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 governmentor 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.

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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

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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 trace" 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

birth to ruins and round towers. And when, after the Anglo-Norman invasion, it became a question how their fallen position could be retrieved, how it might be reduced into a portion of the modern imperfectly civilized world, and raised from a condition abject for themselves, dangerous for England, of being a mere landing-place for enemies, an approach for foreign intrigue,-it soon became too apparent that one course alone was practically effective. It was one full of difficulties and objectionable consequences, not to be adopted without leaving behind a surviving enmity of the worst kind,-the enmity of races. The disposition of property, the laws of inheritance, the distribution of power, the civil jurisdiction, with the prejudices and customs of every class, were, as they stood, unfavourable to regular government, common as they were to peace or constitutional freedom. There was nowhere power to remedy these evils by peaceful means. The nation, half conquered, had been left to flounder on like a wounded bird that could neither fly nor walk, escape nor resist. It was full of conflicting elements: two races were hostile to each other-two laws clashed-two powers strove for mastery-two religions cursed each other;-ills partially, and but partially, redressed by the only remedies which could be found applicable, yet which no less tended to perpetuate than to assuage them.

During this period there cannot be traced the regular form or working of any civil constitution, beyond the imperfect administration of criminal law and financial imposition by the legislative council, afterwards to occupy so important a position in Irish history, and so largely modify the national condition and the train of events. From the several occasional and incidental allusions to this essential estate of free government, it is not easy to fix the period of its institution, its earliest privileges and constitution. We meet it first very much in the form of a council of ecclesiastics and other persons having rank and authority, assembled to consult on local or at most provincial interests. Under successive monarchs, from the reign of Henry, its constitution was by slow degrees improved, both in authority and the composition of members. These were long the persons of noble rank, summoned by the king or by his lieutenant for some special occasion;-there was not, and, properly speaking, could not have been, a House of borough representation. For long no boroughs existed, until created by successive kings of the Norman descent. The first House of Commons seems to have been in 1613. Of its after history we shall have much occasion to speak more fully. We may here best observe that for the whole of this period, from Elizabeth to Anne, the Irish parliament possessed little power to influence the course of events. It became a matter of discre tion or favour long before it was of right, to call in the council or obtain the sanction of the nobles for the laws which were projected by the government, or (by Poyning's Law,) transmitted to the council in England. The law was loosely worded, and one convenient evasion followed another, and abuses rose which were the business of further enactments and declarations to correct or aggravate. At times the balance of encroachment preponderated for the nobles, sometimes for the Crown, and latterly for the Commons, according to the varying changes in the successive reigns, from Henry VIII. to Charles II.

The

declaratory act of Philip and Mary is to be regarded as having fixed the sense of the law, and given to the parliament that form which it afterwards held. The Irish parliament began in disorder and confusion, not unprophetic of its future and of its end. The government continued, from the commencement of this period, in the formal possession of lieutenants or deputies of the crown, but mostly with little authority beyond the metropolitan district, or what they could assert by military force. The country, until this time, yet remained in the same condition as before the Anglo-Norman invasion, and with many nominal institutional changes was virtually the same. The population, as of old, consisted of lords and serfs. There was no people, in the vulgar sense of the term; neither commerce, nor arts, nor manufactures, nor even agriculture existed. The land was a forest and a morass. The petty kings -as they chose to be ranked-amused themselves with the chase, or with the costlier game of war and civil intrigue and circumvention; until discord and mutual strife at last brought in the Anglo-Norman. Thus was originated the first step of what might have come to be the dawn of civil progress, but (not to say, that the conquerors themselves were yet but little beyond the first rudiments) the elements of barbarism had somewhat of a constitutional growth in the country. veterate prejudices traditionally rooted, and, as it were, crystallized into laws, were favourable to the usurpations of the new, as well as of the ancient lords, and adapted to the manners and customs of both; and combined with a territorial distribution which converted the whole land into a hunting-field, prevented all those wholesome influences of property, and useful occupations of the soil on which, primarily, the social advantage of a people must depend: the country was divided rather into kingdoms and lordships, than farms and pastures. The rule of force was the law. The acquisition of a fortified house was a title to rob, and to lord it over the neighbouring district with its inhabitants, who looked to the owner for protection, espoused his quarrels, and joined his marauding excursions.

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The long succession of feudal contentions, forfeitures, appropriations, and settlements, of wars, and transfers of lordship, which constitute the history of the following four centuries, belong to the period already past, and may be referred to the memoirs contained in our former volume. They are here but adverted to, as descriptive of the state of things from which we must next proceed. In quitting the subject, a few reflections may be allowed. We have approached the history of a state of things from which, if suffered to continue, there could follow no recovery. "History's muse," as the spirit of the Irish historian has, with inadvertent satire, been termed by the poet of Ireland, has adorned the "blotted" page with bright dreams of heroic achievement and patriotic suffering. The colours of the rainbow have been lavished to glorify the monuments of those dark ages of crime and mutual wrong. The chronicler and the bard too frequently have supplied matter for the rant of Irish eloquence, by ignoring the protracted lapse ages, which separate the "glories of Brian the Brave" from the black betrayal of friendly trust and domestic sanctity in Charlemont fort. It grieves us to touch these dark recollections; but our main object is, so far as we may, to restore the balance of reality. On

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