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The Land War In Ireland (1870) by James Godkin

J >> James Godkin >> The Land War In Ireland (1870)




But further on this able author expresses himself much more in
accordance with the truth of history, when he states that the 'Irish
enemy' was no _nation_ in the modern sense of the word, but a race
divided into many nations or tribes, _separately_ defending their
lands from the English barons in the immediate neighbourhood.
There had been no ancient national government displaced, no dynasty
overthrown; the Irish had _no national flag_, nor any capital city as
the metropolis of their common country, nor any common administration
of law.' He might have added that they had no _mint_. There never was
an Irish king who had his face stamped on a coin of his realm. Some
stray pieces of money found their way into the country from abroad,
but up to the close of the sixteenth century the rudest form of barter
prevailed in Ulster, and accounts were paid not in coins but in cows.
Even the mechanical arts which had flourished in the country before
the arrival of the Celts had gradually perished, and had disappeared
at the time of the English invasion. Any handy men could build a house
of mud and wattles. Masons, carpenters, smiths, painters, glaziers,
&c., were not wanted by a people who despised stone buildings as
prisons, and abhorred walled towns as sepulchres. Spinning and weaving
were arts cultivated by the women, each household providing materials
for clothing, which was little used in warm weather, and thrown off
when fighting or any other serious work was to be done.

I should be sorry to disparage the Celtic race, or any other race, by
exaggerating their bad qualities or suppressing any reliable testimony
to their merits. But with me the truth of history is sacred. Both
sides of every case should be fairly stated. Nothing can be gained by
striving to hide facts which may be known to every person who takes
the trouble to study the subject. I write in the interest of the
people--of the toiling masses; and I find that they were oppressed and
degraded by the ruling classes long before the Norman invader took
the place of the Celtic chief. And it is a curious fact that when the
Cromwellians turned the Catholic population out of their homes and
drove them into Connaught, they were but following the example set
them by the Milesian lords of the soil centuries before.

The late Mr. Darcy Magee, a real lover of his country, in his Irish
history points out this fact. The Normans found the population divided
into two great classes--the free tribes, chiefly if not exclusively
Celtic, and the unfree tribes, consisting of the descendants of the
subjugated races, or of clans once free, reduced to servitude by the
sword, and the offspring of foreign mercenary soldiers. 'The unfree
tribes,' says Mr. Darcy Magee, 'have left no history. Under the
despotism of the Milesian kings, it was high treason to record the
actions of the conquered race, so that the Irish Belgae fared as badly
in this respect at the hands of the Milesian historians as the latter
fared in after times from the chroniclers of the Normans. We only know
that such tribes were, and that their numbers and physical force more
than once excited the apprehension of the children of the conquerors.
One thing is certain--the jealous policy of the superior race never
permitted them to reascend the plane of equality from which they had
been hurled at the very commencement of the Milesian ascendency.'

Mr. Haverty, another Catholic historian, learned, accurate, and
candid, laments the oppression of the people by their native rulers.
'Those who boasted descent from the Scytho-Spanish hero would have
considered themselves degraded were they to devote themselves to
any less honourable profession than those of soldiers, _ollavs_, or
physicians; and hence the cultivation of the soil and the exercise of
the mechanic arts were left almost exclusively to the _Firbolgs_ and
the _Tuatha-de-Danans_--the former people, in particular, being still
very numerous, and forming the great mass of the population in
the west. These were ground down by high rents and the exorbitant
exactions of the dominant race, _in order to support their unbounded
hospitality_ and defray the expenses of costly assemblies; but this
oppression must have caused perpetual discontent, and the hard-working
plebeians, as they were called, easily perceived that their masters
were running headlong to destruction, and that it only required a bold
effort to shake off their yoke.' Then follows an account of a civil
war, one of the leaders of the revolution being elected king at its
termination. Carbry reigned five years, during which time there was no
rule or order, and the country was a prey to every misfortune. 'Evil
was the state of Ireland during his reign; fruitless her corn, for
there used to be but one grain on the stalk; and fruitless her rivers;
her cattle without milk; her fruit without plenty, for there used to
be but one acorn on the oak.'

Dr. Lynch, author of _Cambrensis Eversus_, expresses his astonishment
at the great number of ancient Irish kings, most of whom were cut off
by a violent death, each hewing his way to the throne over the body
of his predecessor. But upon applying his mind to the more profound
consideration of the matter, he found nothing more wonderful in
the phenomenon 'than that the human family should proceed from one
man--the overflowing harvest from a few grains of seed, &c.' His
learned translator, the Rev. Matthew Kelly, of Maynooth, sees proof
of amendment in the fact that between 722 and 1022 twelve Irish kings
died a natural death. This candid and judicious writer observes in
a note--'It appears from the Irish and English annals that there
was perpetual war in Ireland during more than 400 years after the
invasion. It could not be called a war of races, except perhaps during
the first century, for English and Irish are constantly found fighting
under the same banner, according to the varying interests of the rival
lords and princes of both nations. This was the case even from the
commencement.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Vol. i. p.216.]

Many persons have wondered at the success of small bands of English
invaders. Why did not the Irish nation rise _en masse_, and drive them
into the sea? The answer is easy. There was no Irish nation. About
half a million of people were scattered over the island in villages,
divided into tribes generally at war with one another, each chief
ready to accept foreign aid against his adversary--some, perhaps,
hoping thereby to attain supremacy in their clans, and others, who
were pretenders, burning to be avenged of those who had supplanted
them. It was religion that first gave the Irish race a common cause.
In the very year of the English invasion (1171) there were no fewer
than twenty predatory excursions or battles among the Irish chiefs
themselves, exclusive of contests with the invaders. Hence the Pope
said--'_Gens se interimit mutua caede_.' The Pope was right.

The clergy exerted themselves to the utmost in trying to exorcise the
demon of destruction and to arrest the work of extermination. Not only
the _Bashall Isa_, or 'the staff of Jesus,' but many other relics were
used with the most solemn rites, to impress the people with a sense
of the wickedness of their clan-fights, and to induce them to keep the
peace, but in vain. The King of Connaught once broke a truce entered
into under every possible sanction of this kind, trampling upon all,
that he might get the King of Meath into his clutches. Hence the Rev.
Mr. Kelly is constrained to say--'It is now generally admitted by
Catholic writers that however great the efforts of the Irish clergy to
reform their distracted country in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
the picture of anarchy drawn by Pope Adrian is hardly overcharged.'
Indeed, some Catholic writers have confessed that the anarchy would
never have been terminated except by foreign conquest establishing a
strong central government. This, however, was not accomplished
till after a struggle of centuries, during which, except in brief
intervals, when a strong prince was able to protect his people, the
national demoralisation grew worse and worse. An Oxford priest,
who kept a school at Limerick, writing so late as 1566 of the Irish
nobles, says--'Of late they spare neither churches nor hallowed
places, but thence also they fill their hands with spoil--yea, and
sometimes they set them on fire and kill the men that there lie
hidden.'

Mr. Froude, following the Irish MSS. in the Rolls House, has presented
graphic pictures of the disorders of the Irishry in the reign of Queen
Mary. 'The English garrison,' he says, 'harassed and pillaged the
farmers of Meath and Dublin; the chiefs made forays upon each other,
killing, robbing, and burning. When the war broke out between England
and France, there were the usual conspiracies and uprisings of
nationality; the young Earl of Kildare, in reward to the Queen who
had restored him to his rank, appearing as the natural leader of
the patriots. Ireland was thus happy in the gratification of all its
natural tendencies. The Brehon law readvanced upon the narrow limits
to which, by the exertions of Henry VIII., the circuits of the
judges had been extended. And with the Brehon law came anarchy as its
inseparable attendant.'

The correctness of this view is too well attested by the records
which the learned historian brings to light, adopting the quaint
and expressive phraseology of the old writers whom he quotes. For
example:--

'The lords and gentiles of the Irish Pale that were not governed under
the Queen's laws were compelled to keep and maintain a great number
of idle men of war to rule their people at home, and exact from their
neighbours abroad--working everyone his own wilful will for a law--to
the spoil of his country, and decay and waste of the common weal of
the same. The idle men of war ate up altogether; the lord and his men
took what they pleased, destroying their tenants, and themselves never
the better. The common people, having nothing left to lose, became as
idle and careless in their behaviour as the rest, stealing by day and
robbing by night. Yet it was a state of things which they seemed all
equally to enjoy, and high and low alike were always ready to bury
their own quarrels, to join against the Queen and the English.'

At the time when the crown passed to Elizabeth the qualities of the
people were thus described by a correspondent of the council, who
presents the English view of the Irishry at that time:--

'The appearance and outward behaviour of the Irish showeth them to be
fruits of no good tree, for they exercise no virtue and refrain and
forbear from no vice, but think it lawful to do every man what him
listeth. They neither love nor dread God, nor yet hate the devil. They
are worshippers of images and open idolaters. Their common oath they
swear is by books, bells, and other ornaments which they do use as
holy religion. Their chief and solemnest oath is by their lord or
master's hand, which whoso forsweareth is sure to pay a fine or
sustain a worse turn. The Sabbath-day they rest from all honest
exercises, and the week days they are not idle, but worse occupied.
They do not honour their father and mother as much as they do
reverence strangers. For every murder that they commit they do not so
soon repent, for whose blood they once shed, they lightly never cease
killing all that name. They do not so commonly commit adultery; not
for that they profess or keep chastity, but for that they seldom or
never marry, and therefore few of them are lawful heirs, by the law of
the realm, to the lands they possess. They steal but from the strong,
and take by violence from the poor and weak. They know not so well who
is their neighbour as who they favour; with him they will witness in
right and wrong. They covet not their neighbours' good, but command
all that is their neighbours' as their own. Thus they live and die,
and there is none to teach them better. There are no ministers.
Ministers will not take pains where there is no living to be had,
neither church nor parish, but all decayed. People will not come to
inhabit where there is no defence of law.'

After six years of _discipline and improvement_ Sir Henry Sidney, in
1566, described the state of the four shires, the Irish inhabitants,
and the English garrison, in the following terms:--'The _English Pale_
is overwhelmed with vagabonds--stealth and spoil daily carried out of
it--the people miserable--not two gentlemen in the whole of it able
to lend 20 l. They have neither horse nor armour, nor apparel, nor
victual. The soldiers be so beggerlike as it would abhor a general to
look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so
rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them,
yet so allied with the Irish, I dare not trust them in a forte, or in
any dangerous service.'

A sort of 'special correspondent' or 'commissioner,' as we should call
him now, furnished to Cecil a detailed account of the social condition
of the people, which of course he viewed with English eyes. He found
existing among them a general organisation wherever the Irish language
was spoken--the remnants of a civilisation very ancient, but now fast
tending to ruin. Next to the chiefs were the priesthood, and after
them came a kind of intellectual hierarchy, consisting of four classes
of spiritual leaders and teachers, which were thus described. The
first was called the Brehon, or the judge. These judges took
'pawns' of both the parties, and then judged according to their own
discretion. Their property was neutral, and the Irishmen would not
prey upon them. They had great plenty of cattle, and they harboured
many vagabonds and idle persons. They were the chief maintainers of
rebels, but when the English army came to their neighbourhood they
fled to the mountains and woods 'because they would not succour
them with victuals and other necessaries.' The next sort was called
_Shankee_, who had also great plenty of cattle wherewith they
succoured the rebels. They made the ignorant men of the country
believe that they were descended from Alexander the Great, or Darius,
or Caesar, 'or some other notable prince, which made the ignorant
people run mad, and care not what they did.' This, the correspondent
remarked, 'was very hurtful to the realm.' Not less hurtful were the
third sort called _Denisdan_, who not only maintained the rebels,
but caused those that would be true to become rebellious--'thieves,
extortioners, murderers, raveners, yea, and worse if it was possible.'
These seem to have been the historians or chroniclers of the tribe.
If they saw a young man, the descendant of an O' or a Mac, with half a
dozen followers, they forthwith made a rhyme about his father and his
ancestors, numbering how many heads they had cut off, how many towns
they had burned, how many virgins they had deflowered, how many
notable murders they had done, comparing them to Hannibal, or Scipio,
or Hercules, or some other famous person--'wherewithal the poor fool
runs mad, and thinks indeed it is so.' Then he will gather a lot of
rascals about him, and get a fortune-teller to prophesy how he is to
speed. After these preliminaries he betakes himself with his followers
at night to the side of a wood, where they lurk till morning. And when
it is daylight, then will they go to the poor villages, not sparing to
destroy young infants and aged people; and if a woman be ever so
great with child, her will they kill, burning the houses and corn, and
ransacking the poor cots; then will they drive away all the kine
and plough-horses, with all the other cattle. Then must they have a
bagpipe blowing before them, and if any of the cattle fortune to wax
weary or faint they will kill them rather than it should do the owner
good; and if they go by any house of friars, or religious house, they
will give them two or three beeves, and they will take them and pray
for them, yea, and praise their doings, and say, 'His father was
accustomed so to do, wherein he will rejoice.' The fourth class
consisted of 'poets.' These men had great store of cattle, and 'used
all the trade of the others with an addition of prophecies. They were
maintainers of witches and other vile matters, to the blasphemy of
God, and to the impoverishing of the commonwealth.'

These four septs were divided in all places of the four quarters of
Ireland, and some of the islands beyond Ireland, as Aran, the land of
the Saints, Innisbuffen, Innisturk, Innismain, and Innisclare. These
islands, he added, were under the rule of O'Neill, and they were
'very pleasant and fertile, plenty of wood, water, and arable ground,
pastures, and fish, and a very temperate air.' On this description
Mr. Froude remarks in a note--'At present they are barren heaps of
treeless moors and mountains. They yield nothing but scanty oat crops
and potatoes, and though the seas are full of fish as ever, there
are no hands to catch them. _The change is a singular commentary upon
modern improvements_.' There were many branches belonging to the four
septs, continues the credulous reporter, who was evidently imposed
upon, like many of his countrymen in modern times with better means
of information. For example, 'there was the branch of Gogath, the
glutton, of which one man would eat half a sheep at a sitting. There
was another called the Carrow, a gambler, who generally went about
naked, carrying dice and cards, and he would play the hair off his
head. Then there was a set of women called Goyng women, blasphemers
of God, who ran from country to country, sowing sedition among the
people.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Froude's History, of England, vol. viii. chap. vii.]

Mr. Froude says that this 'picture of Ireland' was given by some
half Anglicised, half Protestantised Celt, who wrote what he had seen
around him, careless of political philosophy, or of fine phrases with
which to embellish his diction. But if he was a Celt, I think his
description clearly proves that he must have been a Celt of some
other country than the one upon whose state he reports. Judging from
internal evidence, I should say that he could not be a native; for an
Irishman, even though a convert to Anglicanism, and anxious to please
his new masters, could scarcely betray so much ignorance of the
history of his country, so much bigotry, such a want of candour and
discrimination. If Mr. Froude's great work has any fault, it is his
unconscious prejudice against Ireland. He knows as well as anyone the
working of the feudal system and the clan system in Scotland in
the same age. He knows with what treachery and cruelty murders
were perpetrated by chiefs and lairds, pretenders and usurpers--how
anarchy, violence, and barbarism reigned in that land; yet, when he is
dealing with a similar state of things in Ireland, he uniformly takes
it as proof of an incurable national idiosyncrasy, and too often
generalises from a few cases. For example, in speaking of Shane
O'Neill, who killed his half-brother, Matthew Kelly, Baron of
Dungannon, in order to secure the succession for himself, he
says--'_They manage things strangely in Ireland._ The old O'Neill,
instead of being irritated, saw in this exploit a proof of commendable
energy. He at once took Shane into favour, and, had he been able,
would have given him his dead brother's rights.'




CHAPTER II.

THE RULE OF THE O'NEILLS.


Shane O'Neill was a man of extraordinary ability and tremendous
energy, as the English found to their cost. He was guilty of atrocious
deeds; but he had too many examples in those lawless times encouraging
him to sacrifice the most sacred ties to his ambition. He resolved to
seize the chieftainship by deposing his father and banishing him to
the Pale, where, after passing some years in captivity, he died. He
was, no doubt, urged to do this, lest by some chance the son of the
baron of Dungannon should be adopted by England as the rightful heir,
and made Earl of Tyrone. This title he spurned, and proclaimed himself
the O'Neill, the true representative of the ancient kings of Ulster,
to which office he was elected by his people, taking the usual oath
with his foot upon the sacred stone. This was an open defiance of
English power, and he prepared to abide the consequences. He thought
the opportunity a favourable one to recover the supremacy of his
ancestors over the O'Donels. He accordingly mustered a numerous army,
and marched into Tyrconnel, where he was joined by Hugh O'Donel,
brother of Calvagh, the chief, with other disaffected persons of the
same clan. O'Donel had recourse to stratagem. Having caused his cattle
to be driven out of harm's way, he sent a spy into the enemy's camp,
who mixed with the soldiers, and returning undiscovered, he undertook
to guide O'Donel's army to O'Neill's tent, which was distinguished by
a great watch-fire, and guarded by six galloglasses on one side and as
many Scots on the other. The camp, however, was taken by surprise
in the dead of night, and O'Neill's forces, careless or asleep, were
slaughtered and routed without resistance. Shane himself fled for his
life, and, swimming across three rivers, succeeded in reaching his own
territory. This occurred the year before he cast off his allegiance
to England. He was required to appear before Elizabeth in person to
explain the grounds on which he had claimed the chieftainship. He
consented, on condition that he got a safe-conduct and money for the
expenses of his journey. At the same time he sent a long letter to the
Queen, complaining of the treatment he had received, and defending his
pretensions. The letter is characteristic of the man and of the times.
He said: 'The deputy has much ill-used me, your Majesty; and now that
I am going over to see you, I hope you will consider that I am but
rude and uncivil, and do not know my duty to your Highness, nor yet
your Majesty's laws, but am one brought up in wildness, far from all
civility. Yet have I a good will to the commonwealth of my country;
and please your Majesty to send over two commissioners that you can
trust, that will take no bribes, nor otherwise be imposed on, to
observe what I have done to improve the country, and hear what my
accusers have to say; and then let them go into the Pale, and hear
what the people say of your soldiers, with their horses, and their
dogs, and their concubines. Within this year and a half, three hundred
farmers are come from the English Pale to live in my country, where
they can be safe.

'Please your Majesty, your Majesty's money here is not so good as your
money in England, and will not pass current there. Please your Majesty
to send me three thousand pounds in English money to pay my expenses
in going over to you, and when I come back I will pay your deputy
three thousand pounds Irish, such as you are pleased to have current
here. Also I will ask your Majesty to marry me to some gentlewoman of
noble blood meet for my vocation. I will make Ireland all that your
Majesty wishes for you. I am very sorry your Majesty is put to such
expense. If you will trust it to me, I will undertake that in three
years you will have a revenue, where now you have continual loss.'

Shane suspected evil designs on the part of the English, and not
without reason. The object of the summons to England was to detain him
there with 'gentle talk' till Sussex could return to his command with
an English army powerful enough to subjugate Ulster. For this purpose
such preparations were made by the English Government in men and
money, 'that rebellion should have no chance; and,' says Mr. Froude,
'so careful was the secresy which was observed, to prevent Shane from
taking alarm, that a detachment of troops sent from Portsmouth sailed
with sealed orders, and neither men nor officers knew that Ireland was
their destination till they had rounded the Land's End.' The English
plans were well laid. Kildare, whom Elizabeth most feared, had
accepted her invitation to go to London, and thus prevented any
movement in the south, while O'Donel was prepared to join the English
army on its advance into Ulster; and the Scots, notwithstanding their
predilection for Mary Stuart, were expected to act as Argyle and his
sister should direct. But Shane had a genius for intrigue as well
as Elizabeth, and he was far more rapid than her generals in the
execution of his plans. By a master-stroke of policy he disconcerted
their arrangements. He had previously asked the Earl of Argyle to give
him his daughter in marriage, in order that he might strengthen his
alliance with the Ulster Scots. It is true that she had been already
married to his rival, O'Donel; but that was a small difficulty in his
way. The knot was tied, but he had no hesitation in cutting it with
his sword. 'The countess' was well educated for her time. She was also
a Protestant, and the government had hopes that her influence would be
favourable to 'civility and the Reformation' among the barbarians of
the north. But whatever advantages the presence of the fair Scottish
missionary might bring, Shane O'Neill did not see why they should
not be all his own, especially as he had managed somehow to produce
a favourable impression on her heart. Accordingly he made a dash
into Tyrconnel, and carried off both the lady and her husband to his
stronghold, Shane's Castle, on the banks of Lough Neagh. Her Scotch
guard, though fifteen hundred strong, had offered no resistance.
O'Donel was shut up in a prison, and his wife became the willing
paramour of the captor. 'The affront to McConnell was forgiven or
atoned for by private arrangement, and the sister of the Earl of
Argyle--an educated woman for her time, not unlearned in Latin,
speaking French and Italian, counted sober, wise, and no less
subtle--had betrayed herself and her husband. The O'Neills, by this
last manoeuvre, became supreme in Ulster. Deprived of their head, the
O'Donels sank into helplessness. The whole force of the province, such
as it was, with the more serious addition of several thousand Scotch
marauders, was at Shane's disposal, and thus provided, he thought
himself safe in defying England to do its worst.'[1]

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