the land. And therefore, although the lord were become the king's tenant, his country was no whit reformed thereby, but remained in the former barbarism and desolation. But now (he continues) since his Majesty came to the Crown, two special commissions have been sent out of England for the settling and quieting of all the possessions in Ireland, the one for accepting surrenders of the Irish and degenerate English, and for regranting estates unto them, according to the course of common law: the other for strengthening of defective titles. In the execution of which commissions there hath ever been had a special care to settle and secure the under-tenants: to the end there might be a repose and establishment of every subject's estate: lord and tenant, freeholder and farmer, throughout the Kingdom. Then he describes in these clear words the course taken under James I.: Upon surrenders this course hath been held from the beginning. When an Irish lord doth offer to surrender his country, his surrender is not immediately accepted, but a commission is first awarded to inquire of three special points:First, of the quantity and limits of the land whereof he is the reputed owner. Next, how much himself doth hold in demesne, and how much is possessed by his tenants and followers. And thirdly, what Customs' duties and services he doth yearly receive out of those lands. This inquisition being made and returned, the lands which are found to be the lord's proper possessions in demesne are drawn into a particular; and his Irish duties, as coscherings, sessings, rents of butter and oatmeal, and the like, are reasonably valued and reduced into certain sums of money, to be paid yearly in lieu thereof. This being done the surrender is accepted, and thereupon a grant is passed not of the whole country, as was used in former times, but of those lands only which are found in the lord's possession, and of those certain sums of money, as rents issuing out of the rest. But the lands which are found to be possessed by the tenants are left unto them respectively charged with these certain rents only, in lieu of all uncertain Irish exactions. In like manner, upon all grants which have passed by virtue of the commission for defective titles, the Commissioners have taken special caution for preservation of the estates of all particular tenants. No words could be clearer than these. But it will be observed that Sir John Davis had in the earlier quotation spoken of chiefs of countries and chiefs of septs; i.e. there were septs under septs, and so chiefs under chiefs; and thus the question might possibly arise whether this careful plan of distinguishing between demesne and tenants' land was applied further than as between the superior chief of the 'country' and the sub-chief of the sept,—whether, in fact, the inferior chief of the sept inhabiting such and such townlands had his demesne land separated in the same way as the superior chief from the tenants' land under fixed rent? Now an actual example will make this clear. The members of the inferior sept were, it will be seen, made into actual freeholders, subject only to a quit-rent. In a letter to the Earl of Salisbury, written in 1606,8 Sir John Davis describes what was done in the settlement of County Monaghan. And in this letter he gives the names of the townlands granted to McMahon, the chief, to be held in demesne, with rents from so many 'Sir John Davis's Discovery of the State of Ireland, 1612, p. 273. 8 His Historical Tracts, ed. 1786. other townlands granted to other chiefs of inferior septs, who also have so many townlands or parts of townlands granted to them in demesne, while the sub-tenants, members of the septs, had one or more tates or homesteads allotted to them in freehold, subject only to the quit-rents to their chief, part of which went to the king.9 In the Calendars of State Papers of James I.10 can be traced the gradual accumulation of evidence which induced Sir John Davis to take this view of the position of the inferior members of the septs. It was the only natural view to take when the fact was once fully grasped that under the sept system of tribal ownership the land belonged to the sept, of which the chief was only the elected head. He had, as we have said, the choice whether he would treat them as analogous to English commercial tenant-farmers or as analogous to English copyhold tenants. He chose the latter alternative, only instead of making them copyholders, requiring future enfranchisement, he preferred to make them freeholders at once, subject only to fixed quit-rents. And let it be understood that this careful process of converting the inferior members of the septs into freeholders had nothing to do with the plantation of Ulster or any other plantation. It was the process applied to the purely Irish estates before the opportunity for the plantation of Ulster had arisen. These are Sir John Davis's own words: And thus we see how the greatest part of the possessions (as well of the Irish as of the English) in Leinster, Connaught, and Munster, are settled and secured since his Majesty came to the Crown; whereby the hearts of the people are so settled, not only to live in peace, but raised and encouraged to build, to plant, to give better education to their children, and to improve the commodities of their lands; whereby the yearly value thereof is already increased double of that it was within these few years, and is likely daily to rise higher till it amounts to the price of our land in England."1 To go one step further. It will hardly be disputed that if this legal arrangement attempted by the law officers of James I. had really been effected fully in fact, and had peaceably continued and remained under the recognition and protection of the English law, the result Iwould have been that the lords of Irish manors would have been found to-day the legal and absolute owners of their demesne lands only, with such additions thereto as might have been awarded to them upon the enclosure of the townlands in lieu of their manorial quitrents over the rest; while the mass of their peasant tenants would by this time, under Enclosure and Enfranchisement Acts, have become practically the absolute owners of their holdings, like English copyholders and Continental peasant proprietors. But the course of history did not run thus smoothly on a royal road. In the first place, though the inferior members of the septs may have been satisfied or, as Sir John Davis says, even comforted' See list of persons to which the several 'tates' were given, Cal. State Papers, Jas. I., 1606-8, p. 164. 10 1606-9, pp. 20, 23, 155, 211, 386, &c. 11 Discovery of Ireland, p. 279. by the notion of legal protection and the substitution of fixed freeholds for their uncertain holdings, yet naturally it was a sore blow to a chief to be restricted to his demesne lands and to lose his personal rule and his capricious and unlimited rights over a multitude of dependent followers. It was, in fact, too great a change to be effected suddenly. The habits of a thousand years were not to be set aside by a stroke of the pen or by the mere wording of the patents. Mischief very soon began to mar the completeness of the AttorneyGeneral's settlement of Ireland. First there was the rebellion of two great Ulster chieftains, followed by the English plantation of Ulster. And let it be clearly understood that by this plantation the work of Sir John Davis was in great measure set aside. Quite inadequate provision was made for the native Irish. The rights of the newly created freeholders were in many places roughly set aside to make room for the new English and Scotch planters. And these latter covenanted on paper to allow no Irish tenants on their estates, but to establish in their place English tenants under certain tenures and with fixed rents. But, in fact, the restrictions were futile. Before many years were over the Irish tenants were back upon their old lands, and the new landlords neglected to give the certain tenures. Then came the more general rebellion of 1641, its suppression by Cromwell, and the re-settlement of Ireland under a fresh race of Scotch and English landowners. By the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland, in theory and in law, nearly the whole land of Ireland under Irish owners was confiscated, and the whole Irish nation, like the sept of the Greames, was ordered to be bodily transplanted to Connaught. 6 But this was more easily said than done. First, exceptions were made to this terrible rule, and very soon the order of transplantation was confined to those only who were proprietors' and known rebels. Some landowners, it is known, were transplanted into Connaught with their tenants; in some cases the tenants remained behind when the landlords were transplanted; and no doubt the wholesale confiscation did disturb the legal title of the peasant holdings: so that in a strictly legal sense we must take it as settled, by the after course of the law, that the tenancies in dry law began again de novo. Thenceforward, the law rightly or wrongly treated the tenants, not as Sir John Davis had treated them as freeholders subject to a quit rent, not as peasant tenants with hereditary rights, but simply as commercial tenants under contracts, or, if without contracts, then as mere tenants at will. But again facts were stronger than the law. The legal confiscation on paper of all the previously recognised rights inherent in the peasant tenures, did not annihilate them in point of fact any more than the paper decree of banishment across the Shannon transplanted the peasant tenants into Connaught. Fortunately, evidence is accessible, of the very best possible kind, proving that the peasant tenants were still, after the Rebellion, in occu pation of their holdings, in spite of the decree of banishment, and still possessed of actual if not legal interests in their holdings, in spite of the general confiscation. For what evidence could possibly be better evidence as to the actual position of the tenants after the Rebellion, than that of the Government official who was sent all through Ireland to fix the boundaries and define the estates of the new owners and to assess their value? This official was Sir William Petty, and his report and survey are still extant. Let us apply a crucial test of the tenants' position. In surveying and valuing the manors did Sir William Petty find the peasant tenants still on the land; and if so, did he in valuing the lands of the new landlords include or exclude the tenants' interests, or how did he treat them? Now, the plain answer is first that he did find peasant tenants on the manors. And an equally plain answer can be given to the second question. Sir William Petty, in valuing the total value of the land of Irish landlords after the change was made, excepted from the gross value the value of the tenants' interests in their holdings, thus clearly showing that he considered that the tenants were not merely modern commercial tenant farmers, but that they were possessed still of permanent and valuable interests in the land, subject to which in fact, however it might be in law, the new landlords took possession of their manors. This is his valuation: 7,500,000 acres of good, and 1,500,000 acres of coarse, making The benefit of leases and the value of tenants' improvements upon So that he estimated the value of the tenants' interests in the land at about one-third of the whole value of the land of Ireland-i.e., not at one-third of the value of the land they occupied, but of the value of the whole manor under which they were tenants, demesne land included. There remained to the landlord the other two-thirds. And that the cabins of the peasantry were valued as belonging to their one-third share of the land is clear from his urging that the tenants (not the landlords) should be encouraged to reform their cabins and build better ones. Sir W. Petty estimated the population after the Rebellion at 1,100,000; 300,000 Protestants or English, 800,000 Papists or Irish. The said 1,100,000 people do live in about 200,000 families or houses, whereof there are about 16,000 which have more than one chimney in each, and about 12 Sir William Petty's Political Anatomy of Ireland. 24,000 which have but one; all the other houses, being 160,000, are wretched nasty cabins without chimney, window, or doorshut, even worse than those of the savage Americans, and wholly unfit for making merchantable butter and cheese, or the manufactures of woollen, linen, or leather. We may assume that the 160,000 nasty cabins' were mostly those of the native Irish, according well with the number of homesteads in the estimate of 1598. And now, when it is recollected that these little peasant homesteads represented not so much arable as little pasture farms, it becomes clear at once that when Sir W. Petty says the 160,000 cabins of the native Irish were unfit for dairies and manufactures, he meant that they were unfit for the purposes for which they were used. Hence, then, we may picture these peasant tenants after the Rebellion as having, to a great extent, got back to their old holdings and as still possessed at least of some farming stock-some few head of cattle saved from the herds of their old sept, and some few sheep grazing on the common pastures; patches of oats, and of flax, and perhaps already of potatoes scattered about on the run-rig' system round the cluster of cabins on the townland. We see the butter and the cheese made up in the smoke and dirt of the cabins, some beef and bacon cured for winter use or sale, a few skins stretched and tanned rudely into leather. We hear the whirr of the spinning wheel and the rattle of the rough wooden loom, by which the wool and flax are spun and woven. No wonder the butter, and cheese, and cloth, and leather seemed scarcely merchantable' to the eyes of Sir W. Petty, but then their so appearing to him when he made his survey is the best evidence we could have that a homely industry eked out the produce of the peasant holdings. Wretched as they seemed to him, he set down the value of the peasants' interests in them at one-third of the whole value of the country. ... Out of the 800,000 Irish, 600,000 'lived' (he said) 'very simply in the cabins above mentioned.' And he continues, 'As for the interest of these poorer Irish it is manifestly to be transmuted into English. . . . It is their interest to deal with the English for leases, for time, and upon clear conditions, which being performed they are absolute freemen rather than [as formerly under their Irish chieftains] to stand always liable to the humour and caprice of their landlord, and to have everything taken away from them which he pleases to fancy. He counted, therefore, on the new landlords respecting the tenants' interests. But alas! when power was given to the new settlers to create manors and reserve tenures to themselves, non obstante the Statute of Quia Emptores, no care was taken of these peasant tenants. Holdings which a few years before had been at law freeholds subject only to quit rents, were now left at law at the mercy of the new landlords, without the controlling customs which in English manors gave fixity of tenure to copyhold tenants. And, as was natural, the constant tendency of the new landlords was to push up the quit rents to rack rents, so as to transfer to the landlord as much as possible of that |