THE JAMES D. PHELAN CELTIC COLLECTION
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THE
CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
OF
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THESETTLEMENT OF IRELAND . ~
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'.'..•• IUI '• .
THE
CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
OF
IRELAND.
BY
JOHN P. PRENDERGAST, ESQ.
\VJLl'±l THEEE MAPS.
NEW YORK : P. M. HAVERTY, 1 BARCLAY STREET,
(8 DOOE8 FROM BROADWAY.) 1868.
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. SULLIVAN
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
PREFACE 7-23
INTRODUCTION 25-60
PAKT I.
CIRCUMSTANCES IMMEDIATELY LEADING TO THE OROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT OF IRELAND.
The Great Irish Rebellion of 23d October, 1641 61
The Difficulties of the Irish War, and the Terms offered to the
Irish 70
Schemes for the New Planting of Ireland 74
Departure of the Swordmen for Spain 77
Ireland assigned to the Adventurers and Soldiers 79
PAET H.
THE TRANSPLANTATION.
The First Trumpet 81
The Second and Last Trumpet, with the Doom of the Irish
Nation 83
The Remonstrances of the Irish 87
Applications for Dispensations from Transplantation 91
The Troubles of the Commissioners for Ireland 96
The First Aspect of Connaught. . , 97
The First Year of Transplantation 99
The Second and following Years of Transplantation 101
The Condition of the Transplanted in Connaught Ill
PART III.
THE ADVENTURERS AND SOLDIERS.
The Civil Survey 121
The Down Survey 123
Of the Boxing of the Army for Lands 125
Of the Equalizing of Counties and Baronies 128
The Counties as valued by the Army 129
The Baronies as valued by the Regiments of each Province. . . 130
302192
6 CONTENTg.
PAGK.
Of the Equalizing of the Lands in the Lot of a Troop or Com pany 135
Sale of Debentures by the Common Soldiers to their Officers. . . 136 Common Soldiers cheated of their Lots of Land by their Officers 145 Attempts of the Officers to take unfair Advantages of one
another in the Setting out of Lands 147
Of the Distribution by the Adventurers of their Allotments . . . 148
The Replanting of Ireland 151
Of English Planters invited back by the Government from
America 154
Proceedings of the Adventurers in Replanting 156
Proceedings of the Officers in Replanting 160
Of the Five Counties 164
Of the reinhabitmg of the Towns by new English, by the Orders of the Government 167
CONCLUSION.
THE THREE BTJBDENSOME BEASTS.
Desolation of Ireland 177
First Burdensome Beast, The Wolf 178
Second Burdensome Beast, a Priest 180
Third Burdensome Beast, a Tory 187
APPENDIX.
I. Of the Map of Coniiaught 203
II. Of the Map of the County of Tipperary as divided be tween the Adventurers and Soldiers, with the List of the Adventurers and their Localities therein 211
III. Sale of Debentures by the Common Soldiers to their
Officers 225
IV. Petitions for Dispensation from Transplantation 230
V. Mallow Commission, A. D. 1656 236
VI. Of the Seizing of Widows, Orphans, and the Destitute, and Transporting them to the Barbadoes and the
English Plantations in America 244
VII. Petitions of Maurice Viscount Roche, Fermoy; and of
Jordan Roche's Children 247
VIII. Transplanters' Certificates 249
Index of Subjects 255
Index of Names , 279
P E E F A~C E .
OF all possessions in a country Land is the most desirable It is the most fixed. It yields its returns in the form of rent with the least amount of labour or forethought to the owner. But, in addition to all these advantages, the possession of it confers such power, that the balance of power in a state rests with the class that has the balance of Land.
The laws of most of the states of Europe since the days of the Northern invasions have been made by the landowners. They have been enabled to prescribe to the mass of the peo ple on what conditions they shall live on the land, or whether indeed they shall live there at all.
The term " Settlement," of such great import in the history of Ireland in the Seventeenth century, means nothing else than the settlement of the balance of land according to the will of the strongest ; for force, not reason, is the source of law. And 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. As their object was rather to extinguish a nation than to suppress a religion, they seized the lands of the Irish, and transferred them (and with them all the power of the state) to an overwhelming flood of new English settlers, filled with the intensest national and re ligious hatred of the Irish.
Two other settlements followed, which may be called the Restoration Settlement and the Revolution Settlement. The one was a counter-revolution, by which some of the Royalist
8 PREFACE.
English of Ireland and a few of the native Irish were restored to their estates under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation.* The other (or Revolution Settlement) followed the victory of William III. at the battle of the Boyne. JBy it the lands lately restored to the Royalist English and a few native Irish were again seized by the Parliament of England and distributed among the conquering nation. At the Court for the Sale of Estates forfeited on account of the war of 1690, the lands could be purchased only by Englishmen. No Irishman could pur chase more than the site for a cabin ; for to the condition of cottagers it was intended that the relics of the nation should be reduced.f
The Penal Laws, which lasted nearly in full force till the breaking out of the first American War, were nothing but the complement of the Forfeited Estates Act. Their main pur pose was, on the one hand, to prevent the Irish from ever en larging their landed interest beyond the low state to which it had been reduced after the sales by the Forfeited Estates Court — for which reason they were forbid to purchase land ; and, on the other hand, to contrive by all political ways, and particularly by denying them the power to make settlements of their property by deed or will, and by making their lands divisible equally among their sons at their death, to crumble and break in pieces the remnant that had escaped confiscation,
* Such was the nationnl hatred of the Royalists of England to the Irish (who fought, and lost country and every thing for the King), that even in their common exile abroad they rejoiced at Cromwell's proceedings in stripping the Irish of their lands : —
" We are at a dead calm [writes Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, from Paris, in 1654] for all manner of intelligence. Cromwell, no doubt, is very busy. Nathaniel Fiennes is made Chancellor of Ireland ? and they doubt not to plant that kingdom without opposition. And truly, if we can get it again, we shall find difficulties removed which a virtuous prince and more quiet times could never have compassed." Sir Edward Hyde to Mr. Betius, Paris, 29th May, 1654.— Clarendon's " State Tracts," vol. iii., p. 244. Folio. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
t They could be purchased by Protestants (i. «., English) only. 1st Anne, st. 1, c. 26, sec. 8, English Statute. Two acres was the utmost an Irishman could take a lease of. — Ib., sec. 10.
PREFACE. 9
and thereby to deprive them of all power and consideration in the state.* It will thus be seen that these three Settlements are only parts of one whole, and that the Cromwellian Settle ment is the foundation of the present settlement of Ireland.
The terra Settlement being understood in this sense, the present sketch is conversant directly with the measures taken by the Parliament of England in dealing with the land. The history of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the personal character of Cromwell and the chief actors, the account of the war from 1649 to 1653, are no further touched upon than has been thought necessary to the main purpose of this sketch. But it will be seen from the Introduction, and in treating the details of the Cromwellian Settlement, how large a share of the his tory of Ireland is involved in the Land question.
From the days of the first invasion, the King and Council of England intended to make English landed proprietors in Ire land the rulers of Ireland, as William the Conqueror had made the French of Normandy landlords and rulers of the English. Though the Government of England were interrupted in this course by the wars of Edward I. for the subjection oif the Scotch, by the wars of Edward III. and his successors for the crown of France, and finally by the civil wars of England, called the " Wars of the Roses," the design was never aban doned. And when Henry VIII., disencumbered of any foreign war or domestic treason, had time to destroy the house of Kil- dare, he projected the clearing of Ireland to the Shannon, and colonizing it with English. But the new conquest of Ireland only really began in the reigns of his three children, Edward
* " As to the intention of the Act,* it is plain the legislature hn<l a double view ; first, to disable Papists from enlarging their lauded interest, so as they should soon moulder away in their hands : the second view was to encourage them to become converts by throwing some temporal invitation in their way." Vicars against Carrol, in the Exchequer, 10th February, 1728. " Several Special Cases on the Laws against the further Growth of Popery in Ireland. By Gorges Edward Howard, Esq." 8vo. Dublin, 1775, p. 37.
* 8th Anne, c. 3, A. D. 1710.
10 PREFACE.
VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, when the conquest of the lands of the Irish for the purpose of new colonizing or planting them with English was resumed, after an interval of more than three hundred years. During this interval the English Pale, or that part of Ireland subject to the regular jurisdiction of the King of England and his laws, had been gradually contracting — partly by the English of Ireland throw ing off the feudal system, and partly by reconquests effected by the Irish, until in the reign of Henry VI. the Pale was nearly limited by the line of the LifFey and the Boyne. Beyond the Pale the English and the Irish dwelt intermixed. And in all the plans for restoring the regular administration of the King's laws in Ireland, previous to the reign of Edward VI., it was always proposed that the English of Ireland should be brought back to their ancient military discipline, and should conquer from the Irish the lands in their possession, in order that they might be given to English under grants on feudal conditions by the King.
But the English of Ireland clearly foresaw that the effect of the complete conquest of the Irish would be to give the Gov ernment of Ireland to the English of England. Their armed retainers, called Gallowglasses and Kerne, would be put down, as there would no longer remain the pretence of defending the land from the King's Irish enemies. With the regular admin istration of English laws would come back wardships, marriages, reliefs, escheats, and forfeitures, which they were only too hap py to have thrown off in the days of Edward II. ; and the final result would be to bring over new colonists from England, who would be rivals to supplant them in the favour of the Govern ment, and in all the offices of the State. The English of Ire land, consequently, were secretly indisposed to effect the recon- quest, and it was not until they were subdued that the second conquest began.
The first blow to the English of Irish birth was the limiting the power of Parliament. In the reign of Henry VII., Sir Ed ward Poynings forced from the Irish Parliament a statute
PREFACE. 1 1
whereby the Privy Council of England were made virtually part of the Parliament of Ireland ; for thenceforth it could ori ginate no statutes, and could pass only such as had been first approved by the Privy Council of England. The Parliament had in fact long become devoted to the Earls of Kildare, who had thereby become too powerful for the Kings of England. The next and final blow to the power of the English of Ireland was the fall of the House of Kildare, when Silken Thomas, Earl of Kildare, and his five uncles, were executed at Tyburn for treason, at the end of Henry VIII.'s reign. The head of the ancient English of Ireland had now fallen ; their Parliament had been already deprived of its power ; the main obstacles to the designs of England were removed ; and in the following reigns the recon quest of Ireland by plantation began.
At first it was the native Irish that were stripped, as the O'Moores, the O'Connors, and the O'Neils. The Earl of Des mond's great territories, extending over Limerick and Kerry, Cork and Waterford, were next confiscated and planted. Fi nally, in James I.'s reign, the native Irish, not only of Ulster, but of Leitrim, and wherever else they continued possessed of their original territories, were dispossessed of portions of their lands, varying from one-third to three-fourths, to form planta tions of new English. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the old English of Ireland, though they agreed in point of re ligion with the native Irish, always adhered to the English in any rebellion of the Irish, as in a national quarrel. In James I.'s reign, as all the planters were of the new religion, the old English found themselves supplanted by them in all the offices of the State, as the Irish found themselves supplanted by them in their native homes.
It is needless here to recapitulate the long-continued injuries and insults by which the ancient English of Ireland were forced into the same ranks with the Irish in defence of the King's cause in 1641. Chief among them were the attempts to seize their estates under the plea of defective title, in order to plant them with new English. It was thus Lord Strafford got Con-
1 2 PREFACE.
naught and parts of Tipperary and Limerick into his power, with the intention of forming a new plantation at the expense of the De Burgos and other old English. One of the old Eng lish, in 1644, thus graphically expresses their feelings: — " Was it not the usual taunt of the late Lord Straftbrd arid all his fawning sycophants, in their private conversations with those of the Pale, that they were the most refractory men of the whole kingdom, and that it was more necessary (that is, for their own crooked ends) that they should be planted and sup planted than any others ;" and that " where plantations might not reach, Defective Titles should extend." He had known many an officer and gentleman, he adds, who had left a hand at Kinsale in fighting in defence of the Crown of England, when the Spaniards and the Earl of Tyrone were defeated by Lord Mountjoy, to be afterwards deprived of his pension for having refused to take the oath of supremacy and allegiance in the Protestant form, though, as one of them answered, on being questioned before the State for matter of recusancy (as they termed it), " It was not asked of me the day of Kinsale what religion I was of." *
The Scotch and English, however, having rebelled against the King in 1639 (for the march of the Scottish rebels to the Border in that year was on the invitation of the leaders of the popular party in England, though they themselves did not openly take the field till 1642),f the Irish rose in his favour. They were finally subdued, in 1652, by Cromwell and the arms of the Commonwealth ; and then took place a scene not wit nessed in Europe since the conquest of Spain by the Vandals. Indeed, it is injustice to the Vandals to equal them with the
* "Queries propounded by the Protestant Party concerning the Peace now treated of in Ireland, and the Answers thereto made on behalf of the Irish nation," pp. 11, 12. Small 4to. Paris: 1644.
t To obtain a clear account of the leading1 causes and principal events of this era in England in a short compass, with all the evidence to support his view, I know nothing equal to " The Britannic Constitution," by Roger Acherley, Esq., of the Middle Temple, folio, London, 1727 (chap, ix., " Breaches of the Constitution in the Reign of Charles I.").
PREFACE. 13
English of 1652 ; for the Vandals came as strangers and con querors in an age of force and barbarism, nor did they ban ish the people, though they seized and divided their lands by lot;* but the English, in 1652, were of the same nation as half of the chief families in Ireland, and had at that time had the island under their sway for five hundred years.
The captains and men of war of the Irish, amounting to 40,000 men and upwards, they banished into Spain, where they took service under that king; others of them, with a crowd of orphan boys and girls, were transported to serve the English planters in the West Indies ; and the remnant of the nation not banished or transported, were to be transplanted into Con- naught, while the conquering army divided the ancient inheri tances of the Irish amongst them by lot.
This scene, never before described, is the subject of the pres ent sketch. By what accident it became my study may de serve mention.
I had for about ten years belonged to the Leinster Circuit, travelling through the counties of Wicklow, Wexford, Water- ford, Kilkenny, and Tipperary, when, in the year 1846, I re ceived a commission from England to make some pedigree re searches in the latter. county. Furnished with an old pedigree, which had been given to an ancestor of the family by the Ul ster King of Arms, when quitting Ireland, as an exile, after the battle of the Boyne, I visited the place where the family had been anciently seated.
Twelve miles south of Clonmel, on the right bank of the Suir, under a range of hills that there bars the course of that river from north to south, and sends it thirty miles eastward to issue below Waterford, as one of " the Three Sisters," to the sea, I found a ruined castle, and beside it a still more ruined chapel, and desecrated graveyard. The castle had evidently been built to guard the pass over the hills to Lismore. Among many broken tombstones of the family of the pedigree, within
* See Eobertson's " History of the Emperor Charles V.," Appendix to Introduction.
14 PREFACE.
the roofless walls, lay a large one, fractured across the centre, recording the name and virtues of a captain in the array, who, as far as could be deciphered, had received the public thanks ; but the stone was gapped, and, the next word being " borough," it seemed as if he had been a Member of Parliament. One of the crowd who watched the attempt to decipher the inscrip tion sent a boy for the fragment, which marked a potato ridge in the adjoining conacre field. It filled the gap, and the in scription now showed that he had received the public thanks [of the great Duke of Marl\ borough for his distinguished ser vices at the siege of Aire, in Flanders, in 17 10.
The prospect of the mountain, the river, and the plain, to gether with the scene of ruin all around, so characteristic of the country, excited my interest ; and the pedigrees (for in the neighbourhood I discovered another) were now studied with care. The family, it seems, had come over from Pem brokeshire with Strongbow, and by an alliance with the De Berminghams had obtained large possessions both in Tippe- rary and in Waterford (counties which the chain of hills here divides) ; so large, indeed, that the country people, whose im agination supplies a tradition for every thing, call the family, whose memory they tenaciously preserve, the Clan a Gothag, or Clan of the Smoke ; for they say that the founder of the family, the first invader, halted on the summit of the pass, from whence could be seen the Suir flowing north and south on one side, and the Blackwater in the same direction on the other ; and, lighting a fire, he said that he would follow and conquer with the smoke. It was a calm summer day, and the smoke rose, and spread both ways.
There they remained, possessed of lands in Tipperary and Waterford, from the days of King John. In the year 1650, Cromwell, leaving his winter-quarters in Youghal at an unusu ally early season of the year for campaigning in Ireland (the 29th of January), crossed the Suir at Cahir, nine miles to the north of this castle ; and sending a detachment towards it, it was surrendered, but was yielded back on condition of the de-
PREFACE. 15
fences being taken down. A few soldiers were left to see this done. The rest of the detachment had not proceeded far before they heard confused noises behind ; and they hurried back, thinking that the tenants of the castle were murdering their comrades. But it was only the noise of a pack of buck- hounds, kept in the bawn, or fortified curtilage. So they brought off the owner and his hounds to Cromwell, then on his march to the siege of Kilkenny, who was thus afforded some good sport, whereby the gentleman so ingratiated himself with Cromwell, according to the pedigree, that he afterwards inter fered in his favour. And among the few letters of the Lord Protector there remains one in favour of a gentleman of the same name " of the County of Tipperary," requesting that he might be spared from transplantation.
His estate, however, passed to the Adventurers. Whole families of the name, as I afterwards found, were transplanted into Connaught. Thence some of them petitioned to be allow ed to come back, merely to get in their last harvest ; but they were refused ; they were only suffered to send some servants. Soon afterwards they sold their assignments in Connaught for a trifle to the officers of transplantation, and fled in horror and aversion from the scene, and embarked for Spain. At the Restoration, the heir, who had served under the King's ensigns abroad, returned ; and, expecting to be restored to his estate, complained to the Council that he found the Adventurer who was in possession of the family estate cutting down all the timber, endeavouring, evidently, to make the most of his time, in case he should lose the lands by this new revolution. As the timber on all forfeited lands was, by Cromwell's Acts, re served to the State, the Council had issued a proclamation, on the Restoration, to prevent the cutting down of trees. The affidavit of the heir still remains, informing the Council that, when he showed the Adventurer the proclamation, he and his men answered him, " that they did not value the said procla mation, and that they would not leave standing a tree of all the wood but one, whereon he, this deponent, should hang.'1
I 6 PHEFACE.
Deprived of their estates, which were never restored, differ ent branches of the family became tenants under the Adven turers of the lands they had once owned as lords. Some of them, still adhering to the Crown, forfeited their leases after the battle of the Boyne, and became exiles. Others held on. One of the family — the grandfather of him whose pedigree I was commissioned to investigate — happened to be conducting agent for one of the candidates at the election at Clonmel for the county of Tipperary caused by the accession of George III. He tendered his vote. " You know you married a Papist," said the opposing agent, and thus denied his right. The other challenged him for the insult. They retired at once to the Green of Clonmel, behind the Court-house, where the man in sulted on account of his wife's supposed religion was shot dead, the other with difficulty escaping, on a horse, from the excited crowd across the River Suir, which runs by the Green,. I did not understand, until later, that a Protestant who married an Irishwoman, if she did not conform to English religion within one year of the marriage, sank to the harlot-like condition of his wife's people ; he was deprived of all rights ; he became " a constructive Papist ;" and " a Protestant of this class was, in the eye of the law, a more odious Papist (to use the words of the Court) than a real and actual Papist by profession and principle." *
On my return to Dublin, I had recourse to the Records, to trace the pedigree. The Rolls of Chancery begin only in the reign of Edward II., almost all the earlier ones having been burnt by a fire that destroyed St. Mary's Abbey, where they were then deposited. Many early links, however, were ob tained from the Tower of London, whither appeals in Writs of Right by members of the family, and in one case of Wager of Battle, carried from Ireland to Westminster in the reign of Edward I., had been preserved. From Edward II. to the
* The case of Rives against Roderic, in the Exchequer, Hilary Term, 1729. Howard's " Cases on the Laws against the further Growth of Popery in Ireland," p. 60. 8vo. Dublin: 1775.
PBEFACE. 1 7
34th of Henry VIII. comparatively little information was to be obtained, as in that interval the regular administration of Eng lish law was suspended, except in the Pale ; and the English in the provinces ruled their differences by March Law, the Irish by Brehon Law, and some of the towns (as, for instance, Gal way) by the Civil Law.
But after the fall of the House of Kildare, the Feudal Law was resumed, and Inquisitions taken upon the death of every landowner " found," or recorded in Chancery, his death ; what estates he died seized of; who was his heir, and whether under age, and unmarried ; for in case the King became entitled to the guardianship and marriage of the heir, and to the rents of the estate during the minority, without account. Thus, from 1540 to 1640 nothing was easier than to trace the chain. But here these documents ended, and a gap ensued, which it was long difficult to bridge. The Statutes, after a similar gap, began in 1662 with the Act of Settlement. After some study it proved unintelligible. It was founded on transactions of which there was no explanation. The histories of Ireland af forded next to nothing.
The search for information had been for some time aban doned as nearly hopeless, when I remembered that in the King's Inns' Library there were pamphlets amounting to thousands, but not catalogued. Each day, after court, a certain number were gone through, until at length the whole was examined. Between 1641 and 1650, there were plenty of pamphlets about Ireland ; but they concerned the War ; and it was not such I wanted. I had come to perceive the importance of the history of the Landed Settlement of Ireland, and I desired those that concerned the period from 1650 to 1659. I only found the following, viz.: — ''The Great Case of Trans plantation in Ireland Discussed," in the year 1655, with an answer by Colonel Lawrence, and a reply by Vincent Gookin (the author of the " Case") ; and Colonel Lawrence's ** Interest of England in the Well Planting of Ireland with English People Discussed," in 1656.
18 PREFACE.
My interest was now redoubled, for I had formed some conception of the Settlement. I went back to the Rolls' Office, to ask Mr. Hatchell, so long Deputy-Keeper, if he knew any thing of the history of the Settlement ; and if not, who did ? He answered, he knew nothing of it, " but perhaps Groves might." He was an old clergyman, who had been one of the Record Commission of 1810. Mr. Groves knew nothing, but said Mr. Shaw Mason might — he had been Secretary to the Commission ; but Mr. Mason knew no more than Mr. Groves.
I now thought of searching the Record Commissioners' Re ports, and found that there were several volumes of the very date required, 1650-1659, in the custody of the Clerk of the Privy Council, preserved in the heavily embattled Tower which forms the most striking feature of the Castle of Dublin. They were only accessible at that day through the order of the Lord Lieutenant or Chief Secretary for Ireland. I obtained at length, in the month of September, 1848, an order. It may be easily imagined with what interest I followed the porter up the dark winding stone staircase of this gloomy tower, once the prison of the Castle, and was ushered into a small central space that seemed dark, even after the dark stairs we had just left. As the eye became accustomed to the spot, it appeared that the doors of five cells made in the prodigious thickness of the Tower walls opened on the central space. From one of them Hugh Roe O'Donel is said to have escaped, by getting down the privy of his cell to the Poddle River that runs round the base of the Tower, i The place was covered with the dust of twenty years ; but, opening a couple of volumes of the Stat utes, — one as a clean spot to place my coat upon, the other to sit on, — I took up my seat in the cell, exactly opposite to the one just mentioned, as it looked to the south over the Castle garden, and had better light. In this Tower, I found a series of Order Books of the Commissioners of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England for the Affairs of Ireland, together with Domestic Correspondence and Books of Establishments from 1650 to 1659. They were marked on the back by the
PREFACE. 19
letter A over a number, as will be observed in the various ref erences in the notes of the present sketch.* Here I found the J^ records of a nation's woes. The first page I happened to open presented the following : —
" Forasmuch as the within Mrs. Mary Wolverston, by reason of the bad weather that hath happened, was disabled to travel with her provision and carriages into Connaught by the tyme limited in the within passe, these are therefore to desire all whom it may concern to permit the said Mary, and the within named persons her servants, with such corne and other necessary provisions as she or they shall have with them, quietly to pass into Connaught aforesaid to their habitations, she and they behaving themselves as becometh.
" THOMAS HERBERT, Clerk of the Council.
"Dated the 14£7t October, 1654," f
I felt that I had at last reached the haven I had been so long seeking. There I sat, extracting, for many weeks until I began to know the voices of many of the corporals that came with the guard to relieve the sentry in the Castle yard below, and every drum and bugle call of the regiment quartered in the Ship- street barracks. At length, between the labor of copying, and excitement at the astonishing drama performing as it were be fore my eyes, my heart by some strange movements warned me it was necessary to retire for a time. But I again and again returned at intervals, sometimes of months, sometimes of years. Other depositories were ransacked. I got free range of the Exchequer, full of interesting historical documents, and con taining the Minute and Order Books of Cromwell's Court of Claims. I had access to the Records of the late Auditor and '
* See the catalogue of these books, among the papers contained in the Council Office, in the volume of reports from the Record Commissioners from 1816 to 1828, Appendix, p. 227.
t A-5. The Wolverstons were at this time owners of the noble de mesne called Stillorgan Park, three miles south of Dublin, derived through the Cruise family, who were possessed of it in the beginning of the 13th century. (" History of the County of Dublin, by John D' Alton, Esq., Barrister at Law," p. 840. 8vo. Dublin: 1838.) It subsequently got the name of Carysfort Park, from becoming the property of the Earls of Carysfort.
2 J PREFACE.
Surveyor-General's offices in the Custom House Buildings, in the custody of W. H. Hardinge, Esq., whose works on the Of ficial Maps and Surveys of the 1641 and 1688 Forfeitures, now publishing in the " Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy," will become, for their extent and accuracy, the basis of much authentic history. Some of the Order Books of the Council are to be found here ; and the correspondence of the Revenue Commissioners of the fifteen precincts into which Ireland was divided by the Commissioners of the Commonwealth abound in curious details. Every circuit I visited, through the kind permission of the late Marquis of Ormond, the muniment room of Kilkenny Castle, containing a series of private and pub lic historical documents, some coeval with the first Conquest — a pleasure enhanced by a friendship with their accomplished keeper, the Rev. James Graves, Honorary Secretary to the Kilkenny Archaeological Society.*
This depository is still surprisingly rich, though drayloads of papers concerning the Cromwellian and Restoration eras were carried away by Carte, to enable him to write the " History of the Life of James Duke of Ormond," — papers which now form the Great Carte Collection in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. These were visited, as also the British Museum and State Paper Office, which, however, did not yield much. I must add the Library of Charles Haliday, Esq., at his Lucullan villa, Monks- town Park, rich in all the rarest literature relating to Ireland, with a collection of pamphlets and fugitive pieces from the earliest time to the present, probably unequalled,! over the door
* Author, jointly with J. G. A. Prirn, of the " History of the Cathedral of St. Cauice, Kilkenny." 4to. Dublin: Hodges and Smith, 1857. Mr. Graves is now editing, under the sanction of the Master of the Rolls, a Council Roll of 18th Kichard II., A. D. 1395, preserved in Kilkeuny Castle.
t Plutarch, after describing the elegance of Lucullus's villas, praise* him for the libraries he had collected, and the number ot volumes he had caused to be copied for him in elegant hands. His libraries were open to all. The Greeks repaired at pleasure to the galleries and porticos, as to the retreat of the Musfis, and there spent whole days in conversation on matters of learning, delighted to retire to such a scene from business
PREFACE. 21
of which might be written, " The Books of Charles Haliday and his friends."* As the materials grew, so grew the difficulty of selecting and framing an account. Other occupations also in terfered.
It seemed as if I had now gone through every depository. I had got a tolerably clear view of that great work, the Trans plantation of a Nation, which the Commissioners of the Parlia ment found it such a labor to execute. But to express the despondency I felt at attempting to describe it, I might almost use the language of the Commissioners themselves in effecting it, — " The children were now come to the birth, and much was expected and desired, but there was no strength to bring forth." f
In the beginning of the year, 1864, however, the Earl of Charlemont intrusted me with the care of the noble collection of books, coins, and papers in Charlemont House, Dublin, formed by his grandfather, James, first Earl of Charlemont, a man no less distinguished in arts than for patriotism, — the General in Chief of the Irish Volunteers. The library was a rich one (particularly in early English and Italian literature) ; but, as I had had constant access to so many fine Public libra ries, it did not seem likely that I should meet with any thing in print that had not come under my notice. What, then, was my surprise to find twelve small quarto volumes, in old sheep skin covers, comprising the London weekly newspapers between " 1641 and 1659, the same substantially in form as those of the present day ! There is the leading article (those of the year
and from care. Lucullus often joined these learned men in their walks^ and gave them his advice about the affairs of their country ; so that his house was in fact an asylum and senate house to all the Greeks that visited Rome. " Life of Lucullus."
* Eabelais inscribed in all his books the following :— " Francisci Kabe- laesi, medici, *ai rG>v abrov <f>i\wv." Notwithstanding his devotion to commerce, there are to be found valuable papers from Mr. Haliday on the early history of Dublin and its port, in the "Transactions of the Eoyal Irish Academy." His researches into the history of the Danes of Ireland would be a most important addition to the history of the kingdom.
t See at p. 85, post.
22 PEEFACE.
1650, for instance, hare " Young Tarquin" for their subject, sometimes called " the Scotch King," nicknames for Charles II., to render him odious to the English), proceedings in Par liament and the Law Courts, and correspondence from Paris, Sweden, Rome, &c., and Ireland — the letters from Ireland sup plying some of those lively touches that such contemporary ac counts alone can give.
It was plain that all the information that could be hoped for had now been obtained ; and if not brought forth, the subject might sleep for another period as long as the last — some of the information might, perhaps, be buried forever with the pos sessor.* Much of it had been collected with the view of being able some time or other to treat the subject of the Settlement of real property in Ireland, historically considered, before the body of the Bar ; but as neither of the two chairs founded by the Benchers had the law of real property allotted to it, and still wishing to interest my own profession in a favorite pur suit, a select audience of them was addressed, f The interest
* "When a learned man dies," said the Master of the Temple, in his speech at the grave of the great jurisconsult, John Selden, in 1654, in the Temple Church — " when a learned man dies, much learning dies with him;" adding, " If learning could have kept a man alive, our brother had not died." — Wood's "Athenae Oxonienses," vol. ii., "John Selden," p. 134. Folio. London: 1721.
t This lecture was delivered on the 9th of June, 1864, at the Four Courts, Dublin. The following was the notice issued : —
" THE CKOMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT OF IRELAND.
" A lecture, to be based on Acts and Ordinances of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England, on unpublished Orders and Declarations of the Lord Deputy and Council for the Affairs of Ireland, and on other original sources. To be illustrated by transcript maps of Strafford's Sur vey, taken in 1637, on occasion of the confiscation of Connaught and part of Tipperary ; also by transcripts of the Down Survey, for setting down the regiments of the Army of the Parliament of England, by troops and companies, in 1654 and 1655; by original certificates of Adventurers' allotments, and by conveyances from the soldiers of whole troops and companies of their debentures to their officers ; likewise by coloured maps, showing, in different tints, the baronies assigned in Connaught for the new settlements of the ancient nobility, gentry, and farmers of the Irisli nation, corresponding in character to their old habitations in the three
PREFACE. 23
and appreciation shown by men so well qualified to judge gave assurance that the subject could not be without interest to the public.
JOHN P. PRENDERGAST. 3 TOWER TERRACE, SANDYMOUNT, DUBLIN, May 1, 1865.
other provinces from whence they were transplanted ; and showing the division of those three provinces between the Adventurers, for their advances towards putting down the rebellion, and between the officers and soldiers for arrears of pay."
INTRODDCT40ftiJ"':
" THE Irish are one of the most ancient nations," says Spen ser, " that I know of at this end of the world ;" and come of " as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth." *
They belong to that great Gaelic or Celtic race that ages ago inhabited Erin, Britain, Gaul, and the northern part of Spain.
Men of big hearts, and big bodies,f the Gauls were long the terror of Rome. Bursting over the Alps, they sacked the city (B. c. 388). Camillus paid a ransom for it, and they retired ; and Camillus got the name of Second founder of Rome. Others of them, following the course of the Danube, burst into Greece, and attacked the Temple of Delphi for its treasures (B. c. 279). Another body crossed over into Asia Minor. Three of their tribes divided the country among them. Antio- chus at length put a stop to their attacks on the Greek cities,J and confined them to the central mountains of Asia Minor ; for this he got the title of Soteer, or Saviour (B. c. 277). There they long dwelt, the only free people amid na tions of slaves. The chiefs of the clans met yearly on a plain, surrounded by ancient oaks. Here St. Jerome found them
* " View of the State of Ireland, written by Edmund Spenser, Esq., in the yeare 1596," pp. 26 and 32. Folio. Printed at Dublin : 1633.
f " Ingentes animos ingenti corpore versant." — The men of Tipperary are said to have hearts as big as bulls, and to their foes as fierce ; but to woman or friend as tender as thrushes.
I See the touching song, in Greek, of three young Ionian ladies of Miletus, who voluntarily quitted life rather than meet these Gauls : —
" Then let us hence, Miletus dear ! Sweet native land, farewell 1 The insulting wrongs of lawless Gauls we fear whilst here we dwell.'1
Bonn's " Greek Anthology," translated, 12mo., London, 1852, p. 446. One might have presumed that these Gauls belonged to Gallia Celtica (they did in fact come from Toulouse, in France) ; if they had been Irish, these virgins need not have felt the least alarm— for
" No son of Erin would have offered them harm." 2
26 INTRODUCTION.
speaking their own language, six hundred years after their first settlement. Of these were " the Galatians," or Celts, to whom St. Paul addressed his Epistle.
About one hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Cimbric Gauls again threatened Rome. Marius, fresh from his conquest at Ganliftge:, defeated them. It bespeaks the great ness of the peril that the Romans gave him for this victory .tl.'G -tarjie; of Third ^founder of Rome. They were a warlike 'ruce. Whoever Wanted to buy headlong courage hired the Gauls. They were in the pay of Carthage ; they were the chosen soldiers of Pyrrhus, that king of blasted triumphs, who loved fighting for fighting's sake. It was in going to the res cue of his Gaulish troops, overmatched in the market-place of Argos, that an old woman killed him in one of its narrow streets, by a tile thrown from the roof. Vast in their hopes, noisy, rhetorical, laughers, talkers, sympathetic, — such is the character of the early race. " The Gauls march openly to their end," says Strabo, lt and are thus easily circumvented."
Some people seem always disposed to side with the power ful, but the Gauls, according to the same author, more readily took part with the weak and injured.
Caesar, meditating schemes for the overthrow of the aristo- cratical power in Rome, exercised his armies in subduing the Gauls. Having desolated a country, the Romans set about civilizing it. They established on the ruins of ancient Gaulish freedom a Roman government and a bastard Roman civiliza tion.
They gave the Gauls baths, circuses, and forums ; but they took away from them their arms and the management of their own affairs. Their best citizens were withdrawn from them, to seek their fortunes at the capital of the world. Dearly did they pay for their civilization. Large landed estates, which had ruined Italy, now ruined Gaul.* Weighed down with taxes, and the overpowering shadow of the empire, in their wretchedness the Gauls of France actually welcomed the irrup tion of the barbarians.f
The Britons, in the course of 400 years of Roman govern-
* " Latifundia perdidere Italiam ; ju,m vero et provincias." C. Plin. Sccnndi, Nat. Hist., lib. xviii., 7.
t For an account of the Gauls, see Michelet, " Hiatoire de France," b. i., cc. 1-3; Amadee Thierry, " Histoire des Gaules." 2 vols. Svo, Paris: 1857.
INTRODUCTION. 27
ment, were reduced to similar weakness. The descendants of those warriors that startled Julius Caesar with their enthusias tic bravery and contempt of death, were unable to strike in their own defence, when the Roman armies withdrew to the Continent to support the crumbling empire. When the Irish of Caledonia invaded them, the Britons could do nothing but "groan," and finally called in the Saxons to defend them. It was the same with Spain — this country, that so long maintain ed itself against the Romans, was overrun by the Vandals, and partitioned in two years. It was the same wherever the Roman power prevailed. Italy, and Rome itself, Gaul, Spain, Britain, were overrun by hordes of barbarians,
Huns, Alans, Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombards, Saxons, Franks, poured over Western Europe, like wave succeeding wave. Whole countries were depopulated ; their names were changed, their laws and languages lost ; the survivors became the farm slaves of the conquerors, to be taxed, worked, and flogged at the will of their masters. These conquerors began to fight amongst them selves; the strong ones knew no law but their own will, limited only by their power. They built themselves castles on the heights, clad themselves in iron, and compelled each man to be either of their band or -to be their victim. The earlier invaders resigned to some later tyrant in the neighbour hood the allotments they had carved out for themselves with their own swords and held independent of any superior. They took them back from him as his Tenants on the condition of serving him with his followers either in robbing, or in defend ing him from being robbed, he on his part yielding them pro tection.* This was the feudal system, the foundation of the law of real property in Europe, modified in the course of cen turies, by the growth of towns, by the spread of intelligence, by the Crusades ; happily extinguished utterly in France by the Revolution of 1789, and wherever the French army carried the Code Napoleon with its abolition of settlements or quasi- entails, by deed or will, and its freer diffusion of property in land, accompanied by general self-respect, and increase of national well-being.
Britain from her remoteness, and by being an island, was
* Robertson, " History of the Emperor Charles V. ;" preliminary chapter and appendix, ib.
28 INTRODUCTION.
not subject to so many invasions as the Continent of Europe. She fell, however (A. D. 450) to one of the fiercest of the bar barian nations, the Saxons. They were possessed in the high est degree of the Land hunger that made the invasions of these northern hordes so terrible beyond all former conquests. They seized the houses and farms of the Romanized Britons, exter minated them and their language, and the very names of their towns and districts, and drove the survivors behind the River Severn ; and there they shut them up among the mountains of Cambria, surrounded by the Severn and the sea, and further secured on the land side by the dike called Offa's Dike, just as theif descendants, one thousand years later, penned up the Irish in Connaught behind the Shannon.
Six hundred years after the settlement of the Saxons in Britain, another race of pirates who had issued in their boats from the fiords and bays of Norway and the Baltic, sailed up the Seine. They made themselves masters of Neustria, took wives of the native race, and became the French of Normandy. Thence William the Conqueror led his French and Flemish fol lowers into England. These French of Normandy reduced this great English nation to such slavery, that they seized the en tire lands and government of England, made the inhabitants their serfs, taxable and floggable at their will, until it became a disgrace to be called an Englishman.*
The English peasantry, deprived of the protection of their na tive gentry and national Government, took the only means they had to make themselves respected : they cut the throats of the worst of their foreign landlords whenever they caught them unawares in byways and thickets.f As no one would turn in former (for national hatred is the firmest bond of association and secrecy), the vill or townland was then fined where a
* " Ut Anglum vocari foret opprobrio." Matthew of Paris, b. 5., c. 12.
t " Black Book of the Exchequer," by Richard Fitz Nigel (or Lenoir), afterwards Bishop of Ely, written in 24th of Henry II., A. D., 1172, in the introduction to Madox's " History and Antiquities of the Exchequer," 2 vols. 4to, London, 1769, vol. i., p. 390. It has been truly said —
" Qui de ses sujets est ha'i,
N'est pas seigneur de son pays.'
* The lord whose tenants cannot well endure him,
Finds no place in his country to secure him."
See Randall Cotgrave's French and English Dictionary, A. D. 1610, at the word " Seigneur." Howell's edit. Folio. London : 1673.
INTRODUCTION. 29
Frenchman was found murdered. To escape this fine, the Eng lish peasantry used to cut off the poor gentleman's nose, slit his cheeks, and so disfigure the corpse, that no one could know whether it was French or English. This practice is alluded to in the ballad of " Robin Hood and Sir Guy of Gisborne," where, after Robin had slain Sir Guy, the ballad proceeds : —
" Then Robin pulled out an Irish knife,
And nicked Sir Guy in the face,
That he was never of woman born
Could know whose head it was.
It was then enacted that the corpse should be deemed French, unless a jury found it was only an Englishman. This was called the presentment of " Englischerie." The French who ruled England charged the English peasantry with treach ery and murder as characteristic of their race. They said that abroad over the wide extent of Germany, inhabited by so many races, whenever any very atrocious deed was committed, it was common to hear people say, " Perfidious Saxon !"* But the English peasantry had no natural taste for murder. They sheltered and protected the man that avenged his own wrongs with spirit, as in some degree the champion of their cause and race ; feeling, perhaps, that if it was not for shooting a gentle man now and then, there would be no living in the country for a poor man. This law (and probably these insults and mur ders) lasted till the reign of Edward III. Then, when the ser vices of the English bowmen were wanted to bring back the revolted French provinces under the hated rule of England,f
* " Who dare compare the English, the most degraded of all races un der heaven [says Giraldus Cambrensis], with the Welsh ? In their own country they are the serfs, the veriest slaves of the Normans. In ours, who else have we for our herdsmen, shepherds, cobblers, skinners, cleaners of our dog-kennels, ay, even of our privies, but Englishmen ? Not to mention their original treachery to the Britons, that hired by them to defend them ihey turned upon them in spite of their oaths and engage ments, they are to this day given to treachery and murder, so that when ever," &c. The concluding words in the Latin of Giraldus are — " Unde et in Teutonico regno quotiens enormiter quis delinquere videtur, de natione quacunque, quasi proverbialiter in suo vulgari diei solet Untrewe Sax, hoc est, infidelis Saxo." Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, edited by J. S. Brewer, M. A., vol. iii., p. 27. 8vo. London, Longman & Co. : 1863.
t " The English," saVs Carte (alluding to the brutal insolence displayed in the debates in the Parliament of England upon the Live Irish Cattle Importation Prohibition Bill, in 1666, which he says was urged out of
80 INTRODUCTION.
they ceased from these national insults, and no doubt found the English peasantry possessed of bravery, truth, and all the vir tues under the sun.
These French conquerors were settled one hundred years in England before they invaded Ireland. A body of them, prin cipally Flemings, had settled in the southern part of Wales along the Bristol Channel, round by St. David's Head, from whence Ireland was in view.
A party of these men, by way of private adventure, sailed over to the aid of the King of Leinster, then at war with the neighbouring Irish kings. The contingent they brought was small in. number compared to the Irish army which they joined; but better arms, and discipline acquired in foreign war and in maintaining the rule of conquerors over the English they had enslaved, gave the victory to the side they espoused. Their leader married the King's daughter, and received as her dowry the kingdom of Leinster ; his followers obtained estates in the same district ; and, an opening being thus made, the French prince then ruling in England followed, with an army of French and Flemings, and established his rule in Ireland.
The country to which the invaders had now arrived struck them as another world.* The rest of western Europe had been for more than a thousand years enslaved, first to the Ro mans, then to the northern hordes; so that the Feudal system, which is founded on the conquest and colonization of the coun try by an army of foreigners, had come to be considered as the natural state.
Ireland, however, lying on the verge of the western world in the Atlantic, separated from Britain by the unquiet Irish Sea,
wantonness, and a resolution taken to domineer over that distressed kingdom), " never understood governing their provinces, and have put them under a necessity of casting off their government whenever an op portunity offered." ""Lite of James, Duke of Ormond," vol. ii., p. 317. And he had seen the treaties which the provinces of Guienne, Poictou, Anjou, &c., had made with the Kings of France, when by the intolerable pride of the English they had been forced to throw off their yoke. In these they expressly stipulated, " that in any distress of the affairs of France they should never be delivered back into the power of the Eng lish." Ib., ib. And the people thus injured and insulted by them in Ireland, in 1666, were their own blood and nation, the Adventurers and Soldiers not ten years settled in the country.
* " Thus separated from the rest of the known world, and in some sort to be distinguished as another world." — Giraldus, " Topographia Hiber- niae," b. i., chap. 2.
INTRODUCTION. 31
scarcely calm for three days in summer,* had escaped Roman and feudal thraldom.
Tacitus had often heard Agricola, his father-in-law, comman der of the Roman forces in Britain, say that the country could be conquered and held by one legion, and that the conquest of it much concerned the interests of the Romans in Britain ; for the neighbourhood of a free country rendered the Britons more '" difficult to govern. It would be well, therefore, that freedom should be as it were taken out of sight, and the Roman armies be seen everywhere.
To this end he kept a MacMurroughf in his camp, and moved a legion to the coast of Wales, watching for some op portunity ; but the exigencies of the empire called the Roman V" forces home without having invaded Ireland.]; So that when the companions of Strongbow landed, in the reign of King Henry II., they found a country such as Caesar found in Gaul 1200 years before; the inhabitants divided into tribes on the system of clansmen and chiefs, without common government, suddenly confederating, suddenly dissolving, with Brehons, Shannahs, Minstrels, Bards, and Harpers, in all unchanged, ex- cept that for their ancient Druids they had got Christian priests. Had the Irish only remained honest Pagans, Ireland perhaps had been unconquered still. Round the coast stran gers had built seaport towns, either traders from the Cartha ginian settlements in Spain, or outcasts froai their own coun try, like the Greeks that built Marsoilles.§ At the time of the arrival of the French and Flemish Adventurers from Wales, they were occupied by a mixed Danish and French population, who, supplied the Irish with groceries, including the wines of Poitou, — the latter in such abundance, that they had no need of vineyards.||
Unlike England, then covered with castles on the heights, where the French gentlemen secured themselves and their
* Ibid., b. ii., chap. 1.
-t " Agricola, expulsutn seditione domestica, unum ex regulis gentis, exceperat, ac specie ainicitiae in occasionem retinebat." — Tacitus, •' Lite of Airricola."
% " Life of Agricola."
§ Giraldus Cambrensis says the towns were built by the Ostmen, "To '/ pography of Ireland," Distinction iii., chap. 43. But, as Tacitus says the v ports of Ireland were better known to merchants than those of England, the account here given is the more probable one.
\ Giraldus Cambrensis, Distinction L, chap. 5.
32 INTRODUCTION.
families against the hatred of the churls and villeins, as the English peasantry were called, the dwellings of the Irish chiefs were of wattle or clay. It is for robbers and foreigners to take to rocks and precipices for security ; for native rulers there is no such fortress as justice and humanity.
The Irish, like the wealthiest and highest of the present day, loved detached houses, surrounded by fields and woods. Towns and their walls they looked upon as tombs or sepulchres, where man's native vigor decays, as the fiercest animals lose their courage by being caged.* They wore woollen garments much in the present fashion, and disdained to case themselves in iron, thinking it honorable to fight naked, as it was called, with the mailed French of Normandy and their Flemish and English followers, just as the Gauls fought naked with the well- armed soldiers of Rome, f
They were fond of music, poetry, and genealogy, and the professors of these arts in each tribe or clan had land heredi tarily allotted to them. In the spirited character of the Irish the new settlers found themselves in the presence of a people of original sentiments and institutions, the native vigor of whose mind had not been weakened by another mind. Noth ing surprised the invaders more than the natural boldness and readiness of the Irish in speaking and answering even in tl . presence of their chieftains and princes, accustomed as the • vaders were to the servile habits of the English, produced, as Giraldus says, either by long slavery, or (more probably he adds) by the innate dulness of men of Saxon and German stock.|
They were equally astonished at the freedom and familiarity of the Irish gentry with their poorer followers, so different from the haughty reserve of an aristocracy of foreign descent to-
* This was the feeling of the ancient Germans. — Gibbon, chap. xix.
t Sentleger, Lord Deputy, giving Henry VIII. a description of such troops as he might command out of Ireland to France, after describing the gallowglasses, says:—" The other sort, called kerne, are naked men but only their shirts and small coats, and many times when they came to the bicker [tight] but bare naked saving their shirts to hide their privities," p. 444. State Papers (Ireland), H. VIII., vol. ii., Paper 385. In the battle with Lucius JEmilius, the young chiefs of the Gesatae stripped themselves naked, except only their collars and armlets of gold. — Polybius, b. ii., chap. 2.
I Giraldus Cambrensis, " Description of Wales," b. i., c. 15 ; but the eame remarks are applicable to the Irish even in a greater degree.
INTRODUCTION. 33
wards the lower classes of a subject nation reduced by conquest to the state of villeins and serfs. Free by nature, the Irish were followers of nature and freedom in all things.
Unlike most other nations of the world, the Irish did not bind up their infants in swaddling clothes.* It required the lapse of ages, and the burning eloquence of Rousseau, to induce the world to follow the practice of the Irish, who never went wrong in this respect ; so true is the saying that he who fol lows nature never goes out of the way. We learn from Giraldus, that the Irish midwives did not raise the new-born babe's nose, nor shape its face, nor stretch and swathe its little legs. Nature, he says, was in that country allowed to adjust the limbs she had given birth to ; and, as if to prove that what she was able to form she does not cease to watch over, it was found that she gave growth and proportion to the Irish until they arrived at perfect vigor, tall and handsome.f And, being never swathed in infancy, their limbs had a freer turn, and their countenances a more liberal air.
The harp that had long been silent in Gaul, and was heard in Britain only in the mountains of Wales, was universally played in Ireland ; and the gayety of the airs, and the skill of the artists, astonished and delighted those accustomed to the slower airs of the Welsh .J
They amused themselves with hurling, the men of one dis trict playing against those of another, the prize probably, as in later times, being often some fair girl, arranged to be the bride of the favourite youth of the winning side.§
* Such was the custom of the Jews : — " And when I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth . . . and the first voice which I uttered was crying ... I was nursed in swaddling clothes." . . . Wis dom of Solomon, chap. 7. And of the Romans : — " Horninem tantum nu- dum, et in nuda. humo natali die [natura] abjicit ad vagitus statim et plora- turn. Ab hoc lucis rudimento, . . . vincula excipiunt et omnium mem- brorum nexus: itaque feliciter natus, jacet, manibus pedibusque devinctis, flens animal cseteris imperaturum, et a suppliciis vitam auspicatur, unam tantum ob culpam quia natum est." — C. Plinius, lib. vii., chap. 1. " Nature flings down man alone naked on the bare ground on the day of his birth, to begin life with cries and tears. On his entrance into light, every limb is chained and bound; and there lies this little weeping animal that is to command all others, born under these happy auspices, and begins its life in chains and punishment, guilty only of being born."
t "Topography of Ireland," Distinction iii., chap. 10.
% Ibid., chap. 11.
§ " There is a very ancient custom here [county of Tipperary] for a number of country neighbors among the poor people to fix upon some 2*
34 INTRODUCTION.
The great bcxly of the people were of pastoral habits. The different families used the tribal lands in common, following their herds from the winter feeding grounds to the summer pastures in the mountains, shifting their quarters as the need of fresh pasturage for their cows required, and building for themselves light booths of boughs of trees, covered with long strips of green turf. •"' "i
The tillage ground of each tribe, near which they seem to have had dwellings a little more durable than their movable summer huts in the mountains, was annually divided among the families by the Caunfinny, according to their stock and re quirements.
But, though the great body of the people had no separate properties, the chief families had portions appropriated to them in perpetuity. There were also lands appointed as well for the elected chief, as others for the Tanist who was to succeed him ; other portions were also enjoyed hereditarily by the Bre- hons, and bards, and physicians of the tribe. The chief also was entitled to tributes of victuals, and certain of his depend ants were bound to entertain him and his company for stated times in the year.
But the Irish knew no such thing as tenure, nor forfeiture, nor fixed rent ; at this they repined, though willing to offer such tribute of victuals as was required, and to let their chief tains eat them almost out of house and home : hence the saying, " Spend me, but Defend me." *
young woman that ought, as they think, to be married. They also agree upon a young fellow as a proper husband for her. This determined, they send to the f&ir one's cabin, to inform her that on the Sunday following she is to be horsed, that is, carried in triumph on men's backs. She must then provide whiskey and cider for a treat, as all will pay her a visit after mass for a hurling match. As soon as she is horsed, the hurling beghis, on which the young fellow appointed for her husband has the eyes of all the company fixed on him ; if he comes off conqueror, he is certainly mar ried to the girl ; but if another is victor, he as certainly loses her, for she is the prize of the victor." — Vol. ii., p. 250, "A Tour in Ireland in the years 1776, 1777, 1778," by Arthur Young. 8vo. Dublin: 1780. See also his account of Irish dancing, ibid. ; but, with the advance of English power and English religion,
" These healthful sports that graced the happy scene, Lived in each look, and brightened all the green ; These, fur departing, seek a kinder shore, And rural mirth and manners are no more."
* Spenser says, "Coigny is in common use among landlords of the Irish to have a common spending upon their tenants .... neither in this was
INTRODUCTION. 35
The treaty between Henry II. and Roderic, King of Con- naught, entered into at Windsor, three years after the king's return from his " Veni, vidi, vici," visit to Ireland, as Sir John Davies styles it, justifies his ridicule of the nature of the conquest attributed to him.
By that instrument, signed on O'Connor's behalf, as King of Connanght, and Chief King of Ireland, by two of the Pope's new archbishops of Ireland, O'Connor is made to become the King's liegeman, and to be King of Connaught, and Chief King of Ireland, under Henry II. He undertakes that the Irish shall yield the King of England annually one merchant able hide for every ten cows in Ireland, which O'Connor is to collect for him through every part of Ireland, except that which is in the possession of King Henry II. and his barons, being Dublin, Meath, and Leinster, with Waterford as far as Dungarvan. The* rest of the k^ngs and people of Ireland are to enjoy all their lands and liberties as long as they shall con tinue faithful to the King of England, and pay this tribute through the hands of the King of Connaught.*
Two systems were thus established side by side in Ireland, the Feudal and the Brehon systems ; for the Irish, as Sir John Davies remarks, merely became tributaries to the King of Eng land, preserving their ancient Brehon law, and electing their chiefs and tanists, making war and peace with one another, and ruling all things between themselves by this law, until the reign of Queen Elizabeth ;f and this, as Spenser remarks, not merely in districts entirely inhabited by Irish, but in the Eng lish parts. He speaks as an eye-witness, having seen their meetings on their ancient accustomed hills, where they deba ted and settled matters between family and family, township and township, assembling in large numbers, and going, accord ing to their custom, all armed.J
There, surrounded by the Irish lords and gentlemen and
the tenant wronged, for it was an ordinary and known custom .... for they were never wont (and yet are loath) to yield any certain rent but only such spendings; for their common saying is, 'Spend me, but Defend me.' " "A View of the State of Ireland," by Edmund Spenser, Esq., in the year 1596.
* Kymer's " Foedera," vol. i., p. 31. Folio. London : 1816.
t " A Discovene of the State of Ireland, and the true Cause why that Kingdom was never entirely subdued until the Beginning of His Majesties [James I.] most happie Reign." London : 1613, p. 603.
% " View of Ireland," pp/421, 500.
36 INTRODUCTION.
commonalty, seated on the accustomed stone, or under some ancient tree, the Brehon gave his judgment according to the Brehon code, formed partly of Irish customs, and partly of maxims culled from the Roman Digest.*
Campion, an English Jesuit, from Cambridge, who travelled in Ireland in Queen Elizabeth's day, saw their schools of Bre hon law ; the rising Brehons, stretched at full length, conning their tasks, and learning by rote fragments of Roman and Irish law, at which they continued for many years.f Spenser admits that their decisions had a great show of equity. Stani- hurst, a contemporary of Spenser's, had witnessed the breaking up of their meetings, and seen the crowd in long lines coming down the hills in the wake of each chieftain, he the proudest that could bring the largest company home to his evening supper.J
It was from a priest who had once been a Brehon that Sir John Davies, in 1610, received the treatise on " Corbes and Herenachs ;"§ and few who have read his account of the first assizes held for the county of Fermanagh, in the ruins of the abbey, in the island of Lough Erne, will forget the aged Brehon of the Maguires drawing from his bosom with trem bling hand the ancient roll, and refusing to part with it until the Lord Deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, had given him his hand and faith that it should be restored to him.|| It was only at this period of the reign of King James I. that the practice of the Brehon law was forbidden in Ireland ;^ for the Statutes of Kilkenny, passed in the 40th of Edward III., only prohib-
* Sir James Ware, " Antiquities of Ireland," chap. viii.
t " They speak Latin like a vulgar language, learned in their common schools of leachcraft and law, whereat they begin children and hold on sixteen or twenty years, conning by rote the aphorisms of Hippocrates and the Civil Institutes, and a few other parings of these two faculties. I have seen them where they kept school, ten in some one chamber, grov elling upon couches of straw, their books at their noses, themselves lying prostrate, and so to chant out their lessons by piecemeal, being the most part lusty fellows of twenty-five years and upwards." — p. 18, Edmund Campion's "Account of Ireland," written in May, 1571.
% Ricardus Stanihurst, "De Eebus in Hibernia Gestis," p. 37. 4to. Antwerp: 1584.
§ "Letter to Robert, Earl of Salisbury, touching the State of Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan ; wherein is a Discourse concerning the Corbes and Herenachs of Ireland," 1607, 8vo, Dublin, 1787, p. 246.
| Ib., ib., p. 253.
IF In Hilary Term, 3d James I. (A. D. 1605). See Sir J. Daviea, Re ports, p. 40.
INTRODUCTION. 37
ited the use of it in ruling differences between the English. The Irish had no other, as they were denied the use of the English law. But after the subduing of Tyrone's rebellion, the English judges, who had hitherto gone their circuits round the Pale, were sent all round Ireland to administer English law ; and the practice of the Irish code was superseded, and declared to be no law, but a lewd custom.
At the date of the Treaty of Windsor the invaders had planted themselves only on the east coast of Ireland ; and King Henry II. by that treaty purported to guarantee their lands to the rest of the Irish. Yet he did not hesitate, un known probably to the Irish, to cantonize or divide Ireland among ten of his followers, who received by these grants petty kingdoms, to be divided among their comrades and followers, in the expectation that they should bring over fresh Adventurers from England, and that as they grew more numerous, they should gradually supplant the Irish, and strip them of their lands.*
These barons and their followers all held their lands on feudal conditions, liable to homage and fealty, to aids and tal- liages, to wardships and marriages, to fines for alienation, to primer seizins, rents, reliefs, escheats, and forfeitures — contri vances of the stronger for exacting money from the weaker. They stood instead of legacy and succession duties and stamp duties of modern times. No man could come into his estate without paying a year's rent as a relief, or sell it or settle it without a fine for alienation.
But beyond all other feudal burdens were wardships and marriages. If a gentleman left his heir under age at his death, he could appoint no guardian : the king or superior lord (for each lord exacted from his tenants what the king exacted from him) took possession of the heir and the estate, leaving the widow to maintain the rest of the family out of her dower, while the guardian spent the rents of the estate without lia bility to account, often letting the castle go out of repair. As incident to the wardship, he had the right to sell it, and with it the right for the purchaser to dispose of the heir or heiress in marriage to the highest bidder. Thus the Earl of Lincoln gave King John 3000 marcs for the marriage of Richard de
* Sir John Davies' " Discoverie," etc., p. 652.
38 INTRODUCTION.
Clare in order to marry him to his eldest daughter, Matilda.* Geoffry de Mandeville gave him 20,000 marcs, that he might marry Isabella, Countess of Gloucester, and possess her lands.f Sibella de Singera offers the king 200 marcs to marry as she likes.J; Heiresses remained in wardship to the king or their landlord until they married, no matter what their age, and when they became widows became wards again, and to marry a second time must have their landlord's consent.§ Thus Alice, Countess of Warwick, gave the king £1000 for liberty to remain a widow as long as she liked, and not to be forced by the king to marry, and for the wardship of her sons.| One of the great inducements to settle in towns was the privilege conceded by almost every founder of a borough by his charter, that the burghers or citizens might marry, themselves, their sons, and daughters, and widows, without license from their lords ;^f a license of late required on the estates of some land lords managed in the English or feudal mode in Ireland.
No man could hunt or hawk on his own estate ; the game was all reserved for the king ;** he could not even take the young hawks in his own oaks — this was one of the liberties won and consecrated by Magna Charta. So strict a game preserver was King John, that the beasts and fowl of the forest seemed to be aware that they were under his protection. In England the country abounded with them ; they would not fly from the traveller, but would only move to a short distance and continue to fced.ff This slavery the Anglo-Saxons always endured ; but the Irish never knew the Forest Law or Game Law, nor could the English ever impose it on them. " If they had," says Sir John Davies, " it might have been a means of conquest ; for they might have turned the Irish out of the wild places where they dwelt in freedom, and might have given
* Preface T>. xxx. "Oblate and Fine Rolls in the Tower of London, in the Time 01 King Jchn," Record Publication. 8vo. By T. D. Hardy : 1835.
t Ib., ib. \ Ib., xxxii. § Ib., ib. \ Ib., ib.
IT See the charter of the City of Dublin and other charters, in " Cartsa Privilegifi et Immunitates," Irish Record Commission. Folio.
** Walter de Riddlesford offers King John (A. D. 1200) twenty marcs to have the King's confirmation of his lands, and for license to hunt the hare and the wolf. " Oblate and Fine Rolls," preface, p. ix. n.
•ft See a curious account by one of the Flemish soldiers of King John's expeditionary army to Ireland, in the year 1210, " Histoire des 1>UC3 de Normandie," vol. i., p. 109. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris : 1840.
INTRODUCTION. 39
them up to the beasts of chase, less hurtful, and less wild than they."*
The feudal system proceeded on the principle that the lands were all derived from the king, as the captain of a conquering army, and had been distributed by him amongst the members of it on certain conditions (the main object of which was the maintaining x>f the conquest), liable to be forfeited if they were not observed.
The Irish, having never undergone a feudal conquest and plantation like the rest of Europe, considered the territory as the common property and patrimony of the clans or nations — not held from any one, not liable to forfeiture, which indeed was impossible, as it was owned and occupied by them jointly or in common.
The chief families had contrived, contrary to the general principle, to appropriate some portions to themselves, divisible however at the death of the father among all the sons, legiti mate and illegitimate alike. The inferior members of the tribe yielded to the chiefs milk and honey, and even money for the grazing of their cows, and were bound to maintain their lords, with their wives, sons, and daughters, their horses, servants, their dogs and dog boys, for a specified number of meals or days in their houses when they went among their dependants " coshering," as it was called. But they know no such thing as rent or services in the feudal sense, as an acknowledgment of holding their land from a landlord, liable to forfeiture if not rendered.
The chief, like the baron, had his law court, but it assembled under his Brehon on the hill.f He had his retainers, and each of them had their kerne, or foot soldiers, ready to appear on summons, quartered on the poorer families of the tribe. The Irish custom of fosterage was in the nature of wardship; but the object being to make the young chief the beloved of his followers, he was brought up in the bosom of the family of his foster parents, who paid largely for the honour of thus
* Sir John Davies' "Discoverie," etc., p. 664.
t u Other lawyers they have liable to certain families, which after the custom of the country determine and judge causes. . . . the Breighoon (as they call this kind of lawyer) sitteth him down on a bank, the lords and gentlemen at variance around about him, and then they proceed," p. 19, Edward Campion (1571).
40 INTRODUCTION.
bringing him up from his earliest years in the midst of them.* Nursed up in a sense of his own importance, he became the proud and spirited head of the clan, their pride and joy, and bound to his foster family and they to him by ties of affection stronger than those of blood.
Though their lands were thus left with the Irish, it was the design of the English Government that they should gradually come into possession of the English, until all should be held in feudal tenure, and the feudal system be spread throughout the kingdom. With this intent, therefore, the Irish were denied the right of bringing actions in any of the English Courts in Ireland for trespasses to their lands, or for assaults and batteries to their persons. Accordingly, it was answer enough to the action in such a case to say that the plaintiff was an Irishman,! unless he could produce a special charter giving him the rights of an Englishman. If he sought dam ages against an Englishman for turning him out of his land, for the seduction of his daughter Nora, or for the beating of his wife Devorgil, or for the driving off of his cattle, it was a good defence to say he was a mere Irishman. And if an English man was indicted for manslaughter, if the man slain was an Irishman, he pleaded that the deceased was of the Irish nation, and that it was no felony to kill an Irishman. For this, how ever, there was a fine of five marcs, payable to the king ; but mostly they killed us for nothing. If it happened that the man killed was a servant of an Englishman, he added to the plea of the deceased being an Irishman, that if the master should ever demand damages, he would be ready to satisfy him.J
* " They love tenderly their foster children, and bequeath to them a child's portion, whereby they nourish sure friendship, so beneficial in every way, that commonly 500 kine and better are given to winne a nobleman's child to foster." Ib., pp. 13-14. Gifts of the Irishry to foster with the Earl of Kildare, pp. 70-71, " Earls of Kildare," vol. ii., by the Marquis of Kildare. Dublin: 1860.
t Thus in 29th Edward I., before the justices in Eyre, at Drogheda, Thomas le Boteler brought an action against Robert de Almain for certain goods. The defendant pleaded that he was not bound to answer him, be cause he was an Irishman, and not of free blood. A jury was summoned, and found that the plaintiff was an Englishman, and thereupon he haa judgment to recover his goods. Sir J. Davies' " Discoverie," p. 639.
I " Lastly, the mere Irish were not only accounted aliens, but enemies, and altogether out of the protection of the law, so as it was no capital of fence to kill them." And then Sir J. Davies gives a record of a jail delivery at Waterford, where "Robert Walsh, indicted of the manslaugh ter of John, son of Ivor Mac Gilmore, admits the slaying ; but says it was
INTRODUCTION. 41
Not unlike the story of those hot bloods of Charles II.'s day who ran the waiter through at a tavern with their rapiers, and threw the body out at the window, and then rang the bell for the landlord, and bade him put him in the bill.
The Irish, too, were forbid to purchase land. Though the English might take from the Irish, the Irish could not even by way of gift or purchase take any from the English. la every charter of English liberty, as it was called, granted to an Irishman, besides the right to bring actions in the king's courts, there was given an express power to him to purchase lands to him and his heirs ;* without this he could not hold any so acquired. The Exchequer officers constantly held inquisitions for the purpose of obtaining a return that certain lands had been aliened to an Irishman, in order thereupon to seize them into the hands of the Crown as forfeited. Thus, by inquisition taken at Dunboyne, in the first year of King Henry VI., the lands of Moymet and Clonfine in the county of Meath, were found forfeited ; and were seized by the king's escheator, as having been aliened by Esmond Butler, son and heir of James, Lord and Baron of Dunboyne, deceased, to Connor O'Mulrooney and John Machan, chaplains, and their heirs, they being Irish and of Irish nation.f Not that this was any beneficial conveyance to these two Irishmen, but simply a feoffment to them as trustees for the purpose of a will or settlement. In 16th of Edward IV., lands near Swords, in the county of Dublin, were seized on a like inquisition, find ing them to have been conveyed by Catherine Dowdal to John Belane, chaplain, an Irishman of Irish nation, that is to say, of the O'Belanes, Irishmen, and enemies to our lord the king ; although O'Belane was evidently only a trustee to answer the uses of Mrs. Dowdal's will.]; The Parliament Rolls are full of cases where the inquisitions are set aside, for the finding having been malicious and untrue, the parties com plained of not being Irish, but English. They prove, however, that no Irishman could take lands by conveyance from an
no felony, because Mac Gilmore was a mere Irishman, and not of free blood. Bat when the master of thesaid John shall ask damages for the slaying, he will be ready to answer him as the law may require." " Discoverie,"
* Sir J. Davies' " Discoverie," p. 641.
t Fifth Edward IV., c. 24. Transcript of Statute Kolls, made by the Record Commissioners (1810), in the Record Tower, Dublin Castle, t Sixteenth Edward IV., c. 80. lb., ib.
42 INTRODUCTION.
Englishman ; and this continued to be the law until the year 1612, when Sir John Davies framed an act abolishing the distinction of nations.* But the prohibition practically pre vailed after the passing of the act ; for, by Plantation rule, the English were forbidden, under pain of forfeiture, to convey any of the lands taken from the Irish in the extensive planta tions of English made in Munster, Ulster, and Leinster, to any Irishman, and the Irish there could only aliene to English ; so that the Irish must be always losing, and the English gaining, by any change. The prohibition was again extended to the whole nation by the Commonwealth Government ; and when j the lands forfeited for the war of 1690 came to be sold at v Chichester House in 1703, the Irish were declared by the English Parliament incapable of purchasing at the auction or of taking a lease of more than two acres. Shortly afterwards, another act disqualified them forever from purchasing or acquiring any lands in Ireland, and declared the purchase void.f But, notwithstanding these prohibitions, the Irish grew and increased upon the English, instead of the English upon the Irish ; and the Irish customs overspread the feudal, until at length the administration of the feudal law was con fined to little more than the counties lying within the line of the Liffey and the Boyne.
It may be asked how the Irish contrived to preserve their lands? In the first place, then, it is to be remembered that they kept their arms, and the whole tribe rose in war against the English of that district whence their lands had been inva ded, or by whom an Irishman had been killed. They ravaged it, and made prisoner of the highest Englishman they could take, and held him to ransom, and by this obtained a il health saute," or satisfaction to the family of the deceased. J
Had the first English adventurers in Ireland been of the same
. * " Statutes of Ireland," llth, 12th, and 13th James I., c. v.
t But it was when the estate was made the property of the first Protes tant discoverer, that animation was put into this law (Robinson, Justice, in Lesste J/' Larty against Stanley, King's Bench, Hilary Term, 1771), Howard's u Popery Cases," Dublin, 1775, p. 209. Discoverers then be came like hounds upon the scent after lands secretly purchased by the Irish. Gentlemen fearing to lose their lands found it now necessary to conform. "Between 1703 and 1709 there were only 36 conformers in Ire land. In the next ten years (i. e. after the Discovery Act), the conform ists were 150." Ib., ib., pp. 211-12.
\ The payment of " Health Saute" by the English to the Irish, made high treason, 11 and 12 Edward IV., c. 5. (Unpublished Statutes)
INTRODUCTION. 43
mind as the king and nobility in England the Irish might pos sibly have been subdued, their lands taken from them, and the nation reduced to serfdom, or exterminated. But the early set tlers learned to love the Irish, and to prefer the freedom of Irish life and manners to the burdensome feudal system. The case of the leader of the first English adventurers in Ireland may serve to explain the relations of the English in Ireland with the Irish in early times.
Richard Strongbovv, Earl of Pembroke, was married to an Irishwoman ; he had a large body of Irish kinsmen ; he had an army composed largely of Irishmen, and he and they had been comrades in war ; his territory was nearly sixty miles square, inhabited almost entirely by Irish. His English captains and men-at-arms, amongst whom he divided his territory in fiefs, •were much in the same condition. They, many of them, took Irish wives and mistresses — had Irish kinsmen and comrades. As Strongbow left the Kavanaghs and M'Murroughs, relations of his wife's, in possession of their lands, liable to serve him with their followers in war, so did his captains other Irish ; no difference of religion divided them ; they early learned the lan guage of Ireland ; they gave out their sons to be fostered with their Irish relations; the young English heir became the pride of his foster father and his clan ; hurled with his Irish cousins ;* 'listened with delight to the harpers, bards, and minstrels,f and became enamoured of Irish life, and probably of some Irish girl also.| The young Englishman, however, remained of his father's nation, an Englishman ; and held his estate on English tenure, liable to the demands of the Exchequer for aids, reliefs, and fines. How burdensome this tenure was, may be judged from the complaints of the English of Ireland. In 1347 they complained to the king, that bad as were the Irish enemies, the extortions and oppressions done by the king's offi-
* " It is ordained and established that the English do not hencefor'h use the plays which men call hurlings with great sticks and a hall upon the ground, and other plays called coitings ; but that they do apply them selves to draw the bow and throw lances, and other gentlemanlike games appertaining to arms, whereby the Irish enemies may be better checked," etc. — " Statutes of Kilkenny,'"' 40th Edward III. (A. D. 1367), s. 0.
t Ib., sect. 15.
\ " It is ordained that no alliance by marriage, gossipred, fostering of children, concubinage, or by amour, be henceforth made between the English and Irish . . 7 and if any shall do to the contrary, he shall have judgment of life and member as a traitor to our Lord the King." Ib., s. 2.
44 INTRODUCTION.
cers were worse.* But, bad as these burdens were, the law of forfeiture must have been a more constant source of disquiet. Under convictions of high treason the king could enrich him self and his courtiers with confiscated estates. The De Lacys,
t beggared by this law, and driven from their principalities of Meath and Ulster, induced Edward Bruce to invade Ireland. John Fitzthomas with an army of Irishmen recovered the king dom for Edward II., but not until the greater part of it had been in possession of the invading force, supported by some of the English of Ireland, for more than a year, during which time the sitting of the courts and the administration of the feudal laws was suspended. The English of Ireland beyond the im mediate neighbourhood of the metropolis took care, under va rious pretences, to oppose its being resumed ; and thenceforth the regular administration of the English law was confined to the limits of the Pale. They represented the whole Irish na tion as hostile to the English, and thereby had an excuse for keeping up their forces. These forces of kernes and gallow- glasses were maintained by coyne and livery, nearly equivalent to free quarters on their tenants ; and their English tenants, being unwilling to endure this infliction, retired to England, arid the lands thus deserted were granted by these great lords to Irish.f
"The Irish enemy" now became an excuse for feudal duties neglected, and feudal payments withheld. The government of Ireland became impossible to strangers from England. The English lords of Ireland had always a means of moving the Irish to rebellion by oppressing them, or to attacks on their neighbours, or the king's officers, by secretly egging them on. The judges, who from the days of the first Settlement had regularly ridden their circuits in Munster to administer the feu dal law, now ceased to hold assizes. The danger from the
', Irish enemy was alleged to be the cause, though there was no reason why the Irish should object to the administration of the law, as it was only administered betwen the King's English sub-
* " Petitions delivered to our Lord the King of France and England, by Friar John L' Archer, Prior of St. John of Jerusalem, in Ireland, and Master Thomas Wogan, sent in message by the Prelates, Earls, Barons, and Commons of the land in Ireland." " Ked Book of the Exchequer of Ireland."
t Preamble to 10 Henry VII.. c. 4. Sir J. Davies' " Discoverie " p. 675.
INTRODUCTION. 45
jects. The journey to the South lay through Kildare and Car- low, under the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, to the bridge of Leighlin, for many ages the only passage over the Barrow. These hills were inhabited by the three nations of the Tooles, the Byrnes, and the Kavanaghs, and the opposite side of the river towards Leighlin Bridge by the O'Moores, so that there was a kind of gantelope to be run between these tribes. It is alleged that the Tooles, the Byrnes, and Kavanaghs, exiled the administration of the king's law from Minister, by prevent ing the judges riding their circuits past Leighlin Bridge.* But as the English of Minister had much greater reason to fear the return of the king's officers than the Irish, there is good rea son to suspect that they were egged on by them. In Henry VIII.'s days, the Earl of Kildare was charged with having al ways protected these three nations, the Tooles, the Byrnes, and the Kavanaghs, whom he kept at his bidding, it was said, ready to rise and " make war behind" when any of the king's forces marched out of Dublin on any expedition which he secretly wished to counteract. f Now " the Irish enemy" was no na tion in the modern sense of the word, but a race divided into many nations or tribes, separately defending their lands from the English barons in their immediate neighbourhood. There had been no ancient national government displaced, no national dynasty overthrown ; the Irish had no national flag, nor any capital city as the metropolis of their common country, nor any common administration of law ; nor did they ever give a na tional opposition to the English. All the notions of nationality and independent empire are of a surprisingly modern date. The English, coming in the name of the Pope, with the aid of the clergy, and with a superior national organization, which the Irish easily recognized, were accepted by the Irish. Neither King Henry II. nor King John ever fought a battle in Ireland. In the early days of English rule in Ireland, the Irish generally lived as tributaries to the king. During the reign of Henry III. and in the beginning of that of Edward I. the kings and captains of nations received regular writs of sum mons, in precisely the same terms and by the same cursitor or courier as the De Burgos, the Butlers, the Le Poers, to
* State Papers. Henry VIII. (Ireland), vol. i., p. 411. Memorial, or w A Note for the Wynning of Leynster," A. D. 1536 t Ib., ib., p. 410.
46 INTRODUCTION.
attend the war in Wales or Scotland, or yield the king an aid in money.* The chief or royal tribe in each of the five prov inces became allies of the English at the first invasion, as is plain from their receiving the rights of Englishmen to bring and defend actions. They were legally known as the Five bloods, being the O'Neills of Ulster, the O'Connors of Con- naught, the O'Melaghlins of Meath, the O'Briens of Munster, and the M'Murroughs of Leinster.f Different encroachments of English adventurers caused partial insurrections. In Bruce's invasion the Northern Irish formed a more general confederacy, and, owing to their situation, established their independence ; but the Irish tenants and kerne of the Fitzge raids, the Butlers, the De Burgos, the Roches, the Barrys, adhered to their English chiefs in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught.
No soldiers came from England, and it was Irish troops that recovered the dominion of Ireland for the English. J But from thenceforth all the Irish were called in law the king's Irish enemy. So that the very men who filled the troops levied by the English Deputy for service against the Irish were known as such. Thus O'Hanlon and O'Mulloy, who claimed to be hereditary standard-bearers of Ulster, and bore the banner of Queen Elizabeth's army as soon as it crossed the Boyne on al ternate days, on its march against Hugh O'Neill, were Irish enemy.§ It meant that they were excluded from claiming any rights or privileges under English law; and was in fact a far less injurious disqualification than that of Irish Papist in the last century. The English of Ireland intermarried with them, fostered with them, and made alliances with them, though the Statutes of Kilkenny made it high treason so to do. But as the English law was now confined within the limits of the Eng lish Pale, and no judges went circuit beyond the Barrow, the prohibition was nugatory. If it is only remembered that .from the reign of King John no army ever came out of England ex cept the expeditionary army of Richard II., and that the few forces subsequently sent over, until the 29th of Queen Elizabeth, were to subdue rebellions of the English, || it will be evident that
* See some of these writs, " Liber Mnnerum Publicorum," vol. i., part iv., pp. 6, 12. 2 vols. Folio. London : 1826. t Sir John Davies' " Discoverie," p. 639. jib., p. 674.
§ Sir Richard Cox, " Hibernia Anglicana," vol. i., p. 407. 1 Sir J. Davies' " Discoverie," p. 617.
INTRODUCTION. 47
the term Irish enemy simply meant that the Irish had no legal rights, and that sooner or later they should lose their lands to the English.
The English in all the provinces beyond the Pale saw with joy the regular administration of the English law confined within the line of the Liffey and the Boyne. Many of them ; had acquired lands not held from the Crown, which they feared ; would be seized.* Others had large arrears of fines due by them, for which their estates were liable to forfeiture. These men boldly banished the king's sheriffs, escheators, and pur suivants, by making it dangerous for them to approach. The Burkes, or De Burgos, were in this class. They had lands which the king claimed by title derived by the intermarriage of Lionel, son of Edward III., with the heir female of William De Burgo, Earl of Ulster. Lionel came over with a considera ble force to seize these lands from the Burkes, but did not march into Connaught. Thenceforth they employed every effort to prevent the king's writ running in Connaught. In this sense, and through fear of losing their lands, they became the king's English rebels.f They allied themselves for this purpose with the king's Irish enemies, but they had no inten tion of rebelling to eject the English out of Ireland ; they were too proud of their English blood. To the eye they looked like Irish, for they dressed and spoke as Irishmen, yet they are described as " tall men who boast themselves to be of the king's blood, and berith hate to the Irishrie." J But be sides English rebels, the king had his English lieges beyond the Pale. The English lieges beyond the Pale acknowledged themselves to be the king's subjects, on his peace and war, and held their Irish tenants and forces ready to appear in the field on the king's side. But they had for the most part ceased to pay feudal dues, as there were no sheriffs or escheators to enforce them ; though the Butlers of Kilkenny, and the Earls of Kildare and Desmond, as they were about the king's court, and aspired to be lord deputies and treasurers, seem to have sued out livery, and paid some of the feudal charges.
The English of Ireland, however, of all classes except in the
* Sir J. Davies' " Discoverie," p. 676.
t Deputy and Council to the King. A. D. 1610. State Papers, Henry VIII. (Ireland), vol. ii., p. 307. J Ib., ib., vol. i., p. 327.
48 INTRODUCTION.
neighbourhood of Dublin, had adopted the Irish language, dress, and manners, and never appeared in English apparel, except when attending Parliament or the Lord Deputy's court ;* and no sooner home thence (or from the Court of England), than off with their English apparel, and on with their brogues and saffron shirt, and kerne's coat, and other Irish attire.f
In their justice halls, they administered March law, a mix ture of the English law and the Irish law of Kincogish, the latter being a system of fines or satisfaction exacted from the clan or nation of the party committing the injury, payable, part to the party injured, and part to the lord who enforced
tej
The king and statesmen of England, indignant that the feudal system had been nearly abandoned in Ireland, and that the English settlers had adopted the freer mode of life of the Irish, by an ordinance made in England in the year 1342 (15 Edw. III.), resumed — in other words, confiscated — the estates of all the great English nobility and gentry of Ireland,§ in tending plainly to send over colonists from England to plant such parts of their lands as the king should judge convenient, just as was done about 200 years later (in the year 1585), when the estates of the descendant of the Earl of Desmond, one of the noblemen now aimed at, were confiscated, and set out to planters from Somersetshire and Devonshire, from Cheshire and Lancashire. For this purpose the Deputy sum moned the nobility and commons of Ireland to a Parliament ;it Dublin, largely filled with prelates and lords, and landed proprietors of English birth, who were eager, no doubt, for a
* State Papers, Henry VIII. (Ireland), vol. i., p. 477.
t " That the Earl of Clanricarde's sons (not without manifest consent of their father) had stolen across the Shannon, and there cast away their English habit and apparel, and put on their wonted Irish weede." Sir Henry Sidney to the Council in England (A. D. 1576), pp. 119, 120, Collins' " Memorials of the Sidney Family." 2 vols. Folio.
Patrick, the Baron of Lixnaw's eldest son, " Notwithstanding he was trained up in the court of England, sworn servant to her Majesty, in good favour there, and apparelled according to his degree, yet he was no sooner come home, put away with his English attires, and on with his brogs, his shirt, and other Irish rags, being become as verie a traitor as the veriest knave of them all."— A. D. 1586. Holinshed, " Chronicle of Ireland " p. 477.
I " The Deputie's Boke," State Papers of Henry VIIL, vol. i., Paper 181, p. 447.
§ Sir J. Davies' " Discoverie," p. 660.
INTRODUCTION. 49
reformation and improvement of Ireland, founded on a redis tribution of Irish lands to English capitalists. But the Earls of Desmond and Kildare, and the rest of the English nobility possessed of Irish estates, refused to attend, and, with the citizens and burgesses of the principal towns, held a separate Parliament or Convention at Kilkenny, and remonstrated against the design. The Earl of Kildare was thereupon arrested, and the Earl of Desmond and many others indicted, their lands seized, and their titles called in, and cancelled.* But about ten years afterwards (26th Edw. III.), their lands and liberties were restored ; much, however, to the chagrin of the Parliament of England, who made the king engage not to restore them if he again got them into his hand.f
The expedition of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the king's son, to Ireland, a few years afterwards, was a partial renewal of the same design. He claimed the greater part of Connauglit from the 13urkes, and other lands in other parts of Ireland, which he intended to take from the present possessors, and to plant, of course, when recovered, with settlers out of England. Preparatory to his invasion of Connauglit, he assembled a Parliament at Kilkenny, where the mo.st rigorous laws wore passed against those English that had adopted Irish customs, or should adopt them for the future. Those who should take Irishwomen for wives or mistresses, or should give out their children to be fostered or reared up in Irish families — who should maintain Irish harpers, bards, rhymers, or minstrels in their halls — were to undergo various punishments. For marrying an Irish wife, or for having an Irishwoman for a mistress, the penalty was to be half hanged, disembowelled alive, and to forfeit his estate.];
* Sir John Davies' " Discoverie," pp. 660, 680.
t Ib., p. 655.
% "The Statutes of Kilkenny, of the 40th year of King Edward ITT., enacted in a Parliament held at Kilkenny, A. D. 1367, before Lionel, Duke of Clarence. Now first printed. Edited by James Hardimim, M. R. 1. A." 4to. Dublin. For the Irish Archaeological Society; 1843. The English of Ireland became as fond of the harp as the Irish. In i.he inventories of the household goods of the gentry confiscated at the Revolution of 1688, the ancient English families of the Pale are found possessed of " one Irish harpe." (W. Lynch, author of " Feudal Dignities in Ireland," Sub-Com missioner of Irifrh Records, "Dublin Penny Journal," vol. i., p. 335.) And the Irish " Hudibras," printed in London, 1698, to ridicule and vilify the Irish, thus describes the gentlemen of the same class: —
50 INTRODUCTION.
" It was manifest from these laws," says Sir John Davies, " that those who had the government of Ireland under the Crown of England intended to make a perpetual separation and enmity between the English settled in Ireland and the native Irish, in the expectation that the English should in the end root out the Irish." But the numerous English of Irish birth possessed of lands to which the Crown laid claim, or which were liable to forfeiture, had now nearly equal reason with the native Irish to fear the designs of the Government of England. The degenerate English, like the Burkes of the counties of Mayo and Gal way, the Poers of Waterford, and others, be came only more determined " English rebels." The other English beyond the Pale, though they professed allegiance to the king, were in secret equally disinclined to see the king's escheators, sheriffs, and judges resume their duties among them. They knew the value of being free from the feudal burdens of wardships, marriages, fines for alienation, and all the other taxes which it was the secondary aim of these re forms to restore ; and they did not feel that hatred and con tempt for their Irish tenants, neighbours, and kinsmen, required by the Statute of Kilkenny. Nor did the English who came over from England render themselves very agreeable to their countrymen settled in Ireland, or make them very anxious for any reformation that should bring a fresh accession of them from the mother country ; for they were, of course, preferred to all the chief offices of the State, and they despised the Eng lish of the birth of Ireland. It appears from this very Statute of Kilkenny (which forbids the use of the contemptuous term), that the newly arrived English had no better name for them than " Irish Dogg," — insolence which the English of Ireland hurled back by calling them " English hobbe," or churls.*
" There was old Threicy [Tracy], and old Darcy, Playing all weathers on the clarsey, The Irish harp, — whose rusty metal Sounds like the patching of a kettle."
Ten years afterwards it survived in Connaught, where the old Irish gentry are described as careful to have their children taught to speak Latin, write well, and play on the harp. " Discourse concerning Ireland, and the different Interests thereof; in Answer to the Exoii and Barnstaple Petition." Small 4to., London, 1697-3, p. 19.
* " Also . . that no difference of allegiance shall henceforth be mado between the English born in Ireland and the English born in England by calling them English hobbe or Irish dog: but that all be called by one
INTRODUCTION. 51
The Irish marked the coarser manners, the cold reserve of the English by birth, by calling them <; Buddagh Sassenach," Saxon clowns;* for they conceive it to be the mark of a gentleman to be free and affable with inferiors and equals : clowns are cold, they thought, but gentlemen courteous. f Thus, both the English of the birth of Ireland and the native Irish had reason to dislike the reforms aimed at by the Statute of Kilkenny ; but it was the English of Ireland that became the main impediment to the reconquest of Ireland, and more malicious to the English}; — moro mortal enemies than the Irish themselves,§ as better knowing their power and purposes. |
During the long wars in France, and afterwards during the civil wars of the Roses, when the English, driven back from their attempted conquests in France, turned in their lust for land and power to rob each other, this reformation of Ireland was suspended. But no sooner were these wars over, and the Government firmly established in England, which was not until Henry VIII.'s reign, than all these projects were renewed.
At the commencement of Henry VIII.'s reign, the regular administration of the law was limited to the four counties adja cent to the capital, called the English Pale. In these only were there justices or sheriffs under the king. In the rest of Ireland no judges had held assizes for more than 200 years. No escheators or sheriffs had levied the reliefs payable to the king for each succession ; no fines had been paid for aliena tions. The estates of all the old English settlers beyond the Pale were for this reason alone liable to forfeiture.
The native Irish were in a still worse case. From the days of the first conquest, they were denied the protection and en joyment of the English law, with the intent that the English
name, the English lieges of our Lord the King." 40th Edward III. (Irish), c. 4.
* Stanihurst, in Holinshed's " Chronicle," vol. ii., chap. 8, p. 44. Folio. London, 1586.
t " Les vilains s'entretiennent ; les nobles s'embrassent." Old French proverb.
t Spenser's " View of Ireland." § Sir J. Davies " Discoverie."
"In Henry VIII.'s reign the Deputy and Council dissuade the king from seeking to confiscate Connaught, as it was " the fearing to be expelled from these their possessions," that kept M' William [the ancestor of the
g resent Marquis of Clanricarde] and his ancestors so long English rebels." tate Papers of Henry VIII. (Ireland), vol. ii., p. 309.
52 INTRODUCTION.
should in the end root them out of their lands. Many of the largest English proprietors were absentees, who possessed land in both countries, and scorned to dwell in this remote and backward island. In their absence, the Irish reoccupied their ancient territories. During the civil war of the Roses whole families had left Ireland for the battle-fields in England, and been swept away. The Irish repossessed themselves of the deserted land. But it was against the policy of England that any Irish should ever possess any lands that had once belonged to an Englishman. About this period much of the county of Kildare was thus deserted of English, and reoccupied by Irish. The Parliament offered it to any English who would come, and inhabit it ; and as an inducement, they were to be tax-free for six years.* In like manner, in the counties of Kilkenny and Tipperary, many of the native proprietors had got back into their ancient lands, abandoned by the English. This, if not remedied, would be the destruction of these counties, which (piously adds the Parliament) God forbid. For the English seem to have thought God made a mistake in giving so fine a country as Ireland to the Irish ; and for near seven hundred years they have been trying to remedy it. Sir James of Ormond was therefore commissioned to recover the lands for himself.f The Earls of Kildare subsequently had grants of all lands they could win from the Irish. £ The Irish were therefore never deceived as to the purpose of the English. And though the English Pale had not been extended for 240 years, their firm persuasion in the reign of Henry VIII. was, that the original design was not abandoned. " Irishmen be of opinion among themselves," says Justice Cusack, to the King, " that Englishmen will one day banish them, and put them from their lands forever." § How correctly they judged of their purposes is now evident from the State Papers of that day. Upon the subduing of Thomas Fitzgerald's rebellion there is to be found project after project for clearing Ireland of Irish to the Shannon. || Almost all concur in proposing that the
* 28th Henry VI. (Irish), c. 35 (Unpublished Statutes).
t 8th Henry VII. (Irish), c. 25.
I State Papers of Henry VIII. (Ireland), vol. i., p. 177.
§ Ibid., vol. ii., p. 326.
i See Cowley's " Treatise," ibid., vol. i., pp. 323-328. Another paper thus concludes— " Consequently, the premises brought to pass, there shall no Irishrie be on this side the water of Shennyn unprosecuted, un-
INTRODUCTION. 5 3
country south of Dublin, within the line of the Barrow, be in habited exclusively by English. It was to be a base of opera tions against the rest of Ireland. Some even contemplated the entire extirpation of the Irish ; but, luckily for the Irish, there was no precedent for it found in the chronicle of the conquest.* Add to this the difficulty of finding people to reinhabit it, if suddenly unpeopled. Accordingly, the chiefs and gentlemen of the Irish only were to be driven from their properties, and worn out in exile, while their lands should be given to English. The towns were to be all cleared, their walls repaired, and rendered defensible against the attacks of the exiled Irish.f And the projectors of these improvements were, of course, to be rewarded by lands thus recovered. The king, however, seems to have been satisfied with confiscating the estates of the Earl of Kildare and his family. Fierce and bloody though he was, there was something lion-like in his nature. Notwith standing all these promptings, he left to the Irish and old English their possessions, and seemed anxious even to secure them, but failed to do so for want of time. Swarms, however, of English adventurers were hungering and thirsting after Irish lands, and there was no difficulty in driving a high-spirited people, full of well-grounded suspicions, into rebellion. The O'Moores and O'Connors rebelled in Edward VI.'s reign. Their territories were formed by Philip and Mary into the King's and Queen's Counties, and their lands passed to English. The JEarl of Desmond's great territories in Munster were for feited in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and were set out to com panies of planters oiit of Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and Somer setshire — out of Lancashire, and Cheshire — organized for
subdued, and unexiled Then shall the English Pale be well
200 Iryshe miles in length, and more." Ibid., ib., p. 452.
* " The lande is very large, by estimation as large as Englande, so that to enhabit the whole with new inhabiters, the number would be so great that there is no prince christened that commodiously might spare so many
subjects to depart out of his regions But to enterprise the whole
extirpation and totall destruction of all the Irishmen of the lande, it would be a marvaillous and sumptuous charge and great difficulty, considering both the luck of enhabitors, and the great hardness and misery these Irish men can endure, both of hunger, colde, and thirst, and evill lodging, more than the inhabitauntes of any other lande. And by president of the con quest of this lande we have not heard or redde in any cronycle that at such conquestes the hole inhabitauntes of the landes have been utterly extirped and banished. Wherefore," &c. Lord Deputy and Council to the King, ibid., vol. ii., p. 176.
t Cowley's " Treatise," ibid., vol. L, p. 326.
54 INTRODUCTION.
defence, and to be supported by standing forces. Each new plantation produced fresh rebellions, from the pride and insolence of the new planters, the cupidity of standers-by, and the fears and resistance of the neighbouring Irish ; till at length, in Hugh Earl of Tyrone's rebellion, iu 1598, the most of the native Irish were engaged, and great numbers of degen erate or rebellious English.
This rebellion was subdued in the closing hours of Queen Elizabeth's life ; and James I. ascended the throne with the country at his disposal.
And here, before entering on his settlement of Ireland, it may be worth inquiring what were the crimes of the Irish to cause the English for so many ages to treat them as alien ene mies, to refuse them the right to bring actions in the courts set up by the English in Ireland, and to adhere to their cherished scheme of depriving the nation of their lands. The Irish gave no national resistance to the English; they had no dynasty to set up ; no common government to restore ; no national capi tal to recover. They never contemplated independence or separation. The doctrine that allegiance and protection were reciprocal was not yet established — the rights of man not yet suspected. There was no inveterate repugnance between the races ; on the contrary, they were too ready to intermarry, and the heaviest penalties could not prevent these alliances. The designs of extirpation were on the side of the English — the fears of it on the side of the Irish. The Irish only too quickly forgave the robbery of their lands. The Fitzgeralds and the Butlers soon became to them as much their natural leaders and captains as the O'Briens, the M'Carthys, and O'Neills.* No one ever questioned their titles. Sir J. Davies has said that the Irish, after a thousand conquests, pretended title still. This was to transfer the feelings engendered by the Plantations of the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I. to a period when no such feelings were known. If they had entertained them, they might easily have expelled or massacred the English when the jurisdiction of the English Government was limited for 200 years to the line of the Liffey and the Boyne. No forces came
* Thus, in 1520, the Earl of Surrey urges that James, Lord Butler, be sent over to Ireland, as the Earl of Orinond has gout, and cannot take the field; " and his men will never go forth unless they may have the said Erl, or ellys his sonne and heire with them, to be their capitaine." State Papers of Henry VIII., vol. i. (Ireland), p. 49.
INTRODUCTION. 55
from England ; there was no standing army of English ; yet the English lived unharmed among the Irish, as secure of their castles and lands as native Irish. Campion, Spenser, .and Davies have noted with no friendly hand the faults of the Irish ; but the murdering of English landlords is not in the catalogue ; on the contrary, their devotion to them was unbounded. Thou sands sacrificed themselves to maintain the Kildares and the Desmonds in their right. And the love of lord and tenant was reciprocal. When the Earl of Kildare and his five uncles had been cut off by a kind of Turkish butchery,* the Irish of Lein- ster pined for the return of the heir ; they longed to see young Gerald's banner displayed, and coveted more to see a Geral- dine reign and triumph than to see God come among them ;f and the last Earl of Desmond declared he had rather forsake God than forsake his men.J
Their crime was to be possessed of lands the English coveted. Moreover, the English could not endure that the Irish should enjoy their lands in a freer manner than themselves ; and the Irish could not submit to give them up, or to change their free and independent title into feudal tenure. The English planted in Ireland soon learned to prefer Irish freedom to feudal thraldom. This became a fresh crime in the Irish — they cor rupted the English, and both became odious, and the lands of each were to be confiscated.
James I. ascended the throne at the very hour of Hugh O'Neill Earl of Tyrone's submission. The country was a ruin from the devastations of " the fifteen years' war." He recog nized the insecurity of the properties of the Irish as the capital error of all the former governments, from the days of the Con quest. He saw also how largely the fears of the degenerate English for their estates, held under defective title, had con tributed to the disturbance of Ireland. His first act was to
* Hanged and disembowelled alive at Tyburn on 3d of February, 1538.
" Butchered to make a London holiday."
Some or all of the uncles were guiltless of their nephew's rebellion. But the king was told there should never be peace and good order in Ireland 44 till the bludde of the Garroldes were wholly extinct." Lord Audley to Thomas Cromwell, 13th Sept., 1535. «' Lives of the Earls of Kildare," by the Marquis of Kildare, vol. i., p. 152. For details of the punishment for treason, see^os^, p. 143, n.
t State Papers of Henry VIII. (Ireland), vol. ii., p. 147.
j Carleton" (Bishop of Chichester), " Thankful Remembrance of God's Mercy to the Church of England," p. 43. 4to. London: 1624.
50 INTRODUCTION.
proclaim a general oblivion and indemnity. He restored the Earl of Tyrone to his estates; he promised the Irish that they should thenceforth hold their lands as English freeholds, in stead of under the law of tanistry, and assured the degenerate English that their estates should be confirmed to them for the future against the claims of discoverers, on easy terms of com position. By these measures the perpetual war which had continued between the nations " for four hundred and odd years," and was caused, says Sir John Davies, by the purpose entertained by the English "to roote out" the Irish, was to be brought to an end. But before many years were passed these first good resolutions were abandoned. The right of the Irish to their lands was derided, and we find Sir John himself shar ing in the spoil.* In the mean time the king's design with re gard to the Irish was to restore to the chiefs and principal gen tlemen such demesnes as they kept in their own occupation, to hold as tenants by knight's service under the king ; and to fix the inferior members of the clan, hitherto living the wandering life of the creaghts, in settled villages, paying certain money rents to their lords, instead of their former uncertain spend- ings, — the object being to break up the clan system, and to destroy the power of the chiefs.
This plan seems to have been matured by the summer of 1G07. On the 17th of July in that year, Sir Arthur Chiches- ter, Lord Deputy, accompanied by Sir John Davies and other commissioners, proceeded to Ulster, with powers to inquire what lands each man held. There appeared before them in each county which they visited the chief lords and Irish gentlemen, the heads of creaghts, and the common people, the Brehons and Shannahs, a kind of Irish heralds or chroniclers, who knew all the septs and families, and took upon themselves to tell what quantity of land every man ought to have ; they thus ascertained and booked their several lands, and the Lord Deputy promised them estates in them.f " He thus," says Sir John Davies, " made it a year of jubilee to the poor in-
* In the Plantation of Ulster he got, in the county of Fermanagh, 1300 acres; in the county of Tyrone, 2000 acres; in the county of Armagh, 500 acres. Pynnar's " Survey of Ulster by Commission under the Great Seal of Ireland, A. D. 1618-1619." Harris's u Hibernica," 8vo, Dublin, 1717, p. 131.
t Letter of Sir John Davies to the Earl of Salisbury, A. D. 1607. " His torical Tracts," by Sir John Davies, 8vo, Dublin, 1787, p. 258.
INTRODUCTION. 57
habitants, because every man was to return to bis own bouse, and be restored to his ancient possessions, and they all went home rejoicing." *
Notwithstanding these promises, the king, in the following year issued his scheme for the Plantation of Ulster, urged to it, it would seem, by Sir Arthur Chichester, who so largely profited by it, though the highest councillor in the kingdom told him to his face, in the king's presence, that it was against the honour of the king and the justice of the kingdom."!* It could not be said that the flight of O'Neill and O'Donnell, Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, gave occasion to this change ; for the king immediately issued a proclamation^ (which he renewed on taking formal possession of the Earls' territories), § assuring the inhabitants that they should be protected and preserved in their estates, notwithstanding the flight of the Earls : nor the outbreak of Sir Cahir O'Doherty in the month of May, 1608, as it was confined to the neighbourhood of Lon donderry, which he attacked, killing the governor, who had dared to strike him. The truth would seem to be, that the English, with their feudal prejudices, regard the land in a higher light than man, and consider the improvement of the country to consist in better tilled fields and straightened fences, and not in the happiness of the countrymen ; the more espe cially as they assume that the Irish cannot effect these works, and that the lands must accordingly be assigned to themselves, careful not to remember that the energies of the Irish are de stroyed by their sense of impending exile. Manors of 1000, 1500, and 3000 acres were offered by this project to such English and Scottish as should undertake to plant their lots with British Protestants, and engage to allow no Irish to dwell upon them. For the security of the Plantation, all Irish who had been in arms were to be transplanted with their families, cattle, and followers, to waste places in Munster and Con- naught, and there set down at a distance from one another; while those who should be suffered to remain were to remove
* Letter of Sir John Davies to the Earl of Salisbury, A. D. Ifi07. "His torical Tracts," by Sir John Davies, 8vo, Dublin, 1787, p. 258.
t " Analeeta Sacra, Nova ct Mira tie Rebus Catholicorum in Hibernia pro Fide et Religione Gestis. Collectore et Relatore T. N. Philudelpho- Colonias," 1617, 12mo, p. 239.
\ Dated Rathfarnham, 7th Sept., fifth James I. " Printed Calendar of Patent Rolls of James I.," p. 419.
§ Dated 9th November of same year. Ib., p. 420. 8*
58 INTRODUCTION.
from the lands allotted to the planters, to places where they could be under the eye of the Government officers.
The Irish gentlemen who did not forfeit their estates re ceived proportions (intended to be three-fourths of their former lands, but often only one-half or one-third, as the English " were their own carvers "), as immediate tenants of the king. Their lands were liable to forfeiture if the chief took from any of his former clansmen any of his ancient cus tomary exactions or victuals ; if he went coshering on them as of old ; if lie used gavelkind, or took the name of the great O, whether O'Neill or O'Donnell, O'Oarroll or O'Connor. On his death, his youthful heir was made ward to a Protestant, to be brought up in Trinity College, Dublin, from his twelfth to his eighteenth year in English habits and religion — often after this enforced conformity, all the more embittered, like Sir Phelim O'Neill, against English religion. The wandering creaghts were now to become his tenants at fixed money rents. He covenanted that they should build and dwell in villages, and live on allotted portions of land, " to them as grievous as to be made bond slaves." Unable to keep their cattle on the small portions of land assigned to them, instead of ranging at large, they sold away both corn and cattle.* Unused to money rents, though of victuals they formerly made small account because of their plenty, they were unable to pay their rents; and their lords finding it impossible to exact them, and being thus deprived of their living, numbers of them fled to Spain. Similar Plantations followed in Leitrim, Longford, King's County, and Wexford, except that in some (as in Leit rim) one-half of the lands of the Irish were seized.
If the fair promises of James I. were of no value to the native Irish, his commission to secure the defective titles of the English availed them but little more. Notwithstanding- large sums paid during his reign, as compositions to obtain perfect titles, Discoverers with eagle eyes (to use the language of a Committee of the House of Commons of Ireland to Lord Strafford, in 1634), piercing into the grants made to them under this commission, took advantage of the errors of the persons employed in passing of patents and estates from the Crown, and disheartened them from making their possessions
* Letter of Sir Arthur Chichester to the King, 30th October, 1610. Sir Henry Ellis's " Original Letters." Third series.
INTEODUCTION. 59
beautiful or profitable.* And King Charles I., occupied in devising means to raise moneys without the aid of Parliament, connived at the Earl's proceedings in the confiscation of the estates of the old English of Connaught, though they had bought off the claim of the Crown, three hundred years old, derived through the De Burgos, whose daughter and heir Lionel, son of Edward III., had married. Lord Strafford found flaws in the execution of the previous commissions, and got the king's title found. More unscrupulous than James I., who took one-fourth from the native Irish, Strafford resolved to take one-half of the lands of the old English of Connaught, with the intention of founding there " a noble English Planta tion."! And when Lord Holland, in the Privy Council in England, declared that taking so much might induce them to call the Irish regiments out of Flanders, Lord Strafford an swered that if taking one-half should move that country to rebellion, the taking one-third or one-fourth would hardly insure the Crown their allegiance ; and if they were so rotten and unsound at heart, wisdom would counsel to weaken them, and line them thoroughly with Protestants as guards upon them.];
His despotic proceeding in the confiscation of Connaught •was made one of the grounds of his impeachment ; but the managers for the Parliament abandoned it.§ It had served its purpose by swelling the train of the Earl's accusers ; and, in their Declaration concerning the Rise and Progress of the Irish Rebellion, the Commons of England made it a ground of complaint against the king that he had allowed the Connaught proprietors to compound with him for their estates.||
* " Stratford's Letters," vol. i., p. 310. For a good account of the va rious technical errors for which the Patents were declared to be void, see " Fiction Unmasked," by Walter Harris, Esq., 12mo, Dublin, 1752, pp. 60-83.
t Sir Eichard Cox, Secretary to King William 111., and afterwards Chan cellor of Ireland, in his " Hibernia Anglicana," vol. ii., p. 56. Folio. London: 1690.
I " Stafford's Letters," vol. ii., p. 33.
§ Knshworth's «' Historical Collections," vol. viii., p. 717.
| Ibid., vol. v., pp. 846-7.
OBSERVE.
The signs, A-5, A-85, A-90, etc., etc., so frequently used in the foot notes to the following work, refer to the series of books of the Lord Deputy and Council, otherwise called " The Commissioners of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England for the Affairs of Ireland," preserved in the Record Tower, Dublin Castle, as de scribed at page 18 of the Preface
THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
OP
IRELAND.
PART I,
CIRCUMSTANCES IMMEDIATELY LEADING TO THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT OF IRELAND.
THE GREAT IRISH REBELLION OF 23D OCTOBER, 1641.
THE forty years between the defeat of the Irish at Kinsale, on the 2d January, 1601-2, and the great War or Rebellion which broke out on the 23d October, 1641, have been repre sented as the period of the greatest peace, improvement, and prosperity known in Ireland since the days of the first invasion. And so it was in one sense ; but in another the period of the greatest misery. The land was improved. Castles and bawns sprang up among new-formed fields. The planters, happy and energetic, thought all the world was happy too. Under the labours of about twenty years, their lands began to smile. Little they thought or cared how the ancient owner, dispos sessed of his lands, must grieve as he turned from the sight of the prosperous stranger to his pining family ; daughters with out prospect of preferment in marriage ; sons, without fit com panions, walking up and down the country with their horses and greyhounds, coshering on the Irish, drinking and gaming,
62 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
and ready for any rebellion ;* most of his high-born friends wandering in poverty in France or Spain, or enlisted in their armies. There was prosperity, but it was among the supplant ing strangers — misery among the displanted and transplanted Irish. There was peace, but it was the peace of despair, be cause there remained no hope except in arms, and their arms were taken from them.
The case was little better among the old English gentry of Leinster, Munster, and Connaugbt, once possessed of the finest lands, and all the power and privileges of the kingdom. They were now supplanted in all the offices of state by the later in vaders of Queen Elizabeth's, and James the First's, and Charles the First's reigns, all Protestants. The towns, always hitherto the sure defence of the English power, were equally unhappy in this prosperous time. The seaport towns were built by the Danes, the inland ones raised and walled under charters from the kings of England or of feudal lords. They were so strictly English, that no Irish could originally by law dwell in them. They were considered by Sir Henry Sydney the Queen's un paid garrisons, which had ever stood stanch in all wars as well of English rebels as of Irish enemies. The ancient burgher families were now supplanted by English Protestants in the office of mayors, sheriffs, and recorders ; and where these could not he had, and Roman Catholics took the offices, the members of the corporation were summoned before the Lord Deputy, and fined £100 each, and imprisoned, for not taking the oath of supremacy when tendered to them.f Churchwar dens enumerated in lists the Irish of every parish that did not attend the English service, and these were tendered to grand juries at sessions of the peace and assizes to be presented for fines. If the old English or Irish grand jurors outnumbered
* Act of 10th and llth Charles I., chap. 16 [Irish], A. D. 1636, "For the Suppression of Cosherers and idle Wanderers." It speaks of " the many young gentlemen of this kingdom that have little or nothing to live on of their own. . . . but live coshering on the country and sessing themselves and their followers, their horses and their greyhounds, sometimes exacting money to spare them and their tenants, and to go elsewhere for their eeaught and adraugh, viz., supper and breakefaste .... being commonly
active young men, and such as seek to have many followers apt
upon the least occasion of insurrection or disturbance .... to be heads and leaders of outlaws and rebels, and in the mean time do support their excessive drinking and gaming by several stealths."
t P. 325, "Analecta de Rebus Catholicis in Hibernia" (Collections re lating to Catholic affairs in Ireland), 12mo. Dublin- 1617.
OF IRELAND. 63
the new English, there were no presentments made ; for they made it a matter of conscience not to be accessory to fining their fellow-worshippers for an act of duty. They were then all "censured" by the Court of Castle Chamber by heavy fines, and put in prison, till at times the jails were choked with them.*
Suddenly, on the night of the 23d of October, 1641, the Irish of Ulster, under the leading of Sir Phelim O'Neil, rose in insurrection, seized the forts of Charlemont and Mountjoy, and all the places of strength in the North except Derry and Car- rickfergus, made prisoners of some of the planters, and caused the rest to fly towards Derry or Dublin. The planters were like criminals seized with the goods in their possession : the owners had come to claim their properties. So terrified were they, that for the first three days and nights no cock was heard [by them] to crow, no dog to bark, nay, not even when the rebels came in great multitudes.! The English power was overthrown in three-fourths of Ireland in a night ; and before Christmas, 1641, they only held Londonderry, Carrick- fergus, and Drogheda, in the North; and Cork, Youghal, Kinsale, and Bandon, in the South. Though the Irish were at first a popular rout of unarmed clowns, the English durst scarce peep out of the gates of their great garrisons of Dublin and Drogheda.;);
It was not until the month of February, 1642, that Lord Ormond marched out of Dublin with a large force, to relieve the gentlemen in the neighbourhood of the capital confined to their castles. It has been represented that there was a general massacre, surpassing the horrors of the Sicilian Vespers, the Parisian Nuptials, and Matins of the Valtelline, but nothing is more false. The English, whose conscience made them expect such retribution, had often foretold this outburst of injured and outraged humanity. They themselves massacred
* "Last Michaelmas term the jurors who were imprisoned for refusing1 to find verdict against their fellow Catholics were packed in jail like her rings in a barrel ; their fines reached to £16,000, which, instead of going to the poor of the parishes, went to private favourites." Ibid., p. 49. Those of the county of Cavan alone were fined £3000. Ibid., p. 59.
t Deposition of the Rev. Dr. Maxwell, Rector of Tynan, in the county of Armagh. Borlase's " History of the Execrable Irish Rebellion," p. 418.
\ P. 11, "Queries propounded by the Protestant Party concerning the Peace now treated of in Ireland, aud the Answers thereto made on behalf of the Irish Nation." 4to. Paris : 1644.
64 THE CROMWELLIAX SETTLEMENT
the Danes ; bat the Irish, to use the words of an old divine, have ever lacked gall to supply a wholesome animosity to the eternal enemies and revilers of their name and nation.* They were content to recover their ancient lands. While these designs, therefore, were freely attributed to them, their very accusers furnish proof of the falseness of the charge; for they show that, when they had the opportunity to effect their alleged purpose, they let their enemies go. Contemporaneous ac counts, especially those that give results against the bias of the writers, are mostly the true ones. All these prove there was no massacre. Thus, a minister of God's Word, writing in December, 1641, with the express object of rousing the indig nation of the English by an account of the atrocities done by the Irish, in order to draw forth charitable aid to their victims, says, " It was the intention of the Irish to massacre all the English. On Saturday they were to disarm them ; on Sunday, to seize all their cattle and goods ; on Monday, at the watch word ' Skeane,' they were to cut all the English throats. The former they executed ; the third only [that is, the massacre] they failed in." f
Against such intentions, provided only they were true, there could of course be no cruelty too great. Accordingly, the English of Dublin petitioned the Parliament of England,
* " Six hundred years ago we found the native Irish murdering and pil laging, burning towns, carrying off heiresses and wives, too; and it cannot be said that the leaven is quite out of them yet. A hundred years, more or leas, are a trifle in the cure of so deep a disease . . . . So long as there
are s [naming the latest sacrifice on the scaffold to the maintenance
of the unendurable feudal land monopoly], there will be stout /Saxons, who, by fair means or by foul, will, carry the day, or send them to work and be honest across the ocean. We wish, of course, the animal could be tamed [i. e., reduced to the serfish condition of the rural population of England], and kept at home ; but it is no use wishing when a whole race has an innate taste for conspiracy and manslaughter." — "Times," 10th May, 1859.
" The Lion of St. Jarlath's . . . surveys with an envious eye . . . the Irish exodus, . . . and sighs over the departing demons of assassination and murder. . . So complete is the rush of departing marauders, whose lives were profitably occupied in shooting Protestants from behind a hedge, that silence reigns over the vast solitude of Ireland. . . . Just as ... civiliza tion gradually supersedes the wilder and fiercer creatures by men and cities, so decivilization, such as is going on in Ireland, wipes out mankind to make room for oxen."—" Saturday Review," Nov. 28th, 1863.
t " A Brief Declaration of the Barbarous and Inhuman Dealings of the Northern Irish Rebels . . . ; written to excite the English Nation to relieve our poor Wives and Children that have escaped the Rebels' savage Cruel- tie. . . By G. S., Minister of God's Word, in Ireland." Small 4to. Lon don: 1641.
OF IRELAND. 65
in December, 1641, that the towns should be cleared of Irish, and forfeited, and given to English ; that all the cows, cattle, and provisions of the country should be brought into them, or driven under their guns, out of reach of the Irish, to starve them ; and pardon and reward offered to any rebel that should bring in the head of his fellow-rebel, and promotion to respect and honour for the head of a chief ringleader, provided the traitor would turn Protestant.*
That the massacre rested hitherto in intention only is fur ther evident from the proclamation of the Lords Justices of the 8th of February, 1642 ; for, while offering large sums for the heads of the chief Northern gentlemen in arms (Sir Phelim O'Neil's name heading the list, with a thousand pounds), the Lords Justices state that the massacre had failed. Many thousands had been robbed and spoiled, dispossessed of house and lands, many murdered on the spot; but the chief part of their plots (so the proclamation states) and amongst them a universal massacre, had been disappointed.!
But after Lord Ormond and Sir Simon Harcourt, with the English forces, in the month of April, 1642, had burned the houses of the gentry in the Pale,| and committed slaughters of unarmed men,§ and that the Scotch forces, in the same month, after beating off Sir Phelim O'Neil's army at Newry, drowned and shot men, women, and priests, in that town, who had surrendered on condition of mercy, || then it was that some
* " Remonstrance from Ireland to the High Court of Parliament in England for the speedy oppression of the Rebels without cost, and the probable way of moving the Rebels to submit themselves, and to cut one another's own Throats, and to bring in the Heads of the chief Actors, thereby to get their pardon. Presented by a Member of the House of Commons in Ireland." Small 4to. First printed at Dublin. Reprinted at London: 1641.
t The proclamation is given at length in Borlase's " History of the Execrable Irish Rebellion."
\ Page 117, "The humble Protestation of the Catholics of the English Pale of Ireland against a Proclamation elated 8th February, 1641-2." — "Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, or Select State Papers," etc. Dublin: 1772.
§ " A full Relation of the good Success of Lord Ormond and his Army, from their going out of Dublin on 2d April, 1642, till the 17th of the same, when they returned thither again." Small 4to. London: 1642.
\ "Monday, May 5th [1642] : — The common soldiers, without direction from the general-major, took some eighteen of the Irish women of the town [Newry], and stript them naked, and threw them into the river, and drowned them, shooting some in the water. More had suffered so, but that some of the common soldiers were made examples of." . . . — "A True
66 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
of Sir Phelim O'Neil's wild followers, in revenge, and in fear of the advancing army, massacred their prisoners in some of the towns in Tyrone. The subsequent cruelties were not on one side only, and were magnified to render the Irish detest able, so as to make it impossible for the king to seek their aid without ruining his cause utterly in England. The story of the massacre, invented to serve the politics of the hour, has been since kept up for the purposes of interest. No in ventions could be too monstrous that served to strengthen the possession of Irish confiscated lands.
The truth seems to be, that the English were to the full as bloody as the Irish ; but, as regarded the acts of the English, law,* which is nothing but the will of the strongest, made killing no murder. Incited by those who hungered after Irish estates, and therefore determined to render them desperate, and drive all into rebellion, they proclaimed all of them rebels, — old English of the Pale as well as the ancient natives; con fiscated in advance 2,500,000 acres of their lands ; invented crimes for them, thereby maddening the people of England, until extermination was preached for gospel, and the sparing of any of them was declared a crime. So that when the Bishop of Meath, in a sermon in Christ Church, Dublin, in 1642, pleaded for mercy for women and children, an English officer, publicly by print in London, justified his quitting the army of Ireland, inasmuch as the plea was made by the bishop in the presence of the Lords Justices, and not reproved, and they must, therefore, be traitors to the English interest.!
The Puritans heard of the Irish rebellion with feelings of
Relation of the Proceedings of the Scots and English Forces in the North of Ireland." 4to. London : 1642.
"Mr. Griffin, Mr. Bartly, Mr. Starkey, all of Ardmagh, and murdered by these bloudsuckers on the sixt of May. For, about the fourth of May, as I take it, we put neare fourty of them to death upon the bridge of the Newry, amongst which were two of the Pope's pedlers, two seminary priests, in return of which they slaughtered many prisoners in their cus- tody."— " The Levite's Lamentation," pp. 13, 14.
* "Amongst acts some produce great evils. The Strongest wished to arrest the course of acts prejudicial [to themselves], and for that reason turned those acts into crimes. The will of the strongest, clothed with out ward forms, received the name of law." — "Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation," edited by Dumont, vol. i., p. 153.
t "An Apology made by an English Officer of Quality for leaving the Irish Wars, declaring the design now on foot to reconcile the Irish and English, and expelling the Scotch, to bring their Popish Forces against the Parliament.'''
OF IRELAND. 67
great anger ; for it gave the king an opportunity to demand fresh forces to be employed into Ireland, which he might turn against the Parliament, when he had subdued or made a treaty with the Irish. The king was already suspected of such a design. One of the charges against the Earl of Straiford, who had been impeached {he previous year, was that he purposed to bring an army from Ireland to England ; and it was believed that his brother only spoke the Earl's sentiments when he said that the English nation would never be well till they were con quered over again.* They had also knowledge of the king's design to supersede Borlase and Parsons, the Lords Justices, who were in the interest of the Parliament, by Lord Ormond ; and then Lord Ormond having command of the army, and a majority in the Parliament of Ireland, formed by a junction of the Protestant Royalist gentry with the old English gentry of Ireland, all Catholic and Royalist, the king could raise taxes there, dissolve the Parliament of England, and use all his pre rogative uncontrolled against the English Puritans.
It was this secret coming to the knowledge of Sir Phelim O'Neil that induced him to rise with the native Irish, that they might anticipate the other parties, and have the credit of greater zeal for the king.f But the Parliament defeated the king's design : unwilling to trust him with an army for Ireland, or with the funds to pay it, they offered 2,500,000 acres of Irish lands to be forfeited, as security to those who should advance moneys towards raising and paying a private army for subduing the rebels in Ireland.^ The moneys, instead
* Trial of the Earl of Strafford, "Kushworth's Collections," vol. viii., pp. 725, 728; and "Declaration of the Commons of 25th July, 1643» concerning the Rise and Progress of the Rebellion in Ireland." Ibid.> vol. v., p. 353.
t P. 22, " Case of Ireland Stated," by Hugh Reilly. The Marchioness of Antrim [Lady Catherine Manners, heiress of Rutland, and widow of G. Villiers, first 'Duke of Buckingham] said that Lord Ormond hated her husband, believing lie had blabbed the plot to Sir Phelim O'Neil. Ibid., p. 23.
% "Petition of divers well affected to the House of Commons, offering to raise and maintain forces on their own charge against the rebels of Ire land, and afterwards to receive their recompense out of the rebells estates," Feb. 11, 1642, p. 553, 4th Rushworth's Collections; Act for the speedy re ducing of the rebels in Ireland, 16 Charles I. [English], c. 33.
" The adventurers, with their moneys raised under the Act, were to have carried over a brigade of 5000 foot and 500 horse into Minister against the rebels, which business they were to have carried on by officers chosen by themselves, whereby they had the oversight of that business, and laying
68 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
of being paid into the king's exchequer, were to be paid to a committee, composed half of members of the House of Com mons, and half of subscribers to this joint fund, who were to nominate the general and the officers, the king having nothing to say to the force but to sign the officers' commissions. All the Irish saw that this army of adventurers were coming, like the first invaders under Strongbow, to conquer estates for them selves and their employers, and therefore could not but oppose them for the sake of their wives and children, who must be deprived of their homes. They must therefore fight against England, thus represented, and the king be deprived of their aid. The king objected to the Act : it took away from him the power of pardoning the Irish, and he suggested that it must only render them desperate, which in truth was the very purpose of the Parliament, but he dared not refuse his assent.* The measure was received in England as a triumph over the king and the Irish. The subscribers, or adventurers as they were called, were to have estates and manors of 1000 acres given to them in Ireland at the following low rates : — In Ulster for £200, in Connaught for £300, in Munster for £450, and in Leinster for £600, and lands proportionably for less sums. The rates by the acre were four shillings in Ulster, six shillings in Connaught, eight shillings in Munster, and twelve shillings in Leinster.
If this plan were carried out it was to put an end forever, according to Sir John Bulstrode Whitelock, the Speaker of the House of Commons, to that long and bloody conflict fore told (with so much truth) by Giraldus Cambrensis.f Accord ing to another, it would bring in such sums of money (which are the sinews of war) as would bring the war to a speedy end ; the more certainly as many of the officers of the force would themselves become adventurers, and thus, in the language of Tacitus describing the soldiers of Catiline, they would carry fortune, honour, glory, and riches at their swords' points. The work of Queen Elizabeth and James the First, it was said,
out their own money for the best advantage of the service." — Reasons of the Committee of Adventurers for refusing to lend moneys on the Ordi nance of 15th August, 1645.
* P. 557, ibid.
t "Speech at a Conference between the Lords and Commons on 13th February, 1641-2, concerning the Proposition of divers Gentlemen, etc., for the speedy Eeducing," etc. Small 4to. London : 1642.
OF IRELAND. 69
would now be perfected. The Irish would be rooted out by a new and overwhelming plantation of English : another Eng land would speedily be found in Ireland, and that prophecy be proved false that Ireland will not be reformed till the day of judgment.*
The adventurers had their private army of 5000 foot and 500 horse at Bristol, under the orders of Lord Wharton, ready for the invasion of Munster, in the summer of 1642. But the conflict between the king and Parliament growing embittered, he delayed the giving the commissions for the officers ;f and the civil war having broken out, the Parliament directed Lord Wharton and his force to march against the king ; and on the 23d October, 1642 (the first anniversary of the Irish rebellion), they were defeated at the battle of Edge Hill, with the rest of the English rebels. The adventurers, finding that the funds they had raised to conquer lands in Ireland were thus misused by the Parliament, it was difficult to obtain further subscriptions, though the measure of land was enlarged to the Irish standard, and afterwards doubled for any adven turer that would pay in a sum equal to a fourth of his original subscription. But the conflict in England prevented any forces from coming thence for seven years. It was not until they had put a conclusion to their strife by cutting off the king's head and dethroning the dynasty, that Cromwell, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and general-in-chief of the Common wealth armies, landed at Ringsend, near Dublin, on the 14th August, 1649, in order to carry on the war in Ireland. He remained here for nearly nine months, being called back to England on the 29th May, 1650, just after the capture of Clonmel.
The war lasted more than two years longer ; for it was not until the 27th September, 1653, that the Parliament were enabled to declare the rebellion subdued, and the war appeased and ended.];
* "Fidelity, Valour, and Obedience, of the English declared by way of Pacification of His Majesty, and a desire of reunion between His Majesty and the Parliament, as also, that the present forces now ready to bicker here in England, may be turned against the barbarous Irish rebels. By "Walter Meredith, Ge'nt." Small 4to. London: 1642.
t 4th " Kushworth's Collections," p. 776.
% " Ordinance for the Satisfaction of the Adventurers for Lands in Ire land, and the Arrears due to the Soldiery there, 27th September, 1653."— Scobell, "Acts and Ordinances."
70 THE CKOMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE IRISH WAR, AND THE TERMS OFFERED TO THE IRISH.
The immediate cause of the settlement of the soldiery in Ireland was the waste caused by the war, and the difficulty the government were in about satisfying them their large arrears, or finding them current pay.
Spenser has described the English method of war in Ire land. He was an eye-witness of the measures pursued by his master and patron, Lord Grey de Wilton, to subdue Munster, in 1580. By this method a most populous and plentiful coun try, he says, was suddenly left void of man and beast, so that (to use the language of the Irish annalists) the lowing of a cow nor the voice of a herdsman was not heard from Dunquin, in Kerry, to Cashel, in Munster.* It consisted in so placing garrisons as to confine the Irish to some narrow fastnesses. The English then destroyed the cattle and growing crops in the neighbourhood, and removed away or spoiled all those that bordered on those parts, that the enemy might find no succour ; and the Irish being closely penned up, and their cattle prevented from running abroad, they were soon con sumed and the people starved. f " In one year and a half," says Spenser, " they were brought to such wretchedness, as any stony heart would have rued the sight. Out of every corner of the woods and glynns they came forth on their hands, for their legs could not bear them, — they looked like anatomies of death, and spoke like ghosts crying out of the grave ; they flocked to a plot of water-cresses as to a feast, though it afford ed them small nourishment, and ate dead carrion, happy when they jcould find it, and soon after scraped the very carcases out of the graves."| Yet this gentle poet only describes this war fare, and all its horrors, in order to recommend it for adop tion by the Earl of Essex in the war then on foot against Hugh O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone. And though Essex did not carry out this ruthless plan, Lord Mountjoy, who superseded
* "Annals of the Four Masters," at the year 1582.
f "View of the State of Ireland, written dialoguewise between Eudoxus and Irenseus, by Edmund Spenser, Esq., in the Year 1596," p. 526, vol. i. of "Collection of Tracts and Treatises illustrative of Ireland." 2 vols. 8vo, Alexander Thorn. Dublin: 1860.
I Ibid., id.
OF IRELAND.
him, did, burning the houses and destroying the corn and cattle, till the dead lay unburied in the fields in thousands.*
Carrion and corpses became the food of the survivors ; and, more horrible still, children were killed and eaten, and the
rr wretches who killed them were tried and hanged for it those that drove them to such horrors.f Archbishop Ussher, who was ordained on the very day that Tyrone's war was ended by the defeat of the Irish and Spaniards at Kinsale, and therefore speaks of what was within his own knowledge, relates how women were known to lie in wait, and to rush out, like famished wolves, upon a rider, to drag him from his saddle and to seize and devour the horse.| The war in Ire land in 1650 was of the same nature ; but the resistance was more general ; for the ancient English, and all the towns, who were upon the Queen's side in Tyrone's, and all former wars, were now united with the Irish. The process consequently was longer, because the English forces were comparatively fewer: the methods were the same. It may seem strange to hear counted as military weapons issued from the store at Waterford, among swords, pikes, powder, shot, bandaliers and match, " eighteen dozen of scythes with handles and rings, forty reape hooks, and whetstones and rubstones proportional ;"§ but with these the soldiers cut down the growing crop, in order to starve the Irish into submission. ||
Not less strange is it to hear of the Bible being served out of store, with their other ammunition, to the army; yet they had no bloodier implement in all their arsenal of war.^f
* Fynes Morison's " Itinerary ;" and " The History of Hugh O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone's, Rebellion, and its Suppression," p. 237. Folio. London : 1617.
t Idem, p. 271.
\ " Life of Primate Ussher, by Dean Barnard," p. 67. 12mo. London: 1656.
§ A-82, p. 281.
|| " Dublin, 1st July, 1650. — Last Monday, Colonel Hewson, with a con siderable body from hence, marched into Wicklow. Colonel Hewson doth now intend to make use of scythes and sickles that were sent over in 1649, with which they intend to cut down the corn growing in those parts which the enemy is to live upon in the winter time, and thereby, for want of bread and cattle, the Tories may be left destitute of provisions, and so forced to submit and quit those places.— Dublin, 1st July, 1651."— Letter of the Commissioners for Ireland to the Parliament, A-2, p. 7.
H '_' Dublin, 3d August, 1652.— Ordered, that the Governor of Dublin do give warrant to the commissary of the stores in Dublin to issue the JSibies now in the stores to the several companies offoote and troopes of h&rst
72 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
On the 1st January, 1651-2, the Parliament (so the Commis sioners report) had in Ireland an army of 30,000 men, but they had 350 garrisons and military posts to maintain, and 100 more to plant ; while the Irish had an equal number of men, all of them, except those in their towns and garrisons in Connaught, in woods, bogs, and other fastnesses of the greatest advantao-e to them, and from which there was no dislodging them. They describe the country as almost everywhere interlaced with great bogs, with firm woody grounds like islands in the middle, approached by a narrow pass where only one horse could go abreast, easily broken up, so as no horse could attack them ; but in and out the Irish could pass over the wet and quak ing bog by ways known only to themselves, whereby they could attack or escape at pleasure. To place garrisons near their fastnesses, to lay waste the adjacent country, allowing none to inhabit there on pain of death, was the course taken to subdue the Irish.* The consequence was, that the country was reduced to a howling wilderness. Three-fourths of the stock of cattle were destroyed. In 1653, cattle had to be im ported from Wales into Dublin ; f it required a license to kill lamb ; J tillage had ceased : the English themselves were near
within the said precinct of Dublin according to muster, that is to say, one Bible to every file • and that the several commissaries of the musters with in the said precinct have order every master to see the said Bibles ac counted for by the officer so commanding the said troope or company ; and when they find the said Bibles to be wanting upon musters as aforesaid, to certify the same to the governor and commissioners of the revenue in the respective precincts, that defalcation may be made of the said troopes or companys pay for such Bibles as are wanting." A-2, p. 294.
" Drogheda, 17th August, 1652. — You are desired forthwith to deliver out of the stores under your charge one hundred Bibles unto Mr. Robert Clarke, or whom he shall appoint to receive the same, to be by him disposed of for the use of the forces and others as may bee for the propagation of the Gospell within the precinct of Galway as hee shall see cause.
" To the storekeeper at Limerick or Galway." A-2, p. 304.
* " Some particulars humbly offered to consideration, in order to the breaking of the enemy's strength, and lessening the charge of England in managing the affairs of Ireland. Commissioners for Ireland to the Coun cil of State in England, dated 1 January, 1652." A-2, p. 288.
t Potty's "Political Anatomy of Ireland," 1672, vol. ii., p. 26, "Tracts and Treatises on Ireland." Alexander Thorn, Dublin: 1860.
% u Upon the petition of Mrs. Alice Bulkeley, widow, and consideration had of her ould age and weakness of body: It is thought fitt and ordered that she be and she is hereby permitted and lycensed to kill and dresse so much lam be as shall be necessary for her own use and eating, not exceed ing tiiree lambes for this whole year, notwithstanding any declaration of the said Commissioners of Parliament to the contrary. Dated at Dublin, 17 March, 1652." A-82, p. 721.
OF IRELAND. 73
starving. Soldiers and officers were encouraged, therefore, to till the lands round their posts ;* and such of the Irish not in arms as would comedown from their fastnesses and raise crops within the line of a garrison, until the Parliament of Eng land should declare their intentions towards the Irish nation, were promised the benefit of their crop.f The revenue from all sources, even in 1654, did not amount to £200,000 (exact, £198,000). The cost of the army exceeded £500,000. J It became important, therefore, to come to some terms with the Irish. The Commissioners for Ireland reported that the natives were of opinion that the Parliament intended them no mercy. At length, 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 surren dered. By these Kilkenny articles, all except those who were guilty of the first blood were received into protection, on lay ing 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 tiie Par liament, should have liberty to treat with their agents for that purpose. But the Commissioners undertook faithfully and really to mediate with the Parliament to their utmost en deavours, that they might enjoy such a remnant of their lands as might make their lives comfortable who lived amongst them, or for the maintenance of the families of such of them as should go beyond seas.
* Waste and untermnted lands to be let to officers and soldiers of the garrison for five years, from 25th. March, 1653, at reasonable rents, free of contribution, OD condition that they till and manure, and sow one-third of arable land with corn, and occupy. A-82, p. 601.
t " The stock of cattle in this country are almost spent, so that above four parts in five of the best and most fertile lands in Ireland lye waste and uninhabited, which threatens great scarcity here; for prevention whereof, declarations have been issued forth for encouragement of the Irish to till their lands, promising them the enjoyment of their crop, as also for enforcing those that are removed to the mountains to return. Dublin, 1 July, 1651. Commissioners for Ireland to the Council of State in England." A-2, p. 12.
J " Memoir on the Mapped Surveys of Ireland from 1640 to 1688, remaining in the late Auditor-General for Ireland's Office," by W. H» Hardinge, " Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy," for 1862, p. 7.
§ A-90, p. 103. 4
74 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
SCHEMES FOR THE NEW PLANTING OF IRELAND.
Under this destructive system of war, the country was be coming a waste, without cattle, and without inhabitants. The taxation to support the army was continually increasing on the parts of the country under protection, and amounted to double the rent in the former times of peace. Soldiers who had taken farms were throwing them up.* The Irish under protection were quitting the English quarters with their cattle, unable to endure the grinding taxation, and flying to the mountains again ; and the charge to be supplied from Eng land was continually increasing. There was only one remedy for these evils — to plant and inhabit the country, and reduce the army.
The officers of the army were eager to take Irish lands in lieu of their arrears,f though it does not appear that the com mon soldiers were, who had small debentures and no capital, and no chance of founding families and leaving estates to their posterity. But the adventurers 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 ba first ascertained, before the rest of the country could be free for disposal by the Parliament to the army.
Pressed with these considerations, the Commissioners for
* 11 January, 1653. On reading the petition of the inhabitants of the barony of Shilelogher, in the county of Kilkenny, complaining of the as sessment, the Commissioners of Revenue were directed, if they found that the persons who took waste lands in the said barony have deserted them, they are to cotnpel such persons to stand to their agreements, and the rents and contributions payable by such persons to be allowed to the petitioners for the better enabling them to pay their monthly contribution [i. e. a like amount to be deducted from the monthly assessment of the barony, as the parties deserting their holdings ought to have paid]. A-82, p. 542.
7 January, 1653. On reading the petition of the inhabitants of the barony of Cranagh, in the county of Kilkenny, ordered, if it be true as is suggested that many have thrown up their farms which they had taken, casting them as a burden upon the said barony, that such persons stand to their bargains, and discharge the rents and duties falling on their holdings. A-82, p. 523.
t *' Some proposals humbly offered by a General Council of Officers to the General and Commissioners of Parliament. 22 October, 1652." Ib., p. 47.
OP IEELAND. 75
Ireland, on the 1st of January, 1652, proposed to the Council of State in England, that the adventurers should cast lots for their lands presently, notwithstanding the war was not over ; and they suggested that four allotments, one in each province, amply sufficient to pay the adventurers, should be made, and that they should then cast lots to ascertain in which of them their proportions should be fixed ; the first lot to consist of the counties of Limerick, Kerry, and Clare in Munster, and Gal way in Connaught ; the second, of the counties of Kilkenny, Wex- ford, Wicklow, and Carlovv, in Leinster ; the third, of the coun ties of Westmeath and Longford, in Leinster, and Cavan and Monaghan, in Ulster ; the fourth of the counties of Fermanagh and Donegal in Ulster, and Leitrim and Sligo in Connaught.* By which it appears that they had not as yet determined on the transplantation of the Irish to Connaught, but still adhered to the plan of the Adventurers Act, that the lands should be taken equally out of the four provinces. They also proposed that the soldiers should have land in their quarters, as well for their arrears as in lieu (for part at least) of their present pay. They would thus be encouraged to follow husbandry, and to maintain their own interest as well as that of the Common- wealth.f The adventurers, therefore, were directed on 30th January, 1652, to attend the Committee of Parliament sitting in the Speaker's Chamber at Westminster, and propose a form of speedy -plantation.
The adventurers had been very urgent during the whole course of the war for lands to be set out to them. In 1645, they demanded to be put in possession of the houses belonging to the Irish in Cork, Kinsale, and Youghal, with lands adja cent, and to be given other lands in Munster as they should be conquered from the rebels.^ Now they declared, if the Parliament insisted on a speedy plantation, they were undone. The war was not over — people feared the Tories. No plan was proposed for their security. The Irish were to be removed. Men were hard to be got in England for tenants and labourers, as they saw that the Government would have to give people land in Ireland for nothing, as there must be many millions
* A-2, p. 290. t A-2, p. 289.
J P. 11, " JReasons offered by a Committee of Adventurers for refusing to lend Moneys on the Ordinance of 15th August, 1645, for raising Moneys for Ireland for six months from November, 1645." Small 4to : London.
76 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
of acres still left after satisfying the adventurers and soldiers, which must be waste and untenanted, unless given away to prevent them from being reoccupied by the Irish. That la bourers were scarce, by reason of the many forests and chases lately disafforested in England, and then under improvement. They accordingly demanded to be paid in lands, in such parts of Munster, Kilkenny, and (if need be) in other parts of Lein- ster most contiguous, as they should choose ; that they should have the city of Watertbrd, and such towns as they should point out, preserved for them ; that they should be well guarded.
But they refused to be put under conditions to plant in any limited time, and demanded that they should be free of taxes while planting. Unless they should be greatly favoured, they must be forced to plant on such terms that the labourers would grow rich, and the adventurers poor, as many did in New England. And if the first adventurers should prove unsuc cessful, it might cast such a damp upon the spirits of others, like a dismal discomfit in the beginning of a battle, as they would hardly be brought on again on any conditions.*
The government, however, still pressed for a speedy plan tation. They wished to limit them to three years, and the lands not then planted and inhabited to be forfeited. To which the adventurers gave for final answer, that it would take 40,000 labourers and their families to execute such a work, for whom no housing was provided, no guards against Tories, and that to attempt it would be to destroy the plantation.^
The officers of the army were at the same time urging that the army should have lands set out to them forthwith for their arrears. There was no way of preventing a further increase of the charge that weighed upon England, but by planting the country, and reducing the forces by degrees, and with as much speed as might be consistent with safety. And they proposed that one or more counties should be allotted to the adven turers, adequate to their demands, and others to the army, that so the planting by the adventurers and by the gradually disbanding army might go on together. As the utmost speed
* Proposals of the Adventurers, dated April 5, 1652. Carte, MSS.f Bodleian Library, " Ireland," vol. x., pp. 230-236.
t u Adventurers' remarks upon the Proposals of the Committee of Par liament for the Planting of Ireland, sitting in the Speaker's Chamber, 23 d December, 1652." Ib., p. 257.
OF IRELAND. 77
was necessary for the relief of England, they proposed that the army should have lands for their arrears at the same rates as they were given by the Act of 1642 to the adventurers, called the Act rates, namely, lands in Leinster at 12s. per acre; in Munster, at 8s. ; in Connaught, at 6s. ; and in Ulster, at 45. To value the several estates and farms in a convenient time, would require more fit valuers than could be found, would cost more than the revenue could bear, and the army and its pay (drawn from England) must continue. Moreover, it would be a very uncertain valuation, the lands being in many places waste, the inhabitants destroyed or gone, so as there were none to give evidence of the value when they were inhabited. And, lastly, the Ordinance of the year 1643, allowing officers of the army to become adventurers to the extent of their pay on the same terms as the adventurers, was a precedent for pay ing the whole army their arrears now at the Act rates.* All very good reasoning to give them the lands at extraordinary cheap rates.
DEPARTURE OF THE SWORDMEN FOR SPAIN.
Foreign nations were apprised by the Kilkenny Articles that the Irish were to be allowed to engage in the service of any state in amity with the Commonwealth. The valour of the Irish soldier was well known abroad. From the time of the Munster plantation by Queen Elizabeth, numerous exiles had taken service in the Spanish army. There were Irish regi ments serving in the Low Countries. The Princev of Orange declared they were born soldiers ;f and Henry IV. of France publicly called Hugh O'Neil the third soldier of the age,]; and
* A-82, p. 391.
j " There lives not a people more hardy, active, and painful
neither is there any will endure the miseries of wurre, as famine, watching, heat, cold, wet, travel, and the like, so naturally, and with such facility and courage that they do. The Prince of Orange's Excellency uses often pnbliquely to deliver that the Irish are souldiers the first day of their birth. The famous Henry IV., late king of France, said there would prove no nation so resolute martial men as they, would they be ruly, ana not too headstrong. And Sir John N orris was wont to ascribe this particular to that nation above others, that he never beheld so few of any country as of Irish that were idiots and cowards, which is very notable." P. 219, "Advertisement for Ireland," MS., folio (A. D. 1615), Library of Trin. Coll. Dublin, F. 3, 16.
% " Se ipsum primum esse significans," etc., " meaning himself to be the first, and the illustrious Count de Fuentes the second ; as testified to
78 THE CKOMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
he said there was no nation made better troops than the Irish when drilled. Sir John Norris, who had served in many coun tries, said he knew no nation where there were so few fools or cowards. Agents from the King of Spain, the King of Poland, and the Prince de Conde, were now contending for the services of Irish troops. Don Ricardo White, in May, 1652, shipped 7000 in batches from Waterford, Kinsale, Gal way, Limerick, and Bantry, for the King of Spain.* Colonel Christopher Mayo got liberty in September, 1652, to beat his drums to raise 3000 for the same king.f Lord Muskerry took 5000 to the King of Poland.]; In July, 1654, 3500, commanded by Colonel Edmund Dwyer, went to serve the Prince de Conde. § Sir Walter Dungan and others got liberty to beat their drums in different garrisons to a rallying of their men that laid down arms with them in order to a rendezvous, and to depart for Spain. || They got permission to march their men together to the different ports, their pipers perhaps playing " Ha til, Ha til, Ha til, mi tulidh" — We return, we return no more ;T or more probably, after their first burst of passionate grief at leaving home and friends forever was over, marching gayly to the lively strains of Garryowen. Between 1651 and 1654, thirty- four thousand (of whom few ever saw their loved native land again) were transported into foreign parts.**
tliis day by the most noble the Count D'Ossunia, late Viceroy of Naples and Sicily, in whose presence he said so." Lynch's " Alithinilogia," vol. ii., p. 50.
* A--82, p. 205. t Ib., p. 331.
% " On reading the within petition of .John Gould, in behalf of the Lord Muskerry, who has license to transport 5000 men out of Ireland to the service of any prince in amity with the Commonwealth, praying that while his lord is now in treaty with the Polish ambassador for those men ....
they may not be transplanted : It is ordered, etc Dublin, 12
February, 1655." A-4, p. 426.
§ A-32, p. 112. I A-84, p. 342.
•ft The tune with which the departing Highlanders usually bid farewell to their native shores. Preface to Sir Walter Scott's "Legend of Mon- trose."
**Sir W. Petty's "Political Anatomy" (published A. D. 1672), p. 27. " The chiefest and eminentest of the nobility and many of the gentry have taken conditions from the King of Spain, and have transported 40,000 of the most active spirited men, most acquainted with the dangers and dis cipline of war." P. 20. " The Great Case of Transplantation in Ireland discussed" [by Vincent Gookin]. Small 4to. London : 1655.
OF IRELAND. 79
IRELAND ASSIGNED TO THE ADVENTURERS AND SOLDIERS.
These discussions occupied the whole of the year 1652; but caused in point of fact no loss of time, for the war was still raging, and there could be no planting.
Towards the close of the year 1653, the island seemed suf ficiently 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.
The next made ample provision for the adventurers. The amount due to the adventurers was £360,000. This they di vided 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, West- meath, 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, to begin at 8 o'clock in the morning, when lots should be first drawn in which province each adventurer was to be satisfied, not exceeding the specified amounts in any province ; lots were to be drawn, secondly, to ascertain in which of the ten counties each adventurer was to receive his land — the lots not to exceed
* " Whereas Mr. Thomas Kicks is by the Church of Christ meeting1 at Chichester House approved as one fully qualified to preach and dispense the gospel .... he is appointed to preach the gospel at Still. >rgan, and other places in the barony of Rathdown, in the county of Dublin, as often as the Lord shall enable 'him, and in such places as tne Lord shall make his ministry most effectual. Dated 12th September, 1659. THOMAS HER BERT, Clerk of the Council." " Book of Establishments," p. lai.
80 THE CKOMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
in Westmeath £70,000, in Tipperary £60,000, in Meath £55,000, in King's and Queen's Counties £40,000 each, in Lim erick £30,000, in Waterford £20,000, in Antrim, Down, and Armagh £15,000 each. And, as it was thought it would be a great encouragement to the adventurers (who were for the most part merchants and tradesmen), about to plant in so wild and dangerous a country, not yet subdued, to have soldier planters near them, these ten counties, when surveyed (which was di rected to be done immediately, and returned to the committee for the lottery at Grocers' Hall), were to be divided, each county, by baronies, into two moieties, as equally as might be, without dividing any barony. 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.*
* " For the satisfaction of the Adventurers for Lands in Ireland, out of the arrears due to the Souldiery here, and of other Publique Debts." Sco- bell's " Acts and Ordinances," chap, xii.
OF IRELAND. 81
PART II.
THE TRANSPLANTATION.
THE FIRST TRUMPET.
WHEN the Irish forces laid down arms in 1650, they could scarce have anticipated the measures adopted towards them, two years later, by the Parliament of England. Many of the Irish gentry embarked, in the years 1650 and 1651, for Spain. Those who stayed behind had families, that prevented them from following their example ; they returned to their former neighbourhoods, took up their abode in the offices attached to their mansions, or shared the dwellings of some of their late tenants, — their mansions being occupied by some English offi cer or soldier, — and employed themselves in tilling the lands they had lately owned as lords. Let us conceive the dismay of a poor nobleman, with his wife and daughters, thus employed on the evening of the first market day, after the llth October, 1652, when some neighbour came to announce the news pro claimed by beat of drum and sound of trumpet in the adjoin ing town.* It was, in fact, the proscription of the nation. If he had been a colonel or a superior officer in the army, as al-
* " The Parliament of the Commonwealth of England having by one Act lately passed (entitled an Act for the Settling of Ireland) declared that it is not their intention to extirpate this whole nation, but that mercy and par don for life and estate be extended to all husbandmen, plowmen, labour ers, artificers, and others of the inferior sort, in such manner as in and by the said Act is set forth ; for the better execution of the said Act, and that timely notice may be given to all persons therein concerned, it is ordered that the Governor and Commissioners of Revenue or any two or more of them, within every preijinct in this nation, do cause the said Act of Parliament with this present declaration to be published and proclaimed in their re spective precincts by beat of drumme and sound of trumpett, on some mar- kett day, within tenn day's after the same shall come unto them within their respective precincts.
" Dated at the Castle of Kilkenny, this llth October, 1652.
" EDMUND LUDLOW, MILKS CORBET,
" JOHN JONES, R. WEAVER."
A-82, p. 867.
4*
82 THE CKOMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
most all the highest were, it was a sentence of confiscation and banishment; and a separation from his now beggared wife and daughters, the partners of his miseries, unless he had the means of bringing them abroad with him.
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. The rest of the nation were to lose their lands, and take up their residence wherever the Parliament of England should order.* On 26th September, 1653, all the ancient estates and farms of the people of Ireland were declared to belong to the adventurers and the army of England ; and it was announced that the Parliament had assigned Connaught (America was not then accessible), for the habitation of the Irish nation, whither they must trans plant with their wives, and daughters, and children, before the 1st of May following (1654), under penalty of death, if found on this side of the Shannon after that day.
It might, perhaps, be imagined that this fearful sentence was a penalty upon the supposed bloodthirstiness of the Irish. But for blood, death, not banishment was the punishment ; and the class most likely to be guilty of blood, — the ploughmen, labourers, and others of the lower order of poor people, — were excepted from transplantation. The nobility and gentry of ancient descent, proprietors of landed estates, were incapable of murder or massacre ; but it was they that were particularly required to transplant. Their properties were wanted for the new English planters. There is an anecdote told by an Englishman of the order of the Friars Minors, who must have dwelt, disguised probably (a not uncommon incident) as a soldier or servant, in the household of Colonel Ingoldsby, Governor of Limerick, that explains the reason why the com mon people were to be allowed to stay, and the gentry re quired to transplant. He heard the question asked of a great Protestant statesman (" magnus hereticus consiliarius"), who gave three reasons for it : — First, he said, the^ are useful to the English as earth-tillers and herdsmen ; secondly, deprived of their priests and gentry, and living among the English, it is hoped they will become Protestants ; and, thirdly, the gentry without their aid must work for themselves and their families,
* Act for the Settling of Ireland, passed 12th August, 1652. Scobell'a *' Acts and Ordinances."
OF IRELAND. 83
or, if they don't, must die, and if they do, will in time turn into common peasants.*
The truth is, that, having engaged to take 2,500,000 acres from the gentry of Ireland, the Parliament feared they might seek to recover their own again, unless they went through with the business, and swept the nation beyond the Shannon.
The Parliament made one exception. Those Irish who could show by active proof that they had borne a constant good affection to the Parliament of England during the ten years' contest, were to be exempt from transplantation. To render it more difficult, however, the claim was barred if it was shown the claimant had dwelt on an estate in the Irish quarters, or that the rents were remitted to him though dwell ing in the English quarters. The exception, too, of husband men, ploughmen, and others of the lower ranks, did not save them for the use of the English, as was intended ; for all sword- men were to transplant, and in this term were included all who had attended muster, though compelled by their landlords, and any who kept watch and ward, which comprised almost every one. For their share in the war, or not proving a constant good affection to the Parliament of England, the proprietors of lands were to suffer a loss of the greater part of their estates, and to receive an equivalent for the residue in Connaught for the support of themselves and their families.
THE SECOND AND LAST TRUMPET, WITH THE DOOM OF THE IRISH NATION.
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.f To further secure the imprisonment
* " Threnodia Hiherno-Catholica, sive Planctus universalis totius Cleri et Populi Kegni Hiberniae," etc. ["The Wail of the Irish Catholics; or Groans of the whole Clergy and People of the Kingdom of Ireland, in which is truly set forth an Epitome of the unheard of and transcendental Cruelty by winch the Catholics of the Kingdom of Ireland are oppressed under tha
Urns of of the witness of
. _._. dedicated to
his worthy patron, Don Guidobald, Archbishop of Salzburg, and to the dean and canons there, t yih March, 1634-5. Order. Passes over the Shannon betweea
84 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
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 cost and Shannon, was reserved by the Act of 27th September, 1653, from being set out to the Irish, and was to be given to the soldiery to plant. Thither all the Irish were to remove at latest by the first day of May, 1654, except Irishwomen married to English Protestants before the 2d December, 1650, provided they became Protestants; ex cept also boys under fourteen, and girls under twelve, in Prot estant 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. 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 sen tence of a court of military officers, if found after that date on the English side of the Shannon.*
Connaught was at this time the most wasted province in the kingdom. Sir Charles Coote the younger, disregarding the truce or cessation made by order of the king with the Irish in 1644, had continued to ravage it, like another Attila, with fire and sword. t The order was for the flight of the Irish nation thither in winter-time, their nobles, their gentry, and their commons, with their wives and little children, their young maidens and old men, their cattle, and their household goods.
The officers of the army were themselves struck with the difficulties of executing the orders of the Parliament of Eng land. The gentry and farmers were then engaged in getting in the harvest they had been encouraged to plant on account of the scarcity. The whole nation, panic-struck at having to
Jamestown and Sligo to be closed, so as to make one entire line between Connaught and the adjacent parts of Leinster and Ulster. A--S5.
* "The further Instructions confirmed by this Act." Act for the Satis faction of the Adventurers for Lands in Ireland and Arrears due to the Souldiery there. 26 September, 1653. Scobell's " Acts and Ordinances," Anno 1653, chap. xii.
t P. 58, vol. 1st, " Alithinologia; sive Veridica Responsio, etc. [in Eng lish] A true Answer to the Attack of R. F. [Richard Farrel], Capuchin, full of Lies, Fallacies, and Calumnies against a large body of the Clergy, Nobility, and Irish of every rank, presented to the Propaganda in the year 1659. By Eudoxius Alithinologus [John Lynch, Priest, Archdeacon of Tuam]." PriutH. at St. Malos, 1064. * v0U. 4to.
OF IRELAXD. 85
travel during the winter to Connaught, and to abandon the lands they were still in occupation of, were deprived of all motive to go on with their tillage. The country must next year be a waste, for the soldiers could not be put in possession in time to sow. Then there was the possibility that the Irish generally might decline to remove, and incur all penalties, and prefer death itself to transplanting under such difficulties.
The officers communicated their thoughts to the commis sioners for the Government of Ireland, who communicated them to the Council of State in England.
The Commissioners for Ireland, to use their own expressions, were overwhelmed with a sense of their difficulties, and of their own unworthiness and weakness for so great a service. They felt they had neither wisdom nor strength for such mat ters ; and that they might truly say, " The children are now come to the birth, and much is desired and expected, but there is no strength to bring forth."
They therefore fasted, and enjoined the same thing on all Christian friends in Ireland, and invited the commanders and officers of the army to join them in lifting up prayers with strong crying and tears to Him to whom nothing is too hard, that His servants, whom He had called forth in this day to act in these great transactions, might be made faithful, and carried on by His own outstretched arm against all opposition and difficulty, to do what was pleasing in His sight.*
Meantime they proceeded, as in duty bound, to carry out the law. They issued their orders, dated the loth October, 1653, for the better carrying on the great work. Fathers and heads of families were to proceed before 30th January, 1054, to Loughrea, to commissioners appointed to set them out lands competent to the stock possessed by them and by the tenants and friends who were to transplant with them. They were there to build huts against the arrival of their wives and families, who were to follow before the first of May. The commis sioners were to be guided by a statement, or Particular, which each proprietor, before leaving home, was to present to the revenue officer of the precinct for his certificate. It set forth the abode, names, ages, stature, colour of the hair, and other
* Letter, dated 9th November, 1653, from the Commissioners for Ire land "to the commanders of the respective precincts, to be communicated to the rest of our Christian friends there." A-yO, p. 555.
8fi THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
marks of distinction, of the transplanter and his family, and ol ail his tenants and friends who were to accompany him into Connaught, together with the number of their cattle, quantity and quality of tillage, and other substance.* From the gray- haired sire to the blue-eyed daughter of four years old, the family portraiture is given in these transplanters' certificates. Sometimes there is a long list of tenants and friends, and sheep and cattle, accompanying the chief proprietor of the district into exile, like the pictures of the descent of the Israelites into Egypt. In others, a landlord, who perhaps had rendered him self distasteful to his tenants, has none to accompany him ; for tenants were not required to adhere to their landlord ; they might sit down in Connaught as tenants under the state. Occasionally in these certificates is described a gen tleman, like Sir Nicholas Comyn, of Limerick precinct, " numb at one side of his body of a dead palsy, accompanied only by his Lady, Catherine Comyn, aged thirty-five years, flaxen-haired, middle stature ; and one maid servant, Honor ny McNamara, aged twenty years, brown hair, middle stature ; having no substance, but expecting the benefit of his qualifica tion." Or orphans ; as, " Ignatius Stacpoole, of Limerick, orphant, aged eleven years, flaxen haire, full face, low stature ; Katherine Stacpoole, orphant, sister to the said Ignatius, aged eight years, flaxen haire, full face ; having no substance to re lieve themselves, but desireth the benefit of his claim before the Commissioners of the Revenue."!
James, Lord Dunboyne, in the county of Tipperary, describes himself as likely to be accompanied by twenty-one followers, and as having four cows, ten garrans, and two swine.}; Dame Katherine Morris, of Lathragh, in the same county : thirty-five followers, one and a half acre of summer corne, ten cows, six teen garrans, nineteen goats, two swine. Lady Mary Hamer- ton, of Roscrea : forty-five persons, three and a half acres of summer corn, forty cows, thirty garrans, forty-six sheepe, two goats.§ Pierce, Lord Viscount Ikerrin : seventeen persons,
* From a printed copy (original), preserved in the muniment room, Kilkenny Castle.
t Pp. 12, 13, Book of Transplanters' Certificates, in the Kecord Tower, Dublin Castle.
\ Ib. Among the records of the late Auditor-General's Office in the custody of W. H. Hardirige, Esq., Custom House Buildings.
§ Ib., ib.
OF IKELAND. 8*1
i
sixteen acres of winter corne, four cows, five garrans, twenty- four sheep, two swine. For each acre of winter corn, three acres of land were to be assigned, summer corn and fallow be ing included ; for each cow or bullock (of two years old and upwards), three acres; for each yearling, one acre ; for each gar- ran, nag, or mare (of three years old and upwards), four acres ; for every three sheep, one acre *, and for goats and swine pro- portionably.* These assignments were only conditional ; for at a future day other commissioners were to arrive and sit at Athlone, to determine the claims, i. e. the extent of lands the transplanter had left behind him. and to distinguish the quali fications, i. e. the extent of disaffection to the Parliament, by which the proportion to be confiscated was to be regulated, and an equivalent, called a Final Settlement was to be given in Connaught. These first assignments were technically called Assignments de Bene Esse.
REMONSTRANCES OF THE IRISH.
And now there went forth petitions from every quarter of the kingdom, praying that the petitioners' flight might not be in the winter-time ; or alleging that their wives or children were sick, their cattle unfit to drive, — that they had crops to get in. Some were still collecting men for transport to Spain. Others had claims to exemption under articles of war. All sought a dispensation.
The petitioners were the noble and the wealthy, men of an cient English blood, descendants of the invaders — the Fitz- geralds, the Butlers, the Plunkets, the Barnwalls, Dillons, Cheevers, Cusacks, names found appended to various schemes for extirpating or transplanting the Irish after the subduing of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald's rebellion in 1535, — who were now to transplant as Irish. The native Irish were too poor to pay scriveners and messengers to the Council, and their sorrows were unheard, though under their rough coats beat hearts that felt pangs as great at being driven from their native homes as the highest in the land. The first dispensations were limited within the 1st of May, the Commissioners for the Affairs of Ireland not being empowered to dispense from com pliance with the Act of Parliament. But they represented to
* A-90, p. 629.
88 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
•
the Council of State in London that all tillage would cease un less people were encouraged to put in a crop with the pros pect of reaping it. Powers were according!}7 given to them to grant dispensations for the wives and children and neces sary servants of those who should crop their land, who were to be permitted, in case the father or head of the family should have complied with the orders of the state, and have removed into Connaught, to stay behind with not more than one or two servants to watch the corn in the ground, and to attend to the threshing and " inning" of it.* But from the 1st of May, 1654, their estates would be either taken possession of by the soldiers, or let by the state to other tenants, to whom they must pay for the standing of their crop from that date till re moved, an eighth or a fifth sheaf, according to the custom of the country.
The estate now called Woodlands, the seat of Lord An- naly, adjoining the Phrenix Park, Dublin, formerly known as Luttrelstown, was the seat of the Luttrels, from the days of King John until sold, about seventy years ago, by Luttrel, Lord Carhampton, to the ancestor of Lord Annaly.
Thomas Luttrel, the owner, though strongly attached to the English interest, as appeared by his getting a decree at Athlone, in 1658, of good, though not constant good, affection, f was obliged, as an Irish Papist, to make way, when Lord Or- mond handed over Dublin and the sword of state, in 1647, to the Parliament, for Lord Broghill, who was afterwards suc ceeded as tenant to the state by Colonel Hewson, Governor
* " Commissioners for Ireland to Colonel Foulk, Governor of Tredagh, and the Commissioners of Revenue there.
•"GENTLEMEN, — The Commissioners of the Commonwealth of England for the Affairs of Ireland have read your letter of the 25th instant, declar ing that several persons removing from your parts into Connaught desire some time to stay for their wives, children, and stock, for the better enabling them to travel, and that it is your judgment that by their short stay the contribution will be the better secured. They have commanded me to signify that you may suspend the transplantation of such wives and children (whose husbands and parents are to go into Connaught) for such time as you shall judge fit, not exceeding the 1st July next, and may per mit the stay of their cattle until they be in a condition to drive, allowing but one servant to look alter the respective herds or flocks, and such servants to be neither proprietors nor such as have been in arms against the Commonwealth.
" THOS. HERBERT, Clerk of the Council. " Cork House, tfth, April, 1654." A-90, p. 668. t A-22, p. 149.
OF IRELAND. 89
of Dublin. In 1652, Luttrel got permission to occupy the stables and till the land.*
On the 30th of September, 1654, he was dispensed from being transplanted until the 1st of December following, in " regard his whole livelihood and his family's depended on improving the crop of corn that was then in taking off the ground."f On the 15th of March, 1655, upon his inability, through his weakness by sickness, to travel into Connaught, he was further dispensed till the 1st June.J Before this time, however, he had departed, leaving his wife behind ; for on the 18th of May she was dispensed until the 1st of June following,, on her representation that her husband was already trans planted, and that she had a great charge of children and stock which were not yet in a condition to drive.§
But often the owners were transplanted, and got liberty to return to reap their crop, or to send back their servants. Thus, John Talbot, ancestor of Lord Talbot de Malahide, had to yield his castle to Chief Baron Corbet, and transplant, and in April, 1655, got a pass for safe travelling from Connaught to the county of Dublin to dispose of his corn and other goods, giving security to return within the time limited. ||
Considerable difficulties arose about these allowances be tween the families of the transplanted left behind to watch the crop, and the soldiers. On the 1st of May, 1654, the first considerable disbanding took place ; and from the moment any district was assigned to the soldiers, they became uncontrolled masters of it. Thus, the officers and soldiers whose lots had fallen in the district called the Rower, in the county of Kil kenny, were declared entitled to have an allowance for the standing of the corn on the lands fallen to them for their arrears, from the 1st of May last (1654) till December follow ing, according to the custom of the country, not exceeding a fifth sheaf ;^f and the transplanted inhabitants of the county of Waterford, finding that their wives and children were inter rupted in the securing of their crops, petitioned the govern ment from Connaught for protection.** The government thereupon ordered that the Commissioners of Revenue of the precinct where the respective crops of corn were should per-
* A-82, p. 515 ; ib., p. 534. t A-4, p. 17. \ A-6, p. 134.
§ Ib., p. 217. | Ib., p. 173. H A-4, p. 6.
** Ib.; p. 50.
90 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
mit the wives, and such servants of theirs as were permitted to stay, to receive the benefit of their crop, having discharged the contribution due thereout, and allowing the new proprie tors an eighth sheaf, or such proportion as is usually made in those parts, according to the custom of the country. But the cruelest act of these rough soldiers was that they and the state tenants entered, and proceeded without mercy to turn out the wives and children of these transplanted proprietors and their servants engaged in watching their last crop, with out giving them even a cabin to shelter in, or allowing them grass for their cows on lands so lately their own.* The ancient owners became, in fact, strict tenants at will to the state from the time that the Parliament declared the forfeited lands to belong to the soldiers and adventurers, though, as would appear from Sir John Burke's complaint, they had been promised, or understood they were entitled to, a six months' notice to quit.f
In the case of Thomas Luttrel, of Luttrelstown, in the county of Dublin, we have a proprietor reduced, with his
* " To the Commissioners of the Revenue of the respective precincts.
"Dublin, 26 May, 1654.
" GENTLEMEN, — Whereas we have been informed that several persons that have taken leases of lands from the Commonwealth belonging to Irish inhabitants that are to be transplanted into Connaught from the 1st of May, instant, and upon orders of possession for the same, have entered by virtue of their said leases, and turned out the former Irish possessors and their servants, without allowing them any cabbins or other habitacons for such necessary servants as they leave behind them for looking after their corn in the ground, and inning and thrashing of the same, contrary to the provisions made in the order for transplantation, we therefore here by order that you take care that in cases where the said Irish are denied such liberty as abovesaid, you cause convenience of room to be allowed for servants dwelling and thrashing the said corn now in the ground, with grazing on the said lands fit for euch sort of cattle as will be needful for carrying in the corn in harvest.
" We remain your loving friends,
CHAS. FLEETWOOD, MILES CORBET, JOHN JONES."
A-90, p. 702.
t " Upon consideration had of the agreement made by the Commission ers of Revenue with the petitioner, Sir John Bourke, and others in like condition with him, that he should, upon six months' notice, remove out of the possession of the lands in the petition mentioned, and the peti tioner having been required to remove into Connaught upon the general declaration for transplanting, the Council! do not think fit to do anything in his case, but do expect that the petitioner should conform himself to former orders for removing into Connaught.
" 16th Oct., 1654. " Tuos. HERBERT, Clerk of the Council."
A-4, p. 67.
OF IRELAND. 91
family, to occupy the stables while taking the last crop, and thence transplanted to Connaught.
APPLICATIONS FOR DISPENSATIONS FROM TRANSPLAN TATION.
The applications for dispensations were innumerable, and the Commissioners were overwhelmed with them.
Margaret Barnwall had long been troubled with a shaking palsy.* Mary Archer had an aged father, who would be sud denly brought to his grave wanting his accustomed accommo- dation.f Lady Margaret Atkinson was of great age, and no one to support her but her son, Sir George Atkinson, a Protes tant.;); Lady Culme prayed not to be deprived of her servant.§ Elinor Butler, widow, had a charge of helpless children. || Dowager Lady Lowth was of great age and impotency.^j" John, Lord Baron Power, of Curraghmore, had for twenty years past been distracted, and destitute of all judgment.** Piers Creagh, of Limerick, was hated by his countrymen for his
* A-6, p. 266.
t A-12, p. 65.
I " Upon consideration of the petition of Sir G. Atkinson on the behalf of his mother, the Lady Margaret Atkinson, desiring that his said mother might be dispensed with from transplantation, and remain in the province of Ulster ; and consideration being had of the report of Colonel Markham, Captain Shaw, and Thomas Richardson, Esq., unto whom it was referred, who have certified that in regard of the said Lady's great age, as also that she hath no friend to support her save only her said son, a Protestant, and for that it appears by Sir Charles Coote's certificate that she hath always lived inoffensively in said quarters, they are of opinion she should not be removed into Connaught or Clare without special direction ; and that she may in the mean time continue to reside with her said son. It is therefore ordered .that she be dispensed with from transplantation until 1st May, and that she be permitted to enjoy that proportion of her estate according to her qualification.
" T. HERBERT, Clerk of the Council.
" Dublin, BQtk October, 1654." A-4, p. 116.
§ A-12, p. 214. '"£
| " Upon the consideration of the petition of Ellinor Butler, widow, and the order of the Commissioners of the Revenue of Waterford, and the report of Colonel Lawrence, etc., etc., and it being his opinion that the petitioner's own person and her helpless children should be dispensed with as to her present transplantation ; and that she be permitted to bring back her cattle from Connaught towards the maintenance of herself and children; We, 'the said Deputy and Council, agree, etc., that she be per mitted to bring back her said cattle without "molestation, etc. Dublin^ IMh October, 1654." A-4, p. 64.
Tf A-4,. p. 211. ** Ib.~p. 366.
92 THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT
former known inclination to the English Government.* Robert Plunket had given information against several prisoners now in the Marshalsea, who are of great alliance to the Irish, and his safety would be risked in Connaughtf (a common state ment). Lord Viscount Ikerrin had great weakness and infirm ity of body.J; Dominic Bodkin, Nicholas oge French, and Richard Kerroan (Kirwan), inhabitants of Galway, pleaded their singular good services, whereby they had prejudiced their private interests, and contracted malice from those of