Ireland

GEOGRAPHY

Ireland lies in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Great Britain, from which it is

separated in the north-east by the North Channel, in the east by the Irish Sea,

and in the south-east by St. George's Channel. Situated between the fifty-first

and fifty-sixth degrees of latitude, and between the fifth and eleventh parallels of

longitude (Greenwich), its greatest length is 302 miles, its greatest breadth 174

miles, its area 32,535 square miles. It is divided into four provinces, these being

subdivided into thirty-two counties. In the centre the country is a level plain;

towards the coast there are several detached mountain chains. Its rivers and

bays are numerous, also its bogs; its climate is mild, though unduly moist. In

minerals it is not wealthy like Great Britain, but is soil is generally more fertile,

and is specially suitable for agriculture and pasturage.

EARLY HISTORY

In ancient times it was known by the various names of Ierna, Juverna, Hibernia,

Ogygia, and Inisfail or the Isle of Destiny. It was also called Banba and Erin, and

lastly Scotia, or the country of the Scots. From the eleventh century, however,

the name Scotia was exclusively applied to Caledonia, the latter country having

been peopled in the sixth century by a Scottish colony from Ireland. Henceforth

Ireland was often called Scotia Major and sometimes Ireland, until, after the

eleventh century, the name Scotia was dropped and Ireland alone remained.

Even yet it is sometimes called Erin—chiefly by orators and poets. Situated in

the far west, out of the beaten paths of commercial activity, it was little known to

the ancients. Festus Avienus wrote that it was two days' sail from Britain. Pliny

thought that it was part of Britain and not an island at all; Strabo that it was near

Britain, and that its inhabitants were cannibals; and all that Caesar knew was

that it was west of Britain, and about half its size. Agricola beheld its coastline

from the opposite shores of Caledonia, and had thought of accepting the

invitation of an Irish chief to come and conquer it, believing he could do so with a

single legion. But he left Ireland unvisited and unconquered, and Tacitus could

only record that in soil and climate it resembled Britain, and that its harbours

were then well known to foreign merchants.

But if we have not any detailed description from his lively pen, the native

chroniclers have furnished us with abundant materials, and, if all they say be

true, we can understand the remark of Camden that Ireland was rightly called

Ogygia, or the Ancient Island, because in comparison, the antiquity of all other

nations is in its infancy. Passing by the absurd story that it was peopled before

the Deluge, we are told that, beginning with the time of Abraham, several

successive waves of colonization rolled westward to its shores. First came

Parthalon with 1000 followers; after which came the Nemedians, the Firbolgs,

and the Tuatha-de-Dananns, and lastly the Milesians or Scots. In addition, there

were the Fomorians, a people of uncertain origin, whose chief occupation was

piracy and war, and whose attacks on the various settlers were incessant. These

and the Milesians excepted, the different colonists came from Greece, and all

were of the same race. The Milesians came from Scythia; and from that country

to Egypt, from Egypt to Spain, from Spain to Ireland their adventures are

recorded in detail. The name Scot which they bore was derived from Scota,

daughter of Pharaoh of Egypt, the wife of one of their chiefs; from their chief

Miledh they got the name Milesians, and from another chief Goidel they were

sometimes called Gadelians, or Gaels. The wars and battles of these colonists

are largely fabulous, and the Partholanians, Nemedians, and Fomorians belong

rather to mythology than to history. So also do the Dananns, though sometimes

they are taken as a real people, of superior knowledge and skill, the builders of

those prehistoric sepulchral mounds by the Boyne, at Dowth, Knowth, and

Newgrange. The Firbolgs however most probably existed, and were kindred

perhaps to those warlike Belgae of Gaul whom Caesar encountered in battle.

And the Milesians certainly belong to history, though the date of their arrival in

Ireland is unknown. They were Celts, and probably came from Gaul to Britain,

and from Britain to Ireland, rather than direct from Spain. Under the leadership of

Heremon and Heber they soon became masters of the island. Some of the

Firbolgs, it is said, crossed the seas to the Isles of Arran, where they built the

fort of Dun Engus, which still stands and which tradition still associates with their

name. Heber and Heremon soon quarrelled, and, Heber falling in battle, Heremon

became sole ruler, the first in a long line of kings. This list of kings, however, is

not reliable, and we are warned by Tighearnach, the most trustworthy of Irish

chroniclers, that all events before the reign of Cimbaeth (300 B.C.) are uncertain.

Even after the dawn of the Christian Era fact and fiction are interwoven and events

are often shrouded in shadows and mists. Such, for instance, are the exploits of

Cuchullain and Finn Macumhael. Nor have many of these early kinds been

remarkable, if we except Conn of the Hundred Battles, who lived in the first

century after Christ; Cormac, who lived a century later; Tuathal, who established

the Feis of Tara; Niall, who invaded Britain; and Dathi, who in the fifth century lost

his life at the foot of the Alps.

The Irish were then pagans, but not barbarians. Their roads were indeed

ill-constructed, their wooden dwellings rude, the dress of their lower orders

scanty, their implements of agriculture and war primitive, and so were their land

vehicles, and the boats in which they traversed the sea. On the other hand, some

of their swords and shields showed some skill in metal-working, and their

war-like and commercial voyages to Britain and Gaul argue some proficiency in

shipbuilding and navigation. They certainly loved music; and, besides their

inscribed Ogham writing, they had a knowledge of letters. There was a high-king

of Ireland (ardri), and subject to him were the provincial kings and chiefs of tribes.

Each of these received tribute from his immediate inferior, and even in a sept the

political and legal administration was complete. There was the druid who

explained religion, the brehon who dispensed justice, the brughaid or public

hospitaller, the bard who sang the praises of his chief or urged his kinsman to

battle; and each was an official and had his appointed allotment of land. Kings,

though taken from one family, were elective, the tanist or heir-apparent being

frequently not the nearest relation of him who reigned. This peculiarity, together

with gavelkind by which the lands were periodically redistributed, impeded

industry and settled government. Nor was there any legislative assembly, and the

Brehon law under which Ireland lived was judge-made law. Sometimes the ardri's

tribute remained unpaid and his authority nominal; but if he was a strong man he

exacted obedience and tribute. The Boru tribute levied on the King of Leinster

was excessive and unjust, and led to many evils. The pagan Irish believed in

Druidism, resembling somewhat the Druidism Caesar saw in Gaul; but the pagan

creed of the Irish was indefinite and their gods do not stand out clear. They held

the immortality and the transmigration of souls, worshipped the sun and moon,

and, with an inferior worship, mountains, rivers, and wells. And they sacrificed to

idols, one of which, Crom Cruach, they are said to have propitiated with human

sacrifices. They also believed in fairies, holding that the Tuatha-de-Dananns,

when defeated by the Milesians, retired into the bosom of the mountains, where

they held their fairy revels. One of the women fairies (the banshee) watched the

fortunes of great families, and when some great misfortune was impending, the

doomed family was warned at night by her mournful wail.

EARLY CHRISTIAN PERIOD

Intercourse with Britain and the Continent through commerce and war sufficiently

accounts for the introduction of Christianity before the fifth century. There must

have been then a considerable number of Christians in Ireland; for in 430

Palladius, a bishop and native of Britain, was sent by Pope Celestine "to the

Scots believing in Christ". Palladius, however, did little, and almost immediately

returned to Britain, and in 432 the same pope sent St. Patrick. He is the Apostle

of Ireland, but this does not imply that he found Ireland altogether pagan and left

it altogether Christian. It is however quite true that when St. Patrick did come

paganism was the predominant belief, and that at his death it had been

supplanted as such by Christianity. The extraordinary work which St. Patrick did,

as well as his own attractive personal character, has furnished him with many

biographers; and even in recent years his life and works have engaged erudite

and able pens. But in spite of all that has been written many things in his life are

still doubtful and obscure. It is doubtful when and where he was born, how he

spent his life between his first leaving Ireland and his return, and in what year he

died. It has been maintained that he never existed; that he and Palladius were

the same man; that there were two St. Patricks; again, some, like Jocelin, have

multiplied his miracles beyond belief. These contradictions and exaggerations

have encouraged the scoffer to sneer; and Gibbon was sure that in the sixty-six

lives of St. Patrick there must have been sixty-six thousand lies. In reality there

seems no solid reason for rejecting the traditional account, viz., that St. Patrick

was born at Dumbarton in Scotland about 372; that he was captured and brought

to Ireland by the Irish king, Nial; that he was sold as a slave to an Ulster chief

Milcho, whom he served for six years; that he then escaped and went back to his

own people; that in repeated visions he, a pious Christian, heard the plaintive cry

of the pagan Irish inviting him to come amongst them; that, believing he was

called by God to do so, he went first to the monastery of St. Martin of Tours,

then to that of St. Germanus of Auxerre, after which he went to Lerins and to

Rome; and then, being consecrated bishop, he was sent by Pope Celestine to

Ireland, where he arrived in 432.

From Wicklow, where he landed, his course is traced to Antrim; back by

Downpatrick, near which he converted Dichu and got from him a grant of land for

his first church at Saul; then by Dundalk, where Benignus was converted; and to

Slane, where in sight of Tara itself he lighted the paschal fire. The enraged druids

pointed out to the ardri the heinousness of the offence, for during the great pagan

festival then being celebrated it was death to light any fire except at Tara. But St.

Patrick came to Tara itself, baptized the chief poet, and even the ardri; then

marched north and destroyed at Leitrim the idol, Crom Cruach, after which he

entered Connaught, and remained there for seven years. Passing through

Connaught to Ulster, he went through Donegal, Tyrone, and Antrim, consecrated

Macarten Bishop of Monaghan, and Fiace Bishop of Sletty; after which he

entered Munster. Finally he returned to Ulster, and died at Saul in 493. His early

captivity in Ireland interfered seriously with his education, and in his Confession

and in his Epistle to Caroticus, both of which have survived the wreck of ages, we

can discover no graces of style. But we see his great familiarity with the

Scripture. And the man himself stands revealed; his piety, his spirit of prayer, his

confidence in God, his zeal, his invincible courage. But while putting his entire

trust in God, and giving Him all the glory, he rejected no human aid. Entering into

a pagan territory he first preached to the chief men, knowing that when they were

converted the people would follow. Wonderful indeed was his labour, and

wonderful its results. He preached in almost every district in Ireland, confounded

in argument the druids and won the people from their side; he built, it is said, 365

churches and consecrated an equal number of bishops, established schools and

convents, and held synods; and when he died the whole machinery of a powerful

Church was in operation, fully equal to the task of confirming in the faith those

already converted and of bringing those yet in darkness into the Christian fold.

One of the apostle's first anxieties was to provide a native ministry. For this

purpose he selected the leading men—chiefs, brehons, bards—men likely to

attract the respect of the people, and these, after little training, and often with

little education, he had ordained. Thus equipped the priest went among the

people, with his catechism, missal, and ritual, the bishop in addition his crosier

and bell. In a short time, however, these primitive conditions ceased. Abut 450 a

college was established at Armagh under Benignus; other schools arose at

Kildare, Noendrum, and Louth; and by the end of the fifth century these colleges

sent forth a sufficient supply of trained priests. Supported by a grant of land from

the chief of the clan or sept and by voluntary offerings, bishop and priests lived

together, preached to the people, administered the sacraments, settled their

disputes, sat in their banquet halls. To many ardent natures this state of things

was abhorrent. Fleeing from men, they sought for solitude and silence, by the

banks of a river, in the recesses of a wood, and, with the scantiest allowance of

food, the water for their drink, a few wattles covered with sods for their houses,

they spent their time in mortification and prayer. Literally they were monks, for

they were alone with God. But their retreats were soon invaded by others anxious

to share their penances and their vigils, and to learn wisdom at their feet. Each

newcomer built his little hut, a church was erected, a grant of land obtained, their

master became abbot, and perhaps bishop; and thus arose monastic

establishments the fame of which soon spread throughout Europe. Noted

examples in the sixth century were Clonard, founded by St. Finian, Clonfert by

St. Brendan, Bangor by St. Comgall, Clonmacnoise by St. Kieran, Arran by St.

Enda; and, in the seventh century, Lismore by St. Carthage and Glendalough by

St. Kevin.

There were still bardic schools, as there was still paganism, but in the seventh

century paganism had all but disappeared, and the bardic were overshadowed by

the monastic schools. Frequented by the best of the Irish, and by students from

abroad, these latter diffused knowledge over western Europe, and Ireland received

and merited the title of Island of Saints and Scholars. The holy men who laboured

with St. Patrick and immediately succeeded him were mostly bishops and

founders of churches; those of the sixth century were of the monastic order;

those of the seventh century were mostly anchorites who loved solitude, silence,

continued prayer, and the most rigid austerities. Nor were the women behindhand

in this contest for holiness. St. Brigid is a name still dear to Ireland, and she, as

well as St. Ita, St. Fanchea and others, founded many convents tenanted by

pious women, whose sanctity and sacrifices it would be indeed difficult to

surpass. Nor was the Irish Church, as has been sometimes asserted, out of

communion with the See of Rome. The Roman and Irish tonsures differed, it is

true, and the methods of computing Easter, and it may be that Pelagianism

found some few adherents, though Arianism did not, nor the errors as to the

natures and wills of Christ. In the number of its sacraments, in its veneration for

the Blessed Virgin, in its belief in the Mass and in Purgatory, in its obedience to

the See of Rome, the creed of the early Irish Church was the Catholic creed of

to-day (see CELTIC RITE). Abroad as well as at home Irish Christian zeal was

displayed. In 563 St. Columba, a native of Donegal, accompanied by a few

companions, crossed the sea to Caledonia and founded a monastery on the

desolate island of Iona.

Fresh arrivals came from Ireland; the monastery with Columba as its abbot was

soon a flourishing institution, from which the Dalriadian Scots in the south and

the Piets beyond the Grampians were evangelized; and when Columba died in

597, Christianity had been preached and received in every district in Caledonia,

and in every island along its west coast. In the next century Iona had so

prospered that its abbot, St. Adamnan, wrote in excellent Latin the "Life of St.

Columba", the best biography of which the Middle Ages can boast. From Iona

had gone south the Irish Aidan and his Irish companions to compete with and

even exceed in zeal the Roman missionaries under St. Augustine, and to

evangelize Northumbria, Mercia, and Essex; and if Irish zeal had already been

displayed in Iona, equal zeal was now displayed on the desolate isle of

Lindisfarne. Nor was this all. In 590 St. Columbanus, a student of Bangor,

accompanied by twelve companions, arrived in France and established the

monastery of Luxeuil, the parent of many monasteries, then laboured at Bregenz,

and finally founded the monastery of Bobbio, which as a centre of knowledge and

piety was long the light of northern Italy. And meantime his friend and

fellow-student St. Gall laboured with conspicuous success in Switzerland, St.

Fridolin along the Rhine, St. Fiacre near Meaux, St. Kilian at Wurzburg, St.

Livinus in Brabant, St. Fursey on the Marne, St. Cataldus in southern Italy. And

when Charlemagne reigned (771-814), Irishmen were at his court, "men

incomparably skilled in human learning".

In the civil history of the period only a few facts stand out prominently. About

560, in consequence of a quarrel with the ardri Diarmuid about the right of

sanctuary, St. Columba and Rhodanus (Reudan) of Lorrha publicly cursed Tara,

an unpatriotic act which dealt a fatal blow at the prospect of a strong central

government by blighting with maledictions its acknowledged seat. Nearly thirty

years later the National Convention of Drumceat restrained the insolence and

curtailed the privileges of the bards. In 684 Ireland was invaded by the King of

Northumbria, though no permanent conquest followed. And in 697 the last Feis of

Tara was held, at which, through the influence of Adamnan, women were

interdicted from taking part in actual battle. At the same time the ardri Finactha,

at the instance of St. Moling, renounced for himself and his successors the Boru

tribute. As the eighth century neared its close, religion and learning still

flourished; but unexpected dangers approached and a new enemy came, before

whose assaults monk and monastery and saint and scholar disappeared.

These invaders were the Danes from the coasts of Scandinavia. Pagans and

pirates, they loved plunder and war, and both on land and sea were formidable

foes. Like the fabled Fomorians of earlier times they had a genius for devastation.

Descending from their ships along the coast of western Europe, they murdered

the inhabitants or made them captives and slaves.

In Ireland as elsewhere they attacked the monasteries and churches, desecrated

the altars, carried away the gold and silver vessels, and smoking ruins and

murdered monks attested the fury of their assaults. Armagh and Bangor, Kildare

and Clonmacnoise, Iona and Lindisfarne thus fell before their fury. Favoured by

disunion among the Irish chiefs, they crept inland, effected permanent

settlements at Waterford and Limerick and established a powerful kingdom at

Dublin; and, had their able chief Turgesius lived much longer, they might perhaps

have subdued the whole island. For a century after his death in 845 victory and

defeat alternated in their wars; but they clung tenaciously to their seaport

possessions, and kept the neighbouring Irish in cruel bondage. They were,

however, signally defeated by the Ardri Malachy in 980, and Dublin was

compelled to pay him tribute. But, able as Malachy was, an abler man soon

supplanted him in the supreme position. Step by step Brian Boru had risen from

being chief of Thomond to be undisputed ruler of Munster. Its chiefs were his

tributaries and his allies; the Danes he had repeatedly chastised, and in 1002 he

compelled Malachy to abdicate in his favour.

It was a bitter humiliation for Malachy thus to lay down the sceptre which for 600

years had been in the hands of his family. It gave Ireland, however, the greatest

of her high-kings and unbroken peace for some years. War came when the

elements of discontent coalesced. Brian had irritated Leinster by reviving the

Boru tribute; he had crushed the Danes; and these, with the Danes of the Isle of

Man and those of Sweden and the Scottish Isles, joined together, and on Good

Friday, 1014, the united strength of Danes and Leinstermen faced Brian's army

at Clontarf. The victory gained by the latter was great; but it was dearly bought by

the loss of Brian as well as his son and grandson. The century and a half which

followed was a weary waste of turbulence and war. Brian's usurpation

encouraged others to ignore the claims of descent. O'Loughlin and O'Neill in the

North, O'Brien in the South, and O'Connor beyond the Shannon fought for the

national throne with equal energy and persistence; and as one set of disputants

disappeared, others replaced them, equally determined to prevail. The lesser

chiefs were similarly engaged. This ceaseless strife completed the work begun

by the Danes. Under native and Christian chiefs churches were destroyed,

church lands appropriated by laymen, monastic schools deserted, lay abbots

ruled at Armagh and elsewhere. Bishops were consecrated without sees and

conferred orders for money, there was chaos in church government and

corruption everywhere. In a series of synods beginning with Rathbreasail (1118)

and including Kells, at which the pope's legate presided, many salutary

enactments were passed, and for the first time diocesan episcopacy was

established. Meanwhile, St. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh, had done very

remarkable work in his own diocese and elsewhere. His early death in 1148 was

a heavy blow to the cause of church reform. Nor could so many evils be cured in

a single life, or by the labours of a single man; and in spite of his efforts and the

efforts of others the decrees of synods were often flouted, and the new diocesan

boundaries ignored.

THE ANGLO-NORMANS

In Henry II of England an unexpected reformer appeared. The murderer of Thomas

a' Becket seemed ill-fitted for the role, but he undertook it, and in the first year of

his reign (1154) he procured a Bull from the English-born Pope Adrian IV

authorizing him to proceed to Ireland "to check the torrent of wickedness to

reform evil manners, to sow the seeds of virtue." The many troubles of his

extensive kingdom thwarted his plans for years. But in 1168 Macmurrogh, King of

Leinster, driven from his kingdom sought Henry's aid, and then Adrian's Bull was

remembered. a first contingent of Anglo-Normans came to Ireland in 1169 under

Fitzgerald, a stronger force under Strongbow (de Clare, Earl of Pembroke) in

1170, and in 1171 Henry himself landed at Waterford and proceeded to Dublin,

where he spent the winter, and received the submission of all the Irish chiefs,

except those of Tyrconnell and Tyrowen. These submissions, however,

aggravated rather than lessened existing ills. The Irish chiefs submitted to Henry

as to a powerful ardri, still preserving their privileges and rights under Brehon law.

Henry, on his side, regarded them as vassals holding the lands of their tribes by

military service and in accordance with feudal law. Thus a conflict between the

clan system and feudalism arose. Exercising his supposed rights, Henry divided

the country into so many great fiefs, giving Meath to be Lacy, Leinster to

Strongbow, while de Courcy was encouraged to conquer Ulster, and deCogan

Connaught. At a later date the deBurgos settled in Galway, the Fitzgeralds in

Kildare and Desmond, the Butlers in Ossory. Discord enfeebled the capacity of

the Irish chiefs for resistance; nor were kernes and gallowglasses equal to

mail-clad knights, nor the battle-axe to the Norman lance, and in a short time

large tracts had passed from native to foreign hands.

The new Anglo-Irish lords soon outgrew the position of English subjects, and to

the natives became tyrannical and overbearing. Ignoring the many evidences of

culture in Ireland, her Romanesque architecture, her high crosses, her

illuminated manuscripts, her shrines and crosiers, the scholars that had shed

lustre on her schools, the saints that had hallowed her fame throughout

Europe—ignoring all these, they despised the Irish as rude and barbarous,

despised their language, their laws, their dress, their arms; and, while not

recognizing the Brehon law, they refused Irishmen the status of English subjects

or the protection of English law. At last, despairing of union among their own

chiefs, or of justice from Irish viceroy or English king, the oppressed Irish invited

Edward Bruce from Scotland. In 1315 he landed in Ireland and was crowned king.

Successful at first, his allies beyond the Shannon were almost annihilated in the

battle of Athenry (1316); and two years later he was himself defeated and slain at

Faughart. His ruin had been effected by a combination of the Anglo-Irish lords,

and this still further inflated their pride. Titles rewarded them. Birmingham

became Lord of Athenry and Earl of Louth, Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, his kinsman

Earl of Desmond, de Burgo Earl of Ulster, Butler Earl of Ormond. But these titles

only increased their insolence and disloyalty. Favoured by the weakness of the

viceroy's government the native chiefs recovered most of the ground they had

lost.

Meanwhile the De Burgos in Connaught changed their name to Burke, and

became Irish chiefs; many others followed their example; even the ennobled

Butlers and Fitzgeralds used the Irish language, dress, and customs, and were

as turbulent as the worst of the native chiefs. To recall these colonists to their

allegiance the Statute of Kilkenny made it penal to use Irish customs, language,

or law, forbade intermarriage with the mere Irish, or the conferring of benefices on

the native-born. But the barriers of race could not be maintained, and the

intermarrying of Irish with Anglo-Irish went on. The long war with France, followed

by the Wars of the Roses, diverted the attention of England from Irish affairs; and

the viceroy, feebly supported from England, was too weak to chastise these

powerful lords or put penal laws in force. The hostility of native chiefs was bought

off by the payment of "black rents". The loyal colonists confined to a small

district near Dublin, called "the Pale", shivered behind its encircling rampart; and

when the sixteenth century dawned, English power in Ireland had almost

disappeared. Those within the Pale were impoverished by grasping officials and

by the payment of "black rents". Outside the Pale the country was held by sixty

chiefs of Irish descent and thirty of English descent, each making peace or war

as he pleased. Lawlessness and irreligion were everywhere. The clergy of Irish

quarrelled with those of English descent; the religious houses were corrupt, their

priors and abbots great landholders with seats in Parliament, and more attached

to secular than to religious concerns; the great monastic schools had

disappeared, the greatest of them all, Clonmacnoise, being in ruins; preaching

was neglected except by the mendicant orders, and these were utterly unable to

cope with the disorders which prevailed.

THE TUDOR PERIOD

Occupied with English and Continental affairs, Henry VIII, in the beginning of his

reign, bestowed but little attention on Ireland, and not until he was a quarter of a

century on the throne were Irish affairs taken seriously in hand. The king was

then in middle age, no longer the defender of the Faith against Luther, but, like

Luther, a rebel against Rome; no longer generous or attractive in character, but

rather a cruel capricious tyrant whom it was dangerous to provoke and fatal to

disobey. In England his hands were reddened with the best blood of the land; and

in Ireland the fate of the Fitzgeralds, following the rebellion of Silken Thomas,

struck Irish and Anglo-Irish alike with such terror that all hastened to make

peace. O'Neill, renouncing the inheritance of his ancestors, became Earl of

Tyrone; Burke became Earl of Clanrickard, O'Brien Earl of Thomond, Fitzpatrick

Lord of Ossory; the Earl of Desmond and the other Anglo-Irish nobles were

pardoned all their offences, and at a Parliament in Dublin (1541) Anglo-Irish and

Irish attended. And Henry, who like his predecessors had been hitherto but Lord

of Ireland (Dominus Hiberniae), was now unanimously given the higher title of

king. This Parliament also passed the Act of Supremacy by which Henry was

invested with spiritual jurisdiction, and, in substitution for the pope, proclaimed

head of the Church. As the proctors of the clergy refused to agree to this

measure, the irate monarch deprived them of the right of voting, and in revenge

confiscated church lands and suppressed monasteries, in some cases shed the

blood of their inmates, in the remaining cases sent them forth homeless and

poor. These severities, however, did not win the people from their faith. The

apostate friar Browne, whom Henry made Archbishop of Dublin, the apostate

Staples, Bishop of Meath, and Henry himself, stained with so many adulteries

and murders, had but poor credentials as preachers of reform; whatever

time-serving chiefs might do, the clergy and people were unwilling to make Henry

pope, or to subscribe to the varying tenets of his creed. His successor, an ardent

Protestant, tried hard to make Ireland Protestant, but the sickly plant which he

sowed was uprooted by the Catholic Mary, and at Elizabeth's accession all

Ireland was Catholic.

Like her father Henry, the young queen was a cruel and capricious tyrant, and in

her war with Shane O'Neill, the ablest of the Irish chiefs, she did not scruple to

employ assassins. She was neither a sincere Protestant nor a willing persecutor

of the Catholics; and though she re-enacted the Act of Supremacy and passed

the Act of Uniformity, making Protestantism the state creed, she refused to have

these acts rigorously enforced. But when the pope and the Spanish king

declared against her, and the Irish Catholics were found in alliance with both, she

yielded to her ministers and concluded, with them, that a Catholic was

necessarily a disloyal subject. Henceforth toleration gave way to persecution.

The tortures inflicted on O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, and O'Hely, Bishop of

Mayo, the Spaniards murdered in cold blood at Smerwick, the desolation of

Munster during Desmond's rebellion, showed how cruel her rule could be. Far

more formidable than the rebellion of Desmond, or even than that of Shane

O'Neill, was the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill, Early of Tyrone. No such able Irish

chief had appeared since Brian Boru. Cool, cautious, vigilant, he laid his plans

with care and knew how to wait patiently for results. Never impulsive, never

boastful, wise in council and wary in speech, from his long residence in London

in his youth he learned dissimulation, and was as crafty as the craftiest English

minister. Repeatedly he foiled the queen's diplomatists in council as he did her

generals in the field, and at the Yellow Ford (1598) gained the greatest victory

ever won in Ireland over English arms. What he might have done had he been

loyally supported it is hard to say. For nearly ten years he continued the war; he

continued it after his Spanish allies had brought upon him the disaster of Kinsale;

after his chief assistant, O'Donnell, had been struck down by an assassin's

hand; after Carew had subdued Munster, and Mountjoy had turned Ulster into a

desert; after the Irish chiefs had gone over to the enemy. And when he submitted

it was only on condition of being guaranteed his titles and lands; and by that time

Elizabeth, who hated him so much and so longed for his destruction, had

breathed her last.

UNDER THE STUARTS

James I (1603-25) was the first of the Stuart line, and from the son of Mary Stuart

the Irish Catholics expected much. They were doomed, however, to an early

disappointment. The cities which rejoiced that "Jezabel was dead", and that now

they could practise their religion openly, were warned by Mountjoy that James

was a good Protestant and as such would have no toleration of popery.

Salisbury, who had poisoned the mind of the queen against the Catholics, was

equally successful with her successor, with the result that persecution

continued. Proclamations were issued ordering the clergy to quit the kingdom;

those who remained were hunted down; O'Devany, Bishop of Down, and others

were done to death. The Acts of Supremacy and uniformity were rigorously

enforced. The Act of Oblivion, under which participants in the late rebellion were

pardoned, was often forgotten or ignored. English law, which for the first time was

extended to all Ireland, was used by corrupt officials to oppress rather than to

protect the people. The Earl of Tyrone and the Early of Tyroconnell (Rory

O'Donnell) was so spied upon and worried by false charges of disloyalty that they

fled the country, believing that their lives were in danger; and to all their pleas for

justice the king's response was to slander their characters and confiscate their

lands. It is indeed true that Irish juries found the earls guilty of high treason, and

an Irish Parliament, representing all Ireland, attained them. But these results

were obtained by carefully packing the juries, and by the creation of small

boroughs which sent creatures of the king to represent them in Parliament. And

the Catholic members acquiesced under threat of having enacted a fresh batch of

penal laws. Thus, aided by corrupt juries and a complaisant Parliament, James I

was enabled to plant the confiscated lands of Ulster with English Protestants and

Scotch Presbyterians. Other plantations had fared badly. That of King's and

Queen's County in Mary's reign had decayed; and the plantation of Munster after

the Desmond war had been swept away in the tide of O'Neill's victories. The

plantation of Ulster was more thorough and effective than either of these. Whole

districts were given to the settlers, and these, supported by a Protestant

Government, soon grew into a powerful and prosperous colony, while the

despoiled Catholics, driven from the richer to the poorer lands, looked helplessly

on, hating those colonists for whose sake they had been despoiled.

Under the new king, Charles I (1625-49), the policy of persecution and plantation

was continued. Under pretence of advancing the public interest and increasing

the king's revenue, a crowd of hungry adventurers spread themselves over the

land, inquiring into the title by which lands were held. With venal judges, venal

juries, and sympathetic officials to aid them, good titles were declared bad, and

lands seized, and the adventurers were made sharers in the spoil. The O'Byrnes

were thus deprived of their lands in Wicklow, and similar confiscations and

plantations took place in Wexford, King's County, Leitrim, Westmeath, and

Longford. Hoping to protect themselves against such robbery, the Catholics

offered the king a subsidy of £120,000 in exchange for certain privileges called

"graces", which among other things would give them indefeasible titles to their

estates. These "graces" granted by the king, were to have the sanction of

Parliament to make them good. The money was paid, but the "graces" were

withheld, and the viceroy, Strafford, proceeded to Connaught to confiscate and

plant the whole province. The projected plantation was ultimately abandoned; but

the sense of injustice remained. All over the country were insecurity, anxiety,

unrest, and disaffection; Irish and Anglo-Irish were equally menaced. Seeing the

futility of appealing to a helpless Parliament, a despotic viceroy, or a perfidious

king, the nation took up arms.

To describe the rebellion as the "massacre of 1641" is unjust. The details of cruel

murders committed and horrible tortures inflicted by the rebels are mischievously

untrue. On the other hand, it is true that the Protestants suffered grievous wrong,

and that many of them lost their lives, exclusive of those who fell in war. The

Catholics wanted the planters' lands; when driven away in wintry weather, without

money, or food, or sufficient clothes, many planters perished of hunger and cold.

Others fell by the avenging hand of some infuriated Catholic whom they might

have wronged in the days of their power. Many fell defending their property or the

property and lives of their friends. The plan of the rebel leaders, of whom Roger

Moore was chief, was to capture the garrison towns by a simultaneous attack.

But they failed to capture Dublin Castle, containing large stores of arms, owing to

the imprudence of Colonel MacMahon. He imparted the secret to a disreputable

Irishman named O'Connolly, who at once informed the Castle authorities, with

the result that the Castle defences were strengthened, and MacMahon and

others arrested and subsequently executed. In Ulster, however, the whole open

country and many towns fell into the rebels' hands, and Munster and Connaught

soon joined the rebellion, as did the Catholics of the Pale, unable to obtain any

toleration of their religion, or security of their property, or even of their lives.

Before the new year was far advanced the Catholic Bishops declared the

rebellion just, and the Catholics formed a confederation which, from its meeting

place, was called the "Confederation of Kilkenny". Composed of clergy and laity

its members swore to be loyal to the king, to strive for the free exercise of their

religion, and to defend the lives, liberties, and possessions of all who took the

Confederate oath. Supreme executive authority was vested in a supreme council;

there were provincial councils also, all these bodies deriving their powers from an

elective body called the "General Assembly".

The Supreme Council exercised all the powers of government, administered

justice, raised taxes, formed armies, appointed generals. One of the best-known

of these officers was General Preston, who commanded in Leinster, having come

from abroad with a good supply of arms and ammunition, and with 500 trained

officers. A more remarkable man still was General Owen Roe O'Neill, nephew of

the great Earl of Tyrone, who took command in Ulster, and whose defence of

Arras against the French caused him to be recognized as one of the first soldiers

in Europe. He also, like Preston, brought officers, arms, and ammunition to

Ireland. At a later state came Rinuccini, the pope's nuncio, bringing with him a

supply of money. Meanwhile, civil war raged in England between king and

Parliament; the Government at Dublin, ill supplied from across the Channel, was

ill fitted to crush a powerful rebellion, and, in 1646, O'Neill won the great victory of

Benburb. But the strength of which this victory was the outcome was

counterbalanced by elements of weakness. The Catholics of Ulster and those of

the Pale did not agree; neither did Generals O'Neill and Preston. The Supreme

Council, with a feeble old man, Lord Mountgarret, at its head, and four provincial

generals instead of a commander-in-chief, was ill-suited for the vigorous

prosecution of a war. Moreover, the influence of the Marquis of Ormond was a

fatal cause of discord. A personal friend of the king, and charged by him with the

command of his army and with the conduct of negotiations, a Protestant with

Catholic friends on the Supreme Council, his desire ought to have been to bring

Catholic and Royalist together. But his hatred of the Catholics was such that he

would grant them no terms, even when ordered to do so by His Majesty. The

Catholics' professions of loyalty he despised, and his great diplomatic abilities

were used to sow dissensions in their councils and to thwart their plans. Yet the

Supreme Council, dominated by an Ormondist faction, continued fruitless

negotiations with him, agreed to a cessation when they themselves were strong

and their opponents weak, and agreed to a peace with him in spite of the victory

of Benburb, and in spite of the remonstrances of the nuncio and of General

O'Neill. Nor did they cease these relations with him even after he had

treacherously surrendered Dublin to the Parliament (1647), and left the country.

On the contrary, they still put faith in him, entered into a fresh peace with him in

1648, and when he returned to Ireland as the Royalist viceroy they received him

in state at Kilkenny. In disgust, General O'Neill came to a temporary agreement

with the Parliamentary general, and Rinuccini, despairing of Ireland, returned to

Rome.

The Civil War in England was then over. The Royalists had been vanquished, the

king executed, the monarchy replaced by a commonwealth; and in August,

1649, Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland with 10,000 men. Ormond meanwhile had

rallied his supporters, and, with the greater part of the Catholics of Leinster,

Munster, and Connaught, the Protestants of the Pale and of Munster, and great

part of the Ulster Presbyterians, his strength was considerable. His obstinate

bigotry would not allow him to make terms with the Ulster army, and he thus lost

the support of General O'Neill at a critical time. Early in August he had been

disastrously beaten by the Puritan general Jones, at Rathmines; in consequence

he offered no opposition to Cromwell's landing and made no attempt to relieve

Drogheda. It was soon captured by Cromwell and its garrison put to the sword. A

month later the same fate befell Wexford. Waterford repelled Cromwell's attack,

and Clonmel and Kilkenny offered him a stout resistance; but other towns were

easily captured, or voluntarily surrendered; and when he left Ireland, in May,

1650, Munster and Leinster were in his hands. His successors, Ireton and

Ludlow, within two years reduced the remaining provinces. Meanwhile Owen Roe

O'Neill had died after making terms with Ormond, but before meeting with

Cromwell. The Catholic Bishops, however, repudiated Ormond, who then left

Ireland. Some negotiations subsequently between Lord Clanricarde and the Duke

of Lorraine came to nothing, and the long war was ended in which more than half

the inhabitants of the country had lost their lives.

In the beginning of the rebellion many Englishmen subscribed money to put it

down, stipulating in return for a share of the lands to be forfeited, and thus hatred

of the Catholics was mingled with hope of gain. The English Parliament accepted

the money on the terms proposed, and the subscribers became known as

"adventurers", because they adventured their money on Irish land. When the

rebellion was over, the problem was to provide the lands promised, and also to

provide lands for the soldiers who were in arrears of pay. It was a difficult

problem. There was an Act for Settling Ireland, and and Act for the Satisfaction of

Adventurers in Lands and Arrears due to the soldiers and other public Debts;

there was a High Court of Justice to determine who were guilty of rebellion; there

were soldiers who had got special terms when laying down their arms; and there

were those who had never had a share in the rebellion, but had merely lived in the

rebel quarters during the war. The best of the lands east of the Shannon were for

the adventurers and soldiers, the dispossessed being driven to Connaught. To

determine where the planters were to be settled and where the transplanted, and

what amount they were to get, there were commissions, and committees, and

surveys, and court of claims. Nor was it till 1658 that the Cromwellian Settlement

was complete, and even then many of the transplanted protested their innocence

of any share in the rebellion, and many of the adventurers and soldiers

complained that they had been defrauded of their due. In the amount of suffering

it entailed and wrong inflicted the whole scheme far exceeded the plantation of

Ulster. But it failed to make Ireland either English or Protestant, and in setting up

a system of alien landlords and native tenants it proved the curse of Ireland and

the fruitful parent of many ills.

To the Irish Cromwell's death in 1658 was welcome news, all the more so

because Charles II (1860-85) was restored. For their attachment to the cause of

the latter they had suffered much; and now the Catholic landlord in his

Connaught cabin and the Irish soldier abroad felt equally assured that the

recovery of their lands and homes was at hand. They soon learned that Stuart

gratitude meant little and that Stuart promises were written on sand. Had Charles

been free to act, the Cromwellian Settlement would not have endured; for he

loved the Catholics much more than he loved the Puritans. But the planters were

a dangerous body to provoke, sustained as they were by the English Parliament

and by the king's chief adviser, Ormond, who indeed hated the Cromwellians, but

hated the Catholics much more. Some attempt, however, was made to right the

wrong that had been done, and by the Act of Settlement, six hundred innocent

Catholics were restored to their lands. Many more would have been restored had

the court of claims been allowed to continue its sittings. The irate planters

wanted to know what was to become of them if the despoiled papist thus back

their lands; utterings threats and even breaking out into rebellion they alarmed

the king. Under Ormond's advice the Act of Explanation was then passed (1665)

and the court of claims set up by the Act of Settlement closed its doors, though

three thousand cases remained untried. Thus the Cromwellians who had

murdered the king's father were, with few exceptions, left unmolested while the

Catholics were abandoned to their fate. Before the rebellion two-thirds of the

lands of the country were in the hands of the latter; after the Act of Explanation

scarcely one-third was left them, a sweeping confiscation especially in the case

of men who were denied even the justice of a trial. After this the toleration of the

Catholics was but a small concession. Not, however, during the whole of

Charles's reign; for Ormond, now a duke, filled the office of viceroy for many

years; he at least would maintain Protestant ascendancy, and exclude the

Catholics from the bench and the corporations. In the English Council and in

Parliament he bitterly attacked and defeated the proposed revision of the Act of

Settlement. He does not appear to have had any sympathy with the lying tales of

Oates and Bedloe, or with the storm of persecution which followed, and he

disapproved of the judicial murder of Oliver Plunket. But his aversion from the

Catholics continued, and was in no way chilled by advancing age. One of the last

acts of Charles was to dismiss him from office as an enemy to toleration. The

king himself soon after died in the Catholic Faith, and James II, an avowed

Catholic, succeeded, the first Catholic sovereign since the death of Mary Tudor.

Religious toleration had then made little progress throughout Europe, and

England, aggressively Protestant, looked with special disfavour on Catholicism.

In these circumstances James II should have moved with caution. He should

have taken account of national prejudices and the temper of the times, and

respected established institutions; while conscientiously practising his own

religion, he should have sought for no favour for it, at least until the nation was in

a more tolerant and yielding mood. Instead of this, and in defiance of English

bigotry and English law, he appointed Catholics to high civil and military offices,

opened the corporations and the universities to them, had a papal nuncio at his

court, and issued a declaration of Indulgence suspending the penal laws. When

the Protestant bishops refused to have this declaration read from their pulpits he

prosecuted them. Their acquittal was the signal for revolt, and James, deserted

by all classes, fled to France leaving the English throne to William of Orange,

whom the Protestants invited from Holland. Meanwhile sweeping changes had

been effected in Ireland by the viceroy, the Duke of Tyreconnell, a militant

Catholic and a special favourite of King James. Protestant magistrates, sheriffs,

and judges had been displaced to make room for Catholics; the army and

corporations underwent similar changes; and the Act of Settlement was to be

repealed. Timid Protestants trembling for their lives fled to England; others

formed centres of resistance to the viceroy in Munster and Connaught, and, in

Ulster, Derry and Enniskillen expelled the Catholics and closed their gates

against the viceroy's troops. This was rebellion, for James, though repudiated in

England, was still King of Ireland. In March, 1689, he arrived at Kinsale from

France to subdue these rebels. But the task was beyond his strength. Derry and

Enniskillen defied all his attacks, and a Wiliamite force, issuing from the latter

town, almost annihilated a Jacobite army at Newton-Butler.

Disaffection became general among the Protestants when the Irish Parliament

repealed the Act of Settlement and attained eighteen hundred persons who had

fled to England through fear; and when, in August, a Williamite force of twenty

thousand landed at Carrickfergus, the Protestants everywhere welcomed it. This

great force, however, effected nothing, and in June, 1690, William himself came

and encountered James on the banks of the Boyne. The battle was fought on 1

July, and resulted in the defeat of James. Hastening to Dublin he told the

Duchess of Tyrconnell that the Irish soldiers had shamefully run away, to which

the lady is said to have replied; "But your Majesty won the race." The retort was

just. The Irish cavalry behaved with conspicuous gallantry, as did the greater part

of the infantry. Some of the latter did run away, but not so fast as James himself,

who fled taking the ablest of the Irish generals, Sarsfield, with him. That the Irish

were no cowards was soon shown by their defence of Athlone and the still more

glorious defence of Limerick. After being compelled to raise the siege of the latter

city, King Williams left for England, committing the civil authority to lords justices

and the military command to General Ginkel. In the following year Ginkel

captured Athlone, owing to the carelessness of the Jacobite general, St-Ruth;

and on 12 July, 1691, the last great battle of the war was fought at Aughrim. The

Irish were not inferior to their opponents in numbers, discipline, or valour, and

though overmatched in heavy guns they had the advantage of position. Nor was

St-Ruth inferior to Ginkel in military capacity. His dispositions were excellent,

and after several hours' desperate fighting Ginkel was driven back at every point.

Just then St-Ruth was struck down by a cannon ball. Panic-stricken, the Irish fell

back, allowing their opponents to advance and inflict on them a crushing defeat.

The surrender of Galway and Sligo followed, and in a short time Ginkel and his

whole army were before the walls of Limerick. When he had effectually

surrounded it and made a breach in the walls, further resistance was seen to be

hopeless, and Sarsfield and his friends made terms. By the end of the year the

war was over, King William had triumphed, and Protestant ascendancy was

secure.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

By the Treaty of Limerick the Catholic soldiers of King James were pardoned,

protected against forfeiture of their estates, and were free to go abroad if they

chose. All Catholics might substitute an oath of allegiance for the oath of

supremacy, and were to have such privileges "as were consistent with the laws

of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II". King William also

promised to have the Irish Parliament grant a further relaxation of the penal laws

in force. This treaty, however, was soon torn to shreds, and in spite of William's

appeals the Irish Parliament refused to ratify it, and embarked on fresh penal

legislation. Under these new laws Catholics were excluded from Parliament, from

the bench and bar, from the army and navy, from all civil offices, from the

corporations, and even from the corporate towns. They could not have Catholic

schools at home or attend foreign schools, or inherit landed property, or hold land

under lease, or act as executors or administrators, or have arms or ammunition,

or a horse worth £5. Neither could they bury their dead in Catholic ruins, or make

pilgrimages to holy wells, or observe Catholic holidays. They could not intermarry

with the Protestants, the clergyman assisting at such marriages being liable to

death. The wife of a Catholic landlord turning Protestant got separate

maintenance; the son turning Protestant got the whole estate; and the Catholic

landlord having only Catholic children was obliged at death to divide his estate

among his children in equal shares. All the regular clergy, as well as bishops and

vicars-general should quit the kingdom. The secular clergy might remain, but

must be registered, nor could they have on their churches either steeple or bell.

This was the Penal Code, elaborated through nearly half a century with patience,

and care, and ingenuity, perhaps the most infamous code ever elaborated by

civilized man.

Such legislation does not generate conviction, and, in spite of all, the Catholics

clung to their Faith. Deprived of schools at home, the young clerical student

sought the halls of Continental colleges, and being ordained returned to Ireland,

disguised perhaps as a sailor and carried in a smuggler's craft. And in secrecy

and obscurity he preached, taught, lived, and died, leaving another generation

equally persecuted to carry on the good fight. Poverty was his portion, and

frequently the prison and the scaffold; and yet, while Protestantism made no

progress, Catholicism more than held its own. In 1728 the Catholics were to the

Protestants as five to one, and half a century later Young calculated that to make

Ireland Protestant would take 4000 years. Indeed the Protestant clergy made no

serious effort to convert the Catholics; nor was this the object of the Penal Code.

Passed by Protestants possessing confiscated Catholic lands, it object was to

impoverish, to debase, to degrade, to leave the despoiled Catholics incapable of

rebellion and ignorant of their wrongs. In this respect it succeeded. A few

Catholics, with the connivance of some friendly Protestants, managed to hold

their estates; the remainder gradually sank to the level of cottiers and

day-labourers, living in cabins, clothed in rags, always on the verge of famine.

Shut out from every position of influence, rackrented by absentee landlords,

insulted by grasping agents and drunken squireens, paying tithes to a Church

they abhorred, hating the Government which oppressed them and the law which

made them slaves, their condition was the worst of any peasantry in Europe.

From a land blighted by such laws the enterprising and ambitious fled, seeking

an outlet for their enterprise and ambition in happier lands. In the time of

Elizabeth and James, and still more in Cromwell's time, thousands joined the

army of Spain. But in the latter half of the seventeenth century the stream was

diverted to France, then the greatest military power in Europe. Thither Sarsfield

and his men went after the fall of Limerick, and in the fifty years which followed

450,000 Irish died in the service of France. They fought and fell in Spain and Italy,

in the passes of the Alps, in the streets of Cremona, at Ramillies and

Malplaquet, at Blenheim and Fontenoy. Irishmen were marshals of France; an

Irishman commanded the armies of Maria Theresa; another the army of Russia;

and there were Irish statesmen, generals, and ambassadors all over Europe.

Beyond the Atlantic, Irish had settled in Pennsylvania and Maryland, in Kentucky

and Carolina and the New England states; Irish names were appended to the

Declaration of Independence; and Irish soldiers fought throughout the War of

Independence.

Now were soldiers and statesmen the only Irish exiles whom penal laws had sent

abroad. The decay of schools and colleges continued from the eleventh to the

sixteenth century; nor did Ireland in that period produce a single great scholar,

except Duns Scotus, who was partly educated broad. Any hope of a revival of

learning in the sixteenth century was blasted by the suppression of monasteries

and the penal laws; early in the seventeenth century, however, Irish colleges

were already established at Louvain, Salamanca, and Seville, at Lisbon, Paris,

and Rome. In these colleges the brightest Irish intellects learned and taught, and

Colgan and O'Clery, Lynch and Rothe, Wadding and Keating recalled the

greatest glories of their country's past. At home Trinity College had been

established (1593) to wean the Irish from "Popery and other ill qualities"' but the

Catholics held aloof, and either went abroad or frequented the few Catholic

schools left. The children of the poor, avoiding the Protestant schools, met in the

open air, with only some friendly hedge to protect them from the blast; but they

met in fear and trembling, for the hedge-school and its master were proscribed.

Thus was the lamp of learning kept burning during the long night of the penal

times.

In the Irish Parliament meanwhile a spirit of independence appeared. As the

Parliament of the Pale it had been so often used for factious purposes that in

1496 Poyning's Law was passed, providing that henceforth no Irish Parliament

could meet, and no law could be proposed, without the previous consent of both

the Irish and English Privy Councils. Further, the English Parliament claimed the

right to legislate for Ireland; and in the laws prohibiting the importation of Irish

cattle (1665), and Irish woollen manufactures (1698), and that dealing with the

Irish forfeited estates (1700), it asserted its supposed right. The Irish Parliament,

dominated by bigotry and self-interest, had not the courage to protest, and when

one member, Molyneux, did, the English Parliament condemned him, and

ordered his book to be burned by the common hangman. Moreover, it passed an

Act in 1719 expressly declaring that it had power to legislate for Ireland, taking

away also the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords. The fight made by

Swift against Wood's halfpence showed that, though Molyneux was dead, his

spirit lived; Lucas continued the fight, and Grattan in 1782 obtained legislative

independence. England was then beaten by the American colonies; an Irish

volunteer force had been raised to defend Ireland against a possible invasion, and

it seems certain that legislative independence was won less by Grattan's

eloquence than by the swords of the Volunteers. These events favoured the

growth of toleration. The Catholics, in sympathizing with Grattan and in

subscribing money to equip the Protestant Volunteers, earned the goodwill of the

Protestant Nationalists; in consequence the penal laws were less rigorously

enforced, and from the middle of the century penal legislation ceased. In 1771

came the turn of the tide, when Catholics were allowed to hold reclaimed bog

under lease. The grudging concession was followed in 1774 by an Act

substituting an oath of allegiance for the oath of supremacy; in 1778 by an Act

enabling Catholics to hold all lands under lease; and in 1782 by a further Act

allowing them to erect Catholic schools, with the permission of the Protestant

bishop of the diocese, to own a horse worth more than £5, and to assist at Mass

without being compelled to accuse the officiating priest. Nor were Catholic

bishops any longer compelled to quit the kingdom, nor Catholic children specially

rewarded if they turned Protestant. Not for ten years was there any further

concession, and then an Act was passed allowing Catholics to erect schools

without seeking Protestant permission, admitting Catholics to the Bar, and

legalizing marriages between Protestants and Catholics. Much more important

was the Act of 1793 giving the Catholics the Parliamentary and municipal

franchise, admitting them to the universities and to military and civil offices, and

removing all restrictions in regard to the tenure of land. They were still excluded

from Parliament, from the inner Bar, and from a few of the higher civil and military

offices.

Always in favour of religious liberty, Grattan would have swept away every vestige

of the Penal code. But, in 1782, he mistakenly thought that his work was done

when legislative independence was conceded. He forgot that the executive was

still left independent of Parliament, answerable only to the English ministry; and

that, with rotten boroughs controlled by a few great families, with an extremely

limited franchise in the counties, and with pensioners and placement filling so

many seats, the Irish Parliament was but a mockery of representation. Like

Grattan, Flood and Charlemont favoured Parliamentary reform, but, unlike him,

they were opposed to Catholic concessions. As for Foster and Fitzgibbon, who

led the forces of corruption and bigotry, they opposed every attempt at reform,

and consented to the Act of 1793 only under strong pressure from Pitt and

Dundas. These English ministers, alarmed at the progress of French

revolutionary principles in Ireland, fearing a foreign invasion, wished to have the

Catholics contented. In 1795 further concessions seemed imminent. In that year

an illiberal viceroy, Lord Westmoreland, was replaced by the liberal-minded Lord

Fitzwilliam, who came understanding it to be the wish of Pitt that the Catholic

claims were to be conceded. He at once dismissed from office a rapacious

office-holder named Beresford, so powerful that he was called the "King of

Ireland"; he refused to consult Lord Chancellor Fitzgibbon or Foster, the Speaker;

he took Grattan and Ponsonby into his confidence, and declared his intention to

support Grattan's bill admitting Catholics to Parliament. The high hopes raised by

these events were dashed to the earth when Fitzwilliam was suddenly recalled,

after having been allowed to go so far without any protest from Portland, the

home secretary, or from the premier, Pitt. The latter, disliking the Irish Parliament

because it had rejected his commercial propositions in 1785, and disagreed with

him on the regency in 1789, already mediated a legislative union, and felt that the

admission of Catholics to Parliament would thwart his plans. He was probably

also influenced by Beresford, who had powerful friends in England, and by the

king, whom Fitzgibbon had mischievously convinced that to admit Catholics to

Parliament would be to violate his coronation oath. Possibly, other causes

concurred with these to bring about the sudden and disastrous change which

filled Catholic Ireland with grief, and the whole nation with dismay.

The new viceroy, Lord Camden, was instructed to conciliate the Catholic bishops

by setting up a Catholic college for the training of Irish priests; this was done by

the establishment of Maynooth College. But he was to set his face against all

Parliamentary reform and all Catholic concessions. These things he did with a

will. He at once restored Beresford to office and Foster and Fitzgibbon to favour,

the latter being made Earl of Clare. And he stirred up but too successfully the

dying embers of sectarian hate, with the result that the Ulster factions, the

Protestant "Peep-of-Day Boys" and the Catholic "Defenders", became embittered

with a change of names. The latter, turning to republican and revolutionary ways,

joined the United Irish Society; the former became merged in the recently formed

Orange Society, taking its name from William of Orange and having Protestant

ascendancy and hatred of Catholicism as its battle cries. Extending from Ulster,

these rival societies brought into the other provinces the curse of sectarian strife.

Instead of putting down both, the Government took sides with the Orangemen;

and, while their lawless acts were condoned, the Catholics were hunted down.

An Arms' Act, an Insurrection Act, an Indemnity Act, a suspension of the

Habeas Corpus Act placed them outside the pale of law. An undisciplined

soldiery, recruited from the Orange lodges, were than let loose among them.

Martial law, free quarters, flogging, picketing, half-hanging, destruction of Catholic

property and life, outrages on women followed, until at last Catholic blood was

turned into flame. Then Wexford rose. Looking back, it now seems certain that,

had Hoche landed at Bantry in 1796, had even a small force landed at Wexford in

1798, or a few other counties displayed the heroism of Wexford, English power in

Ireland would, temporarily at least, have been destroyed. But one county could

not fight the British Empire, and the rebellion was soon quenched in blood.

Camden's place was then given to Lord Cornwallis, who came to Ireland for the

express purpose of carrying a Legislative Union. Foster refused to support him

and joined the opposition. Fitzgibbon, however, aided Cornwallis, and so did

Castlereagh, who for some time had discharged the duties of chief secretary in

the absence of Mr. Pelham, and who was now formally appointed to the office.

And then began one of the most shameful chapters in Irish history. Even the

corrupt Irish Parliament was reluctant to vote away its existence, and in 1799 the

opposition was too strong for Castlereagh. But Pitt directed him to persevere,

and the great struggle went on. On one side were eloquence and debating power,

patriotism, and public virtue, Grattan, Plunket, and Bushe, Foster, Fitzgerald,

Ponsonby, and Moore, a truly formidable combination. On the other side were

the baser elements of in Parliament, the needy, the spendthrift, the meanly

ambitious, operated upon by Castlereagh, with the whole resources of the British

Empire at his command. The pensioners and placemen who voted against him at

once lost their places and pensions, the military officer was refused promotion,

the magistrate was turned off the bench. And while anti-Unionists were

unsparingly punished, the Unionists got lavish rewards. The impecunious got

well-paid sinecures; the briefless barrister was made a judge or a commissioner;

the rich man, ambitious of social distinction, got a peerage, and places and

pensions for his friends; and the owners of rotten boroughs to large sums for their

interests. The Catholics were promised emancipation in a united Parliament, and

in consequence many bishops, some clergy, and a few of the laity supported the

Union, not grudging to end an assembly so bigoted and corrupt as the Irish

Parliament. By these means Castlereagh triumphed, and in 1801 the United

Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland opened its doors.

SINCE THE UNION

The next quarter of a century was a period of baffled hopes. Anxious to stand

well with the Government, Dr. Troy, the Archbishop of Dublin, had been a strong

advocate of the Union, and had induced nine of his brother bishops to concede to

the king a veto on episcopal appointments. In return, he wanted emancipation

linked with the Union, and Castlereagh was not averse; but Pitt was

non-committal and vague, though the Catholic Unionists had no doubt that he

favoured immediate concession. Disappointment came when nothing was done in

the first session of the United Parliament, and it was increased when Pitt

resigned office and was succeeded by Addington, a narrow-minded bigot.

Cornwallis, however, assured Dr. Troy that Pitt had resigned, unable to overcome

the prejudices of the king, and that he would never again take office if

emancipation were not conceded. Yet, in spite of this, he became premier in

1804, no longer an advocate of emancipation but an opponent, pledged never

again to raise the question in Parliament, during the lifetime of the king. To this

pledge he was as faithful as he had been false to his former assurances; and

when Fox presented the Catholic petition in 1805, Pitt opposed it. After 1806,

when both Pitt and Fox died, the Catholic champion was Grattan, who had

entered the British Parliament in 1805. In the vain hope of conciliating opponents

he was willing, in 1808, to concede the veto. Dr. Troy and the higher Catholics

acquiesced; but the other bishops were unwilling, and neither they nor the clergy,

still less the people, wanted a state-paid clergy or state-appointed bishops. The

agitation of the question, however, did not cease, and for many years it

distracted Catholic plans and weakened Catholic effort. Further complications

arose when, in 1814, the prefect of the Propaganda, Quarantotti, issued a

rescript favouring the veto. He acted, however, beyond his powers in the absence

of Pius VII, who was in France, and when the pope returned to Rome, after the

fall of Napoleon, the rescript was disavowed.

In these years the Catholics badly needed a leader. John Keogh, the able leader

of 1793, was then old, and Lords Fingall and Gormanstone, Mr. Scully and Dr.

Dromgoole, were not the men to grapple with great difficulties and powerful

opponents. An abler and more vigorous leader was required, one with less faith in

petitions and protestations of loyalty. Such a leader was found in Daniel

O'Connell, a Catholic barrister whose first public appearance in 1800 was on an

anti-Unionist platform. A great lawyer and orator, a great debater, of boundless

courage and resources, he took a prominent part on Catholic committees, and

from 1810 he held the first place in Catholic esteem. Yet the Catholic cause

advanced slowly, and, when Grattan died in 1820, emancipation had not come.

Nor would the House of Lords accept Plunket's Bill of 1821, even though it

passed the House of Commons and conceded the veto. At last O'Connell

determined to rouse the masses, and in 1823, with the help of Richard Lalor

Sheil, he founded the Catholic Association. Its progress at first was slow, but

gradually it gathered strength. Dr. Murray, the new Catholic Archbishop of Dublin,

joined it, and Dr. Doyle, the great Bishop of Kildare; other bishops followed; the

clergy and people also came in; and thus rose a great national organization,

supervising from its central office in Dublin subsidiary associations in every

parish; maintained by a Catholic rent; watching over local and national affairs,

discharging, as Mr. Canning described it, "all the functions of a regular

government, and having obtained a complete mastery and control over the

masses of the Irish people". The Association was suppressed in 1825 by Act of

Parliament; but O'Connell merely changed the name; and the New Catholic

Association with its New Catholic rent continued the work of agitation as of old.

Nor was this all. By the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 the forty-shilling freeholders

obtained the franchise. These freeholders, being so poor, were necessarily in the

power of the landlords and were wont to be driven to the pools like so many

sheep. But now, protected by a powerful association, and encouraged by the

priests and by O'Connell, the freeholders broke their chains, and in Waterford,

Louth, Meath, and elsewhere they voted for the nominees of the Catholic

Association at elections, and in placing them at the head of the pool humbled the

landlords. When they returned O'Connell himself for Clare in 1828, the crisis had

come. The Tory ministers, Welllington and Peel, would have still resisted; but the

people were not to be restrained: it must be concession or civil war, and rather

than have the latter the ministers hauled down the flag of no surrender, and

passed the Catholic Relief Bill of 1829. The forty-shilling freeholders were

disfranchised, and there were some vexations provisions excluding Catholics

from a few of the higher civil and military offices, prohibiting priests from wearing

vestments outside their churches, bishops from assuming the titles of their sees,

regulars form obtaining charitable bequests. In other respects Catholics were

placed on a level with other denominations, and at last were admitted within the

pale of the constitution.

From that hour O'Connell was the uncrowned king of Ireland. Where he led the

people followed. They cheered him when he praised Lord Anglesey and when he

attacked him; when he supported the Whigs and when he described them as

"base, brutal and bloody"; when he advocated the Repeal of the Union and when

he abandoned the Repeal agitation; and when, after long years of waiting for

concessions that never came, he again unfurled the flag of Repeal, they flocked

to hear him, and laughed or wept with him, responsive to his every mood. Finally,

to leave him free to devote his whole time to public affairs they subscribed yearly

to the O'Connell tribute, given him thus an income which never fell below £16,000

and often went far beyond that figure. And yet the legislative results of nearly

twenty years of such devotion and sacrifice were poor. The National Education

system, established in 1831, required much amendment before it worked

smoothly, and even now is far from being an ideal system. The Commutation of

Tithes Act only transferred the odium of collection from the parson to the

landlord, but gave little relief to the people. The Poor Law system, though it often

relieved destitution, too often encouraged idleness and immorality. And the

Corporation Act, while reforming a few of the corporations, abolished many. Nor

could anything be more complete than the failure of the Repeal agitation. The

explanation is not far to seek. O'Connell had a wretched party, men without

capacity or patriotism. His acceptance of offices for his friends and his alliances

with the Whigs was surely not a sound policy. And when he took up Repeal in

earnest he was already old, with the shadow of death upon him. Lastly, as he

neared the end, he lost the support of the Young Irelanders, the most vigorous

and capable section of his followers. These things embittered his last days and

hastened his death in 1847.

Meantime the shadow of famine had fallen upon the land. The potato blight first

appeared in Wexford, in 1845, whence it marched with stealthy tread all over the

country, poisoning the potato fields as it passed. The stalks withered and died,

the potatoes beneath the soil became putrid, and when they were dug and the

sound ones separated from the unsound ones and put into pits, it was soon

discovered that disease had entered the pits. The reckless creation of

forty-shilling freeholders by the landlords for political purposes, the reckless

subdivision of holdings by the tenants, had so augmented the population that in

1845 the inhabitants of Ireland were well beyond 8,000,000, most of them living in

abject poverty with the potato as their only food. And now, with half the crop of

1845 gone and with the loss of the whole crop in the two succeeding years,

millions were face to face with hunger. To cope with such a calamity required

heroic measures, and O'Connell urged that distilleries should be closed, the

export of provisions prohibited, public granaries set up, and reproductive works

set on foot. But the premier, Peer, minimized the extent of the famine, and Lord

John Russell, who succeeded him in 1846 was equally sceptical. He would

neither stop distilling nor the export of provisions, nor build railways; and when he

set up public works they were not reproductive, and the money expended on

them, largely levied on the rates, was squandered by corrupt officials. Ultimately

indeed he set up government stores, and in many cases food was distributed

free. Charity supplemented the efforts of Government, and with no niggard hand.

There were Quaker, Evangelical, and Baptist relief committees, and

subscriptions from Great Britain and from Continental Europe, from Australia and

from the West Indies. But America was generous most of all. In every city from

Boston to New Orleans meetings were held and subscriptions given. Philadelphia

sent eight vessels loaded with provisions; Mississippi and Alabama large

consignments of Indian corn; railroads and shipping companies carried relief

parcels free; and the Government turned some of the war vessels into transports

to carry food to the starving millions beyond the Atlantic. Yet were the sufferings

of the people great, and the number of deaths from famine and famine-fever

appalling. Thousands lived for weeks on cabbage and a little meal, on cabbage

and seaweed, on turnips, on diseased horse and ass flesh; and one case is

recorded where a woman ate her dead child. Men died from cold as well as from

hunger. They died on the roads and in the fields, at the relief works and on their

way to them, at the workhouses and at the workhouse doors. They died in their

cabins unattended, often surrounded by the dying and frequently by the dead.

Flying from the country they died in the hospitals of Liverpool or Glasgow, or on

board the sailing vessels to America. And thousands who crossed the ocean

reached America only to die. In 1848 and in 1849 the famine was only partial, but

in the latter year cholera appeared. In 1851 the famine was over, and such was

the havoc wrought that a population, which at the previous rate of increase should

have been 9,000,000, was reduced to 6,500,000.

The conduct of the landlords during this terrible time was selfish and cruel. With

few exceptions they gave no employment and no subscriptions to the relief

funds. Unable to get rents from tenants unable to pay, they used their right to

evict, and in thousands of cases the horrors of eviction were added to the horrors

of famine. Retribution soon followed. The evictors, without rents and crushed by

poor-rates, became hopelessly insolvent. The British Parliament considered them

a nuisance and a curse, and in 1849 passed the Encumbered Estates Act, under

which a creditor might petition to have the estate sold and his debt paid.

Insolvent landlords were thus sent adrift, and solvent men took their places, and

to such an extent that in a few years land to the value of £20,000,000 changed

hands. But the new landlords were no better than the old. They raised rents,

confiscated the tenant's improvements, worried him with vexatious estate rules,

evicted him cruelly; and from 1850 to 1870 was the period of the great

clearances. The necessary result was a constant and ever-increasing stream of

emigration from Ireland, chiefly to America. Nor would British statesmen do

anything to stem the tide, Lord John Russell would not interfere with the rights of

property by passing a Land Act. Lord Derby was a landlord with a landlord's

strong prejudices. Lord Palmerston declared that tenant right was landlord wrong.

Nothing could be expected from the Irish members. Sadleir and Keogh broke up

the Tenant Right party; Lucas was dead; Duffy in despair went to Australia;

Moore was out of Parliament; and from 1855 to 1870 the Irish members were but

placehunters and traitors. In these circumstances the Irish peasant joined the

Ribbon Society, which was secret and oath-bound, and specially charged to

defend the tenants' interests. Agrarian outrages naturally followed. The landlord

evicted, the Ribbonman shot him down, and the evictor fell unpitied by the

people, who refused to condemn the assassin. After 1860 the Robbonmen were

gradually merged in the Fenian Society, which extended to America and

England, and had national rather than agrarian objects in view. The Irish are not

good conspirators, and the attempted Fenian insurrection in 1867 came to

nothing. But the mediated assault on Chester Castle, the Clerkenwell explosion,

and the Fenian raids into Canada showed the extent and intrepidity of Irish

disaffection. An increasing number of Englishmen began to think that the non

possumus attitude of Lord Palmerston was no longer wise; and with the advent to

power of Mr. Gladstone in 1868, at the head of a large Liberal majority, the case

of Ireland was taken up.

The Catholic masses had a threefold grievance calling urgently for redress: the

state Church, landlordism, and educational inequality. Mr. Gladstone called them

the three branches of the Irish ascendancy upas tree. Commencing with the

Church, he introduced a Bill disendowing and disestablishing it. Commissioners

were appointed to wind it up, taking charge of its enormous property, computed

at more than £15,000,000 ($75,000,000). Of this sum, £10,000,000, ultimately

raised to £11,000,000, was given to the disestablished Church, part to the

holders of existing offices, part to enable the Church to continue its work. A

further sum of nearly £1,000,000 was distributed between Maynooth College,

deprived of its annual grant, and the Presbyterian Church deprived of the Regium

Donum, the latter getting twice as much as the former. The surplus was to be

disposed of by Parliament for such public objects as it might determine. This

was generous treatment for the state Church which had been so conspicuous a

failure. Supported with an ample revenue, and by the whole power of the State,

its business was to make Ireland Protestant and English. It succeeded only in

intensifying their attachment to Catholicity and their hatred of Protestantism and

England. In 1861, after the havoc wrought by the famine, the Catholics were

seven times as numerous as the members of the state Church. There were many

parishes without a single Protestant; and in a poor country a Church numbering

but 600,000 persons had an income of nearly £700,000, mostly drawn from

people of a different creed, who at the same time had their own Church to

support. Yet there were members of Parliament who described Mr. Gladstone's

Bill as robbery and sacrilege. The House of Lords, afraid to reject it altogether,

emasculated it in committee. And Ulster Protestants declared that if it became

law they would kick the Queen's crown into the Boyne. Ignoring these threats,

Mr. Gladstone rejected the Lords' amendments, though on some minor points he

gave way, and in spite of all opposition the Bill became law. And thus one branch

of the upas tree came crashing to the earth. The Land Act of 1870 was

well-meant, but in reality gave the tenants no protection against rackrenting or

eviction. Two years later the Ballot Act freed the Irish tenant from the terrors of

open voting.

In 1873 the education question was reached. And first as to the primary schools.

What the Catholic primary schools were in the early years of the nineteenth

century we learn from Carleton. The teacher, the product of a local hedge-school

and of a Munster classical school, or perhaps an ex-student of Maynooth, had

first been employed as a tutor in some farmer's family. Then he became a

hedge-schoolmaster, and the manner in which he attained to this position was

peculiar. Challenging the schoolmaster already in possession to a public

disputation, they met at the church gates on Sunday in presence of the

congregation. The intellectual swordplay between the combatants was keenly

relished, and, if the younger man won the applause of the audience by his depth

of learning and readiness of reply, his opponent left the district and the victor was

installed in his place. His school, built by the roadside by the people's voluntary

efforts, was of earthen sods, with an earthen floor, a hole in the roof for a

chimney, and stones for the pupils' seats. In many districts the teacher received

little fees, but the people supplied him liberally with potatoes, meal, bacon, and

turf, and entertained him at their houses. A century before Carleton's time the

Charter schools were established, and endowed to educate the children of the

destitute poor. They were to give industrial as well as literary training, and took

religion and learning as their motto. But they became dens of infamy, with

incompetent and immoral teachers, who taught the pupils nothing except to hate

Catholicism. As such the schools were shunned by the Catholics, and were

manifest failures, and yet till 1832 they received government grants. Such

societies as the Society for Discountenancing Vice, the London Hibernian

Association, and the Baptist Society were proselytizing institutions. The Kildare

Street Society founded in 1811, though Protestant in its origin, was on different

lines. The design was to have Catholics and Protestants educated together in

secular subjects, leaving their religious training to the ministers of their religion

outside of school hours. O'Connell favoured the scheme and joined the governing

board, grants were obtained from Parliament, and for some years all went well.

But again the bread of knowledge given to Catholics was steeped in the poison of

proselytism. The bigots insisted on having the Bible read in the schools "without

note or comment"; the Society was then vigorously assailed by John MacHale,

at the time a young professor at Maynooth, and O'Connell retired from the board.

Recognizing the failure of such a system, Lord Stanley; the Irish chief secretary,

passed through Parliament in 1831 a bill empowering the lord lieutenant to

constitute a National Board of Education with an annual grant for building

schools, and for payment of teachers and inspectors. Religious instruction was

to be given on one day of the week by ministers of the different religions to

children of their own Faith. The schools were open to all denominations, and even

"the suspicion of proselytism" was to be excluded. But the Catholics were

treated unfairly. In spite of their numbers they were given but two of the seven

members of the Board. Mr. Carlisle, a Presbyterian, was made resident

commissioner, and as chief executive officer appointed non-Catholics to the

principal offices; and he and his fellow-commissioner, Dr. Whately, the

Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, compiled lesson-books, in which the history of

Ireland and the Catholic religion were treated with injustice. In a few years the

original rules of the Board were so changed that Catholic priests were entirely

excluded from all Ulster schools under Presbyterian management. Outside of

Ulster, a bigoted Protestant clergyman, named Stopford, was able in 1847 to

abrogate the rule compelling Catholic child in Protestant schools to leave when

the hour for religious instruction arrived. This left it optional with the children to

remain, and brought much suffering on poor Catholics at the hands of tyrannical

and bigoted landlords.

Among the Catholic bishops there was toleration rather than approval of the

National system. But Dr. MacHale, who had become Archbishop of Tuam in

1834, opposed the system from the first, believing that education not founded on

religion was a curse. He preferred to have in his diocese the Christian Brothers'