Books: Irish Race in the Past and the Present

A >> Aug. J. Thebaud >> Irish Race in the Past and the Present

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But the great fact of the birth of a nation, in the midst of
those throes of anguish, will lessen their atrocity in the mind
of the reader, and explain to some extent the wonderful designs
of Providence.

From an English state paper, published by M. Haverty, we learn
that, in 1515, a few years before the revolt of Luther, the
island was divided into more than sixty separate states, or
"regions," "some as big as a shire, some more, some less."

Had it not been for this division and the constant feuds it
engendered, in the north between the O'Neills and O'Donnells, in
the south between the Geraldines (Desmonds and Kildares) and the
Butlers (Ormonds), the authority of the English king would have
been easily shaken off. The policy so constantly adopted by
England in after-times--a policy well expressed by the Latin
adage, Divide et impera--preserved the English power in Ireland,
and finally brought the island into outward subjection at least,
to Great Britain--a subjection which the Irish conscience and
the Irish voice and Irish arms yet did not cease to protest
against and deny. But the nation was divided, and it required
some great and general calamity to unite them together and make
of them one people.

That, even spite of those divisions, they were at the time on
the point of driving the English out of the island, we need no
better proofs than the words of the English themselves. The
Archbishop of Dublin, John Allen, the creature of Wolsey, who
was employed by the crafty cardinal to begin the work of the
spoliation of convents in the island, and oppose the great Earl
of Kildare, dispatched his relative, the secretary of the Dublin
Council, to England, to report that "the English laws, manners,
and language in Ireland were confined within the narrow compass
of twenty miles;" and that, unless the laws were duly enforced,
"the little place," as the Pale was called, "would be reduced to
the same condition as the remainder of the kingdom;" that is to
say, the Pale itself, which had been brought to such
insignificant limits, would belong exclusively to the Irish.

It was while affairs were at this pass that the revolt of
"silken Thomas" excited the wrath of Henry VIII., and brought
about the destruction of almost the whole Kildare family.

It was about this time, also, that Wolsey fell, and Cromwell,
having replaced him as Chancellor of England, with Cranmer as
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Reformation began in England with
the divorce of the king, who shortly after assumed supremacy in
spirituals as a prerogative of the crown, and made Parliament --
in those days himself--supreme law-giver in Church and state.

Cromwell, known in history as the creature and friend of Cranmer,
like his protector a secret pervert to the Protestant doctrines
of Germany, and the first arch-plotter for the destruction of
Catholicity in the British Isles, undertook to save the English
power in Ireland by forcing on that country the supremacy of the
king in religious matters, knowing well that such a step would
drive the Irish into resistance, but believing that he could
easily subdue them and make the island English.

Having been appointed, not only Chancellor of England, but also
king's vicar-general in temporals and spirituals, Cromwell
inquired of his English agents in Ireland the best means of
attaining his object--the subjection of the country. Their
report is preserved among the state papers, and some of their
suggestions deserve our attentive consideration. If Henry VIII.
had consented to follow their advice, he would have himself
inaugurated the bloody policy so well carried out long after by
another Cromwell, the celebrated "Protector."

The report sets forth that the most efficient mode of proceeding
was to exterminate the people; but Henry thought it sufficient
to gain the nobility over--the people being beneath his notice.

The agents of the vicar-general were right in their atrocious
proposal. They knew the Irish nation well, and that the only way
to separate Ireland from the See of Peter was to make the
country a desert.

Their means of bringing about the destruction of the people was
starvation. The corn was to be destroyed systematically, and the
cattle killed or driven away. Their operations, it is true, were
limited to the borders of the Pale. The gentle Spenser, at a
later period, proposed to extend them to all Munster, and it was
a special glory reserved for the "Protector" to carry out this
policy through almost the whole of the island.

"The very living of the Irishry," says the report, "doth clearly
consist in two things: take away the same from them, and they
are passed for ever to recover, or yet to annoy any subject
Ireland. Take first from them their corn, and as much as cannot
be husbanded, and had into the hands of such as shall dwell and
inhabit in their lands, to burn and destroy the same, so as the
Irishry shall not live thereupon; and then to have their cattle
and beasts, which shall be most hardest to come by, and yet,
with guides and policy, they may be oft had and taken."

The report goes on to point out, most elaborately and
ingeniously, every artifice and plan for carrying this policy
into effect. But here we have, condensed, as it were, in a
nutshell, and coolly and carefully set forth, the system which
was adopted later on, and almost crowned with a fiendish success.
But the moment for the execution of this barbarous scheme had
not yet come, and we find no positive results following
immediately.

This project, complete as it was, was far from being the only
one proposed at that time for "rooting out the Irish" from
Ireland. Mr. Prendergast, in his "Introduction to the
Cromwellian Settlement," says:

"The Irish were never deceived as to the purport of the English,
and, though the Pale had not been extended for two hundred and
forty years, their firm persuasion in the reign of Henry VIII.
was, that the original design was not abandoned. 'Irishmen are
of opinion among themselves,' said Justice Cusack to the king,
'that Englishmen will one day banish them from their lands
forever.'"

In fact, project after project was then proposed for clearing
Ireland of Irish to the Shannon. Some went so far as already to
contemplate their utter extirpation; but "there was no precedent
for it found in the chronicles of the conquest. Add to this the
difficulty of finding people to reinhabit it if suddenly
unpeopled.

"The chiefs and gentlemen of the Irish only were to be driven
from their properties," according to some of those projects,
"and they only were to be driven into exile, while their lands
should be given to Englishmen."

"The king, however, seems to have been satisfied with
confiscating the estates of the Earl of Kildare and of his
family. Fierce and bloody though he was, there was something
lion-like in his nature; notwithstanding all those promptings,
he left to the Irish and old English their possessions, and
seemed even anxious to secure them, but failed to do so for want
of time."

We think Mr. Prendergast's judgment of Henry VIII. too favorable.
Generosity did not prompt him to spare the people and the
nobles, with the exception of the Kildares. We believe that he
never contemplated the extirpation of the people, because such a
political element could not enter into his mind. As for the
nobles, he wished to gain them over, because of the long wars he
foresaw necessary to bring about their utter extinction or exile.

He adopted, accordingly, a plan of his own, holding firm to his
design of having his new title of "Head of the Church"
acknowledged in Ireland as well as in England.

Cromwell commenced his work by two measures which had met with
perfect success in the latter country, but which were destined
to fire the sister isle from end to end, and make "the people,"
in course of time, really one. These measures were acts of
Parliament: 1. Establishing 'the king's spiritual supremacy; 2.
Suppressing, at once, all the monasteries existing in the
country, and giving their property to the nobles who were
willing to apostatize.

The necessity of convening Parliament resulted from the failure
of the first attempt, already made, to establish the king's
supremacy. Browne, the successor of Allen in the See of Dublin,
a rank Lutheran at heart, had been commissioned by the king and
by Cranmer, his consecrator, to establish the new doctrine at
once. His want of success, is thoroughly explained in a letter
to Cromwell, which is still preserved, and which remains one of
the proudest monuments of the steadfastness of the Irish in
their religion.

He complains that not only the clergy, but the "common people,"
were "more zealous in their blindness than the saints and
martyrs in truth, in the beginning of the Gospel," and "such was
their hostility against him that his life was in danger."

And all this in Dublin, in the heart of the Pale, where the
chief antagonist of the new doctrine, "the leader of the people"
against this first attempt at schism, was Cromer, the Archbishop
of Armagh, an Englishman himself! So that those prelates of
England, who, with the exception of the noble Fisher, had all
yielded without a murmur of opposition to the will of Henry,
could find no followers, not even of their own nation, in
Ireland, so much had their faith been strengthened by contact
with that of "the common people."

A Parliament was needed, therefore, and that one which was to be
the instrument of introducing the great English measure, met for
the first time in Dublin, on the 1st of May, 1536; but, being
prorogued, it met again in 1537, and did not complete its work
until once more summoned in 1541, when the old Irish element was
for the first and last time introduced at its sitting, in order,
if possible, to consecrate the new doctrine by having it
solemnly accepted by the old race.

This Parliament, which was first convened in Dublin, McGeoghegan
says, "adjourned to Kilkenny, thence to Cashel, after ward to
Limerick, and lastly to Dublin again." The chief cause of these
interruptions was the difficulty of bringing an Irish Parliament,
even when composed of Englishmen, as was the case up to 1541,
to pass the decrees of supremacy, denial of Roman authority, etc.,
which had been so readily accepted in England.

The Irish Parliaments, as far back as we can see, were composed
not only of lords, spiritual and temporal, and of deputies of
the Commons, but each diocese possessed also the right to send
there three ecclesiastical proctors, who, by reason of their
office, owned neither benefice nor fief, and were therefore at
liberty to vote, fearless of attainder and confiscation, in
accordance with their conscience and their sense of right.

This feature of the Irish assemblies, even when no
representative of the native race sat in them, was a fatal
obstacle to the success of the scheme devised by Browne and
executed by Cromwell. Accordingly, we are not astonished to find
that, by an act of despotism not uncommon during the reign of
Henry VIII., the proctors were excluded from Parliament, which
thus became an obedient tool in the hands of the government.

Not only, therefore, were several state measures carried in
accordance with the wish of the king, but the great object
proposed by the meeting of this assembly was finally obtained;
and, lowing the lead of the English Parliament, Henry VIII. and
his successors were confirmed in the title of "Supreme Head of
the Church in Ireland," with power of reforming and correcting
errors in religion. All appeals to Rome were prohibited, and the
Pope's authority declared a usurpation.

Henry, however, foreseeing that all these favorite measures of
his policy, being carried by English votes in a purely English
assembly, though on Irish soil, would meet with universal
opposition from all the native lords, conceived the idea of
summoning the great Irish chieftains to a new meeting of
Parliament, from which he expected that a moral revolution would
be effected in the island. Sir Anthony St. Leger, created deputy
in August, 1540, was thought a likely man to be intrusted with
so delicate a mission. He conducted it with political prudence,
that is to say, with a judicious mixture of kindness and fraud,
which succeeded beyond all expectations.

In order to prepare the way for hoodwinking the Irish chieftains,
favors of every kind were showered upon them, to wit, titles
and estates, chiefly those of suppressed monasteries; and St.
Leger, by an alternate use of force and diplomacy, at length
effected that the Irish should consent to accept titles. Con
O'Neill, the head of the house of Tyrone, went to England,
accompanied by O'Kervellan, Bishop of Ologher, and was admitted
to an audience by the king. Henry adopted toward those proud
Irishmen a policy utterly different from that he had used with
the English lords. These latter were merely threatened with his
displeasure, and with the feudal penalties he knew so well how
to inflict; the others were received at court as favorites and
dear friends; a royal courtesy, kind expressions, a smiling face-
-such were the arms he employed against the "barbarous Irish."

Tyrone, O'Donnell, and others, were not proof against his
cunning. The first renounced his title of prince and the
glorious name of O'Neill, to receive in return that of Earl of
Tyrone. Manus O'Donnell was made Earl of Tyrconnel. Both
received back the lands which they had offered to the king, and
their example was followed by a great number of inferior lords.
Among them, two Magenisses were dubbed knights; Murrough O'Brien,
of North Munster, was made Earl of Thomond and Baron of
Inchiquin; De Burgo, or McWilliams, was created Earl of
Clanricard, and a host of others submitted in like manner, and
received the new titles which henceforth became conspicuous in
Irish history.

This was the beginning of the gradual suppression of the clans.
Many of these nobles, unfortunately, not content with receiving
back, at the hands of the king, the lands which had come into
their possession from a long line of ancestors, and which really
belonged not to them personally, but to the clans whose heads
they were, greedily snatched at the estates of religious orders,
whose suppression was the first consequence of the schism in
Ireland, which will soon occupy our attention.

The Irish chieftains had already seen Wolsey, a cardinal in full
communion with Rome, suppress forty monasteries in the island.
They might therefore imagine that the confiscation of a still
greater number on the part of the king was a thing not
altogether incompatible with the religion of the monarch, and
that the fact of their sharing in the plunder was not entirely
opposed to their titles of Catholics and subjects of Rome. Such
is human conscience when blinded by self-interest.

The king thought that he had gained over the nobility,--which
was all he wished- -and the last session of the previous
Parliament of 1536 and the following years might now be held in
order to consecrate the unholy work.

"On the 12th of June, 1541," says Mr. Haverty, "a Parliament was
held in Dublin, at which the novel sight was witnessed of Irish
chieftains sitting for the first time with English lords.
O'Brien appeared there by his procurators and attorneys, and
Kavanagh, O'More, O'Reilly, McWilliams, and others, took their
seats in person, the addresses of the Speaker and of the Lord-
Chancellor being interpreted to them in Irish by the Earl of
Ormond. An act was unanimously passed, conferring on Henry VIII.
and his successors the title of King of Ireland, instead of that
of Lord of Ireland, which the English kings, since
the days of John, had hitherto borne. This act was hailed with
great rejoicings in Dublin, and on the following Sunday, the
lords and gentlemen of Parliament went in procession to St.
Patrick's Cathedral, where solemn high mass was sung by
Archbishop Browne, after which the law was proclaimed and a Te
Deum chanted."

It is worthy of remark that in the session of 1541, at which
alone the Irish chieftains appeared, not a word was said of the
supremacy of the king in spirituals. Sir James Ware, who gives
the various decrees with more detail than usual, makes no
mention of this pet measure of the king and of the Lutheran
Archbishop Browne, but it was only part and parcel of the
Parliament of 1536, prorogued successively to Kilkenny, Cashel,
Limerick, and finally again to Dublin. At its first sitting the
law of supremacy was passed and proclaimed as law of Ireland.
Nothing was said of it in the various sessions that followed,
including that of 1541; and yet the Irish chieftains were
supposed to have sanctioned it, inasmach as it was a measure
previously passed in the same Parliament: and the suppression of
various abbeys and monasteries having been openly decreed in the
final session, as a result of the king's supremacy--Rome not
having been consulted, of course--all the signers of the last
decree were supposed to have thereby sanctioned and adopted the
previous ones. Thus O'Neill, O'Reilly, O'More, and the rest,
without being aware of the fact, became schismatics, though many
of them, perhaps all, did not see the connection between the
various sessions of that long Parliament. Certainly, if, on
leaving the Dublin Cathedral, where they had heard the
archbishop's mass and assisted at that solemn Te Deum, they had
been told that that act was intended to consecrate the surrender
of the religion of their ancestors, and the commencement of a
frightful revolution, which would end in the destruction of
their national existence, almost of their very race, they would
have incredulously laughed to scorn the unwelcome prophet.

But even if, as we may well believe, those Irish lords had
really been the victims of deception, and had not, as a body,
been corrupted by the sacrilegious gift of suppressed
monasteries, the people, their clansmen, prompted by the vivid
impressions and unerring instincts of religious faith and
patriotic nationality, which were ever living in their breasts,
resented the weakness of their chieftains as a national
defection and a real apostasy, and took immediate steps to bring
the lords to their senses, and to prevent the spread of English
corruption.

All who had received titles from Henry, and surrendered to him
the deeds of their lands, as if those lands belonged to them
personally, and not to the clans collectively, all those,
particularly, who had enriched themselves by the plunder of
religious houses, and who had taken any part in the destruction
of the religious orders so dear to the Irish heart, were soon
made to feel the indignation which those events had excited
among the native clansmen, north and south. And those of the
chieftains who had really been deceived, and had preserved in
their hearts all through a strong love for their religion and
country, were recalled to a sense of their error, and brought
back to a sense of their duty by the unmistakable voice of the
"people."

While the nobles were still in England, feted by Henry in his
royal palace of Greenwich, renouncing their Irish names to
become English earls and barons, the Ulster chief, protesting
that he would never again take the name of O'Neill, but content
himself with the title of Earl of Tyrone; while O'Brien was
being created Earl of Thomond; McWilliams, Earl of Clanricard;
O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell; Kavanagh, Baron of Ballyann; and
Fitzpatrick, Baron of Ossory; the clans at home, hearing in due
time of those real treasons, were concerting plans for making
their lords repent of their weakness or treachery, and for
administering to them due punishment on their return.

O'Neill, "the first of his race who had accepted an English
title," on landing in Ireland, learned that, his people had
deposed him, and elected in his stead his son John the Proud,
better known as Shane O'Neill; O'Donnell, on his arrival, met
most, of his clan, headed by his son, up in arms against him;
the new Earl of Clanricard had already been deposed by his
people and another McWilliams, with a Gaelic name, elected in
his place; and so with the rest.

But, unfortunately, the Government of England was strong enough
to support its favorite chieftains, and it found some Irish
tools ready at hand to form the nucleus of an Irish party in
their favor. Thus, unanimity no longer marked the decisions of
the clans; two parties were formed in each of them, the one
national, comprising the great bulk of the people, the real,
true people; the other English, composed of a few apostate
Irishmen, backed by the power of England. Thus, henceforth we
hear of the O'Reilly, and the king's O'Reilly, etc.

Henry VIII. seemed, therefore, with the help of his minister, St.
Leger, to have succeeded in breaking up the clans, after the
Irish national government had been broken up long before.
Confusion of titles, property, and traditions became worse
confounded. How could the shanachies, bards, and brehons, any
longer agree in their pedigrees, songs, and legal decisions?
England had thus early adopted in Ireland the stern and
coldhearted policy which, centuries later, she used to destroy
the native and Mohammedan dynasties in Hindostan. It was not yet
divide et impera on a large scale, but the division was pushed
as far as lay in the power England, to the very last elements of
the social system.

From this time forward, then, we must not be surprised to find
England welcoming to her bosom unworthy sons of Ireland, whom
she wished to make her tools. There was always, either in Dublin
or London, a sufficient supply of materials out of which crown's
chiefs might be manufactured; the government made it part of its
policy to hold in its hands and train to its purposes certain
members of each of the ruling families--of the O'Neills,
O'Reillys, O'Donnells, O'Connors, and others.

It was no longer, therefore, the rooting out and exterminating
policy which prevailed, but one as fatal in its results, which
would have utterly destroyed Irish national feeling, to set up
in its place, not only English manners, language, and customs,
but also English schism, heresy, philosophical speculations --as
the Four Masters have it --finally, materialism and nihilism.

But, in real sober fact, the scheme proved almost an utter
failure, owing to the far-seeing good sense of the people. The
national spirit revived among the upper classes, both native and
of English descent--owing to the decided stand taken by the
inferior clansmen.

The Desmonds and Kildares, in the south, the O'Donnells,
Maguires, and others, in the north, soon showed themselves
animated by a new spirit of ardent Catholicism; created, in fact,
a new nation, quite apart from, or rather embracing, clanship,
well-nigh destroyed the English power, kept Elizabeth, during
the whole of her reign, in constant agitation and fear, and
would have succeeded in recovering their independence, and
securing freedom of worship, had not their good-nature been
imposed upon by the hypocrisy and faithlessness of the Stuarts,
to whom they always looked for freedom in the practice of their
religion, without ever obtaining it.

Thus did the people, the Irish race, thwart the policy of Henry,
who sought to gain over the nobility. Their stubborn resistance
to the vastly-increased and constantly-increasing English power,
grew at last to such proportions, and became so discouraging to
their oppressors, that the old policy of utter extermination was
resumed by Cromwell and the Orange party of the following age.

The refusal of the people, that is to say, of the bulk of the
nation, to submit to the policy of their chieftains, and the
determination to repudiate that policy by deposing its
supporters and choosing others in their stead, was most happy in
its effect on their whole future history.

The leaders, by accepting the new titles bestowed on them by the
English kings, by taking their seats in Parliament, and
concurring in the various measures there passed, subjected
themselves to a foreign rule, surrendered to this rule the tribe-
lands, which it was not in their power to surrender of
themselves, gave up, in fact, their nationality, and became
English subjects. The action of the clansmen reversed all the
fatal consequences resulting from those acts. They remained a
nation distinct from the English, whose laws they had never
either admitted or accepted. And, as the clan spirit declined,
under the policy of England, it only made way for a new and a
greater spirit--religious feeling, the bond of a common religion
assaulted--which, henceforth, lay at the bottom of the whole
struggle--which, for the first time in their history, blended
into one whole the broken clans, gave them a unity and a
consistency never known till then, and thus the real nation was
born.