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

Richard II.’s army, augmented as it was by the forces of the colony, was the largest seen in Ireland during the middle ages, and has hardly been exceeded in modern times. William III. had about 36,000 at the Boyne. Nothing was performed worthy of so great a host or of the King’s presence. One division of the royal army was defeated with great loss by the O’Connors of Offaly, and another by the O’Carrolls. Richard saw that his troops were unfit for war in bogs and mountains, and could not but confess that the natives had many just causes of complaint. He adopted a conciliatory policy, and induced O’Neill, O’Connor, MacMurrough, and O’Brien, as representatives of the four royal Irish races, to do homage and to receive the honour of knighthood at his hands. These four, and a great number of other chiefs, bound themselves to the King by indenture; but no money was actually paid, and for all practical purposes Caligula’s shells were quite as good a badge of conquest. The German princes had a right to say that Richard was not fit for empire, since he had been unable to subdue his rebellious subjects of Ireland. He remained nine months in the island, and left the government to Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, heir-presumptive to the Crown, and claiming to be Earl of Ulster in right of his mother, the only child of Lionel, Duke of Clarence.

The Irish grow continually stronger. Richard’s second visit, 1399

Besides the earldom of Ulster, Mortimer claimed enormous estates all over Ireland, but possession had been completely divorced from feudal ownership. He attacked the Wicklow clans, but was defeated with loss. In 1398 he made a final attempt to recover some portion of his Leinster inheritance, but was defeated and slain in Carlow by the O’Tooles, O’Nolans, and Kavanaghs. In the following year Richard again visited Ireland in person. His army was nearly as large as on the first occasion, and vast quantities of stores had been collected. The Crown jewels were carried with the King, as was a yet more precious flask of oil which had been transmitted straight from heaven to Archbishop Becket while praying at the shrine of Columba. But neither arms, nor gems, nor even the sacred chrism had any effect upon Art MacMurrough. The King again landed at Waterford, and after a few days’ rest moved forward to meet the redoubtable Irishman, who was posted in a wood with 3,000 men. An open space having been secured by burning houses and villages, Richard knighted young Henry of Lancaster, the future victor of Agincourt, and ordered a large number of labourers to fell the wood which sheltered the enemy. Aided by the ground, MacMurrough held the royal army in check for eleven days. The communications were cut, and the men at arms had nothing but green oats for their horses. It was early in July; but the weather was wet, and the whole army suffered from exposure and hunger. A convoy which arrived at Waterford rather added to the disaster. ‘Soldiers,’ says a contemporary chronicler, ‘rushed into the sea as if it were straw.’ Casks were broached, and more than 1,000 at a time were seen drunk with the Spanish wine. Abandoning the hope of attacking the Kavanaghs in their fastnesses, Richard made his way to Dublin, the Earl of Gloucester having failed to treat with MacMurrough.

Richard’s failure

The Leinster chieftain had married an Anglo-Norman heiress, and through her claimed the barony of Narragh in Kildare. He demanded to be put in full possession of his wife’s lands, and to be left unmolested to enjoy his chiefry. Otherwise he refused to come to any terms with the King. Richard threatened, but his Irish plans were interrupted by the news that Henry of Lancaster had landed in England. He lingered for some weeks in Ireland, and that delay was fatal to him. He reached Milford only to find that he had no longer a party, and thus Art MacMurrough may be said to have crowned the House of Lancaster. The Irish chief continued irreconcilable, and defied the Government until his death in 1417.

Ireland neglected by Henry IV

With a bad title and an insecure throne Henry IV. could not be expected to pay much attention to Ireland. The strength of the colony continued to decline during his reign. He made his second son, Thomas, Viceroy, but a child in his twelfth year was not the sort of governor required. The treasury was empty, and the young prince’s council had soon to announce that he had pawned his plate, and that not another penny could be borrowed. The soldiers had deserted, the household were about to disperse, and the country was so much impoverished that relief could scarcely be hoped for. The settlement was only preserved by paying black mail to the Irish. The towns defended themselves as they best could, and sometimes showed considerable martial enterprise. Thus Waterford was several times attacked by the O’Driscolls, a piratical clan in West Cork, who habitually allied themselves with the Le Poers. In 1413 the citizens assumed the offensive, and armed a ship, in which the mayor and bailiffs with a strong band sailed to Baltimore, where they arrived on Christmas Day. A messenger was sent to say that the Mayor of Waterford had brought a cargo of wine, and admission was thus gained to the chief’s hall. ‘The Mayor,’ we are told, ‘took up to dance O’Driscoll and his son, the prior of the Friary, O’Driscoll’s three brethren, his uncle, and his wife, and having them in their dance, the Mayor commanded every of his men to hold fast the said persons; and so, after singing a carol, came away bringing with them aboard the said ship the said O’Driscoll and his company, saying unto them they should go with him to Waterford to sing their carol and make merry that Christmas; and they being all aboard made sail presently, and arrived at Waterford, St. Stephen’s day at night, where with great joy received they were with lights.’

This exploit seems to have tamed the O’Driscolls for a time, but they invaded Waterford in 1452 and 1461. On the first occasion the citizens had the worst, but on the second they gained the victory, and took the chief with six of his sons.[37 - The quarrels of Waterford with the O’Driscolls are given in the Calendar of Carew MSS., Miscellaneous vol. p. 470. Smith refers to a MS. in Trinity College.]

Henry V. makes Talbot Viceroy

In the first year of his reign Henry V. made the famous Sir John Talbot Viceroy. He was entitled to lands in Westmeath in right of his wife, and the lordship of Wexford had devolved upon his elder brother. He adopted the plan by which Bellingham and Sidney afterwards reconquered the greater part of Ireland. The array of the counties was called out under heavy penalties, and Talbot remained six days in Leix, which he so ravaged as to bring O’More to his senses. The bridge of Athy, which had been of use to none but the assailants of the Pale, was rebuilt and fortified, so that the cattle of loyal people might graze in safety, which they had not done for thirty years. Passes were cut in the woods bordering on the settled districts, and there seemed some hope for the shrunken and shattered colony. But Talbot’s salary of 4,000 marks fell into arrear, and his unpaid soldiers became a worse scourge than the Irish had been. The Viceroy and his brother, the Archbishop of Dublin, were constantly at daggers drawn with the White Earl of Ormonde, and the feud continued nearly till the Earl’s death in 1450. It was, however, due both to Sir John Talbot and to Ormonde, his antagonist, that the Irish were kept at bay. Shakespeare’s hero was the bugbear with which French mothers quieted naughty children, and he was no less feared in Ireland. With the colonists he was not popular, because the Crown refused him the means of paying his debts, and Irish writers stigmatise him as the worst man who had appeared in the world since the time of Herod.

Drain of colonists to the English civil wars

‘France,’ says Sir John Davies, ‘was a fairer mark to shoot at than Ireland, and could better reward the conqueror.’ The latter part of his statement is questionable, but such was the view taken by the kings of England from Henry II. to Henry VII. Thomas Butler, Prior of Kilmainham, who ought to have been engaged in the defence of the Pale, took 1,500 men to help Henry V. at the siege of Rouen in 1418. The contemporary chronicler, Robert Redman, says they did excellent service with very sharp darts and crossbows. Trained in the irregular warfare of Ireland, they easily outran the Frenchmen, to whom they showed extraordinary animosity, but were less honourably distinguished by their practice of kidnapping children and selling them as slaves to the English. James, Earl of Ormonde and Wiltshire, also raised troops in Ireland for foreign service, and it is probable that many other contingents were furnished of which no record has been preserved. These forces consisted of Anglo-Irish, or at least of Irishmen settled in obedient districts, and their absence from home must have had a constant tendency to weaken the colony.

Richard of York made Lord-Lieutenant for ten years, 1449

In 1449 Richard of York visited Ireland as Viceroy. He accepted the office for ten years, in consideration of 4,000 marks for the first, and 2,000l. for each succeeding year, and of the whole local revenue. Richard was Earl of Ulster, but he preferred conciliation to any attempt at reconquest, and was, consequently, able to command the services of many Irish clans, including Magennis, MacArtane, MacMahon, and O’Reilly. The O’Byrnes were put down with the help of the Northern chiefs, O’Neill himself sent presents to the Duke, and most of the central districts became tributary. The Anglo-Normans of Munster, who had partially degenerated, renewed their allegiance, and it was generally supposed that the task of making Ireland English would at last be accomplished. The Viceroy’s son George, the ‘false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,’ of later years, was born in Dublin, and his sponsors were Ormonde and Desmond. But very soon the fair prospect was clouded. The stipulated salary was not paid. The Irish discovered that Richard had no greater force than his predecessors, and the MacGeohegans, who had submitted, openly defied his power. He left Ireland suddenly in the autumn of 1450, and did not return for nine years.

Richard is popular, and creates a Yorkist party. Ireland almost independent

Richard had not done much to increase the King’s power in Ireland, but he created a Yorkist party there. At the time he was accused of prompting Cade’s rebellion, and Jack himself was said to be a native of Ireland. The fact that both Simnel and Warbeck afterwards found their best support among the Anglo-Irish seems to show that the Kildare and Desmond partisans were already familiar with the notion of a Yorkist pretender. It is very probable that the adherents of the White Rose saw their opportunity in the fact that the Earldom of Ulster belonged to their chief, and Cade must have had an object in calling himself Mortimer. All this is plausible conjecture; but about the significance of Richard’s second viceroyalty there can be no reasonable doubt. In 1459, after Salisbury’s defeat at Blore Heath, the Duke of York was forced to fly, and he took refuge in Ireland, where he seized the government in spite of the Coventry Parliament. The local independence of Ireland was now for the first time seriously attempted. Richard held a Parliament, which acknowledged the English Crown while repudiating the English Legislature and the English Courts of Law. The Duke of York’s person was declared inviolable, and rebellion against him was made high treason. The royal privilege of coining money was also given to him. William Overy, a squire of the Earl of Ormonde, who was already acknowledged as head of the Irish Lancastrians, attempted to arrest the Duke as an attainted traitor and rebel; but he was seized, tried before Richard himself, and hanged, drawn, and quartered. After the victory of his friends at Northampton the Duke returned to England. He took with him a considerable body of Anglo-Irish partisans, and he committed the government to the Earl of Kildare.

The Yorkist faction headed by the Earl of Kildare

Richard of York fell at Sandal Hill, but the popularity which he had gained in Ireland descended to his son. In the bloody battle of Towton the flower of the Anglo-Irish Lancastrians fell, and their leader, the Earl of Ormonde, was taken and beheaded. His house suffered an eclipse from which it was destined to emerge with greater brilliancy than ever, and the rival family of Kildare became for a time supreme in the Pale. The native Irish everywhere advanced, and English law rapidly shrunk within the narrowest limits. A Parliament, held by the Earl of Desmond in 1465, enacted that every Irishman dwelling among the English in Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare, should dress in the English fashion, shave his moustache, take the oath of allegiance within a year, and assume as a surname the name of a town, of a colour, or of a trade. In the Parliament of 1480, held by the Earl of Kildare, all trade between the Pale and the Irish was forbidden by law. The Parliament of Drogheda in 1468 had already passed an Act which declared that the castle of Ballymore Eustace, ‘lying between the counties of Dublin and Kildare, among the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles, Irish enemies,’ should be garrisoned by Englishmen only. The Eustaces, it was explained, had given it in charge to ‘one Lawrence O’Bogan, an Irishman both by father and mother, who by nature would discover the secrets of the English.’ Other Acts to a similar effect might be cited, and it may be said that the main object of Edward IV.’s government in Ireland was to separate the two races more completely.

George, Duke of Clarence, twice Viceroy

Execution of Thomas, Earl of Desmond, 1467

George, Duke of Clarence, was Viceroy from 1461 to 1470, and again from 1472 till his mysterious death in 1478. Though born in Dublin, he never visited Ireland as a man, and the government was administered by a succession of Deputies. The fate of one of these Deputies, Thomas, eighth Earl of Desmond, deserves particular mention. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, whose beautiful Latinity had moved Pope Æneas Sylvius to tears, was entrusted with the government in 1467, and he assembled a Parliament in which Desmond and Kildare were attainted. Kildare escaped to England, and procured a reversal of the attainder, but Desmond was enticed to Drogheda, and there beheaded. The ostensible cause for this severity is declared by an unpublished statute to have been ‘alliance, fosterage, and alterage with the King’s Irish enemies, and furnishing them with horses, harness, and arms, and supporting them against the King’s loyal subjects.’ The Anglo-Irish tradition attributes it to the vengeance of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, whose marriage Desmond had opposed. According to Russell, he told Edward that Sir John Grey’s widow was too mean a match for him, that he needed allies sorely, and that he had better cast her off and link himself with some powerful prince. By this account the Queen stole the royal signet, and transmitted a secret order for the Earl’s death to Ireland. Three years later Worcester was taken and beheaded during the short Lancastrian restoration; and this quite disposes of Russell’s statement that King Edward ‘struck his head from his neck to make satisfaction to the angry ghost of Desmond.’ What is historically important in Desmond’s execution is that it gave his successors an excuse for not attending Parliaments or entering walled towns. Their claim to legal exemption was not indeed allowed, but it may have had considerable effect on their conduct.[38 - Besides those in the Statute Book many Irish Acts of Edward IV.’s reign may be studied in Hardiman’s Statute of Kilkenny.]

Under Edward IV. and Richard III. the House of Kildare is all-powerful. The Butlers overshadowed

After the death of Clarence, Edward made his sons, George and Richard, Viceroys, and Richard III. conferred the same office on his infant son Edward. The government was carried on by Deputies, and during the last twenty years of the Yorkist dynasty almost all real power centred in the House of Kildare. It was the seventh Earl who established the brotherhood of St. George for the defence of the Pale. The thirteen members of this fraternity were chosen from among the principal landowners of the four obedient shires, thus excluding the Butlers, who formed a small Pale of their own about Kilkenny. The brothers of St. George had rather more than 200 soldiers under them, who were paid out of the royal revenue; and that constituted the entire standing army. The cities and towns maintained a precarious existence by themselves. In the charter which Richard III. granted to Galway it was specially declared that the Clanricarde Burkes had no jurisdiction within the town which their ancestors had taken and fortified. An Act passed in 1485 declares that various benefices in the diocese of Dublin were situated among the Irish, that English clerks could not serve the churches because they could not be understood or because they refused to reside, and that it was therefore necessary to collate Irish clerks; and power was given to the Archbishop to do so for two years. The statute of Kilkenny and the Acts subsidiary to it had had their natural effect. The English, in trying to become perfectly English, had shrunk almost to nothing; and the Irish, by being held always at arm’s length, had become more Irish and less civilised than ever.

CHAPTER VII.

THE IRISH PARLIAMENT

The Irish Parliament a close copy

The history of the Irish Parliament in the middle ages corresponds pretty closely with that of England. The idea of the three estates is plainly visible as early as 1204, when John asked an aid from the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, archdeacons, and clergy, the earls, barons, justices, sheriffs, knights, citizens, burgesses, and freeholders of Ireland. The Common Council of the King’s faithful of Ireland is afterwards often mentioned, and in 1228 Henry III. ordered his justiciary to convoke the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls and barons, knights and freeholders, and the bailiffs of every county, and to read Magna Charta to them. 1254 has been fixed as the date at which two knights from each shire were regularly summoned to the English Parliament. In the confusion which followed, the precedent slept for a while, but in Simon de Montfort’s famous Parliament in 1264 burgesses as well as knights had seats. The evidences of regular election in Ireland are scanty at this early period; but legislative enactments and pecuniary aids were more than once made by the whole community of Ireland before the close of Henry III.’s reign. The germs of a Parliamentary constitution were not planted in purely Irish districts; but it is probable that ecclesiastics attended Parliament even from them, and that the natives were thus in some degree represented. In 1254 the King called by name upon the Kings O’Donnell, O’Neill, O’Reilly, and O’Flynn, upon MacCarthy of Desmond, O’Brien of Thomond, O’Phelan of Decies, and fourteen other Celtic chiefs, to help him against the Scots. He confides in their love for him to furnish such help, and promises them thanks; pointedly separating their case from that of his lieges of Ireland.[39 - Stubbs’s Const. Hist., chap. xv.; Lynch’s Feudal Dignities, chaps. iii. and xi.]

Growth of representative institutions

Accepting 1295 as the date at which English Parliamentary representation settled down into something like its modern shape, we find that the great Plantagenet was not unmindful of Ireland. In that same year the justiciary Wogan issued writs to the prelates and nobles, and also to the sheriffs of Dublin, Louth, Kildare, Waterford, Tipperary, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Connaught, and Roscommon, and to the seneschals of the liberties of Meath, Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny, and Ulster. The sheriffs and seneschals were ordered to proceed to the election of two good and discreet knights from each county or liberty, who were to have full power to act for their districts. It does not appear that cities and boroughs were represented on this occasion; but in 1300, Wogan being still justiciary, writs were directed to counties for the election of three or four members, and to cities and boroughs for the election of two or three. The King’s principal object was to get money for his Scotch war; and, with this view, Wogan visited Drogheda and other places and extorted benevolence before the Parliament met. A certain supremacy was not denied to the English Parliament, for in 1290 a vast number of petitions were made to the King in Parliament at Westminster. Among the petitioners was the Viceroy, John Sandford, Archbishop of Dublin, who begged the King to consider the state of Ireland, of which he had already advised him through Geoffrey de Joinville, a former Viceroy, who was sitting in Parliament with others of the King’s Council in Ireland. Edward I. answered that he was very busy, but that he had the matter much at heart, and that he would attend to it as soon as he could.[40 - Sweetman’s Calendar of Documents, 1289; Lynch, supra.]

Parliament of 1295

Of the Parliament of 1295 a particular record has fortunately been preserved. Each sheriff was ordered to make his election in the full county court, and each seneschal in the full court of the liberty, and they were to attend Parliament in their proper persons – to verify the returns no doubt. The personal attendance of the sheriffs was required in England until 1406. The magnates who were summoned to Wogan’s Parliament behaved as we might expect to find them behave. The Bishops of the South and East came. The Archbishop of Armagh and his suffragans sent proctors with excuses for non-attendance. The Archbishop of Tuam and his suffragans neither came nor apologised. The absence of Hugo de Lacy, one of those elected by the county of Limerick, is particularly noted, whence we may infer that the other shires and liberties were duly represented. Richard, Earl of Ulster, was present. This Parliament principally occupied itself with making regulations as to the treatment of the Irish, and in devising means for checking their inroads upon the colonised districts. The descendants of the first conquerors were already beginning to adopt Celtic customs.[41 - The record is printed from the Black Book of Christ Church, in the Miscellany of the Irish Archæological Society.]

Parliaments of Edward II. and Edward III

Under Edward II. Parliaments were frequent; and writs are extant which show that he, as well as Edward III., intended them to be held annually. Cases occur of bishops, priors, and temporal peers being fined for non-attendance in this reign, and there is good reason to believe that those who were summoned to Parliament generally came. In 1311 writs for a Parliament to be held at Kilkenny were issued by the justiciary Wogan to Richard, Earl of Ulster, and eighty-seven other men of name, to the prelates and ecclesiastical magnates, and to the sheriffs. The sheriffs were ordered to summon two knights from every county, and two citizens or burgesses from every city or borough, who were to have full power to act for their several communities in conjunction with the magnates, lay and clerical. Owing probably to the shape which Bruce’s invasion gave to the English colony, the Parliaments of Edward III. are more strictly confined to the districts where the King had real as well as nominal authority. The murder of the last Earl of Ulster in 1333, and the conversion of the De Burghs into Irishmen, almost completed the work of destruction which Bruce had only just failed to effect. To the Parliament of 1360, the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel, the Bishops of Meath, Kildare, Lismore, Killaloe, Limerick, Emly, Cloyne, and Ferns, and the Abbots of St. Mary’s and St. Thomas’s at Dublin were the only prelates summoned. The Earls of Kildare and Desmond and eight knights were called up by name. Writs for the election of two knights were issued to the sheriffs of the counties of Dublin, Carlow, Louth, Kildare, Waterford, Limerick, and Cork, and of the crosses of Meath, Kilkenny, Wexford, and Tipperary; and to the seneschals of the liberties of Kilkenny, Meath, Tipperary, and Wexford. Writs for the election of citizens and burgesses were no longer directed to the sheriffs, but the mayor and bailiffs of Dublin, Drogheda, Cork, Waterford, and Limerick, the sovereign and bailiffs of Kilkenny and Ross, and the provost and bailiffs of Clonmel and Wexford were ordered to return two members each. The sheriff of Kildare and the seneschal of the liberty of Kilkenny were told what individuals they were expected to see elected. The House of Commons was then supposed to consist of twenty-eight knights and twenty-four citizens and burgesses; but the counties of Dublin and Carlow were ‘justly excused’ on account of the war, and the members for Drogheda, who omitted to come, were summoned before the Council under a penalty of 40l.[42 - Lynch, ut supra.]

Parliament of Kilkenny

The famous Parliament which Lionel, Duke of Clarence, held at Kilkenny in 1367 was probably attended by representatives from a very limited district; for there were but forty members of the House of Commons in March 1374, and of these four came from the county of Dublin. But in November 1374 the number was fifty-four; in 1377 it rose to sixty-two; and in 1380 and 1382 it was fifty-eight. We may, therefore, take the number of county and borough members at the close of the fourteenth century as about sixty. The counties generally represented were Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, Meath, Louth, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Wexford, the liberties of Ulster, Meath, Tipperary, Kerry, and Kilkenny, and the crosses of Ulster, Tipperary, Kilkenny, and Kerry. The cities were Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny, and Limerick, and the towns were Drogheda, Youghal, Ross, Wexford, Galway, and Athenry. Longford was a county in 1377, but was not maintained as shire ground. Many Parliaments met during the fifteenth century, but their action was more and more confined to the district round Dublin, which about the middle of the century came to be called the Pale.[43 - Lynch, ut supra; Lodge’s Register; Hardiman’s Statute of Kilkenny.]

Hereditary peers

1295 will probably be accepted as the date when English barons who had once sat in Parliament claimed an hereditary right to their writs of summons. It would seem that the origin of the Irish peerage, using the word in its modern sense, must be referred to a somewhat later date; for eighty-seven persons, who were perhaps all tenants of the Crown, were summoned by name to the Kilkenny Parliament in 1311. The subject is not of great historical importance, because the period of transition coincides with that in which the encroachments of the natives reduced feudal Ireland to its lowest estate. In the sixteenth century the title of baron was still popularly given to the heads of some families who had formerly been barons by tenure, but who had lost all Parliamentary rights. As in England, the knights of the shire had become the proper representatives of the gentry, and peerage grew to be the special creation of the Crown. In the Parliament of 1560 there were twenty-three temporal peers, and of these eight had been created within the century. It will be safe to assume that the number of temporal peers sitting in the Irish Parliament at any time during the one hundred years preceding Elizabeth’s accession was well under thirty.[44 - The names of those summoned to the Parliament of 1311 are printed by Lynch, chap. ii.; the names of those who attended in 1560 are in Tracts Relating to Ireland, vol. ii., Appendix II.]

Spiritual peers

The number of spiritual greatly exceeded the number of temporal peers. There were four archbishops from the first sending of the palls in 1151. If we take the year 1500, after some unions had been effected and before the great quarrel between King and Pope, we find that there were twenty-six bishops in Ireland. Some of the more distant ones were perhaps never summoned to Parliament, and long before the close of the fifteenth century we cannot doubt that many had ceased to attend the shrunken legislature of the Pale. In 1293 John, Bishop of Clonfert, an Italian and the Pope’s nuncio, was fined for non-attendance; and similar penalties were imposed on Bishops of Ferns, Ossory, Cork, Ardfert, Limerick, Down, and Emly, during the reigns of Edward II., Edward III., and Richard II. There were thirteen mitred Abbots of the Cistercian order, ten mitred Priors of Augustinian canons; and the Grand Prior of Kilmainham, who represented the wealth and importance of the proscribed Templars as well as of the Hospitallers, had always a seat in Parliament. The Prior of Kilmainham was so important a person that upon the suppression of the order of St. John, Henry VIII. made its last chief a peer. The Abbot of St. Mary’s and the Prior of St. Thomas’s were always summoned, but it is clear that in earlier days all the mitred heads of houses were considered real as well as nominal spiritual peers. The Prior of Athassel was fined for non-attendance in 1323, the Abbot of Owney in 1325, and the Abbot of Jerpoint in 1377. Much obscurity hangs over the mediæval House of Lords in Ireland; but it must generally have rested with the Viceroy whether the temporal or spiritual peers should be most numerous in any particular Parliament.[45 - Cotton’s Fasti; Alemand’s Histoire Monastique; Lynch, chaps. iii. and vii.]

The clergy as a separate estate. Proctors

The existence of the clergy as a separate estate in Ireland is less clear than in England; but they had the right of taxing themselves, for in 1538 the Lords Spiritual were thanked by Henry VIII. for granting him an annual twentieth of all their promotions, benefices, and possessions. Proctors of the clergy attended the Lower House, and when Henry VIII. undertook his ecclesiastical innovations, they claimed the right to veto bills. It was, however, easily shown that their consent had not formerly been held necessary; and in 1537 an Act was passed declaring the proctors to be no members of Parliament. The preamble states that two proctors from each diocese had been usually summoned to attend Parliament; but that they had neither voice nor vote, and were only ‘counsellors and assistants upon such things of learning as should happen in controversy to declare their opinions, much like as the Convocation within the realm of England.’ Their pretensions to a veto were formally pronounced baseless, and it was declared once for all that the assent or dissent of the proctors could have no effect on the action of Parliament.[46 - Irish Statutes, 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.]

The Viceroy

The representative of the King in Ireland was generally styled justiciar for a long time after the first invasion. His powers were analogous to that of the great officer of State in England who had the same title, and who acted as regent during the frequent absences of the kings. The title of justiciar continued to be given to the Irish viceroys long after the English justiciarship changed its character – that is, about the close of Henry III.’s reign. The first person who had the title of Lord Lieutenant, if we except the early case of John de Courcy, appears to have been Lionel, Earl of Ulster and Duke of Clarence, who was sent to Ireland in 1361. Afterwards it became a common practice to make one of the royal family Lord Lieutenant, the duties being usually performed by a deputy. But the title of Lord Lieutenant, though considered higher than any other, was not confined to princes. In time the title of Deputy was given to Governors of Ireland, even when no Lord Lieutenant intervened between them and the King. Richard of York was the last Lord Lieutenant of royal blood who actually ruled at Dublin. After his time the real government was in the hands of the Earls of Kildare, who were Lords Deputy, with but brief intervals, from 1478 to 1526. During that period the title of Lord Lieutenant, but the title only, was enjoyed by Edward, Prince of Wales, by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, by Jasper, Duke of Bedford, and by Henry VIII. before his accession to the Crown. In the meantime, the word justiciar, or Lord Justice, had come to mean a temporary substitute for the Deputy or Lieutenant. When a sovereign died, or when a viceroy suddenly left Ireland, it became the business of the Council to elect some one in his room. When giving leave to a governor to leave his post, the sovereign sometimes named the Lord Justice. Lord Capel, who was appointed in 1695, was the last chief governor who had the title of Deputy. Since the Revolution, the head of the Irish Government has always been a Lord Lieutenant, and during his absence one, or two, or three Lords Justices have been appointed by the Irish Privy Council.[47 - See the list of chief governors in Harris’s Ware; Borlase’s Reduction of Ireland; Lodge’s Patentee Officers; and Gilbert’s Viceroys.]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE REIGN OF HENRY VII

Accession of Henry VII., 1485

Ireland was destined to give the victor of Bosworth much trouble, but his accession made little immediate difference to the Anglo-Irish community. Kildare continued to act as Chief Governor, and on the nomination of Jasper, Duke of Bedford, to the Lord Lieutenancy, he was formally appointed Deputy under him. His brother Thomas was allowed to retain the Great Seal. While thus leaving the administration of the island to the Yorkist Geraldines, Henry lost no time in restoring the rival House, which had suffered in defence of the Red Rose. Sir Thomas Butler was by Act of Parliament at once restored in blood, became seventh Earl of Ormonde, and was taken into high favour. The practical leadership of the Irish Butlers was, however, never held by him, and the disputes concerning it had no doubt great effect in consolidating Kildare’s power.

The Ormonde family. Sir Piers Butler

John, sixth Earl of Ormonde, who never lived in Ireland, appointed as his deputy his cousin, Sir Edmund Butler. Earl John dying in Palestine, his brother Thomas succeeded him, and continued Sir Edmund in the custody of the Irish estates. Sir Edmund by will granted to his son Piers the same power as he had himself held, but it does not appear that this curious bequest was acknowledged either by the Earl of Ormonde or by the people of Kilkenny and Tipperary. Sir James Ormonde, as he is called, a bastard son of the fifth Earl, became the real chief of the Butlers, and is often called Earl by Irish writers; the rules of legitimate descent being then very lightly regarded in Ireland. Sir James received a regular commission from Thomas, Earl of Ormonde, as his deputy, supervisor, ‘and general and special attorney’ in Kilkenny. Strong in the confidence of the rightful Earl and in the estimation of the people, Sir James became Kildare’s chief opponent; who to weaken him espoused the cause of Sir Piers, to whom he gave his daughter Lady Margaret in marriage. ‘By that means and policy,’ says the ‘Book of Howth,’ ‘the Earl of Wormond (i. e. Sir James) was so occupied in his own country that he could not attend to do any damage to the Earl of Kildare nor any of his friends.’ And the chronicler Stanihurst, a Geraldine partisan, would have us believe that the successful career of Sir Piers was wholly due to the ‘singular wisdom’ of his wife. An eminent modern antiquary tells us that her fame still lives among the peasantry of Kilkenny, while the Red Earl is forgotten; that she is remembered as Magheen, or little Margaret, and that she is the traditional castle-builder of the district.[48 - History of St. Canice, by Graves and Prim, especially pp. 187 and 193; also Mr. Graves’s Presentments, p. 79; Archdall’s Lodge’s Peerage, art. ‘Mount Garrett.’]

Kildare suspected of plots. Lambert Simnel