Ireland under the Tudors, with a Succinct Account of the Earlier History. Vol. 1 (of 3)

The Bruces were descended from Strongbow and from Dermod MacMurrough, and Robert’s wife was descended from Roderic O’Connor. The true principles of hereditary succession were not fully accepted, and they might pretend some right to interfere in Ireland. They had been invited by the De Lacies of Meath, who for want of male heirs saw their territory divided between De Verdon and De Mortimer. In the first flush of his victorious advance from the south, Roger Mortimer called the De Lacies before him. They refused to appear, and were proclaimed traitors, but continued to adhere to Edward Bruce’s fortunes. The invader, after his brother’s departure, remained for more than a year at Carrickfergus, in hopes of being able to take the offensive again, and still retaining the title of King, which he had assumed after his first successes. He had been so often victorious in battle that he despised the colonists, and, against the advice of his Irish allies, resolved to fight once more without waiting for reinforcements from Scotland. John de Bermingham, at the head of an army which greatly outnumbered the Scots, forced an engagement between Faughard and Dundalk, and Bruce and most of his officers were killed. The remnant of his army, with Walter and Hugo de Lacy, managed to escape to Scotland. The sovereignty of the English Crown in Ireland was never again seriously disputed; but the feudal organisation was shattered by Bruce’s invasion, which did nothing to compose the differences already existing among the colonists. John de Bermingham received a grant of Louth with the title of earl, but his great services were soon forgotten, and eleven years after the battle of Dundalk he was murdered by the English of his own earldom.

Horrible cruelties of the Bruces

English and Irish are agreed as to the cruelty and ferocity of the Bruces. Clyn the Franciscan records, in terse and vigorous Latin, that ‘Robert Bruce, who bore himself as King of the Scots, crossed Ireland from Ulster, where he landed, almost to Limerick, burning, killing, plundering, and spoiling towns, castles, and even churches, both going and returning.’ Clyn was an English partisan, but the same cannot be said of the Lough Cé annalists, who record that ‘Edward Bruce, the destroyer of all Erin in general, both foreigners and Gaels, was slain by the foreigners of Erin, through the power of battle and bravery at Dundalk; and MacRory, King of the Hebrides, and MacDonnell, King of Argyll, together with the men of Scotland, were slain there along with him; and no better deed for the men of all Erin was performed since the beginning of the world, since the Formorian race was expelled from Erin, than this deed; for theft, and famine, and destruction of men occurred throughout Erin during his time for the space of three years and a half; and people used to eat one another, without doubt, throughout Erin.’

The Irish fail to give the Bruces effectual support

There can, however, be no doubt that Edward Bruce came to Ireland on the invitation of the Irish. Donnell O’Neill, claiming to be the true heir to the chief kingship, and the other chiefs, in the famous remonstrance which they addressed to John XXII., informed that Pope that they felt helpless for want of a leader, but were determined no longer to submit like women to Anglo-Norman oppression, and that they had therefore invited over ‘the brother of the most illustrious Lord Robert, by the grace of God King of the Scots, and a descendant of the most noble of their own ancestors,’ and that they had by letters patent constituted him king and lord. The blood of Roderic O’Connor and of Eva evidently went for something, but the chiefs also believed that Edward Bruce was ‘a person of piety and prudence, of a chaste and modest disposition, of great sobriety, and altogether orderly and unassuming in his demeanour.’ Scottish historians are not entirely of the same opinion. It is indeed probable that Bruce had no other idea than to carve out a kingdom with his sword, like a genuine Norman as he was. He had the memory of Earl Richard, of Fitz-Stephen, and of De Courcy to guide him; and if a more modern instance was required, there could be none better than that of his brother Robert.

CHAPTER V.

FROM THE INVASION OF THE BRUCES TO THE YEAR 1346

The Irish never united. The O’Connors are almost destroyed by the De Burgos

The Irish invited Bruce, but they made no regular or general effort in his favour. Their total incapacity for anything like national organisation had forbidden the idea of a native sovereign, and perhaps the majority of them thought one Norman baron no better than another. The year 1316, in which Bruce landed, witnessed the almost total destruction of the O’Connors, the tribe which had last held the chief kingship. Their relationship with the De Burgos, Berminghams, and other Anglo-Normans may be traced in great detail in the annalists. Felim O’Connor, whom the Connaught historiographers call undisputed heir presumptive to the sovereignty of Erin, formed one of those great confederacies which occur so frequently in Irish history, and which so seldom had any results. The O’Kellys, MacDermods, O’Maddens, O’Dowds, O’Haras, O’Kearneys, O’Farrells, MacMahons, and many others were represented; and the Anglo-Normans, who also mustered in great force, were commanded by the Red Earl’s brother, Sir William de Burgo, and by Richard Bermingham, fourth baron of Athenry, at the gate of which town the decisive struggle took place. The Irish were defeated with the loss of something like 10,000 men. Felim O’Connor fell, and his tribe never recovered its position in Connaught. In late times we have O’Connor Don and O’Connor Roe in Roscommon, O’Connor Sligo, O’Connor Kerry near the mouth of the Shannon, and O’Connor Faly in what is now the King’s County, but the De Burgos became supreme in Connaught.

The Irish recover ground under Edward II. and his successors

In other parts of Ireland the Celts were more successful. In 1317 or 1318 the O’Carrolls gained a victory over Sir Edmund Butler, but Clyn places his loss at about two hundred only. More important was the battle of Disert O’Dea, in which Richard de Clare was defeated and slain. This fight destroyed the pretensions of the De Clares, and the O’Briens remained supreme in Thomond as long as such supremacies lasted anywhere. In Leinster, too, the Irish became more and more troublesome, and Clyn unwillingly records successes of the O’Nolans and O’Tooles over the Poers and other settlers. The dissensions of the colonists were yet more fatal than the prowess of the natives. Eva’s descendants were for ever fighting among themselves, and it was the Red Earl’s jealousy of Sir Edmund Butler which prevented a united effort from being made against Bruce. ‘After having violently expelled us,’ wrote the Irish to John XXII., ‘from our spacious habitations and patrimonial inheritances, they have compelled us to repair, in the hope of saving our lives, to mountains and woods, to bogs and barren wastes, and to the caves of the rocks, where, like the beasts, we have long been fain to dwell.’ The close of Edward II.’s reign saw them everywhere ready to descend from their hills, and to emerge from their woods. For nearly two hundred years the history of Ireland is in the main a history of Celtic gains at the expense of Anglo-Normans and Englishmen; if, indeed, anarchy can rightly be accounted gain to any race or community of men.

The last Earl of Ulster is murdered, 1333. The De Burgos and other Anglo-Normans assume Irish names and habits

In 1326 the Red Earl of Ulster retired into the monastery of Athassel, where he died soon afterwards. His great power descended to his grandson William, who was murdered at or near Carrickfergus in 1333 by the Mandevilles and other Ulster colonists. By his wife, Maud Plantagenet, great-grand-daughter of Henry III., he left one child, Elizabeth, who was only a few months old at the date of his murder. Twenty years afterwards she married Lionel Duke of Clarence, and became ancestress of the Tudors and Stuarts. The Earldom of Ulster thus ultimately merged in the Crown. But the Irish De Burgos refused to acknowledge a baby, who, as a royal ward, would be brought up independently of them; and they preferred to follow the sons of Sir William, the Red Earl’s brother. William the elder assumed the title of MacWilliam Uachtar, or the Upper, took all Galway for his portion, and became ancestor of the Clanricarde family. His brother, Sir Edmund, as MacWilliam Iochtar, or the Lower, took Mayo, and founded the family which bears that title. They threw off their allegiance to England, and became more Irish than the Irish. They reappear in the sixteenth century under the modern name of Burke. About the same time several other Anglo-Normans assumed Irish names. The Stauntons became MacAveelys; the Berminghams MacFeoris; the D’Exeters, MacJordans; the Barretts, MacAndrews, MacThomins, MacRoberts, and MacPaddins; the Nangles, MacCostelloes; the Mayo Prendergasts, MacMaurices. The De Burgos themselves had many subordinate branches, each with its peculiar Irish name, as MacDavid, MacPhilbin, MacShoneen, MacGibbon, MacWalter, and MacRaymond. Nor was the practice confined to Connaught. Some of the Leinster Fitzgeralds became MacThomases and MacBarons; and some of the same house in Munster were transfigured into MacGibbons, MacThomaisins, and MacEdmonds. Many other Anglo-Normans or English families were more or less completely transformed in the same way. It is only necessary to mention that the Wesleys or Wellesleys, who gave England its greatest captain, were sometimes called MacFabrenes; and that the Bissetts of Antrim, whose connections in Scotland gave the Tudors such trouble, may still be traced as Makeons. In the district near Dublin, which got the name of the English Pale, some Irish residents took English names, and the practice was encouraged by a statute of Edward IV. There is probably no country in Europe where the population is so thoroughly mixed as it is in Ireland.

Edward III. creates three great earldoms: Kildare, Desmond, and Ormonde

As the Earls of Ulster disappear, other families attain prominence, and the earlier Tudor history is mainly occupied with the struggles of three earldoms, created in the first half of the fourteenth century. The name Geraldine, to which Giraldus Cambrensis gave a more extended signification, was in later times confined to the descendants of Maurice Fitzgerald, one of Nesta’s many sons. One branch was firmly settled in Kildare before the death of Henry II., and in the reign of Edward I. the head of it was John Fitz-Thomas, whose dissensions with William de Vesci, Lord of Kildare, ended in an appeal to the King, and a challenge to the trial by combat. Fitz-Thomas was the challenger, and on his adversary failing to appear, he received a royal grant of De Vesci’s lands. In 1316 Edward II. created him Earl of Kildare, and the Duke of Leinster is descended from him. During most of the fifteenth century, and for the first third of the sixteenth, this was on the whole the most powerful family in Ireland. The Earls of Kildare commanded the whole strength of that county, and its proximity to Dublin often enabled them to control the government. Meath was too much divided for its proprietors to act as a counterpoise, and the strength of the rival house of Ormonde lay at a distance from the capital, and was exposed to attacks from another branch of the Geraldines, whose chief was created Earl of Desmond in 1329. The Desmonds first rose at the expense of the MacCarthies in Kerry. A marriage with the heiress of Fitz-Anthony brought them the western half of the county Waterford and other large estates. This lady’s son married the heiress of the Cogans, and her great property in Cork was added to the rest. The Desmonds never became quite so completely Hibernicised as the De Burgos; but they attained something very like independence, and more than once proved too strong for the government. The third great earldom was founded in the person of Edmund Butler, who was created Earl of Carrick in 1315; the better known title of Ormonde being conferred on his son James in 1328. The founder of the family was Theobald Fitz-Walter, who accompanied Henry II. to Ireland, and was by him made hereditary butler with a grant of the prisage of wines. The name of office was adopted by his descendants, who derived great advantage from the grant. Ormonde is properly the northern part of Tipperary, but the earls became palatine lords of nearly all the county, and owners of vast estates in Kilkenny and Wexford. Their principal castles were Kilkenny, Gowran, Carrick-on-Suir, and Arklow. The possession of the latter place gave them ready access to England, and through all turns of weal and woe they ever remained faithful to the Crown. If regard be had to the length of time that it retained eminence, or to the average ability of its chiefs, or to its comparative civilisation in rude times, the House of Ormonde must be accounted the most distinguished of the Anglo-Norman families of Ireland.

Towns in Ireland: Dublin and Drogheda

The native Irish had no regular towns. The Anglo-Normans took possession of those founded by the Ostmen, which were all on the coast, and founded many others, of which only three or four, and those not the most important, were at a distance from navigable rivers. Athassel in Tipperary is sometimes called a town, but it never became a municipality, and can have been little more than an aggregation of poor houses about the great monastery, and there may have been other similar cases. Dublin obtained its first charter from Henry II. in 1171 or 1172, and Drogheda from Henry III. in 1229.

‘Dublin and Drogheda,’ says the historian of the Irish capital, ‘were neither distinctly English nor Irish. Their citizens, as tax-contributing and acknowledged subjects of England, relied on her for protection against oppressive Anglo-Norman nobles and hostile natives. The Irish – unless Anglicised – had no legal part in these communities, but continuous mutual intercourse was sustained by the advantages derived from traffic.’ ‘In our documents,’ adds the same writer, ‘Scandinavians or Ostmans but rarely appear, although in 1215 the latter people were of sufficient importance to have been associated with the English of Dublin by King John as parties to an inquiry held there by his justiciary. The proportion of the various national elements cannot be absolutely determined by the forms of names;’ for many names originated in personal peculiarities, many were translated from one language to another, and many Irishmen became denizens, and adopted an English patronymic. The ‘Irish town’ which exists outside the old bounds of Dublin, Limerick, Kilkenny, Clonmel, and other places, doubtless perpetuates the memory of a time when the natives congregated in the neighbourhood of civic communities to which they did not belong.[35 - The quotations are from Gilbert’s Historic and Municipal Documents of Ireland, pp. xxviii. and xxx.]

Other towns: Limerick, Waterford, and Cork the chief

What has been said of Dublin and Drogheda applies to the other cities and towns of Ireland. Limerick received its first charter from John in 1197, Waterford from the same prince in 1206, and Cork from Henry III. in 1242. These were the chief centres of trade and of English law in the south of Ireland. The less important municipalities owed their origin generally to some great noble, the Crown afterwards adopting them and granting fresh privileges. Kilkenny received a charter from the Earl Marshal between 1202 and 1218. New Ross, well situated at the junction of the Nore and Barrow, belonged to the same great man, and excited the jealousy of Waterford at least as early as 1215. Clonmel was included in a grant made by Henry II. to Otho de Grandison. It passed into the hands of the De Burgos, who probably incorporated it, and who received a royal grant to hold a fair there in 1225. Fethard, Callan, Gowran, and other inland towns were of less consequence, but were still distinctly English in origin and character. Youghal and Kinsale were also corporate towns. The latter received a charter from Edward III. in 1333, and the former, which had been long identified with the Desmond family, seems not to have been regularly incorporated till 1462. The Kinsale charter recites that the town was surrounded by Irish enemies and English rebels, and that the burgesses were worn out in repelling the same. The mediæval kings commonly granted the customs and tolls of loyal towns to be expended by the inhabitants in repairing their walls.

Galway

Galway has a history of its own. The O’Connors had a fortified post there before the Anglo-Norman invasion, and it soon attracted the attention of the invaders. In 1232 it was for the first time taken by Richard de Burgo, who lost it once, but recovered it and made it the capital of his province. The building of the walls was begun about the beginning of the reign of Edward I., and murage charters were granted probably by that king, and certainly by Edward III. and Richard II. A charter of incorporation was granted in 1396, but the names of certain chief magistrates, provosts, portreeves, and sovereigns, are preserved from 1274 to 1485, when the first mayor took office. Fourteen English families, afterwards known as the tribes of Galway, engrossed civic power, and from 1485 to 1654 every mayor, with a single doubtful exception, was chosen from among them. When the De Burgos turned Irish and renounced their allegiance, the loyal citizens soon learned to treat them as enemies, and in 1518 the corporation resolved that no inhabitant should receive into his house ‘at Christmas, Easter, nor no feast else, any of the Burkes, MacWilliams, the Kellys, nor no sept else, without licence of the mayor and council, on pain to forfeit 5l. that neither O nor Mac shall strut nor swagger through the streets of Galway.’ Their great enemies were the O’Flaherties of Iar-Connaught, and it is said the prayer ‘from the ferocious O’Flaherties, good Lord, deliver us,’ was once inscribed over the west gate of the town. Athenry, which was built by the Bermingham family, was long and closely connected with Galway. It received a murage charter in 1312.[36 - Hardiman’s History of Galway contains as much as most readers will care to know about that town. The following distich makes it possible to remember the tribes: —Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Deane, Darcy, Lynch, Joyce, Kirwan, Martin, Morris, Skerrett, French.To which Ffont or Faunt must be added]

Anglo-Norman families of importance

Besides the three great earldoms, there were several Anglo-Norman families who continued to have considerable importance in Tudor times. Robert le Poer, or De Poher, received a grant from Henry II., which made his descendants, now generally called Power, supreme in the eastern half of the county Waterford. In the middle ages they were often at war with the citizens of Waterford. Their chief seat was Curraghmore, and they are represented, through a lady, by the Marquis of Waterford. The western half of the same county, which came by marriage to the Desmonds, fell to the descendants of the seventh earl’s second son, known as the Fitzgeralds, of Decies, and seated at Dromana. The Fitzmaurices, descended from Raymond le Gros, occupied that part of north Kerry which is still called Clanmaurice. They became Barons of Lixnaw, and are represented by the Marquis of Lansdowne. The family of the White Knight was descended from Gilbert, eldest son of John More Fitzgerald by his second wife, Honora O’Connor; his half brother by Margery Fitz-Anthony being the first Earl of Desmond. The White Knights were called Macgibbon and Fitzgibbon, and their memory is preserved by the barony of Clangibbon, in the county of Cork. From John, the second of Honora O’Connor’s sons, is descended the Knight of the Valley, or of Glin on the Shannon. Maurice, the third brother, was the first Knight of Kerry. Another branch of the Fitzgeralds, known as hereditary seneschals of Imokilly, were settled in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at Castle Martyr. The Barrys, descendants of Nesta as well as the Geraldines, were settled in that part of the county of Cork called Barrymore; and the Roches were established soon after the first invasion about Castletown-Roche, and Fermoy. Of the families who obtained portions of De Lacy’s great territory, the most important were the Nugents, Barons of Delvin, and the Flemings, Barons of Slane on the Boyne. The Plunkets, who are supposed to be of Danish origin, were in the middle ages settled chiefly in Meath; and there they are still. They became Barons of Killeen, Dunsany, and Louth. The Prestons, Viscounts of Gormanston, and the Barnewalls, Barons of Trimleston, may also be noticed; but all the families of the Pale were overshadowed by the House of Kildare.

The colony steadily declines under Edward III

So far as the English colony in Ireland is concerned, the long reign of Edward III. must be regarded as a period of decay. The murder of the last Earl of Ulster in 1333, and the consequent secession of the De Burghs, hastened the destruction of a fabric which had always hung loosely together. The sons of Hugh Boy O’Neill, who was killed in 1283, established themselves firmly in Eastern Ulster, and undid nearly all the work of De Courcey and his successors. They gave to Antrim the name of Clan-Hugh-Boy, or Clandeboye, as it is now written. Only the Savages maintained themselves in Ardes; and the MacQuillins, a family of Welsh origin, between the Bush and the Bann, in the district afterwards called the Route. The three royal fortresses which bridled Connaught, Athlone, Roscommon, and Randon, all fell into the hands of the Irish. In Leinster also the natives rapidly gained ground. Lysaght O’More formed a confederacy of nearly all the midland tribes, and expelled the settlers from the district between the Barrow and the Shannon. His career was short, but his work was lasting. ‘In 1342,’ says Clyn, ‘he was killed when drunk by his own servant. He was a rich and powerful man, and honoured among his own people. He expelled nearly all the English from his lands, and burned eight of their castles in one evening. He destroyed Roger Mortimer’s noble fortress of Dunamase, and usurped the lordship of his own country. He was a servant, he became a lord; he was a subject, he became a prince.’ Bunratty Castle in Clare was dismantled by the O’Briens and Macnamaras, and a branch of the former established themselves in Tipperary. Of William Carragh O’Brien, of Aherlow, one of the chiefs of this sept, Clyn gives a very unflattering account. ‘He was,’ he declares, ‘a bad and perverse man who lived ill and died ill, passing all his time in waylayings, thefts, spoils, and murders.’

Dissension rife among the colonists

The constant quarrels of the colonists, and the corruption of their officials, laid them open to the attacks of the natives, and the state of Ireland attracted so much attention that the Parliament held at Westminster in 1331 advised the King to cross the Channel himself. Edward III. never had much time to attend to Ireland, but he seems to have been aware that he had duties in the matter. In 1338 he decreed that none but Englishmen born should fill legal offices; but this did not mend matters, and the administration of justice continued to be as corrupt as ever. The new comers married in Ireland, and were as ready to job for their children as if they had been descended from the first colonists. In 1341 the King ordered that Englishmen with estates in England should be preferred, but the supply of such men was necessarily limited. The main cause of the corruption prevalent was no doubt the poverty of the Crown. Officials were ill paid, or not paid at all, and they supported themselves by embezzling funds or by selling justice. An unjust proposal to increase the revenue by resuming royal grants naturally aggravated every evil, and the English by blood were arrayed against the English by birth. Sir John Morris, the deputy who was ordered to carry out the new policy, summoned a Parliament to meet at Dublin in October, 1341. But Maurice Fitz-Thomas, first Earl of Desmond, persuaded a large section of the nobility to ignore the writs, to attend a rival assembly at Kilkenny, and to draw up a remonstrance addressed to the King. The malcontents wished to be informed how a governor without military skill could rule a land where war never ceased, how an official could become quickly rich, and how it came about that the King was never the richer for Ireland? Edward abandoned the intention of resuming the grants, but subsequent events show that he did not really forgive Desmond.

D’Ufford’s futile attempts to recover the Earldom of Ulster

Ralph d’Ufford had married Maud Plantagenet, widow of the murdered Earl of Ulster, and in 1344 he was sent over as Viceroy with very large powers. One of his objects was to resume possession of Ulster for the benefit of his step-daughter, the royal ward; but he totally failed in obtaining rent out of the lands, or in ousting those who had seized them. After chastising the Irish in the neighbourhood of Dublin, d’Ufford resolved to invade Ulster with a regular army. The MacArtanes attacked him at the Moyrie Pass, and he narrowly escaped annihilation. Having cut his way through with the help of the settlers in Louth and Monaghan, he made his way into the northern province, but no permanent results followed. Desmond and others having refused to attend his Parliament, the Viceroy went to Kerry, took Castle Island, and hanged its principal defenders. He imprisoned the Earl of Kildare and seized his estates, and then took action upon a bond executed in 1333, by which twenty-six of the chief men of the colony became bound for Desmond’s good behaviour. Many of the sureties had aided the Viceroy, but he, nevertheless, seized their lands. The Earl of Ormonde and two more were the only exceptions. The ruin caused by this policy was out of all proportion to the good, and in the history of the English in Ireland no one has a worse name than Sir Ralph d’Ufford, except perhaps his high-born wife, whose resentments were supposed to guide him. His hand was as heavy against the Church as against the temporal nobles. The annalist Pembridge, who was a contemporary, declares that he brought bad weather to Ireland, and that it lasted all his time. ‘On Palm Sunday,’ says the same writer, ‘which was on April 9, 1346, Ralph d’Ufford died, whose death was very much lamented by his wife and family; but the loyal subjects of Ireland rejoiced at it, and both the clergy and laity for joy celebrated a solemn feast at Easter. Upon his death the floods ceased, and the air again grew wholesome, and the common people thanked God for it.’

CHAPTER VI.

FROM THE YEAR 1346 TO THE ACCESSION OF HENRY VII

Lionel, Duke of Clarence, is not more successful than D’Ufford

Lionel holds a Parliament at Kilkenny, 1367

The Crown did nothing for Ireland. Torn by intestine quarrels, and denied a just government, the colony grew yearly weaker. Many of the settlers found their position intolerable, and, in spite of severe ordinances, absenteeism constantly increased. In 1361 Edward summoned to Westminster no less than sixty-three non-resident landowners, including the heads of several great abbeys, who derived revenues from Ireland and gave nothing in return. They were ordered to provide an army suitable for the King’s son Lionel, Duke of Clarence and Earl of Ulster by marriage, who proceeded to Ireland as Viceroy. He was accompanied by his wife, but failed, as D’Ufford had done, to obtain any profit from her lordship of Ulster, and was scarcely successful even against the clans near Dublin. The O’Byrnes and O’Tooles cut off many of his English soldiers, and the Duke was obliged to seek aid from the more experienced colonists. Like many governors who have come to Ireland with great pretensions, Lionel found his position most humiliating, and he spent a great part of his time in England. His authority was delegated to deputies, and the feuds between English by blood and English by birth ran higher than ever. In 1367 he returned and summoned a Parliament, whose enactments gave legal sanction to the fact that the King was no longer lord of more than a comparatively small portion of Ireland.

The statute of Kilkenny contains a great many rather heterogeneous rules. What makes it of such great importance is its formal recognition of the existence of an English Pale, and of a hostile Irish people outside it. The word Pale may not have been in use for a century later, but the thing was fully established.

Composition of the Parliament of Kilkenny

The Parliament of Kilkenny did not, however, confine its attention to the narrow limits of the ‘four obedient shires.’ The distinction between English and Irish land was conceded, but it was still hoped that most of the shireland would be preserved to English law. The sheriffs or seneschals of ten counties or liberties, comprising all Leinster, except the modern King’s and Queen’s Counties, as well as Tipperary and Waterford, were required to produce their accounts at Dublin; but those of Connaught, Kerry, Cork, and Limerick were excused on account of distance, and were required only to attend commissioners of the exchequer when they came to their bailiwicks, and to render an account to them. Ulster, the Duchess of Clarence’s patrimony, is not even mentioned by her husband’s Parliament. Of the composition of that assembly we have no record, but it was attended by the Archbishops of Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam, and by the Bishops of Waterford and Lismore, Killaloe, Ossory, Leighlin, and Cloyne. The Archbishops of Cashel and Tuam and the Bishop of Killaloe were Irishmen; the rest were of English race, and some of them born in England.

The Statute of Kilkenny endeavours to separate the two races

The statute begins by reciting that for a long time after the conquest the English in Ireland spoke English, and in general behaved like Englishmen; but that of late years many had fallen away and adopted the Irish language and habits, whereby the King’s authority and the English interest were depressed, and the Irish enemy ‘against reason’ exalted. In order to remedy this marriage, fosterage, gossipred, and even concubinage with the Irish was declared high treason. Supplying horses and armour to Irishmen at any time was visited with like penalties, and so was furnishing them with provisions in time of war. Englishmen and even Irishmen living among the English were to speak English, to bear English names only, and to ride and dress in the English fashion, on pain of forfeiture until they should submit and find security. If they had no lands they might lie in prison till security was forthcoming. Special penalties were provided for offenders who had 100l. a year in land. The English born in Ireland and in England were to be in all respects equal, and were not to call each other English hobbe or Irish dog, on pain of a year’s imprisonment and a fine at the King’s pleasure. War with the Irish was inculcated as a solemn duty, and the practice of buying off invasions was condemned. The end aimed at was that Irish enemies should be finally destroyed, and many minute rules were made for arming the colony properly. The rude Irish game of hurling was discountenanced, and the borderers were enjoined to make themselves fit for constant war by practising such gentlemanlike sports as archery and lance-play. Imprisonment and fine were to follow a neglect of these precepts. Provision was made to prevent the Irish from forestalling the markets by establishing fairs of their own, and from grazing their cattle in the settled districts. Very severe regulations were made against Irish hangers-on – pipers to wit, story-tellers, babblers, and rhymers, all of whom acted habitually as spies. The keeping of kerne and idlemen, armed or unarmed, at the expense of other people, was sternly forbidden, and qualified as open robbery. It became, nevertheless, the greatest and commonest of all abuses. Private war among the English was to be punished as high treason, and so was the common practice of enticing friendly Irishmen to acts of violence.

The Statute of Kilkenny respects the Church, but makes distinctions

The rights and privileges of Holy Church were jealously guarded by the Parliament of Kilkenny. Persons excommunicated for infringing her franchises were to be imprisoned by the civil power until restitution was made. Tithes were specially protected, and the excommunicated were not to be countenanced by King or people. But the distinction between the hostile races was maintained in matters ecclesiastical. No Irishman was to be admitted by provision, collation, or presentation among the English. Such preferments were declared void, and the next presentation was to lapse to the Crown. Religious houses situated among the English were strictly forbidden to receive Irishmen, but Englishmen by birth and by blood were given equal rights. The Irish prelates present probably found no difficulty in accepting these principles, for they might, and did, retaliate by refusing to receive English clerks in Irish districts. The Archbishops and Bishops assembled at Kilkenny lent a special sanction to the statute by agreeing to excommunicate all who broke it, and they declared such offenders duly excommunicated in advance.

Effects of the Statute of Kilkenny

Sir John Davies, with less than his usual accuracy, has declared that ‘the execution of these laws, together with the presence of the King’s son, made a notable alteration in the state and manners of the people within the space of seven years, which was the term of this prince’s lieutenancy.’ Now, the Statute of Kilkenny was not passed till 1367, and Lionel died in 1368. The Act of Henry III., on which Davies chiefly founded his statement, says the land continued in prosperity and honour while the Kilkenny laws were executed, and fell to ruin and desolation upon their falling into abeyance. But the annalists tell a different story, and it is not easy to say what those fat years were. In 1370, only three years after the passing of the much vaunted statute, the Earl of Desmond and others were taken prisoners by the O’Briens and Macnamaras, and the deputy, Sir William de Windsor, was obliged to leave the O’Tooles unchastised in order to hurry to the defence of Munster. Newcastle, within a day’s ride from Dublin, was taken and dismantled. The judges could not get as far as Carlow. In 1377 the O’Farrells gained a great advantage over the English of Meath. The general result of the fighting during the ten years which followed the Parliament of Kilkenny was that the Irish retained possession of at least all which they had previously won. What the statute really did was to separate the two races more completely.

Edward III. weakens the colony by drawing men from it

Edward III. repeated his grandfather’s mistake, and drew away many of the colonists to his Scotch and Continental wars. An Anglo-Irish contingent fought at Halidon Hill, and it was while making preparations for that campaign that the Earl of Ulster lost his life. Ireland was also well represented at Creçy, and many brave men fell victims to disease at Calais. The Viceroys sent over from time to time seem to have been regarded as licensed oppressors, and it is recorded of many that they left Dublin without paying their debts. Sir Thomas Rokeby, who was Deputy in 1349 and 1356, is praised by the contemporary chronicler Pembridge for beating the Irish well, and for paying his way honestly. ‘I will,’ he said, ‘use wooden cups and platters, but give gold and silver for my food and clothes, and for the men in my pay.’ That this golden saying, as Davies calls it, should have been thought worth recording shows what the general practice was. The three great pestilences which ravaged England ran their course in Ireland also. It was to the first of these visitations that the annalist Clyn succumbed. ‘I have,’ he records, ‘well weighed what I have written, as befits a man who dwells among the dead in daily expectation of death; and lest the writer should perish with the writing, and the work with the workman, I leave parchment for a continuation, if by chance any of the race of Adam should escape this plague and resume my unfinished task.’ On the whole, the reign of Edward III. must be regarded as one of the most disastrous in the annals of the English in Ireland.

Richard II. determines to visit Ireland

His first visit, 1394

The reign of Richard II. is mainly remarkable for the King’s two visits to Ireland. But that step was not taken until many others had failed. James Butler, third Earl of Ormonde, was Viceroy when the old King died. He continued in office, and held a Parliament at Castle Dermot, whose deliberations were interrupted by an invasion of Leinster on the western side. The O’Briens were bought off with 100 marks, but there were only nine in the treasury, and the residue was supplied by individuals who gave horses, a bed, or moderate sums of money. Ormonde resigned an office which there was no means of supporting properly, and the Earl of Kildare refused the post. In 1380 Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who claimed Ulster through his wife Philippa, the daughter of Duke Lionel, agreed to accept the burden for three years. He covenanted for 20,000 marks and for absolute control over the revenue of Ireland. The Irish scarcely ventured to oppose him openly; and he recovered Athlone, built a bridge at Coleraine, put down rebels in southern Leinster, and might have extended his power still further had he not died of a chill, caught in fording a river near Cork. Ormonde and Desmond refused to accept the vacant government, and the Irish continued to enlarge their borders. In 1385 Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the King’s favourite and grandson of Ralph d’Ufford and the Countess of Ulster, was appointed Viceroy for life, and created first Marquis of Dublin, and then Duke of Ireland. All the attributes of royalty, such as the right to coin money and issue writs in his own name, were conferred on him, and he undertook to pay the King 5,000 marks a year, which the latter agreed to remit until the conquest of Ireland was complete. De Vere did not visit Ireland; but the government was carried on in his name for some years, during which the colony grew weaker and weaker. Nor did his disgrace make any more difference than his appointment had done. Limerick and Cork could scarcely defend themselves. Waterford was harassed by the Le Poers and their Irish allies. Towns in Kildare were burned, and the English Bishop of Leighlin was unable to approach his diocese. Galway threw off its allegiance, and sought the protection of MacWilliam. In 1391 the Earl of Ormonde was again persuaded to undertake the government with a salary of 3,000 marks; but he could do little more than temporise. Payments to the Irish were frequent, and as they constantly advanced the dispossessed settlers carried the story of their woes to England. Proclamations against absentees were of small effect, and at last the King determined to go himself. He landed at Waterford on October 2, 1394, with 4,000 men at arms and 30,000 archers. As soon as Art MacMurrough, whom the Leinster Irish accepted as their king, heard of Richard’s arrival, he attacked New Ross, ‘burned its houses and castles, and carried away gold, silver, and hostages.’

Richard has but little success