ANGLO-NORMAN. ANCIENT IRISH FAMILIES. PLATE I. FITZGERALD, — LINE OF OFFALLY, KILDARE AND LEINSTER. ORIGIN OF LORDSHIP IN FEUDAL TENURE OF LANDS AND LOCAL USAGE. EARLDOM GREAT ANCESTOR ON Male SIDE, Walter Fitzotho, CASTELLAN OF WINDSOR TEMPORA WILLIAM THE 1 & 2 Maurice, his eldest son. 1177. Gerald, eldest, Patriarch of house of Kildare. CONQUEROR. Gerald, his eldest son, married Nesta, daughter of Rhasa, Prince of South Wales. The line of Earls of Kildare is continued in direct male succession to Gerald, 7th earl, the most prominent Irishman in Ireland during his long life. Of the intervening earls the only one whose life presents anything worthy of notice being Maurice, 4th earl, knighted by Edward III. for his valour at the siege of Calais, governor of Ireland 1350, and twice afterwards; and Thomas, 7th earl, lord-deputy 1454 and in 1468. The line is again continued in direct male succession to James, 19th earl, whom George II., (in consideration of his ancient and noble descent, his offer to raise a regiment at his own expense on the occasion of the rebellion of 1745, and of his marriage with a lady of the royal branch of Lennox,) created a British peer, and raised to the dignity of Marquis of Kildare, Earl of Offally, and Duke of Leinster in Ireland, 1766. Of the intervening earls, his father, Robert, the 18th earl, was conspicuous for his public services (having been lord justice, chancellor, and a commissioner of the great seal in Ireland), and for his benevolence and piety. Dukes of Leinster, Marquises and Earls of Kildare, and Earls of Offally. The crest and supporters were first assumed by Thomas, called 6th feudal L. O., called "The Ape," from an escape he had when an infant. Of the patent of Earldom of Kildare, which is given at length in Jacob, Selden says, "It is the most ancient form of creation I have seen. "3 THE IRISH NATION. TRANSITION. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. Retrospect Early Religion not that of Rome State of Ireland in the previous Period -Anglo-Norman Conquest-Reign of Mary-Elizabeth. To obtain a just insight into the social or political history of Ireland, during the period on which we must now enter, it will be necessary to recall from the past some general conditions which have still, through all our periods, had a main influence to govern, or chiefly shape the course of events. The consideration is the more essential, as most of the seeming difficulties and misrepresentations which have obscured our history, have their source in opposite views on those fundamental elements the social condition and early religion of the native Irish. For the first of these main considerations, we have to observe, that even so late as the 17th century, there existed in Ireland no class, to which, in any modern sense, the term "people" could be intelligibly applied. There was no constitutional structure of civil government— or social order between the lord and the serf. The common people were slaves to chiefs, with few exceptions, little less savage than themselves. As such a statement must seem to many inconsistent with the traditional exaggerations of the annalist or the bard, it may be useful to recall the truth, even as it becomes transparent through the very surface of the tradition itself. And it will also be clearly apparent, that the boasted learning of the early Hibernian saints and doctors, was wholly confined to those learned individuals themselves; and, in no way indicates the state of the people, rich or poor. They were teachers without a school-speculative disputants in religion or philosophy, travelling to learn or teach. The chiefs and the people had other objects to attend to; the incessant and murderous contentions of the petty toparchs who robbed each other, and trampled on their "hereditary bondsmen." The frequent invasions from the Dane or Norwegian, invited by such a state of things, ever tended to repress the first germs of civilization, and drive the arts and muses from the shore. One high and pure civilizing influence found its way-impeded and II. Ir. finally interrupted by the same causes-an imperfectly planted Christian church; neutralized by the popular ignorance and nearly primitive absence of moral or social culture. The early, and, it is said, apostolical teaching of Christianity, notwithstanding these impediments, like sunrise on the hilltops, cast its illumination, to a more than partial extent, among the superior classes, and there soon began a rich spread of moral and doctrinal intelligence, strangely contrasted with the general condition of the people and with the rude simplicity of the age. In a few generations the doctors and disputants of the "Isle of Saints" were heard in foreign schools, and the earlier heresies and disputes of the first Christian churches were earnestly discussed among the mountains of Kerry, or the rocky isles of the western shore. And for many centuries, while heresies of all forms and grades of degeneracy were accumulating in Christian churches, the saints and bishops of Ireland, with small exception, adhered to their first unadulterated faith. Of these contests, and of the earlier disciples and doctors whose names they rendered memorable in high tradition, we have given several full notices in a former stage of our history. Two centuries later we trace the slow beginning of a considerable change. It was then that the great metropolitan city of the west, having in the revolutions of continental Europe gathered influence, began to claim supremacy over the nations. As a natural consequence the emissaries and monks of the church began to be mixed among the Irish; a result more natural, as they had as yet not departed widely from the common standard of faith. We only mention this as accounting for the confusion of some more recent antiquarian writers on the ancient church of the country. It was after the Anglo-Norman invasion, and late in the 12th century, that Henry II. conceived the policy of availing himself of the powerful alliance of the Pope. He had speculated on the defenceless condition of the country, and through his chaplain opened a negotiation with Pope Adrian, in which he urged the fitness of reducing Ireland to Romish jurisdiction, and offered his own services for that laudable end. Adrian gladly closed with the welcome proposal. His power in Ireland was yet unacknowledged; the people had latterly given doubtful and wavering signs of acknowledgment. Much had still been gained since 1152. when Eugenius III. had sent over Cardinal Papirius, who introduced several canons of the Roman See, and established generally a communion with Rome. Henry undertook to reduce the nominal to a real and canonical subjection, and to secure a tribute for the Pope. In return, he was rewarded with the gift of the island, by virtue of a power latterly assumed by the Pope to dispose of kingdoms. During the period to which we have thus looked back, it cannot be truly said that there existed many of the social or political incidents which indicate progress towards the civil institutions of law, government, or commerce of modern ages. The most decided steps in advance may be traced in connection with the invaders from Denmark and Norway, whose settlement in both of the British isles brought in many elements of civilization. Their general influence is however more decidedly to be found marked in early English antiquity. After their first reduction, in the reign of O'Melachlin, they were again allowed to land and settle peaceably under Sitric, under many professions of friendly conduct and commercial benefit to the nation. They were permitted to gain possession of the chief cities-Waterford, Limerick, and Dublin. They soon recovered strength, and kept the country in successive outbreaks of war and predatory excursion through the greater part of the ninth century, to the famous battle of Clontarf, when they were finally defeated with great slaughter by Brian Baromhe. We have already given the main details of these events, they are here thus cursorily adverted to as among the few incidents which contributed to the state of Ireland as it existed at the commencement and during the first reigns of the period of the history of which we must now offer the main events. The most important of the cities, and, generally, the elements of civic or corporate organization obtained form and construction in the outset from the habits and commercial genius of that adventurous race. Their occupation was nevertheless too transient to have communicated any impulse to the nation, but that which it did not want, their spirit of outrage and plunder. The Irish people were during that period little in condition to receive improvement, or the Danish settler in condition to impart it. We have to notice the events of a much later period. Events, which may not be characterized as prosperous, nor to be contemplated with humane satisfaction, yet, in which the earlier indications of genuine progress and the civilized future-long after to be approached, become slowly and painfully traceable. It is to be still felt through every reign of the Anglo-Norman kings, through the period of one immediate division, that we are still engaged in following the deeds and fortunes of an unreclaimed people, which we might perhaps describe as rather fallen than raised from their pristine condition; and this we should affirm with less reserve, could we rely on the poetic and legendary relation of the bardic annalists of their primitive heroic ages. The succession of events chiefly occupying the memoirs of our latter period display no advance in the general condition; some political changes were such as to materially aggravate the disorders we have noted. Nor can we present any very redeeming incident but one, itself the result of the most awful calamities which can befall a nation -rebellions, massacres, and judgments, forfeitures and exiles,—the results, to a remote posterity, from early causes, which had long continued to operate. The constitution of the country, if the term may be so applied, abounded with irreconcilable conditions, and, as it stood, was incapable of being transformed into any polity susceptible of improvement, unless by changes too comprehensive to be effected without opposition, offence, and hence fatal malversation and abuse. The Irish natives, though among the earliest civilized races of Europe, had from many causes hung back in the twilight of antiquity, till, in the course of human progress, their antique customs had become barbarism, retaining on its wild features somewhat of the "hairbreadth sentimental traee" of the Caledonian muse, without the refinement. Rude and fierce, and torn into factions by the continual dissensions of their petty kings, they long continued to degenerate,-warping for many generations further from the pale of progress. From the first inroads of Danish invasion, their condition was sinking into dilapidation, giving |