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An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 by Mary Frances Cusack

M >> Mary Frances Cusack >> An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800




M.F.C.
ST. CLARE'S CONTENT, KENMARK, CO. KERRY,
May 8th, 1868.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] The Rev. U. Burke, of St. Jarlath's College, Tuam, has a note on
this subject, in a work which he is at this moment passing through the
press, and which he kindly permits me to publish. He says: "This book
[the "Illustrated History of Ireland"] ought to be in the hands of every
young student and of every young Irish maiden attending the convent
schools. Oh, for ten thousand Irish ladies knowing the history of
Ireland! How few know anything of it! The present volume, by Sister
Francis Clare, is an atoning sacrifice for this sin of neglect."

I am aware that the price of the "Illustrated History of Ireland," even
in its present form, although it is offered at a sacrifice which no
bookseller would make, is an obstacle to its extensive use as a school
history. We purpose, however, before long, to publish a history for the
use of schools, at a very low price, and yet of a size to admit of
sufficient expansion for the purpose. Our countrymen must, however,
remember that only a very large number of orders can enable the work to
be published as cheaply as it should be. It would save immense trouble
and expense, if priests, managers of schools, and the heads of colleges,
would send orders for a certain number of copies at once. If every
priest, convent, and college, ordered twelve copies for their schools,
the work could be put in hands immediately.




PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION.


The history of the different races who form an integral portion of the
British Empire, should be one of the most carefully cultivated studies
of every member of that nation. To be ignorant of our own history, is a
disgrace; to be ignorant of the history of those whom we govern, is an
injustice. We can neither govern ourselves nor others without a thorough
knowledge of peculiarities of disposition which may require restraint,
and of peculiarities of temperament which may require development. We
must know that water can extinguish fire, before it occurs to us to put
out a fire by the use of water. We must know that fire, when properly
used, is a beneficent element of nature, and one which can be used to
our advantage when properly controlled, before we shall attempt to avail
ourselves of it for a general or a particular benefit. I believe a time
has come when the Irish are more than ever anxious to study their
national history. I believe a time has come when the English nation, or
at least a majority of the English nation, are willing to read that
history without prejudice, and to consider it with impartiality.

When first I proposed to write a History of Ireland, at the earnest
request of persons to whose opinion. I felt bound to defer, I was
assured by many that it was useless; that Irishmen did not support Irish
literature; above all, that the Irish clergy were indifferent to it, and
to literature in general. I have since ascertained, by personal
experience, that this charge is utterly unfounded, though I am free to
admit it was made on what appeared to be good authority. It is certainly
to be wished that there was a more general love of reading cultivated
amongst the Catholics of Ireland, but the deficiency is on a fair way to
amendment. As a body, the Irish priesthood may not be devoted to
literature; but as a body, unquestionably they are devoted--nobly
devoted--to the spread of education amongst their people.

With regard to Englishmen, I cannot do better than quote the speech of
an English member of Parliament, Alderman Salomons, who has just
addressed his constituents at Greenwich in these words:--

"The state of Ireland will, doubtless, be a prominent subject of
discussion next session. Any one who sympathizes with distressed
nationalities in their struggles, must, when he hears of the
existence of a conspiracy in Ireland, similar to those combinations
which used to be instituted in Poland in opposition to Russian
oppression, be deeply humiliated. Let the grievances of the Irish
people be probed, and let them be remedied when their true nature
is discovered. Fenianism is rife, not only in Ireland, but also in
England, and an armed police required, which is an insult to our
liberty. I did not know much of the Irish land question, but I know
that measures have been over and over again brought into the House
of Commons with a view to its settlement, and over and over again
they have been cushioned or silently withdrawn. If the question can
be satisfactorily settled, why let it be so, and let us conciliate
the people of Ireland by wise and honorable means. The subject of
the Irish Church must also be considered. I hold in my hand an
extract from the report of the commissioner of the Dublin
_Freeman's Journal_, who is now examining the question. It stated
what will be to you almost incredible--namely, that the population
of the united dioceses of Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore is
370,978, and that of those only 13,000 are members of the
Established Church, while 340,000 are Roman Catholics. If you had
read of this state of things existing in any other country, you
would call out loudly against it. Such a condition of things, in
which large revenues are devoted, not for the good of the many, but
the few, if it does not justify Fenianism, certainly does justify a
large measure of discontent. I am aware of the difficulties in the
way of settling the question, owing to the fear of a collision
between Protestants and Catholics; but I think Parliament ought to
have the power to make the Irish people contented."

This speech, I believe, affords a fair idea of the opinion of educated
and unprejudiced Englishmen on the Irish question. They do not know much
about Irish history; they have heard a great deal about Irish
grievances, and they have a vague idea that there is something wrong
about the landlords, and something wrong about the ecclesiastical
arrangements of the country. I believe a careful study of Irish history
is essential to the comprehension of the Irish question; and it is
obviously the moral duty of every man who has a voice in the government
of the nation, to make himself master of the subject. I believe there
are honest and honorable men in England, who would stand aghast with
horror if they thoroughly understood the injustices to which Ireland has
been and _still is_ subject. The English, as a nation, profess the most
ardent veneration for liberty. To be a patriot, to desire to free one's
country, unless, indeed, that country happen to have some very close
connexion with their own, is the surest way to obtain ovations and
applause. It is said that circumstances alter cases; they certainly
alter opinions, but they do not alter facts. An Englishman applauds and
assists insurrection in countries where they profess to have for their
object the freedom of the individual or of the nation; he imprisons and
stifles it at home, where the motive is precisely similar, and the
cause, in the eyes of the insurgents at least, incomparably more valid.
But I do not wish to raise a vexed question, or to enter on political
discussions; my object in this Preface is simply to bring before the
minds of Englishmen that they have a duty to perform towards Ireland--a
duty which they cannot cast aside on others--a duty which it may be for
their interest, as well as for their honour, to fulfil. I wish to draw
the attention of Englishmen to those Irish grievances which are
generally admitted to exist, and which can only be fully understood by a
careful and unprejudiced perusal of Irish history, past and present.
Until grievances are thoroughly understood, they are not likely to be
thoroughly remedied. While they continue to exist, there can be no real
peace in Ireland, and English prosperity must suffer in a degree from
Irish disaffection.

It is generally admitted by all, except those who are specially
interested in the denial, that the Land question and the Church question
are the two great subjects which lie at the bottom of the Irish
difficulty. The difficulties of the Land question commenced in the reign
of Henry II.; the difficulties of the Church question commenced in the
reign of Henry VIII. I shall request your attention briefly to the
standpoints in Irish history from which we may take a clear view of
these subjects. I shall commence with the Land question, because I
believe it to be the more important of the two, and because I hope to
show that the Church question is intimately connected with it.

In the reign of Henry II., certain Anglo-Norman nobles came to Ireland,
and, partly by force and partly by intermarriages, obtained estates in
that country. Their tenure was the tenure of the sword. By the sword
they expelled persons whose families had possessed those lands for
centuries; and by the sword they compelled these persons, through
poverty, consequent on loss of property, to take the position of
inferiors where they had been masters. You will observe that this first
English settlement in Ireland was simply a colonization on a very small
scale. Under such circumstances, if the native population are averse to
the colonization, and if the new and the old races do not amalgamate, a
settled feeling of aversion, more or less strong, is established on both
sides. The natives hate the colonist, because he has done them a
grievous injury by taking possession of their lands; the colonist hates
the natives, because they are in his way; and, if he be possessed of
"land hunger," they are an impediment to the gratification of his
desires. It should be observed that there is a wide difference between
colonization and conquest The Saxons conquered what we may presume to
have been the aboriginal inhabitants of England; the Normans conquered
the Saxon: the conquest in both cases was sufficiently complete to
amalgamate the races--the interest of the different nationalities became
one. The Norman lord scorned the Saxon churl quite as contemptuously as
he scorned the Irish Celt; but there was this very important
difference--the interests of the noble and the churl soon became one;
they worked for the prosperity of their common country. In Ireland, on
the contrary, the interests were opposite. The Norman noble hated the
Celt as a people whom he could not subdue, but desired most ardently to
dispossess; the Celt hated the invader as a man most naturally will hate
the individual who is just strong enough to keep a wound open by his
struggles, and not strong enough to end the suffering by killing the
victim.

The land question commenced when Strongbow set his foot on Irish soil;
the land question will remain a disgrace to England, and a source of
misery to Ireland, until the whole system inaugurated by Strongbow has
been reversed. "At the commencement of the connexion between England and
Ireland," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, "the foundation was inevitably laid
for the fatal system of ascendency--a system under which the dominant
party were paid for their services in keeping down rebels by a monopoly
of power and emolument, and thereby strongly tempted to take care that
there should always be rebels to keep down." There is a fallacy or two
in this statement; but let it pass. The Irish were not rebels then,
certainly, for they were not under English dominion; but it is something
to find English writers expatiating on Irish wrongs; and if they would
only act as generously and as boldly as they speak, the Irish question
would receive an early and a most happy settlement.

For centuries Ireland was left to the mercy and the selfishness of
colonists. Thus, with each succeeding generation, the feeling of hatred
towards the English was intensified with each new act of injustice, and
such acts were part of the normal rule of the invaders. A lord deputy
was sent after a time to rule the country. Perhaps a more unfortunate
form of government could not have been selected for Ireland. The lord
deputy knew that he was subject to recall at any moment; he had neither
a personal nor a hereditary interest in the country. He came to make his
fortune there, or to increase it. He came to rule for his own benefit,
or for the benefit of his nation. The worst of kings has, at least, an
hereditary interest in the country which he governs; the best of lord
deputies might say that, if he did not oppress and plunder for himself,
other men would do it for themselves: why, then, should he be the loser,
when the people would not be gainers by his loss?

When parliaments began to be held, and when laws were enacted, every
possible arrangement was made to keep the two nations at variance, and
to intensify the hostility which already existed. The clergy were set at
variance. Irish priests were forbidden to enter certain monasteries,
which were reserved for the use of their English brethren; Irish
ecclesiastics were refused admission to certain Church properties in
Ireland, that English ecclesiastics might have the benefit of them.
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, when Viceroy of Ireland, issued a
proclamation, forbidding the "Irish by birth" even to come near his
army, until he found that he could not do without soldiers, even should
they have the misfortune to be Irish. The Irish and English were
forbidden to intermarry several centuries before the same bar was placed
against the union of Catholics and Protestants. The last and not the
least of the fearful series of injustices enacted, in the name of
justice, at the Parliament of Kilkenny, was the statute which denied,
which positively refused, the benefit of English law to Irishmen, and
equally forbid them to use the Brehon law, which is even now the
admiration of jurists, and which had been the law of the land for many
centuries.

If law could be said to enact that there should be no law, this was
precisely what was done at the memorable Parliament of Kilkenny. If
Irishmen had done this, it would have been laughed at as a Hibernicism,
or scorned as the basest villany; but it was the work of Englishmen, and
the Irish nation were treated as rebels if they attempted to resist. The
confiscation of Church property in the reign of Henry VIII., added a new
sting to the land grievance, and introduced a new feature in its
injustice. Church property had been used for the benefit of the poor far
more than for the benefit of its possessors. It is generally admitted
that the monks of the middle ages were the best and most considerate
landlords. Thousands of families were now cast upon the mercy of the new
proprietors, whose will was their only law; and a considerable number of
persons were deprived of the alms which these religious so freely
distributed to the sick and the aged. Poverty multiplied fearfully, and
discontent in proportion. You will see, by a careful perusal of this
history, that the descendants of the very men who had driven out the
original proprietors of Irish estates, were in turn driven out
themselves by the next set of colonists. It was a just retribution, but
it was none the less terrible. Banishments and confiscations were the
rule by which Irish property was administered. Can you be surprised that
the Irish looked on English adventurers as little better than robbers,
and treated them as such? If the English Government had made just and
equitable land laws for Ireland at or immediately after the Union, all
the miseries which have occurred since then might have been prevented.
Unfortunately, the men who had to legislate for Ireland are interested
in the maintenance of the unjust system; and there is an old proverb, as
true as it is old, about the blindness of those who do not wish to see.
Irish landlords, or at least a considerable number of Irish landlords,
are quite willing to admit that the existence of the Established Church
is a grievance. Irish Protestant clergymen, who are not possessed by an
anti-Popery crochet--and, thank God, there are few afflicted with that
unfortunate disease now--are quite free to admit that it is a grievance
for a tenant to be subject to ejection by his landlord, _even if he pays
his rent punctually_.


I believe the majority of Englishmen have not the faintest idea of the
way in which the Irish tenant is oppressed, _not by individuals_, for
there are many landlords in Ireland devoted to their tenantry, but by a
system. There are, however, it cannot be denied, cases of individual
oppression, which, if they occurred in any part of Great Britain, and
were publicly known, would raise a storm, from the Land's End to John o'
Groat's House, that would take something more than revolvers to settle.
As one of the great objects of studying the history of our own country,
is to enable us to understand and to enact such regulations as shall be
best suited to the genius of each race and their peculiar circumstances,
I believe it to be my duty as an historian, on however humble a scale,
not only to show how our present history is affected by the past, but
also to give you such a knowledge of our present history as may enable
you to judge how much the country is still suffering from _present
grievances_, occasioned by past maladministration. Englishmen are quite
aware that thousands of Irishmen leave their homes every year for a
foreign country; but they have little idea of the cause of this
emigration. Englishmen are quite aware that from time to time
insurrections break out in Ireland, which seem to them very absurd, if
not very wicked; but they do not know how much grave cause there is for
discontent in Ireland. The very able and valuable pamphlets which have
been written on these subjects by Mr. Butt and Mr. Levey, and on the
Church question by Mr. De Vere, do not reach the English middle classes,
or probably even the upper classes, unless their attention is directed
to them individually. The details of the sufferings and ejectments of
the Irish peasantry, which are given from time to time in the Irish
papers, and principally in the Irish _local_ papers, are never even
known across the Channel. How, then, can the condition of Ireland, or of
the Irish people, be estimated as it should? I believe there is a love
of fair play and manly justice in the English nation, which only needs
to be excited in order to be brought to act.

But ignorance on this subject is not wholly confined to the English. I
fear there are many persons, even in Ireland, who are but imperfectly
acquainted with the working of their own land laws, if, indeed, what
sanctions injustice deserves the name of law. To avoid prolixity, I
shall state very briefly the position of an Irish tenant at the present
day, and I shall show (1) how this position leads to misery, (2) how
misery leads to emigration, and (3) how this injustice recoils upon the
heads of the perpetrators by leading to rebellion. First, the position
of an Irish tenant is simply this: he is rather worse off than a slave.
I speak advisedly. In Russia, the proprietors of large estates worked by
slaves, are obliged to feed and clothe their slaves; in Ireland, it
quite depends on the will of the proprietor whether he will let his
lands to his tenants on terms which will enable them to feed their
families on the coarsest food, and to clothe them in the coarsest
raiment If a famine occurs--and in some parts of Ireland famines are of
annual occurrence--the landlord is not obliged to do anything for his
tenant, but the tenant _must_ pay his rent. I admit there are humane
landlords in Ireland; but these are questions of fact, not of feeling.
It is a most flagrant injustice that Irish landlords should have the
power of dispossessing their tenants if they pay their rents. But this
is not all; although the penal laws have been repealed, the power of the
landlord over the conscience of his tenant is unlimited. It is true he
cannot apply bodily torture, except, indeed, the torture of starvation,
but he can apply mental torture. It is in the power of an Irish landlord
to eject his tenant if he does not vote according to his wishes. A man
who has no conscience, has no moral right to vote; a man who tyrannizes
over the conscience of another, should have no legal right. But there is
yet a deeper depth. I believe you will be lost in amazement at what is
yet to come, and will say, as Mr. Young said of penal laws in the last
century, that they were more "fitted for the meridian of Barbary." You
have heard, no doubt, of wholesale evictions; they are of frequent
occurrence in Ireland--sometimes from political motives, because the
poor man will not vote with his landlord; sometimes from religious
motives, because the poor man will not worship God according to his
landlord's conscience; sometimes from selfish motives, because his
landlord wishes to enlarge his domain, or to graze more cattle. The
motive does not matter much to the poor victim. He is flung out upon the
roadside; if he is very poor, he may die there, or he may go to the
workhouse, but he must not be taken in, even for a time, by any other
family on the estate. The Irish Celt, with his warm heart and generous
impulses, would, at all risks to himself, take in the poor outcasts, and
share his poverty with them; but the landlord could not allow this. The
commission of one evil deed necessitates the commission of another. An
Irish gentleman, who has no personal interest in land, and is therefore
able to look calmly on the question, has been at the pains to collect
instances of this tyranny, in his _Plea for the Celtic Race._ I shall
only mention one as a sample. In the year 1851, on an estate which was
at the time supposed to be one of the most fairly treated in Ireland,
"the agent of the property had given public notice to the tenantry that
expulsion from their farms would be the penalty inflicted on them, if
they harboured _any one_ not resident on the estate. The penalty was
enforced against a widow, for giving food and shelter _to a destitute
grandson of twelve years old_. The child's mother at one time held a
little dwelling, from which she was expelled; his father was dead. He
found a refuge with his grandmother, who was ejected from her farm for
harbouring the poor boy." When such things can occur, we should not hear
anything more about the Irish having only "sentimental grievances." The
poor child was eventually driven from house to house. He stole a
shilling and a hen--poor fellow!--what else could he be expected to do?
He wandered about, looking in vain for shelter from those who dared not
give it. He was expelled with circumstances of peculiar cruelty from one
cabin. He was found next morning, cold, stiff, and dead, on the ground
outside. The poor people who had refused him shelter, were tried for
their lives. They were found guilty of manslaughter _only_, in
consideration of the agent's order. The agent was not found guilty of
anything, nor even tried. The landlord was supposed to be a model
landlord, and his estates were held up at the very time as models; yet
evictions had been fearfully and constantly carried out on them. Mr.
Butt has well observed: "The rules of the estate are often the most
arbitrary and the most sternly enforced upon great estates, the property
of men of the highest station, upon which rents are moderate, and no
harshness practised to the tenantry, who implicitly submit." Such
landlords generally consider emigration the great remedy for the evils
of Ireland. They point to their own well-regulated and well-weeded
estates; but they do not tell you all the human suffering it cost to
exile those who were turned out to make room for large dairy farms, or
all the quiet tyranny exercised over those who still remain. Neither
does it occur to them that their successors may raise these moderate
rents at a moment's notice; and if their demands are not complied with,
he may eject these "comfortable farmers" without one farthing of
compensation for all their improvements and their years of labour.

I have shown how the serfdom of the Irish tenant leads to misery. But
the subject is one which would require a volume. No one can understand
the depth of Irish misery who has not lived in Ireland, and taken pains
to become acquainted with the habits and manner of life of the lower
orders. The tenant who is kept at starvation point to pay his landlord's
rent, has no means of providing for his family. He cannot encourage
trade; his sons cannot get work to do, if they are taught trades.
Emigration or the workhouse is the only resource. I think the efforts
which are made by the poor in Ireland to get work are absolutely
unexampled, and it is a cruel thing that a man who is willing to work
should not be able to get it. I know an instance in which a girl
belonging to a comparatively respectable family was taken into service,
and it was discovered that for years her only food, and the only food of
her family, was dry bread, and, as an occasional luxury, weak tea. So
accustomed had she become to this wretched fare, that she actually could
not even eat an egg. She and her family have gone to America; and I have
no doubt, after a few years, that the weakened organs will recover their
proper tone, with the gradual use of proper food.

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Murder One closing so did we commit this crime?
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

Poetry Workshop creature features

For many years my local corner shop displayed a large sign in its window telling local residents to "use us or lose us!" It always looked a rather toothless threat to me. After all, if I didn't use them, what difference would it make to me if they weren't there? And surely a corner shop, one that had been there for years, would have enough customers to survive without recourse to such apocalyptic warning? But it didn't and was soon converted into flats.

This community shop was destroyed not so much by the pressures of the supermarkets or people's commuting patterns, but simply by customer apathy. It's something to think about as crime writers and readers across the world mourn the imminent passing of Maxim Jakubowski's celebrated Charing Cross Road bookshop in London, Murder One.

Apathy is a strange word to connect to a bookstore that thrives on passion. It's noticeable when you walk through the door, when you speak to the friendly, knowledgeable staff, when you look at the shelves and see the vast range of titles on offer. This isn't your regular kind of bookstore: the first time I visited spent a whole lunch break looking up and down, from floor to ceiling from table to table; it was an hour that changed my perception of both crime writing and of bookselling.

Murder One was – and for a few weeks will remain – a shop that took crime seriously. Not in the sense that it intellectualised it, or made unsubstantiated claims for its importance, but in the way that it treated crime writing with the respect it was due. With a genre that has so many off-shoots, branches and sub-genres, it took a shop of Murder One's calibre to show just how diverse, interesting and mentally stimulating crime could be – far more than the guilty pleasure I had, until then, considered it.

Thanks to judicious recommendations, enticing table displays and hours of foraging among the stacks, I discovered writers that I would never have picked up, let alone read. You could always get the latest blockbuster, but delve a little deeper and you'd find books that were not stocked anywhere else, novels that, like the perfect crime, were hidden from public view. The Martin Beck novels by Sjöwall & Wahlöö – probably my favourite sequence of novels in any genre – were introduced to me via Murder One, as were Kem Nunn, Sue Grafton, and Henning Mankell. It's also the staff of Murder One who piqued my interest in the inimitable Fred Vargas, and I can't thank them enough for the introduction.

Inclusive and without snobbery, Murder One amply demonstrated that the best bookshops are places not just of commerce, but of community; places that make feel you belong. It's the kind of store that bibliophiles dream about: well-stocked, well-staffed and shabby enough to lose days browsing within. It's just unfortunate that such shops don't have enough paying customers to keep them afloat, or that these customers visit all too infrequently – something of which I'm certainly guilty.

These kinds of shops are facing a long, bloody battle – and one which, without significant reinforcements, they are likely to lose. As we hear of the travesty of another brilliant independent going down, we'll mourn the loss, wring our hands and damn Amazon and the supermarkets and Waterstone's. Yet perhaps the most important detail we'll probably keep under wraps: the last time we actually spent any money there.

Murder One closing its doors for the final time is undoubtedly a .38 shell for independent bookshops, but whether it's body blow or a warning shot all depends upon us, the consumers. No one, no matter how iconic or established, can exist on fond memories alone: just ask Woolworths. Use these shops now, because it doesn't take a master sleuth to deduce what will happen if we don't.

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