CHAPTER III.

STATE OF IRELAND, FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I.

THE principle on which English dominion was originally established in Ireland, must, from its very nature, have repressed the energies of the people, and prevented them from benefiting of the vast advantages which the country presented. Henry II. brought with him pretensions which, wisely directed, would have rendered his reign propitious, and the annexation of the Irish to his English subjects permanently prosperous to both nations; but his political necessities compelled him to deprive them of the happy consequences of union and equal rights, by throwing the one into the hands of needy adventurers, whose interest it was to isolate their acquisitions, and form a dangerous medium of selfish independence between both. The successors of Henry weakly followed his example. Sir John Davies gives a pithy view of this pernicious principle. "Our great lords could not endure that any kings should reign in Ireland but themselves; nay, they could hardly endure that the crown of England itself should have any jurisdiction or power over them. For many of these lords, to whom our kings had granted these petty kingdoms, did, by virtue and colour of these grants, claim and exercise jura regalia within their territories, insomuch as there were no less than eight counties palatine in Ireland at one time."

These grants were made with a view of securing the at

tachment and support of the grantees in the time of the feudal struggles in England; but although that profuse liberality, at the expence of another nation, helped them to secure the possession of their own, it laid the foundation of a woful anarchy, which affords the historian nothing but a detail of military barbarities, and disgusting deterioration of national character. "Assuredly," continues the writer just quoted, "by these grants of whole provinces and petty kingdoms, those few English lords pretended to be proprietors of all the land, so as there was no possibility left of settling the natives in their possessions, and by consequence the conquest became impossible without the utter extirpation of all the Irish, which those English lords were not able to do, nor perhaps willing, if they had been able. They persuaded the king of England that it was unfit to communicate the laws of England unto them; that it

was THE BEST POLICY TO HOLD THEM AS ALIENS AND ENEMIES, AND TO PROSECUTE THEM WITH A CONTINUAL WAR."

Not content with carrying into effect this horrid proscription, they grew jealous of one another, filling the country with dissension, revolution, and bloodshed, through an over anxiety for extending their individual possessions, each making the nolumus hunc regnare the law of the hour, and tracing their land-marks with the sword. How, it may be asked, could such men maintain even the semblance of good government, or indeed, any government at all? With what minds could they be supposed to legislate for the people amongst whom they held such jarring turbulence? The fact is, they became so degenerate, rudely arrogant, and restive, as to disdain meeting in parliament, or submit to be bound by any form of law whatever. Their conduct was marked by absurdity still

more mischievous. They terrified or influenced the persons who did assemble on such occasions, to pass enactments of such a nature as to make the terms law and justice far from synonymous; their coarse intrigues perpetually thwarted the deputies, and rendered every endeavour of government nugatory. They went further; frequently usurping the reins of state, and by the most perverse and wilful mismanagement, making "confusion worse confounded.”

In circumstances like these, the people were treated merely as the means of promoting the factious purposes of those powerful lords, and consequently, a disposition to military strife and restless tumult was encouraged in place of their ancient mild and merciful character. Their original rude but simple institutions were corrupted, and no reformation of manners or substitution of better laws was attempted in their room. The native princes, still mindful of their hereditary wrongs, took occasional advantage of the impolicy of these contentions to regain their rights,* but with a lamentable loss of national prosperity, their endeavours tending still more to augment the miseries of the country, without effecting aught of public good; because, the English lords, aspiring to the whole, refused to enter into any compromise which might secure the native chieftains even in a part, or admit of any amelioration of the moral condition of the people, an injustice the most cruel and barbarous they could possibly commit.

Many of the Irish princes, more prudent than the others,

"It was on one side, a powerful government possessed with the spirit of rapine, invading property and privileges not its own; it was on the other side, a band of feeble but lawful princes, fighting without hope, yet with pertinacity, because they fought for power and independence.” Parnell's Historical Apology.

sought the support of the government in England, submitting to the laws, and receiving titles in return: some even sat in the parliamentary assemblies, as appears in the reign of Elizabeth, when Turlough of Tyrone, ranking as a temporal peer in the parliament of 1588, and also the bishops of Clogher and Raphoe, who, according to the custom of the time, had received their appointment from the pope, independently of English authority, assisted in the deliberations of that period.

Antecedently to the reign of James, the national concerns of Ireland had never been represented in parliament. The convention, usually known by that name, should rather have been called the parliament of the pale than the parliament of Ireland, as it had cognizance merely of the affairs of the English colony; nor were its enactments obeyed except within the contracted limits of that little territory. Under James the parliament assumed a different character, and may be said to date its origin from the epoch of that king's accession.

James was no stranger to the reduced and ruined state of Ireland at the time of Elizabeth's decease, as he had privily fomented the rebellion with aids from Scotland, with a view to embarrass the queen, and prevent any strong opposition to his succession; so that, knowing the extent of the storm he had contributed to raise, he could the more easily obtain credit for understanding the best means of allaying it. The king's vanity scarcely needed the adulation of the crafty Cecil to make him entertain the highest value for his own wisdom: he therefore proceeded at once to tranquillize the nation by acts of the royal will to secure persons and property from the consequences of implication in the late rebellion.

Acts of oblivion and indemnity were published by pro

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COMMISSION OF GRACE.

clamation under the great seal, by which all offences against the crown, and all injuries between subject and subject were for ever cancelled and forgiven. A commission of grace was also proclaimed, by which the chief governor was empowered to accept the surrender of their estates from the Irish chieftains, and substitute fee-simple tenure in place of the old brehon system of tanistry thus giving to the crown in fact a power of claiming those very estates in case of any complaint to be set up on any future opportunity. Time proved this fact too truly. Submitting to the English arms, they gladly laid aside all further hostilities: relying on this offer of James to guarantee even a secondary right in the soil, they resigned into the hands of a stranger, whom they had not proved, an indefeasible right derived from the remotest ancestry, and which it was their sacred duty to preserve unimpaired to their descendants. The tenour of this commission of grace is important, as it has the closest connection with the history of property at that particular period.

Each lord, accepting new patents for his estates, was invested only with the lands found to be in his immediate possession, while his followers were confirmed in their several tenures, on condition only of their payment to him of a yearly rent equivalent to his claims exacted formerly, under the brehon system, which was now declared to be abolished. This new arrangement, which appeared so fine in theory, proved, on account of the insincerity of its application, highly mischievous, by throwing the whole mass of the population into a new and unnatural state, and withdrawing them from their legitimate association with their ancient chiefs, and was in no respect better than the system it was calculated to supersede.

According to that part of the brehon law which regu

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