xii Ill-usage of Englishmen in Spanish prisons The Channel and the Thames ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... The ports of England closed against the Flemings Sufferings of English prisoners ... ... ... ... CHAPTER VII. THE currency speculations of the Government of CHAP VII the acces Queen Edward the Sixth had not recommended to the Irish the morals of the Reformation; the plays of Bishop Bale had failed to convert them to its theology. On the accession of Mary the Protestant missionaries had fled from their duties, being unambitious of martyrdom, and the English service which had been forced into the churches disappeared without sound or effort. The monasteries of the four shires, wherever the estates had remained with the crown, were rebuilt and reinhabited; Ireland on beyond the border of the Pale the Irish chieftains fol- sion of lowed the example, wherever piety or superstition were Mary. stronger than avarice. In the south the religious houses had been protected from spoliation by the Earl of Desmond, and the monks had been secretly supported; with the change of government they were reinstated in their homes, and the country reverted to its natural condition. The English garrisons cessed 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 ELIZ. II. B CHAP VII 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 the Eighth the circuits of the Judges had been extended; and with the Brehon law came anarchy as its inseparable attendant. 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 every one 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 all together;' 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 good and bad qualities of the people were thus described by a correspondent of the Council. "The appearance and outward behaviour of the Irish sheweth 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 1 The disorders of the Irishry, 1559.-Irish MSS. Rolls House. devil. They are worshippers of images and open CHAP VII 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 The Irish lord's or master's hand, which whoso forsweareth is sure Commandto 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 or mother so much as they do reverence strangers. 'For every murder 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 laws 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 whom they favour; with him they will witness in right and wrong. They covet not their neighbours' goods, 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." The condition of the Pale was more miserable than The disorders of the Irishry, 1559.-Irish MSS. Rolls House. and the Ten ments. |