ablest and most honourable men who, in the sixteenth century, presided over Irish affairs. An arrangement was made with 'the nobilitie spiritual and temporal, and all the chieftains and Lords,' of Connaught, to free them from all uncertaine cesse, cuttings, and spendings,' and at the same time to convert them into English proprietors. They agreed to surrender their titles and to hold their estates by patents of the Crown, paying to the Crown certain stipulated rents, and discharging certain stipulated military duties. In addition to the freedom. from capricious and irregular taxation which they thus purchased they obtained an hereditary possession of their estates, and titles which appeared perfect beyond dispute. The common land was to remain common, but was no longer to be divided. The tribes lost their old right of election, but paragraphs were inserted in many of the indentures not only confirming the 'mean freeholders and tenants' in their possessions, but also freeing them from all their money and other obligations to their chiefs. They were placed directly under the Crown, and on payment to the Crown of 10s. for every quarter of land that bore 'corn or horn,' they were completely freed from rent and services to their former landlords, but this latter measure was not to come into effect until the death of the chiefs who were then living. The De Burgo's, who were prominent among the Connaught nobles, for a time resisted this arrangement by force, but they were soon compelled to yield; and the creation of a large peasant proprietary was probably one cause of the comparative tranquillity of Connaught during many years.1 But this composition of Connaught stands altogether apart from the ordinary policy of the Government. Their usual object was to obtain Irish land by confisca 1 Sigerson's Hist. of Land Tenures in Ireland, pp. 26-31. VOL. I. Leland, ii. 300-302. Strafford's C tion and to plant it with English tenants. The system was begun on a large scale in Leinster in the reign of Mary, when the immense territories belonging to the O'Mores, the O'Connors, and the O'Dempseys were confiscated, planted with English colonies, and converted into two English counties. The names of the Queen's County and of the King's County, with their capitals Maryborough and Philipstown, are among the very few existing memorials of a reign which Englishmen would gladly forget. The confiscation, being carried out without any regard for the rights of the humbler members of the tribes, gave rise, as might have been expected, to a long and bloody guerilla warfare, between the new tenants and the old proprietors, which extended far into the reign of Elizabeth, and is especially famous in Irish memories for the treacherous murder by the new settlers of the Irish chiefs, who are said to have been invited with that object to a peaceful conference at Mullaghamast.1 In Munster, after Desmond's rebellion, more than 574,000 acres were confiscated and passed into English hands. One of the conditions of the grants was that none of the native Irish should be admitted among the tenantry of the new proprietors.2 It was intended to sweep those who had survived the war completely from the whole of this enormous territory, or at least to permit them to remain only in the condition of day-labourers or ploughmen, with the alternative of flying to the mountains or the forests to die by starvation, or to live as savages or as robbers. Fortunately it is easier to issue such injunctions than to execute them, and though the country was in a great degree planted from England, not a few of the old inhabitants retained their hold upon the soil. Accus 1 See Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors, ii. 130, 131. 2 Leland. tomed to live in wretched poverty, they could pay larger rents than the English; their local knowledge gave them great advantages; they were unmolested by the numerous robbers who had begun to swarm in the woods; and after the lapse of ten years from the commencement of the Settlement, Spenser complained that the new proprietors, 'instead of keeping out the Irish, doe not only make the Irish their tenants in those lands and thrust out the English, but also some of them become mere Irish.' The confiscations left behind them many 'wood kerns,' or, as they were afterwards called, rapparees, who were active in agrarian outrage,2 and a vagrant, homeless, half-savage population of beggars; but the better sort' of the Irish were by no means entirely uncivilised. An English 'undertaker' named Robert Payne, who obtained, in conjunction with some others, an estate in Munster, published in 1589 a‘Brief Description of Ireland,' in which he drew a very favourable picture of their habits. The better sorte,' he says, ' are very civill and honestly given; the most of them greatly inclined to husbandrie, although as yet unskillful, notwithstanding through their great travell many of them are rich in cattle. . . . Although they did never see you before, they will make you the best cheare their View of the State of Ireland. 2 Derrick, in his curious poem called 'The Image of Irelande,' written in 1578, gives a horrible description of these kerns. He says No pies to plucke the thatch from house, Somers' Tracts, i. 582. It is curious that the magpie, though now very common in Ireland, was unknown there till the 6 beginning of the eighteenth century. See a note to Tracts relating to Ireland, published by the Archæological Society, i. 26. Chief Justice Dixie, in a letter (Jan. 1597) in the Carew MSS., noticed the frequent murder and robbery of English settlers living in detached houses, and the necessity of concentrating the new colonists in groups of not less than twenty households. See Richey's Lectures on Irish History (2nd series), p. 388. country yeeldeth for two or three days, and take not anything therefor. Most of them speake good English and bring up their children to learning. I saw in a grammar-school at Limbrick one hundred and threescore schollers, most of them speaking good and perfect English, for that they have used to construe the Latin into English. They keep their promise faithfully, and are more desirous of peace than our Englishmen, for that in time of warres they are more charged; and also they are fatter praies for the enemie who respecteth no person. They are quicke witted, and of good constitution of bodie: they reform themselves daylie more and more after the English manners. Nothing is more pleasing unto them than to hear of good justices placed amongst them. They have a common saying, which I am persuaded they speake unfeinedly, which is, "Defend me and spend me;" meaning from the oppression of the worser sort of our countriemen. They are obedient to the laws, so that you may travel through all the land without any danger or injurie offered of the very worst Irish, and be greatly releaved of the best.' Payne strongly urges the duty of fulfilling the terms of the grants, and planting the land with English, but he at the same time fully explains, though he censures, the preference of some of the undertakers for Irishmen. They find such profit from their Irish tenants, who give them the fourth sheafe of all their corne, and 16d. yearly for a beastes grass, beside divers other Irish accustomed dues. So that they care not, although they never place any Englishmen there.'2 6 1 Henry VIII. had ordered free schools for teaching English in every parish. 2 Tracts relating to Ireland, published by the Irish Archæological Society (vol. i.). I am in debted for my knowledge of this pamphlet to Dr. Sigerson's History of Land Tenures in Ireland -a very valuable, and at the same time unpretending, little book, from which I have derived It is no slight illustration of the amiable qualities of the Irish character that so large a measure of the charities of life as these passages indicate should have been found in Munster within four years after the great confiscations and after a war conducted by such methods as I have described. The system of tanistry, it must be remembered, did not exist on the estates of Desmond. A low level of comfort and much experience of the vicissitudes of civil war, helped to reconcile the survivors to their new lot, and a confiscation which in its plan was atrociously cruel, was somewhat mitigated in its execution. Still, feelings of fierce and lasting resentment must have rankled in many minds, and traditions were slowly forming which coloured the whole texture of Irish thought. In the north, Tyrone, by a timely submission, succeeded in saving his land; but soon after the accession of James I. a decision of the King's Bench, which had the force of law, pronounced the whole system of tanistry and gavelkind, which had grown out of the Brehon law, and which had hitherto been recognised in a great part of the island, to be illegal; and thus, without a struggle and without compensation, the proprietary rights of the natives were swept away. Then followed the great plantation of Ulster. Tyrone and Tyrconnel were accused of plots against the Government, whether falsely or truly is still disputed. There was no rebellion, but the earls, either conscious of guilt, or, quite as pro much assistance. One other passage from Payne's book I may quote: As touching their government [that of the native Irish] in their corporations where they beare rule is doon with such wisdome, equity, and justice, as demerits worthy commendations. For I myself divers times have seen in severall places within their jurisdictions well near twenty causes decided at one sitting, with such indifferencie that for the most part both plaintiff and defendant hath departed contented. Yet many that make shewe of peace, and desireth to live by blood, doe utterly mislike this or any good thing that the poor Irishman dothe.'-Ibid. |