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EDWAHO BAKER, 
 
ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL 
 HISTOEICAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY AND 
 BIOGRAPHY. Mainly of the Eighteenth 
 Century. 8vo. 12s. 6d. net. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF IRISH HISTORY 
 AND TOPOGRAPHY. Mainly of the Seven- 
 teenth Century. With 3 Maps. 8vo. 18s. net. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 London, New York, Bombay, and Calcutta 
 
ESSAYS 
 EELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL 
 HISTORICAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL 
 
 BY 
 
 C. LITTON FALKINER 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD DOWDEN, LL.D. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATEENOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 
 
 1909 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

 
/ 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 The accident near Argenti^re, in the Chamonix Valley, of 
 August 5, 1908, which caused the death of Csesar Litton 
 Falkiner, not only carried sorrow into a happy home and 
 brought a deep sense of deprivation to friends who regarded 
 him with honour and affection, but was felt as a pubhc calamity 
 by lovers of literature, and especially by those who are inter- 
 ested in the history and the hterature of Ireland. He died 
 when all his powers were at the full, before he had completed 
 his forty-fifth year, and when he was actively engaged in 
 several literary undertakings of importance. I shall set down 
 in the briefest way some facts of a happy, laborious, and well- 
 spent life. 
 
 He was born in Dublin, September 26, 1863, the second 
 son of the late Sir Frederick Richard Falkiner, Recorder of 
 Dublin and Privy Councillor, Ireland. His mother was a 
 daughter of Mr. Sadlier, of Ballinderry Park, Co. Tipperary. 
 The ' Litton ' of Falkiner's Christian name had been the maiden 
 name of his grandmother ; the ' Csesar ' came from a friend, 
 and, I believe, a kinsman of the family, the Rev. Caesar Otway, 
 an antiquary and a writer of popular books on Irish topography, 
 who had projected a History of Ireland and an edition of 
 the works of Sir James Ware. For a time Falkiner was a pupil 
 in the Royal School, Armagh. In Trinity College, Dublin, 
 where he graduated B.A. in 1886, M.A. in 1890, his career 
 was not undistinguished. He took a prominent part in the 
 discussions of the Philosophical Society, whose composition 
 prize was awarded to him for an essay on Macaulay. At a 
 later time he referred to the 'juvenility' of this essay, though 
 he retained a certain respect for his early achievement ; in 
 
 V 
 
 252312 
 
vi MEMOIR 
 
 truth it is mature in judgment beyond the writer's years, 
 and already shows something of the judicial character of his 
 mind. The esteem in which he was held by his fellow-students 
 is evidenced by the fact that they elected him President of the 
 Society — a coveted honour — for the session 1885-86. His 
 opening address, delivered before a large and distinguished 
 audience, entitled in its printed form ' The New Voyage to 
 Utopia,' is a kind of appeal from the New Whigs to the Old. 
 The spirit engendered by the recent Reform Act, and that 
 expressed in a still more recent political manifesto of Mr. 
 Gladstone, supplied the text for Falkiner's discourse. Utopian 
 visions, rash designs of innovation, the temper of change for 
 the sake of change, and the consequent sense of insecurity 
 and the violations of justice to minorities were the subjects 
 of his criticism. 
 
 In 1887 Falkiner was called to the Bar. I knew him in 
 those days and earlier days, and I imagined that in order 
 to be a great advocate it would be needful for him to strive 
 against his own judicial temper. Yet letters addressed by 
 several Irish judges to his father testify to their high opinion 
 of Falkiner's conduct of cases in their Courts. And he could 
 vigorously take a side in controversy, for, when deliberation had 
 resulted in convictions, those convictions were steadfast and 
 became the basis of action. In the year after that in which 
 he was called to the Bar he began to take an active part in 
 political work in connexion with the Unionist Registration 
 Associations for the City of Dublin and the South County 
 Dublin. Of the former association he was for many years 
 an honorary officer, secretary or treasurer, and threw himself 
 into the work with the energy and practical ability which 
 were characteristic of him. At the same time he was engaged 
 in politics as a regular contributor of leading articles to a 
 Dublin newspaper — the Daily Express. Such dealings with 
 contemporary politics doubtless had their influence upon him 
 afterwards, when he became a historical student of the past. 
 He felt more vividly the living spirit in and behind external 
 events ; history could not appear to him as a mere accumula- 
 tion of inanimate facts piled up by scientific coral-insects. 
 
MEMOIR vii 
 
 He acquired much knowledge of the inner working of party 
 government, and a sense of those forces with which the legis- 
 lative has to reckon. He developed a feeling for the values 
 of personal influences in politics. And while untiring in 
 historical research, and aware of the importance of those 
 minute contributions to knowledge which delight the specialist, 
 he saw the necessity of co-ordinating such facts under ideas 
 and wider views, which can be appreciated, at least in a 
 measure, by all intelhgent readers. 
 
 At the General Election of 1892 Falkiner as a Unionist candi- 
 date contested South Armagh, making the best poll that has 
 ever been recorded for a candidate of his political persuasion. 
 Again in 1895 he was invited to contest the same constitu- 
 ency, and also that of East Donegal, but he was unable to 
 accept either of these invitations in consequence of the 
 task of organising the extensive campaign of the Irish 
 Unionist Alliance at the General Election of that year — a 
 task for which his zeal, his energy, his caution, and his 
 sound judgment eminently qualified him, and which he 
 conducted to the most successful results. 
 
 Before this date a great happiness had come to Falkiner. 
 On August 4, 1892, took place his marriage to Henrietta 
 Mary, only daughter of Sir Thomas Newenham Deane, the 
 eminent architect, to whom Ireland owes its Art Museum 
 and National Library, and Oxford its University Physiological 
 Laboratory and Anthropological Museum. Even if it were 
 possible, this is not the place to tell of the incalculable gains 
 added to his life by his marriage and by the birth of two 
 daughters. 
 
 In 1896 he became a member of the Royal Irish Academy. 
 Having served for some years on the Council, he was elected 
 secretary to that body in 1907, a position which he held 
 until the close of his life. His successor in that office, Dr. 
 L. C. Purser, in noticing the losses of the Academy during 
 the session 1908-09, spoke of Falkiner's work thus : * His 
 work (in the secretaryship of the Council) was indefatigable 
 and thorough-going, and was always inspired by the conscious- 
 ness of the dignity and high position which the Academy 
 
viii MEMOIR 
 
 holds in the world of learning. He contributed various papers 
 to the Academy relating to the history of Ireland ; and the 
 object at which he aimed in his works was twofold, to help 
 in determining the degree in which the progress of the consti- 
 tutional and administrative history of the country and the 
 evolution of its social condition have been influenced by the 
 accidents of its local development and of its physical char- 
 acteristics, and to show that Irish history is adorned with 
 episodes in which all sections of Irishmen can take an honour- 
 able pride. ... A wide and general knowledge of the sources 
 for the elucidation of Irish history, which was second to that 
 of no other scholar, an impartial sympathy with all forms of 
 excellence, a practical acquaintance with administration, 
 remarkable judgment in the selection of materials, and a 
 singularly graceful and lucid style — all combined to render 
 his historical writings models of accuracy, research, and 
 exposition.' The first part of Falkiner's ' Illustrations of 
 Irish History and Topography ' (1904) is formed in the main 
 from papers read before the Royal Irish Academy, and to 
 the President and members of that body the volume is dedi- 
 cated. It fell to his lot as secretary to survey the work of 
 two distinguished Presidents of the Academy, who died during 
 the session 1907-08 — J. Kells Ingram and Robert Atkinson. 
 A more detailed memoir of Ingram was read by Falkiner 
 before the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland 
 (November 1, 1907). This, which was printed and published as 
 a pamphlet, forms — together with the bibliography by Mr. 
 T. W. Lyster — the least inadequate existing record of the 
 work of that remarkable thinker, poet, and scholar. 
 
 Falkiner's literary interests were by no means confined to 
 history, topography, and political biography. Of the many 
 contributions which he made to the ' Dictionary of National 
 Biography ' not a few are concerned with Irish writers whose 
 work lay in other provinces than these. In the third volume 
 of the last edition of * Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English 
 Literature ' his articles deal chiefly with the poets of Ireland. 
 He edited in 1903 the poems of Charles Wolfe, and in the 
 same year appeared in ' The Golden Treasury Series ' his 
 
MEMOIR ix 
 
 selection from the poems of Thomas Moore. I will not deny 
 myself the pleasure of mentioning that Falkiner associated 
 my name with his own through the dedication of this little 
 volume. Shortly before his death he had begun to make 
 preparations for a complete edition of Moore's Poetical Works 
 to be published by the Clarendon Press. He knew the dis- 
 repute into which much of Moore's once popular poetry has 
 fallen, and he recognised that in the revenge of Time there 
 was a certain justice ; but he held that the ' Irish Melodies ' 
 still live and deserve to live, and he assigned a high place to 
 Moore as a satirist who wielded deftly a scourge of small 
 cords. In the poetry of what is styled the Irish Literary 
 Bevival of recent years Falkiner took an interest, but he 
 regarded some of the verse which is supposed outside Ireland 
 to possess a characteristic Irish ' glamour ' as in truth emi- 
 nently foreign to the Irish character and genius. I remember 
 two delightful visits to my study, in one of which Falkiner 
 sketched in outline the scheme for a series of volumes on 
 Irish Men of Letters, in the other the scheme for a series of 
 public lectures dealing with the same themes. I can recall that 
 he assigned to me Henry Brooke, the author of ' The Fool 
 of Quality.' Difficulties arose and neither design was accom- 
 plished. Such visits were a pleasure of a rare kind, for Falkiner 
 spoke on a subject in which he was a master, and he gave more 
 play in conversation than he often gave in his writings to the 
 gift of humour which he possessed — humour not boisterous, 
 but alert, intelligent, and shrewd. 
 
 He was appointed in 1898 an Assistant Legal Land Com- 
 missioner. The appointment at first was temporary, but in 
 1905 he was placed on the permanent staff. The ability, 
 discretion, and impartiality with which he performed his 
 duties were recognised in the highest quarters and by his 
 colleagues in the Land Commission. For the first half of 
 his period of service his work lay in the western counties, 
 for the latter half in the southern counties. During the 
 earlier years he acquired a special knowledge of the Congested 
 Districts, which he turned to good account in some of his 
 published articles. His official position, of course, brought 
 
 o 3 
 
X MEMOIR 
 
 to a sudden close his work in connexion with poHtical organis- 
 ations ; it did not withdraw him from hterature, but he 
 laboured under all the disadvantages of public duties, which 
 were often exacting, much railway travelling, frequent absences 
 from his own collection of books and from public libraries. 
 Under such conditions it is really surprising to see how large 
 a body of work, often involving detailed research and always 
 of high excellence, was achieved. Within the last ten years of 
 his life he contributed twenty articles to the Edinburgh Remew, 
 three to the Monthly Beview, three to the English Historical 
 Beview, a series of articles to the Saturday Beview, and seven 
 important papers to the Proceedings of the Boyal Irish Academy. 
 Nor does this list nearly exhaust the sum of his labours. In 
 1899 Falkiner was appointed in the room of Sir John Gilbert 
 an inspector under the Historical Manuscripts Commission, 
 with the duty of editing the * Ormonde Papers.' He went to 
 work with his usual diligence and sense of responsibility. 
 The five volumes of the ' Ormonde Papers,' which appeared 
 from 1902 to 1908, contain not far from 3000 pages — a great 
 contribution to the materials of history ; the Introductions 
 show the editor's mastery of his subject, and that mastery 
 is also evident in the Essay ' An Illustrious Cavalier,' included 
 in the present volume. Materials for a sixth volume of the 
 * Ormonde Papers ' (now in the press) had been selected by 
 Falkiner before his last midsummer holiday. With such a 
 heavy pack upon his shoulders of the literary work in 
 which he rejoiced, he never seemed to suffer from hurry 
 and flurry; he was always, it seemed to me, well 
 poised for work ; and certainly he was always ready to 
 answer a query or solve a doubt, even at the cost of some 
 distraction or loss of time, if thereby a deserving fellow- 
 labourer in the field of his own studies could be guided or 
 assisted. He recognised, moreover, the claims made upon 
 him by institutions connected with education and culture in 
 Ireland, even at the loss of a portion of his cherished hours 
 of study. He was a visitor of the Science and Art Museum, 
 Dublin, a member of the Erasmus Smith Board, of the Board 
 of the King's Hospital, and a Governor of the Incorporated 
 
MEMOIR xi 
 
 Society for Promoting Protestant Schools in Ireland. With 
 reference to his work in the last of these positions the Rev. 
 H. Kingsmill Moore writes : ' He did not rest until he had 
 mastered the whole system ; alike in visiting the different 
 schools, and in studying the various problems which they 
 presented, his exertions were untiring. It followed naturally 
 that the Governors were learning to attach the highest value 
 to the advice of one in whom they found both the wisest of 
 helpers and the truest of friends,' 
 
 He had indeed a gift for friendship. Where he gave 
 affection, he gave it with all the strength, sincerity, and 
 steadfastness of his nature. As his closest friend I cannot 
 be wrong in naming the editor of the present volume, Mr. F. 
 Elrington Ball, a colleague of Falkiner in much of his poHtical 
 work, and a specialist, like Falkiner, in the field of Irish 
 topographical research. Among the many and various labours 
 which occupied Falkiner during the last year of his life was an 
 edition of the collected letters of Jonathan Swift. It is a 
 happiness to think that this important undertaking will not 
 be allowed to drop, and that the completion of Falkiner's 
 work has been entrusted to skilled and competent hands — 
 those of his most intimate and faithful friend. 
 
 The end came in a moment. On a glorious morning, 
 August 5, 1908, he started alone from his hotel at Trelechant, 
 near Argenti^re, for a walk to the Flegere, intending to 
 return in the early afternoon. He must have strayed, pro- 
 bably when returning, from the path to a point where the cliff 
 edge wears a deceptive appearance of safety. Death was 
 instantaneous. In what followed kind help was given by 
 many. His body was laid to rest in the English cemetery at 
 Chamonix. His friends, in response to a movement initiated 
 by Colonel Edward Macartney-Filgate, and with the approval 
 and sympathy of the Very Reverend Dean Bernard, have 
 made arrangements to place a memorial tablet to Falkiner in 
 St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. 
 
 Not very long before his death he was actively engaged 
 as secretary to the Committee of the Lecky Memorial, 
 which placed near the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, 
 
xii MEMOIR 
 
 the statue of that eminent historian. Had Falkiner lived it 
 is probable that he would have ranked, among the students 
 of Irish history of the younger generation, as Lecky's immediate 
 successor. His chief work, apart from the ' Ormonde Papers,' 
 which are the possession of specialists rather than of the 
 general reader, and apart from those articles which dealt 
 with contemporary social and political questions, is comprised 
 in the three volumes of collected essays — ' Studies in Irish 
 History and Biography,' 1902, ' Illustrations of Irish History 
 and Topography,' 1904, and the present volume. Falkiner's 
 view as to how history should be written is expressed in an 
 article contributed to the Monthly Eeview for May 1904, 
 He stood between the elder school of historians and those 
 of recent years who claim that history should be not literature 
 but a branch of science. Accuracy in the ascertainment of 
 facts he recognised as a chief duty of the historian. Every 
 historical student, he held, should train himself to a certain 
 intellectual detachment — ' the faculty of discarding native 
 prepossessions, of trying innate prejudices by the touchstone 
 of principle, and of submitting every historical problem to 
 the same test.' But he did not believe that any mere accumu- 
 lation of minute facts deserves the name of history. He 
 feared that the so-called ' scientific ' school in its research 
 after fact might ignore the great fact of life in things otherwise 
 dead, the great fact of the spirit which animates what is 
 material. He admitted the duty of historical impartiality, 
 but impartiality, he thought, does not mean indifference or 
 suppression of opinion — it means that the historian should 
 be a judge, who delivers his charge, and not an advocate for 
 this party or for that. Even in the selection of facts, essential 
 for the intelligent presentation of truth, a certain personal 
 element cannot but enter into historical work. Finally, 
 Falkiner dared to think that if history is to be read it should 
 be readable, and that, however ' scientific,' it yet should not 
 fail to be literature. His suggestions as to special provinces 
 of study and research in Irish history, which had peculiar 
 claims upon students of the present day, may be found in 
 the Preface to the ' Illustrations ' ; they were set forth more 
 
MEMOIR xiii 
 
 fully in an unpublished lecture delivered before the National 
 Literary Society not long before his death. 
 
 Animated by such views as these, Falkiner studied and 
 revived the past. His first collected volume, ' Studies in 
 Irish History and Biography,' is a substantial addition, and 
 one of enduring value, to our knowledge of the history of 
 Ireland from the days of Grattan to those of O'Connell. Each 
 study presents in a form attractive to a reader who is not 
 necessarily a specialist the results of careful and often full 
 investigation ; documents previously unpublished are exhibited 
 in appendices. While dealing with passages of history and 
 figures of historical importance around which controversy had 
 been violent and harsh, the writer, whose own convictions 
 are decided and unfaltering, gives an example, rare at least 
 until recent years, of an exponent of Irish history who does 
 not fail in justice, temperance, and charity. He corrects 
 incomplete or erroneous views not so much by direct polemical 
 methods as by replacing these with fuller knowledge and a 
 more exact setting forth of the truth. * Our homage to moral 
 grandeur, intellectual power or great achievement,' he writes 
 in the Preface, ' need not be limited by our predilections or 
 prejudices. To insist on the importance of Plunket's share 
 in the struggle for Catholic Emancipation is not to rob O'Connell 
 of the aureole of his genius, nor is the majestic figure of Grattan 
 dwarfed by dwelling on the great qualities of the Earl of Clare.' 
 The essay on Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop 
 of Derry, is noteworthy not only as a contribution to history 
 but as a psychological study of character in the case of one 
 whose great wit was near allied to madness. 
 
 The ' Illustrations ' consist in part of original papers, 
 historical and topographical, in which an attempt is made 
 to exhibit ' the manner and degree in which the local and 
 general history of the country are intertwined ' ; in part of 
 a carefully selected series of descriptions of Ireland in the 
 seventeenth century from published and manuscript writings by 
 seventeenth century authors. ' The book originated,' Falkiner 
 writes, ' in the desire to realise for myself the social condition 
 of Ireland at a period singularly pregnant of lasting effects 
 
xiv MEMOIR 
 
 upon her history. • . . The difficulty I have experienced 
 in finding the materials for my purpose has led me to believe 
 that a collection of the less accessible descriptions of Ireland 
 for the period under consideration may not be unwelcome to 
 fellow students in the same field.' The value of the work 
 was recognised by a highly qualified critic, Mr. Robert Dunlop, 
 in the English Historical Beview. 
 
 During the years while he was thus exploring the past, 
 Falkiner, through articles contributed to the Edinburgh 
 Beview, and less frequently to another leading Review 
 became an adviser to the British public — an adviser exception- 
 ally well-informed and judicious — on matters relating to the 
 political and social welfare of contemporary Ireland. His 
 wide acquaintance with facts, the historical tendency of his 
 mind, and his generous recognition of what is excellent even 
 in opponents, saved him from merely partisan views ; his 
 temperament and his experience would not permit him to 
 err through over-sanguine expectations ; he was a meliorist, 
 not an optimist. Assured that the best interests alike of 
 Great Britain and Ireland are bound up with the maintenance 
 of the legislative Union, he was unfaltering in his opposition 
 to every scheme which might tend to disintegrate the political 
 nucleus of the Empire ; but the policy on which rested his 
 hopes was not one of mere resistance or negation. Prepared 
 for difficulties and occasional disappointments, he yet was 
 confident that the gradual operation of measures, at once 
 generous and prudent, would in the end yield satisfactory 
 results. When in 1895 Lord Salisbury returned to power 
 with a commanding majority, Falkiner's chief desire was that 
 a great opportunity should be seized by the Unionist party, 
 not so much for the advancement of their cause as for the 
 good of the country. He pleaded for the creation of a Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture and Industry in Ireland ; an extension 
 of the powers and resources of the Congested Districts Board ; 
 the provision of an effective system of industrial education ; 
 the encouragement of extensive forestry operations in the 
 waste lands of the West ; the further development of light 
 railways, and the reorganisation through State intervention 
 
MEMOIR XV 
 
 of the Irish railway system ; and such an arrangement of the 
 respective duties of the Viceroyalty and the Chief Secretaryship 
 as would make it possible that the functions of the Viceroy should 
 be undertaken by a member of the Royal Family. I recite his 
 proposals as they are summarised byhimself in a published article 
 of 1896. He interpreted the principle of equality of treatment 
 as between the Three Kingdoms with a comment on the word 
 * equality ' called for, as he believed, by the circumstances 
 and conditions of his own country : ' Equality of treatment 
 is not justice to Ireland if it only means the same treatment ; 
 for that is not true equality which is applied with procrustean 
 indifference to objects essentially dissimilar. To succeed at 
 all, equality of treatment must be accompanied by an endeavour 
 to produce as close an approximation of conditions as the 
 inexorable disparities prescribed by Nature will allow. In 
 the dealings of a rich country with a poor one, generosity is 
 involved in the idea of justice.' It was not because he desired 
 to range the youth of Ireland into separate camps, each regard- 
 ing the other with mutual distrust, that Falkiner advocated 
 the establishment of a Roman Catholic College or University : 
 it was because, as he believed, nothing better would meet the 
 conditions of the case ; and he would have preferred that a 
 denominational institution, if created, should wear no disguise, 
 but be frankly and courageously described as that which in 
 fact it is. He hoped much from the gradual creation of a 
 peasant proprietorship, but he demanded justice to existing 
 rights as a condition ; he did not expect good results from 
 raw haste, ' the sister of delay ' ; and he saw the futility of 
 enlarging uneconomic holdings into holdings a little less large 
 but still uneconomic. Parliamentary compulsion having been 
 already resorted to in the creation of dual ownership, he did 
 not regard with horror the compulsory destruction of such 
 ownership, subject to the conditions imposed by justice and 
 prudence. He did not raise an outcry against emigration 
 in so far as it was a natural result of the economic conditions 
 of the world. He sympathised with some of the professed 
 objects of the Gaelic League, but not with that hostility to 
 England and English institutions which drew the literary 
 
xvi MEMOIR 
 
 and artistic movement towards a connexion with politics. 
 He did not disapprove efforts to preserve the ancient language 
 of Ireland as the spoken tongue in districts where it still 
 survives ; but he regarded ' the task of re-creating the Irish 
 language, in a country from which it has almost died out, as 
 the living language of a people which the last seven centuries 
 have left perhaps the most mixed in Europe,' as best designated 
 in words which he quotes from Lord Eussell of Killowen : 
 ' absolutely futile and impracticable.' It need hardly be 
 added that Falkiner was no admirer of a lax administration; 
 whatever remedial measures might be desirable, he regarded 
 the vigorous maintenance of social order as a prime condition 
 of success. Such in a brief summary were some of the opinions 
 which he expressed on the contemporary affairs of Ireland. 
 It will be perceived that he lived sufficiently long to see the 
 fulfilment of some of his hopes. 
 
 This notice, slight as it is, could not have been written 
 without help received from Mr. F. Elrington Ball, for which 
 I desire to thank him. 
 
 EDWARD DOWDEN. 
 
NOTE 
 
 In the selection and arrangement of the Essays included in 
 the present volume the aim has been to obtain the unity and 
 historical sequence which mark the author's former works. 
 The greater number of the Essays appeared originally in the 
 Edinburgh Review. Their reproduction has been generously 
 permitted by Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. The Essay 
 on Dublin is inserted with the consent of Professor Cole, acting 
 on behalf of the Publication Committee of the British Associa- 
 tion for 1908, and the Essays on the other Irish towns are 
 included with the approval of the Editor of the Saturday 
 Beview, while leave has been granted by the Council of the 
 Eoyal Irish Academy for the use of the notes and appendices 
 to the Essay on Irish Parliamentary Antiquities, which ap- 
 peared in connexion with papers published in the Academy's 
 Proceedings. 
 
 F. E. B. 
 Dublin, 
 September 21, 1909. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAQB 
 
 Mbmoib V 
 
 I 
 
 STUDIES IN IRISH BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Spenser in Ireland 3 
 
 Sir John Davis ,32 
 
 An Illustrious Cavalier . 56 
 
 Archbishop Stone 82 
 
 Robert Emmet 117 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF IRISH TOPOGRAPHY 
 
 Dublin 147 
 
 YOUGHAL 165 
 
 Kilkenny 170 
 
 Drogheda 176 
 
 Armagh 180 
 
 Galway 186 
 
 III 
 
 STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY 
 
 Irish Parliamentary Antiquities » 193 
 
XX CONTENTS 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A. The Succession of the Speakers of the Irish House 
 
 OF Commons with BiooRAPHiCAii Notices of the early 
 Speakers 221 
 
 B. List of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the 
 
 Irish Parliament, 1568-69 233 
 
 C. John Hooker's Diary, or Journal, January 17 to 
 
 February 23, 1568-69 .... = ... 237 
 
 Index 241 
 
 Errata 
 
 Page 14, line 10, for Rowland Eustace read James Eustace. 
 „ 38, „ 24, „ this great read the great. 
 
STUDIES IN IRISH BIOGRAPHY 
 
 ^r 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 
 
 The large part which, in recent times at least, has been played 
 by Irishmen on the imperial stage of Great Britain is among 
 the most familiar of commonplaces whenever the relation of 
 Ireland to the Empire is mooted. We are constantly reminded 
 how, not merely in the field of war and action, but in the 
 realm of letters and the world of affairs, some of the greatest 
 places have been filled by men of Irish birth and Irish genius. 
 Not to take any account of contemporary figures, the history 
 of the last hundred and fifty years supplies abundant examples 
 in every sphere of action and of effort of this honourable 
 eminence of distinguished Irishmen in the roll of British 
 fame. In the senate, Burke and Sheridan ; in the camp, 
 Wellington ; in letters. Swift, Goldsmith, and Moore are 
 examples that at once occur to the mind of great reputations 
 achieved by Irishmen in purely British surroundings. It is 
 not so often recalled that, in earlier times, a reciprocal oppor- 
 tunity was afforded by Ireland to English men of letters and 
 of politics. Especially was this the case with many of the 
 later Elizabethans. In an age when pen and sword were 
 wielded with equal facility by the accomplished courtiers of a 
 sovereign whose favour might be won as readily by a sonnet 
 as at a siege, Ireland had its full share in the activities of those 
 versatile servants of the Crown who were equally ready to 
 serve in Court or in camp. The names of Barnaby Googe, the 
 poet, and Barnaby Rich, the pamphleteer ; of Sir Geoffrey 
 Fenton, the translator of Bandello and Guicciardini, and of 
 Bryskett, one of the lyrists of ' Astrophel,' by no means ex- 
 haust the list of those literary stars of lesser magnitude which 
 shone in the Viceregal Courts of Sussex, of Sidney, or of Grey. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Of the part which Ireland played in the fortunes of much 
 more illustrious men, Mr. Sidney Lee's ' Great Englishmen 
 of the Sixteenth Century 'i reminds us very forcibly. Of 
 the six representative Elizabethans discussed in that volume, 
 two were identified in the closest and most direct manner with 
 the wars and politics of Ireland, while to a third, as the son of 
 a statesman who thrice held the reins of Irish Government, 
 the sister kingdom must have been a familiar theme. But 
 of the three great careers of Spenser, Raleigh, and Sidney, 
 it is that of the poet of the ' Faery Queene ' which was most 
 closely connected with Irish affairs, and which was most largely 
 influenced by the connexion. Sidney, though he visited 
 his father in Ireland in 1577, soon passed to the wider arena 
 in which he was to find his untimely fate. To Raleigh, though 
 his earliest successes were achieved there, and though he 
 acquired in the Munster confiscations a princely territory 
 whose development might well have filled the interests and 
 absorbed the energies of a less mercurial temperament, 
 Ireland was never an abiding home. But to Spenser, from his 
 twenty-eighth year, Ireland was the place of his actual residence 
 and the sole scene of his struggles for worldly advancement. 
 
 It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration, though hardly 
 a grave one, to assert that no poet of equal fame is less read 
 than the author of the ' Faery Queene.' The poet's poet, as 
 Charles Lamb truly called him, Spenser has indeed received 
 the fullest meed of fame in the unstinted admiration he has 
 won from so many of the most illustrious of his descendants 
 in the great line of English poets. But, though he has un- 
 questionably found fit audience, it cannot be pretended that 
 the students of his poetry have ever been numerous. And, 
 having regard to the place which he admittedly occupies of 
 right in the history of Enghsh literature, it is quite remarkable 
 how little attention has been bestowed either upon the 
 circumstances under which his work was produced, or upon 
 a study of the influence exerted by those circumstances, not 
 merely upon the form and direction which Spenser's art 
 assumed, but upon the actual texture of his poetry. 
 
 1 Lond. 1904. 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 5 
 
 That this is so is, doubtless, due in part to the extreme 
 length of the work on which Spenser's fame mainly depends. 
 Not all of those who open their Spenser at the first canto 
 of the ' Legend of Holiness ' are in, as Macaulay put it, at the 
 death of the Blatant Beast. And Macaulay's reference to 
 that incident proves, as has been pointed out, that the brilliant 
 essayist had not himself reached, or if he reached it, had not 
 accurately remembered, the unconcluded conclusion of this 
 most elaborate and longest drawn of allegories. For the 
 Blatant Beast, though subdued, is not slain. But in part, 
 also, the comparative superficiality of' the study given to 
 Spenser's poetry, even by those who have felt the poet's spell 
 most strongly, may be attributed to the scantiness of our 
 knowledge of the facts of the poet's life. For above two 
 centuries from his death not much more was known of the 
 circumstances of Spenser's career than of Shakespeare's. 
 Lideed, in certain material respects the record of the elder 
 poet was the more scanty of the two ; the facts as to Spenser's 
 origin and early life resting as they did on a few vague auto- 
 biographical allusions scattered through his own works, and 
 on the unsubstantiated traditions recorded by such antiquaries 
 as Aubrey and Oldys. That the poet was a Londoner ; that his 
 birth took place somewhere about 1552 ; that he was somehow 
 connected with the ancient house of Spencer ; that he was 
 educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge ; and that shortly 
 after he had graduated at the University he retired into the 
 North of England for some years — this was as much as was 
 certainly known on these points. Who his father was and 
 whence his origin ; where the poet's school-days had been 
 passed, and in what locality his earlier manhood had been 
 spent ; who was the fair ' Rosalind ' of the ' Shepherd's 
 Calendar,' so long, so passionately, and so vainly wooed ; and 
 what was the scenery which formed the setting of Colin Clout's 
 pastoral lamentations : who, again, was Rosalind's late found 
 but more complaisant successor, the last of his trinity of 
 EHzabeths : 
 
 The third, my love, my life's last ornament, 
 By whom my spirit out of dust was raised — 
 
6 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 these were all of tliein questions which long remained not only 
 unanswered but almost unasked, so thick was the obscurity 
 which veiled all the more intitaate associations of the poet's 
 career. That some time after leaving the University he made 
 the acquaintance of the gifted Philip Sidney, the Astrophel of 
 his famous elegy ; that either through the influence of this 
 powerful friend, whose father was one of the most eminent of 
 Elizabethan Viceroys of Ireland, or through that of Sidney's 
 uncle, Leicester, he was appointed to an official position in 
 the sister kingdom, and subsequently accompanied Lord 
 Grey de Wilton to that country ; that he received successive 
 grants of land there, and was subsequently visited at his castle 
 of Kilcolman by Sir Walter Ealeigh, by whom, as the poet 
 himself relates in ' Colin Clout 's Come Home Again,' he was 
 brought to Court and graciously received by Elizabeth ; that 
 he married towards the close of his career the fair unknown to 
 whom the ' Amoretti ' are addressed, and whom he adorned 
 with such wealth of worship in that ' song made in lieu of many 
 ornaments,' the ' Epithalamion,' with its splendid ritual of 
 impassioned adoration ; and that finally, with fortunes over- 
 whelmed by the lava of the Irish volcano, he died in London 
 at the age of forty-six — these are substantially all the facts 
 which the wreck of time had left us knowledge of prior to the 
 patient discoveries of nineteenth century research. 
 
 In years still recent, however, the diligence of a few 
 Spenserian enthusiasts has added very considerably to the 
 number of authenticated facts concerning the poet's career. 
 From the date of Archdeacon Todd's edition of the poet's 
 works, first published a century ago,i to that of Dr. Grosart's 
 monumental and elaborately annotated ' Life and Works,' 
 issued some twenty-five years since,^ a continuous stream 
 of discovery has poured fresh light on many long hidden 
 incidents in Spenser's career. The last-mentioned editor, in 
 particular, devoted many years of assiduous industry to the 
 patient exploration of fresh sources of knowledge, and the 
 careful co-ordination of evidence already available. Dr. 
 
 ' The Works of Edmund Spenser, edited by Henry J. Todd. 
 
 - The Complete Works of Edmund Spenser, edited by Alexander B. Orosart. 
 
SPENSEK IN IRELAND 7 
 
 Grosart's tireless zeal was rewarded by the discovery or 
 independent corroboration of a number of facts which not only 
 add materially to our knowledge of the actual course of 
 Spenser's life, both before and after his coming to Ireland, 
 but shed an informing light on the development of Spenser's 
 poetical genius. By a careful analysis and comparison of the 
 facts previously ascertained ; by a diligent search through 
 State papers, legal records, parish registers, and so forth ; 
 and especially by a minute etymological study of the archaic 
 vocabulary of the ' Shepherd's Calendar,' Dr. Grosart succeeded 
 in establishing a number of interesting and valuable certainties 
 which greatly add to the clearness of our conception alike of 
 the poet and his writings. It is true that, like all his pre- 
 decessors. Dr. Grosart has failed to conclusively identify the 
 poet's father, or to do more than confirm the evidence already 
 available of Spenser's connexion with the Spensers of Hurst- 
 wood, near Clitheroe, in North-East Lancashire, a family of 
 respectable and long-established position, though its precise 
 relationship to the ' house of ancient fame ' with which the 
 poet claimed to be allied has not been established. But he 
 has shown beyond question that the country district in ' the 
 north parts ' to which Spenser retired after leaving Cambridge 
 was Pendle Forest, near Clitheroe, on the borders of Lancashire 
 and the West Riding of Yorkshire ; and he has established the 
 identity of much of the idiom of the ' Shepherd's Calendar ' 
 with the north country provincialisms of that neighbourhood. 
 If the editor's efforts to identify ' Rosalind ' with a supposed 
 Rose Dineley — conjectured to have been the daughter of a 
 yeoman of that name known to have resided in the district in 
 Spenser's time — can hardly be accepted as successful. Dr. 
 Grosart has undoubtedly recovered for us the name and 
 lineage of the poet's wife. That lady he has proved to have 
 been Elizabeth Boyle, of Youghal, and a near kinswoman 
 of that remarkable personage who, succeeding Spenser in his 
 office of Clerk of the Council of the Presidency of Munster, was 
 busy during the poet's last years in Ireland in laying the 
 foundations of the splendid fortunes of the Great Earl of Cork.i 
 
 ' The evidence of the identity of Spenser's wife is furnished by the Earl of 
 
8 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 But while Dr. Grosart's labours have placed lovers of 
 Spenser under a heavy obligation, the value of his services 
 has not been fully commensurate with the labour he bestowed 
 on his researches. Privately printed in two elaborate editions, 
 which together numbered no more than two hundred and 
 fifty copies, his volumes are necessarily known only to students ; 
 and even in this form the series of volumes which he proposed 
 to devote to the edition remains incomplete. A large mass 
 of laboriously acquired information intended to form the 
 tenth volume has never reached even the limited public for 
 whom it was designed. Again, the minute attention bestowed 
 by Dr. Grosart upon the earlier poems, and the microscopic 
 comparison of the descriptions and language in the ' Shepherd's 
 Calendar ' with the scenery and dialect of Pendle Forest and 
 its neighbourhood, have not been paralleled in the case of the 
 poet's later and more important work. Though a visit to 
 Youghal and its neighbourhood probably contributed to his 
 identification of the poet's wife. Dr. Grosart's knowledge of 
 Ireland was certainly not as great as his familiarity with North- 
 East Lancashire. He was unable to criticise the descriptions 
 in the ' Faery Queene ' from the same topographical standpoint 
 which served him so well in dealing with the earlier work of 
 the poet. And although Dr. Grosart's zeal led him to explore 
 with all the enthusiasm of an editor the most minute scraps 
 of Spenser's extant reports as an Irish official which can be 
 traced in the Record Office or elsewhere, he has given com- 
 paratively little attention to the evidences which the poems 
 contain of the influence exerted upon Spenser's genius by his 
 Irish surroundings. 
 
 Dr. Grosart is not alone in his disregard of the effects of 
 Spenser's Irish environment upon the character of his work. 
 Indeed, it is not an aspect which has been much noticed by 
 any recognised editor or critic of the poet. In an admir- 
 able article, which deserves to be better known, contributed 
 
 Cork's diary, edited by Dr. Grosart, and by an entry in the Council Book of the 
 Corporation of Youghal. The facts are summarised in his introductions to 
 both series of the Lismore Papers, in which Lord Cork's diary is printed. It 
 may be noted that the Lismore Papers are not cited among the authorities for 
 Spenser's life in the notice of the poet in the Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 9 
 
 thirty years ago to Frazer's Magazine,^ Dr. P. W. Joyce 
 has examined elaborately and with a wealth of local knowledge 
 Spenser's account of the Irish rivers in the eleventh canto of 
 the fourth book of the ' Faery Queene,' as well as the references 
 to the streams in the neighbourhood of Kilcolman which are 
 so prominent in ' Colin Clout 's Come Home Again.' The late 
 Mr. Keightley, too, in some valuable contributions published 
 many years ago in Notes mid Queries^ has dwelt upon the 
 same topic, and asserted the title of Spenser to be viewed as 
 in a special sense the poet of Ireland.^ But with these excep- 
 tions little or nothing has been written on the subject of 
 Spenser's indebtedness to the country in which his later lot 
 was cast for much of the scenery, many of the allusions, and 
 even some of the topics handled in the ' Faery Queene ' and 
 others of his poems. Dean Church, indeed, in the admirable 
 monograph ^ which he contributed to the ' Men of Letters Series ' 
 has some excellent remarks on the similarity between the 
 actual Ireland of the sixteenth century and the imagined 
 world of Spenser's romantic invention. But he has not 
 attempted to work out the parallel either in regard to the 
 political significance or the descriptive realism of Spenser's 
 poetry. And even so profound and capable a student as 
 Mr. Sidney Lee, in his admirable essay cited above, alludes 
 to Spenser's Irish experiences in connexion with his prose 
 work, rather than with his poetry. In such circumstances an 
 attempt to trace in some detail the connexion of the poet of 
 the ' Faery Queene ' with the Ireland of Elizabeth may not 
 appear wholly superfluous. 
 
 That Spenser was himself conscious of the influence exerted 
 upon his poetry by the conditions of his Irish career, and 
 that he felt his work to be impressed in a marked degree with 
 the stamp of his surroundings, is apparent from his own 
 language. Whether he was right in representing the ' Faery 
 Queene ' as having lost something of grace and perfection of 
 form through his Irish exile, or whether his deprecatory 
 
 1 N.S. vol. xvii. pp. 315-33. 
 
 ^ Note3 and Queries, Ser.*4, vol. vii. p. 317. 
 
 •' Spenser, by R. W. Church, Dean of St. Paul's. 
 
10 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 expressions are to be taken as the merely conventional language 
 of affected modesty, it is certain that many such sentiments 
 are to be found in his later writings. In the dedicatory sonnets 
 prefixed to the ' Faery Queene ' this language of self- deprecia- 
 tion is frequently employed, and always in relation to the 
 misfortune of his situation, remote from the culture and charm 
 of the Court of Ehzabeth. Thus, in the sonnet addressed to 
 his principal patron in Ireland, the ex- Viceroy Lord Grey de 
 Wilton, he apologises for his poetry as no better than 
 
 Rude rhymes, the which a rustic Muse did weave 
 In salvage soil, far from Parnasso Mount 
 And roughly wrought in an unlearned loom. 
 
 Again, in addressing the Earl of Orraond, one of the most 
 eminent of contemporary Irishmen, and a kinsman through 
 the Boleyns of Elizabeth herself, the poet holds almost identical 
 language : 
 
 Receive, most noble Lord, a simple taste 
 Of the wilde fruit which salvage soil hath bred. 
 Which being through long wars left almost waste 
 With brutish barbarism is overspread. 
 
 Nor indeed was this kind of language peculiar to the poet of 
 the ' Faery Queene.' It was the common form of every 
 writer connected with Ireland in Spenser's day. To the 
 subjects of Ehzabeth the sister kingdom seemed a place as 
 far apart from England as though it were situate in another 
 hemisphere. Its trackless forests and unexplored fastnesses 
 were a fit theatre for the malign enchantments of fairy land. 
 There, as Dean Church puts it, ' men might in good truth 
 travel long through wildernesses and great woods given over 
 to the outlaw. There might be found, in most certain and 
 prosaic reality, the ambushes, the disguises, the treacheries, 
 the deceits and temptations, even the supposed witchcrafts 
 and enchantments against which the fairy champions of the 
 virtues have to be on their guard.' In the estimation of the 
 courtiers of Elizabeth, and indeed in that of every subject 
 of the Queen of gentle birth, Ireland was no better than 
 
SPENSEE IN IKELAND 11 
 
 unreclaimed backwoods, wholly given over to savagery and 
 ' incivility,' little fit for the habitation of people of character 
 and refinement, but to which in the last resort a spendthrift 
 or a scapegrace might perhaps venture to repair, to restore 
 his shattered fortunes in the vast area of its confiscated 
 lands, or to win reputation in its incessant wars. It is of 
 such a one that Bishop Hall speaks, in his ' Virgidemiarum,' 
 in the lines 
 
 So slips lie to the wolvish western isle 
 • Among the savage kerne in sad exile. 
 
 And it is of a piece with this conception of Ireland that in 
 the fourth book of the ' Faery Queene ' Sir Arthegall, the 
 knight who is afterwards charged with the task of succouring 
 Irena, the fair princess in whom Ireland is personified in the 
 allegory, is introduced under the designation of ' the Salvage 
 Knight,' all whose armour 
 
 was like the salvage weed 
 With woody moss bedight, and all his steed 
 With oaken leaves attrapped, that seemed fit 
 For salvage wight. 
 
 To realise adequately the extent to which the poetry of the 
 ' Faery Queene ' was influenced by Spenser's surroundings 
 in Ireland, it is necessary to examine a little carefully the 
 course of his career as a servant of the Crown in that country, 
 and to compare his successive migrations with the stages of 
 the composition of his great poem. The poet's connexion 
 with Ireland certainly began as early as 1577, when, as already 
 noted, he was appointed to the position of secretary to Sir 
 Henry Sidney. Neither then, nor later under Lord Grey de 
 Wilton's Viceroyalty, does Spenser's name appear in the 
 lists of viceregal officers ; the Secretary of State under both 
 Sidney and Grey being John Chaloner, who in 1581 was 
 succeeded by the well-known Sir Geoffrey Fenton. Evidently 
 Spenser's position was only that of private secretary. Sidney 
 left Ireland in August 1578, and Spenser did not remain behind 
 him ; so that the poet's first connexion with Ireland must have 
 
12 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 been of the briefest. Some of his biographers have even 
 doubted whether he came over. But though no document of 
 any sort survives to attest the fact, it is impossible to doubt 
 the poet's own statement in his ' View of the State of Ireland,' 
 that he was present at Limerick ' at the execution of a notalile 
 traitor Murrough O'Brien,' an event which is known to have 
 taken place in July 1577. 
 
 This first brief visit to Ireland can have given Spenser but 
 few opportunities of learning his way about the country. He 
 was certainly absent from Ireland between 1578 and 1580, 
 that is, from the retirement of Sidney to the appointment of 
 Grey. He may, indeed, have acquired just such an impression 
 of the country as an untutored wilderness, filled with wild and 
 semi-civilised people, as would suggest his making its solitudes 
 of wood and waste and mountain the background or scenery of 
 the action of the great allegory he was already meditating. 
 But it was impossible that he could learn enough in so short 
 a stay to enable him to give those intimate descriptions of 
 familiar scenes which are abundant in the later books of the 
 ' Faery Queene ' and elsewhere in his later poetry. In the 
 summer of 1580, however, Spenser entered definitely upon 
 that Irish career which was to last until his death. Except 
 for occasional visits, sometimes lengthened, but still never 
 more than visits, to England, Ireland was henceforth his 
 continuous, though no doubt uncongenial, residence, and in 
 the fullest sense his home. We know from a letter to Gabriel 
 Harvey, written in April 1580 — four months, that is, before his 
 coming to Ireland for the second time — that before that date 
 he had already begun work on the ' Faery Queene.' Some 
 portions of the poem had been drafted, though probably not 
 precisely in the form in which they ultimately appeared. But 
 evidently no great progress had been made ; for he writes 
 to his literary confidant and critic, ' I will in hand forthwith 
 with my " Faery Queene," which I pray you heartily send 
 me with all expedition.' In the years immediately following 
 his appointment, and in fact throughout his chief's tenure of 
 the Viceroyalty, Spenser can have had little leisure to cultivate 
 the Muse. The Deputy was constantly moving about, and 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 13 
 
 for the first six months his secretary had abundant opportunities 
 of seeing rural Ireland. He was present with Grey at Smerwick, 
 and as is evident from the ' View of the State of Ireland,' was 
 perpetually at his chief's elbow until his duties were terminated 
 by the Viceroy's recall, precisely two years after his coming 
 over. Meantime, he had been appointed, in March 1580-81, 
 to the ofiice of Kegistrar or Clerk of the Faculties in the Court 
 of Chancery, a position of considerable importance, and 
 probably proportionate emolument, in Dublin. He was 
 succeeded in this office in 1588 by Arland Ussher, father of the 
 great Primate, and it may have been in this connexion that the 
 latter formed the acquaintance to which he testified heartily 
 many years afterwards, as Aubrey relates, by his indignation 
 at Sir William Davenant's slighting remarks on his ' old friend 
 Edmund Spenser.' i For six years from this date, until he 
 took over from his brother poet, Ludovic Bryskett, the office 
 of Clerk to the Council of the Munster Presidency, Spenser's 
 head quarters must have been in Dublin. In the same year in 
 which he acquired his Chancery post he received his first grant 
 of Irish property, procuring a lease of ' the house of Friars 
 
 ' None of Spenser's biographers, not even the industrious Dr. Grosart, have 
 been at much pains to investigate the nature of the office in the Irish Court of 
 Chancery to which vSpenser was appointed, shortly after his arrival in Ireland. 
 There is certainly nothing in the title of that office or the enumeration of its 
 duties which suggests that it can have had much attraction for the poet. It 
 was, however, a position of considerable importance and substantial emolument ; 
 and so far as regards this office, and his later post in Munster, Mr. Lee's remark 
 that ' the record of Spenser's worldly struggles is sordid and insignificant ' is 
 hardly warranted. The office of ' Registrar or Clerk in Chancery for the 
 Faculties ' was constituted by the Act of Faculties, 28th Henry VIII. Chapter 
 19. This statute was levelled against the ' intoUerable exaction of great sums 
 of money by the Bishop of Rome ' for dispensations, licences, and faculties. 
 After repudiating the Pope's authority it declared the authority of the King 
 and Parliament to dispense upon due occasion with the laws, and provided that 
 auch dispensations should be given under faculties to be obtained under the 
 Great Seal, or the seal of the Archbishop of DubUn. For the due performance 
 of its prescribed functions, the Act further provided for the appointment of 
 ' one sufficient Clerk, being learned in the course of Chancery, which shall always 
 be attendant on the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and 
 shall make, write and enroll the confirmations of all such licences, dispensations, 
 instruments and other writings as shall be brought under the Archbishop's 
 seal, there to be confirmed or enrolled, taking for his pains such reasonable sums 
 of money as hereafter, by this Act, shall be limited for the same.' What the 
 precise remuneration amounted to does not appear, as it was paid out of the fees 
 charged on the faculties. With tills office was united the cognate office of 
 Registrar of Ecclesiastical Appeals, constituted as a separate post under the 
 Act, but which in practice was amalgamated with the Registrarship of Faculties. 
 
14 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 of Enniscortie, the Manor of Enniscortie, and a ruinous castle 
 and weir there.' Of this he was only three days the master, 
 parting with it to one Richard Synot, who some years later 
 transferred the lands to Sir Henry Wallop, ancestor of the 
 Earls of Portsmouth, by whose descendants they are still held. 
 But he was not long in acquiring a similar interest in property 
 more conveniently situated, being granted in August 1581 a lease 
 of ' the site of the House of Friars called the New Abbey, co. 
 Kildare,' which had lapsed to the Crown through the attainder 
 of Rowland Eustace, Lord Baltinglass, the head of a family 
 whose distinction it has been to supply at a distance of two 
 centuries two eminent occupants of the Irish Woolsack. He 
 likewise acquired the custodiam of the lands of Newlands 
 in the same neighbourhood, and a lease for six years of the 
 same nobleman's Dublin residence. New Abbey was a house 
 of the Franciscans which had been founded by the ancestors 
 of Lord Baltinglass in 1460, and had been regranted to that 
 peer on the dissolution of the monasteries. Seven years later 
 this property had passed out of Spenser's hands, being leased to 
 one Thomas Lambyn, from whom it passed within a few years 
 to Sir Henry Harington. The poet had by that time settled 
 in Munster, and had no further need of it. But there is 
 evidence that it remained for some years in his hands, and must 
 often have been visited by him, even if he did not actually reside 
 there. In 1583 and 1584 Spenser is named in successive 
 commissions to the principal gentry of Kildare as one of the 
 commissioners of musters for that county.^ New Abbey lay 
 within riding distance of the metropolis, the river Liffey flowing 
 through its grounds, and adjacent to the north-eastern border 
 of the great Bog of Allen. At least two passages in the ' Faery 
 Queene ' are reminiscent of its surroundings. The well-known 
 line in the descriptive of the Irish rivers in the fourth book — 
 
 There was the LifEey rolling down the lea, 
 
 is strictly applicable to the aspect of the river at this part of 
 its course, where, having left its mountain sources, it assumes 
 the proportions and the vigour of an ample stream. And 
 
 ^ See Calendars of Fiants and State Papers, Ireland. 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 15 
 
 a passage in the ninth canto of the second book, which may 
 be presumed to have been written about the period of his 
 residence in this district, and prior to his residence at Kilcolman, 
 bears still stronger testimony to the poet's familiarity with 
 the neighbourhood : — 
 
 As when a swarme of gnats at eventide 
 Out of the fennes of Allan do arise, 
 Their murmuring small trompets sounden wide, 
 Whiles in the air their clustring army flies, 
 That as a cloud doth seeme to dim the skies ; 
 Ne man nor beast may rest nor take repast 
 For their sharpe wounds, and noyous injuries. 
 Till the fierce northerne wind with blustring blast 
 Doth blow them quite away and in the ocean cast. 
 
 Spenser's earher biographers seem to have considered 
 that his connexion with Ireland ceased for some years with 
 his patron's withdrawal from the country. But this suggestion 
 is unwarranted by what we now know of the facts. The 
 documents just referred to in connexion with New Abbey show 
 him to have been resident in Ireland in the summer of 1584, 
 and the fact that he retained his appointment as Eegistrar 
 of the Court of Chancery till 1588, only resigning it within 
 a week of his being gazetted Clerk of the Munster Council, 
 affords a strong presumption that he remained continuously 
 resident in or near Dublin. The date of the well-known 
 meeting of Spenser and other friends, many of them persons 
 of distinction, at Bryskett's cottage near Dublin, at which 
 time the poet is known to have been busily at work upon his 
 poem, cannot have been earlier than July 1584, and may have 
 been a year later. Spenser must manifestly have been resident 
 in Ireland when, in June 1586 in the articles for the Munster 
 Undertakers, he was set down for the lands of Kilcolman, for 
 in this year he addressed a sonnet from Dublin to his old friend 
 Harvey. From the date of the poet's acceptance of the 
 Munster Secretaryship, and actual settlement at Kilcolman, 
 our knowledge of Spenser's career is sufficient to enable us to 
 say that he was almost continuously in the South of Ireland. 
 From 1588, when he succeeded Ludovic Bryskett, until about 
 
16 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 1598, when he appears to have surrendered his office to a 
 deputy, he must have passed his time between Limerick, 
 the official seat of the Presidency, and his own home at Kilcol- 
 man, his only absences being occasioned by his visits to London 
 with Ealeigh in 1589 or 1590, when he arranged for the publica- 
 tion of the first three books of the ' Faery Queene,' and again 
 in 1595, in connexion with the publication of the last books of 
 the same work. 
 
 It is plain from the foregoing analysis of the known facts of 
 Spenser's official career in Ireland that his residence there 
 falls into two clearly marked periods. In the first, which 
 extended from his arrival in August 1580 to his acceptance 
 of the office in Munster in 1588, he was in general resident 
 in Dublin, though his duties took him frequently into the 
 country. During a part and perhaps the greater part of this 
 period he had an alternative residence in a country seat not 
 far from Dublin, in which he could at times enjoy the sylvan 
 scenery in which he delighted. But it is evident that while 
 he would thus have acquired an excellent general knowledge 
 of Ireland, he was not in a position to acquire an intimate 
 familiarity with any particular locality. In the second period, 
 on the other hand, he was in uninterrupted occupation of a 
 permanent home, and enjoying a comparative leisure which 
 would enable him to explore the whole of the neighbouring 
 country. For although his official position must have rendered it 
 a matter of obligation that his head quarters should be in Munster, 
 it did not of necessity involve residence in Limerick, where the 
 routine duties of the Secretaryship were discharged by a deputy. 
 
 These differing characteristics of the two main periods of 
 Spenser's Irish life will be found to be closely reflected in 
 his poetry. In the first three books of the ' Faery Queene,' 
 the genius loci is indeed apparent, not only in the general 
 setting of the imagery, but in many specific allusions ; but 
 there is no detailed description of familiar haunts. In the 
 second portion of the poem, on the other hand, the scenery and 
 the associations of Kilcolman and the South of Ireland colour 
 the whole texture of his work, and the concluding books abound 
 in passages wherein not all the poet's idealism nor the veil of 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 17 
 
 his elaborate allegory can conceal the influence of his actual 
 surroundings, both upon the trend of his fancy and the form in 
 which that fancy found expression. And what is true of the 
 ' Faery Queene ' is true of Spenser's minor poetry. In the 
 poems written between 1580 and 1590 the local allusions, 
 though not entirely wanting, are few and far between, and 
 they are the allusions of a stranger in a strange land ; in his 
 later pieces they are frequent and even elaborate. Thus in 
 * Astrophel ' the forest of Arlo, which he afterwards celebrated 
 so affectionately, is mentioned only to be contrasted with the 
 more peaceful woodlands of England. 
 
 So wide a forest and so waste as this 
 Nor famous Arden, nor fowl Arlo is. 
 
 But in the fragment on ' Mutability ' this synonym for 
 the terrible is transformed by ' the magic of ownership ' 
 into a paradise, and represented as having been anciently 
 
 the best and fairest hill 
 That was in all their holy island's heights, 
 
 though transformed by wars and the hand of man into a 
 wilderness. 
 
 In illustration of these remarks it is worth while to examine 
 the ' Faery Queene ' with some attention from the point of 
 view of its topographical allusiveness. In the first three books, 
 as already remarked, there are to be found by the careful 
 reader reminiscences of Irish scenery and of Irish social condi- 
 tions which are tolerably distinct. Thus in the 'Legend of 
 Temperance,' it is sufficiently obvious that in the description of 
 the attack on Sir Guyon and his comrades we have a picture of 
 the lawless banditti who commonly formed the bodyguard of 
 an Irish chief, much as they are represented by Derricke in his 
 ' Image of Irelande,' ^ or by Spenser himself in his prose works, 
 and as they are depicted in the almost contemporary drawings 
 which accompany Derricke's work : 
 
 Thus as he spoke, lo, with outrageous cry 
 
 A thousand villeins round about them swarmed 
 
 Out of the rocks and caves adjoining nigh ; 
 
 ' The Image of Irelande, edited by John Small. Edin. 1883. 
 
18 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Vile caitiff wretches, ragged, rude, deformed, 
 All tlireat'ning death, all in strange manner armed ; 
 Some with unwieldy clubs, some with long spears. 
 Some rusty knives, some staves in fire warmed ; 
 Stern was their look, like wild amazed stears, 
 Staring with hollow eyes and stiff upstanding hairsJ 
 
 Again, in the two following quotations it is plain that the 
 poet is drawing not from imagination but from memory : 
 
 As when a foggy mist hath overcast 
 The face of heaven, and the clear air engrost, 
 The world in darkness dwells ; till that at last 
 The watery south- wind, from the seaboard coast 
 Upblowing, doth disperse the vapour loos'd, 
 And pours itself forth in a stormy shower : 
 So the fair Britomart, &c.' 
 
 In the lines just quoted we may have a reminiscence of 
 Kilcolman, which lies not very far from the sea, and it is little 
 to be doubted that in the following we have a picture of the 
 vale of Arlo : 
 
 Into that forest far they thence him led. 
 
 Where was their dweUing ; in a pleasant glade 
 
 With mountains round about environed. 
 
 And mighty woods which did the valley shade. 
 
 And like a stately theatre it made. 
 
 Spreading itself into a spacious plain ; 
 
 And in the midst a Uttle river played 
 
 Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plaine 
 
 With gentle murmur that his course they did restrain.^ 
 
 The witch's cottage in the same book is plainly reminiscent 
 of an Irish cabin of Spenser's day : 
 
 There in a gloomy hollow glen she found 
 A little cottage, built of sticks and reeds 
 In homely wise, and walled with sods around ; 
 In which a witch did dwell in loathly weeds 
 And wilful want, all careless of her needs.+ 
 
 ' Book II. Canto ix. Stanza 13. - Book III. Canto iv. Stanza 13. 
 
 ^ Book III. Canto v. Stanza 39. •• Book III. Canto vii. Stanza 6. 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 19 
 
 While the lorcUier apartment, described in the * Legend of 
 Hohness,' may well have been drawn from the hall of one 
 of the greater Irish castles, even if the scene depicted be not 
 the Earl of Ormond's ' brave mansion ' at Kilkenny : 
 
 And forth he comes into the common hall ; 
 
 Where early waits him many a gazing eye, 
 
 To weet what end to stranger knights may fall. 
 
 There many minstrels maken melody ; 
 
 To drive away the dull melancholy ; 
 
 And many bards that to the trembling chord 
 
 Can tune their timely voices cunningly ; 
 
 And many chroniclers that can record 
 
 Old loves, and wars for ladies done by many a Lord.i 
 
 Many similar illustrations might readily be adduced from 
 the earlier books of the ' Faery Queene,' to show the degree 
 in which Spenser's imagination was haunted by the wild charm 
 of the ' salvage soil ' in which he found himself, even where 
 the context shows that he had no express concern with Ireland 
 in the evolution of his allegory. But these must suffice. It 
 is to be noticed, however, concerning these and all similar 
 passages, that however obvious the reflections of the sights and 
 scenes of Irish life which they exhibit, it is only in the earliest 
 cited example, the description of the gnats of the fens of Allen, 
 that any express use is made of Irish scenery or that an Irish 
 name is used. With that exception it is only in the later books 
 that the scenery of Ireland is avowedly introduced. In those 
 books, however, and in those of his minor poems which can 
 confidently be ascribed to the last decade of the poet's life, the 
 references to the rivers, hills, and woods of Ireland are many 
 and widely scattered, though it is curious that the account of 
 Sir Arthegall's ' adventure hard ' in the ' Legend of Justice,' in 
 which Lord Grey de Wilton's Irish experiences are almost 
 undisguisedly commemorated, contains no mention of the 
 country in which it is represented as occurring more express 
 than the anagram Irene for lerne, in which the parable is subtly 
 indicated. With the exception already specified, the first clear 
 
 ' Book I. Canto v. Stanza 3. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 ESSAYS KELATTNG TO IRELAND 
 
 note of Spenser's acquaintance with Ireland which is heard in 
 the ' Faery Queene ' occurs in Ijook four, and refers appropri- 
 ately to the Irish Channel. It is to be found in canto one stanza 
 forty-two, where the shock of the onset of the two knights in the 
 encounter between Blandamour and Scudamour is likened to 
 
 two billows in the Irish sounds 
 Forcibly driven with contrary tides. 
 
 The next, in canto three stanza twenty- seven, of the same 
 book, is also an aquatic simile for a knightly duel. It will be 
 found in the story of Campbell's fight with Triamond, and 
 is borrowed from the tidal conflict of sea and river in the 
 estuary of the Shannon, which Spenser must often have 
 noted during his official visits to Limerick : 
 
 Like as the tide, that comes fro' the ocean main, 
 Flows up the Shannon with contrary force. 
 And, over-ruling him in his own reign, 
 Drives back the current of his kindly course, 
 And makes it seem to have some other source ; 
 But, when the flood is spent, then back again 
 His borrowed waters forced to redisburse. 
 He sends the sea his own with doubled gain 
 And tribute eke withal, as to his Soveraine. 
 
 But by far the most famous of the Irish passages in the 
 * Faery Queene ' is of course the well-known catalogue of the 
 Irish rivers, who are represented as attending the spousals 
 of the Thames and the Medway, which, often as it has been 
 quoted, must be quoted here once more : 
 
 Ne thence the Irish rivers absent were, 
 Sith no less famous than the rest they be. 
 
 There was the Liffey rolUng down the lea ; 
 The sandy Slane ; the stony Aubrian ; i 
 The spacious Shenan spreading like a sea ; 
 The pleasant Boyne ; the fishy, fruitful Ban ; 
 
 ^ ' The Stony Aubrian ' has puzzled Dr. Joyce and all the topographical 
 critics. May it not be the Owenbrin which flows into Lough Mask, a river 
 certainly known to the Elizabethan captains who soldiered in Connaught and 
 to whom Spenser was certainly indebted for some of his local knowledge ? The 
 epithet ' stony ' is particularly applicable to this river. 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 21 
 
 Swift Awnidufl", which of the EngUsh man 
 
 Is cal'de Blackewater, and the Liffar deepe ; 
 
 Sad Trowis, that once his people overran ; 
 
 Strong Alio, tumbling from Slewlogher steep ; 
 
 And Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep. 
 
 And there the three renowned brethren were : 
 
 The first and gentle Shure that making way 
 
 By sweet Clonmell adorns rich Waterford ; 
 
 The next the stubborn Newre, whose waters gray 
 
 By faire Kilkenny and Rossponte boord. 
 
 The third the goodly Barow, which doth hoord 
 
 Great heapes of salmons in their deepe bosome : 
 
 All which, long sundered, do at last accord 
 
 To joyne in one, ere to the sea they come ; 
 
 So flowing all from one, all one at last become. 
 
 There also was the wide embayed Mayre ; 
 
 The pleasant Bandon, crowned with many a wood ; 
 
 The spreading Lee, that, like an island fair, 
 
 Encloseth Cork with his divided flood ; 
 
 The baleful Oure, late stained with English blood, 
 
 With many more whose names no tongue can tell.^ 
 
 Dr. Joyce, in the article in Frasers Magazine already 
 mentioned, has dealt, with great fulness and intimate know- 
 ledge of the local geography of Ireland, with this enumeration 
 of the Irish rivers, as also with the detailed references to the 
 neighbourhood of the poet's home, which are so numerous in 
 the largely autobiographical poem of ' Colin Clout 's Come Home 
 Again,' and in the fragmentary cantos of ' Mutability.' We 
 have no intention of entering here into a detailed examination 
 of the use made by the poet of the scenery of Kilcolman. The 
 pictures of his home in the former poem and in the ' Epitha- 
 lamion ' are photographic in their accuracy to anyone who has 
 viewed the scene for himself, though its aspect to-day is of 
 course less homely, since, of the once substantial building only 
 the gaunt peel tower of the castle remains, and almost all 
 
 ' Book IV. Canto xi. Stanzas 40-44. 
 
22 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 traces of its precincts are lost. For the wild solitudes of 
 Kilcolman, with its lonely lake and barren marsh, peopled only 
 by wild-fowl, and the desolate levels of moor and bog which 
 stretch between the mountains and the mere are not less but 
 more a solitude to-day than in the poet's time. Those familiar 
 with its present appearance will hardly agree with Mr. Lee that 
 ' the surrounding scenery has gained in fulness and in richness 
 of aspect ' in the interval. This reminiscence of the poet 
 ruminating in his farm is more attractive than the present-day 
 reality, though it testifies to his unaffected enjoyment of his 
 home : 
 
 One day (quoth he), I sat (as was my trade) 
 Under the foot of Mole, that mountain hore, 
 Keeping my sheep amongst the cooly shade 
 Of the greene alders by the Mulla's shore. i 
 
 Similarly the panegyric on the stream at Kilcolman as an 
 angler's joy, though it may perhaps exaggerate the piscatory 
 qualities of the Awbeg as we now know it, expresses all the 
 pride of an owner in the attractions of his home, and recalls 
 with accurate suggestiveness the surroundings of Kilcolman : 
 
 Ye nymphs of MuUa, that with careful heed 
 
 The scaly river trouts do tend full well, 
 
 And greedy pikes which use therein to feed ; 
 
 (Those trouts and pikes all others do excel) 
 
 And ye hkewise which keep the rushy lake 
 
 Where none do fishes take. 
 
 Bind up the locks, the which hang scattered light. 
 
 And eke ye lightfoot maids which keep the dore 
 That on the hoary mountain use to toure : 
 And the wild wolves which seek them to devour 
 With your Steele darts do chace from coming near.'- 
 
 But neither the express references to the poet's home, nor 
 the specific descriptions of the natural features and scenery 
 of Ireland already quoted, exhaust the illustrations which 
 Spenser's poetry affords of the influence exerted upon his 
 
 ' Colin Chutes Come Home Again. ^ Epithalamion. 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 23 
 
 literary development by the circumstances which cast his lot 
 in Ireland. There are also clear indications of the effects 
 produced by his official experience upon his opinions on the 
 political problems presented by the Ireland of his day. Of 
 Spenser's official connexion with Ireland, by far the most 
 important memorial is his prose ' View of the State of Ireland.' 
 But scarcely less remarkable, and even more minute in its 
 references to the actual scenes in which the poet participated, 
 is the narrative already referred to of the ' Adventure of Irene,' 
 in the fifth book of the ' Faery Queene.' It has been observed, 
 and not unjustly, that the pure allegory of the poem is much 
 more perfect in the earlier than in the later books, and that 
 the vividness of Spenser's purely poetical imagination is in- 
 jured in some parts of the poem by the substitution of the 
 historical for the strictly romantic allegory. That is no more 
 than to say that even the astonishing wealth and fecundity 
 of Spenser's imagination were not absolutely inexhaustible, 
 and could not be entirely independent of the pabulum supplied 
 by the actualities of life in the material world in which he 
 lived and moved. But the poetry as poetry is none the worse 
 for this. It is doubtless true that if we insist on dissecting 
 the poetry, and on laying bare the political moral which may 
 be found to underlie it, our appreciation of the poetry is likely 
 to be effected by our sympathy with or dislike for the political 
 or rehgious ideals of the poet. But there is no reason why 
 the reader who comes to the ' Faery Queene ' for its poetry 
 should trouble himself about its politics, real or supposed. It 
 is only from the point of view from which we are now writing 
 that the hidden or obscure allusions to contemporary persons 
 and events are of any serious interest. It is, however, precisely 
 those portions of the poem which are most obviously historical 
 that are the most likely to yield sidelights on the poet's personal 
 history. And there is no portion of the ' Faery Queene ' or 
 of any of Spenser's works more charged with autobiographical 
 significance than the ' Legend of Justice.' 
 
 As everyone knows, the ' Legend of Justice ' portrays in 
 the person of its hero, Sir Arthegall, Spenser's political chief 
 in Ireland, Lord Grey de Wilton. x\lready in the ' Legend of 
 
24 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Britomartis ' he had hmted not obscurely at Ehzabeth's dis- 
 satisfaction with Grey in the early part of that statesman's 
 career, when, for some now unknown offence, the Queen 
 imprisoned him in the Fleet, and he had elof^uently vindicated 
 his patron through the mouth of the Kedcross Knight : — 
 
 Faire martial maid, 
 Certes ye misadvised been to upbraid 
 A gentle knight with so uuknightly blame ; 
 For weet ye well of all that ever played 
 At tilt or tourney, or like warlike game, 
 The noble Arthegall hath ever borne the nameJ 
 
 Spenser had also drawn in the same canto a splendid portrait 
 of his hero. But although in the fourth canto Sir Arthegall 
 is again introduced and his restoration to the Queen's favour 
 is intimated in the knight's relations with Britomartis, the 
 poet does no more at that stage of his story than fore- 
 shadow his intention of dealing with the episodes of his 
 patron's Irish career, by representing the knight as leaving 
 his lady in quest of the ' hard adventure ' he had long 
 propounded, and the ' Legend of Friendship ' is concluded 
 without any development of Arthegall's adventures in Irene's 
 behalf. In all probability what determined Spenser's choice 
 of the topic of the fifth book was the death of Lord Grey. This 
 event, which occurred in October 1593, must have been nearly 
 coincident with the date at which the ' Legend of Justice ' was 
 commenced. The book must certainly have been written about 
 this period, and it is easy to imagine that the death of his 
 friend and former patron, to whom, amongst others, he had 
 dedicated the earlier portions of his poem, and for whom he 
 lost no opportunity of evincing a warm and grateful regard, 
 would have given a fresh impulse to the poet's Muse, and led 
 him to commemorate Grey's career. It is certain that in the 
 ' Legend of Justice ' and especially in the portrait of Sir 
 Arthegall there is a personal note which is wanting elsewhere, 
 and which intimates how closely the poet's sympathies were 
 aroused in this part of his narrative. It is at once an elegy on 
 
 • Book III. Canto ii. Stanza 9. 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 25 
 
 his much admired patron and an assertion of the principles 
 upon which, in Spenser's judgment, the government of Ireland 
 could alone be successfully conducted, principles by which 
 Grey had certainly been animated, but of which little trace was 
 to be found in the administration of his successors. 
 
 The twelfth canto of the fifth book recounts accordingly, 
 under a thinly veiled disguise, the stirring incidents of Lord 
 Grey's vigorous government, the hostilities with the Spanish 
 force, whose landing at Smerwick had been almost coincident 
 with Lord Grey's arrival in Ireland, their annihilation by the 
 Viceroy's army, the reduction of the country by a stern enforce- 
 ment of the law, and the vacillation of Elizabeth and her 
 ministers in England, by which his policy was thwarted and 
 which soon led to his recall and disgrace. Of these latter aspects 
 of his patron's career in Ireland the poet's views are expressed 
 in these nervous stanzas : 
 
 During which time that he did there remain, 
 His study was true justice how to deal, 
 And day and night employed his busy pain 
 How to reform that ragged commonweal : 
 And that same Iron Man, which could reveal 
 All hidden crimes, through all that realm he sent, 
 To search out those that used to rob and steal 
 Or did rebel 'gainst lawful government, 
 On whom he did inflict most grievous punishment. 
 
 But ere he could reforme it thoroughly, 
 
 He through occasion called was away 
 
 To Faerie Court, that of necessity 
 
 His course of justice he was forced to stay, 
 
 And Talus to revoke from the right way 
 
 In which he was that Realm for to redresse. 
 
 But Envye's cloud still dimmeth virtue's ray ! 
 
 So having freed Irene from distress 
 
 He took his leave of her, there left in heaviness.i 
 
 Spenser has been reproached in relation to Irish politics 
 with an arrogant contempt for Ireland, and Mr. Lee censures 
 
 1 Book V. Canto xii. Stanzas 26, 27. 
 
26 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 his ' View of the State of Ireland ' as ' a mere echo of the 
 hopeless and helpless prejudices which infected the English 
 governing class.' But whatever may be said of the narrow- 
 ness of Elizabethan views of the Irish question, this picture 
 of the difficulties of an Irish Viceroy is intensely modern. 
 So little difference have three centuries wrought in Ireland, so 
 perennial are the problems that at recurring periods compel 
 the attention of English statesmen, that they might with equal 
 applicability have been written by some uncompromising 
 Unionist of the present day in reference to Mr. Arthur 
 Balfour's Chief Secretaryship and his administration of the 
 Crimes Act. 
 
 The political motive of the ' Legend of Justice,' and espe- 
 cially of Sir Arthegall's adventure with Irene, has of course 
 been often noticed, and indeed is almost too obvious to be 
 missed by any reader at all acquainted with the history of the 
 time. But the like intention has not been so generally recog- 
 nised in the two cantos of ' Mutability.' Yet their applicability 
 to Ireland and to the changes in the attitude of English policy 
 after Lord Grey's recall is too striking to be merely accidental. 
 It would seem as though the ' Legend of Constancy ' of which 
 these fragments were meant to be a part was designed to furnish 
 that supplement to the ' Legend of Justice ' which is promised 
 in the last stanza of the fifth book. It is at any rate manifest 
 that the evils which the poet bewails in these cantos are pre- 
 cisely those which the ex-official deplored in his ' View of the 
 State of Ireland,' and which the Munster Undertaker reprobated 
 in the last known writing of Spenser, that letter addressed to 
 the Queen which he either brought with him on his last journey 
 to London, or composed as he lay sick in King Street on what 
 proved to be his death-bed. 
 
 The parallel between the two works is indeed astonishingly 
 close. The chief burden of the ' View ' in its constructive 
 suggestions, is the need for consistency in the policy to be 
 pursued by the Crown in Ireland. Spenser's ideal adminis- 
 tration was the stern and inflexible but never purposeless 
 severity of the administration of Lord Grey. He could con- 
 ceive no greater injustice to Ireland, nothing more injurious 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 27 
 
 to the well-being of his adopted country, than the making 
 her the sport of Enghsh pohticians, or the arena for the 
 rivalries of the English courtiers who contended for the 
 favour of Elizabeth, Inconsistency or inconstancy in action, 
 lack of purpose and vacillation on the part of the repre- 
 sentatives of the Crown, he considered injurious alike to both 
 the English and the Irish elements of the population. 
 Spenser's acute sense of the mischief wrought by this un- 
 fortunate feature in a system of government whose working 
 he thoroughly understood, and whose actions he had had 
 the best means of noting during fifteen years' residence in 
 Ireland, is stated with great clearness and emphasis in the 
 remarkable passage in his prose treatise in which he reviews 
 the motives and conduct of successive Deputies : 
 
 The sequel of things doth in a manner prove, and plainly speak 
 so much, that the governors usually are envious one of another's 
 greater glory, which if they would seek to excel by better governing 
 it should be a most laudable emulation. But they do quite otherwise. 
 For this (as you may mark) is the common order of them, that who 
 Cometh next in place will not follow that course of government, 
 however good, which his predecessors held, either for disdain of 
 himself, or doubt to have his doings drowned in another man's 
 praise, but will straight take a way quite contrary to the former : 
 as if the former thought (by keeping under the Irish) to reform them 5 
 the next, by discountenancing the English, will curry favour with the 
 Irish, and so make his government seem plausible, as having all the 
 Irish at his command : but he that comes after, will perhaps follow 
 neither the one nor the other, but will dandle the one and the other 
 in such sort as he will suck sweet out of them both, and leave bitter- 
 ness to the poor country, which if he that comes after shall seek 
 to redress, he shall perhaps find such crosses as he shall hardly 
 be able to bear, or do any good that might work the disgrace of 
 his predecessors. 
 
 Such is the burden of the song which was continually on 
 Spenser's lips as often as he referred to Irish problems, and 
 such is the significance of the stanzas of ' Mutabihty,' which 
 sound like its musical accompaniment. The date at which 
 
28 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 these posthumously published cantos were written is not 
 known, but they almost certainly belong to that period of 
 trouble and disorder in which the poet's closing years were 
 spent, and were inspired by the apprehension of that 
 calamitous rising in which the Munster plantation was over- 
 whelmed and his own fortunes ruined. So read, and it is 
 impossible for anyone who knows the historical facts to read 
 them otherwise, they are full of a melancholy personal signi- 
 ficance from the commencement to the close. The metrical 
 argument prefixed to each canto indicates not obscurely 
 the motive of the allegory and its application to the ills of 
 Ireland, while the fact that the scenery of both cantos is 
 laid in Munster, and that the machinery moves in the soli- 
 tudes of the Galtee mountains, is even more clearly indicative 
 of the poet's meaning and purpose. 
 
 Proud change (not pleased in raortall things 
 
 Beneath the moon to reign) 
 Pretends as well of gods as men 
 
 To be the sovereign. 
 
 'PeaUng from Jove to Nature's bar 
 
 Bold alteration pleads 
 Large evidence ; but Nature soon 
 
 Her righteous doom areads,' 
 
 The first stanza of canto six, with the two scanzas which 
 have alone reached us of the ' unperfite ' eighth canto, plainly 
 bespeak the pessimism of the poet in his latter days. Con- 
 vinced of the ultimate triumph of the principle of constancy 
 in the moral and spiritual world, he yet despairs of witnessing 
 the effective assertion in the actual world in which he moved 
 of the principle of unswerving consistency of purpose and 
 action. These cantos are the dirge of the system of selfish, 
 unprincipled and purposeless methods of government which 
 had lasted through the poet's Irish career, and which were 
 to be replaced, as a result of the anarchy which they 
 inevitably produced, by the very different scheme of 
 
SPENSER IN IRELAND 29 
 
 administration and of settlement which Spenser did not hve 
 to see. 
 
 What man that sees the ever-whirhng wheel 
 
 Of Change, the which all mortal things doth sway, 
 
 But that thereby shall find, and plainly feel 
 
 How MutabiUty in them doth play 
 
 Her cruel sports to many men's decay .1 
 
 When I bethink me of that speech whileare 
 
 Of Mutability, and well it way ! 
 
 Me seems that though she all unworthy were 
 
 Of the heavens' rule ; yet very sooth to say, 
 
 In all things else she bears the greatest sway ; 
 
 Which makes me loath this state of life so tickle, 
 
 And love of things so vain to cast away ; 
 
 Whose flowring pride, so fading and so fickle, 
 
 Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle. 
 
 Then 'gin I think on that which Nature said. 
 
 Of that same time when no more change shall be 
 
 But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayed 
 
 Upon the pillars of Eternity, 
 
 That is contrayr to Mutability : 
 
 For all that moveth doth m change delight : 
 
 But thenceforth all shall rest eternally 
 
 With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight, 
 
 ! thou great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabaoth's sight.2 
 
 As the larger moral of this concluding portion of Spenser's 
 great poem is plainly to assert the faultiness of the methods 
 of government employed by English statesmen in their dealings 
 with Ireland, so the machinery of the allegory is utilised to 
 indicate its effects in producing or helping to produce the 
 desolation which the resulting anarchy in the Irish provinces 
 had wrought in Munster and in the near neighbourhood of 
 his own home. Of the affection he had grown to feel for 
 Kilcolman and his surroundings abundant references through- 
 out the poem are eloquent. But nowhere is this trait more 
 
 ' Canto vi. Stanza 1. - Canto viii. Stanzas 1, 2. 
 
30 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 apparent, though his language in the latter reference is charged 
 with melancholy and foreboding, than in the first of these cantos 
 of ' Mutability,' the scene of which is laid amid the hill and 
 vale of Arlo. After adverting to the old days — 
 
 When Ireland flourished in fame 
 Of wealth and goodness far above the rest 
 Of all that bear the British islands' name,i 
 
 the poet narrates how Cynthia, as ' sovereign queen professed 
 of woods and forests,' had chosen Arlo for her home : 
 
 But mongst them all as fittest for her game 
 (Either for chase of beasts with hound or bow 
 Or for to shroud in shade from Phoebus flame 
 Or bathe in fountains that do freshly flow 
 Or from high hills, or from the dales below) 
 She chose this Arlo.' 
 
 Then after explaining by what offence against her modesty 
 Diana was driven from her loved resort, he gives the picture 
 of its modern desolation : 
 
 Natheless Diana full of indignation, 
 
 Thenceforth abandoned her delicious brook, 
 
 In whose sweet stream, before that bad occasion, 
 
 So much deUght to bathe her limbs she took ; 
 
 Ne only her, but also quite forsook 
 
 All those fair forests about Arlo hid ; 
 
 And all that mountain which doth overlook 
 
 The richest champain that may else be rid, 
 
 And the fair Shure in which are thousand salmons bred. 
 
 Them all, and all that she so dear did way. 
 Thenceforth she left ; and, parting from the place, 
 Thereon a heavy, hapless curse did lay ; 
 To weet, that wolves, where she was wont to space 
 Should harboured be, and all those woods deface. 
 And thieves should rob and spoil that coast around, 
 
 ' Canto vi. Stanza 38. - Stanza 39. 
 
SPENSEE IN IRELAND 31 
 
 Since which, those woods, and all that goodly chase 
 
 Doth to this day with wolves and thieves abound : 
 
 Which too-too true that lands indwellers since have found.i 
 
 Such and so melancholy are the last references to Ireland to 
 be found in Spenser's verse. It is significant that they are 
 also the last lines of all his poetry that have reached us. 
 
 ' Stanzas 54-55. 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 
 
 In the previous article occasion was taken to observe on the 
 remarkable degree in which the careers of many among 
 the most famous Elizabethans were involved in the affairs of 
 Ireland. Men of action and men of letters alike found on Irish 
 soil a field for adventures and an opportunity for advancing 
 their fortunes, and flocked to it in numbers. The careers 
 of many of the most famous figures in the Courts of Elizabeth 
 and James the First were moulded, often to a large degree, 
 and sometimes finally, by their Irish experiences. Sidney and 
 Sussex, Mountjoy and the ill-fated Essex among statesmen, 
 are all of them examples of men whose fortunes were made 
 or marred in Ireland. Among men of action and affairs 
 there is the striking instance of Richard Boyle, ' the great 
 Earl of Cork,' a man whose acquisitive and constructive 
 genius must have won him enduring fame as an empire builder, 
 had he carried it to any country but Ireland. And in the 
 sphere of letters there are the yet more splendid names of 
 Spenser and of Raleigh, and the less eminent but still remark- 
 able figure of the subject of this article. 
 
 But there is this distinction between the case of Sir John 
 Davis and the others we have mentioned, that whereas in 
 the case of the latter their Irish experiences formed no more 
 than an episode, however important, in the career of each, 
 in that of Davis his Irish service made up the main interest 
 and importance of a life in which all other incidents were 
 secondary. It is true, indeed, that before he had entered 
 on his sixteen years' service as an Irish official Davis was 
 already famous enough to be greeted by James the First 
 at that monarch's accession to the English Crown as a poet 
 
 32 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 33 
 
 of acknowledged celebrity, and that at its conclusion he 
 devoted himself to a legal career in England, which had just 
 led him to the great place of Lord Chief Justice when death 
 put its abrupt close on his ambitions. But neither his literary 
 eminence, though it was considerable, nor his legal attain- 
 ments, though these were of a high order, would have suf&ced 
 to give Davis the lasting fame he acquired had his career 
 not included the period of his life in which he was the animating 
 spirit of the Irish Government at an epoch of singular import- 
 ance in Irish history. For not merely was Davis the trusted 
 and most efficient instrument of the Irish policy of King 
 James and his Ministers from the morrow of that suppression 
 of Tyrone's rebellion which was the last act in the long agony 
 of Elizabeth's Irish wars, bat he was in a large degree the 
 guiding spirit of the Irish administration by which that policy 
 was directed. 
 
 Davis's connexion with Ireland was marked by three 
 great and far-reaching developments in its administrative, 
 its social, and its parliamentary history. And in each of 
 these great and pregnant transactions he himself bore a 
 principal part. It was during his tenure of the Irish attorney- 
 generalship that the machinery of local government was 
 first effectively organised through the definitive demarcation 
 of the four Irish provinces and the final settlement of the 
 boundaries of the counties embraced in each. It was during 
 his term of office, and largely under his direction and super- 
 vision, if not under his immediate inspiration, that the 
 tremendous operation of the Plantation of Ulster was conceived 
 and executed. x\nd finally it was under his advice and guidance 
 that the parliamentary system of Ireland was modelled and 
 developed from the very primitive organisation which had 
 sufficed even as late as Tudor times into the actual scheme 
 of representation which prevailed for almost two centuries 
 from his time. 
 
 To the proper understanding of the tangled story of Ireland 
 under Charles the First and Cromwell, an accurate knowledge 
 of the Ireland of the first quarter of the seventeenth century 
 is essential. This is a period which has too often been passed 
 
34 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 over by the historians, and no adequate account of it has 
 yet been written. But Dr. Mahaffy in his book on Trinity 
 College, Dublin,! has handled with much felicity and gift of 
 historical insight some, at least, of the problems which belong 
 to the Ireland of Davis. And Mrs. Townshend in her ' Life of 
 the Great Earl of Cork ' 2 recalls both the peculiar social con- 
 ditions of the time and the characters of the leading personages. 
 
 Sir John Davis ^ was the son of Edward Davis, a small 
 country gentleman of Welsh extraction and owning a patri- 
 mony in Wiltshire, whither his ancestor had accompanied 
 the Earl of Pembroke early in the sixteenth century. John 
 Davis was the third son, and was born about the year 1570. 
 He was educated at Winchester and Queen's College, Oxford, 
 where he graduated in 1590. Early designed for the law, 
 Davis was admitted a student at the Middle Temple in 1587, 
 and was called to the Bar in 1595. His progress, both academic 
 and legal, was marked by many irregularities. He had a 
 taste for practical joking and rough horseplay, which at 
 Oxford caused his expulsion from Commons ; and in early 
 life at least he displayed a warmth of temper and a disregard 
 for social conventions which, within three years of his admission 
 to the Bar, had nearly wrecked his career. He was intemperate 
 enough to publicly chastise a quondam friend, one Richard 
 Martin, in the hall of the Middle Temple in presence of the 
 assembled benchers. For this offence he was very properly 
 disbarred and expelled the society, and but for the intervention 
 of a powerful friend his legal prospects must have been for 
 ever ruined. But after three years of disgrace Lord Chan- 
 cellor Ellesmere procured his restoration, and on making public 
 profession of repentance Davis was readmitted to practice. 
 
 But the three years of seclusion had not been wasted. As 
 early as 1593 Davis had written his first poem ' Orchestra, 
 or a Poem of Dancing ' : a work which was dedicated to the 
 same Martin with whom he subsequently quarrelled so 
 
 ' An Epoch in Irish History, by John Pentland Mahaffy. 
 
 2 The Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork, by Dorothea Townshend. 
 
 ■* Davies is the more correct form of the name, and is the spelling adopted 
 in the notice in the Dictionary of National Biography ; but the form long 
 consecrated by familiar usage has been retained throughout this article. 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 35 
 
 disastrously, and which Mr, Bullen, in his Introduction to 
 Professor Arber's collection of longer English poems,i justly 
 praises as ' a graceful monument of ingenious fancy.' On 
 being prohibited from practice, Davis resumed his devotion 
 to the Muses, and, retiring to Oxford, produced his well- 
 known * Nosce Teipsum,' a poem ' Of the Soul of Man, and 
 of the Immortality thereof,' which he was encouraged by his 
 friend and patron, Lord Mountjoy, to dedicate to Elizabeth. 
 Of this poem Hallam, in his ' History of Literature,' says 
 that ' perhaps no language can produce a poem extending 
 to so great a length of more condensation of thought, or in 
 which fewer languid verses will be found,' and that * very few 
 have been able to preserve a perspicuous brevity without 
 stiffness or pedantry so successfully as Sir John Davis.' What 
 was of more importance to the poet than the posthumous 
 praise of even the most eminent of literary Solomons, the 
 poem procured him the favour of the Queen, to whom it was 
 introduced by Mountjoy, and the opportunity of chanting 
 his gratitude in no fewer than twenty-six ' Hymns to Astrsea ' : 
 acrostic verses of sixteen lines each, in which the initial letters 
 of each line formed the words Elizabetha Begina. Better still, 
 the same poem which won the favour of Elizabeth's setting 
 sun procured the author equal praise from the rising orb of 
 her successor. King James was delighted with the poem. 
 Anthony a Wood, the Oxford antiquary, has preserved the 
 anecdote of the first introduction of Davis to King James. 
 He tells how the poet, proceeding in Lord Hunsdon's train to 
 Scotland to notify the monarch of his accession, was presented 
 by Hunsdon to the King, ' who straightway asked was he 
 " Nosce Teipsum " Davis, which, being answered in the 
 affirmative, James graciously embraced him and conceived 
 a considerable liking for him.' 
 
 Meantime the poet had succeeded in entering the House 
 of Commons. Under the auspices, doubtless, of Mountjoy, 
 he had been returned to the last and short parliament of 
 Elizabeth as member for Corfe Castle. James had been but 
 a short time on the throne when the recommendation of 
 
 ' Some Longer Elizabethan Poems, with an Introduction by A. H. Bullen. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 the same statesman, joined to the favour of his sovereign, 
 procured the nomination of Davis as Sohcitor- General for 
 Ireland. He received his patent of appointment on November 
 25, 1603, and, immediately proceeding to Ireland, received 
 the honour of knighthood at the hands of his patron the 
 Viceroy. He at once entered on a career as an Irish law ofiQcer 
 of almost unexampled duration and of quite unrivalled im- 
 portance. But before entering on his achievements in that 
 capacity it will be convenient to recount briefly the main 
 passages in his subsequent career. 
 
 Davis's Irish preferment did not involve complete severance 
 from the English Bar. In 1606, the year which saw his 
 advancement to the of&ce of Attorney-General for Ireland, 
 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law in England. 
 At that time it was the custom for newly made Serjeants 
 to present rings, and Davis chose for his the motto, ' Lex 
 publica lux est.' In 1612 he became First Serjeant. Davis 
 remained constantly in Ireland until 1616, when, returning 
 to England, he resumed regular practice at the English Bar. 
 But he retained his official post in Ireland until 1619. He 
 was counsel for the Crown in the trial of the Countess of 
 Somerset for the murder of Lord Overbury, and as First or 
 Prime Serjeant was frequently sent to preside at assizes. 
 Some of his charges on circuit survive in manuscript in 
 the British Museum. In 1620 he was again returned to the 
 House of Commons, this time for Newcastle-under-Lyme. 
 His name occurs in the printed debates of this Parliament 
 chiefly in connexion with Irish affairs, in which he never lost 
 interest. He opposed the Bill of that year restraining the 
 importation of Irish cattle to England, and was an advocate 
 of the continuance of a separate Irish currency. In one of 
 his speeches he touches on the perennial controversy between 
 the two kingdoms, maintaining on the one hand the depend- 
 ence of Ireland on the crown of England, but, on the other, 
 asserting ' that this kingdom cannot make laws to bind 
 that kingdom, for they have there a Parliament of 
 their own,' a sentiment which was certainly becoming in 
 ^one who had been Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 37 
 
 The crowning triumph of Davis's career was lost in the 
 tragical anti-climax of his sudden death. As the brief ' Notes ' 
 of his life, which survive in the Bodleian Library, put it, ' He 
 was made Chief Justice of England, and had not death seized on 
 him, he had sat that day he died on the Bench.' In November 
 1626, by one of the earliest of Charles the First's unfortunate 
 exertions of arbitrary power. Chief Justice Sir Randolph Crew 
 was discharged from his office for refusing to recognise the 
 legality of forced loans. Davis, who had written in defence 
 of the exaction, was nominated to the vacancy. His robes 
 of office were actually ordered. On the night of December 7 
 he supped with the Lord Keeper apparently in vigorous health, 
 and received congratulations on his advancement to this great 
 dignity. Next morning he was found dead in his bed. He 
 had succumbed to apoplexy : no unexpected fate, except for 
 the dramatic manner of its overtaking him, for physically he 
 was a very Falstaff. A contemporary has left a very unflat- 
 tering picture of his awkward gait, describing him as ' waddling 
 in a most ungainly fashion, and walking as if he carried a 
 cloakbag behind him.' ^ 
 
 No account of Sir John Davis may entirely omit mention 
 of his wife. Lady Eleanor Audley, daughter of George, Earl 
 of Castlehaven, grandfather of the well-known Irish statesman 
 and writer of that name. She belonged to a family of great 
 social consideration in that day. But however largely the 
 alliance may have contributed to the consolidation of Davis's 
 position in Court circles, it did little to procure him domestic 
 happiness. In Lady Eleanor's generation there was an evident 
 touch of madness in her family, from which she was not exempt. 
 Her brother figures notoriously in the ' State Trials ' as the 
 subject of an unsavoury prosecution, and she herself, eccentric 
 at all times, ultimately developed complete insanity. She 
 had a turn for prophecy based on scriptural anagrams. Most 
 of her vaticinations were unhappily melancholy. Among 
 other predictions she claimed to have foretold her husband's 
 death. ' His doom I gave him in letters of his own name 
 
 ' Manningharri' s Diary, published by Camden Society, p. 168. 
 
38 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 (John Daves — Jove's Hand) within three years to expect 
 the mortal blow, so put on my mourning garments from that 
 time ; when about three days before his sudden death, before 
 his servants and friends at the table, gave him part to take 
 his long sleep, by him thus put off : "I pray, weep not 
 while I am alive, and I will give you leave to laugh when 
 I am dead," ' But with all her disadvantages this unhappy 
 Cassandra was attractive enough to get a second husband, 
 who, however, deserted her. 
 
 Heylin, in his ' Life of Laud,' tells a good story of Lady 
 Eleanor. She was brought, it appears, into the Court of 
 High Commission, on charges arising out of her claims to 
 prophetic powers, which she grounded on an anagram of her 
 name, Eleanor Davis — Reveal, Daniel. 
 
 ' And thougli,' says Heylin, ' it had too much by an L, and too 
 little by an S, yet she found Daniel and Reveal in it, which served 
 her turn. Much pains was taken by the Court to dispossess her of 
 this spirit ; but all would not do, till Lamb, then Dean of Arches, 
 shot her through and through with an arrow borrowed from her 
 own quiver. For whilst the Bishops and Divines were reasoning 
 the point with her out of holy Scriptures, he took a pen in his hand 
 and at last hit on this excellent anagram, viz. Dame Eleanor Davys 
 — Never so mad a lady ! i 
 
 It is, of course, by this great historical treatise, first pub- 
 lished in 1612, towards the close of the author's active work 
 in Ireland, that Davis's connexion with that country is best 
 remembered and most clearly emphasised. As the climax of 
 that work is the plantation of Ulster, and its primary object 
 the glorification of the measures of King James for the 
 
 * In Bishop Goodman's Court and Times of Charles I some curious 
 particulars are given of the later eccentricities of this unfortunate lady. The 
 Cathedral of Lichfield was the scene of one of her most whimsical misdemean- 
 ours. In 1636 the Cathedral had lately been beautifully adorned with arras 
 hangings and other decorations. The demented lady appeared one morning, 
 ' with a kettle in one hand and a brush in the other,' to sprinkle the hangings 
 and the bishop's seat with what she called holy water, but which proved to be 
 ' a composition of tar, pitch, sink puddle, and water and such kind of nasty 
 ingredients.' ' This,' says the narrator, ' being the act of a madwoman, 
 the lords to prevent further mischief have given out two warrants, the 
 one to bring the lady to Bethlehem, the other to the keeper of Bethlehem 
 to receive her.' 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 39 
 
 pacification of Ireland, it is easily forgotten that a large part 
 of its author's administrative work had been achieved before 
 the plantation of Ulster had been rendered possible by the 
 flight of the Earls, and that a further very important phase 
 of it was subsequent to that event. In truth, his most im- 
 portant work lay not in the plantation of Ulster, but in the 
 setting, to use his own words, of the clock of civil government 
 in Ireland, and the harmonising of the strings of that Irish 
 harp which it was the business of the civil magistrate to 
 finger,^ The story of the Plantation of Ulster has been often 
 written, and though much still remains to be said in elucidation 
 of some of its incidents, it is not our purpose to re-tell the 
 story now. But it is worth while to endeavour to realise 
 more clearly than has yet been done the civil and social state 
 of Ireland at the date of the accession of the first Stuart and 
 the arrival of Sir John Davis in Ireland. It is, therefore, to 
 the first and third of the three great achievements with which 
 Davis was connected that attention will be directed here. 
 
 Not the least remarkable feature in the state of Ireland 
 at the opening of the seventeenth century was the primitive, 
 not to say amorphous, condition of the administrative organisa- 
 tion provided by its rulers. Not merely was the machinery of 
 government inefiicient, but even the framework of an adminis- 
 trative system was non-existent in a great part of Ireland. 
 It is indeed astonishing to reflect how little progress had 
 been made by the representatives of the Crown in applying 
 English law to Irish lawlessness between the days of King 
 John and those of EHzabeth. The early Plantagenets, 
 indeed, had made some progress. They had divided the 
 country into provinces, and even, in theory at least, into 
 counties. As early as Henry the Third's reign the sheriff, 
 that pioneer of the laws of England, exercised his functions 
 
 ' It is curious to note Davis's fondness for this image. He had used it 
 many years earlier, and before he had set foot in Ireland, in his poem of The 
 King's Welcome, addressed to James on his accession : 
 
 On, for thee birds will help to fill thie songe, 
 wherto all english harte stiinges doe agree ; 
 And the Irish harpe stringes, that did iarre soe long 
 to make the musicke full, nowe tuned be. 
 
40 ESSAYS EELATING TO lEELAND 
 
 in every one of the districts into which the island had been 
 parcelled, either as the direct functionary of the Crown itself, 
 or as the agent and nominee of the great earls palatine, who in 
 feudal times did so much of the work of government as well in 
 England as in Ireland. But the feebleness of Henry's grand- 
 son, Edward the Second, allowed the process to be arrested. 
 It is scarcely an exaggeration to assert that the independence 
 of Scotland, vindicated on the field of Bannockburn, was 
 really consolidated in Ireland, where the invasion of Edward 
 Bruce struck a signal blow at the prestige of the English crown. 
 That invasion undermined English authority not merely 
 with the Irish chieftains, but with the great Norman lords on 
 whom the English sovereigns had till then depended for the 
 administration of a large part of the country. Of this truth 
 no more striking illustration can be given than the fact that 
 from the date of the wars of the Bruce in Ireland to the middle 
 of the reign of Henry the Eighth, for a period that is of two 
 full centuries, not a single addition was made to the list of 
 Irish counties. On the contrary, the effective authority 
 of the Crown vanished from all but four of the twelve counties 
 created by King John, until, in the quaint language of the 
 historian Stanyhurst, the boundaries of the English Pale were 
 ' cramperned and crouched into an odd corner of the country 
 named Fingal, with a parcel of the king's land of Meath and 
 the counties of Kildare and Louth.' In every quarter of 
 Ireland the functions of government were wrested from 
 their nominal owners. In Connaught the Burkes enjoyed 
 complete independence. In Ulster the Anglo-Norman colonies 
 of Lecale and Antrim practically ceased to exist ; and the 
 show of homage rendered to the Crown under the later Plan- 
 tagenets by the great Earls of Ormond, Desmond, and Kildare 
 but thinly concealed the complete indifference of the country 
 at large to a sovereignty that was at best an unenforced and 
 scarcely enforceable suzerainty. So far had the sense of 
 the English ownership of Ireland vanished from the minds 
 of the nominal lords of the island, that as late as 1537 the 
 Irish Council addressed to Henry the Eighth's English advisers 
 a * Memorial for the winning,' not of Ulster, Munster, or 
 
SIE JOHN DAVIS 41 
 
 Connaught, but of Leinster itself. They actually began this 
 document with a definition of the extent of the metropolitan 
 province, with the extraordinary averment that ' the country 
 called Leinster and the situation thereof is unknown to the 
 King and his Council.' Even after the Act of 1541, constituting 
 Henry the Eighth king of Ireland, had shown the resolution of 
 that masterful sovereign to convert his nominal overlordship 
 of Ireland into an effective supremacy, little progress had been 
 made in the formal subdivision of the country into adminis- 
 trative units. To the end of Henry's reign the proverb quoted 
 by Sir John Davis in his ' Discovery ' continued to hold good, 
 that ' Wlioso lives by west of the Barrow lives west of the law ; ' ^ 
 and three-fourths of Ireland, if not exactly unconquered, was 
 at all events ungoverned. The short reign of Edward the Sixth 
 witnessed little or no progress in the business of reintroducing 
 English legal and administrative procedure ; and though that 
 of Mary saw the first step in the process of forming a proper 
 administrative system through the island by the erection of 
 the districts of Leix and Offaly into the King's and Queen's 
 Counties, it was not until Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne 
 that any substantial advance was made in the shiring of 
 Ireland, a work which, as a succession of deputies had long seen, /" 
 lay at the root of all real administrative reform. And in fact/ 
 although two Acts of Parliament, one of Mary and the other 
 of Elizabeth, had been passed to empower the deputies ' to 
 convert and turn divers and sundry waste grounds into shire 
 ground,' it is probable that the objects of this legislation would 
 have long remained unaccomplished had not Sir Henry Sidney, : 
 perhaps the ablest in the great succession of Ehzabeth's Irish i 
 Viceroys, devised a new and potent administrative instrument, 
 which in his hands and in those of his successor. Sir John Perrot^ 
 was destined to produce vast effects in winning back Ireland 
 to what was called in that day ' civility.' 
 
 Sidney, whose vigour and energy made him a marvel of 
 activity both military and administrative, united with his 
 Irish government the Presidency of Wales. In the political 
 system of the Principality he found a model for a scheme of 
 administrative devolution which he aimed ^ at applying to the 
 
42 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 ■j whole of Ireland, and which he successfully established in 
 J two of its provinces. No single act of Elizabethan policy 
 had more important or more satisfactory results than the 
 institution of the Presidencies of Munster and Connaught, 
 not only because the gradual demarcation of the counties 
 of both these provinces as they now exist was largely effected 
 by their means, but because it was by their example that 
 Davis was guided when, a generation later, he effected the 
 final shiring of Ulster. It may be worth while to devote a 
 brief paragraph to an account of an institution devised, in 
 Davis's own language, ' to inure and acquaint the people again 
 with English government.' 
 
 The first idea of these instruments of government may be 
 traced to the reign of Mary, if not to the time of Edward the 
 Sixth, when a scheme was devised for the appointment of 
 separate Presidents for each of the three provinces of Munster, 
 Connaught, and Ulster. Sidney was then in Ireland in a 
 subordinate position, as the friend and adviser of his brother- 
 in-law Sussex, then Lord Fitzwalter. But although Sussex 
 had a clearly defined scheme for the institution of the system, 
 nothing was done during his government to give effect to 
 it. It was not until Sidney's first administration in 1565 
 that a practical shape was given to his plan. In that year, 
 j the constitution of what for the next century were known 
 ■, as the Presidencies of Connaught and Munster was formally 
 i drafted. The presidency included not only a president 
 1 answerable directly to the Lord Deputy for the military 
 security of the province entrusted to him, but a provincial 
 council composed of the prelates and nobles whose dioceses 
 : and estates lay within the district. It had also a separate 
 , legal machinery composed of the provincial chief justice, 
 two puisne judges, and an attorney-general ; and it was 
 I provided with a treasurer, clerk of the council, and other 
 
 ■ administrative officers. The powers and functions exercised 
 
 ■ by these Councils appear very fully from the detailed in- 
 structions issued by Mountjoy and the Irish Privy Council to 
 Sir George Carew which are printed in ' Pacata Hibernia.' 
 
 It is a matter of great regret, and a serious loss to the 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 43 
 
 historian of the Ireland of Ehzabeth and the early Stuarts, 
 that the records of these provincial presidencies have long 
 since perished. They seem to have been lost in the anarchic 
 years succeeding the rebellion of 1641 ; and, indeed, the 
 presidency system did not long survive that cataclysm. 
 Though they were revived at the Restoration as part of the 
 status quo ante existing at the time of the rebellion which the 
 Ministers of Charles the Second desired, as far as possible, to 
 re-establish, the presidencies were not regarded by the Restora- 
 tion viceroy, the Duke of Ormond, as necessary instruments 
 of government. Their efficacy, in fact, ceased with the final 
 establishment of a strong central executive ; and in 1672, 
 during the viceroyalty of Lord Essex, the system was abolished. 
 
 But though the era of their utility was comparatively 
 brief, the presidencies were invaluable aids to that policy of 
 restoring the power of the Crown through the remoter districts 
 of the south and west, which was the chief object of solicitude 
 to the Irish Government in the latter half of the sixteenth 
 century. It was under Sidney and his successors that the 
 provinces of Munster and Connaught, and by consequence 
 of Leinster, assumed their present shape. To Sidney himself 
 belonged the credit of the shiring of Connaught and the 
 division of that province, which throughout the Middle Ages 
 was treated as but one shire, into its five modern counties of 
 Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, and Roscommon. The same 
 administrator had also the honour of devising, though not of 
 completing, those additions to the area of Leinster by which 
 the final shape of the eastern province was determined. The 
 business of shiring Munster was in the main accomplished 
 by Sir John Perrot, and was the principal achievement of 
 a distinguished term of office as president of the province, 
 though it was not until Perrot had succeeded to the higher 
 office of deputy that his work in this respect was completed. 
 
 But, successful as were the Elizabethan deputies in the 
 settlement of the southern and western provinces through 
 the agency of the presidential administrations, they could 
 make no similar progress in Ulster. The conditions, indeed, 
 of the northern province forbade the application of that 
 
44 ESSAYS KELATING TO IKELAND 
 
 method of government to the solution of its problems. Thanks 
 to the success with which the O'Neills and O'Donnells, and 
 other chieftains of the north continuously asserted their 
 independence of the Crown, the great northern territories 
 remained down to the very end of the seventeenth century 
 practically terra incognita to the Viceroys, and preserved all 
 the primitive characteristics of the scarcely more than nomadic 
 civilization of Ulster. At the close of the sixteenth century 
 the greatest woods and fastnesses which remained in Ireland 
 were to be found in Ulster. And the thoroughly Celtic character 
 of its civilization was emphasised by the fact that the whole 
 province did not contain a single town of the smallest import- 
 ance, with the exception of Armagh, which, being a centre of 
 English influence, was continually harried by the O'Neills. 
 It was significant of this state of things that when Sidney 
 appointed the presidents of Munster and Connaught he made 
 no attempt to create a similar office for Ulster, but contented 
 himself with constituting the military office of marshal. 
 The O'Neills succeeded in keeping this and all other Angli- 
 cising institutions at bay for close on half a century longer, 
 and, indeed, one of the circumstances which is held to have 
 most directly influenced Tyrone to his flight in 1607 was 
 the threat or rumour that such an administration was to be 
 at length established. 
 
 In 1575 Sir Henry Sidney made a journey into Ulster for the 
 purpose of dividing the province into shires, but failed to 
 effect his object, and Perrot's endeavour in the same direction 
 some ten years later was no more than a settlement on paper 
 
 1 of the boundaries of the new counties he desired to create. 
 
 i It is best described in Sir John Davis's own language : * Sir 
 John Perrot reduced the unreformed parts of Ulster into 
 
 ' seven shires, namely, Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone, Coleraine, 
 
 ■ Donegal, Fermanagh, and Cavan, though in his time the law 
 was never executed in these new counties by any sheriffs or 
 justices of assize ; but the people left to be ruled still by their 
 own barbarous laws and lords.' Perrot's work was thus; 
 effective only in the sense that his division became the basis 
 of the allocation of territory carried out by Davis fully twenty/ 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 45 
 
 years later, and that his nomenclature of the Ulster counties 
 is that which, with the substitution of Londonderry for 
 Coleraine, still distinguishes the shires of the north. 
 
 Nor was this independence of authority confined to those 
 districts of the northern province which were dominated by 
 the O'Neills. South-western Ulster was equally remote from 
 the influence of the central government. East Breny, the 
 modern Cavan, was described by the Marshal, Sir Nicholas 
 Bagnal, as ' a territory where never writ was current,' which 
 it was ' almost sacrilege to look into ' ; and a Commission 
 appointed about the same time, by virtue of the same enact- 
 ments under which the Presidents of Munster and Connaught 
 had been constituted, for reducing Ulster to shire ground, 
 had been entirely unable to proceed. Thus it came about 
 that until the eve of the accession of James the First, Ireland 
 as a whole was in all essentials less amenable to the authority 
 of the British Crown than it had been in the days before the 
 wars of the Bruces : a state of things which suggests at once 
 the important influence exerted on the consolidation of English 
 power in Ireland by the union of the English and Scottish 
 Crowns. 
 
 There can be little question, indeed, that the success of 
 the northern province in prolonging its independence long 
 after the rest of Ireland had submitted in more or less sullen 
 acquiescence to the assertion of English power, was due in no 
 small measure to its geographical position, and to its neigh- 
 bourhood to the independent kingdom of Scotland. In the 
 early days of English rule, indeed, no inconsiderable progress 
 had been made in colonising the north, and especially the 
 north-east of Ireland. The settlements of Lecale and the Ards 
 in Down, and of Carrickfergus in Antrim, were flourishing 
 colonies in the reigns of the early Plantagenets ; and the 
 existence of Down and Antrim as separate administrative 
 entities, if not as counties in the full sense of the word, can 
 be clearly traced to a period prior to that of Edward the Second. 
 But from the date of the assertion of Scottish independence, 
 and of the overrunning of Ulster by Edward Bruce and his army, 
 down to Tudor times, these settlements, though never perhaps 
 
46 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 altogether uprooted, had ceased to expand. Communication 
 between Dubhn and the colonies in Antrim and Down was 
 carried on by sea only. There can be little doubt that a main 
 cause of the failure to revive English influence north of the 
 Boyne lay in the sense of the propinquity of Ulster to the 
 northern kingdom, and in the ease with which, in times of 
 trouble between England and Scotland, the northern chieftains 
 could secure support from their neighbours and kindred across 
 the Irish Sea. It is certainly something more than a coinci- 
 dence that the anglicising of Ulster, arrested in the fourteenth 
 century by the Scottish invasion, was never effectually resumed 
 until the hostile exertion of Scottish power had ceased to be 
 a possibility through the accession of James the First to the 
 English Crown. 
 
 The failure of all attempts to establish a semblance of 
 English administration in Ulster even in late Tudor times 
 only serves to emphasise the merit of the performance which 
 the energy and determination of Davis successfully carried 
 f-through. And it is to be noted that his shiring of Ulster, 
 / unlike his other great achievements, was accomplished before 
 Vand not after the flight of the Earls. It is true that the 
 actual series of ' inquisitions ' by which every ' bordering 
 territory whereof doubt was made in what county the same 
 should lie was added or reduced to a county certain,' was 
 not completed till 1610 ; and that, as noticed already, the 
 delimitation of one or two of the counties was directly afl'ected 
 in some important respects by the Plantation. But the 
 direct personal investigation by Davis himself, by which the 
 process had been preceded, had been begun at a time when, 
 to all appearance, Tyrone's continuance in Ireland in a position 
 of comparative prosperity was assured. It may perchance 
 have been a perception on the part of that clear-sighted 
 adversary of British power of the effects of the direct intro- 
 duction of English laws and institutions into the Irish territories 
 that precipitated the fatal step that ended in final exile. 
 The flight of the Earls has indeed never been adequately 
 accounted for. As Disraeli said of Newman's secession from 
 the Anglican communion, ' it has been apologised for, but 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 47 
 
 it has never been explained.' It was no doubt the result of 
 tKe sum of many causes operating in the same direction. 
 But the strongest motive in the heart of this strenuous adver- 
 sary of English rule may well have been the feeling that the 
 efforts of a lifetime to stem the tide of alien innovation were 
 at last on the verge of exhaustion and failure. Cultivated 
 though he was, this great representative of a vanishing ideal 
 must have looked on the onward march of English institutions 
 with feelings not very different from those with which the 
 aborigines of the American continent beheld the advance of 
 the stranger from the East. It was doubtless a desperate i 
 determination to appeal to the Spanish King to assist him 
 in arresting what he regarded as a fatal process that led Tyrone 
 to take this step. And no doubt but for the accidents of 
 European politics the step might have been successful. For 
 months, if not for years, after the flight of the Earls from'' 
 Ulster the direct intervention of the Spanish King was every- 
 where expected. Had hostilities been suspended on the 
 Continent within a year or two of the flight, an invasion of 
 Ireland would almost certainly have followed. ' " Peace in 
 the Netherlands means war in Ireland " has become a prover- 
 bial saying here.' So wrote the ambassador De la Broderie 
 from London in the spring of 1608. As it was, the war in 
 the Netherlands dragged on until Philip's energies and resources 
 were too far exhausted for further adventures. And so the , 
 flight of the Earls to win foreign succour for their native land, 
 instead of bringing the desired help, only fastened the chains 
 upon those they left behind, and facilitated the process which 
 Davis was a foremost agent in carrying out. No wonder J 
 that their exodus, precipitate, rash, and inconsiderate as it 
 was, prompted that eloquent and impressive lamentation of 
 the Four Masters which is the last dirge of Irish independence : 
 / Woe to the heart that meditated, woe to the mind that \ 
 /conceived, woe to the council that decided on the project of \ 
 i their setting out on this voyage, without knowing whether 
 uhey should ever return to their native principalities or patri- / 
 monies to the end of the world.' / 
 
 The last, and in some respects the most important, of the ' 
 
48 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 three great acts of policy with which Sir John Davis was 
 intimately associated was the reform of the Irish Parliament. 
 It is indeed not a little curious that it is to the man who was 
 the central figure in a great popular commotion, who stood, 
 in fact, for all that was most objectionable to the Irish leaders 
 of the day, that the parliamentary system of Ireland in a 
 later century owed much of its organisation. No episode 
 in the seventeenth-century history of Ireland is better known 
 than the story of the election to the Speakership in the Parlia- 
 ment called in Ireland by Sir Arthur Chichester in 1613. 
 On that occasion, after an unseemly struggle, not unmarked 
 by the appearance, if not the reality, of physical violence, 
 on the floor of the House of Commons, Davis, who had been 
 recommended from the Throne for the office, was elected 
 Speaker by a majority composed of 127 Protestant votes, 
 as against 97 ' recusant ' or Roman Catholic votes. His 
 competitor was Sir John Everard, an ex-judge who had left 
 the bench rather than subscribe to the oath of supremacy. 
 But though in this controversy Davis was the official candidate 
 of the English Government, and as such in direct opposition to 
 the popular party, it had been his business, prior to the election, 
 to devise the Parliamentary system under which, with little 
 alteration, the Grattan Parliament subsequently sat, and which 
 lasted down to the Union. Moreover, it was his part to pro- 
 nounce, in his address to the Viceroy, following on his election 
 as Speaker, the most eloquent vindication of the history 
 of the Irish Legislature which has ever been put on record. 
 
 It was natural enough that, upon the morrow of the great 
 operation of the plantation of Ulster, when the issue which 
 most moved men in Ireland was the momentous issue of 
 religion, objection should have been taken to the selection 
 as Speaker of a great Crown lawyer and the chief adviser 
 of the English interest. But it is impossible to deny either 
 the pre-eminence of Davis's qualifications for the post or the 
 conspicuous ability with which he discharged its duties. When 
 the first and only Irish Parliament of James the First met, 
 the very name of Parliament was little more than a memory 
 in the country. For nearly a generation none had been called. 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 49 
 
 The three ParHaments held in the reign of EHzabeth, those 
 of 1560, 1569, and 1585, had been summoned for specific 
 purposes — the attainder of Shane O'Neill and the Earl of 
 Desmond in the first and third cases, and the raising of revenue 
 in the second — and had sat for a very short time. There 
 were few, if any, alive in 1613 who had sat in an Irish House 
 of Commons, and still fewer who had any knowledge of par- 
 liamentary procedure in England. The records of former 
 Parliaments were scanty and inadequate, and in order to 
 ascertain the precedents a diligent search through such journals 
 as survived had been essential. Such an inquiry could hardly 
 be profitably conducted save by an investigator with a lawyer's 
 training, and in fact it had been undertaken by Davis himself. 
 The actual record of his inquiry is still extant among the 
 Huntingdon papers preserved in the Bodleian Library. Its 
 more matured fruits remain in the speech addressed by Davis 
 to Chichester on presenting himself at the head of the 
 Commons of Ireland for the ratification of his election as 
 their Speaker. It may not be out of place to preface an 
 account of his singularly complete analysis of Irish Parlia- 
 mentary history by some reference to the actual character 
 of the formal proceedings at the opening of an Irish 
 Parliament in the seventeenth century. 
 
 Parliament was summoned by writs addressed to the lords 
 spiritual and temporal, and to the sheriffs of counties, mayors 
 and sovereigns of cities and boroughs, to elect knights of 
 the shire and burgesses of the cities and boroughs to attend 
 the King's deputy in Parliament, on Tuesday, May 18, 1613. 
 The place of meeting was the Castle of Dublin, a choice to 
 which exception was taken by the popular party, on the 
 ground, which was scarcely tenable, that it was contrary to 
 custom to meet there, and that troops had been brought into 
 the city by the deputy to overawe the assembly. A further 
 objection was based on the alleged fear of the explosion of 
 the powder and ammunition stored in the Castle, which, in 
 the view of the objectors, was like to occasion such alarm 
 as had been felt at Westminster on a still recent Fifth of 
 November. This last objection was set aside by Chichester, 
 
50 ESSAYS EELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 who with some adroitness turned the tables by reminding those 
 who put it forward ' of what rehgion they were that had 
 hatched such cockatrices' eggs.' As for the presence of the 
 soldiers, their utility was quickly evidenced by the disorders 
 which ensued. The scene when Parliament met has been 
 graphically painted in a contemporary letter : i 
 
 ' Upon the 18th of May, being Tuesday, the lord deputy with 
 all the peers of the realm, and the noblemen, the clergy, both bishops 
 and archbishops, attired in scarlet robes very sumptuously, with 
 sound of trumpets ; the lord David Barry, Viscount Buttevant, 
 bearing the sword of estate ; the earl of Thomond, bearing the cap 
 of maintenance ; and after all these the lord deputy followed, riding 
 a most stately horse, very richly trapped, himself attired in a very 
 rich and stately robe of purple velvet which the King's Majesty had 
 sent him, having his train borne up by eight gentlemen of worth : 
 and thus in a most stately and sumptuous manner they rode from 
 the Castle of Dublin to the Cathedral Church of St. Patrick, to hear 
 divine service, and a sermon preached by the reverend father in God, 
 Christopher Hampton, D.D., archbishop of Armagh, and primate 
 of all Ireland.' 
 
 The chronicler of the proceedings further informs us, with 
 picturesque detail, how the Lord Deputy, having returned with 
 his train to the Castle, ' ascended up into the high house of 
 parliament, where he sat down in his chair of estate ; like- 
 wise the Lord Chancellor sat down according to his estate, 
 also the nobility of the kingdom, the lords spiritual and 
 temporal, everyone sat down accordingly.' After which, 
 ' when the whole high court of Parliament was assembled,' 
 the Lord Chancellor delivered what was in effect a ' King's 
 speech,' ' setting forth many great and worthy causes of 
 estate, there to be debated upon for the good of the kingdom 
 and for the commonwealth thereof.' 
 
 Of the struggle with which the actual proceedings of the 
 Parliament opened more than one account has been left by 
 actual eye-witnesses and participants in the scene. The 
 Roman Catholic party, aware that, owing to the re-distribution 
 of seats due to the creation of new counties and the erection 
 
 ' State Papers, Ireland, James I, 1G13, May 29 ; Ryves to Dunn. 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 51 
 
 of fresh boroughs, they would find themselves in a minority, 
 and dreading that legislation inimical to their creed would 
 be proposed and carried by the Government, resolved to 
 bring the proceedings to naught. Since they would be power- 
 less in any division, the tactics resolved on were to obstruct 
 the introduction of legislation by creating a preliminary 
 discussion. Accordingly, when the House of Commons, after 
 hearing the Lord Chancellor's speech, was dismissed to elect 
 a Speaker, a scene of the utmost and apparently the most 
 calculated disorder ensued. Sir John Davis having been 
 proposed by the Court party, on the recommendation of the 
 Crown, Sir John Everard was proposed by the Opposition. 
 After an attempt had been made to procure a postponement 
 of the election pending an investigation into the returns for 
 several of the seats, the validity of which was challenged 
 by the popular party, a division was called. Some uncertainty 
 existing as to the mode of division, Sir Oliver St. John, a 
 member of the English House of Commons and a supporter 
 of Davis, who three years later became Lord Deputy, gave 
 the House the benefit of his experience at Westminster. 
 ' The use of Parliament,' he said, ' is to decide controversies 
 by questions, and questions by the numbering of voices ; and 
 for trial thereof I know by experience that they who are of 
 the affirmative part are to go out of the House to be numbered, 
 and to leave those that are of the negative part to be numbered 
 within the House.' St. John's suggestion was acted upon, 
 and the supporters of Davis withdrew to be numbered. But 
 the Opposition, refusing to appoint tellers, and taking advan- 
 tage of the accident which left them in possession of the 
 House, proceeded to elect Everard by acclamation, and 
 placed him in the Speaker's chair. The sequel to this dis- 
 orderly violation of all the conditions of parliamentary 
 procedure and decorum is best told in the quaint language 
 of the eye-witness already quoted. Dr. Thomas Ryves : 
 
 ' Which when we saw,' i.e. the placing of Everard in the chair, 
 ' we entered the House again and propounded for Sir John Davis, 
 and finding ourselves to be the major part by twenty-eight voices 
 or thereabouts, having named him, two knights took him and put 
 
 £ 2 
 
52 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 him also in the Speaker's chair and set him down in the other's lap ; 
 and because he would not remove they took him fairly out of the 
 chair and kept Sir John there. I cannot express what a cry was 
 raised thereupon, but the recusants, seeing they could not prevail, 
 left the House, and being sent unto by us refused to return, but 
 went every man to his lodging ; and shortly after we caused the 
 mace to be borne up before our Speaker and carried him to his home. 
 This is the true sum of that which passed that day ; no man doubteth 
 but that had the Parliament been kept in the town, the whole town 
 had been drawn in upon us, and we had all fallen to cutting of throats. 
 But in the Castle they durst not stir so far.' 
 
 It was before an assembly thus constituted that three days 
 later, having emerged successfully from the stormy scenes 
 which attended his election to the Speaker's chair, Sir John 
 Davis addressed to the Lord Deputy the remarkable oration 
 in which he reviewed with admirable succinctness, yet with 
 essential fulness, the parliamentary history of Ireland. In the 
 course of this address, to the essential completeness of which 
 modern research has added few facts of importance, Davis 
 pointed out the circumstances which made the House of 
 Commons of which he was the spokesman representative for the 
 first time of the whole of Ireland. For the space of one hundred 
 and forty years after Henry the Second had become possessed 
 of the lordship of Ireland, and of forty from the establishment 
 of an effective representative system by Edward the First, there 
 had been no separate Irish Parliament, the laws passed in 
 England being transmitted into Ireland under the Great Seal 
 to be enrolled as laws of the realm. Oddly enough it was not 
 until the decline of English power, in the reign of Edward the 
 Second, that the first formal Parliaments of Ireland were called 
 by Sir John Wogan, a name of much importance in the history 
 of the Irish legislature. The Parliaments of the later Planta- 
 genets were, of course, mainly occupied with legislation which, 
 like the famous Statute of Kilkenny, was designed to enforce 
 the views of the Norman or English minority upon the Irish 
 majority, and to keep up the distinction between the King's 
 English servants and his Irish enemies. In point of fact the 
 Parliaments of the Plantagenets were Parliaments in which 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 53 
 
 the lords of the ever-shrinking EngHsh Pale sought to legislate 
 for the exclusive benefit of the English colony. At one period, 
 indeed, the four shires of the Pale were the only districts of 
 the country which returned any members. The Parliament, 
 both Lords and Commons, was returned exclusively by the Pale. 
 To the Parliament called by Lord Gormanston in 1493, under 
 Henry the Seventh, the other shires were not even summoned 
 to return members, an illegality so flagrant that Poynings' 
 Parliament caused its Acts to be repealed. These Parliaments 
 were, of course, as Davis showed, entirely unrepresentative, 
 and though he did not say so, it was due to his exertions 
 more than to those of any single individual that it had become 
 possible to elect a representative Parliament in the sense of 
 a Parliament, the constituencies of which embraced all the 
 geographical and administrative divisions of the island. And 
 not only was the Parliament of James in very truth the 
 first in which every district of the country was directly repre- 
 sented, but it was the first in which representatives of Irish 
 blood and Irish opinion had any real place. Down to the 
 33rd of Henry VIII none but those of English blood or English 
 title were admitted to the House of Commons. For, as Davis 
 put it, ' The mere Irish of those days were never admitted, 
 as well because their countries, lying out of the limit of counties, 
 could have no knights, and, having neither cities nor boroughs 
 in them, could send no burgesses to the Parliament. Besides, 
 the State did not as then hold them fit to be trusted with 
 the Council of the kingdom.' As regards the shires repre- 
 sented, it had been impossible, prior to the effective settlement 
 of the Irish counties, to secure any proper system of county 
 representation. Down to the year 1 541 , as we have already seen, 
 there were no more than twelve shires in being. In Mary's 
 reign there were fourteen, and in the first Parliament called 
 by Elizabeth there were seventeen. But even when Elizabeth, 
 through the instrumentality of Sidney and Perrot, had raised 
 the number considerably, the representation was still deficient ; 
 for the Ulster shires, having no sheriffs, returned no members. 
 The state of the borough representation was even more unsatis- 
 factory. Only thirty boroughs returned any members, and 
 
54 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 the entire body of the House of Commons was less than a 
 hundred in number. Davis raised the total membership to 
 two hundred and thirty-two, of whom eighty sat for the new 
 boroughs created to counterbalance the additions made to 
 the county representation, which was predominantly patriotic 
 in feeling. He thus provided and fixed the shape of the 
 House of Commons as it remained with little or no alteration 
 for close on two centuries. 
 
 It is true that by this great measure of parliamentary 
 reform Davis provoked one of the fiercest parliamentary 
 storms that has ever agitated Ireland. The Parliament of 
 1613 was the first in which the King's servants were confronted 
 by an anti-English opposition, and this opposition was strong 
 enough to make itself felt. The addition to the borough 
 members was accordingly denounced by the Roman Catholic 
 party as devised merely for the purpose of overwhelming 
 the opinion of the country gentlemen by the votes of the 
 place men and nominees of great officials returned for the 
 new boroughs. And the controversy was in the end referred 
 to the determination of the sovereign in person. The career 
 of Sir John Davis in Ireland, indeed, abounds in matters 
 which touch closely the root of the perennial controversies of 
 Irishmen, and his policy, in most if not all of its aspects, was 
 one necessarily offensive to the national aspirations which 
 in his time were beginning to find organised constitutional 
 expression for the first time. For the final overthrow of the 
 last Irish chieftain who was strong enough to wrestle with 
 England in the field was followed almost immediately by the 
 first effective coalition between the Anglo-Irish of the Pale 
 and the native inhabitants of the rest of the country. Down 
 to the close of the sixteenth century the old English through- 
 out the island had continued to feel for the ancient race the 
 contempt with which for four centuries their fathers had 
 looked down upon ' a barbarous people, void of civility and 
 religion.' Had Tyrone maintained his independence, the 
 Pale would doubtless have remained fixed in its traditional 
 attitude, and continued to support English authority against 
 Irish revolt. But the practical annihilation of purely Irish 
 
SIR JOHN DAVIS 55 
 
 ideas in their last stronghold, the advent in Ulster of a new 
 race of English and Scottish colonists equally hostile to 
 the aboriginal and the acclimatised Irishmen, and the opposi- 
 tion in the vital element of religion between the old inhabitants 
 and the newcomers, produced within but a few years that 
 unity which many generations had hitherto failed to effect. 
 Davis left Ireland at the moment when these new conditions 
 had for the first time made themselves apparent, and it is not 
 to be denied that for the new and unhappy shape which the 
 Irish difificulty assumed in his time he must bear his share 
 of the responsibility. That he fully concurred in the views 
 of his colleagues and superiors in the Irish Government and 
 the English Council as to the propriety of the measures with 
 which he was associated there can be little doubt, and he 
 would have been the last to disavow his share in the framing 
 of the policy which it was his business to carry out. But 
 it is not with these matters that we are mainly concerned here. 
 It is upon the part played by Davis as an administrator rather 
 than as a statesman that we have sought to dwell. What gives 
 to Davis his great importance in the history of Ireland is not 
 so much the share he took in devising policies as the immense 
 administrative capacity with which he carried out these policies, 
 and made them real and operative. Let history decide as 
 it may on the wisdom or unwisdom of the whole scheme of 
 British policy in the Ireland of James the First, it can never 
 weaken the claims of Davis to our admiration in this regard. 
 Whether it was well or ill to have consolidated the social 
 organisation of Ireland on a frankly English model ; whether 
 it was wise or foolish to destroy rather than seek to conciliate 
 the last governing leaders of the Irish race ; whether it was a 
 bold expedient or only a base one to contrive a Parliament 
 technically representative of the whole Irish nation without 
 distinction of race, but actually subservient to the wiU of 
 the English Council — these propositions may be controverted. 
 What can never be questioned is that the man who rightly 
 or wrongly achieved all this has as just a title to admiration 
 as a great executive officer as any public functionary who 
 in any century has served the English Crown. 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 
 
 Among the voluminous labours of the Historical Manuscripts 
 Commission by no means the least considerable place must 
 be assigned to the already numerous volumes devoted to 
 the Marquess of Ormonde's very extensive collection of 
 historical documents. These volumes consist almost entirely 
 of transcripts from the papers of that well-known statesman 
 James Butler, twelfth Earl and first Duke of Ormond, of 
 whom it has been justly observed that ' the history of Ireland 
 for nigh half a century may be read in the life, actions, and 
 adventures of this able, virtuous, and illustrious man.' Ormond 
 was one of those who consider that ' papers are the jewels of 
 a family,' and few statesmen have ever taken more pains 
 to preserve their correspondence. Yet the papers now at 
 Kilkenny, numerous as they are, do not, as is well known, 
 by any means exhaust the documentary remains which the 
 sedulous solicitude of the Duke of Ormond, during an active 
 participation in public affairs which extended over half a 
 century, has preserved for the information of posterity. At 
 least as many more are to be found in the Bodleian Library 
 among the papers of the Duke's biographer, Thomas Carte. 
 Taken together, the documents preserved at Kilkenny and at 
 Oxford form something like a continuous series of papers 
 relating to public affairs in Ireland from the outbreak of the Irish 
 rebellion of 1641 to the arrival of Cromwell in Ireland, and from 
 the Restoration to the close of the reign of Charles the Second. 
 They are full of information alike in regard to the history of the 
 great events of this period and to the more minute details of 
 administration. It may, indeed, be said without exaggeration 
 that the armals of English Government in Ireland during the 
 
 56 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 57 
 
 middle period of the seventeenth century are illustrated by a 
 greater mass and variety of extant documentary evidence 
 than can be matched in the case of any other period. And 
 it is, at any rate, certain that the manuscript collections of 
 the Duke of Ormond relating to the affairs of his own times 
 exceed both in value and in volume those of any of his con- 
 temporaries, with the exception of his friend and colleague, 
 the indefatigable Clarendon, whose tireless industry as a 
 correspondent has, perhaps, never been paralleled among 
 statesmen. 
 
 The value of these extensive remains has, however, been 
 considerably marred by their separation into two widely 
 sundered portions. Our gratitude to Carte for his * Life of 
 Ormond,' a work which, in spite of some obvious literary 
 imperfections which have not escaped the inexorable judgment 
 of Dr. Johnson, is too thoroughly done to be ever superseded, 
 must not blind us to the injury done through the splitting up 
 of a great homogeneous collection into two confused and 
 disordered parts. The history of the transference of the larger 
 and in some respects the more valuable portion of the Duke's 
 papers from Kilkenny to Oxford may rank among the curiosities 
 of literature ; and, as it has been the subject of some miscon- 
 ception, must be briefly noticed here. 
 
 A biography of Ormond on a large scale had been long 
 contemplated by members of his family and friends, but 
 thirty years had passed from the date of the Duke's death 
 before the task of writing it was entered on by Thomas Carte, 
 a Jacobite author, whose first contribution to literature had 
 been a vindication of Charles the First from the charge of having 
 instigated the Irish Rebellion of 1641, and who saw in the 
 career of Ormond the opportunity for a defence of the House 
 of Stuart at a time when the failure of the Old Pretender 
 to recover the throne his father had forfeited had covered the 
 fallen dynasty with every form of obloquy. When Carte 
 embarked on his task Ormond's grandson and successor in the 
 title was an exile at Avignon, having paid the penalty of a 
 too reckless participation in the schemes of Harley and St. 
 John, and the family was represented by Charles, Earl of 
 
58 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Arran, the younger brother of 'the attainted Duke. To Arran 
 Carte addressed himself, and by him was not only entrusted 
 with a large quantity of his grandfather's, the first Duke of 
 Ormond's, letters and papers, which had already been brought 
 to England in connexion with earlier biographical projects, 
 but was authorised to visit Kilkenny and select from the 
 collection there such documents as he might find suited to 
 his purpose. The liberal interpretation which Carte placed 
 on this permission must be given in his own words : — 
 
 ' The success was answerable to my wishes ; I found in the 
 Evidence Room at Kilkenny, about fourteen wicker bins (each 
 large enough to hold a hogshead of wine in bottles) covered with 
 unwieldy books of steward's accounts, but which, upon examination, 
 appeared to be full of papers and to contain a series of papers of 
 state, orders, resolutions, and letters of the Privy Council of Ireland, 
 the despatches of the king and secretaries of state in England, his 
 Grace's own letters and those of other great men who corresponded 
 with him, from before the Restoration of King Charles II to the 
 year 1686. There being no bookbinder at Kilkenny, I was forced 
 to transport these in three Irish cars to Dubhn, where I was continu- 
 ally employed for several months in digesting them, in order to 
 have them bound up hke the others. Such papers as upon perusal 
 did not appear useful to my subject I sent back to Kilkenny, and 
 bound up the rest in volumes.' i 
 
 The volumes so bound up, to the number of not less than 
 a hundred, were brought to England, and were never returned. 
 They were retained by Carte with the rest of an enormous 
 collection of manuscripts accumulated by him for the purposes 
 of his other historical undertakings until very shortly before his 
 death in 1754 ; and it was long supposed that, as stated by 
 Nichols in his ' Literary Anecdotes,' they had passed to Carte's 
 widow under the terms of his will and had by her been left 
 to the University of Oxford. That lady did in fact make a 
 will by which she bequeathed, subject to a life estate in her 
 second husband, Nicholas Jernegan, ' all the manuscripts 
 of my late husband, Mr. Thomas Carte, or which did belong 
 to him, to and for the use of the University of Oxford,' and 
 the papers so demised were deposited in the Bodleian in 1778. 
 
 ^ Life of Ormond, by Thomas Carte, Oxford, 1851, vol. i. p. iv. 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 59 
 
 It was long imagined that these papers included the Ormond 
 manuscripts, in which Carte had no sort of ownership, and 
 that the biographer had been guilty of one of those misappro- 
 priations of manuscript materials from which the history 
 of literature shows that many otherwise honourable men have 
 not been exempt. The researches of the historian of the 
 Bodleian have, however, wholly exonerated Carte from the 
 imputation of literary kleptomania. Mr. Macray has shown 
 that the Ormond collection was in fact handed over to the 
 keeping of the University of Oxford by Carte himself in the 
 year 1753 ; and, further, that Carte in 1754, very shortly 
 before his death, placed in the Bodleian numerous other 
 manuscripts relating to Irish affairs in the seventeenth century. 
 No record has been preserved of the circumstances under 
 which the gift was made or of the concurrence of the re- 
 presentatives of the Ormond family in this disposition of 
 the great Duke's papers. But there is strong warrant for the 
 presumption that this arrangement had the sanction of the 
 nobleman from whom Carte had received his original authority. 
 Lord Arran was still alive in 1753, and was moreover, like 
 his grandfather and brother before him, Chancellor of the 
 University of Oxford. In that year the University had 
 become the recipient of a cognate gift of great importance in 
 the bequest by the descendant of the great Earl of Clarendon 
 of a large portion of the manuscripts of that statesman ; 
 and, although these papers did not actually reach Oxford 
 till six years later, nothing appears more probable than that 
 the gift to the University of the papers of the historian of 
 the Great Eebellion should have suggested to Carte a like 
 destination for the very similar manuscripts of Clarendon's 
 great friend and colleague. That Lord Arran, as custodian of 
 the manuscripts, should have assented to an arrangement 
 in which as Chancellor of the University he must have willingly 
 acquiesced is an entirely natural supposition ; and it is difficult 
 to believe that the transaction could have been completed 
 without his cognisance in either or both capacities. 
 
 From the very extensive nature of Carte's selections it 
 follows that the papers of the great Duke remaining at Kilkenny 
 
60 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 are comparatively deficient in historical interest, and it is the 
 highest tribute to the completeness of Carte's labours that the 
 most careful investigation of the sources he consulted, though 
 it enables us not seldom to supplement his statements with 
 interesting particulars, in no way supersedes his work. 
 Accurate in his statements of fact, even where he is most 
 prejudiced in his opinions, the reader may quarrel with Carte's 
 conclusions, but is obliged to accept his premises. Nevertheless 
 there have been found at Kilkenny, over and above the many 
 documents which were probably known to Carte, some which 
 he appears to have overlooked, and which throw no incon- 
 siderable light on his hero's career, while there are others which, 
 having come into the Ormond collection since Carte's day, 
 could never have been known to the biographer. In what we 
 have here to say of the career of the Duke of Ormond it is 
 proposed to draw more particularly upon those portions of 
 these fresh sources of information which throw light upon 
 the personal character of Ormond, the limits of an article 
 scarcely admitting of an adequate survey of the political 
 aspects of a career which is part of the texture of more 
 than half a century of English history. Chief among these 
 sources may be mentioned some particulars of the Duke's early 
 life, apparently compiled shortly after his death with a view 
 to his biography, a number of letters from the Duchess to his 
 half-brother, and the Duke's letters in the last two years of his 
 life to his close friend and henchman Sir Eobert Southwell. 
 
 Of all the statesmen of the seventeenth century the great 
 Duke of Ormond, as he is commonly called, had the longest career. 
 The Courts of Charles the First and Charles the Second contained 
 no more conspicuous or imposing figure than his whom Macaulay 
 has described as ' the most illustrious of the cavaliers of the 
 Great Civil War.' Ormond was continuously occupied in 
 public affairs for more than half a century, and his public 
 life spans the history of his country from Strafford to Tyrconnell. 
 More than forty years elapsed between his first appointment to 
 the Government of Ireland by Charles the First and the termina- 
 tion of his third tenure of the same great office just before the 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 61 
 
 accession of James the Second. In the words of his friend and 
 correspondent Sir Kobert Southwell ' he was fifty-five years in 
 councils and business, which comprehends all the last age.' 
 Thus the record of his participation in public affairs forms, in 
 the words of the same admirer, ' a little map of a great country.' 
 And this lengthened career was marked throughout by an 
 unswerving consistency, inspired by an indomitable loyalty. 
 Hence it is that Ormond has impressed even those who have 
 little sympathy with the cause he supported with a sense 
 of his absolute honesty. Even his hero-worship of Cromwell 
 could not blind Carlyle to the ' distinguished integrity, patience, 
 activity, and talent ' of the chief supporter of the royal cause 
 in Ireland ; and Lord Morley, in his ' Life of Cromwell,' has 
 characterised Ormond in terms which it would be difiicult 
 to improve on as ' one of the most admirably steadfast, 
 patient, clear-sighted, and honourable men in the list of 
 British statesmen.' 
 
 James Butler, twelfth Earl and first Duke of Ormond, was 
 born, according to his own belief — for the date of his birth is not 
 otherwise attested — on October 19, 1610, at Clerkenwell, then 
 a fashionable quarter of London, in which the town residence 
 of his maternal grandfather. Sir John Poyntz, of Acton, in 
 Gloucestershire, was situated. Though the scion of a stock 
 among the most ancient in Europe there was nothing in the 
 circumstances in which he was born to suggest that the infant 
 would become the possessor of the vast patrimony of the Earls 
 of Ormond, or live to excite the envy of the most powerful of 
 English nobles as the wealthiest subject of the British crown. 
 At the moment of young James Butler's birth the hereditary 
 honours of the house of Butler were held by the well-known 
 tenth Earl, the veteran warrior of the perpetual conflicts which 
 had torn his country under Ehzabeth. ' Tom Duff ' or ' Black 
 Tom,' as this earl was commonly called, was without male heirs, 
 and his presumptive successor was his eldest nephew, Theobald, 
 Viscount Tulleophelim, who had married the Earl's only daugh- 
 ter. Young James Butler, who was but the son of a younger 
 nephew, was thus only a contingent successor to the family 
 honours when he was brought to Ireland as a child of three. 
 
62 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 On this occasion the boy was taken by his parents to visit the 
 old Earl in the stately mansion of Carrick-on-Suir, in which the 
 veteran passed his latter years, and where, as the interlaced 
 monogram of his sovereign's initials and his own on a still re- 
 maining ceiling certifies, he had once prepared to receive a visit 
 from Elizabeth. Young as he then was, the future Duke in 
 after years could often recall the patriarchal aspect of old Earl 
 Thomas, as he sat sightless in his chair with flowing beard and 
 his jewelled George about his neck. There is a pretty story 
 which, though it rests only upon the tradition preserved by some 
 ancient retainer of the family, and contains some obvious 
 inaccuracies, has yet an air of verisimilitude in its essentials 
 sufficient to justify its acceptance. On the last Christmas before 
 his death, so the story runs. Earl Thomas kept Christmas at 
 Carrick, in the midst of a large family gathering : 
 
 ' The table being full, and no room for the younger James Butler 
 to sit at it, he, being then a sprightly boy, entertained himself by 
 whipping his gig (top) in the dining-room, just behind the Earl of 
 Ormond's chair.' 
 
 The old man, inquiring and being told the cause of the noise, 
 bade the servant put the boy upon his knees, when, stroking 
 the child's hair, he is reported to have predicted the family 
 misfortunes which, in fact, followed his own demise, and the 
 ultimate advancement of his name to more than its former 
 splendour in the person of the child upon his knee. 
 
 ' Upon which prophetical expression by the Earl,' says the family 
 chronicler, ' the Lord Viscount TuUogh, who then sat near him, and 
 was his nephew and son-in-law, and was to be his successor in the 
 earldom, being a very proud, conceited man, he in great indignation 
 put back his chair and rose up and flung from the table.' 
 
 The Earl again inquiring and ascertaining the cause of the 
 second noise, and being told that his nephew had left the room 
 in dudgeon, predicted his early demise, and the consequent suc- 
 cession of the boy James to the heirship of the family honours.^ 
 Whatever degree of credence may be attached to this story 
 
 * Manuscri'pts of the Marquis of Ormonde, N.S. vol. ii. p. 346. 
 
AN ILLUSTKIOUS CAVALIER 63 
 
 it is certain that the Earl's death was followed by twenty years 
 of melancholy family vicissitudes. The Lady Elizabeth, the 
 widowed daughter and heiress to the entailed estates of Earl 
 Thomas, becoming by her father's death a ward of the crown, 
 was given in marriage by James the First to a Scotch favourite, 
 the playfellow of his childhood, James Preston, Lord Dingwall. 
 Created Earl of Desmond by his sovereign, the Scotch peer im- 
 mediately instituted claims on behalf of his wife to the greater 
 part of the Ormond estates, in defiance of the rights of the 
 owner of the Ormond title. A long and expensive lawsuit fol- 
 lowed, which King James, who actively assisted his favourite, 
 ultimately undertook to terminate by an award. But the terms 
 of the settlement were so onerous that Walter, Earl of Ormond, 
 refused to abide by it. He was accordingly thrown into the 
 Fleet, where he lay for eight years. The King, not satisfied with 
 this injustice, arbitrarily resumed the ancient grant of the 
 county palatine of Tipperary, which had been enjoyed for above 
 four centuries by the Earl's family, and the splendid fortunes of 
 the house of Butler were for a time completely eclipsed. 
 
 Meantime young James Butler was being brought up in 
 London. Earl Walter, the new head of the family, joined to 
 his other offences against King James's predilections a warm 
 devotion to the Roman Catholic religion, to which faith the 
 lad's parents and almost all his immediate relatives also 
 belonged. Accordingly, on the death of his father, which 
 occurred when he was ten years old, the lad, who had thus 
 become by courtesy Viscount Thurles, was removed to England 
 by the King's direction and placed under the care of the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury at Lambeth, to be brought up in the 
 Protestant faith. No provision, beyond the scanty allowance of 
 forty pounds a year, appears to have been made for his main- 
 tenance ; but though Primate Abbot troubled himself as little 
 as possible about his charge this expedient answered the King's 
 purpose. Though always thoroughly tolerant of every form of 
 religious opinion Ormond appears to have become imbued at 
 this period with a sincere attachment to the Church of England, 
 to whose principles he ever afterwards constantly and con- 
 scientiously adhered. In his government of Ireland after the 
 
64 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Restoration, his tolerance of Roman Catholics was more than 
 once a source of embarrassment to Ormond, and in the ferment 
 excited by Oates's Plot his kindness to his numerous relatives 
 of that creed even threatened to lead to an impeachment. In 
 a letter addressed at this period to his confidential correspon- 
 dent, Sir Robert Southwell, Ormond vindicates himself from 
 the aspersions and suspicions which were then rife, with a firm- 
 ness and manliness entirely honourable to him : 
 
 ' I know well that I am born with some disadvantages in relation 
 to this present conjuncture, besides my natural weakness and in- 
 firmities, and such as I can no more free myself from than I can from 
 them. . . . My father and mother lived and died Papists, and bred 
 all their children so, and only I, by God's merciful providence, was 
 educated in the true Protestant religion, from which I never swerved 
 towards either extreme, not when it was most dangerous to profess 
 it and most advantageous to quit it. . . . My brothers and sisters, 
 though they were not very many, were very fruitful and obstinate 
 (they will call it constant) in their way. Their fruitfulness hath 
 spread into a large alliance, and their obstinacy has made it 
 altogether Popish. . . . But I am taught by nature, and also by 
 instruction, that difference in opinion concerning matters of 
 rehgion dissolves not the obligations of nature ; and in conformity 
 to this principle I own not only that I have done but that I will 
 do my relations of that or any other persuasion all the good I can.' i 
 
 Great as was the hostility between the Earls of Ormond 
 and Desmond, consequent on the acute family quarrel which 
 had arisen between them, the costs of a protracted lawsuit 
 disposed both parties, after some years, to seek the means of an 
 accommodation. As the Countess of Desmond had but one 
 child, the Lady Elizabeth Preston, who was the sole heiress 
 to whatever rights the daughter of Earl Thomas might ulti- 
 mately be found to possess, an obvious mode was presented 
 of reconciling the family differences by uniting the rival claims 
 in the persons of the respective heirs of the disputants. As 
 early as 1621, while both parties to the suggested contract were 
 still children, respectively aged eleven and seven, articles of 
 agreement were concluded between Walter,|Earl of Ormond, 
 
 ' Manuscripts of the Marquis of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 280. 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 65 
 
 and the Earl and Countess of Desmond for the union of Viscount 
 Thurles and his cousin as soon as they should attain marriage- 
 able age. Doubts and differences, however, prevented this 
 arrangement from taking effect ; the proposal was broken off, 
 and was not renewed until after the death of both the parents 
 of the young lady. Meantime, the cousins having made each 
 other's acquaintance, mutual inclination had combined with 
 mutual interest to forward an alliance so obviously desirable. 
 There is a pretty story of the young Viscount's courtship of his 
 cousin which represents him as ' going in disguise (as a romantic 
 lover) through Kensington, with a pedlar's pack on his back,' 
 with the object of gaining an interview. The Lady Elizabeth 
 condescending to inspect the wares of the supposed pedlar, 
 
 * he presented to her a pair of gloves, into one of which he had 
 before conveyed a letter, which she in drawing on the glove per- 
 ceiving, pretended to have no money in her pocket to pay for the 
 gloves, and notwithstanding the young ladies ofEered to lend her 
 money yet she retired to her chamber to fetch money, and, being 
 there, perused the letter, and soon after returned with the gloves 
 again (into which she had as cunningly conveyed an answer) which 
 she returned to the amorous pedlar, pretending they had an ill 
 smell.' ' What were the contents of these letters,' the narrator of the 
 tale continues, ' can be no otherwise guessed at (because they were so 
 secretly contrived as all amorous intrigues are) than by the success.' i 
 
 The young couple were shortly afterwards married, and 
 removing into Ireland in 1630 resided there until the death of 
 Earl Walter in 1634 left his youthful grandson the unchallenged 
 master of the long disputed heritage of Earl Thomas. 
 
 At this point a word may be fitly said of the lady who for 
 fifty-four years was Ormond's helpmeet. Her character fitted 
 her alike in prosperity and in adversity for such a partnership. 
 Her letters, of which a good many remain, show her to have 
 been, in Carte's words, ' a person of excellent capacity and good 
 sense, who could write on matters of business with great 
 clearness and strength of expression.' That she possessed 
 both intrepidity and energy was shown by her activity in 
 rescuing the Protestant refugees in the neighbourhood during 
 
 * Manuscripts of the Marquis of Ormonde, N.S. vol. ii. p. 350. 
 
66 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 the rebellion, and by the capacity with which, during her 
 husband's long absence abroad with his exiled sovereign, she 
 continued to assert her own rights as an heiress and to induce 
 Cromwell to respect them. Her possession of a proper feminine 
 spirit was shown by the firmness with which, as a great lady at 
 Court, she declined to recognise the pretensions of the mistresses 
 of Charles the Second. She refused to wait on the imperious 
 Barbara Villiers, and when the beautiful Louise de Keroualle 
 sent word she was coming to dinner the Duchess of Ormond, 
 though she received her with hospitality, put her grandchildren 
 out of the house, that they might not meet the frail favourite 
 of the sovereign. She was, however, exceedingly magnificent 
 in her notions of hospitality, and her extravagance caused her 
 husband a good deal of embarrassment. To entertain Charles the 
 Second at supper she is said to have spent two thousand pounds, 
 an expenditure which, measured by the different standard of 
 value, was as colossal as that of any modern millionaire on a 
 like occasion. Her protege, Lady Fanshawe, relates in her 
 ' Memoirs ' that the Duchess of Ormond, on her leaving for 
 Ireland in 1662 on the Duke's reappointment as Viceroy, gave 
 her a turquoise and diamond bracelet, and to her husband a 
 diamond ring, and that she never parted from the Duchess 
 on a journey without receiving some present from her. 
 Her love of magnificence occasionally drove the Duchess to 
 odd expedients. Thus on one occasion she was driven to pawn 
 * a pair of diamond pendants and a diamond fasset ring ' to 
 raise £500 ; and when her son, the gallant Ossory, was 
 honoured with the Garter for his naval success, she presented 
 him with a diamond George worth £200, which she had 
 subsequently some difiSculty in paying for. 
 
 Ormond's first appearance in public life was made shortly 
 after Strafford's entry on his Irish career. The familiar story 
 of that defiance of the masterful Lord Deputy which was the 
 foundation of a cordial friendship illustrated both the strength 
 and the adroitness in circumstances of difficulty which were 
 Ormond's characteristics throughout his long career. On the 
 occasion of the calling of his first Parliament Strafford, fearing 
 that the hot temper and embittered feeling prevailing among 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 67 
 
 parties in Dublin might easily lead to a breach of the peace, 
 had issued an order forbidding members of either House of 
 Parliament to wear their swords. The order was generally 
 respected, the peers as they entered their chamber handing 
 their weapons to Black Rod. But the young Earl of Ormond, 
 on being called on to do the like, coolly told this official * that 
 if he had his sword it should be through his guts, and so 
 marched to his seat, and was the only peer who sat with a 
 sword that day in the House.' Strafford was not the man 
 to permit such a defiance of his will, and sent for the offender 
 to appear before the Privy Council. Ormond promptly attended 
 and serenely gave this explanation : He ' acknowledged that 
 he knew of the order and had seen the proclamation, but added 
 that if he disobeyed both it was out of deference to a more 
 particular command and to an higher authority, to which all 
 his obedience and duty were due, and then produced the 
 King's writ which summoned him to come to Parliament cum 
 gladio cinctus.' However unwelcome such a display of inde- 
 pendence may have been to Strafford, the Deputy bore no 
 resentment ; on the contrary, the incident was the commence- 
 ment of a close friendship. Strafford formed a high opinion 
 of Ormond's capacity, giving him important command in the 
 army raised in Ireland, and in his commendation of the young 
 Earl to the King may be found the origin of that reliance 
 which Charles subsequently placed on Ormond's devotion to his 
 service. The friendship between the two men was thoroughly 
 reciprocal, and endured to the end of the great Viceroy's career. 
 In the dark days, before his trial, Strafford had no more staunch 
 friend than Ormond, who exerted himself strenuously to delay 
 the proceedings for his impeachment in the Irish Parliament, 
 and successfully retarded their progress for several days by 
 devices which prove him to have possessed considerable adroit- 
 ness in using the forms of Parliamentary procedure for the 
 purpose of what is now known as obstruction. That Strafford 
 warmly appreciated the loyal friendship extended to him in 
 his adversity is proved by his having made it one of his last 
 bequests to his royal master that his own Garter should be 
 bestowed upon Ormond ; and Ormond, in later years, never 
 
 p 2 
 
68 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 lost an opportunity of expressing his regard for the memory 
 of his early friend. 
 
 Although Ormond had been sworn of the Privy Council as 
 early as 1634, and had accepted from Strafford various military 
 commissions, it was not until after the fall of that statesman 
 that he seriously entered upon active public service. When 
 the Lord-Lieutenant quitted Ireland in 1640 he had left Ormond 
 in command of all the forces of the Crown in that country. 
 It thus befell that on the outbreak of the Rebellion, in October 
 1641, it was upon Ormond that the actual conduct of the 
 measures devised for its suppression immediately devolved. 
 He was thus at once placed in a position of the utmost promi- 
 nence and responsibility. The rapid development of the 
 military situation, and the resort of both parties to the civil 
 quarrel in England to the arbitrament of the sword, led directly 
 to the rapid advancement of Ormond to a position of authority 
 in the Royahst counsels. Though possessing, through his 
 position and connexions, a vast influence with all classes of 
 Irish society, Ormond had as yet been scarcely tried in the 
 serious business of State. Henceforward he remained, despite 
 all the vicissitudes of the royal fortunes, for more than forty 
 years to follow, the central figure in the affairs of Ireland, 
 and earned a resplendent reputation as perhaps the most 
 illustrious servant of the Crown that has ever held the sword 
 of state in that country. Into the details of that long and 
 varied career, in the course of which he was thrice the ruler 
 of Ireland, and twice a fugitive and exile ; which witnessed 
 the complete disruption of social order in his own country, 
 and its resettlement upon a basis which was to outlast him by 
 exactly two centuries ; and which embraced alike long periods 
 in which he was a principal counsellor of his exiled sovereign 
 and others in which that sovereign, forgetful in prosperity 
 of the services faithfully rendered in adversity, ostentatiously 
 ignored his most devoted subject ; it is impossible to enter 
 within the compass of an article in this review. But something 
 may be said of its leading features, and of those aspects of 
 it which are most in evidence in the additional materials for 
 his biography which are contained in the Ormonde Papers. 
 
AN ILLUSTKIOUS CAVALIER 69 
 
 Although Ormond's participation in pubhc affairs extended, 
 as has been already noted, over something like half a century, 
 his direct concern with the politics of his own country was 
 interrupted by the long break of eleven years which were spent 
 in exile. The period of his actual responsibility for Irish aJffairs 
 is thus sharply divided into two unequal parts. In the first of 
 these, which, speaking broadly, lasted from the fall of Strafford 
 to the death of Charles the First, he was engaged in a patient, 
 sustained, but always hopeless struggle to hold Ireland for 
 the Crown ; in the second, which, again speaking broadly, lasted, 
 with but one considerable break, from the Eestoration to the 
 accession of James the Second, he was occupied with the scarcely 
 less difficult task of evolving social order from the chaos to which 
 long years of the bitterest internecine faction had reduced the 
 country, and of reorganising the whole administrative edifice 
 in Ireland on a new foundation. It can hardly be said that 
 either period has hitherto been adequately handled by the 
 historians.! Dr. Gardiner has, indeed, explored the State Papers 
 of the earlier time with marvellous patience and minuteness. 
 The Irish chapters of his great works together constitute the 
 most lucid and impartial examination of a singularly tangled 
 story which has yet been attempted, and indeed have been 
 so written that they might easily be detached from their context 
 and published as a separate book, to the great advantage of 
 the general reader. But with Dr. Gardiner the history of the 
 Eebellion and of the war of the Confederation in Ireland was 
 necessarily only an episode, though a profoundly important 
 one, in the larger history of the Civil War, and it is full time 
 that its incidents should be examined afresh and in detail in 
 an independent work. For such a work the Ormonde Papers, 
 in spite of their necessarily fragmentary character, provide 
 considerable additional materials. Chief among these are the 
 letters of the Irish Lords Justices and Privy Council to the 
 English Government from the commencement of the Irish 
 Rebellion, in October 1641, to the appointment of Ormond 
 to be Lord-Lieutenant at the end of 1643, letters which 
 
 ' Since this passage was written Mr. Richard Bagwell's Ireland under the 
 Stuarts has been published. 
 
70 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 have not hitherto been available in anything like complete 
 sequence. 
 
 No episode in Irish history, as has been remarked in the 
 Introduction to these letters, has been more heavily canvassed 
 than the Rebellion of 1641. 
 
 ' The extent to which the rising was organised and premeditated, 
 the degree in which the accounts of the massacre are entitled to 
 credence, and the question to what extent the spread and violence 
 of the insurrection may have been aggravated by the policy of the 
 Lords Justices ' ' 
 
 are all of them matters which remain to a great extent unsettled 
 by the historians, but upon which these letters of the Irish 
 Privy Council shed a considerable light. Being only concerned 
 at present with Ormond's share of the business, we have no 
 intention of discussing here a topic which, in the words of 
 Lecky, ' is still the favourite field of writers who desire to 
 excite sectarian or religious animosity ' ; nor do the letters 
 themselves do much to resolve the long vexed question of the 
 real extent of the murders by which the Rebellion was accom- 
 panied. The gravity and magnitude of these outrages have 
 of late been as absurdly minimised as they were at one time 
 scandalously exaggerated. There can be no question that, 
 taken at the lowest, they were quite numerous enough to 
 excite the liveliest alarm in an age to which the notion of a 
 religious massacre was a conception by no means far-fetched 
 or novel. But as a contribution to the biography of Ormond 
 the letters go to show what a serious misfortune it was alike 
 for the future peace of Ireland and for the cause of his master 
 in the wider conflict between King and Commons that Ormond's 
 authority was subordinate to that of the self-seeking and 
 unscrupulous and withal essentially weak hands to which the 
 reins of government had been confined on Strafford's departure 
 from Ireland. Although in command of the military forces 
 engaged in suppressing the Rebellion Ormond was subject at 
 every step to the civil authority, and that authority was 
 exerted unfortunately in more than one instance in the attempt 
 to control the conduct of military affairs, which ought properly 
 
 ' Alanuscripts of the Marquis of Ormonde, N.S. vol. ii. p. viii. 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 71 
 
 to have been left to the discretion of the commander. Even 
 more disastrous was the exercise of the authority of the Lords 
 Justices in their legitimate sphere of action. It has been 
 often imputed to Parsons and Borlase that they deliberately 
 discouraged the speedy and effective suppression of the insur- 
 rection, with the sinister motive of driving the Lords of the 
 Pale into rebellion ; and it is far from clear that they can 
 be absolved from the guilt of so detestable a policy. But even 
 if the most favourable view be taken, and their mistakes 
 excused as due to no greater fault than the violence of incom- 
 petence, it must still be deplored that the conduct of affairs 
 should have been left at a moment so critical to men who 
 were wholly incapable of appreciating or utilising the materials 
 which lay ready to their hands for effecting a pacification. 
 Had the government of Ireland, as well as the command of the 
 army, been in the hands of one not less devoted to the authority 
 of the Crown than sympathetic with the great territorial 
 interests represented by the Lords of the Pale, interests which 
 were traditionally attached to the English connexion and hostile 
 to the ideals of the Ulster leaders, it is far from unlikely that 
 the rising would have been suppressed long before the outbreak 
 of hostilities between the Parliament and the King. Could 
 the moderating influence of Ormond, which even under the 
 adverse conditions which afterwards prevailed was so often 
 able to produce combinations impossible to others, have exerted 
 its full effects in the early stages of the Irish troubles, the 
 history of the next few years and the issue of the great civil 
 conflict might well have been altogether different. When, 
 after two years of vacillation, during which the flames of a 
 local disorder had been fanned, whether by accident or design, 
 to a conflagration involving the whole island, the government of 
 Ireland was placed in Ormond's exclusive charge, it was too late 
 to effect a pacification. By that time the Irish leaders had found 
 in the political situation across the Channel such encouragement 
 to the pursuit of separatist ideals as Irish leaders have at no 
 time been able to resist. Then, as so often before and since, Eng- 
 land's difficulty appeared to them to be Ireland's opportunity. 
 The light thrown by the Ormonde Papers on the second of 
 
72 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 the two periods to which we have referred is less steady and 
 concentrated than that which is shed upon the first, though 
 the mass of extant correspondence is considerably larger. 
 There is no such sequence of letters for the period of Ormond's 
 second Irish administration as the letters of the Lords Justices. 
 In any case the circumstances connected with the passing of 
 the Irish Act of Settlement and the subsequent difficulties 
 arising from the impossibility of satisfying the just demands 
 of all who had at one time or another enjoyed or acquired a 
 legal right to Irish land have been much more clearly narrated 
 by historians than the complex politics of the earlier time. 
 The fresh materials now available simply go to emphasise the 
 difficulties of a problem which was really insoluble. It needed, 
 indeed, but a simple sum in arithmetic to demonstrate the im- 
 possibility of meeting the engagements which Charles the First on 
 the one hand, had entered into with the Roman Catholics, and 
 which the Parliament, on the other, had contracted with the ad- 
 venturers ; yet which Charles the Second at the Restoration was 
 equally pledged to satisfy. The utter hopelessness of satisfying 
 demands which were not only mutually inconsistent with each 
 other, but of which the hard statistical facts of the case decisively 
 forbade the settlement, were plain from the first to Ormond. 
 It is, indeed, impossible to state the insuperable nature of the 
 difficulty more incisively than did the Lord-Lieutenant when 
 he applied himself to the drafting of the Act of Explanation. 
 
 ' I confess,' he wrote to the Lord Chancellor, ' I am not able to 
 see to the end of a settlement. For if the adventurer and soldier 
 must be satisfied to the extent of what they suppose intended them 
 by the Declaration, and if all that accepted and constantly adhered 
 to the Declaration of 1648 must be restored, as the same Declaration 
 seems also to intend, there must be new discoveries made of a new 
 Ireland, for the old will not serve to satisfy their engagements. It 
 remains then to determine which party must suffer in the default of 
 means to satisfy all, or whether both must be proportionably losers.' ^ 
 
 The latter alternative was that which Ormond preferred, and 
 could he have had his way he would have enforced a pro rata 
 
 ^ Carte, ojj. cit. vol. iv. p. 81. 
 
AN ILLUSTKIOUS CAVALIER 73 
 
 abatement of the rival claims. But circumstances were too 
 strong for him. The Cromwellian interest was too powerful and 
 too determined to be withstood. The King had no intention 
 of going on his travels again. The sacrifice of the old pro- 
 prietors was the line of least resistance, and it was the line 
 that was followed. This determination had a disastrous effect 
 on the influence of Ormond in Ireland, and was the true cause 
 of his being superseded in the government in 1669. By 
 advocating fair play to the old owners he offended the Crom- 
 weUians ; by failing to secure that fair play he won the hostility 
 of the Eoman Catholics ; and, as the poverty of Ireland, after 
 long years of exhausting wars, forbade the raising of any 
 considerable revenue, he was unable to maintain himself in 
 the good graces of the King. The papers of this period contain 
 many illustrations of the urgency and importance of the 
 financial difficulties of the Irish Government in the years 
 following the Restoration ; difficulties which were not lessened 
 by the facility with which royal warrants for large sums 
 charged on the Irish Revenue were procured from the sovereign, 
 any more than they were solved by the subsequent manipula- 
 tion of the revenue in the hands of the greedy speculators to 
 whose hands the control of the finances of Ireland was confided 
 by the King after the recall of Ormond. 
 
 Among the most interesting of the letters in the latter 
 portion of the Ormonde Papers are those of the once famous 
 Earl of Ossory, whose somewhat remarkable course has hardly 
 been sufficiently appreciated by modern writers. It is, at 
 any rate, impossible in any summary of Ormond's career to 
 omit a reference to his eldest son, that yreux chevalier who 
 enjoyed in the seventeenth century a prestige for personal 
 prowess something akin to that won, through similar gifts, 
 in the eighteenth by the perhaps better-known Marquis of 
 Granby. Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory, is indeed entitled to 
 a higher meed of praise than that which is due to mere dare- 
 devil gallantry, such as he displayed in many a hand-to-hand 
 encounter aboard ship, and on the field of Mons at the head 
 of the English contingent. For his is a figure of considerable 
 interest in the history of the English navy. Having acquired 
 
74 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 some knowledge of naval tactics during a five years' residence 
 in Holland before the Restoration, Ossory was given a sub- 
 ordinate command under the Duke of York at the outbreak of 
 the first Dutch war of Charles the Second, and in the five days' 
 action off the Suffolk coast he so distinguished himself as ' to 
 become the darling of the kingdom and especially of his seamen, 
 who called him the preserver of the navy.' Later, in 1672, he 
 held important command as rear-admiral of the Blue Squadron. 
 In the fight at Sole Bay and other naval actions of this war he 
 played a most conspicuous and distinguished part, displaying 
 a dash and gallantry worthy of the best traditions of the navy. 
 His valour and conduct in this war, to use the language of 
 Anthony Wood, were * beyond the fiction of a romance.' They 
 evoked a signal mark of royal favour, the King and his Consort 
 visiting Ossory on board his ship, and subsequently conferring 
 the Garter upon him in recognition of his services. This is the 
 first of the only two instances in which the Garter has been 
 given for a naval victory, the other being the blue riband 
 bestowed by George the Third on Lord Howe, more than a 
 century later, for the triumph of the Glorious First of June. 
 The Duke of Ormond had long ago received the same Order, and, 
 as Ossory had, some years earlier, been called to the House of 
 Lords as Baron Butler of Moor Park, both father and son now 
 sat together as Peers of Parliament, and both Gartered ; a 
 circumstance probably without a parallel. 
 
 That Ossory possessed a daring worthy of the old Ehza- 
 bethan sea dogs, combined with that impatience of any insult 
 to the national honour which was the mark of Drake and Nelson, 
 is shown by his plan for a descent on Helvoetsluys while that 
 port was guarded by a fleet of twenty-two Dutch ships, in order 
 to recapture or destroy the Royal Charles and other trophies 
 of the first Dutch war, which lay in the harbour. There is the 
 true Nelson touch about Ossory's declaration to Sir John 
 Narbrough, his captain and his colleague in the design, that 
 ' he would fire the Dutch ships with a halfpenny candle, or 
 should place his head upon Westminster Hall by Cromwell's, 
 for the greatest traitor that ever breathed.' That this 'man 
 of great honour, generosity, and courage,' as Burnet calls him, 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 76 
 
 carried the like virtues into other spheres of action appears 
 from his once celebrated encounter with Shaftesbury in the 
 House of Lords. That subtle statesman, in the height of the 
 ferment produced by the Gates plot, was posing as the champion 
 of the Protestant interest, and in that capacity had made some 
 rejflections from his place in the Lords on the inadequacy of 
 Ormond's measures for suppressing Roman Catholic sedition 
 in Ireland. Ossory was present, and at once rose to defend 
 his father. Having recalled the Duke's services, and demon- 
 strated the improbability of his being lacking in jBdelity to 
 the Established Church, he carried the war into the enemy's 
 country, winning the delighted applause of Shaftesbury's 
 numerous ill-wishers by these spirited sentences : — 
 
 ' Having spoke of what he (Ormond) has done, I presume to tell 
 your Lordships what he has not done. He never advised the break- 
 ing of the Triple League ; he never advised the shutting up of the 
 Exchequer ; he never advised the declaration for a toleration ; he 
 never advised the falling out with the Dutch and the joining with 
 France ; he was not the author of that most excellent position of 
 delenda est Carthago, that Holland, a Protestant country, should, 
 contrary to the true interest of England, be totally destroyed.' ^ 
 
 It was Ossory's curious fortune to be on terms of the 
 closest intimacy with the two princes who, a few years after 
 his own death, were to contend for the crown of the Three 
 Kingdoms. And, despite the extraordinary contrast between 
 the characters of James the Second and William the Third, he 
 appears to have entertained an equal affection for both, and 
 equally to have won their regard. To the former, under whom, 
 as Duke of York, he had served in the Dutch wars, Ossory was 
 united by ties of professional brotherhood. The personal courage 
 of James the Second has often been impugned ; but it is difficult 
 to impute cowardice to one whose demeanour in action won the 
 unstinted admiration of a sailor brave to the point of reckless- 
 ness. James's intimacy with Ossory seems to have been 
 cordial and unreserved, and in some of his extant letters he 
 writes in the most familiar and unconventional terms both 
 about naval matters and about his own matrimonial projects. 
 
 * Carte, op. cit. vol. v. p. 136. 
 
76 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 With William Ossory's relations were even closer. Ossory had 
 spent much of his youth in Flanders. He had married, in 1659, 
 the daughter of the governor of Sluys, a nobleman allied in 
 blood to the Princes of Orange, and he had early become 
 acquainted with the young Stadtholder. In 1674 he was 
 chosen by Charles to be the negotiator of the match between 
 the Prince of Orange and the Princess Mary when that alliance 
 was first suggested. When William came to England three 
 years later, to resume the negotiations for his marriage, Ossory 
 was among the Prince's principal attendants. Though it had 
 hung fire for three years the affair was quickly settled when 
 once the Prince had made up his mind, and, as Sir Henry 
 Coventry wrote to Ormond, it was ' quicker than ordinary that 
 a Prince should come and woo, marry, bed, and carry away 
 the Princess Mary in less than a month's time.' Just before 
 this visit to England Ossory had fought with WilHam at the 
 siege of Charleroi, and the next year found him at Mons fighting 
 by his side as general of the British auxiliaries raised by the 
 States-General. It was evidently with entire sincerity that, 
 when leaving England with his bride, William, in acknowledging 
 Ossory's services, wrote that among all his friends the latter 
 could have none more devoted than his ' tres affectionne 
 serviteur, Prince d'Orange.' With such associations and 
 memories it was perhaps fortunate for Ossory that he did 
 not live to witness the Revolution, and so was spared the 
 necessity of determining into which scale he should throw 
 the weight of his influence, or to which of the contending 
 Princes he should lend the not less weighty encouragement of 
 his sword. 
 
 His exploits at Mons, where, besides advising the attack 
 and directing the tactics, he displayed remarkable personal 
 gallantry, formed Ossory's last experience of active service on 
 sea or shore, an appointment to a command against the Algerian 
 pirates who, in those days, were the scourge not merely of the 
 Mediterranean but of the Channel, not being taken up. In 
 the last months of his life, having been already specially 
 attached to the service of Queen Catherine of Braganza as her 
 Chamberlain, he was appointed governor of Tangier, but before 
 
AN ILLUSTKIOUS CAVALIEE 77 
 
 he could proceed thither he was seized with fever and died. 
 No public misfortune has ever been more sincerely or more 
 widely deplored in England than this premature close of a 
 career whose brilliance had caught the popular imagination. 
 The letters are still extant in which King Charles and his 
 Consort condoled with the bereaved parents, and Ossory was 
 made the subject of innumerable elegies. Of these the most 
 elaborate was the Pindaric Ode of Thomas Flatman. But, 
 though Ormond's munificence rewarded the author with fifty 
 guineas and a diamond ring, posterity would contentedly 
 exchange it for one of that poet-painter's miniatures. A more 
 enduring metrical monument was raised in the splendid con- 
 dolence addressed by Dryden to Ormond in one of the finest 
 passages in * Absalom and Achitophel.' In these lines the poet 
 deplores Ossory as 
 
 Snatched in manhood's prime 
 
 By unequal fates and Providence's crime : 
 
 Yet not before the goal of honour won, 
 
 All parts fulfilled of subject and of son ; 
 
 Swift was his race, but short the time to run. 
 I Oh, narrow circle, but of power divine, 
 
 Scanted in space, but perfect in thy fine. 
 
 By sea, by land thy matchless worth was known, 
 
 Arms thy dehght, and war was all thy own. 
 
 To Dryden's stately if formal verses must be added the 
 more feeling tribute of John Evelyn, who had known Ossory 
 from his boyhood, and who, having lived with him on terms 
 of the warmest affection, and attended his death-bed, was able 
 to afiirm that 
 
 ' his Majesty never lost a worthier subject, nor father a better or 
 more dutiful son.' ' Unhappy England,' Evelyn went on to say,^ 
 ' in this illustrious person's loss. He deserved all that a sincere 
 friend, a brave soldier, a virtuous courtier, a loyal subject, an honest 
 man, a bountiful master and a good Christian could deserve of his 
 prince and country.' 
 
 Of Ormond's own share in the additional correspondence 
 under notice not much requires to be said. His letters are 
 
 ' Diary, under date July 26, 1680. 
 
78 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 similar in tone and style to the great mass of those which were 
 published by Carte, and are familiar to students of his time ; 
 and they convey the same impression of his character. Though 
 a constant and a voluminous correspondent Ormond was not 
 a great letter-writer. His dispatches and State papers are 
 generally clear and to the point ; but, though vigorous, they 
 are often cumbrously expressed ; and even in his intimate 
 letters Ormond does not often descend to those personal and 
 trivial details which give charm to the correspondence of a 
 great man. But in conversation he had a faculty for pointed 
 and sometimes scathing irony. No rebuke could be more 
 admirable than his retort courteous to the Duchess of Cleveland, 
 who, having in an outburst of feminine temper expressed a 
 wish to see Ormond hanged, was gravely told that the object 
 of her resentment had no worse wish regarding her than that 
 he might live to see her old. Even more stinging is his observa- 
 tion on receiving the condolence of a nobleman whose hostility 
 had constantly embarrassed him, and whose regrets he could 
 not think sincere : ' My loss indeed sits heavy upon me, and 
 nothing else could affect me so much ; yet I thank God my 
 case is not quite so deplorable as that nobleman's ; for I had 
 much rather have my dead son than his living one.' Still 
 better, perhaps, was his answer to the King when Charles 
 inquired what he thought of the appointment of Shaftesbury 
 to be Chancellor : ' Sire, that lord is a very proper person 
 with whom to entrust the Seals, if your Majesty knows how 
 to get them back again.' 
 
 Ormond does not often write in a reflective mood, but to 
 his close friend Southwell he occasionally puts his musings on 
 paper. Thus a year or two before his death he penned this 
 charming sketch of the close of a long life : — 
 
 ' I am this next week to take a shorter joiurney and stay away a 
 less time. It is to see a little home in Hampshire ; and if I like the 
 situation I am resolved not to make exception to the smallness of 
 the house, because I shall be either able to build to it or I shall not 
 need a bigger. I know the country thereabouts is open, and the way 
 to it good, and I am told the gardens are pleasant and well furnished 
 with good fruit, which is an inducement to an old man that must 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 79 
 
 shortly lay aside the thought of field sports ; and the steps down- 
 ward are very natural from the field to the garden, from a garden to 
 a window, from thence to a bed, and so to the grave.' ^ 
 
 The keynote of Ormond's character and policy is the 
 indomitable loyalty which permeated his whole being and 
 animated all his public actions. From his earliest years he 
 was impressed with the feeling that a whole-hearted devotion 
 to the throne and person of the sovereign was necessarily due 
 from the head of that ancient and illustrious house which 
 before his time had already produced as many as eight Viceroys 
 of Ireland, and whose representatives had given unfailing 
 support to the English crown. The harsh treatment his 
 family had received from James the First could not damp his 
 ardour in the service of James's son. 
 
 ' I confess,' he wrote in a brief fragment of autobiography, ' I 
 confess the undutiful and insolent treatment which King Charles I 
 received from a pack of his ungrateful and ambitious subjects, and 
 the indignation it raised in me to see so good a prince so unworthily 
 used made me resolve to venture all in his cause, though I was very 
 little personally known to him, and not at all obUged by him,' 
 
 Loyalty was indeed with Ormond a master passion. Heavy 
 as was his heart at the death of Ossory, it was yet with perfect 
 sincerity that he could say, in reply to the condolences of an 
 acquaintance, that ' since he could bear the death of his great 
 and good master, Charles the First, he could bear anything.' His 
 language on the death of Charles the Second, for whom he had 
 a cordial personal regard, bears the mark of unaffected reality of 
 feeling. After deploring to his friend Southwell the loss of ' the 
 best King, the best master, and (if I may be so saucy as to 
 say so) the best friend that ever man had,' he feelingly gives 
 evidence of his sense of the trying incongruity between private 
 sorrow and public duty : — 
 
 ' My station, my duty, my allegiance forced me, the very day 
 after I received the stroke, to ride out to proclaim his successor, to 
 put on the habit, and (as well as I could) the countenance of joy and 
 triumph, with dismal sadness at my heart.' ^ 
 
 ' Manuscripts of the Marquis of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 306. 
 2 Carte, op. cit. vol. v. p. 1 77. 
 
80 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 This passionate devotion to the throne and person of the 
 sovereign was proof against every discouragement, and gave 
 to his career a splendid consistency. ' His whole life,' said 
 Southwell, ' was a straight line, if ever a man's in this world 
 were so.' He was often scandalously treated by his royal 
 master, as, for instance, when Charles the Second, after a pitiable 
 exhibition of vacillating insincerity, recalled him from Ireland 
 in 1669 at the instance of the Cabal. This was an indignity 
 which moved the astonishment of the Court and society, 
 people ' admiring,' with Pepys, that ' the greatest subject of 
 any prince in Christendom, who hath done more for his Prince 
 than ever any yet did,' should be thus disgraced. But Ormond 
 never murmured. He possessed what one of his friends called 
 ' a talent for bearing mortification with courage,' and he 
 never received a slight for which time did not bring the repara- 
 tion, which was the only revenge that the true nobility of his 
 nature permitted him to take. ' As noble a gentleman as ever 
 the world bred,' he might fall from power, he could never 
 fall from dignity. In Dryden's words — 
 
 ' The Court he practised, not the courtier's art,' 
 
 and his services, though never obtruded, were as much at the 
 service of the Crown the day after such a humiliation as they 
 had been at the height of his power. No neglect could induce 
 him to forget his lofty conception of the duty of a subject. 
 Thus it was that his fine patience with the vices of others out- 
 wore the courtiers' impatience of his own virtues and won from 
 the careless but not always ignoble Charles, after eight years of 
 studied neglect, that royal amende which Carte records : — 
 
 ' Yonder comes Ormond. I have done all I can to disoblige that 
 man, and to make him as discontented as others ; but still he will 
 not be out of humour with me ; he will be loyal in spite of my teeth ; 
 I must even take him in again, and he is the fittest person to govern 
 Ireland.' ^ 
 
 The same high sense of loyalty which he evinced for the 
 person of his sovereign Ormond carried into the public service 
 of the Crown, The lengths to which he pushed it were the 
 
 1 Carte, op. cit. vol. iv. p. 522, 
 
AN ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALIER 81 
 
 secret alike of his successes and of his failures. He was the first 
 statesman to act on the principle of an illustrious minister 
 of a later age. With Ormond as with Wellington the first 
 maxim of government was that ' the King's Government must 
 be carried on.' It was this principle that enabled him to 
 display that genius for compromise, that power of working with 
 all sorts of dissimilar persons and parties, which was Ormond's 
 principal characteristic as a statesman. If it sometimes brought 
 him into difficulties, and made him appear, as even his hearty 
 admirer Clarendon said of him, ' unwilling to deny any man 
 what he could not but see it was impossible to grant,' it also 
 enabled him to carry through combinations impossible to men 
 less single-minded, as was shown in the success with which he 
 found means to secure the co-operation of the Irish confederate 
 force towards the end of the Civil War, and in the skill with 
 which, after the Restoration, he conciliated the Cromwellian 
 interests, whose goodwill was the indispensable condition of the 
 maintenance of the restored monarchy. Never too fond of his 
 own opinion, though never slow in tendering it, Ormond was 
 always ready to acquiesce in the decisions of others, and prepared 
 to make the best of them. As Burnet puts it, * he always gave 
 good advices ; but even when bad ones were followed he was 
 not for complaining too much of them.' The master he 
 served may not have been entirely worthy either of the personal 
 devotion with which he was followed, or of the public services 
 which Ormond rendered to his Government, Yet Charles, 
 to do him justice, seems really to have appreciated the zeal 
 of his father's old servant, and the unswerving loyalty to 
 himself, which had been proved through more than ten years 
 of exile and of sacrifice. Though much and often pressed by 
 Court intrigues, he ever afterwards preferred to know that one 
 at least of his kingdoms was in safe keeping by retaining 
 Ormond in the Irish Government. 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 
 
 It has been justly remarked of Irish history that it embraces 
 periods of pohtical calm as remarkable as those storms, often as 
 sudden in their uprising as destructive in their course, which 
 challenge the attention of the reader at so many stages in the 
 record of the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. If 
 we analyse the Irish chronicle from the Eevolution of 1688 to 
 the present day, we shall find periods, sometimes covering a 
 whole generation, which remain almost complete blanks upon 
 the page of history. Thus, in the nineteenth century there are 
 the long silences which intervened between the Union and 
 Catholic Emancipation, between the Eepeal and the Home 
 Eule agitations. And in the eighteenth century the pauses 
 are stiU longer and the silences yet deeper. Between the 
 events that immediately followed the Battle of the Boyne and 
 those that closely preceded the creation of an independent 
 legislature, there intervened a space of something like ninety 
 years. Yet, save for the brief squall that raged over Wood's 
 halfpence, there was, throughout that lengthened period, 
 no popular movement serious enough to threaten gravely 
 the reposp of English ministers, much less to engross the 
 attention of the general public of the three kingdoms. To 
 the first sovereigns of the House of Brunswick, Ireland gave 
 little concern through the greater part of their reigns. To 
 them it appeared, to use Horace Walpole's expression, ' no 
 more than a remote part of their dominions which was not 
 accustomed to figure on the theatre of politics.' 
 
 This characteristic is best explained by the consideration 
 that in Ireland, though the materials for agitation are never 
 far to seek, the master-spirits capable of giving cohesion and a 
 
 82 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 83 
 
 common purpose to scattered and often antagonistic factions 
 have appeared only at rare intervals. In Ireland, the personal 
 element has always been the dominant factor. Many have 
 aspired to ride the Irish whirlwind, only a very few have 
 proved themselves capable of directing the storm ; and the 
 hom: of apprehended danger has often passed harmlessly by 
 because it has not brought with it the man who could convert 
 difficulty into disaster. Thus it comes about that Irish history 
 has been characterised by a certain lack of proportion. Swift's 
 brief irruption into Irish politics has been fully explored by 
 historians and exhausted by the biographers of the author of 
 the ' Drapier's Letters.' The story of Grattan and his Parlia- 
 ment is a literature in itself. O'Connell and his triumphs, 
 though still awaiting the final verdict of the impartial historian, 
 are in no danger of being forgotten. But while it is natural 
 the stirring incidents which cluster round strong personalities 
 should concentrate attention on such movements as those which 
 are inspired by the genius of a Grattan or an O'Connell, it is 
 none the less essential to a right understanding of Irish problems 
 that the less conspicuous landmarks of the past should be 
 observed. For it is in the examination of hidden history that 
 the true origin of familiar events is most often revealed. The 
 darker periods of history are not always the least attractive : 
 the obscure is not necessarily the uninteresting. And the 
 investigator is unfortunate who, delving in the dead past, is 
 not occasionally rewarded by the discovery of the secret 
 springs of some long famous but only half-understood event. 
 Such a period is that which intervened between the age 
 of Swift and the rise of Flood and Grattan. It is a period 
 of which less is known, perhaps, than of any other in the 
 history of Ireland since the Revolution. Yet it forms a 
 chapter which is far from unimportant, and some knowledge 
 of which is requisite to a right conception of the more stirring 
 era which followed. If it is deficient in pre-eminent and 
 dominating personalities, it is not without its share of interest- 
 ing personalities in politics, literature, and rehgion. The period 
 which witnessed the rise of a parliamentary Opposition under 
 Anthony Malone at College Green, and of popular agitation 
 
 G 2 
 
84 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 under Charles Lucas, has great importance and suggestive- 
 ness in relation to the subsequent movement for legislative 
 independence. And the Dublin of Lord Chesterfield's Vice- 
 royalty, and of Mrs. Delany's Letters, is not lacking in social 
 distinction. The importance of such a period cannot be more 
 conveniently indicated than in the form of a notice such as is 
 here attempted of some of its more picturesque figures, and of 
 the once famous controversy over the altered Money Bill which 
 according to Edmund Burke, first showed that the English in 
 Ireland had begun to recollect that they had a country and to 
 transform themselves openly and avowedly into an independent 
 Irish interest. 
 
 Perhaps Irish politics have never been so narrowly pro- 
 vincial as during the middle period of the eighteenth century. 
 Scarcely any question of importance then occupied the atten- 
 tion of the statesmen who were responsible for the welfare of 
 the country. This apathy was due in the main to the neglect 
 of their viceregal functions by the noblemen from time to time 
 sent over by English ministers to govern the country. It was 
 the heyday of that extraordinary system of government by 
 Undertakers which prevailed through the earlier part of the 
 century, and was only destroyed by the Octennial Act of 1767. 
 Of this system, by which so many successive Viceroys practically 
 abrogated their functions in favour of certain of the more 
 wealthy and ambitious members of the Irish aristocracy, it is 
 impossible to give a more accurate description than that which 
 has been left us by one of the most eminent of the Lords- 
 Lieutenant who experienced its effects. Writing in 1758, 
 Chesterfield, whose Viceroyalty has been justly praised by Lecky 
 as one of the most successful of the century, gives the following 
 description of his own experience of this curious system : — 
 
 ' The Lord-Lieutenant may, if he pleases, govern alone, but then 
 he must, as I know by experience, take a great deal more trouble 
 upon himself than most Lord-Lieutenants care to do, and he must 
 not be afraid. But as they commonly prefer otium cum dignitate, 
 their guards, their battleaxes, and their trumpets, not to mention 
 perhaps the profits of their post, to a laborious execution of it, they 
 must necessarily rule by a faction, of which faction for the time 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 85 
 
 being they are only the first slaves. The condition of the obligation 
 is this. " Your Excellency or Your Grace wants to carry on His 
 Majesty's business smoothly, and to have it to say when you go 
 back that you met with no difficulties. This we have sufficient 
 strength in Parliament to engage for, provided we appear to have 
 the favour and countenance of the Government, The money, be 
 it what it will, shall be cheerfully voted. As for the public, you 
 shall do what you will, or nothing at all, for we care for that no 
 more than we suppose Your Grace or Your Excellency does. But 
 we repeat it again, our recommendations to places, pensions, &c., 
 must prevail, or we shall not be able to keep our people in order." 
 These are always the expressed, or at least the implied, conditions 
 of these treaties, which either the indulgence or the insufficiency 
 of the Governors ratify. Thus from that moment these Undertakers 
 bury the Governor alive, but indeed pompously.' i 
 
 Much too self-confident and, indeed, too honest to acquiesce 
 in such an effacement of his office, and chafing throughout 
 his government under the control of a plebeian oligarchy, for 
 which, though unable to withstand it, he felt a most patrician 
 contempt, Chesterfield appears to have conceived an intense 
 disgust for the whole system of Irish government. The 
 references to Ireland in his subsequent correspondence are 
 permeated with a contemptuous cynicism which never varies. 
 Thus, in a letter to his friend Chenevix, Bishop of Waterford, 
 a prelate who owed to Chesterfield's patronage a mitre which he 
 adorned by a life of the simplest piety, he expressed his opinion 
 with uncompromising frankness. Parties in Ireland, he did not 
 scruple to say, thought no more of the public good than they 
 did of the squaring of the circle. The question with them was 
 by no means how Ireland should be governed, but by whom ; and 
 whoever prevailed, the difference to the country would be ' no 
 more than that between a cat in a hole and a cat out of a hole.' 
 
 If it be urged that the impressions of an Englishman and 
 a stranger like Chesterfield, notwithstanding that his position 
 gave him so full an opportunity of judging at first hand 
 of the political system he was appointed to preside over, 
 were jaundiced by his unsympathetic temperament, no such 
 objection can be urged against the estimate formed of the 
 
 * Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield, edited by John Bradshaw, p. 1222. 
 
86 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Undertakers by an Irish politician whose honesty and sagacity 
 were so conspicuous as to win him the reputation of a states- 
 man, even under a system which hardly left room for 
 statesmanship. Edmond Sexton Pery, who, for a score of 
 years prior to his elevation to the Speakership in 1771, held a 
 seat in the Irish House of Commons, has left us, in a masterly 
 review of the state of parties in Ireland, addressed in 1757 
 to the Duke of Bedford, a succinct account of the state of 
 parties in Ireland, as it appeared to one who had the best 
 means of judging of its operation from within. It is precisely 
 to the same effect as Chesterj&eld's, though, being addressed 
 to a Viceroy, the language of condemnation is more decorous. 
 According to this candid observer, the one point on which men 
 of all parties were agreed was that the Chief Governor should 
 not be permitted to interfere in the domestic administration 
 of the kingdom. And the same authority averred that the 
 Undertakers' notion of ' doing the King's business ' in each 
 biennial Session consisted in ' procuring the supplies which 
 were thought proper to be demanded by the English Minister, 
 and in preventing the Parliament from examining into the 
 accounts of the previous years.' i 
 
 For some years prior to the period with which we are now 
 concerned, the principal Undertaker had been Henry Boyle, 
 the Speaker of the House of Commons, a scion of that remark- 
 able house which had been founded more than a century 
 earlier by the great Earl of Cork. Down to the death of 
 Primate Boulter, Boyle had held only the subordinate place 
 in the triumvirate of Lords Justices to whom the authority 
 of the Lord-Lieutenant was commonly delegated. But 
 Archbishop Hoadly, though nominated to the same position 
 which his predecessor had filled so vigorously, had little 
 taste for statecraft, and was content to leave the direction 
 of civil politics and patronage in the hands of his lay colleagues. 
 On Hoadly's death, however, after a primacy of little more 
 than four years, the chief place at the head of Church and 
 State was placed in the hands of a very different prelate. 
 Archbishop Stone united to Boulter's capacity for affairs a love 
 
 > Historical Manuscripts Commission Report, viii. App. p. 175. 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 87 
 
 of power and a talent for intrigue which have seldom been 
 surpassed in any Minister : qualities which speedily made him 
 the most powerful subject of the Crown in Ireland, and for some 
 time threatened to eclipse all other influences in the State. 
 
 Unlike the letters of Archbishop Boulter, which form 
 perhaps the principal authority for the affairs of Ireland 
 for the first twelve years of George the Second, little of the 
 correspondence of Archbishop Stone has been printed. A 
 few letters belonging to his latter years are to be found in 
 the correspondence of the fourth Duke of Bedford, and 
 some others have been made available in the Stopford- 
 Sackville Papers, published by the Historical Manuscripts 
 Commission. But many more survive among the papers of 
 the Duke of Newcastle, which are now among the Additional 
 Manuscripts at the British Museum. They range from the 
 year 1739 to 1762. But by far the greater number of them 
 belong to the years 1752 to 1755, and cover the period of 
 the conflict between the Irish Government and the Irish 
 House of Commons on the subject of the disposal of the 
 unappropriated surplus of the Irish Exchequer.^ Though 
 the question at issue in this controversy was a comparatively 
 small one, the dispute is one of serious interest in the develop- 
 ment of Irish politics, marking, as it does, the first concerted 
 attempt by the Irish Parliament in the eighteenth centary 
 to assert its independence of ministerial dictation. It is an 
 incident which has hitherto been little attended to and only 
 half-understood, for the materials available for forming a 
 judgment on the real state of parties in Ireland at the time 
 have been curiously scanty till just recently. 
 
 Kemembering how little tolerant England has been since 
 the days of the Stuarts of the interference of ecclesiastics in 
 the affairs of state, it may seem strange to illustrate the civil 
 politics of Ireland in the eighteenth century in the person 
 of an archbishop. But the retention by the heads of the 
 Irish Establishment of a large share of civil authority, for 
 almost a century after such a combination of political with 
 
 ' These letters have lately been printed, with an introduction by Mr. Falkiner, 
 in the English Historical Review, vol. xx. pp. 508, 735. 
 
88 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 ecclesiastical authority had ceased to be possible in Great 
 Britain, is not the only instance of the survival in Ireland 
 of practices from which the British Constitution had, in 
 theory, long been purged. The peculiar condition of Irish 
 politics and society in the eighteenth century naturally tended 
 to throw civil power into the hands of the rulers of the Church. 
 No religious system was ever more thoroughly Erastian than 
 the Irish Establishment in the eighteenth century. The 
 Church of Ireland of that age, and especially of the earlier half 
 of the century, was a religious organisation imposed from 
 necessities of state upon a people who rejected its doctrines. 
 In an institution so circumstanced, it was inevitable that at 
 a period which witnessed the enactment of the Penal Laws, 
 and was marked by the elaborate educational policy of which 
 the Charter Schools were the instrument, such an organisation 
 should lean heavily towards England. It was equally natural 
 that its rulers should become in civil, as well as in ecclesiastical 
 affairs, the instruments of the Government by which it had 
 been constituted, and by whose authority alone it had been 
 sustained. Recruited almost exclusively from England, the 
 Irish episcopal bench became a stronghold of English ideas. 
 The practice by which the Irish Primate, as the subject of 
 highest rank in Ireland, was invariably placed at the head 
 of the commission of Lords Justices in the absence of the 
 Viceroy, provided numerous opportunities for the assumption 
 of a political role which might easily lead to the absorption 
 of almost the whole executive authority in the hands of an 
 ambitious ecclesiastic. It is no exaggeration to say that during 
 the entire reign of George the Second, and for some years before 
 and after it, the true Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland was the 
 Archbishop of Armagh. A succession of prelates, of whom 
 Boulter's is the best known name, took full advantage of the 
 opportunities thus afforded them. But it was reserved for 
 Stone to prove to the world that the ambitions of a Wolsey and 
 not a little of his power might still be displayed by a Protestant 
 prelate in the Ireland of George the Second. 
 
 The Primacy to which Stone was called at the early age 
 of thirty-nine was thus a Primacy much more political than 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 89 
 
 ecclesiastical. Always prone to dependence on the Crown, 
 the concern of the higher ecclesiastics in Ireland under the 
 first sovereigns of the House of Hanover was rather for the 
 State than for the Church. In the choice of such prelates 
 as Boulter and Stone, political considerations predominated 
 over all others. The Prime Ministers by whom the Primates 
 of Ireland were recommended, and in effect appointed, were 
 more sohcitous for the effective management of the Irish 
 Parhament than for the episcopal supervision of the Irish 
 Church. Accordingly, the preference given to Stone over 
 his principal rivals for one of the most splendid prizes in 
 the gift of the Crown was due to his known aptitude for the 
 management of affairs, and to the confidence felt by the 
 Premier, Henry Pelham, in the loyal support which he could 
 rely on receiving in Irish business from the old friend and 
 'protege of his brother Newcastle. It is, however, no more 
 than justice to the much-maligned eighteenth century to 
 observe that this political conception of a great ecclesiastical 
 position had prevailed in Ireland even in an age when the 
 interests of religion were more particularly regarded. A long 
 succession of sixteenth-century Chancellors, who were politi- 
 cians rather than Churchmen, had created a tradition that 
 civil rather than religious qualifications were to be looked to 
 in the filling of the higher places on the episcopal bench in 
 Ireland. To such a degree had this become an accepted rule, 
 that as early as James the First's time so experienced an official 
 as Sir Henry Harington did not scruple to apply to Cecil for 
 the succession to Archbishop Adam Loftus ; and, as he 
 frankly avowed to Cecil, his ' offer and desire ' was to be the 
 Chancellor's successor ' as well to his sperytuall office as to his 
 temporall.' The Irish Chancellorship and the Archbishopric 
 of Dublin were frequently, though not invariably, vested in 
 the same person in the seventeenth century, and this association 
 was not finally terminated till after the Restoration.^ In 
 the reigns of William the Third and George the First the 
 
 1 Even in England the association of the heads of the Establishment with 
 civil statecraft lasted into the reign of Charles II. Archbishop Sheldon was a 
 member of the Cabinet in 1664, and again in 1673. See Pepys' Diary, and 
 Letters to Sir Joseph Williamson. 
 
90 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 traditional union of the offices was sustained by the frequent 
 nomination of the Archbishops of DubHn to be Commis- 
 sioners of the Great Seal, while the political preoccupation 
 of the Primates was emphasised by their continual nomina- 
 tion as Lords Justices in the frequent absences of the Viceroys. 
 The letters of Primate Stone shed a flood of clear and fresh 
 light on the obscure politics of the time. They enable us to 
 understand the process by which the Irish House of Commons 
 was moulded to be the instrument upon which, as was said 
 of Peel in the case of the English one, Grattan could play as on 
 an old fiddle. And they are also valuable for their references 
 to the state of political society at the time they were written, as 
 well as for the illustration they give of the personal idiosyncrasies 
 of the writer. Pilled with the chicane of negotiation, with 
 singularly penetrating and able criticisms of the men he had 
 to deal with, with projects for combinations by which this 
 politician might be checkmated or that other utilised, they are 
 the letters of an adroit and able statesman, thoroughly cognisant 
 of every move on the political chessboard which it was his 
 business to watch so attentively. But they are not the 
 letters of a churchman or divine. Not once in Stone's long 
 and familiar confidences to his patron and political chief is 
 religion mentioned, nor is the Church spoken of except as 
 the nomination to vacant bishoprics might affect ministerial 
 interests in the House of Lords. Occasionally the incom- 
 patibility of such pursuits with the sacred character of his 
 profession is alluded to, but the topic is never long dwelt on, 
 and the pen of the churchman returns readily to the concerns 
 of the statesman. Nor are we left in any doubt as to the 
 means by which the health of the chief pastor of the Irish 
 Church might become impaired in ' doing the business of 
 Government.' Horace Walpole, in noticing the Primate's 
 death, describes the Archbishop as having ' ruined his con- 
 stitution by indulgence in the style of luxury and drinking 
 established in Ireland, and by conforming to which he had 
 found the means of preventing the most grievous prejudices, 
 and of gaining popularity, ascendent, power, an instance of 
 abilities not to be matched.' And it is related that when, being 
 
AKCHBISHOP STONE 91 
 
 threatened with mortal illness, Stone had recourse to his 
 physician, he warned this adviser not to treat his case as that 
 of an average clerical patient. ' Look on me,' he said, ' not 
 as an ordinary clergyman, or as subject to the diseases of the 
 clerical profession, but as one who has impaired his constitution 
 by sitting up late and rising early to do the business of Govern- 
 ment.' Stone's letters fully support both Walpole's statement 
 and his own. 
 
 The convivial excesses which were still common among 
 the Irish country gentry in the last quarter of the eighteenth 
 century have been described by Sir Jonah Barrington, and 
 there is no doubt that such orgies as those which Sir Walter 
 Scott describes in his account of the Osbaldistones were 
 common in the Ireland of a generation earlier, and remained 
 so for long after they had ceased to be general in English 
 society. From these letters we learn that intemperance 
 equally gross prevailed in the highest ranks of society in 
 the early part of the century. It is indeed hardly an exag- 
 geration to say that wine was the medium through which 
 the King's government was carried on. Chesterfield, whose 
 letters disclose a wholesome disgust with the system, which 
 for a couple of years it had been his business to administer, 
 expressed himself very pointedly on this feature of Irish politics. 
 ' It is a maxim that business is best done over a bottle, and 
 that people are never so fit for it as when they are fit for 
 nothing else. I make no doubt that there has been more 
 claret drunk over the barracks than will be drunk in them 
 in ten years ; and I wonder the bridge was not agreed to, 
 considering the national aversion to water.' Elsewhere the 
 same statesman remarked that the five thousand tons of 
 wine annually imported into Ireland were chiefly employed 
 ' in destroying the constitution, and too often the fortunes, of 
 those of superior rank, who ought to take care of all the others.' 
 Cumberland, the dramatist, who had excellent opportunities 
 of observing the manners of Dublin society, and was a frequent 
 guest at the Primate's house, was astonished at the magnifi- 
 cence displayed in the great houses, and at the degree in 
 which ' in several prelatical houses the gravity of demeanour 
 
92 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 maintained by our English dignitaries was laid aside, and the 
 mitre was mingled with the cockade.' Stone's own testimony 
 is to the like effect. Criticising the conduct of affairs by 
 the Viceroys prior to the Duke of Dorset, he observes that 
 the King's business was indeed carried on, ' that is, the money 
 bills were passed, and the chief governor gave wine to the 
 men and fiddles to the women as usual.' The use made of 
 wine in promoting political ends is yet more candidly avowed 
 in another letter, in which the Primate, felicitating himself 
 on his success so far, expresses his confidence that in future 
 the Government may be carried on ' without trusting entirely 
 to the influence of wine, and the exacting of intemperate 
 promises at the end of a debauch.' 
 
 Nor was this use of wine confined to the Government. 
 Intemperance was equally the weapon of the opponents of 
 the administration. ' Satires and claret,' as Walpole puts 
 it, * were useful weapons even against corruption.' The 
 sheriff of Dublin is described as having died in 1754 of a 
 violent fever, ' occasioned by a very hard drinking bout at 
 a late meeting of patriots in the Tholsel.' The ' Orrery 
 Papers ' contain several amusing letters descriptive of the 
 doings of the Opposition. At one of their gatherings — a 
 meeting of the ' gentlemen of the Province of Ulster ' — no 
 fewer than thirty toasts appear to have been drunk. Henry 
 Pelham writes with indignation at Speaker Boyle's attendance 
 at the ' drunken and mobbish assemblies ' of the popular party ; 
 and, not to confine the evidence to English sources, Edmond 
 Pery, in his ' Letters from an Armenian in Ireland,' written in 
 1756, observes with scarcely extravagant exaggeration that 
 ' their people go to such excesses in their intoxicating liquors 
 that it would be no difficult task to take any city of their 
 kingdom by surprise two hours after the time of dining, as 
 half of the people are at that time usually mad.' Chesterfield 
 is not exactly the man we expect to find in the role of 
 temperance reformer, but even he was moved to express the 
 pious aspiration that ' it would please God to blast all the 
 vines in the world, and by His thunder to turn all the wines 
 in Ireland sour.' 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 93 
 
 Of the actual course of the proceedings which so disturbed 
 the ease of the Duke of Dorset's second administration, by 
 far the best account yet available is to be gleaned from the 
 passages relating to Ireland in Horace Walpole's ' Memoirs 
 of the Reign of George 11. ' That most scandalous of political 
 chroniclers knew little of the internal condition of Ireland, 
 and probably cared still less. But he was keenly interested in 
 the administrative changes in that country under the Cabinets 
 of George the Second, as they affected the careers of the great 
 personages of English politics. Whatever else may be said 
 of the Government of Ireland in that reign, it is at least certain 
 that the Viceroyalty was continuously held, not merely by 
 great noblemen, but by noblemen who held great positions in 
 the actual governing circle. The Dukes of Dorset, Devonshire, 
 and Bedford, the Earls of Chesterfield and Harrington, were 
 all of them important members of the Pelham and Newcastle 
 Cabinets, whose removal to or from Ireland sensibly affected 
 the combinations of the political kaleidoscope. It was from 
 this point of view that Walpole was interested in Irish affairs, 
 and it is manifest from his account of them that he contrived 
 to get information regarding what went on in Dublin which 
 was both accurate and minute, enabling him to draw several 
 excellent and characteristic portraits of persons whose fame was 
 purely Irish. And as, in dealing with Ireland, Walpole departed 
 for the sake of convenience from the chronological order of 
 his narrative, and grouped his Irish information into connected 
 summaries of events running through a considerable period, it 
 is possible to obtain from his pages a clearer account of affairs 
 in Ireland, in the last years of George the Second, than has 
 been left by any other writer. But Horace Walpole, although 
 he knew almost everything that went on in political circles in 
 London, and contrived to know much about the leading person- 
 ages in College Green, knew very little, if anything, of Ireland 
 itself. To him, contemporary history was little more than 
 the record of political tittle-tattle and the ups and downs of 
 Court favourites. Admirable from the point of view of English 
 politics, it is necessary to correct Walpole's narrative at many 
 points by a reference to conditions of Irish politics and society 
 
94 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 which, lying a httle below the surface, were hidden to this 
 acute and sagacious, but somewhat superficial, observer. And 
 on these points the correspondence of Archbishop Stone with 
 the Duke of Newcastle, and of Lord George Sackville with 
 both, supplement Walpole's narrative in many important 
 particulars. 
 
 Prior to the accession of the Duke of Dorset to the Lord 
 Lieutenancy in 1751, a dead calm had prevailed for many 
 years. In the language of one of the numerous Opposition 
 pamphlets which within a twelvemonth were everywhere 
 disseminated, ' everything was happy here and agreeable to 
 England.' Speaker Boyle, who, as already mentioned, was 
 the principal Undertaker, had conducted for many years the 
 little business there was to do in Parliament, and in return 
 for that service had been allowed, by a succession of Chief 
 Governors, complete control of the much more important 
 business of dispensing the Government patronage among his 
 own adherents. Dorset had already served for above six years, 
 from 1730-37, in the same great office, and had seen and 
 realised the degradation of the Viceroy's position in the hands 
 of the Undertakers. Chesterfield, as we have seen, had felt 
 acutely the insignificance of his position, and had revolted 
 against the notion that the great English nobles deputed to 
 represent the Crown should become the puppets of a knot of 
 provincial place-hunters. He had imbued Pelham and New- 
 castle with a sense of the danger of surrendering authority 
 over L-eland in the fashion which had prevailed for a generation. 
 On Chesterfield's retirement a resolution seems to have been 
 taken to reform the system. It was at first intended that 
 Dorset should directly succeed him. But the Earl of Harring- 
 ton, who had been obliged by the King to resign the seal of 
 the Secretary of State, insisted on his title to the Lord-Lieuten- 
 ancy. He was accordingly nominated, and held the post for 
 four years. His administration was undistinguished by a single 
 act of importance, other than the advancement of Stone to 
 the Primacy. But on the resignation of Harrington, the 
 opportunity for which Pelham had been waiting was provided. 
 Dorset returned to Dublin Castle. He brought with him 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 95 
 
 instructions, which were certainly not disagreeable to him, 
 to assert the authority of the Crown and ' to bring back 
 administration to the Castle.' 
 
 The task was obviously difficult, but Dorset was favourably 
 circumstanced for its performance. He had been popular in 
 his former tenure of office, and had earned the goodwill of 
 Swift. Several letters from the great Dean, whose friendship 
 was at that period essential to the peace of any Irish adminis- 
 tration, are extant in the Stopford-Sackville Papers. He had 
 also the assured support of his superiors in England. The 
 Duke of Newcastle was the Minister through whom the com- 
 munications between the Enghsh and Irish Privy Councils 
 were carried on under his brother's government, and New- 
 castle, Dorset, and Stone were all three of them on terms of 
 personal and intimate friendship. With Lord George Sackville, 
 the Viceroy's son, as secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, and 
 with Stone at the head of the Commission of Lords Justices, 
 circumstances were more than ordinarily favourable to an 
 attempt to reassert the paramount authority of the English 
 Ministry over the self-seeking place-hunters, so graphically 
 described by Chesterfield, who monopolised both the honours 
 and the emoluments of Irish administration. Admirably 
 persuasive and adroit, and skilled in the management of men. 
 Stone was from the outset of Dorset's government at the elbow 
 of the Viceroy, and in his absence took the lead in the trium- 
 virate of Lords Justices by whom the business of the State was 
 carried on. The Primate had thus at first no difficulty in 
 carrying on affairs to the satisfaction of his patron. Confining 
 himself in the first instance to the control of the House of 
 Lords, and the disposal of ecclesiastical patronage — the latter 
 at that time an important element in the scheme of English 
 government — he at first aroused no hostile feeling. In the 
 first year of Dorset's government, and before that nobleman 
 came over, he carried on the business of administration with 
 marked success. Amongst other measures he negotiated a 
 plan for improving the currency, which had become so debased 
 that, according to a letter of Lord Orrery, the ' guinea was 
 dipt in such a manner as to want six or eight shillings of its 
 
96 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 full weight, so that no money is current except at the card 
 tables. There the gentlemen are obliged to produce their 
 purses, out of which the ladies choose the broadest guinea 
 they can find.' Stone withdrew the proclamation under which 
 Spanish pistoles had been recognised as legal tender, and 
 allowed English money to be imported into Ireland. 
 
 But when, on the opening of the parliamentary session, the 
 Primate proceeded to consolidate his power by the formation 
 of a separate party in the House of Commons, the friends of 
 the old system took alarm. Henry Boyle, who had filled the 
 Speaker's chair for eighteen years, had unquestioned control 
 of the assembly over which he presided. He had influential 
 connexions among the Irish aristocracy, and commanded 
 immense influence as an owner of Irish boroughs. He was 
 not a man of striking abilities, and at critical moments was 
 always fond of leaning on the advice of others rather than 
 deciding for himself. But he was affable and popular and 
 knew how to make things smooth for the Viceroys who 
 governed through him. According to the compendious 
 character given of him by Horace Walpole, he was ' vain and 
 popular, and, as the idols of the people and of themselves 
 generally are, a man of moderate capacity.' At the outset 
 of Dorset's Viceroyalty, and down to the opening of the 
 Session of Parliament, the best relations were maintained 
 between Boyle and Stone. But the moment that the 
 Primate's adroit diplomacy threatened to establish a strong 
 Court interest in the House of Commons, their friendship was 
 speedily dissolved. The result of the conflict of interest 
 between the Primate and the Speaker was to precipitate a 
 conflict of principle between the English and Irish elements 
 in the Irish Parliament. Factions were created which, in 
 Walpole's phrase, soon imbibed all the inveteracy of party 
 except disaffection. For the first time since the Restoration, 
 an Opposition was formed in the Lower House, in which, 
 oddly enough, not a few of the most vigorous members were 
 placemen and servants of the Crown. 
 
 That a definite attempt would be made to assert viceregal 
 authority was known before Dorset's arrival. Lord Orrery, 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 97 
 
 writing from England, was quick to inform his relative, the 
 Speaker, of what was in store. ' There are various struggles 
 and great workings within our mountain of state. When it 
 bursts, some people will be knocked on the head. But, 
 thank Heaven, I am out of this Vesuvius.' No sooner was the 
 Lord-Lieutenant arrived than the issue was quickly joined 
 between the two interests. The Government were anxious to 
 get rid of the Speaker on decent terms, and thought to allay 
 his opposition by the usual panacea. He was offered a peerage 
 and a pension of £1500 a year, but rejected the proposed 
 accommodation in language which, if correctly reported by 
 Walpole, was dignified and to the point. ' If I had a peerage,' 
 he said, ' I should not think myself greater than now that 
 I am Mr. Boyle ; for the other thing, I despise it as much as 
 the person who offers it.' 
 
 Open war was at once declared, and a struggle immediately 
 ensued. The Speaker started with the initial advantage of 
 a great majority in the House of Commons, which he had 
 consolidated during his long tenure of power by a skilful use 
 of the vast patronage in his hands. The Primate, on the 
 other hand, was supported both by the Viceroy and by the 
 English Ministry, and, as ' the Governor of the Governor,' 
 had acquired the control of all future patronage. 
 
 The House of Commons, which thus became the scene of 
 a struggle so important that within a twelvemonth of its 
 commencement, Pelham, the Prime Minister, wrote to Dorset 
 that if a proper stand were not made by the Government the 
 dependency of Ireland upon England might be regarded as 
 over, was a peculiarly constituted body. It consisted of 
 three hundred members, representing half as many consti- 
 tuencies, of whom above two-thirds were returned by boroughs 
 of which the great majority were rotten. Most of the members 
 either belonged to good county families and were the nominees 
 of great peers, or they held positions of emolument in the 
 military, legal, or civil services of the country, and were thus 
 at the service of the Government. Many of the former class 
 had seats in the EngHsh House of Commons at Westminster, 
 and but seldom occupied the benches at College Green. But 
 
98 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 the latter were constantly present and made the normal 
 House. At the beginning of Dorset's administration, the 
 House was already a quarter of a century in being, having been 
 summoned at the accession of George the Second, and it endured 
 throughout the entire reign of that sovereign. Its sessions, 
 which were biennial, were usually but thinly attended, and 
 but that they furnished the sole occasion for the visit of the 
 Viceroy, whose presence brought the territorial magnates to 
 the capital, the assembly would have been still smaller. The 
 Opposition, in so far as one existed, numbered less than thirty, 
 and had hitherto always been powerless to resist the Adminis- 
 tration. The Primate Stone in his letters notes that the 
 attendance in the House of Commons on the Money Bill on 
 November 16, 1753, which amounted to 239, was ' the greatest 
 ever remembered ' ; and, as appears from the Charlemont 
 Papers, it included members who, though elected at the first 
 summons of Parliament in 1727, had not previously taken 
 their seats. Its debates were held in the dignified edifice 
 which had been opened by the Duke of Dorset in his first 
 Viceroyalty, and which the great parliamentary period in- 
 augurated by Grattan was ere long to render famous. 
 
 At the outset of the first session of Dorset's government 
 the parties of which the House was constituted, in so far at 
 least as party system can be said to have prevailed, were 
 three in number. The Primate controlled the large official 
 party directly dependent on the immediate favour of the 
 Court. John Ponsonby, afterwards Speaker of the Irish 
 House of Commons, and father of a future Whig leader of 
 Opposition in the English one, controlled a large Whig vote 
 which he placed at the service of the Primate. The Speaker 
 commanded the remainder. This consisted mainly of the 
 friends and adherents of the great family of Boyle, which for 
 above a century had enjoyed so large a share of political and 
 ecclesiastical patronage, but it also included not a few of the 
 place-holders who abounded at College Green. 
 
 Before relating the progress of the dissensions between 
 the Primate and the Speaker, it may be convenient to give 
 some account of the leading parliamentary personages. 
 
AECHBISHOP STOM^. /■'•. :.. i :' '".•■ •.'•. :&»: 
 
 Considering that the long period of dull, though not unpros- 
 perous, quiescence which had remained unbroken since the 
 accession of the House of Hanover was little favourable to 
 the display of great parliamentary qualities, it is remarkable 
 how large a proportion of members of capacity the House of 
 Commons contained. The rank and file were of course pro- 
 vided by the great territorial interest and its nominees. On 
 its roll appear the names of all the great territorial families 
 whose names, since the Act of Settlement at all events, have 
 been continuously associated with the Irish counties. Among 
 the Knights of the Shire were to be found representatives 
 of the Fitzmaurices of Kerry, and the Fortescues of Louth ; of 
 the Binghams of Mayo, and the Caulfeilds of Tyrone ; of the 
 SkefQngtons of Antrim, and the St. Legers of Cork ; of 
 the Wynnes of Sligo, and the Wesley s of Meath. But while 
 the territorial interest of course predominated, some corrective 
 to its power was supplied by the mercantile interest in the 
 representatives of large towns, and by the considerable 
 admixture of the legal element among the members of the 
 smaller boroughs. The great banking houses were honourably 
 represented by La Touches and Burtons, while the Bar, which 
 was afterwards to have so large a part in the glories of Grattan's 
 Parliament, provided the House with its greatest orator in 
 the person of the Prime Serjeant, Anthony Malone. 
 
 There was a further feature which, whatever its drawbacks 
 in other respects, was not without its compensations in adding 
 to the variety of the House of Commons. The large number 
 of placemen made a company in themselves. Reflecting of 
 course the predominance for the time being of one or other of 
 the great county families, there was at every period in the 
 history of the Irish Legislature a family group, which proved 
 by its numbers the almost boundless possibilities of family 
 aggrandisement under the eighteenth-century system of place- 
 men and pensioners. In the latest era of the Irish Parliament, 
 the Beresfords were the most conspicuous illustration of this 
 characteristic. In the Parliament of George the Second, the same 
 phenomenon was witnessed in the perhaps unparalleled achieve- 
 ment of the powerful family of the Gores. In 1750, no fewer 
 
loo RSSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 than nine gentlemen of this name, known as the ' nine Gores,' 
 sat together in the House of Commons, of which one of them 
 had, for a time, been Speaker. Of the nine there was not one 
 who was not in receipt in one form or another of the sweets of 
 Government patronage ; no fewer than four among them were 
 eventually advanced to the peerage. One, rising to eminence 
 as a lawyer, attained to the great office of Lord Chief Justice 
 of Ireland and the dignity of Earl of Annaly. And the noble 
 houses of Arran and Harlech derive from this singularly capable 
 family coterie, which, always voting solidly together, engrossed 
 a large proportion of the honours and emoluments at the 
 disposal of those in power. 
 
 The official spokesman of the Government in the House 
 of Commons was the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, 
 a title, by the way, which has survived from times when the 
 Viceroy had more than one parliamentary secretary. Under 
 the Dorset regime, the post was filled by the Duke's son. 
 Lord George Sackville, who was to win a few years later an 
 unenviable notoriety as the inglorious hero of Minden. Though 
 his conduct on that occasion subjected him to imputations of 
 cowardice, the charge does not appear to have been deserved. 
 His daring had been the redeeming feature in the display of the 
 British on the unfortunate field of Fontenoy, and much later in 
 his career his spirited conduct in a duel evoked the encomiums 
 of his adversary and the reluctant applause of Horace Walpole. 
 But whatever his physical courage, there was no doubt of Sack- 
 ville's intrepidity in conference and his vigour in debate. There 
 he was audacious to the point of insolence. For though he 
 understood business and was a man of unquestionable capacity, 
 he was deficient in tact and in consideration for other men's 
 feehngs ; and the difficulties which arose from the very outset 
 of his official career in Ireland were attributed by capable 
 observers in a great measure to his lack of temper and his greed 
 for power. Horace Walpole, in noting Sackville's death, which 
 did not occur till 1785, recalled the provocative character of his 
 Irish career in his comment on him as ' the man who first taught 
 Ireland to think.' 
 
 Less conspicuous in debate, but not less important in his 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE -' - - lOl' 
 
 influence in the House, was the leader of the extra-official wing 
 of the ministerial party. John Ponsonby, the second son of 
 the Earl of Besshorough, came of a Cumberland family, which 
 had been settled for about a century in Ireland. Having 
 had considerable grants of land confirmed to them by the Act 
 of Settlement, the Ponsonbys had, by fortunate matrimonial 
 alliances, acquired a leading position in the country, and had 
 founded early in the reign of George the First the Earldom of 
 Besshorough. Supporters of the Cromwellian and extreme 
 Protestant interest in the seventeenth century, they were ardent 
 supporters of Eevolution principles ; and the future Speaker of 
 the Irish House of Commons further strengthened the "Whig 
 connexions of the family by his marriage with Lady Elizabeth 
 Cavendish, daughter of the third Duke of Devonshire. At the 
 moment when Dorset arrived, Ponsonby, who had been for 
 many years in Parliament but was only just turned forty, was 
 at the head of the Revenue Board, a position which, as the case 
 of John Beresford was to prove forty years later, was one of 
 immense influence in the official hierarchy of eighteenth-century 
 Ireland. That influence Ponsonby's connexion with the 
 Cavendishs disposed him to place at the service of a government 
 of which his father-in-law was a member. Accordingly he 
 joined forces with the Primate, and thus enabled the latter to 
 commence operations against the Speaker with a slight majority 
 in his favour. 
 
 While the power of the Primate in the House of Commons 
 depended on the support of Ponsonby, the position of Boyle 
 in the same assembly mainly rested on the Prime Serjeant, 
 Anthony Malone. The eulogies cited by Grattan, in his 
 pamphlet in reply to Lord Clare, have rescued from oblivion 
 the name of this remarkable man, and preserved his reputation 
 as a great orator. ' A great sea in a calm,' he appeared to those 
 who knew him in his latter years ; ' a great sea in a storm ' was 
 the verdict of those who had known him in his prime. And, as 
 Grattan finely added, ' like the sea, whether in calm or in storm, 
 he was a great production of nature.' Of an old Westmeath 
 family, educated at Christ Church, Malone had, on his admission 
 to the Irish Bar, quickly reached eminence in his profession, and 
 
102'*' ■ ■ ■ ■ ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 had been appointed Prime Serjeant at an early age. In the 
 House of Commons, which he entered in 1727, he was to attain 
 a double fame. It is the distinction of Anthony Malone to 
 have been the first to form at College Green that school of Attic 
 oratory which was to reach its zenith in the sonorous rhetoric 
 of Grattan, though his own eloquence probably came nearer 
 to the stately periods of Plunket. It is also his distinction to 
 have been the inventor of a patriotic opposition in the Irish 
 Parliament. Of Malone's great parliamentary abilities many 
 testimonies survive. But none are more convincing than the 
 frankness with which Stone, who felt their power, admits his 
 superiority to all other antagonists. ' I will be so candid as to 
 own,' he wrote to Newcastle in December 1753, ' that the Prime 
 Serjeant, Mr. Malone, is by far the most able man in the House ; 
 and if his dispositions were as good as his talents, the Govern- 
 ment could not pay too much for his support. He must bring 
 strong debating support to any side.' 
 
 Though Malone's father had been a member of the English 
 Bar, who had a large practice at Westminster and had many 
 English connexions, he came of an Irish stock with strong Irish 
 traditions, and he married a Roman Catholic. These circum- 
 stances give a strong national leaning to Anthony Malone's 
 opinions, and though there does not seem to be any warranty 
 for Stone's statement that he was actually born a Roman 
 Catholic, his ' popish connexion ' certainly created some sus- 
 picion of the sincerity of his devotion to the Revolution 
 principles so strenuously professed by his political allies. Thus 
 while many zealous Protestants in consequence felt averse to 
 the thought of his arriving at that ' principal possession of 
 power ' at which he was known to aim, others were fearful 
 of the effect which talents such as his, influenced by national 
 leanings, might have upon the connexion between the two 
 kingdoms. Stone early predicted that the opposition organ- 
 ised by Boyle and Malone would assume the appearance and 
 dimensions of a national movement, and this he attributed to 
 Malone's influence : ' The constitutional dependency upon 
 England is the object upon which the Prime Serjeant's eye is 
 constantly fixed. The Speaker is dragged unwillingly by him.' 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 103 
 
 * The leaders of the Opposition,' he wrote in 1754, ' do not mean 
 disaffection to the King. God forbid that I should say any- 
 thing that could be so understood. I do not think it. But 
 some of them do certainly mean an emancipation from the 
 English legislature and from English administration.' 
 
 Other figures of importance in the House were those of 
 Philip Tisdal, the Solicitor- General, Stone's principal henchman 
 in the Lower House, and afterwards an eminent Attorney- 
 General ; Dr. Francis Andrews, Provost of Trinity College, a 
 bon vivant, a scholar, and a man of trusted political loyalty ; 
 and among the younger men, Edmond Sexton Pery, who, 
 twenty years later, was to succeed Ponsonby in the chair ; and 
 Hely Hutchinson, afterwards so well known as Andrews's 
 successor in the Provostship, and the author of a famous work 
 on the commercial relations between England and Ireland. 
 
 The Irish House of Lords before 1750 was, of course, even 
 more stagnant than the House of Commons. In the time of 
 Boulter it had been managed entirely by that Primate, with 
 the help of the Bishops. The Spiritual Peers habitually 
 made the quorum, and in the rare divisions helped to swell 
 the majority. But at this period it can hardly be said that 
 they numbered many persons of eminence. The great Berkeley 
 was still Bishop of Cloyne. But he had already fallen into 
 ill-health. He was not far from his end and took little part in 
 politics, though his remarks on patriotism, suggested by the 
 events of the year 1753, show that he was an interested spectator 
 of what went on. For a long period the deliberations of the 
 peers had been presided over by a series of English Chancellors, 
 and although at the time of which we are now writing its 
 Speaker, Lord Newport, was so far distinguished from his 
 predecessors that his professional career had been passed in 
 Ireland, the whole atmosphere of the place was much more 
 English than Irish. At the head of the Irish peers, in rank and 
 political importance, stood James Fitzgerald, twentieth Earl of 
 Kildare, later and better known as the first Duke of Leinster, 
 and father of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. From the eclipse of the 
 great rival house of Butler, which followed the attainder of the 
 second Duke of Ormond, the head of the Geraldines was 
 
104 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 facile 'princ&ps among the Irish nobihty. Traditionally con- 
 nected with the national party of earlier days, his adherence 
 to the Speaker and Malone emphasised the patriotic leanings of 
 the latter, and added to their popularity ; while his connexion 
 with Henry Fox, through his marriage to the daughter of the 
 Duke of Richmond, gave the Opposition a support among the 
 Whig adherents of the Pelham Ministry which proved of great 
 service in the struggle. 
 
 Besides these conspicuous personages, two others of less 
 eminence, but of much importance in the Irish capital, require 
 some notice. Thomas Carter had for twenty years held the 
 sinecure office of Master of the Rolls, the reversion of which 
 he had previously acquired by purchase from the Earl of 
 Berkeley, according to a pernicious practice severely condemned 
 by Swift in one of the ' Drapier's Letters.' He had, all his 
 life, taken a prominent part in political business, usually in 
 opposition to the Government. Archbishop Boulter had, as 
 early as 1726, found occasion to censure his conduct as lacking 
 in respect to the English Government. And Horace Walpole 
 describes him as an able, intriguing man, who had always been 
 a Whig, but had constantly fomented every discontent against 
 the Lords-Lieutenant in order to be bought off. He had been 
 closely associated with Boyle throughout the latter's long 
 tenure of the Speakership, notwithstanding that he had himself 
 been a candidate for the chair. He shared to the full the 
 convivial habits of the time, contributing much by a lively 
 wit to the vivacity of the Opposition dinners ; and, according 
 to Pery, he was the author of the ingenious invention of con- 
 veying libels in toasts, of which much invidious use was then 
 made in Dublin. 
 
 Less eminent at this period than the Master of the Rolls, 
 but even more powerful in the parliamentary interest he 
 exerted, was Nathaniel Clements, the Teller of the Exchequer. 
 He was without the slightest pretension to parliamentary 
 talents, and, according to Stone, incapable of speaking three 
 sentences in public. But his position at the Treasury, where 
 important employment had become hereditary in his family, 
 gave him an influence which in that age of corruption it was 
 
AKCHBISHOP STONE 105 
 
 scarcely deemed dishonourable to turn to political purposes, 
 and which he was not slow to use. His almost uncontrolled 
 power gave him at once the means of corrupting individuals 
 and of embarrassing the State. At this period the Bank of 
 Ireland had not yet been formed. The Government finances 
 were entirely in the hands of the individuals controlling the 
 Exchequer — so much so, that it was possible for one of the 
 Lords Justices of Ireland to assert that ' the whole stock of 
 the nation is now in the hands of a single person. And how 
 and where vested is known to him only.' This extraordinary 
 state of affairs arose from the fact that the Teller, whose 
 nominal salary was only £250, was really remunerated by 
 the profits of the manipulation of the Treasury balances. 
 And these profits were said to amount in Clements's hands 
 to no less than £8000 a year. Connected by marriage with 
 the great interest of the Gores, Clements belonged, like Carter, 
 to that section of placemen who were disaffected towards the 
 Court set ; and, like Carter, he had long been in close alliance 
 with Boyle. Of the methods by which he made his power 
 felt no details are given in the correspondence relating to the 
 controversies of this period, and there is no suggestion that 
 he used his public position for his own private gain, otherwise 
 than as just mentioned, and as the recognised system allowed. 
 But at a later date Clements was roundly accused by Hely 
 Hutchinson of augmenting the Treasury receipts at the 
 expense of his political opponents, by making undue deductions 
 from their salaries in respect of income tax. He even carried 
 this novel system to the point of reducing the salary of the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. Clements, who preserved 
 his political influence to the close of a long life, and a year 
 before his death procured the elevation of his son to the peerage 
 as Lord Leitrim, enjoyed for thirty years the dignified office 
 of Ranger of Phoenix Park, and in that capacity built the 
 mansion which, for more than a century, has been familiar 
 to the people of Dublin as the Viceregal Lodge. 
 
 The Parliament in which the persons just noticed were the 
 leading figures had, throughout the first twenty years of George 
 the Second, remained in a state of passive and even somnolent 
 
106 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 acquiescence in the policy dictated by the Enghsh and adminis- 
 tered through the Irish Privy Councih But a question was 
 now to be mooted which in a moment aroused its dormant 
 energies, and brought it into alarming colUsion with the 
 prerogatives of the Crown. Under the government of the 
 Earl of Harrington a question had arisen on a constitutional 
 point of some delicacy which, at the beginning of Dorset's 
 administration, still remained undetermined. The commercial 
 prosperity which followed the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had 
 considerably benefited the trade of Ireland, and at the end 
 of the year 1749 it was found that a considerable surplus out 
 of the moneys voted by Parliament for the service of the Crown 
 remained in the Treasury. The Irish House of Commons 
 proposed to apply this surplus to the discharge of the National 
 Debt, which had been largely increased in the late war, and 
 a Bill was prepared to that effect. No controversy arose 
 on the question of prerogative under Harrington, and the Bill, 
 which contained an acknowledgment of the sovereign's right 
 to direct how much of the surplus could be spared to the 
 purpose assigned by Parliament, was passed in that form. 
 The English Government, however, took the view that this 
 was an interference with the prerogative, and that moneys 
 due to the Crown, being in the absolute control of the sovereign, 
 any surplus could only be dealt with as he might direct or 
 consent. Accordingly, there being again a surplus in 1751, 
 the Duke of Dorset was instructed, while not refusing to 
 sanction the proposed application of the funds, to assert the 
 prerogative explicitly. In his speech at the opening of the 
 session the Viceroy accordingly declared that His Majesty 
 ' would consent and graciously recommend ' that so much 
 of the surplus as could be so applied consistently with the public 
 service should be devoted to the reduction of the debt. The 
 House of Commons, under the guidance of Boyle and Malone, 
 took no notice of the Viceroy's phraseology, and omitted all 
 reference to the prerogative in the Bill they sent over to 
 England for approval. It was, however, too soon for an 
 Opposition which relied on the votes of a number of placemen 
 nominally subservient to the Government to press matters to 
 
AECHBISHOP STONE 107 
 
 extremities, and the Bill, having been amended in England 
 by the insertion in the preamble of a recital of the King's consent 
 and recommendation, was passed without further protest. 
 Postponing for the present matters of government, the leaders 
 determined to fight for the moment on the safer ground of 
 personalities. The Primate being justly regarded as the 
 chief agent of the English Ministry, they resolved to show 
 their power by attacking one of his known favourites and 
 subordinates, rightly judging that in such an enterprise they 
 would have the support of many whose personal pique was 
 stronger than their zeal for constitutional privileges. The 
 Surveyor-General, Nevill Jones, a protege of the Primate's 
 and the member for Wexford, had been for some years engaged 
 in the erection of barracks through the country. Having 
 been called on by the Lord-Lieutenant to vote more money 
 for this work, the Commons readily complied. But having 
 at the same time been invited to inquire into the alleged 
 malversation of money destined for that service, an invitation 
 intended by the Viceroy as an oblique reflection on the conduct 
 of his predecessor Harrington, the House took advantage of 
 the opportunity to arraign Nevill Jones. They accordingly 
 passed a resolution condemning the contractor for deficiencies 
 in carrying out the work, and calling on him to make good 
 the defects at his own expense, and at the close of the session 
 they declined to present the usual address of thanks to the 
 "Viceroy which had hitherto been a matter of course. Having 
 thus given a foretaste of their intentions, and an indication 
 of their power, the Opposition desisted for the present from 
 further measures. The session coming to an end in May, 
 the Viceroy returned to England and matters were left to 
 simmer quietly for eighteen months. The interval was 
 occupied by the Primate in endeavouring to consolidate his 
 forces, and by the Opposition in appeals to the Whig members 
 of the Government. Lord Kildare betook himself to England 
 to present to the King a rather vainglorious memorial against 
 Dorset and the Primate. It had, however, but little effect. 
 * No facts,' says Walpole, ' were alleged against the Lord- 
 Lieutenant, nor any crime pretended in the Primate but 
 
108 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 that he was a Churchman,' and the King, who had a high idea 
 of his prerogative, concurred with his Ministry in supporting 
 the Viceroy. 
 
 Immediately on the reopening of Parliament in October 
 of the succeeding year, the duel was resumed. There is a 
 gap in the Stone and Newcastle correspondence during the 
 period of the recess, but it is evident from other sources 
 that the Viceroy returned to Ireland fully determined to 
 assert the prerogative in the matter of the disposal of the 
 surplus, while endeavouring to smooth over the personal 
 difficulties which had arisen. Dorset had apparently been 
 so much upset by the troubles in which he had found him- 
 self involved that he had designed to throw up his place. 
 But the embarrassments which threatened to follow in choosing 
 a successor made it important to the Ministry that he should 
 remain. ' The thoughts of a successor,' wrote Newcastle 
 from Hanover to his brother the Premier, ' make Dorset's 
 stay in Ireland absolutely necessary.' The Duke of Cumber- 
 land seems to have had a hankering for the Irish Government, 
 and the prospect filled Newcastle with dismay. ' I conclude 
 you know the fat, little, round great man would like it,' he 
 wrote. ' We have now nothing to do in the English army ; 
 we should then have as little in the Irish one.' It was accord- 
 ingly arranged that Dorset should return, and that while no 
 surrender should be made on the point of prerogative, the 
 Primate and Lord George Sackville, on the latter of whom 
 Newcastle threw the chief blame, should make it up with the 
 Speaker. Proposals for an accommodation were accordingly 
 made by the Primate, and at first seemed likely to be successful. 
 But matters had gone too far. The Opposition had organised 
 its forces and was confident of its power. Boyle, who was much 
 in the hands of Malone, after taking time to consult his friends, 
 rejected the Primate's overtures, and the battle was resumed 
 with more vehemence than ever. 
 
 Parliament met at College Green on October 9. On the 
 10th an indication of the heat of party spirit was given in 
 the robbery of the Armagh mail, which carried the writ for 
 a new election in county Armagh, with a view to delaying the 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 109 
 
 filling up of a vacancy in a constituency largely dominated 
 by the Primate's influence. In November, a resolution 
 directly aimed at Nevill Jones, and preliminary to a motion 
 for his expulsion from the House, was carried by three votes. 
 Matters were thus ripe for a fight on the larger constitutional 
 issue. The procedure of the former session had been adopted, 
 but on the Bill coming back from England with the words 
 as to consent and recommendation inserted, it was rejected, 
 after a debate of nine hours, by a majority of five, in the 
 largest House that had yet been seen in College Green. 
 
 ' Whoever,' wrote Horace Walpole, ' has seen the tide first 
 turn in favour of an Opposition may judge of the riotous 
 triumphs occasioned by this victory. The ladies made balls, 
 the mobs bonfires, the poets joyous odes.' Dublin went mad 
 with joy. The ' Patriots,' as the Opposition now began to be 
 called, were toasted as saviours of their country all over the 
 island. A list of the members who voted in the division was 
 printed, in which the supporters of the Government appeared 
 in black and their opponents in red letters, under the title 
 Insula Sacra et Libera. Medals were struck which showed 
 the view entertained by the popular party of the real essence 
 of the struggle in which they had been engaged. On one of 
 them, Hibernia with a harp in her hand, and the Speaker with 
 a cap of liberty on his head, were represented together, with 
 Fame blowing a trumpet, and a banner displaying the figures 
 of the majority. Another showed on the obverse ' The Speaker 
 and Liberty ' ; on the reverse ' The 124 Patriots of Ireland.' 
 Lord Kildare took an hour to pass from College Green to his 
 house not five minutes distant, so cordial were the greetings 
 of the mob. The Dublin chairmen distinguished their patriot- 
 ism by refusing to carry any fare to the Castle. Finally, 
 Sheridan, the manager of the Smock Alley Theatre, had his 
 stage wrecked and the house reduced to a shell for refusing 
 to comply with a call of the audience for a repetition of some 
 lines in Voltaire's ' Mahomet,' which were applauded as 
 applicable to the defeated partisans of the Court in the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 The news of these unexpected and disquieting proceedings 
 
no ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 caused no little astonishment in London, where all capable 
 observers were quick to note the significance of this outburst 
 of independence in the hitherto subservient Parliament of 
 Ireland. To so old a parliamentary hand as Bubb Dodington, 
 whose easy indifference to every interest save his own was 
 not easily disturbed, the rejection of the Money Bill appeared 
 a * dangerous event, and productive of more mischiefs than 
 I shall live to see remedied.' To Chesterfield it seemed equally 
 serious, though it was rather the harm to Ireland than the 
 annoyance to England that this acute and experienced critic 
 deplored. Among the members of the Cabinet, the Duke of 
 Newcastle, always alarmed and ready to temporise, was 
 for conciliation and moderate courses. But to his brother, 
 the Prime Minister, the affair seemed much more grave. ' If 
 a proper stand is not now made,' he wrote to the Primate, ' the 
 dependency of Ireland on this country is over ' ; and he assured 
 Dorset and Stone of his support in any measures which they 
 might think necessary to mark the displeasure with which 
 the conduct of the Patriots was viewed. Carter, Malone, and 
 Dilkes, the Barracks-Master General, and Sir Richard Cox 
 — a man of some mark, who had taken an active part in 
 developing the linen industry, and had given offence by 
 writing a violent attack on the Administration in a pamphlet 
 called the ' True Life of Betty Ireland ' — were accordingly 
 dismissed summarily from their posts. Bellingham Boyle, a 
 near relative of the Speaker, had his pension stopped, and 
 the Speaker himself was threatened with removal from his 
 office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. With these steps, 
 the matter was allowed to rest pending authoritative directions 
 from London, whither two emissaries at once proceeded : 
 Maxwell, the Under-Secretary, to report to the Premier and 
 his brother ; and the Marquis of Kildare, as the ambassador 
 of the Opposition, to lay the grievances of the Patriots before 
 the King. Of the two, Kildare's was the harder task. George the 
 Second had notions of prerogative little less pronounced than his 
 grandson's. As Lord Chesterfield put it, abilities greater than 
 Kildare's were needed to convince the King that the surplus 
 of his own revenue was not his own. The King flatly refused 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 111 
 
 to see Kildare, with whom he was, as Henry Fox reported, as 
 angry as it was possible for a man to be. And the views of 
 the sovereign were reinforced by the powerful counsels of 
 Murray, the future Lord Mansfield. The disgrace of Boyle 
 was therefore sanctioned, and he was removed from office. 
 A touch of absurdity was imparted to the whole controversy 
 by the resolution of the Ministry to appropriate the surplus 
 which had been the nominal bone of contention, thus illus- 
 trating the real powerlessness of the Irish Parliament. The 
 money was applied by the Crown at its own discretion, and 
 not another word was ever heard about it. But Parliament, 
 to obviate the risk of any future embarrassments, took care 
 by voting every sort of unnecessary expenditure to prevent 
 the possibility of a surplus. 
 
 For the moment the Castle had triumphed. The Patriots 
 were indeed more than ever heroes in Dublin, and the dis- 
 placed officials were feted everywhere. But the agitation must 
 soon have died a natural death had the energetic measures 
 of Pelham and Murray been persevered in. This was the 
 opinion of so competent an observer as Lord Macartney, who 
 was afterwards Chief Secretary under Lord Townshend, and 
 who reviewed the history of these events in his ' Account of 
 Ireland in 1773.' ' Why the Duke of Dorset did not return to 
 Ireland, and why the system then laid down was not pursued, 
 I do not know. But I know that the not pursuing it has been 
 the cause of all the distractions and disturbances in Ireland 
 since that time.' The explanation, however, was not far to 
 seek. The death of Pelham, and the construction of a New- 
 castle Cabinet, in which Henry Fox had a place which he seems 
 to have mainly valued as a means of thwarting the policy of 
 his chief, had a marked effect on the course of Irish affairs. 
 Fox was closely connected, through Kildare, with the Irish 
 Opposition ; and although Murray, who was now Attorney- 
 General and the principal figure in the House of Commons, 
 helped to sustain the Primate in his place, the Dorset influence 
 henceforward declined. Matters slept quietly enough during 
 the twelve months following the prorogation of Parliament. 
 But in the autumn of 1754 it became necessary to consider 
 
112 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 affairs with a view to the approaching session. Dorset and 
 the Primate had recommended, as a further means of showing 
 the power of the Crown and overawing those members of the 
 House of Commons whose defection had caused the difficulties 
 of the preceding year, that Clements should be dismissed from 
 his post. The latter, however, had his friends at Court, and 
 contrived to postpone a decision till the imminent meeting 
 of Parliament rendered a decision imperative. The matter 
 was referred to the King, who was averse to the removal, if 
 avoidable, but ready to sanction it if deemed an indispensable 
 measure ; and the Primate was asked to state explicitly 
 whether the turning out of Clements would ensure a majority 
 in the House of Commons. But while affairs were in this 
 doubtful state the Cabinet underwent another shuffle, as a 
 consequence of which the influence of Fox, who became 
 Secretary of State, both with Newcastle and with the King, 
 was materially strengthened. After much irresolution, the 
 Fox party carried the day. It was resolved to supersede 
 Dorset, who became Master of the Horse, and the Marquis of 
 Hartington, shortly to become the fourth Duke of Devon- 
 shire, was sent over as Lord-Lieutenant. Boyle and his friends 
 had thus carried the day. ' The triumph of the Patriots is 
 complete,' wrote Chesterfield, ' and the power is now theirs. 
 With all my heart ; let them but use it well.' The measures 
 recommended by Chesterfield to the Patriots in 1775, for this 
 end, were such as to a modern patriot would appear sufficiently 
 extraordinary, and show the limitations of the views of even 
 the most enlightened statesman of that age. ' Let them 
 encourage the extension and improvement of their manufactures, 
 the cultivation of their lands, and, above all, the Protestant 
 Charter Schools. Let them people and civilise the country 
 by establishing a fund to invite and provide for Protestant 
 strangers. Let them make Connaught and Kerry know that 
 there is a God, a King, and a Government — three things to 
 which they are at present utter strangers.' Chesterfield 
 strongly deprecated any further revival of the constitutional 
 disputes. The discussion of ' national points,' he considered, 
 could never be of advantage to Ireland. The people, he 
 
AKCHBISHOP STONE 113 
 
 thought, had hberty enough, and the Crown had prerogative 
 enough. Those appeared to him the real enemies of Ireland 
 who would enlarge either at the expense of the other. 
 
 The new arrangement was intended as a pacification. But 
 it was not efficient for the purpose. The new Viceroy was 
 brother-in-law to Bessborough, the promotion of whose son to 
 the Speakership had been a principal object in the game of 
 faction. Bessborough and Stone had been left as joint Lords 
 Justices, and the former had no notion of giving up the prize 
 for which he had contended. A battle now ensued between 
 the Primate, supported by Lord Bessborough, and the Speaker, 
 backed by Kildare and Fox, for the possession of power in 
 the next recess. Of this contest Horace Walpole gives an 
 amusing account. Boyle demanded the dismissal of the 
 Primate : the Primate was professedly willing to resign his 
 place in the Commission provided the Speaker would resign 
 too. In the end this arrangement was adopted, to the equal 
 disappointment of both aspirants for power. The Patriots, 
 in the language of Walpole, dismissed the woes of their country, 
 for which they had no longer occasion. The Opposition was 
 placated by the reinstatement of Boyle as Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, and the finding of fresh places for Malone and 
 Carter. At the end of the session, Boyle, accepting an earldom 
 and a pension of £2000 a year, made way for Ponsonby in 
 the Speaker's chair, and Kildare and Bessborough were named 
 Lords Justices on the Lord-Lieutenant's departure from the 
 kingdom. But, before he went, there was time for an object- 
 lesson in the sincerity of patriotism. A motion, made by Pery, 
 to take into consideration the heads of a Bill to secure the 
 freedom of Parliament, by vacating the seats of members 
 accepting pensions or offices of profit under the Crown, was 
 opposed by the full strength of the disinterested Patriots who 
 had refused the Money Bill. The motion was rejected, and 
 among the majority were Malone, Clements, Dilkes, and the 
 whole troop of Gores. 
 
 It would serve no useful purpose to recall the petty intrigues 
 which followed these events. The first result, naturally, 
 was to draw down on the ' Patriots ' the not undeserved 
 
114 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 opprobrium of the Dublin mob. Boyle was burnt in effigy, and 
 Malone was hooted ; and the Duke of Devonshire was probably 
 not sorry when, on the collapse of Newcastle's Government, he 
 was summoned to construct his own short-lived Ministry and 
 relieved of immediate responsibility for Ireland. A further 
 result of this unprincipled conduct on the part of those who, 
 a short time before, had so successfully posed as the saviours 
 of their country, was to produce a revulsion of feeling in favour 
 of the discredited, but consistent, director of English interests 
 in the minds of English statesmen. Even in his temporary 
 discredit under the Hartington Government, the sagacious 
 Chesterfield had predicted the ultimate triumph of the Primate, 
 as being the ablest of all the competitors for power. ' I am 
 bewildered at your Irish politics,' he wrote in the autumn of 
 1757, ' but upon the whole, take my word for it, the Primate 
 will be too hard for them all at the last.' Although the new 
 Viceroy, the Duke of Bedford, struggled to maintain his inde- 
 pendence of the Undertakers, he was soon driven into an 
 alliance with the only member of the governing group who really 
 understood the management of men. Even while out of the 
 Government, the Primate had shown the extent of his influence 
 in the highest places by managing with equal acceptance to 
 both statesmen, as Dodington's Diary informs us, the delicate 
 negotiations between Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle, which 
 resulted in the alliance that terminated the Duke of Devon- 
 shire's Government, and substituted for it the Administration 
 under which Pitt's greatest triumphs were achieved. If he 
 had lost power by attempting to grasp too much. Stone now 
 showed his adaptability to circumstances by coming to terms 
 with his former adversary. Absolutely devoid of rancour and 
 resentment, Stone had no difficulty in acting with those he 
 had formerly opposed. He now entered into a close alliance 
 with his former foe, the ex-Speaker, now become Lord Shannon. 
 The two great Undertakers, together with Speaker Ponsonby, 
 became the joint depositories of power, and for the next six 
 years, till their deaths, which happened in the same month 
 at the close of 1764, their power was undisturbed. Under 
 the successive viceroyalties of Bedford, Halifax, and 
 
ARCHBISHOP STONE 115 
 
 Northumberland, the triumvirate were continually appointed 
 Lords Justices, and the influence of the Undertakers was 
 greater than ever before. 
 
 Such a result seems a lame and impotent conclusion to the 
 controversy so long and so energetically sustained by the 
 Opposition, and may perhaps appear to contradict what has 
 been said above of the importance of that controversy as a 
 stage in the evolution of parliamentary institutions. Yet it 
 is certain that the struggle over the altered Money Bill marks 
 the first definite appearance in the eighteenth- century politics 
 of Ireland of a patriotic party, professedly actuated by a 
 national spirit. However interested and even venal the 
 conduct and motives of those who masqueraded in the garb 
 of patriotism, their action had enduring effects on the character 
 of the Irish House of Commons. For the first time in its history 
 the territorial oligarchy, which had governed Ireland since the 
 Restoration, became identified in the public mind with the 
 principle of the constitutional independence of the Irish 
 Parliament ; and, despite the backsliding of individuals, it 
 continued to be so identified even after the Undertakers had 
 recovered power. The notion of the national identity of Ireland 
 took firm hold of the public mind, and was eagerly adopted by 
 the opponents of the Administration as a means of strengthening 
 the power of the Opposition, and checking the hitherto uncon- 
 trolled power of the Undertakers. And for the first time, 
 too, the control of the purse began to be effectively asserted 
 by the House of Commons as an unquestionable constitutional 
 right. 
 
 To two observers of great eminence these aspects of the 
 * Patriot ' struggles of 1755 were clearly apparent. Both 
 Edmund Burke, from the point of view of English Whiggism, 
 and Lord Clare, from that of Irish Unionism in its most militant 
 form, have left, in striking passages, their impressions of the 
 immense significance of these events. It was at this period, 
 as the great orator observed in his well-known letter to Sir 
 Hercules Langrishe, that the English in Ireland ' began to be 
 domiciliated, began to recollect that they had a country.' 
 The English interest, at first by faint and almost imperceptible 
 
116 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 degrees, but at length openly and avowedly, became an inde- 
 pendent Irish interest fully as independent as it could ever 
 have been ' if it had continued in the persons of the natural 
 Irish.' The clear-sighted and uncompromising champion 
 of English interests in Ireland at the end of the century put 
 the same point in another form, and in his great speech upon 
 the Union referred to the struggle as the fatal precedent on 
 which ' a system had been gradually built which would beat 
 down the most powerful nation of the earth.' 
 
ROBERT EMMET 
 
 Although but little respect has been paid to the dying request 
 of Eobert Emmet, his reputation has certainly not suffered from 
 the world's persistent refusal to bestow upon it * the charity 
 of its silence.' Emmet's admirers have not waited for that 
 distant day to which he would fain have adjourned the writing 
 of his epitaph, the day ' when my country takes her place 
 among the nations of the earth.' Thanks to the loyalty to 
 Emmet's memory consistently shown by a most eminent Irish 
 man of letters of the nineteenth century, as well as to the 
 graceful sentiment evoked by Emmet's fate and the sorrows 
 of his love from one of the most gifted of American writers, the 
 name and character of the chief figure in the insurrection of 
 1803 have been, almost from the first, invested with the glamour 
 of romance. It is not given to many to unite such suffrages 
 as those of Thomas Moore and Washington Irving ; and their 
 touching tributes have combined to render the figure of Robert 
 Emmet, even to those who disapprove his ideals and abhor his 
 methods, among the most picturesque in the portrait gallery 
 of Irish patriots. 
 
 Nothing, indeed, in the career of the somewhat worldly- 
 minded author of ' Lalla Rookh ' is more honourable than his 
 constant zeal for the fame of his earliest friends. For Moore's 
 prose tributes to Robert Emmet are not less touching than 
 the well-known lines which begin 
 
 She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, 
 
 which embalm the memory of the young patriot's attachment 
 to Sarah Curran. In his ' Life of Lord Edward FitzGerald ' 
 Moore pronounced a glowing eulogy on his old college comrade 
 
 117 
 
118 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 as ' among the highest of the few among all I have ever known 
 who appeared to me to combine in the highest degree 
 pure moral worth with intellectual power.' And the poet 
 records in his diary a conversation with Sir Arthur 
 Wellesloy at a dinner at Dublin Castle at which he was 
 ' afforded an opportunity within those memorable walls 
 of speaking of Emmet as he deserved.' The merit, says 
 Moore, was far less in the speaker than in the great 
 listener ; for ' such a flight of daring at an Irish Chief Secre- 
 tary's table was at that time little less than a portent, and 
 even the most ordinary of Irish Secretaries could, from his very 
 position, have consigned me to silence with a look.' But Moore 
 found in Wellington an attentive and interested auditor, and 
 was able, as he tells us, ' to thank God as he went to bed that he 
 had lived to pronounce an eulogium on Robert Emmet at the 
 Chief Secretary's table.' 
 
 Such enthusiasm as Moore's, coupled with such compassion 
 as Washington Irving expressed in his touching story of ' The 
 Broken Heart ' i for one ' so young, so intelligent, so generous, 
 so brave — so everything that we are apt to like in a young 
 man,' is more than sufficient to mitigate the untempered 
 harshness of the less favourable criticisms passed by Grattan 
 and O'Connell. For, curiously enough, the least sympathetic 
 appreciations of Emmet have come from the lips of those 
 two most eminent of Irish patriots. Grattan, who, as an old 
 Whig disgusted at the wreck of Liberalism wrought by the 
 excesses of the enthusiasts of democracy, was perhaps scarcely 
 capable of discriminating criticism in such a case, had none 
 but hard words for Emmet and his associates. And O'Connell 
 was still more uncompromising in his disapprobation. ' Never,' 
 he is reported to have said, ' was there a more rash or foolish 
 enthusiast. At the head of eighty men, armed only with pikes, 
 he waged war on the most powerful government in the world, 
 and the end of the mad fiasco was the murder of one of the 
 best of the then Irish judges. Lord Kilwarden.' For this 
 murder Emmet, in O'Connell's opinion, deserved to be hanged, 
 and he considered that but for the romance which his 
 
 ^ See Washington Irving's Sketch-Book. 
 
ROBERT EMMET 119 
 
 attachment to Miss Curran had thrown around him, his memory 
 would long ago have been forgotten. The judgment of the 
 great Liberator is certainly not generous, and perhaps it is 
 hardly just. But, though a sympathy with the too sanguine 
 enthusiasms of youth, and compassion for the errors of a 
 temperament exceptionally ardent, may dispose us to qualify 
 O'Connell's verdict, it cannot be denied that it comes nearer 
 the mark than the preposterous exaggerations of some undis- 
 criminating eulogists, for the charity of whose silence Emmet 
 had every reason to plead. With all respect to such extra- 
 ordinary and, in a sense, admirable devotion as that exhibited 
 by the author of the ' Lives of the United Irishmen,' Dr. 
 Madden's persistent attribution to his heroes of impossible 
 perfection of character, and to their opponents of equally 
 unattainable depravity, produces an inevitable repulsion on all 
 fair-minded readers. Emmet's title to the remembrance of his 
 fellow-countrymen is safer in the gracious keeping of the great 
 men of letters to whose affecting tributes we have referred, 
 and in the vivid impression created by his own impassioned 
 vindication of his motives, than in the perfervid eulogies of 
 indiscriminate partisans. 
 
 The dissent which Dr. Madden's exaggerated apologetics 
 tend to provoke even in those whose approval of the aims 
 and ideals of the men of '98 is cordial and unreserved appears 
 plainly enough in the tone of Mr. O'Donoghue's attempt i to 
 give an unrhetorical account of the life of Eobert Emmet. 
 Widely as we differ from Mr. O'Donoghue in many of his 
 estimates, his book seems to us to merit the encomium 
 applied by its author to one of the authorities on which he 
 draws, as containing much sane and thoughtful writing, and 
 ' showing an excellent acquaintance with Emmet's time 
 and a thorough appreciation of Emmet's position and ideas.' 
 It is impossible, unhappily, to accord the same praise to Dr. 
 T. A. Emmet's monumental ' Memoirs of the Emmet Family.' ^ 
 Students of the literature of the United Irish Movement will 
 
 1 Life of Robert Emmet, by D. J. O'Donoghue, Dublin, 1902. 
 - The Emmet Family, with some incidents relating to Irish History, by 
 Thomas Addis Emmet, New York, 1898. 
 
120 ESSAYS EELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 indeed be grateful for the fresh matter derived from authentic 
 and original sources which the book contains. The hitherto 
 unknown and unpublished diary of Thomas Addis Emmet, 
 Robert's elder brother, during his stay in Paris in 1803-04, 
 throws an entirely fresh light on the origin of the insurrection 
 of 1803 and its relation to French projects for an invasion of 
 Ireland. But the point of view of the compiler, as is natural 
 and indeed excusable in the principal representative of the 
 descendants of the Emmet family, is as persistently laudatory 
 as Dr. Madden's ; and the readiness with which Dr. Emmet 
 imputes every kind of villainy, possible and impossible, to Pitt 
 and to the Irish Government produces the same undesired 
 effect upon the candid reader. 
 
 Whatever opinion may be formed upon the works we have 
 been discussing, it is unquestionable that Dr. Madden and 
 Dr. Emmet have between them supplied the public with every 
 possible material for forming a judgment on their hero. 
 Their united industry has explored practically every document 
 which is now procurable outside the State Paper Office. And 
 it seems unlikely that the State Paper Office can contain any- 
 thing which may not also be found among the personal papers 
 of the statesmen responsible for the government of Ireland 
 in 1803. In one form or another everything of real importance 
 which can throw light on the circumstances of Emmet's plot 
 or the motives of its chief contrivers has now been made 
 available. For notwithstanding an extraordinary and in- 
 herently incredible hallucination of Dr. Emmet as to the 
 destruction of certain papers in Dublin Castle, there is good 
 reason to believe that every State paper of importance relating 
 to the subject is now accessible to the public. Although the 
 records for 1803 at the Home Office and at Dublin Castle are 
 only accessible by special permission, and have never, so far 
 as we are aware, been utilised by any writer, the acquisition 
 by the British Museum of the Hardwicke collection has placed 
 at the disposal of the public either the originals or official 
 copies of practically every paper in the possession of the 
 Government bearing on the Emmet insurrection. The Earl 
 of Hardwicke was at the head of the Irish Government as 
 
ROBERT EMMET 121 
 
 Lord-Lieutenant for the five years succeeding the Union, and 
 that part of his papers which covers this episode is particularly 
 complete. In addition to the originals, or office copies of the 
 originals, of many important State papers already published in 
 such collections as the ' Castlereagh Correspondence ' and the 
 * Diary and Correspondence of Lord Colchester,' Lord Hard- 
 wicke's collection contains many other documents of an 
 intimate and confidential kind ; and it is unlikely that the 
 hitherto unexplored archives of State departments contain 
 anything of consequence which is not covered by the Viceroy's 
 correspondence. 
 
 Besides the family documents disclosed in the memoirs of 
 the Emmet family and the State papers in the Hardwicke 
 collection and elsewhere, only one other possible source of 
 information has till recently remained unexplored — the 
 archives, namely, of the French Government bearing on the 
 projects of the Directorate and the Consulate for the invasion 
 of England, and on the negotiations known to have taken 
 place between Napoleon and the United Irishmen. The 
 publication of these archives by the Historical Section of the 
 French Staff, under the title of ' Projets et Tentatives de 
 Debarquement aux lies Britanniques, 1793-1805,' i has now 
 been completed, and the chapters devoted to the negotiations 
 with the Irish leaders from the very inception of the French 
 plans of invasion to their overthrow at Trafalgar supply a 
 hitherto missing link in the chain of historical evidence on the 
 subject. Taken in connexion with the invaluable diary of 
 Thomas Emmet, already referred to, these archives demon- 
 strate the practically continuous character of the negotiations 
 between the French Government and the emissaries of the 
 United Irishmen for the invasion of Ireland during a space 
 of a dozen years. They show that at every step in the 
 development of the conspiracy for the overthrow of the 
 British Government in Ireland, French gold, French weapons, 
 and French soldiers were deemed the indispensable conditions 
 of a successful attempt. And they prove that if the premature 
 
 1 Par Edouard Desbriere, Paris, 1900-02. 
 
122 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 outbreak of July 23, 1803, appears at first sight to have 
 been an independent and self-contained movement, it is only 
 because, too impatient to await the tardy development of 
 the plans of the French Government for sending assistance 
 to Ireland, the eager spirit of an uncalculating enthusiast 
 precipitated a rising with which France had designed to 
 co-operate. A careful study of all the information abundantly 
 demonstrates what the bare facts of themselves suggest — 
 that the rising had no real roots in the active discontent of 
 the Irish people, but was due entirely to the promptings of 
 the survivors of the United Irish movement, to the restless 
 activity of a few outlawed conspirators, and to the enthusiasm 
 of a few speculative reformers, of whom the Emmet brothers 
 were the chief. 
 
 The theory that Robert Emmet was the sole contriver of 
 the insurrection which will always be associated with his 
 name, that it was devised in Ireland independently of all idea 
 of foreign assistance, and that in his wild project he was 
 acting simply on the impulse of a raw and inexperienced youth, 
 is one which, in spite of his own disavowal, has been sedulously 
 fostered by his friends and apologists. That disavowal was 
 surely explicit enough to have entitled his assertion to credence : 
 ' I have been charged with that importance in the efforts to 
 emancipate my country as to be considered the keystone of 
 the combination of Irishmen, or, as it has been expressed, " the 
 life and blood of the conspiracy." You do honour me over- 
 much ; you have given to the subaltern all the credit of his 
 superior.' Yet this disavowal has not prevented his admirers — 
 not less anxious to cover the British Government with obloquy 
 than to vindicate the memory of their hero — from seriously 
 putting forward a theory which, if it could be established, must 
 deprive Emmet of a large part of his title to the praises they 
 bestow upon him. To Dr. Madden must be ascribed the 
 honour of first formulating the extraordinary proposition that 
 the Emmet rising was organised by a Government taking 
 advantage of Emmet's youth, enthusiasm, and inexperience, 
 and acting through the medium of traitors among the United 
 Irishmen who had betrayed their cause and their comrades. 
 
ROBERT EMMET 123 
 
 Such extravagant and unsupported hypotheses as those 
 which Dr. Madden advanced are really enough to capsize for 
 the moment the intellect of any candid reader of the history 
 of the times, so utterly inconsistent are they with the known 
 facts of the case. But the confidence with which they are put 
 forward, and the readiness with which they are accepted, 
 have given a wide currency to those fables of a too sympathetic 
 imagination. And as, prior to Mr. O'Donoghue's, no attempt 
 has been made to examine the facts from any less partial 
 standpoint, it is scarcely surprising that Dr. Madden's version 
 of the Emmet insurrection has won a ready credence from the 
 ignorant or half-informed. It was time to make some attempt 
 to exhibit the facts in a fuller and fairer light, and, while doing 
 every justice to all that was attractive in the character of its 
 youthful leader, to indicate plainly the true bearings of the 
 insurrection of 1803. Mr. O'Donoghue's lucid narrative 
 is a considerable step in the right direction, though even he 
 has fallen more than once into the error he deprecates in his 
 predecessors of adopting as facts statements which are ' not 
 borne out by sufficient evidence to justify their inclusion.' 
 
 The far-reaching effect of the ferment of revolutionary 
 ideas, which in every corner of the civilised world marked 
 the last decades of the eighteenth century, was nowhere 
 more apparent than in Ireland, and in no instance was the 
 power of those ideas more strikingly shown than in the careers 
 of the men to whom the revolutionary movement in that 
 island owed its chief inspirations. The three leaders of the 
 United Irishmen, whose names have most powerfully im- 
 pressed themselves on the memory and imagination of the 
 Irish people, are Lord Edward FitzGerald, Wolfe Tone, and 
 Robert Emmet. The names of all three are those of men essen- 
 tially unlikely, from their origin, to have had any connexion 
 with Irish treason, and in all probability in ordinary times not 
 one of them would have ever been heard of in connexion with 
 popular politics. The first-named, a cadet of the oldest of 
 Irish Whig families, and closely connected, through his mother, 
 with one of the greatest titles in the roll of English nobility, 
 began his career as a British soldier fighting the battles of 
 
124 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 England in the American War of Independence, against a people 
 ' rightly struggling to be free.' The second came of a family 
 of Protestant yeomanry of the kind least likely to catch the 
 contagion of anti-British feeling. And neither in the case 
 of Fitz Gerald nor in that of Tone did the early career of those 
 patriots indicate the slightest affinity to the cause for which 
 both died. Within two years of his adoption of republican 
 principles FitzGerald was on the point of accepting at the 
 hands of Pitt the command of an expedition to Cadiz ; and 
 only a few months before he founded the United Irish Society 
 Tone was negotiating with the same minister for the formation 
 of a British colony in the South Seas. The third and youngest 
 of the patriots we have named was in point of race and religion 
 equally unconnected with popular politics. 
 
 Robert Emmet was born at 110 St. Stephen's Green, 
 Dublin,! in 1776. He was the youngest of seventeen children 
 born to Dr. Robert Emmet, M.D., and his wife Elizabeth 
 Mason. The striking qualities of remarkable men are often 
 imputed to their mothers ; but in the case of Emmet there 
 is no doubt that the bent of his character and the turn of his 
 opinions were formed by his father. Dr. Robert Emmet 
 came of a family of English descent, which had settled in 
 the south of Ireland in the seventeenth century. Born in 
 Tipperary, he had, after embracing the medical profession, 
 migrated to Cork, whence he moved to the capital about the 
 year 1770. In that year he was appointed to the position 
 of State physician to the Lord Lieutenant, a post which, 
 though involving attendance at the Viceregal Court, he retained 
 to the day of his death in 1802, notwithstanding the known 
 connexion of two of his children with the treasonable organisa- 
 tion of the United Irishmen. Dr. Emmet appears to have been 
 a man of considerable ability and original views, but too 
 doctrinaire, and even eccentric, in the application of his ideas 
 to life to attract the confidence of practical men. He took a 
 
 • The exact birthplace of Emmet has been the subject of some controversy. 
 His biographers state that he was born in Molesworth Street. The point has 
 been decisively settled in favour of 110 St. Stephen's Green (the house is now 
 numbered 124) by Mr. David A. Quaid, of Dublin, in a brochure entitled 
 Robert Emmet : his Birthplace and Burial, Dublin, 1902. 
 
ROBERT EMMET 125 
 
 keen interest in politics, and stimulated the same taste in his 
 children. But Grattan, whose family physician he was, had a 
 very poor opinion of the doctor's poHtical capacity. ' Emmet,' 
 he used to say, ' had his pill and his plan, and he mixed so much 
 politics with his prescription that he would kill the patient who 
 took the one and ruin the country that listened to the other.' 
 Of the peculiarity of Dr. Emmet's political nostrums only one 
 instance is recorded — a novel scheme of proportional represen- 
 tation, according to which the votes of members of the House 
 of Commons were to be multiplied in the ratio of their eminence 
 and capacity ; Grattan's vote, for example, counting as five, 
 as against the single voice of an undistinguished member. 
 
 Most of the children of Dr. Emmet inherited much of his 
 ability with some of his eccentricity. Their views were 
 coloured from childhood by the extravagance of their father's 
 speculative political philosophy. According to the younger 
 Grattan, the education he gave them was singular and ill- 
 advised ; while Curran used to describe him interrogating his 
 sons at the family table : ' Would you kill your brother for 
 your country ? ' ' Would you kill your sister ? ' ' Would 
 you kill me ? ' It is scarcely wonderful that lads so trained 
 should have been apt recipients of the revolutionary ideas 
 which were rife in then* early manhood, and have eagerly 
 embraced the philosophy of Tom Paine. To this, however, 
 there was one exception. Temple Emmet, the eldest son, 
 though possessed of an imagination which enriched the natural 
 eloquence he displayed during a brief but brilliant career at the 
 Irish Bar, appears to have been unaffected by his father's oddities 
 of opinion. He died at twenty-eight ; but not before he had 
 earned an extraordinary reputation and shown a brilliant 
 promise — ^he was created a King's Counsel within six years of 
 his call to the Bar — and Lord Norbury, in the course of Robert 
 Emmet's trial, took occasion to pronounce a eulogy, which was 
 manifestly sincere, on the character of his eldest brother as one 
 of the greatest ornaments of the Irish Bar. 
 
 Dr. Emmet's second and better-known son, Thomas Addis 
 Emmet, more closely resembled his father, and, like the 
 latter, had much influence on the opinions of young Robert, 
 
126 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 who was fourteen years his brother's junior. Indeed, it is 
 no exaggeration to say that the insurrection known as Robert 
 Emmet's was much more than half the work of Thomas Addis ; 
 and to explain the disciple we must first describe the teacher. 
 Thomas Emmet began life in the medical profession, and was 
 actually associated for some time with his father, according to 
 the practice of those days, in the patent of appointment as 
 State physician. But on the death of his elder brother. Temple, 
 he abandoned medicine for the law ; and, called to the Bar in 
 1790, he at once stepped into considerable practice. In the 
 cases — always tolerably numerous in Ireland — which had any 
 relation to politics, he was constantly retained on the popular 
 side. In this way he became acquainted with Wolfe Tone, 
 then at the beginning of his extraordinary career as a politician. 
 He was a member of Tone's political club, in which connexion 
 he is described in his friend's journal as ' a man completely 
 after my own heart, of a great and comprehensive mind ; of 
 the warmest and sincerest affection for his friends ; and of a 
 firm and steady adherence to his principles, to which he has 
 sacrificed much, as I know, and would, I am sure, if necessary, 
 sacrifice his life.' Mr. O'Donoghue observes in his preface 
 that, while Robert Emmet's career has appealed more strongly 
 to the Irish people in general than any figure in Irish history 
 since Owen Roe O'Neill, and Sarsfield, it would be absurd to 
 pretend that he had the genius of Wolfe Tone. It may be 
 added that he showed little trace of the speculative powers of 
 his brother Thomas. 
 
 Though Lord Edward FitzGerald's and Robert Emmet's are 
 by far the most romantic names in the United Irish movement, 
 Wolfe Tone's and Thomas Addis Emmet's are incomparably 
 the most important in relation both to the genesis of the 
 ideas in which that movement originated and to the history of 
 developments. For the story of its intrigues and stratagems, 
 in the conduct of which he took so keen a delight. Tone's 
 Journal is by far the fullest and best authority ; while as an 
 exposition of the views and motives which guided the more 
 thoughtful among those connected with it, the narrative 
 published by Thomas Addis Emmet in ' Pieces of Irish History ' 
 
EGBERT EMMET 127 
 
 is by far the most instructive of extant documents. This 
 unfinished * Essay towards the History of Ireland,' composed by 
 Thomas Addis Emmet during his confinement as a State 
 prisoner at Fort St. George after the failure of the rebellion of 
 1798, only carries the history of the United Irish movement 
 down to the year 1796 ; but as an exposition of the ideas which 
 pervaded the minds of the authors of the insurrection, and 
 especially of those with whom Eobert Emmet was brought up, 
 it is abundantly complete. Taken in connexion with the 
 author's own examination before the Secret Committees of the 
 Lords and Commons of Ireland, as printed in the same volume, 
 together with certain letters on Irish politics contributed to the 
 press by Thomas Addis Emmet under the pseudonym of 
 ' Montanus,' it leaves no sort of doubt as to the character of 
 this mild apostle of revolution. The impression thus conveyed 
 unquestionably confirms the justice of Grattan's estimate. 
 Thomas Emmet's writings illustrate in a striking way the 
 influence of the French Eevolution on a mind already engrossed 
 with political speculations, and exhibit the rapidity of his 
 advance from the limited object of parliamentary reform, which 
 was the original goal of his aspirations, to the severance of 
 Ireland from Great Britain and the establishment of an 
 independent Irish Eepublic. 
 
 The comparatively limited grievances for the redress of 
 which, according to Thomas Addis Emmet, the reform of 
 the Irish Parliament was desired in the first instance are 
 stated very succinctly in an answer given to the Lord Chancellor 
 in the course of Emmet's examination before the Committee 
 of the House of Lords. Asked what grievances a reformed 
 legislature would remove, he replied, ' In the first place, 
 it would cause a complete abolition of tithes ; in the next, 
 by giving the people an increased value in the democracy, 
 it would better their situation and make them more respected 
 by their superiors ; the condition of the poor would be amelio- 
 rated, and, what is perhaps of more consequence than all the 
 rest, a system of national education would be established.' 
 But with the advent of the French Eevolution the horizon 
 of Thomas Emmet and his friends was enormously widened. 
 
128 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 ' The French Revolution paved the way for the entire accom- 
 plishment of what the volunteer institution had begun. A 
 Catholic country had by its conduct contradicted the frequently 
 repeated dogma that Catholics are unfit for liberty ; and the 
 waning glory of the British Constitution seemed to fade before 
 the regenerated government of France.' 
 
 One other article in the creed of the United Irishmen 
 which Thomas Addis Emmet's essay and other documents in 
 ' Pieces of Irish History ' make clear is the sincerity of the 
 majority of the Irish leaders in their belief in the possibility 
 of maintaining Ireland, once separated, in a position of inde- 
 pendence not only of Great Britain, but of France and all 
 other powers. This point is of special interest in relation to 
 Robert Emmet, the chief burden of whose speech at his trial 
 was less a vindication of his separatist opinions than a protest 
 against the supposition of his being ready to place his country 
 under French rule. Thomas Addis Emmet constantly averred 
 that he would never have attempted to effect a separation 
 had he entertained a shadow of doubt of the ability of Ireland 
 ' to defy the combined efforts of France and England.' His 
 reliance, he said, was more on Irish prowess than on French 
 promises ; and he had persuaded himself that an Irish army, 
 when once organised by foreign assistance, would be powerful 
 enough to withstand a hundred thousand Frenchmen. That 
 Thomas Addis Emmet held tenaciously to this belief to the 
 end is evident from his part in the negotiations carried on 
 with Napoleon in 1803-04 for an invasion of Ireland. He 
 was then the leader of a party among the Irish refugees in 
 Paris who constantly objected to the notion of a French 
 protectorate, which Arthur O'Connor and other refugees 
 were willing to encourage, and he actually secured from the 
 First Consul a promise not to make peace with England without 
 stipulating for the independence of Ireland, and for her 
 treatment by France in every way on the same footing as the 
 United States. 
 
 That the views of the elder Emmet were from the first the 
 views of his younger brother there is no room to doubt. Pre- 
 disposed from the first by his father's precepts to adopt the 
 
EGBERT EMMET 129 
 
 philosophy of revolution in its extremest form, Robert Emmet's 
 development from boyhood to manhood took place at the very 
 period when his brother was giving practical effect to the 
 doctrines of his father. He had barely reached his twentieth 
 year when the rebellion of 1798 broke out, and when his 
 brother and his brother's friends were made to pay the penalty 
 of their revolutionary principles in a prolonged imprisonment. 
 
 No authentic narrative of Robert Emmet's movements in 
 the period of preparation for the rising has ever been written. 
 At any rate no such narrative survives. It is consequently 
 dijQficult to trace with certainty the sequence of the young 
 conspirator's proceedings. The precise degree in which, at 
 certain stages of his enterprise, he acted upon his own initiative, 
 without direction from those associated with him, must ever 
 remain unexplained. But enough can be gleaned from an 
 analysis of the scattered scraps of information bearing directly 
 on the subject to enable us to form a clear view, not only of 
 the general plan upon which his movement was organised, 
 but of the close connexion which subsisted between the ideas 
 of Emmet and the plans of those chiefs of the United Irishmen 
 by whom the rebellion of 1798 had been organised. Taken 
 in conjunction with the diary of Thomas Emmet, the ascertain- 
 able facts demonstrate abundantly the organised character 
 of the conspiracy known as Robert Emmet's. They prove 
 it to have been devised in close conjunction with the exiled 
 leaders of the United Irishmen, to have been modelled in the 
 essentials of its organisation upon the United Irish plan, and 
 to have been based from its inception, like the earlier and 
 more formidable rising, on the expectation of French 
 co-operation. 
 
 That young Emmet had early imbibed the revolutionary 
 principles which his elder brother had been so active in trans- 
 lating into action is clear from his connexion with the treason- 
 able movement among certain undergraduates at Trinity 
 College, Dublin. This movement was the subject of a 
 memorable visitation by Lord Clare in his capacity of Vice- 
 Chancellor of the University, an inquisition of which striking 
 accounts have been left in a volume called * Ireland Sixty 
 
130 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Years Ago,' and in Moore's ' Memoirs.' On that occasion 
 Emmet anticipated his expected inclusion in the sentence 
 of expulsion from the University, which was pronounced 
 against nineteen of his associates, by withdrawing his name 
 from the college books. His remarkable rhetorical ability, 
 frequently displayed in the College Historical Society, had 
 given him, as Moore notes, a wide influence within the college 
 walls, and there is no doubt that he acted as secretary to one 
 of the committees of United Irishmen in the University. 
 There is no evidence as to Emmet's intentions at this period 
 with regard to his future, and most probably he was too 
 deeply absorbed in revolutionary projects to bestow much 
 serious thought on the subject ; but if, as was natural to a 
 youth of his special aptitudes, he had thoughts of the Bar, 
 his ambitions in that direction must have been closed by the 
 abrupt conclusion of his academic career. His proceedings 
 from the date of the college visitation in 1798 to the close of 
 the following year are an almost complete blank. Ireland 
 was at the time under martial law, and a person of Emmet's 
 antecedents was sure to be closely watched. There is some 
 reason to believe that he was concerned in an attempt made 
 to rescue the State prisoners who had been arrested in '98, 
 and it may have been a suspicion of this that caused Castlereagh 
 to issue a warrant for his arrest as a person charged with 
 treasonable practices. But this warrant, though issued on 
 April 3, 1799, was never executed, and it may therefore be 
 concluded that he had been guilty of no overt act at this time. 
 Early in 1800 he is known to have visited Fort St. George, 
 where his brother, with other State prisoners, was confined. 
 The elder brother had formed the intention of settling in 
 America on his release, and Bobert appears to have arranged 
 to accompany him. But subsequently to this interview 
 Robert's plans were changed, and he determined to remain in 
 Europe. Pending the release of the prisoners, which was 
 deferred in the case of most of them till after the Peace of 
 Amiens, he undertook a tour on the Continent, and travelled 
 extensively in Southern France, Switzerland, and Spain, 
 ultimately settling in Paris. Whether he was at this time 
 
ROBERT EMMET 131 
 
 actually engaged in furthering plans for insurrection does 
 not appear from any direct source. But there is every reason 
 to accept the statement made in a secret memorandum drawn 
 up by Wickham, the Chief Secretary, in the autumn of 1803, 
 that when Emmet left Ireland for the Continent, early in 1801, 
 he did so with a mission to the French Government from the 
 Executive Directory of the United Irishmen, Wickham's 
 memorandum is based on the secret examinations in Dublin 
 Castle of several of the accomplices in the insurrection, and 
 on secret documents, letters, and papers either found on their 
 persons or intercepted by Government. Though not, perhaps, 
 accurate in every detail, it presents a remarkably clear narrative 
 of the whole business as known to the Government after the 
 failure of the outbreak. 
 
 The account given of Robert Emmet's movements tallies 
 with other information in so far as other information is avail- 
 able, and Thomas Addis Emmet in his diary refers more than 
 once to the existence at this time of a United Irish Executive. 
 According to Wickham, Robert Emmet left for Hamburg 
 early in 1801, and, arriving after some delay in Paris, held 
 communication with the heads of the French Government, 
 This probably refers to the interview which Emmet himself 
 states that he had with Bonaparte, an interview which pro- 
 foundly disappointed him. But even had Bonaparte's views 
 been more favourable, any expectation of immediate French 
 assistance must have been disappointed by the conclusion, in 
 May 1801, of the Peace of Amiens, though the evidently 
 precarious nature of the truce doubtless encouraged hopes 
 for the future. On the release of the State prisoners Robert 
 at once proceeded to Brussels, where he met his brother, and, 
 returning to Paris, seems to have fallen in with Thomas 
 Russell, Wolfe Tone's closest friend, and perhaps the most 
 thoroughgoing and enthusiastic of the survivors of the men 
 of 1798, Russell, who was also intimate with Thomas Addis 
 Emmet, had travelled with the latter from Fort St. George. He 
 arrived at Amsterdam early in August 1802, and proceeded 
 at once to Paris, where he fell in with Robert, Here, it seems 
 probable, is to be found the genesis of the actual design which 
 
 E 2 
 
132 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 cost the lives of both Emmet and RusselL In the autumn 
 Eobert Emmet returned to Ireland. Before doing so he 
 appears to have confided to some sympathisers the purpose 
 of his journey. According to Lord Cloncurry, he stated in a 
 personal interview that a plan had been formed for a renewed 
 effort to free Ireland, and expressed the most sanguine hopes 
 of a successful issue. 
 
 No sort of record exists of the plans that were concerted at 
 this time for a renewal of the attempt to subvert British rule 
 in Ireland. But whatever the precise nature of the scheme 
 formed between the Emmets and Russell, it is clear that a 
 secret committee was at once formed with the object of per- 
 fecting the arrangement for a fresh rising. Of these the 
 chief members, in addition to the two leaders, were William 
 Henry Hamilton, a relative of Russell's (who had been concerned 
 from the first in the United Irish movement, and had been 
 among the Irish on board the Hoche, in 1798, when he 
 narrowly escaped, disguised as a Frenchman), one Michael 
 Quigley, a bricklayer and small building contractor, and 
 William Dowdall. The last-named was the first of the party 
 to leave France. Going over to London, he appears to have 
 entered into communication with Edward Marcus Despard, a 
 circumstance which suggests that the outward similarity be- 
 tween the attempt of that unfortunate officer to seize the person 
 of King George the Third, and Emmet's notion of capturing 
 Dublin Castle and the chief functionaries there, was more 
 than a chance resemblance. That Emmet was actually con- 
 cerned in Despard's plot has never been proved ; but Despard's 
 supporters were mostly Irish, and the fact that Dowdall was 
 connected with both conspiracies is certain. Despard, how- 
 ever, was arrested as early as November 10, and any plans 
 which may have been based on his co-operation were thus 
 upset. Hamilton, who had come to Ireland with Emmet about 
 November, was soon back in France to report progress to 
 Russell, by whom he was a little later accompanied on his 
 return to Ireland. Measures were at once taken to test the 
 feelings of the country. A provisional government was 
 formed on the '98 model, Russell proceeding to the north to 
 
ROBERT EMMET 133 
 
 organise Ulster, while other emissaries visited the south. And 
 in February, 1803, as appears from his diary, Thomas Addis 
 Emmet, then residing in Brussels, received fresh credentials 
 as agent in France of the Irish executive, and came to Paris 
 to invoke the aid of the Government of the Consulate. 
 
 That such an envoy should have been sent on such a 
 mission at a moment when peace still existed between France 
 and England may appear extraordinary. It is certain, how- 
 ever, that the Irish leaders were well informed as to the secret 
 trend of French policy in regard to a resumption of hostilities. 
 They held the opinion, which events were so soon to confirm, 
 that Napoleon had no intention of maintaining the Peace of 
 Amiens, and they believed that, pending any actual breach 
 of friendly relations, the French Government would be ready 
 to assist with something more than sympathy any movement 
 likely to embarrass an enemy with whom they considered 
 the struggle must sooner or later be renewed. That the 
 Government of France, both before and after the Peace of 
 Amiens, still looked on an Irish expedition as an important 
 move in their own game is clear from the papers from the 
 French archives published in the ' Projets et Tentatives.' 
 As early as 1799, Humbert, the leader of the French expedition 
 to Mayo, had been the author of a proposal for an invasion 
 of Ireland by a force of 12,000 men, which, taking advantage 
 of the prevalent discontent at the impending Union, would, 
 he thought, be amply sufficient to sever Ireland from Great 
 Britain. And, though no definite step had been taken prior 
 to the Peace of Amiens, the ears of the French War Office were 
 never closed to Irish solicitations. That nothing decisive was 
 determined, either then or later, was due solely to Napoleon's 
 disbelief in the ability of Ireland to take an effective share 
 in any programme for her deliverance, and to his resolution 
 to do nothing in Ireland except in relation to his larger project 
 for the invasion of England. In 1798 he had deliberately 
 turned his face from Ireland ; and, though he listened from 
 time to time to the solicitations of Irish disaffection, he could 
 never again be induced to seriously consider Ireland as an 
 important factor in his plans. 
 
134 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Robert Emmet himself, as has been mentioned, had an 
 interview with the First Consul in 1802, from which, though 
 he derived the impression that hostihties between England 
 and France would recommence before the autumn of 1803, 
 he came away dissatisfied. Bonaparte, he clearly saw, cared 
 for Ireland only in so far as her fate was involved in his own 
 designs, and had no particular sympathy with her aspirations 
 for independence. However willing he might have been to 
 undertake the conquest of Ireland with a view to making her a 
 French province, which he might utilise as an additional point 
 of attack on England, he had nothing to gain by giving her the 
 independence which alone would satisfy the Emmets. 
 
 But whatever the real reasons of his apathy in regard to 
 Ireland, there is no doubt that the disbelief in Irish capacity, 
 which Bonaparte expressed more than once at St. Helena, 
 had much justification at this juncture in the divided counsels 
 of the Irish leaders. The diary of Thomas Addis Emmet, 
 who arrived in Paris from Brussels in February 1803, as the 
 emissary of the United Irish leaders, for the purpose of pressing 
 France to render assistance, shows how pitiably his mission 
 was marred by the jealousies which were rife among the 
 refugees, and by his own refusal to co-operate with rival 
 leaders. Among the political prisoners who, on being released 
 from Fort St. George, had come to Paris, was Arthur O'Connor, 
 perhaps the most distinguished, with the exception of Lord 
 Edward FitzGerald, of the aristocratic adherents of the 
 United Irish cause. Six years earlier O'Connor had had an 
 important share in the negotiations which resulted in Hoche's 
 expedition, and he was thus well known in Paris. Though 
 undoubtedly whole-hearted in his patriotism, his views of the 
 means for attaining independence differed considerably from 
 Thomas Addis Emmet's. With the latter he had quarrelled 
 while in confinement at Fort St. George, and the two men had 
 ceased to be on speaking terms. O'Connor was in favour of 
 a French protectorate in Ireland, while Emmet would hear 
 of nothing but absolute independence. It was thus the 
 fortune of the United Irishmen to be represented officially 
 by an uncompromising envoy, who was without the ear of 
 
ROBERT EMMET 135 
 
 the authorities in Paris, while a distinguished member of 
 their original body, much better fitted than Thomas Addis 
 Emmet to conduct a negotiation of this kind, was busily 
 engaged in discrediting his old colleague, and denying his 
 claims to act in a representative character. Napoleon appears 
 to have done his best to bring the two factions together, and 
 suggested, through a subordinate, that he would be glad to 
 learn the joint views of Emmet and O'Connor, as ascertained 
 in conference ; but though O'Connor would have been glad 
 to adopt this course, the other obstinately refused to meet 
 him, averring that, in addition to personal grievances which 
 he might have been willing to overlook, he objected to O'Connor 
 on ' moral and political grounds.' The real merits of their 
 original quarrel are unknown to us, though it is probable 
 that it originated in the divergence of their views on the eve 
 of the rising in '98 as to the proper time for action ; but it 
 is impossible not to censure Emmet, even on bis own showing, 
 for his refusal to co-operate with O'Connor at a moment 
 when it was manifest that the cordial union of all Irishmen 
 in Paris was the essential condition of success. So far as 
 can be gathered from Emmet's diary, the essence of the dis- 
 agreement in point of policy between the two parties was 
 that O'Connor was willing to defer the French views of the 
 time and mode in which assistance was to be rendered in 
 Ireland, and was prepared to assent to a temporary French 
 protectorate : an arrangement to which Emmet, who appar- 
 ently paid no attention to the necessity of giving France 
 some interest of a practical kind in return for her assistance, 
 was vehemently opposed. In the spring of 1803 an expedition 
 to Ireland of 30,000 men, under the leadership of Massena, 
 appears to have been in contemplation ; and Emmet was given 
 satisfactory assurances as to the independence which France 
 was prepared to secure to Ireland. But it was stipulated that 
 no movement should be made in Ireland pending the dispatch 
 of this expedition, which would take six months to prepare. 
 Emmet asked for a passport to enable him to send news of 
 the proposed expedition to his associates. But this passport, 
 applied for as early as May, was not provided until the close 
 
136 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 of July, by which time the fatal precipitancy of Robert Emmet 
 had already led to the abortive insurrection of 1803. 
 
 It is evident that to the neglect or inability of the leaders 
 of the movement to maintain effective communications 
 between their emissaries in France and their active agents in 
 Ireland the failure of the whole scheme of insurrection was 
 largely due. The measures taken by Robert Emmet and 
 Russell for preparing their own people for a rising were framed 
 entirely with a view to early action and the immediate arrival 
 of French assistance. In the absence of any communication 
 from Paris they were not only unaware that the French 
 desired to postpone all action till the late autumn of 1803, 
 but they seem to have counted, with a confidence for which 
 they were entirely without warrant, on the arrival of assist- 
 ance in the form of arms and ammunition, if not of men, 
 at the time which their own plans required. This too implicit 
 reliance on the expectation of French assistance was not the 
 only example of the rashness and over-confidence of the 
 leaders of this enterprise. They miscalculated most strangely 
 the state of feeling among their own people, and grossly 
 overestimated the degree in which their fellow-countrymen 
 were animated by their own hostility to the British connexion. 
 
 Abundant as are the surprises of Irish history, few are 
 more curious or more striking than the completeness of the 
 change which was wrought in Ireland by the incidents of 
 the rebellion of 1798, and, oddly as it may sound, by the 
 operation of the Act of Union. Within a space of less than 
 five years, and despite the embittering experiences of a 
 rudely enforced martial law on the one hand, and the destruc- 
 tion of legislative independence on the other, whole districts, 
 which prior to the rebellion had been seething with discontent 
 and had ardently applauded the doctrines of pronounced 
 Separatists, had become completely reconciled to the Govern- 
 ment. Of the change in the sentiments of the erstwhile 
 republicans of Ulster no better illustration can be given 
 than the statement of Thomas Russell that of the jurors 
 empanelled to try him for his share in the insurrection of 
 1803 as many as six were men who, but a few years before, 
 
ROBERT EMMET 137 
 
 had taken the United Irish oath ; and the evidences of 
 reaction were numerous everywhere. This altered state of 
 pubhc sentiment is chiefly to be ascribed to the manifestation 
 of the depth of racial and religious rancour in the course 
 of the rebelhon, which had revealed to the Protestant and 
 English element in the ranks of the United Irishmen the 
 lengths to which their allies had been prepared to go in a 
 policy of proscription. But it must in part also be set down 
 to the effects of the wise lenity of the Addington Administra- 
 tion, which, satisfied with the suppression of overt treason, 
 and with the removal of what they had deemed a rallying 
 point of disaffection in the suppression of the Irish Parliament, 
 had been careful to refrain from provoking hostility by needless 
 harshness. 
 
 No doubt there was much exaggeration in the complacency 
 with which the Government of Lord Hardwicke contemplated 
 the effects of its policy of clemency and conciliation. John 
 Wilson Croker gives an account of the condition of the country 
 in a pamphlet on the state of Ireland, published in 1808, 
 which is little flattering to the administration, ' By his 
 public and private gentleness, some ostentatious charity, and 
 the universal purchase of the press, the shadow of popularity 
 was acquired ; but this shadow, with which he was contented, 
 deceived England and darkened Ireland.' Undoubtedly Lord 
 Hardwicke and his colleagues underestimated the power of 
 the old leaders of the United Irishmen to foment disorder 
 below the surface. But their confidence that the Irish temper- 
 ament would respond to the mollifying influences of a kindly 
 conciliation was not altogether ill-founded. Irish disorder is 
 never formidable so long as it is inarticulate ; and from 
 banished leaders and a muzzled press little was to be feared. 
 
 Against Croker's disapprobation may well be set the evi- 
 dence of Robert Emmet. According to Wickham, the Chief 
 Secretary, Emmet, in the private examination at Dublin 
 Castle after his arrest, admitted that when he sat down to 
 write his proclamation, his conscience would not allow him 
 to assign an existing grievance, and he was obhged to have 
 recourse to the crimes and follies of preceding times. In a 
 
138 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 remarkable letter, first made public in the Colchester 
 Correspondence, Emmet has borne striking testimony to 
 the lenity of the Irish administration under the Addington 
 Ministry. This letter, addressed to Wickham, the Chief 
 Secretary, within an hour of Emmet's execution, indicates, 
 according to Mr. O'Donoghue, ' the lamentable weakness of 
 Emmet's character.' It is difficult to follow the biographer's 
 point of view in this remark, for certainly the letter must 
 redound in the judgment of most fair-minded persons to the 
 reputation of Emmet for nobility of character. But at any 
 rate it is a remarkable proof that while the anti-English spirit 
 which animated the authors of the rebellion of 1798, and 
 which was at the root of Emmet's own insurrection, was 
 not to be allayed by moderation on the part of the Govern- 
 ment, the people themselves were far less irreconcilable. 
 In it the writer states that, had he been permitted to proceed 
 uninterrupted in his speech at his trial, it had been his inten- 
 tion ' to have done the most public justice to the mildness 
 of the present administration of this country,' and to have 
 stated ' why such an administration did not prevent, but, 
 under the peculiar situation of this country, perhaps rather 
 accelerated, my determination to make an effort for the 
 overthrow of a government of which I do not think equally 
 highly.' Emmet concluded by averring that he felt it right 
 to make this acknowledgment ' which justice requires from me 
 as a man, and which I do not feel to be in the least derogatory 
 from my decided principles as an Irishman.' 
 
 Emmet probably exaggerated the effects of the policy of 
 the Addington Administration in producing a condition of 
 permanent contentment with the Union ; but unquestionably 
 under the direction of the Viceroy, Lord Hardwicke, and his 
 successive Chief Secretaries, Abbot and Wickham, a tone of 
 unexampled conciliation was infused into the Irish Govern- 
 ment. In its dealings with the Koman Catholics and with 
 the Dissenters of the North of Ireland, the new ministry had 
 been remarkably successful. The goodwill of the hierarchy 
 was earned by the patronage extended by the Government 
 to the lately formed College of Maynooth. The establishment 
 
ROBERT EMMET 139 
 
 of that institution, quite as much as any expectation of 
 an early fulfilment of their hopes of emancipation, had been 
 a powerful motive with Archbishop Troy and his fellows in 
 extending their approval to the Act of Union. The clerical 
 horror at the principles of the French Revolution is an element 
 which can never be left out of sight in considering the attitude 
 of the Roman Catholic hierarchy towards the problems of 
 Irish politics at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
 Quite as great as the anxiety of the Government to prevent 
 the young Irish priests from acquiring anti-British sentiments 
 in the course of a foreign education was the solicitude of 
 the bishops to preserve the recruits to the priesthood from 
 the contamination of republican influences. Such views as 
 those which animated the two Emmets were as alien to the 
 leaders of Roman Catholicism in Ireland as they were to 
 the British Government, and in this temper of the hierarchy a 
 conciliatory policy was likely to achieve at least a temporary 
 success. 
 
 Concurrently with the conciliation of the Roman Catholic 
 leaders a serious and more durably successful endeavour 
 was made to cultivate the goodwill of the Presbyterians by 
 establishing close relations between the Government and 
 the Assembly, through a constituted agent, by grants in 
 aid of the Presbyterian ministers. The moment was more 
 favourable for such a connexion than at any former time. 
 The republican views of Ulster, so strongly manifested in the 
 preceding decade, had been first modified by the attitude of 
 the Roman Catholics during the rebellion in Wexford. They 
 received a further discouragement in the singular evolution 
 of republican principles which had made Napoleon First 
 Consul for life. Of this policy of conciliating Nonconformity 
 the principal agent, Alexander Knox (the w^ell-known private 
 secretary of Castlereagh), whose knowledge of the North of 
 Ireland was remarkable, wrote that a happier policy had 
 never been resorted to. ' Never before,' he wrote in a remark- 
 able letter, ' was Ulster under the dominion of the British 
 Crown. It had a distinct moral existence before, of which 
 all that we could certainly know was that they were not 
 
140 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 with the State ; therefore, when any tempting occasion 
 occurred, ready to act against it ; whereas now the Presby- 
 terian ministers would henceforth be a subordinate ecclesiastical 
 aristocracy,' whose feeling wOtild be one of zealous loyalty. 
 
 These considerations are sufficient to account for the fact 
 that, despite the exertions of Emmet and Eussell to revive 
 the old resentment of the Eoman Catholics and the Presby- 
 terians against the Government, no sort of sympathy was 
 manifested by the people at the moment of the outbreak of 
 July 23, 1803. Neither North nor South displayed the 
 smallest interest in the movement. And in Dublin failure 
 must have been inevitable, even had popular sympathy been 
 greater, from the fantastically unpractical and inadequate 
 nature of Emmet's preparations. It is not our purpose 
 to describe afresh the oft-told story of the Emmet insur- 
 rection. The plot to seize Dublin Castle and the defensive 
 positions of Dublin, making hostages of the chief officers of 
 state when captured, was no doubt originally a part of a 
 larger plan for a combined rising in several counties, concerted 
 in co-operation with France and aided by French arms ; 
 but the portion of this plan actually carried out was 
 almost childishly impracticable, and certainly justifies Mr. 
 O'Donoghue's judicious verdict that Kobert Emmet's qualities 
 were those of a ' romantic but hardly great leader.' No 
 doubt his plans had been confused and defeated, and his 
 judgment unsettled by the premature though partial dis- 
 covery of his preparations, through an explosion at his arsenal 
 in Patrick Street a week before the rising. But for the 
 inadequacy of these preparations Emmet was solely responsible, 
 since it was by his orders alone that the attempt was made 
 in conditions that to any practical mind precluded the 
 possibility of success. Mr. O'Donoghue censures Emmet's 
 ' astoundingly childlike ignorance and implicit faith in his 
 associates ' as inviting serious and damaging criticism. But 
 in truth, as regards the military aspect of the rising, serious 
 criticism is impossible. The insurrection, in so far as it was 
 Robert Emmet's, was the wild adventure of a fanatical 
 enthusiast, and its claims to be regarded as a serious military 
 
EGBERT EMMET 141 
 
 attempt may be sufficiently judged from the wild rhapsody 
 penned by its contriver within a few hours of embarking on 
 the final stages of his enterprise : 
 
 ' I have little time to look at the thousand difficulties which 
 still lie between me and the completion of my wishes; that 
 those difficulties will hkewise disappear I have ardent, and I trust, 
 rational hopes ; but if it is not to be the case, I thank God for 
 having gifted me with a sanguine disposition. To that disposition 
 I run from reflection ; and if my hopes are without fovmdation — if 
 a precipice is open imder my feet from which duty will not sufier me 
 to run back, I am grateful for that sanguine disposition which leads 
 me to the brink and throws me down, while my eyes are still raised 
 to the visions of happiness that my fancy formed in the air.' 
 
 In the foregoing attempt to analyse the causes of the 
 insurrection of 1803, we have been concerned with the character 
 of its chief figure only in so far as it directly affected the 
 movement, and have not sought to dwell upon those purely 
 personal passages in the brief career of Robert Emmet which 
 have done so much to give him a peculiar place in the affections 
 of the Irish people. Emmet's attachment to Sarah Curran 
 is an episode which has no real relation to his political schemes ; 
 and it is even doubtful whether it had been formed prior to his 
 return to Ireland in the autumn of 1802, at which period 
 his political purpose was already matured. He has himself 
 stated that when he first addressed Miss Curran he had expected 
 that ' in another week his own fate would have been decided,' 
 and there is no foundation for Mr. O'Donoghue's assertion that 
 a considerable correspondence passed between the two lovers 
 and fell into the hands of the Government. That there was 
 some correspondence is certain, but the letters which were 
 seized by the Government appear to have been limited to 
 two from the young lady and one from her lover. As the 
 subject is one which, quite apart from the poUtical aspects 
 of Emmet's career, has a strong personal interest, and as the 
 facts have not hitherto been correctly represented, it may be 
 interesting to give here some extracts from the Hardwicke 
 Papers, now preserved at the British Museum. These include 
 
142 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Emmet's last letter, and tell us all that can now be known 
 of a pathetic episode. 
 
 Lord Hardwiche to the Hon. Charles Yorhe 
 
 ' Sept. 9, 1803. 
 
 ' A curious discovery has been made respecting Emmet, the 
 particulars of which I have not time to detail to you fully. There 
 were found upon him two letters from a woman, written with a 
 knowledge of the transactions in which he had been engaged, and 
 with good wishes for the success of any future attempts. He has 
 been very anxious to prevent these letters being brought forward, 
 and has been apprehensive that the writer was arrested as well as 
 himself. Till yesterday, however, we were entirely ignorant of the 
 person who had written these letters, which were very clever and 
 striking. The discovery was made last night, by a letter from 
 Emmet intercepted in its passage from Kilmainham prison to Miss 
 Sarah Curran, youngest daughter of Curran the lawyer. Wickham 
 has seen him (Curran), and he professes entire ignorance of the 
 connexion ; but I think he must decHne being counsel for Emmet, 
 in a case in which his daughter may be implicated.' 
 
 Robert Emmet to Thomas and Jane Emmet, written on the day of the 
 writer's execution, and probably his last letter 
 
 ' My dearest Tom and Jane, — I am just going to do my last duty 
 to my country ; it can be done as well on the scaffold as in the field. 
 Do not give way to any weak feelings on my account, but rather 
 encourage proud ones that I have possessed fortitude and tranquilhty 
 of mind to the last. 
 
 ' God bless you and the young hopes that are growing up about 
 you. May they be more fortunate than their uncle, but may they 
 preserve as pure and ardent an attachment to their country as he 
 has done. Give the watch to little Robert. He will not prize it 
 the less for having been in the possession of two Roberts before him. 
 
 ' I have one dying request to make to you. I was attached to 
 Sarah Curran, the youngest daughter of your friend. I did hope to 
 have had her for my companion for life. I did hope that she would 
 not only have constituted my happiness, but that her heart and 
 understanding would have made her one of Jane's dearest friends. 
 I know that Jane would have loved her on my account, and I feel 
 that had they been acquainted she must have loved her on her own. 
 
ROBERT EMMET 143 
 
 ' No one knew of the attachment till now, nor is it now generally 
 known, therefore do not speak of it to others i . . . her father 
 and brother, but if these protectors should fall off, and that no 
 other should replace them, take (or treat) her as my wife, and love 
 her as a sister. 
 
 ' God Almighty bless you all. Give my love to all dear friends, 
 
 ' Robert Emmet.' 
 
 The passage in this letter relating to Sarah Curran was 
 communicated by the Lord Lieutenant's direction to the young 
 lady's father. Curran, in his letter of acknowledgment, 
 dated September 21, 1803, offers to His Excellency his ' more 
 than gratitude, the feelings of the strongest attachment and 
 respect for this new mark of considerate condescension ' ; 
 and expresses his wish for the suppression of this extract, 
 if no particular occasion should have arisen for forwarding it 
 to its destination. 
 
 ' Three or four words are obliterated here. 
 
II 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF IRISH TOPOGRAPHY 
 
DUBLIN 
 
 It is a curious circumstance which has often been noted that 
 the story of the Irish capital does not become the story of 
 the capital of the Irish people until a period long subsequent 
 to the first foundation of Dublin. Although the Irish annalists 
 make occasional mention of the site of the future city of 
 Dublin by its earliest name of Ath Cliath, it is not until 
 the eighth century that vague tradition and unauthenticated 
 legend begin to crystallise into history with the coming of 
 the Norse invader. Owing its origin to Danish auspices, 
 Dublin was neither first built by Irish hands, nor originally 
 peopled, by men of Irish race. To the Ireland of the ages 
 before the advent of the Vikings, the spot round which the 
 city was to rise had no doubt always been a place of some 
 importance. For its maritime situation must from the earliest 
 times have necessitated some sort of assemblage of dwellings 
 near the junction of the Eiver Liffey with the Irish Sea. 
 But there is nothing to indicate that either in pre-Christian 
 or early Christian times the ancient Ath Cliath had reached 
 a position of consequence. Until the Danes had fixed their 
 seat in the immediate neighbourhood, no Leinster chieftain 
 or Irish king appears to have chosen the place for stronghold 
 or for residence. Even during the first hundred years of its 
 Norse ownership, it is improbable that any considerable town 
 can have grown up. Indeed, both the name originally given 
 to the place by the native Irish and the later one, likewise 
 of Gaelic origin, which the Scandinavian invaders adopted, 
 indicate that the early importance of the spot was geographical 
 rather than political, and arose less from any settlement of 
 which it had become the site than from the different uses, 
 
 147 l2 
 
148 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 appropriate to the physical features of the locaHty, to which 
 the Celt and the Norseman respectively put it. To the 
 former it was Ath Cliath, the ford bridged by hurdles, which 
 formed the most direct means of communication between the 
 ancient kingdoms of Meath and Leinster ; and as such it is 
 said, but without any sufficient authority, to have been 
 utilised by St. Patrick when making his way from Wicklow 
 to Armagh. To the latter it was Dubhlinn, the dark pool 
 or haven lying eastward of the ford, a little further down the 
 river, in which the warships of the Viking might find safe 
 harbourage in the course of his marauding visits to the Irish 
 coast. 
 
 The earliest ravages of the Danes in Ireland commenced 
 towards the close of the eighth century ; but it was not until 
 the year 837 that the Vikings paid their first recorded visit to 
 Dublin. In that year there came ' three score and five ships 
 and landed at Dubhlinn of Ath Cliath ' to plunder the adjacent 
 territory. This was the prelude to the incursions of the Finn 
 Gaill or Fair Strangers, the memory of whose settlement in 
 the district north-west of Dublin is embalmed in its name 
 of Fingal. Their advent seems to have been followed within 
 a year or two by the erection of the first recorded building 
 in Dublin, a fortress or fixed encampment which, ten years 
 later, was destroyed by a fresh horde of Northmen. The 
 newcomers represented a different branch of the Scandinavian 
 stock, and are called by the annalists Dubh Gaill, or the Dark 
 Strangers. For some time after their arrival the story of 
 Ireland is a succession of struggles between the two opposite 
 elements in the Scandinavian immigration ; but about the 
 middle of the ninth century this antagonism terminated in 
 the general recognition of Aulaf or Olaf the White by all 
 sections of the invaders. It was by this coalition that the 
 Scandinavian power in Ireland was permanently consolidated ; 
 and it is in King Aulaf that we are to recognise the true founder 
 of Dublin. In 852, according to the 'Annals of Ulster,' 
 ' Aulaiv, son of the king of Laihlinn, came into Ireland, 
 and all the foreigners submitted to him, and had rent from 
 the Irish.' 'i 
 
DUBLIN . 149 
 
 For above a century and a half from the establishment 
 of Aulaf's authority, Dublin was the centre of that important 
 Viking confederacy, stretching from Carlingford to Waterford, 
 to which the name of Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin has 
 been applied. But it is not to be supposed that the Danish 
 supremacy was left unchallenged throughout this long period. 
 The story of the early wars of Ireland after the coming of the 
 Norsemen contains the record of more than one struggle 
 between the native and the alien race for the possession of 
 that fortress by means of which the Danish kings of Dublin 
 sought to buttress their power, and which was to form the 
 nucleus of the future capital. In these contests there were 
 many vicissitudes, and fortune was fickle with her favours. 
 But, though the Irish had their triumphs, they were, for a 
 long period, temporary and barren ; whereas from the date 
 of the great battle, fought on September 15, 919, on the banks 
 of the Liffey, within a mile or so of the very site of the original 
 Ath Cliath,! until that of the still greater Battle of Clontarf, 
 fought close on a century later, the Danish supremacy in 
 Dublin was complete and unbroken. And although the famous 
 victory of Brian Borumha in 1014 effected the expulsion of 
 the foreigner from Meath and Leinster, it did not effectually 
 achieve the deliverance of Dublin from foreign rule. For 
 above half a century after Clontarf the city remained in 
 Danish hands. Down to the time of the coming of the Normans 
 Dublin continued to be, predominantly at least, the city of 
 the Ostmen, as the Norse inhabitants had come to be known. 
 It was by a garrison of Ostmen that in 1170 it was stoutly, 
 though ineffectually, held against Strongbow and his followers. 
 Thus it is that the oldest memorials which Dublin has to 
 boast are those of its early Norse owners, and that its pre- 
 Norman remains are of Scandinavian rather than of Gaelic 
 origin. Its oldest cathedral — Christ Church — was founded 
 almost a quarter of a century after the Battle of Clontarf 
 by Sitric, its Danish king. Its oldest church, St. Michan's, 
 recalls a Danish saint. And an important quarter of the 
 
 ' The scene of this battle has been hitherto wrongly placed. See Proceed- 
 ings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxvi. sec. C. p. 281. 
 
150 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 modern city, on the north bank of the Liffey, has but lately 
 lost its long- preserved name of Oxmantown or Ostmanstown. 
 
 But if the earliest traditions of Dublin are undoubtedly 
 those which connect the city with its Norse founders, its 
 earliest authenticated records are as unquestionably Norman. 
 Beyond the associations just mentioned, there is little, if 
 anything, to identify the Dublin of to-day with the capital 
 of the Scandinavian kingdom ; or to indicate what manner 
 of city it was that on St. Matthew's Day, September 21, 1170, 
 after its abandonment by the Danish king, Hasculf McTorkil, 
 surrendered to Strongbow and his valiant lieutenant, Miles de 
 Cogan ; and which, after the abortive attempt at recapture 
 by a Danish squadron under the dispossessed sovereign, was 
 to become the central stronghold of Norman authority in 
 Ireland. It is impossible to affirm decisively that the fortress 
 of king Aulaf once stood on or near the site of the ' royal palace 
 roofed with wattles after the fashion of the country,' which 
 Henry the Second, on his first arrival in Dublin in 1174, erected 
 for the accommodation of his Court at Christmas-tide. But it 
 is at least extremely probable that it was so. For the physical 
 configuration of the rising ground to the south-east of the city 
 walls must at all times have suggested the eminence on which 
 Dublin Castle now stands as the most appropriate site for 
 a fortress. Thus it may well have been that the battlements 
 of the watch-tower from which king Sitric had followed the 
 varying fortunes of the fight at Clontarf rose from the self-same 
 spot on which for seven centuries His Majesty's Castle of 
 Dublin has been the citadel of the governing authority in 
 Ireland. But however that may be, no trace of the Danish 
 fortress survived the final overthrow of Scandinavian power ; 
 and it is really with King John's order for the construction 
 of ' a strong fortress in Dublin, suitable both for the adminis- 
 tration of justice and, if need be, for the defence of the city,' 
 that the history of Dublin, considered as a metropolis, must 
 be said to begin. 
 
 The Norman captors of the Danish town had received from 
 Henry the Second the charter under which Dublin was to re- 
 main, during the long Plantagenet era, the one secure stronghold 
 
DUBLIN 151 
 
 of English power in an island only half subdued. After the 
 expulsion of the Norsemen, the sovereign ' granted to his men 
 of Bristol his City of Dublin to inhabit and to hold of him, 
 and of his heirs for ever, with all the liberties and free customs 
 which his men of Bristol then enjoyed at Bristol, and through 
 all England.' This charter, subsequently confirmed by King 
 John and others of Henry's successors, gave to the city and 
 its inhabitants an impress which lasted down to Stuart times. 
 ' It is resembled to Bristol, but falleth short,' was the verdict of 
 an English visitor in the time of James the First. The people of 
 Dublin long retained the mercantile characteristics of the great 
 capital of the West of England ; and the parish church of 
 St. Werburgh's, dedicated to the patron saint of one of the 
 earliest of Bristol churches, still bears witness to the connexion 
 between the two cities. The essentially alien character of 
 Dublin, as thus colonised, is well illustrated by the fact that 
 its citizens were long a prey to the depredations of the Irish 
 septs who dwelt within its neighbourhood. Easter Monday 
 of the year 1209 was marked by a memorable raid by the 
 O'Byrnes and O'Tooles, who, descending unexpectedly on 
 the holiday-making citizens, drove them within the city walls, 
 after a slaughter which caused the day long to be remembered 
 in the capital as Black Monday. And Stanihurst, the sixteenth- 
 century chronicler, has recorded how, at a somewhat later date, 
 the Irish enemy carried their raids on one occasion even 
 into the precincts of the Court of Exchequer, ' where, surprising 
 the unweaponed multitude, they committed terrible slaughter 
 by sparing none that came under their dint, and withal, as far as 
 their Scarborough leisure would serve them, they ransacked 
 the prince's treasure.' 
 
 It was doubtless upon some such provocation as this 
 that the work of building the castle and raising the walls of 
 Dublin was ordered and enforced by King John. To that 
 monarch, who as Lord of Ireland had a peculiar interest in 
 his father's conquest long before he succeeded to the English 
 Crown, Dublin was perfectly familiar, and he thoroughly 
 understood its needs. The first instructions for the building 
 of the castle were issued to the Justiciary, Meiller FitzHenry ; 
 
152 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 but it is to a Norman Archbishop of Dubhn, Henri de Londres, 
 that the honour of its erection is really due. The fortress 
 appears to have been completed about the year 1220, and 
 the city walls a few years later. But both castle and city 
 underwent considerable expansion at the hands of the Viceroys 
 of the early Plantagenet sovereigns. Henry the Third gave 
 orders for the erection of a great hall, one hundred and 
 twenty feet in length and eighty in breadth, ' with glazed 
 windows after the manner of the Hall of Canterbury,' a 
 building which in later days appears to have served as the 
 place of meeting for the earlier Irish Parliaments ; and it was 
 at the behest of the same monarch that a splendid chapel 
 was raised within the castle precincts to the honour of 
 Edward the Confessor. There is not much of external 
 splendour about Dublin Castle as it exists to-day ; but 
 there can be little doubt that, as conceived by its Plan- 
 tagenet founders, it was intended to be a pile worthy to be 
 the principal edifice of a stately capital. 
 
 The limits of the medieval city, as encompassed by the 
 walls and turrets designed to defend it, were far from extensive. 
 From the date of its first origin, as the seat of a settled political 
 system, Dublin has a history of over seven centuries, in the 
 course of which the metropolis has from time to time been 
 extended, until at the present day its limits have come to 
 embrace an area of close on eight thousand acres, and to 
 contain a population of nearly three hundred thousand. But 
 these imposing figures have only recently been attained by 
 the inclusion within the city boundaries of several of what 
 until recently were deemed its northern and western suburbs ; 
 and down to the year 1900 the city of Dublin had long been 
 understood to mean the area within the North and South 
 Circular Roads, a circumference of about nine miles. But the 
 walls of the medieval city were much less extensive, and can 
 hardly have measured more than an Irish mile, or encompassed 
 an area much larger than that now enclosed in St. Stephen's 
 Green. Its dimensions can be gauged with fair accuracy 
 from Mr. Leonard Strangways' map,i by which it will be 
 
 ' See Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, by C. Litton Falkiner, p. 3. 
 
DUBLIN 153 
 
 seen that the city lay along the south bank of the Liffey, 
 whose waters at high tide ran right up to the walls from a point 
 just below the castle, at which Grattan Bridge now spans the 
 river, to the Old Bridge ; the whole forming an irregular 
 quadrangle, near the middle of which stood Christ Church 
 Cathedral. Although portions of the ancient walls are still 
 discernible, their traces are of the faintest, only St. Audoen's 
 Arch surviving to show the precise situation of one of the eight 
 city gates. But no substantial change in the boundaries of 
 the capital having taken place between the thirteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, a late Elizabethan description of ' the 
 whole circuit of the city walls ' enables us to gain a fair notion 
 of the character of the medieval town. The walls were about 
 seventeen feet high, with a breadth of four or five feet, and 
 the numerous towers by which they were defended varied 
 from sixteen to forty feet in height. Within was a rampart, 
 fifteen feet thick, and the walls were stoutly buttressed at 
 various points without. The gates, of which the chief was 
 Newgate, were of imposing dimensions. 
 
 Few studies in historical topography can have more real 
 interest than the analysis of the process by which so many 
 of the great cities of modern Europe have been gradually 
 developed from the walled enclosures, which were indispensable 
 conditions of a medieval town, into the spacious and unre- 
 stricted amplitude of a twentieth-century metropolis. In the 
 case of Dublin the process is peculiarly well marked and easy 
 to trace, and is the work in the main of three great periods 
 of expansive growth. As late as the era of the Commonwealth, 
 Dublin still remained a walled town, within the ambit of 
 whose fortifications few changes affecting its general aspect 
 had taken place for a couple of centuries. From the days 
 of the later Plantagenets to those of the later Stuarts, it may 
 be said with little exaggeration that no changes on a scale 
 large enough to affect its general configuration were wrought 
 in the appearance of the capital or in its geographical outline. 
 Some extensions of the residential quarter had indeed taken 
 place in the closing years of the sixteenth century, the erection 
 
154 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 of Trinity College on the site of the old monastery of All Hallows 
 naturally leading to the occupation of the intervening area 
 between College Green and Dublin Castle, now traversed 
 by the spacious thoroughfare of Dame Street. Thus, almost 
 contemporaneously with the foundation of the University, 
 the site on which the Parliament Buildings in College Green 
 — now the Bank of Ireland — were subsequently raised was 
 utilised for the first time by the well-known statesman and 
 soldier, Sir George Carew, for the building at first called Gary's 
 Hospital, but afterwards known as Chichester House, from the 
 name of its owner under James the First, the celebrated Lord 
 Deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester. But no attempt had as yet 
 been made to enlarge the metropolis, either to the north, 
 where the ancient Oxmantown still sufficed for all the inhabi- 
 tants of Dublin on that side of the river, or to the south-east, 
 where the modern enclosure of St. Stephen's Green was still a 
 common. And along the line of the southern quays, already 
 antiquated to our twentieth-century eyes, fresh meadows 
 ran from the river banks to the old Priory of Kilmainham. 
 
 But the Restoration was to change all that. Under the 
 auspices of that illustrious Irishman, the first Duke of Ormond, 
 who held office as Lord Lieutenant for fifteen of the last twenty- 
 five years of the de facto reign of Charles the Second, a remark- 
 able transformation was effected. Ormond, and those who with 
 him constituted the Viceregal Court, had, like so many of the 
 followers of his sovereign, passed more than ten years in an 
 enforced exile in the cities of the Continent. The experience 
 was not without a marked educational influence on the exiled 
 cavaliers, who returned from abroad with new and liberal ideas 
 of what a capital ought to be. The walled medieval city 
 which, as late as 1649, had endured a siege in much the same 
 form in which an attack might have been conducted two 
 centuries earlier, speedily vanished before the more advanced 
 notions of the returned Royalists. Houses everywhere sprang 
 up without the walls of Dublin. The space from Cork Hill 
 to College Green, previously but sparsely occupied, was speedily 
 filled up ; and the quays began to be formed. On the north 
 bank of the river, Oxmantown Green was so largely encroached 
 
DUBLIN 155 
 
 upon that St. Stephen's Green, which was first walled in 
 about this time, had to be requisitioned as an exercise-ground 
 for the garrison. The capital grew so quickly that it was 
 noted in 1673 by Lord Essex, one of the Restoration Viceroys, 
 that ' the city of Dublin is now very near, if not altogether, 
 twice as big as it was at His Majesty's Restoration, and did 
 till the Dutch war began every day increase in building.' 
 So rapid was the extension that some of the old-fashioned 
 citizens, accustomed to rely for security on the protection of 
 the city walls, were filled with alarm, and felt obliged to warn 
 the Lord-Lieutenant of the dangers likely to be occasioned 
 in time of war by the large number of dwellings which had 
 sprung up outside the defences of the city.i But, apart from 
 the actual extension of streets and buildings throughout this 
 period, the era of the Restoration was marked in Dublin by 
 two great and abiding memorials of the public spirit and 
 enterprise of its seventeenth-century rulers and citizens. 
 The formation of the splendid recreation-grounds of the 
 Phoenix Park, and the enclosure of the spacious area of St. 
 Stephen's Green, at opposite sides of the city, produced a 
 marked effect on the conditions of the further development 
 of Dublin. The Phoenix Park, from the moment it was 
 provided, enormously enhanced the amenities of residence 
 in Dublin. And, although a full century was to elapse before 
 residential Dublin transgressed beyond the eastern limits of 
 St. Stephen's Green, the permanent dedication of so large an 
 area as an open-air space has had an abiding effect on the 
 aspect and atmosphere of the modern city. 
 
 Of these two improvements, the first was the work of 
 the Viceroy, the second of the municipality. The germ of 
 the Phoenix Park was found in certain Crown lands, which, 
 having originally formed portion of the possessions granted 
 to the Priory of the Knights Hospitallers at Kilmainham, 
 had been resumed by the Crown on the suppression of the 
 monasteries. ^ To this nucleus Ormond added extensively 
 
 ^ See Falkiner's Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, p. 43. 
 
 - See 'The Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Ireland,' by C. Litton 
 Falkiner, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxvi. sec. C. pp. 275- 
 317. 
 
156 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 by the purchase of adjacent property to the north and west ; so 
 that, as first designed, the Park comprised above two thousand 
 acres, including the area south of the river now forming the 
 grounds of the Eoyal Hospital — another monument of post- 
 Restoration magnificence. The Park was not designed by Ormond 
 as the seat of the viceregal residence ; and the present Viceregal 
 Lodge became so only by purchase from a private owner, who, 
 towards the close of the eighteenth century, had been permitted 
 to build a residence in connexion with his office of Banger of the 
 Phoenix Park. But in its present state the Park, as a whole, 
 owes much to the care and interest of a succession of Viceroys, 
 notably of the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, who took a lively 
 interest in its plantations, and by whom the Phoenix Column 
 in the centre of its principal drive was erected. 
 
 St. Stephen's Green, on the other hand, owes its origin to 
 municipal auspices, stimulated in part by the pressure of 
 financial exigency, and in part by the spirit of emulation and 
 zeal for improvement which was abroad under the Duke of 
 Ormond's regime. The confusion of the Civil War had worked 
 havoc alike with the material prosperity of the general body 
 of the citizens of Dublin and with the municipal finances. The 
 State Papers of the time depict in mournful colours the ruin 
 and indigence wrought in the course of the long struggle, which 
 in Dublin had been marked by all the horrors of a sustained 
 siege and the desolation inevitably produced by the constant 
 apprehensions of military assault. Accordingly the city fathers 
 could find no better means of replenishing an exhausted 
 exchequer than by letting out the lands round the common 
 called St. Stephen's Green as building lots, at the same time 
 providing for the enclosure of the central space. Although 
 the allotments were taken up by persons of wealth and position, 
 it was not until the succeeding century that the building 
 ground was fully utilised. But in the early half of the 
 eighteenth century the Green became the centre of fashionable 
 Dublin, and the Beaux' Walk, along its northern side, was long 
 the chief resort of the leaders of Dublin society. Down to a 
 late period in the nineteenth century St. Stephen's Green was 
 maintained at the expense of the residents. It owes its present 
 
DUBLIN 157 
 
 splendour as a public park solely to the munificence of Lord 
 Ardilaun, who, in 1880, carried out at a cost of £20,000 the 
 scenic transformation which has converted it from an ordinary 
 city square into one of the handsomest of city parks. Besides 
 these two great alterations in the geographical aspect of the city 
 and its environs, two striking memorials of the reign of Charles 
 the Second survive in Dublin. The first is the stately building 
 near its western boundaries known as the Royal Hospital, an 
 institution similar to Chelsea Hospital, which was built towards 
 the close of the reign from the design of Sir Christopher Wren 
 on the site of the ancient Hospital of the Knights of St. John. 
 The second is the Hospital or Free School of Charles II, better 
 known as the Blue Coat School, founded and endowed by the 
 liberality of the citizens of Dublin, acting under a Royal Charter. 
 But in the latter case the original Caroline building has given 
 place to an eighteenth-century successor. 
 
 With the close of Charles the Second's reign and the ensuing 
 political disturbances, a period was put to the development 
 of Dublin under the Stuarts ; and it was not until the reign of 
 George the Second that those extensive additions began to be 
 made which render the latter half of the eighteenth century 
 the grand period in the architectural adornment of the 
 Irish capital. But the interval between the accession of 
 James the Second and the demise of George the First, 
 though unmarked by any striking memorials, was, never- 
 theless, characterised by a gradual development of certain 
 districts theretofore but sparsely inhabited, or even wholly 
 waste, whose occupation was an essential preliminary to 
 the more imposing additions of the succeeding age. Thus 
 the considerable territory between the enclosure of the College 
 Park and the river had become so thickly populated as to 
 necessitate the erection of a new parish, now known as St. 
 Mark's ; and some progress was made towards the inhabiting 
 of the low-lying lands immediately adjacent to the north- 
 eastern bank of the Liffey. These extensions were in part the 
 effect of the pronounced development of the city along the 
 banks of the river in an easterly direction, which its growing 
 wealth and prosperity rendered necessary. But they were in 
 
158 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 part also due to the important enlargement of the port of 
 Dublin by the clearing of the river channel for the better 
 accommodation of shipping. This was an improvement 
 which ultimately transformed the neighbourhood from a 
 wilderness of slough and slob into the busy hive of railway 
 and river-side enterprise of which it has more recently become 
 the scene ; but its most immediate and most conspicuous effect 
 was the laying out of Sackville Street and its adjacent northerly 
 extensions — thoroughfares which the subsequent construction of 
 Carlisle, now O'Connell, Bridge first brought into direct contact 
 and communication with the centre of the modern capital. 
 
 The age of Queen Anne, which in England has left so clear 
 an architectural imprint, has but few memorials in Dublin. 
 No great building of the first rank survives to recall that 
 era, unless it be the fine Library of Trinity College, which» 
 however, though begun in Queen Anne's reign, was not com- 
 pleted till 1732 ; and, though the period was marked by a 
 good deal of rebuilding on old sites, the houses then erected 
 have given place for the most part to the more spacious 
 residences of a later time. The main importance of this 
 period in the history of Dublin lies not so much in its visible 
 enlargement as in the extension of its local and municipal 
 institutions, more than one of which, such as the Port and 
 Docks Board, date from the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century. The development of the linen trade, and the diffusion 
 throughout the country of a spirit of mercantile enterprise, 
 which, though it has unfortunately not been maintained, was 
 a very marked feature of the early part of the eighteenth 
 century, exercised a direct effect upon the progress of the 
 Irish capital ; and to this increased commercial prosperity 
 must be attributed in a great degree that marvellous outburst 
 of architectural enterprise which marked the reign of George the 
 Second and his successors, and which has left such indelible 
 marks on the face of the city. 
 
 For, in its essential features, in almost all that attracts 
 the attention of the passing traveller, the Dublin of to-day 
 is still the Dublin of the closing years of the eighteenth century. 
 With the exception of the cathedrals of Christ Church and 
 
DUBLIN 159 
 
 St. Patrick's, the only buildings of real antiquity which it 
 contains, almost every structure of interest, and every char- 
 acteristic feature of the capital, apart from its natural environs, 
 are memorials of that period. Of those public buildings 
 upon which Dublin now prides itself, the Royal Hospital 
 at Kilmainham is almost the only one which existed in the 
 seventeenth century, and curiously few were added in the nine- 
 teenth. Of the great distinctive features in the centre of the 
 modern city, the Parliament House, now the Bank of Ireland, 
 was built in the reign of George the Second ; and the great 
 fagade of Trinity College, erected at the cost of the Irish 
 Parliament, dates from that of his successor. Modern munici- 
 palities have often indulged in lavish expenditure for the 
 housing of their civic Councils ; but the handsome meeting- 
 place of the Corporation of Dublin has only been adapted 
 from the Royal Exchange of the eighteenth century, whilst 
 the Four Courts and the Custom House, the two chief 
 adornments of the River Liffey as it flows through the 
 city, are monuments of architects of the same period. Nor 
 are the memories of the most vivid period of Irish history 
 in the Dublin of to-day confined to its public buildings. 
 For the residential quarters of Dublin within the old city 
 boundaries still belong as exclusively as its public edifices to 
 the same period. The great squares commemorate in their 
 names the Viceroys and nobility of the Georgian era, and 
 few of the more important streets were unbuilt a hundred 
 years ago. Save the handsome Post-Ofifice in Sackville Street, 
 which dates from very early in the last century ; the fine 
 group of buildings round Leinster House, forming the National 
 Gallery, Museum, and Library ; and a few of the public 
 statues ; there is little in the configuration of the modern 
 streets of Dublin which would be unfamiliar to an eighteenth- 
 century citizen. In the last-named adornment, indeed, Dublin 
 has never been opulent, and it was notably deficient in statues 
 before the erection of those of Burke, Goldsmith, and Grattan, 
 in College Green ; of those of Nelson and O'Connell, in Sackville 
 Street ; and of the recently erected monument to Queen 
 Victoria at Leinster House. 
 
160 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 The best-known of books about Dublin, Sir John Gilbert's 
 * History of Dublin,' originated in its author's rambles as a 
 young man through the streets of his native city, and in the 
 memories which his well-stored mind enabled him to recognise 
 as enshrined in the street-names affixed to the principal 
 thoroughfares. And as there is no better stimulus to the 
 faculty of historical imagination than the traditions which 
 are preserved in the street-nomenclature of a modern city, 
 so there is perhaps no better key by which a stranger interested 
 in such associations can attempt to unlock the past than 
 that which is afforded by the simple process of noting the 
 names attached to its more important streets. In the case 
 of Dublin this method of investigation is more than ordinarily 
 simple, requiring for the most part no more elaborate equip- 
 ment of historical lore than a list of the names of the statesmen 
 who have represented the sovereign in Ireland for the last 
 two hundred and fifty years. The succession of the Viceroys 
 of Ireland is embalmed in the names of the principal streets 
 of the Irish capital ; and whoever would trace the gradual 
 development of Dublin has only to make himself acquainted 
 with viceregal chronology from the Restoration to the Union. 
 For the order of its municipal development corresponds with 
 curious precision with the order of the viceregal succession, 
 the name of each succeeding Viceroy being stamped on each 
 fresh extension of the streets of the Metropolis. Thus, the 
 earliest development of Dublin after the Restoration consisted, 
 as already noted, in the extension of the quays on the north 
 bank of the Liffey. Accordingly, we find in this extensive 
 thoroughfare memorials of the chief governors of the period — 
 Ormond Quay perpetuating the name of the great Duke of 
 Ormond ; Arran Quay that of his son Richard, Earl of Arran, 
 who twice held office as deputy in his father's absence ; and 
 Essex — now Grattan — Bridge, preserving until quite recently 
 the memory of another Restoration Viceroy. In the more 
 modern additions to the city the same rule holds good. Grafton 
 Street, Harcourt Street, and Westmoreland Street on the south 
 side of the city ; Bolton Street, Dorset Street, and Rutland 
 Square on the north side, exhibit the order of the street 
 
DUBLIN 161 
 
 extensions of the eighteenth century. The process might be 
 minutely followed in the names of many of the lesser streets. 
 It can be traced in a less noticeable but still remarkable 
 degree in the case of nineteenth-century extensions in Dublin, 
 and in the street-nomenclature of the various townships outside 
 the borough boundary. 
 
 It has not been possible in such a sketch as this to attempt 
 to exhibit the many remarkable events in the history of 
 Ireland with which Dublin has direct associations. To do 
 so would be to tell both too much and too little of the larger 
 story of Ireland. For, though in one sense the story of the 
 capital is the story of the country, the chronicle of Dublin 
 can scarcely be said to abound in striking episodes. Since 
 its capture by Strongbow's followers the incidents of its history 
 have not often been exciting. In Plantagenet times its most 
 thrilling experience was the imminence, in the reign of 
 Edward the Second, of a siege at the hands of Edward Bruce, as 
 the result of an invasion from Scotland which had very serious 
 effects on the course of Irish history ; but the Scottish com- 
 mander stopped short of assaulting the city, and turned his 
 arms in a different direction. Under the first of the Tudors 
 the city was the scene of Lambert Simnel's brief masquerade 
 in the character of the rightful king of England ; the pre- 
 tender being crowned with all the pomp and circumstance of 
 royalty in the cathedral of Christ Church. And in the reign of 
 Henry the Eighth the capital witnessed the most serious revolt 
 against English authority of which it has ever been the scene, 
 when, in 1534, Lord Thomas FitzGerald, while governing the 
 country in the absence of his father, the Earl of Kildare, who 
 had been summoned to England on a charge of treason, laid 
 siege to Dublin, and sought to carry Dublin Castle by storm. 
 But the young Geraldine, who is known in history as Silken 
 Thomas, was unable to cover his treasure with the justifica- 
 tion of success, and perished with his five uncles at Tyburn. 
 In spite of the general unsettlement of the country, and the 
 prolonged Irish wars which filled the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
 the close of the Tudor era was unmarked by any very notable 
 
162 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 event in Dublin history ; and the close of Strafford's adminis- 
 tration on the eve of the great Civil War was the occasion of 
 the next outbreak by which the peace of the city was menaced. 
 On October 23, 1641, the Irish RebelHon was heralded by 
 the abortive attempt of Sir Phelim O'Neill to surprise Dublin 
 Castle, as the preliminary to the capture of the capital. But 
 the Government of the day was served on this occasion by 
 the treachery, or indiscretion, of one of the conspirators, and 
 Dublin was spared the bloodshed which elsewhere characterised 
 the outbreak of the insurrection. But, though the authority 
 of the English Government was maintained throughout the 
 struggles of the succeeding decade, Dublin was a witness of 
 many vicissitudes of fortune, in the course of which the city 
 and its citizens were severe sufferers. In the earlier part of 
 the conflict between Cavalier and Roundhead, the Duke of 
 Ormond, as Charles the First's vicegerent, had to meet the 
 attack of the generals of the Catholic Confederation ; but, 
 though successful in repelling their assault, he was obliged 
 a year or two later to surrender the capital of his sovereign 
 into the hands of foes more formidable than the King's Irish 
 enemies, and to abandon it to the Commissioners of the 
 English Parliament. Two years later, in 1649, the death of 
 the King having produced a temporary union among all 
 factions in Ireland, the same Viceroy, who had formerly 
 defended the city, was called upon to besiege it. But Ormond's 
 attack was foiled and his army completely dispersed by Michael 
 Jones, the Parliamentary Governor of Dublin, at the Battle 
 of Eathmines ; and thenceforward the capital remained in 
 Cromwellian hands until the Restoration. That event, how- 
 ever, was greeted with enthusiasm by the citizens ; and 
 Charles the Second was proclaimed in the Irish capital in a 
 perfect delirium of loyalty. 
 
 Next, and most exciting of all perhaps among the incidents 
 of Dublin history, comes the brief episode of James the Second's 
 visit, when that monarch, exiled from two of his kingdoms, 
 found a temporary refuge in the third, establishing himself in 
 the Irish capital till the decisive defeat at the Boyne obliged 
 him to abandon it. James was followed by another royal 
 
DUBLIN 163 
 
 visitor in the person of William the Third, whose stay in Dublin is 
 commemorated in Grinling Gibbons' famous equestrian statue 
 of that monarch in College Green. The war of the Revolution 
 was the last occasion on which Dublin experienced the excite- 
 ment of actual hostilities ; and for more than a hundred years 
 the peace of the city remained undisturbed by any formidable 
 civil outbreak. The military disturbances of the seventeenth 
 century gave place to the more peaceful, though scarcely less 
 exciting, political agitations of the succeeding age, in which 
 Swift, in the character of the author of the ' Drapier's Letters,' 
 and Charles Lucas, a noisy but capable politician, whose statue 
 by Edward Smyth still stands in the City Hall, were the 
 central figures. In 1778 the celebrated meeting of the Ulster 
 Volunteers in College Green was the prelude to the triumph 
 of the patriot party in the Irish Parliament, and the restoration 
 of those parliamentary liberties of Ireland which are insepar- 
 ably associated with the splendid names of Flood and Grattan, 
 but which in less than twenty years were to be extinguished 
 as a consequence of the agitation of the United Irishmen and 
 the rising of 1798. That insurrection, which was planned to 
 commence on May 23 of that year, was precipitated by the 
 arrests in Dublin, two months earlier, of several of the chiefs 
 of the movement, followed after a short interval by the capture 
 and death in melancholy and dramatic circumstances of its 
 principal leader, the ill-fated and picturesque patriot Lord 
 Edward FitzGerald. For some months after this event Dublin 
 was under martial law, and its citizens were em'olled in 
 yeomanry corps for the protection of the capital. An echo 
 of the United Irish movement was heard five years later, 
 when another brilliant apostle of popular principles headed 
 the short-lived insurrection known as Eobert Emmet's rising 
 — an outbreak which proved a hopeless fiasco as a menace 
 to the authority of the Government, but which was attended 
 with melancholy results in the murder of Lord Kilwarden, 
 the Irish Lord Chief Justice, and in the death on the scaffold 
 of the romantic but misguided youth whose enthusiasm had 
 hurried him into a foolhardy enterprise. 
 
 The history of Dublin during the nineteenth century is 
 
 M 2 
 
164 ESSAYS EELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 upon the whole a history of municipal prosperity and expansion. 
 None of the great movements of the period can be said to 
 have originated in Dublin. Nor are the chief triumphs of 
 such great leaders of public opinion as O'Connell and Parnell 
 associated in any particularly striking manner with the capital. 
 The great agitations of the nineteenth century — the movement 
 for Catholic Emancipation, the Young Ireland movement, the 
 Fenian rising in 1867, the Land League agitation of more 
 recent years — though all of them enjoyed in a greater or less 
 degree the sympathy of the Dublin populace, were movements 
 which left the surface of Dublin life practically untouched and 
 untroubled. A melancholy exception is to be noted in the 
 tragic crime known as the Phoenix Park murders in 1882, 
 when Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr, Burke were the 
 victims of the Invincible conspiracy. In recent years Dublin 
 has been happy in having no history, and its chronicles for 
 the last quarter of a century have been fortunately filled 
 with no more notable items than those which testify to the 
 improvement in the appearance of its thoroughfares. The 
 last generation has witnessed the adornment of some of the 
 leading quarters of the city with such architectural successes 
 as the Museum and Library in Kildare Street, and such 
 triumphs of sculpture as the statue of O'Connell in Sackville 
 Street ; and last, but not least, the public-spirited munificence 
 of Lord Iveagh in clearing away the dilapidated houses in the 
 neighbourhood of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and the creation of 
 St. Patrick's Park, has effected a striking improvement in the 
 amenities of the poorer quarters of the city. 
 
YOUGHAL 
 
 Irish topography ib in general deficient in that wealth of 
 historical or literary association which lends so much charm 
 to a summer's ramble in rural England, and invests with so 
 much romantic interest so many of the ancient cities and 
 boroughs of Great Britain. Cathedral cities, in the sense in 
 which the term is understood of England, Ireland may almost 
 be said to be without. A few of the towns contain indeed 
 the remains of ecclesiastical and monastic buildings. But 
 even where these exist they are, with one or two exceptions, 
 sadly deficient in human interest. Historical continuity 
 has been lost in the endless civil distractions of the island, 
 and tradition itself speaks in confused and scarce intelligible 
 accents. 
 
 Yet a few places there are which natural charm and historic 
 associations combine to cover with some halo of romance. 
 There is for instance Youghal. Standing at the entrance of 
 the spacious river Blackwater, and thus guarding the approach 
 to the chief waterway of South Munster, the story of Youghal 
 is in its way an epitome of the history of Ireland. It was 
 the strategical base from which, in the ninth century, the 
 piratical Dane conducted the marauding foray which he 
 delighted to direct against the ecclesiastical lords of Lismore 
 and the scene of the conflicts of the Northmen with the old-time 
 Keltic chieftains of Imokelly, as the wooded district west of 
 Youghal was called. And looking diagonally across to the 
 Bristol Channel and the shores of Pembroke and Devon, 
 Youghal was a port easy of access to the invader and adventurer 
 who sought to conquer or to colonise south-eastern Ireland. 
 As such it became the spoil of the Pembrokeshire knight Robert 
 
 165 
 
166 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 FitzStephen, who, in the allocation of Ireland among the 
 followers of Strongbow, secured the fair territory of Imokelly, 
 a district which embraced the southern sea-board from the 
 mouth of the Blackwater to the haven of Cork. From Fitz- 
 Stephen the lands of Imokelly passed to his half-brother 
 Maurice FitzGerald, the ancestor of the famous breed of the 
 southern Geral dines with whose fortunes the fate of Youghal 
 was intimately connected from early Plantagenet to late Tudor 
 times. To FitzGerald was due the making of Youghal as a 
 medieval town. By him the place was colonised with citizens 
 of Bristol who gave to it the trading characteristics it long 
 retained. Through him it received from King John the first 
 of several charters which betokened the favour of a succession 
 of the Plantagenet Lords of Ireland. To FitzGerald also 
 it owed in all probability the protecting presence on the 
 summit of its most commanding eminence of one of those 
 cloistered fortalices which were among the surest tokens of the 
 coming of the Norman ; and finally to him may perhaps 
 be ascribed the foundation of St. Mary's Church, the first 
 of more than one medieval fane whose remains attest the 
 former dignity of the town. 
 
 Thus far the record of Youghal does not differ greatly 
 from that of other towns in the South of Ireland, such as 
 Wexford and Waterford ; but it is the distinction of Youghal 
 that, unlike these better-known places, it continuously attracted 
 the favour and attention of the rulers of the country. For 
 centuries after the decay of English power consequent on the 
 Bruce invasion and the gradual shrinkage of English authority 
 within the ever-attenuating margins of the Pale, Youghal 
 appears to have possessed a peculiar importance as the chief 
 means of access to South Munster. The charters of six 
 successive English monarchs from Edward the Third to 
 Edward the Fourth prove the importance attached to the 
 town. Edward the Fourth made Youghal one of the 
 limbs of the Cinque Ports, and Kichard the Third con- 
 tinued the tradition of royal favour by confirming his 
 brother's charter. Henry the Seventh, in recognition of 
 the loyalty of the townsmen during the rebellion of Lambert 
 
YOUGHAL 167 
 
 Simnel, did the like. It was not until the rising of Perkin 
 Warbeck that the traditional devotion of the men of Youghal 
 to the English crown was tarnished by the adherence of the 
 inhabitants to the cause of that pretender. But they soon 
 returned to their allegiance, and the prosperity of Youghal 
 grew without hindrance for another half century or so ; till it 
 became involved in the failing fortunes of the Desmond 
 Geraldines. In the middle of Elizabeth's reign it received 
 an almost fatal set-back at the hands of the descendant of its 
 first Geraldine benefactor. Gerald, sixteenth Earl of Desmond, 
 in the course of his rebellion, laid siege to the town, and on its 
 surrender Youghal was given over to five days' sack, in which, 
 as the Four Masters tell the tale, the Geraldines seized upon all 
 the riches they found in the town, levelled its walls, and broke 
 down its courts and castles, so that it was not habitable for 
 long after. Youghal never regained its medieval splendour. 
 For though in Stuart times it witnessed many memorable 
 events, they were not of the kind that make for civic prosperity. 
 After the Desmond sack the town became the alternate prey 
 of contending parties ; and though the great Elizabethan 
 Earl of Ormond rebuilt its walls, the revolution of Munster 
 which followe i the Desmond rebellion effectually forbade the 
 rebuilding of its fortunes. Whatever the period of calm, which 
 lasted from the accession of James the First to the rebellion of 
 1641, may have done to repair the damage, its effects must have 
 been completely obliterated by the ensuing ten years of strife, 
 which culminated in the occupation of the town by Cromwell 
 and his army, who spent the winter of 1649-50 in Youghal. 
 
 Nevertheless it is to this darkest period of its commercial 
 history that some of the most attractive associations of 
 Youghal belong, and it is to the misfortunes that followed 
 the Geraldine rebellion that it owes the inspiring memories 
 that cluster round the names of Raleigh and of Spenser. It 
 was on the partition of the vast heritage of the Desmond 
 Geraldines that the favourite Raleigh received in 1585 a grant 
 of above forty thousand acres of the confiscated territories 
 of Munster, including the valley of the Blackwater from 
 Lismore to Youghal. The careless courtier took little heed of 
 
168 ESSAYS EELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 his Irish property or of the terms upon which it was granted 
 to him. But he did come to Youghal, and it is not the least 
 interesting of the associations of the town that Ealeigh was 
 for two years its mayor. For a httle while, at all events, he 
 resided in the quaint old Tudor house which is still shown 
 to visitors, with its garden, and the yew tree, actual or mythical, 
 under which he is said to have smoked his Virginia tobacco, 
 and watched the growth of that potato which has been the 
 blessing and the curse of Ireland. Whether or not Ealeigh 
 cared a straw for his Irish property, it was certainly a possession 
 which in such times as those in which he lived could scarcely 
 be worth a straw to a mercurial courtier such as he. For its 
 development were needed such qualities as belonged to the 
 strenuous and self-made Richard Boyle, the most opulent 
 plutocrat of the day, who became Earl of Cork and owner of half 
 Munster. The rebellion of 1598 which ruined the poorer 
 fortunes of Edmund Spenser was equally destructive to the 
 once splendid prospects of Raleigh, who was glad enough to get 
 rid of his territories and their responsibilities for a beggarly 
 fifteen hundred pounds. In 1602 Raleigh sold his estate 
 and quitted Youghal for ever, and for the next forty years 
 Youghal was the scene of those ceaseless activities which caused 
 Cromwell to say that had there been more Earls of Cork 
 there had been no rebellion. It is of Lord Cork that such 
 living memorials of its former greatness as Youghal still 
 contains speak most eloquently. The Collegiate Church 
 which he rebuilt is filled with memorials of himself and his 
 family, monuments of the unsightly kind in vogue in the 
 early Stuart days, and though not without a suggestion of the 
 over-elaborate magnificence of a nouveau riche, still impres- 
 sively characteristic. 
 
 But besides its visible memorials, its history and its 
 traditions, Youghal possesses one other association of great 
 interest which, though one has to go back three centuries for 
 its origin, has only lately been discovered. Recent literary 
 research has identified the origin and lineage of Spenser's 
 wife, and in doing so has given a new meaning to sundry 
 passages in the ' Epithalamion ' and * Amoretti ' of the poet. The 
 
YOUGHAL 169 
 
 Elizabeth of the Sonnets has been identified with Ehzabeth 
 Boyle, a cousin of the Earl of Cork, and daughter of one of 
 the many relatives of the great Munster Undertaker who 
 followed him to Ireland. The famous strand of Youghal, 
 nowadays the favourite summer resort of the holiday makers 
 of Cork, derives a new charm when it is remembered that it was 
 to it that the poet alluded when he wrote in the ' Epithalamion ' : 
 
 One day I wrote her name upon the strand ; 
 
 and that the splendid sea which breaks upon it is the same 
 that * neighboured near ' to the dwelling of the poet's mistress 
 when the author of the 'Faery Queene' wooed and won his 
 bride in far-off Munster three hundred years ago. 
 
KILKENNY 
 
 The morning of Kilkenny's history is a morning without a 
 dawn. No far beginnings of a dim tradition go back to the 
 twilight of the gods. We pass without transition from utter 
 dark to clear day. The city emerges into history only at the 
 period from which it is possible to watch its subsequent 
 course in almost unbroken continuity. For of Kilkenny in the 
 dark ages practically nothing is known or l.nowable. Unlike 
 Armagh and some other cities, it has no pre-Christian legends ; 
 and although from about the sixth century it was probably 
 the seat of a monastery founded by the saint from whom the 
 place takes its name, no record of the primitive community 
 of St. Canice has been preserved for us. An inland town, 
 thirty or forty miles from the sea, Kilkenny escaped the 
 incursions of the Danes, and we are thus without even such 
 negative evidence of its state in the ninth century as the 
 chronicles of Viking raids have preserved for us in the case 
 of many other towns. Thus of civil history prior to Plantagenet 
 times Kilkenny has practically none. All that the annalists 
 record of earlier date is that in 1085 * Ceall-Cainnigh was for 
 the most part burned,' and that sixty years later Gillapatrick, 
 one of the chiefs of the adjacent district, was treacherously 
 killed there by the rival sept of the O'Brenans. There can 
 indeed be little doubt that the site of the Norman castle 
 which for above seven centuries has kept watch and ward 
 over what is called in Ireland * the marble city ' must in yet 
 earlier days have been the fortress of the lords of Ossory. 
 But it is only with the advent of Strongbow that Kilkenny 
 first appears on the stage of history ; though a strong argument 
 for the existence of a pre-Norman town is supplied in a couplet 
 
 170 
 
KILKENNY 171 
 
 in the old French ' Song of Dermot and the Earl,' which 
 describes how Strongbow's followers quartered at Kilkenny 
 returned after holding council of war * to the hostels where 
 they were before lodged.' 
 
 In the story of not a few Irish cities, where the poverty 
 of material forbids any consecutive narrative, it chances 
 that the barrenness of their civil annals is in some degree 
 redressed by the wealth of ecclesiastical records. But in 
 the case of Kilkenny not only its civil but its ecclesiastical 
 history dates from the coming of the Norman. It is true 
 that none of the Irish dioceses has an antiquity older than 
 that of Ossory. Its founder, St. Ciaran, was the contemporary, 
 if not, as some claim, the precursor of St. Patrick. But the 
 monastery of Saighir, which was the earliest capital of the see 
 whose centre is now fixed in Kilkenny, is situate in the 
 King's County, and separated by half the diocese of Killaloe 
 from that of which Seir-Kieran is still a parish. Later the 
 fame of the first Bishop of Ossory became eclipsed by that 
 of St. Cainneach (Kenny), the comrade of St. Columba. But 
 though it is with Kilkenny that the memory of this saint is now 
 connected, the head quarters of the See of Ossory remained 
 for some centuries at Aghabo, where St. Cainneach had 
 founded a monastery. It was not until 1178 that Bishop 
 O'Dullany, transferring both the tomb of this saint and the 
 ancient chair of St. Ciaran to the site of the cathedral of St. 
 Canice, permanently erected Kilkenny into the capital of the 
 diocese. Thus the period of the foundation of the See of 
 Ossory is, like the history of the city, coeval with the English 
 conquest of Ireland. And although the round tower which 
 stands close to the medieval cathedral undoubtedly derives 
 from an older foundation and an earlier age, it is with the 
 settlement of Strongbow in the midst of the territories brought 
 hkn by his marriage with Eva McMurrough that the story 
 of Kilkenny, ecclesiastical as well as civil, begins. From 
 Strongbow's time to that of the Tudors the history of Kilkenny 
 is an epitome of that of the English in Ireland. It was by his 
 son-in-law Wilham Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, that the 
 foundations were laid of that famous castle which, alone among 
 
172 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Irish residences, can boast a continuous occupation for above 
 seven centuries. On the failure of the male heirs of the 
 Pembroke line and the partition of the vast Strongbow inherit- 
 ance among five heiresses, Kilkenny passed to the De Clares, 
 Earls of Hertford and Gloucester, and from them to the 
 Despencers. From these last the castle was purchased in 
 1392 by James, third Earl of Ormond, the head of that illus- 
 trious house which already ruled the great palatinate of 
 Tipperary, and with whose fortunes the story of the city has 
 ever since been indissolubly connected. 
 
 The importance and interest of Kilkenny in the medieval 
 history of Ireland arises in part from its geographical position, 
 in part from its being continuously in the possession of families 
 closely allied to the Norman or English interest, and devotedly 
 attached to the English connexion. Though lying beyond the 
 Pale, its proximity to Waterford, the strategic key to South 
 Leinster, and its position within eighty miles of Dublin, made 
 it comparatively easy of access from England. On the other 
 hand, its neighbourhood to the wild territories of Ossory and 
 Leix made its possession by friendly hands a matter of serious 
 consequence to the English crown. Hence it was that Kilkenny 
 was called upon to play so conspicuous a part in the political 
 history of Ireland. Down to Tudor times it was the frequent 
 meeting-place of Parliament, including that famous assembly 
 convened by Lionel, Duke of Clarence, which passed the well- 
 known enactment that takes its name from the town. It 
 was by the provisions of the Statute of Kilkenny that the 
 Plantagenet rulers of the country sought to maintain the use 
 of the English language, and to enforce adherence to English 
 modes of civilisation in those territories where the descendants 
 of the Anglo-Norman colonists had become more Irish than 
 the Irish themselves. To this same nearness to the seat of 
 English power Kilkenny owes the first of at least three visits 
 with which it has been honoured by English sovereigns. It was 
 at Kilkenny that, shortly after its acquisition by the Earls of 
 Ormond, Eichard the Second fixed his Court for a fortnight 
 in that last and fatal expedition to Ireland which heralded 
 the fall of his fortunes. An episode in his sojourn forms one 
 
KILKENNY 173 
 
 of the many incidents which gilds Kilkenny history with the 
 romance of the Middle Ages. For it was from the castle of 
 Kilkenny that the English sovereign took the field on the day 
 when he knighted the heir of the rival who was so soon to 
 dethrone him. As the old French chronicler tells the tale, the 
 King ' out of true and entire affection sent for the son of the 
 Duke of Lancaster, a fair, young and handsome bachelor, 
 and knighted him, saying, " My fair cousin, henceforth be 
 preux and valiant, for you have some valiant blood to 
 conquer." ' 
 
 In later Plantagenet and early Tudor times the story of 
 Kilkenny is involved in the long feuds which the Earls of 
 Ormond maintained with the Desmond Geraldines, their 
 neighbours to the south-west, and the Leinster FitzGeralds, 
 their rivals in that struggle for the possession of administrative 
 power which occupied so much of the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries, and which culminated in the devastating wars of 
 Elizabeth. It was in her reign, and in the time of the celebrated 
 Thomas, tenth Earl of Ormond, cousin to his sovereign through 
 her Boleyn blood, that Kilkenny was raised into a city ; and 
 it was on his invitation that Spenser made acquaintance with 
 the place and was able to make familiar mention of it in his 
 enumeration of the Irish rivers : 
 
 the stubborne Newre, whose waters grey 
 By faire Kilkenny and Rosponte boord. 
 
 But though the traditions of Kilkenny are thus English, the 
 city is very far from being without its patriotic memories. 
 For by an odd irony it was in this very centre of English 
 influence that the only parliamentary assembly which can fairly 
 be termed Irish held independent sway for close on a decade. 
 To Irish patriots Kilkenny is above all else the city of the 
 Confederation. Here from 1642 to 1648 the Irish Catholic 
 Confederation held its meetings, made its laws, and raised 
 its armies, under the very shadow of the castle whose lord was 
 throughout that period the actual Viceroy of Ireland. The 
 story of the Kilkenny Confederation is the most remarkable 
 
174 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 example in modern history of the existence of a de facto 
 government, civil and military, completely armed with all the 
 normal powers of central administration, concurrently with 
 the maintenance of the de jure authority in the country. The 
 deliberations of the Confederation were held with all the 
 forms of Parliament, and the Supreme Council which constituted 
 the executive discharged all the offices of Government. It 
 stamped its own coins, set up its own courts of justice, settled 
 the ownership of estates, re-established the Roman form of 
 worship, sent embassies to foreign Courts, and received the 
 Pope's Nuncio in its midst. This last and crowning mark of 
 its sovereign authority contained the elements of disruption. 
 Dissension led the way to the ' Cessation ' or understanding 
 with Ormond and the Royalist party which preceded the death 
 of Charles the First ; and a year or two later the cannon of Crom- 
 well compelled the surrender of the city. It was doubtless in 
 recognition of the strength of its patriotic instincts and the 
 part played by the Confederation that after the Restoration 
 the Irish town was erected into an independent borough 
 returning, like the city itself, two members to the Irish Parlia- 
 ment. This arrangement lasted until the Union, but was 
 evidently not without its disadvantages : for it is to the 
 bickerings between the rival municipalities that we owe the 
 legend of the Kilkenny cats. The annals of the city under 
 the later Stuarts continued to be filled with interesting incidents. 
 Under the aegis of the j&rst Duke of Ormond, the illustrious 
 personage who was thrice Viceroy of Ireland and earned the 
 envy of contemporary courtiers as the richest subject of the 
 King, Kilkenny became, in the words of an English writer, 
 ' the most pleasant and delightful town of the kingdom of 
 Ireland.' The year after the old Duke's death saw it in the hands 
 of James the Second's army ; but the second Duke, adhering to 
 William the Third, soon had the satisfaction of entertaining that 
 monarch in his ancestral castle. Thereafter the prosperity of 
 Kilkenny suffered an eclipse from which it has never wholly 
 recovered, in the temporary ruin of the illustrious house of 
 Ormond, through the attainder and exile of the second Duke. 
 The interest of its modern annals is literary and dramatic 
 
KILKENNY 175 
 
 rather than legislative or military. Congreve, Swift, and 
 Berkeley received their education in Kilkenny School, and 
 the drama nowhere received greater encouragement in Ireland 
 than in the private theatre which flourished in Kilkenny at 
 the beginning of the last century. 
 
DROGHEDA 
 
 The geographical position of Drogheda in a great degree 
 explains the importance of the part played by the town as 
 well in the racial contentions of medieval Ireland as in the 
 politico-religious strife of later centuries. The wide estuary 
 of the Boyne presents the most obvious of entrances into 
 Ireland from the east, and thus the port of Drogheda, situate 
 near the mouth of the most considerable of the rivers that 
 flow eastward to the Irish Sea, was from early times the key 
 to the most fertile pastures and the most impregnable strong- 
 holds of the interior. To the ninth-century Viking the Boyne 
 was an easy avenue to the rich granaries and luxuriant pastures 
 of the ancient kingdom of Meath and its adjacent territories ; 
 while the possession of a commanding point of vantage on the 
 southern confines of Ulster gave him control of the most con- 
 venient landward approach to the wild fastnesses of the North. 
 To complete its strategical advantages, Drogheda is separated 
 by no more than thirty miles of level country from Dublin, 
 the road passing through the richest wheat-bearing district in 
 Ireland. Thus when Turgesius in the ninth century made 
 Drogheda — the bridge of the ford — the 'point d'appui of his 
 devastating activities, he not only established what proved 
 to be a most valuable connecting link between the Danes of 
 Dublin to the south and Carlingford to the north, but he 
 provided a citadel which was to serve his Anglo-Norman 
 successors for many a century as the sentinel of English 
 power on the frontiers of Ulster. For the territory of Uriel, 
 which embraced the modern country of Louth, though now 
 included in the province of Leinster, was anciently a part 
 of the Ulster kingdom, a connexion which is still maintained 
 in the ecclesiastical sphere by the inclusion of Louth in the 
 
 17G 
 
DKOGHEDA 177 
 
 archiepiscopal province of Armagh. Thus happily placed 
 within easy reach of the capital both by land and by water, 
 Drogheda was utilised during the Plantagenet and Tudor 
 periods as a military outpost of the first consequence, alternately 
 serving, according to the ebb or flow of English power, as a 
 bulwark for the defence of the Pale, or as a base for offensive 
 operations against the northern septs, which was its main use in 
 the earlier period of English rule in Ireland. Later when Ulster 
 fell back into undisputed Irish control, and theBoyne became the 
 northern boundary of the limits of English authority, Drogheda 
 was utilised as a buttress against the incursions of the O'Neills. 
 As with most Irish towns, so with Drogheda, the municipal 
 history of the borough begins with the coming of the Norman. 
 To Hugo De Lacy, the first Viceroy of Ireland, who had 
 received from his sovereign the splendid grant of the opulent 
 territories of Meath, the strategical value of the place was at 
 once apparent, and by him was built the first of two castles of 
 Drogheda and Blackagh which long guarded the defences 
 of the town on either side the Boyne. A generation later 
 the castles of Drogheda were excepted from the confirmation 
 of the Palatine grants of Meath to De Lacy's successors, 
 and thenceforward were held by the Crown as royal fortresses 
 under the charge of separate constables. Hence arose a 
 curious administrative feature which, among Irish towns at 
 least, is peculiar to Drogheda. The two castles became 
 the respective seats of independent municipalities. Modern 
 Drogheda sits astride the Boyne, forming a homogeneous 
 town of which the larger portion lies on the north bank of the 
 river. But it is not difficult to trace to-day the indications 
 of that independent existence of its northern and southern 
 sections which was dignified in the Plantagenet days by two 
 charters separately granted to ' the mayor and citizens of 
 Drogheda on the side of Louth ' and to ' the seneschal and 
 burgesses of Drogheda on the side of Meath.' The city and 
 borough of Drogheda remained separate municipal entities 
 down to the reign of Hemy the Fourth, and it was not until 
 1412, after many and sometimes sanguinary quarrels, that a 
 sermon by an eloquent Dominican monk having persuaded the 
 
178 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 inhabitants ' how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell 
 together in amity,' the two jurisdictions were amalgamated, 
 and the county of the town of Drogheda was created by charter. 
 The municipality thus constituted long preserved an honourable 
 pre-eminence among the cities and boroughs of Ireland. The 
 common form of the preliminaries to all fresh legislation in 
 the Plantagenet and Tudor Parliaments bracketed Drogheda 
 with Dublin, Waterf ord, and Limerick in the list of cities whose 
 liberties the sovereign undertook to respect ; and the mayors 
 of the town appear even to have asserted a civic superiority 
 over and above the chief magistrate of the capital. Edward the 
 Fourth, in recognition of the services rendered by the citizens 
 in expeditions against the O'Reillys of Cavan, granted to the 
 Mayor the right to wear a sword as the Mayor of London did, 
 and as late as 1552 in a contest for precedence which had 
 arisen between the Mayors of Dublin and Drogheda when 
 taking the field in the Queen's service, it was adjudged that 
 the latter should have pride of place on the homeward march. 
 Of the numerous stately churches which the medieval 
 town could boast many have long been a prey to dumb forget- 
 fulness, and all trace of them has vanished. Of others the 
 cannonade of Cromwell and the torches of his soldiers have 
 left only the scantiest remnant. Of the Priory of St. John the 
 Baptist, founded by the Knights of St. John, in which King 
 John is reputed to have held a council, scarcely a stone remains ; 
 and of a spacious Dominican friary, large enough to accommo- 
 date the train of a monarch and permit the assembling of 
 a parliament, only the gaunt fragment called the Magdalen 
 Steeple survives. Yet here it was that Richard the Second 
 in the first of his Irish expeditions received the submissions of 
 the ' four Irish kings,' whose inability to adapt themselves 
 to the usages of a Norman Court is so quaintly described by 
 Froissart. But in late Plantagenet times these buildings, with 
 the Abbey of St. Mary's, whose central tower stni presides over 
 some squalid ruins in the dirtiest portion of the modern town, 
 were only a few among many ecclesiastical foundations which 
 easily explain the selection of Drogheda by Edward the Fourth 
 as the seat of an intended medieval university ' with like manner 
 
DROGHEDA 179 
 
 of liberties, privileges, and laudable customs ' to those enjoyed 
 by the University of Oxford. Nowadays, unfortunately, only 
 the imposing structure of St. Laurence's Gate still stands in its 
 entirety to help us to an impression of the appearance of the 
 walled medieval town. 
 
 But it is not its early military consequence, nor the splendour 
 of its vanished architecture, nor the stark memories of Crom- 
 well's inhuman massacre, that constitutes Drogheda's chiefest 
 title to eminence in the roll of Irish towns. Among its most 
 memorable historical associations are those which connect it 
 with the early parliamentary history of Ireland. Not only 
 was Drogheda among the earliest boroughs to return burgesses 
 to Parliament, but it was, alike in Plantagenet and Tudor 
 times, the frequent and favourite meeting -place of the Irish 
 legislature. It was here that the early Plantagenet sovereigns 
 held more than one important council, and it was here that 
 under Henry the Sixth, Eichard Duke of York held, in 1450, as 
 Viceroy of Ireland, the second session of the first Parliament in 
 which the existence of a House of Commons as a separate and 
 formally constituted assembly can be traced. Here, too, the 
 first recorded Speaker of that assembly made protestation 
 of the privileges of the Commons of Ireland in the form familiar 
 at Westminster. 1 By a statute of the same reign the place of 
 assembly of the Parliament was limited to Dublin and Drogheda, 
 and thenceforward down to Elizabethan times the legislature 
 was summoned to sit in Drogheda as frequently as in the 
 capital. The celebrated Parliament called by Sir Edward 
 Poynings, which settled the constitutional system of Ireland 
 on the footing which substantially remained unaltered for 
 three centuries, was held in the Dominican Abbey ; and it was 
 not until as late as 1585 that the town on the Boyne ceased to 
 be resorted to as the seat of the legislature, ' by reason of the 
 inability of that town to bear the train of a Parliament.' 
 Never since has Drogheda come so near as it seems to have 
 done in those Tudor days to the fulfilment of the prophecy 
 recorded in Holinshed's * Chronicles ' that ' Boss was, Dublin is, 
 Drogheda shaU be the best of the three.' 
 
 1 See p. 200, infra. 
 
 »2 
 
ARMAGH 
 
 Of Irish cities Armagh is at once the oldest and the newest. 
 No other town in Ireland has so much the air of a cathedral 
 city. Yet the atmosphere is redolent not of the medieval 
 associations that cling to the grey walls of a cathedral, but 
 of the placid restfulness of the eighteenth century. In this 
 modern town may be found an English Street, a Scotch Street, 
 and an Irish Street ; and the nomenclature reflects not inaptly 
 the racial variety of the inhabitants. Yet the groundwork 
 is English, for the adjacent rural population is mainly of English 
 stock. But these are comparatively modern characteristics. 
 This English population is of barely three centuries' standing, 
 and the architecture of the city of less than two. Yet to 
 recall the memories that are embalmed in such a history as 
 that of the city of Armagh one must go back not only behind the 
 present, but almost behind the past itself, stepping at one 
 bound from the modern to the medieval, and at another 
 from the medieval to the prehistoric. For nowhere is the 
 contrast more marked between the remote antiquity of Irish 
 historical origins and the long silences which intervene between 
 recorded episodes to destroy all natural continuity and in- 
 telligible sequence. 
 
 For above fifteen hundred years the ancient city of Armagh 
 has been entitled ecclesiastically to the term long applied to it 
 in bardic literature of * the Head of Ireland.' An antiquity 
 greater by a full century and a half than that of Canterbury 
 might serve to satisfy the pride even of Milesian antiquaries. 
 And yet the ecclesiastical antiquity of Armagh, great though 
 it be, is very far from exhausting the claims of this oldest 
 of the surviving cities of Ireland to the respectful attention 
 
 180 
 
ARMAGH 181 
 
 of topographical genealogists. Old as is the history of St. 
 Patrick's settlement, the earliest traditions of Ard Macha 
 are older by at least seven centuries. To no more modern 
 epoch than the fourth century before the Christian era belongs 
 the legend of Macha of the Golden Hair, and the foundation 
 of the fortress whose site the fair and warrior queen is said 
 to have traced out with the pin of her golden brooch. Thence- 
 forward Emania, as Macha's fort was called, became famous 
 in song and legend as the most eminent after Tara of Irish 
 royal residences, and as the scene of the chivalry of the Knight 
 of the Eed Branch. Thus it is that the history of Armagh 
 enshrines at once the most venerable traditions of Irish Chris- 
 tianity and the most romantic of Irish pre-Christian legends. 
 But if the early glories of Armagh are ancient, it is long 
 too since they vanished. As far back as 332 a.d. Emania 
 had been already so completely ruined in the warfare of the 
 tribes that all traces of its site had been practically obliterated 
 by St. Patrick's time. Even as early as the fifth century 
 of our era little was left of Macha's fort save the circum- 
 vallations that followed the lines drawn by the queen with 
 her brooch-pin. ' Emania's burgh has perished, save that 
 the stones remain,' says the Calendar of (Engus. In St. 
 Patrick's time the lord of the territories once ruled from 
 Emania was a chief of another race, who had shifted the seat 
 of his capital a mile or two to the eastward. Daire, King of 
 Oriel, was the ruler with whom St. Patrick treated for the 
 possession of the height known as the Hill of the Willows, 
 as Macha's height was also called. 
 
 But if there be no Irish city more ancient in its traditions 
 than Armagh, it may be doubted whether there is any which 
 is more modern in its aspect, or which is so poor in physical 
 .evidences of its historic past. A venerable cathedral still 
 crowns the height of Macha, and occupies the site on which 
 St. Patrick reared his church ; and on an adjacent eminence 
 a yet more splendid fane has lately been raised. But the first 
 of these is in essentials no older than the seventeenth century ; 
 and the second stands as a fine example of what nineteenth- 
 century cathedral builders could achieve. It may even be 
 
182 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 doubted whether the city boasts, save in the foundations of the 
 old cathedral, any building which is much more than two 
 hundred years old. For this contrast between the actual 
 modernity and the historical antiquity of Armagh the reasons 
 are unfortunately ample. They began to operate unusually 
 early, and they continued to affect the city unusually late. 
 As early as the seventh and eighth centuries, according to the 
 annalists, Armagh had already been completely destroyed by 
 fire on four separate occasions within a space of one hundred 
 and twenty years. At the close of the ninth it was sacked 
 by the Danes from Dublin. St. Patrick's primitive church, 
 if it had survived the preceding conflagrations, was evidently 
 destroyed on this occasion ; for, says the chronicler — 
 
 Pity, Saint Patrick, that thy prayers did not stay 
 The foreigners with their axes, when striking thy oratory. 
 
 A little later marauders of the same breed ' took the valuables 
 of the Chamber of Armagh and burned them on the green.' 
 It was an appropriate set-off to these Danish depredations 
 that the sovereign who inflicted the heaviest blow upon the 
 Danish power in Ireland chose for his last resting-place the 
 Cathedral of St. Patrick ; and there accordingly Brian Borumha 
 and his son Murrough were laid on the morrow of the fatal 
 victory of Clontarf. But the overthrow of the Dane was 
 insufficient to give peace to Ireland, or rest to Armagh ; and 
 the city continued to follow in its history the course of the 
 same unfortunate fate which had hitherto marred its progress. 
 The fame of its connexion with St. Patrick, the renown of its 
 schools, where even the fury of the Northman's onslaught 
 could not quench the zeal of its scholars, of whose learning 
 and piety a remarkable memorial survives in the celebrated 
 * Book of Armagh,' as well as its position as the Metropolitan 
 See, continued, even after the coming of the English, and the 
 final erection of Dublin as the capital, to give Armagh pre- 
 eminence among Irish cities. Yet viewed as a seat of civil 
 authority and a centre of urban life Armagh may almost be 
 said to have disappeared from history for the four centuries 
 following the English invasion. The province of which it 
 
AKMAGH 183 
 
 was the centre was the scene of perpetual raids, during which 
 the city was many times destroyed. By the end of the fifteenth 
 century the city had dwindled to the collection of hovels 
 which a century later Camden found it. So insecure was its 
 situation by reason of its position in the unsubdued wilds 
 of Ulster that the Archbishops of Armagh, who as well before 
 as after the Reformation were in a great degree the instruments 
 of English Government, made no attempt to reside in the 
 primatial city, but fixed their seat in Drogheda. To such a 
 condition of desolation and semi-barbarism had the city and 
 its people been reduced at the commencement of the Tudor 
 period that Octavian de Palatio, an Italian prelate who filled 
 the See under Henry the Seventh, is said to have relieved 
 his feelings by stigmatismg the civilisation of Armagh in the 
 uncomplimentary doggerel : 
 
 Civitas Armacliana, 
 Civitas vana, 
 Absque bonis moribus ; 
 Mulieres nudse, 
 Carnes crudse, 
 Paupertas in sedibus. 
 
 In Elizabethan times the city was alternately in the hands 
 of the English Deputies and of its Ulster lords, the O'NeUls. 
 And it suffered almost equally under either. Now a Viceroy 
 would fortify the cathedral against the Irish enemy. Next 
 that enemy would burn it to the ground. And anon, when 
 the zeal of some Primate had rebuilt it, the unlucky edifice 
 would fall once more in the crash of some fresh disturbance. 
 
 The more modern history of Armagh from the time of the 
 Plantation of Ulster is little more than a history of the Primates 
 of the Established Church. With the restoration of the 
 cathedral by Archbishop Margetson began the practical re- 
 building of Armagh as what was long, and till comparatively 
 recently may be said to have remained, an English town. 
 The Primates of the old Establishment were not only great 
 ecclesiastics, but great political personages ; the Archbishop 
 of Armagh being commonly at the head of the commission 
 
184 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 of Lords Justices by whom, through a great part of the eight- 
 eenth century, Ireland was in effect governed. Under the 
 aegis of these prelates it was that Armagh began to assume 
 that air of comfortable prosperity and neat respectability 
 which still characterises its thoroughfares. Primate Boulter 
 was the first of these great dignitaries to initiate the structural 
 improvements which his successors Stone and Robinson carried 
 through. Of these, the former, whose remarkable comeliness 
 of person earned him the sobriquet, which conflicted so strangely 
 with his avowedly mundane ambitions, of ' The Beauty of 
 Holiness,' superintended a rearrangement of the thoroughfares 
 which practically transformed the city ; and it is from his 
 time that the red marble to which Armagh owes its title of 
 the marble city began to be used in the flags of its pavements. 
 But it is to Primate Robinson, Lord Rokeby, that the place 
 owes the characteristic features which still mark this old 
 cathedral town. He it was who resumed the use of Armagh 
 as the residential seat of the primacy ; for his predecessors 
 had long preferred the security of Drogheda and its comparative 
 proximity to Dublin to the risks which attended life in the 
 head quarters of their See. Primate Robinson, too, it was 
 who formed the fine demesne and built the spacious mansion 
 in which the last surviving prelate of the Irish Establishment 
 still reigns as Archbishop of Armagh. To him also is due the 
 library which abuts upon the cathedral, and the observatory, 
 a little to the north of the city, which has won for Armagh 
 some share of repute in astronomical discovery. Lord Rokeby 
 was less fortunate in his more strictly ecclesiastical buildings. 
 His work on the cathedral was ill-conceived, and, through no 
 fault of his own, worse executed ; and it was reserved to a 
 nineteenth-century Primate of not less splendid munificence, 
 the stately Lord John Beresford, to complete the restoration 
 of that edifice in its present form. The building which occupies 
 the hallowed site of St. Patrick's original church is not and 
 can never be transformed into a temple architecturally worthy 
 of its majestic traditions. In its external proportions it is 
 altogether eclipsed by the splendour of the noble structure 
 which has quite recently been reared to the honour of the 
 
ARMAGH 185 
 
 apostle of Ireland. Yet it possesses a quiet dignity of its own 
 not unsuited to its story ; and its interior memorials are 
 characteristic of the traditions of the Church to which it 
 belongs. Of its statues, which are both numerous and artisti- 
 cally admirable, perhaps the most striking is a representation 
 by Koubiliac of Thomas Molyneux, brother to the first of those 
 Anglo-Irish patriots through whose constancy of purpose the 
 independence of the Anglo-Irish Parliament was achieved. 
 The flags with which the aisles are hung mingle the trophies 
 of the Peninsula with the emblems of the Irish Volunteers. 
 And the stately cenotaphs of two Beresford Primates recall 
 an order of prince-bishops who have vanished for ever, but 
 whose magnificence was not unsuited to their times. And 
 finally it is typical of the immutability of the intercourse 
 between the church of St. Patrick and that of St. Augustine 
 that Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, should, 
 as a modest inscription records, have preached his last sermon 
 in the cathedral of Armagh. 
 
GALWAY 
 
 Galway is at once the most Irish of cities and the least so. 
 No one can cross the great bridge which spans the Shannon 
 at Athlone on the journey from DubHn to the West of Ireland 
 without feeling something of that atmosphere of freshness 
 and of freedom, of irresponsibility and unconventionality 
 which is the charm of Connaught and of Connaught folk. 
 This sensation, of which it is happily impossible to divest 
 oneself in any of the five counties of the Western province, 
 is most strongly felt in the county of Galw^ay, and most of all 
 in the capital town of that extensive territory. It is in Galway 
 and in the society of Galway people that one best understands 
 that vein of fun and frolic in the Irish temperament which 
 Charles Lever enjoyed so heartily and represented so vividly. 
 And yet Galway, considered historically, can scarcely be called 
 Irish at all. Not only does it owe its origin, like most Irish 
 towns, to the enterprise of the Saxon invader — for town life 
 was little suited to the genius of the pastoral and in great 
 measure nomadic Kelts who stood for the Irish people before 
 the twelfth century — but its inhabitants were for ages mainly 
 of foreign or non-Keltic extraction. Of the thirteen families 
 from whom Galway gets its title of the ' City of the Tribes ' 
 scarcely two can be referred to an Irish progenitor. The 
 thirteen ' tribes ' enumerated in the rude mnemonic couplet 
 
 Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Deane, Darcy, Lynch, 
 Joyce, Kirwan, Martin, Morris, Sherrett, French 
 
 contain indeed more than one name which we now regard 
 as distinctively Irish. But with the exception of Kirwan 
 there is not one of them which can be shown to have been 
 
 186 
 
GALWAY 187 
 
 connected with Galway prior to the fourteenth century. Irish 
 as we deem it now, Galway from the twelfth century to the 
 eighteenth was a stronghold of the invader, a representative 
 of Norman or English rule in the wild places of the West. 
 
 History prior to the coming of the Norman, Galway, as 
 a city, has none. Its site was occupied only by the dwellings 
 of a few fishermen, the predecessors of that quaint collection 
 of huts which is now known as the Claddagh, a primitive 
 municipality under the protection of the O'Flaherties, the 
 most powerful of the Connemara septs, and the lords of West 
 or lar-Connaught. Some faint traces there are of Danish 
 depredations, and there are definite records of the destruction 
 of the O'Flaherty Castle by which the fishermen were dominated 
 on two separate occasions just before the Norman invasion. 
 But, apart from this, history is almost a blank until the 
 thirteenth century, when, the O'Flaherties having been ejected, 
 the town was built by the De Burgo Earls of Ulster, who were 
 likewise lords of Connaught. Then began that strife between 
 the dispossessed O'Flaherties and the new owners of Galway 
 which lasted for at least four centuries : for as long, in fact, 
 as Galway retained the characteristics of a medieval town 
 which were stamped upon it by its founders. Tradition has 
 it that the inhabitants of the city long invoked the protection 
 of Providence from the raids of the ' ferocious O'Flaherties ' 
 by the legend, engraved on its Western gate : 
 
 From the fury of the CFlaherties 
 Good Lord deliver us ; 
 
 while the undying hostility of the descendants of the ancient 
 sept is embalmed in the imprecation of a seventeenth-century 
 representative of that ancient and combative stock, who was 
 wont to ascend the eminence of Bunowen and there ' declare 
 war against all the potentates of the world, but especially 
 against that pitiful and pettifogging town of Galway.' 
 
 Under the segis of its De Burgo lords Galway expanded 
 from a poor fishing village to a walled town of considerable 
 strength, and the place of chief importance in the Western 
 province. It became an outpost of Norman civilisation and 
 
188 ESSAYS EELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 a stronghold of English authority in the Connaught wilderness. 
 But in the general relaxation of English authority which 
 followed the Bruce invasion, Galway, like many other places, 
 fell away from obedience to the Crown. Its defection was 
 hastened by the accidents of the De Burgo family history. 
 The third De Burgo Earl of Ulster was murdered in 1333, 
 when his vast estates passed to a daughter, Elizabeth, whose 
 succession to the Connaught possessions of her father was 
 repudiated by the younger branches of the De Burgo family. 
 Sir William and Sir Edmond Burke, ancestors respectively 
 of the Earls of Clanricarde and Mayo, raised the standard 
 of revolt, threw off their allegiance, and adopted the dress 
 and language of their Irish neighbours. Mac William Uachtar 
 and MacWilliam lochtar, as the Hibernised De Burgos respec- 
 tively called themselves, divided the territories of Mayo and 
 Galway between them. Galway in this division fell to the 
 ancestors of the Clanricardes, whose descendants were thence- 
 forward lords of the town. The legitimate title to the province 
 and its capital still remained in the daughter of the third 
 earl, through whom it was carried into the Plantagenet line, 
 and in 1369 the manor of Galway was found by inquisition 
 to belong in right of his wife to Lionel Duke of Clarence. 
 But although the interest which the later Plantagenets had 
 thus derived in the chief city of Connaught was of some benefit 
 to Galway in procuring a grant of mercantile privileges from 
 Edward the Fourth, the Connaught De Burgos retained their 
 power and were never afterwards interfered with, though the 
 armorial bearings of the legitimate branch long continued to 
 be used as the arms of Galway. 
 
 The town, however, though it could not fail to be dominated 
 by the De Burgo power, was by no means alien to the English 
 connexion. Its commercial interests were much too important 
 to be jeopardised by politics. It soon returned to its allegiance, 
 and its growing value and consequence as a seat of English 
 influence in the midst of both Irish enemies and English rebels 
 was recognised in successive charters. From Richard the Second 
 Galway received a charter, and from 1377 onwards it returned 
 a representative to Parliament. The town ultimately received 
 
GALWAY 189 
 
 from Kichard the Third the Charter under which it was governed 
 down to the reign of James the First. The first Mayor of Galway 
 dates accordingly from 1485. It was perhaps to the conscious- 
 ness of the honour thus recently conferred on the city by the 
 English Crown that we owe the unique example of devotion 
 to ' law and order ' which a few years later was given by James 
 Lynch FitzStephen, Mayor of the city, who having first 
 participated in the trial and death sentence of his son for the 
 murder of a young Spaniard, defeated the efforts of his friends 
 to procure a reversal of the sentence by himself becoming the 
 stoical executioner of the culprit. 
 
 Under the Tudors Galway rapidly developed, and attained 
 perhaps to the acme of its prosperity. Its municipal records, 
 which from the date of the Charter of Richard the Third are ex- 
 ceptionally perfect, show the English character of the place, and 
 the extent of its foreign commerce. Its freedom was restricted 
 to such as spoke English and shaved their upper lip once a 
 week ; and statutes were made to ensure the credit of the 
 town in its dealings with France and Spain. Thus by 1614 
 it could properly be described as a town, small but with fair 
 and stately buildings, with houses fronted with hewn stone, 
 and garnished with fair battlements, and as forming ' a com- 
 monalty composed of the descendants of the ancient English 
 founders of the town, who rarely admit any new English to 
 have freedom or education among them, and never any Irish.' 
 
 The prosperity of Galway continued unabated until the 
 outbreak of the Irish rebellion ; but thereafter the city became 
 the shuttlecock of contending parties and its mercantile 
 greatness rapidly declined. Having been fortified by Mountjoy 
 during the war with Tyrone its military importance had become 
 considerable, and during the Civil War it was held for and 
 against the King by a succession of leaders including the Papal 
 Nuncio Rinuccini. After the execution of Charles the First 
 the city became the pivot of a memorable negotiation between 
 the Catholic Royalists and the Duke of Lorraine, to whom the 
 town was offered in pledge as security for the Duke's projected 
 expedition to Ireland and an expenditure of £20,000 in succour- 
 ing the royal cause. It was in connexion with this project 
 
190 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 that a remarkable map of Galway was executed which still 
 preserves for us the features of the city as it stood in the 
 middle of the seventeenth century.^ Shortly after the place 
 was surrendered to the forces of the Parliament, when its 
 ecclesiastical buildings and monuments suffered the usual 
 consequences of a Cromwellian victory. Then began a period 
 of municipal seesaw reflecting the ups and downs of political 
 fortune in the larger world of the Three Kingdoms. These 
 mutations did not make for civic prosperity, and although 
 as late as Queen Anne's time the city was described by an 
 intelligent traveller as still the second town in Ireland after 
 Dublin, the great days of Galway had gone never to return. 
 Ever since ' Ichabod ' has been Galway's sufficient motto. To 
 Maria Edgeworth, who visited the town seventy years ago, 
 Galway appeared the dirtiest town she had ever seen, and 
 the most desolate and idle-looking. It is not much better 
 now. Yet still the place preserves in its decay the indelible 
 charm of its associations, and the indefinable attraction 
 inseparable from the sunny temperament of Connaught and 
 its people. 
 
 ^ This map has been reproduced by the Galway Archaeological and Historical 
 
 Society. 
 
Ill 
 
 STUDIES IN lEISH HISTORY 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY 
 ANTIQUITIES 
 
 Many writers have treated of the Irish Parhament in its 
 final stages, but Httle has been done either to elucidate its 
 origin or to follow its constitutional development, as revealed 
 in such information as has come down to us concerning its 
 early constitution and its formal procedure. By what gradual 
 steps the Parliament of Ireland was modelled to the form in 
 which it is familiar to us, by what influence the House at 
 College Green came to be the appropriate area for the majestic 
 eloquence of Flood and Grattan, and what were the views 
 entertained prior to the eighteenth century of the restrictions 
 placed upon the independence of the Irish legislature by the 
 celebrated Act of Sir Edward Poynings, are questions quite 
 as important as others which have been discussed at great 
 length. Though nothing can be more out of place in a serious 
 historical work or more destructive to the true philosophy 
 of history than the pedantry which is the besetting sin of the 
 antiquary, the historian has often much to learn from Dr. 
 Dryasdust. This is true of almost every variety of history, 
 other than contemporary history ; but it is especially true 
 of constitutional history. Perhaps there is no department of 
 human progress in which the continuity of the present with 
 the past is more plainly exhibited than in the story of the 
 development of political institutions. Nowhere certainly has 
 the magic power of form and ceremony, or the governing force 
 of precedent, exerted a more striking influence on the course 
 of affairs than in the evolution of our Parliamentary system. 
 Of the power which the necessity for deferring to the unwritten 
 code of Parliamentary practice can exercise over even the 
 
 193 
 
194 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 most zealous reformers, the history of the British House of 
 Commons, in almost every stage of its progress, offers countless 
 examples ; while the mysterious majesty that dwells in the 
 exterior symbols of authority, even in moments of revolutionary 
 triumph, never received a truer homage than was implied in 
 Oliver Cromwell's masterful contempt for the bauble of the 
 mace. 
 
 As there is no more instructive guide to the study of 
 a constitutional system than a knowledge of the origin, mean- 
 ing, and gradual development of the forms and ceremonies 
 which have grown with its growth and strengthened with its 
 strength, so there is no surer key to the correct apprehension 
 of purely Parliamentary history than a knowledge of early 
 Parliamentary forms. Of the value of this aspect of historical 
 research an admirable example is given in Bishop Stubbs's 
 great work on ' The Constitutional History of England,' in 
 that illuminating chapter entitled ' Parliamentary Antiquities,' 
 in which the historian has sought to realise the character of 
 the medieval Parliament of England in what he calls its 
 formal aspects. By describing the method of summoning, 
 choosing, and assembling the members ; by tracing the legis- 
 lative processes of initiation, discussion, and enactments ; by 
 examining the time, place, and mode of summons at, for, and 
 by which Parliament was assembled ; and by investigating 
 such matters of constitutional form and usage as the arrange- 
 ment of the two Houses, their rules for transacting business, 
 and the forms employed for prorogation and dissolution, 
 the historian of the ' Constitutional History of England ' has 
 thrown a flood of clear light upon many of the larger problems 
 involved in his inquiry. Of the relevance of such formal 
 matters to any fruitful discussion of the growth of the English 
 Constitution no student of the history of institutions is likely 
 to entertain a doubt ; and their importance in relation to 
 the development of the legislative powers of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment is equally self-evident. 
 
 The materials for such an endeavour are of course very 
 much fewer in the case of the Irish than in that of the English 
 Houses of Parliament ; the records of Irish political institutions 
 
lEISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 195 
 
 in early times being vastly less numerous and much more 
 imperfect than those available for Great Britain. Enough, 
 however, exists to justify the attempt to realise at least some 
 features of the ' formal aspect ' of an Irish Parliament. The 
 writers who have dwelt most fully on the characteristics of 
 the legislative system which the Union superseded have made 
 but little attempt to trace the successive stages in its develop- 
 ment. They have paid practically no attention either to the 
 ceremonial of the Irish Parliament in general or to the pro- 
 cedure of the Irish House of Commons in particular, notwith- 
 standing that the consideration of the formal aspect of the 
 Irish legislature has been the professed object of more than 
 one writer. That these historians should have neglected this 
 part of their function is, however, scarcely to be wondered 
 at, in view of the poverty of the materials available in their 
 time. The earliest printed Journals of the Irish Parliament 
 only commence with the year 1634 ; and of the difficulty 
 of ascertaining the constitutional forms of the pre-Stuart 
 period no better illustration need be asked than the fact that 
 Sir John Davis, whose business it was, as Speaker of the 
 Parliament of 1613, to examine into the procedure of an 
 assembly which had then been in abeyance for a generation, 
 found it practically impossible, after the most diligent inquiry, 
 to arrive at the facts. Those writers who have essayed even 
 a portion of the task which baffled Davis have not proceeded 
 very far in their inquiry. Thus William Lynch, in his ' View 
 of the Legal Institutions, Honorary Hereditary Offices, and 
 Feudal Baronies of Ireland,' has discussed with much learning 
 and acuteness the character of the legislative institutions 
 introduced into Ireland by its earliest Plantagenet rulers. 
 But though he has thrown a good deal of light on the consti- 
 tution of those early councils and assemblies of the great 
 men of the realm which for want of a better name have been 
 given the title of Parliaments, however widely they may and 
 must have differed both in their constitution and their powers 
 from what we now call by that name, he has confined himself 
 to one, and that a very limited, branch of his inquiry. The 
 value of Lynch's contribution to the literature of the subject 
 
 o 2 
 
196 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 lies in his careful examination of the earliest Parliamentary 
 Writs of Summons, of which many are extant in ancient Close 
 and Patent Rolls of the Plantagenet era.i But neither he nor 
 Sir William Betham, whose work on ' The Origin and History 
 of the Constitution of England and the Early Parliaments of 
 Ireland ' deals with the earlier councils and Parliaments, has 
 carried the inquiry down to modern times. Betham's investi- 
 gation closes with the reign of Richard the Third, and Lynch's 
 barely touches upon the Tudor period. The same remark is 
 true of Monck Mason's ' Essay on the Antiquity and Constitu- 
 tion of Parliaments in Ireland,' a work which, like the two 
 first mentioned, was written early in the last century, and 
 is mainly intended to rebut the evidence adduced by Sir John 
 Davis, in his well-known book, to show that there was no 
 separate Parliament for Ireland for one hundred and forty 
 years from the time of Henry the Second. Nor is the 
 student likely to be greatly assisted in this inquiry by 
 an eighteenth-century work which at first sight might 
 appear to offer a fuller contribution to the literature of his 
 subject. Viscount Mountmorres's 'History of the Principal 
 Transactions of the Irish Parliament from 1634 to 1666 ' is 
 little more than an analysis of the earliest printed Journals. 
 And though it is prefaced by a ' Preliminary Discourse of the 
 Ancient Parliament of that kingdom,' the latter is itself little 
 more than a reprint of John Hooker's account of the ' Order 
 and Usage how to keep a Parliament in England,' which was 
 compiled by the author for the guidance of the Irish Parliament 
 of 1569, and was first printed in the Irish portion of Holinshed's 
 ' Chronicles.' More useful from the point of view of the student 
 of Irish Parliamentary antiquities than any of the works we 
 have enumerated is Hardiman's well-known edition of the 
 Statute of Kilkenny, published more than sixty years ago 
 by the Irish Archaeological Society in their ' Tracts Relating 
 to Ireland.' But this work dealt of course only with a frag- 
 
 1 The same author, in his treatise on The Law of Election in the Ancient 
 Cities and Tovms of Ireland, which was pubUshed in 1831, gives a very valuable 
 conspectus of the Irish Boroughs returning members to Parliament from 1358 
 to 1800. But this table does not specify the boroughs returning members to 
 any of the Tudor Parliaments prior to that called by Sussex in 2nd Elizabeth. 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 197 
 
 ment, though a most important fragment, of the history of 
 early Parliaments in Ireland. A most lucid summary of the 
 earlier constitution of the Irish legislature is, indeed, furnished 
 by Mr. Bagwell in his ' Ireland under the Tudors.' But no 
 adequate attempt has yet been made by any writer to combine 
 with such notices of the primitive Parliamentary system of 
 Ireland as survive in the earliest historical chronicles the 
 information (fragmentary and unsatisfactory, but so far as 
 it goes authentic) which has been disclosed in the various 
 State Paper publications of the last half-century. There is 
 consequently the less occasion to apologise for even so partial 
 an effort as can be undertaken here to collect what can be 
 gathered upon this subject. 
 
 In the endeavour to glean such stray grains of information 
 concerning the origins of Irish Parliamentary institutions as 
 have escaped the destroying hand of time it might seem natural 
 to begin with the statutes of the realm. But these unhappily 
 are extremely imperfect. The first attempt at an edition of 
 the statute law of Ireland was not made until as late as 
 1569, when, at the suggestion of the Speaker of the House of 
 Commons in the Parliament of that year, authority was given 
 to the John Hooker already mentioned to print the statutes 
 at his own charges. But though the patent given to Hooker 
 recited that ' divers Parliaments have been holden in Ireland, 
 and divers laws statutes and acts made in the same, which 
 laws being never put into print have been altogether turned 
 to oblivion,' nothing further was done to give effect to the 
 proposal.! Thus it was not until 1621 that Sir Richard Bolton, 
 afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland, published in one folio 
 volume the first collected edition of the statutes. Nor, 
 although subsequent statutes were printed regularly enough, 
 was it until the reign of George the Third that anything like an 
 adequate edition of the Irish statutes was provided. In the 
 year 1765 the pubHcation of ' The Statutes at Large passed 
 in the Parliaments held in Ireland from the third year of 
 Edward II, a.d. 1310, to the first year of George III, 
 A.D. 1761, inclusive,' was commenced. The title was, however, 
 
 ' Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, vol. i. p. 387. 
 
198 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 very misleading. Had the editor been able to give the statutes 
 in sequence for the whole of that period he would have accom- 
 plished much more than is ever likely to be achieved by any 
 successor. But although the edition contains six statutes of 
 Edward the Second, no attempt was made to examine the 
 extant rolls of Parliament from that reign down to the 
 seventh year of Henry the Sixth, a period of more than 
 a century being thus left blank. And although several statutes 
 of the latter monarch and of his successor are given, the legisla- 
 tion of Eichard the Third, whose brief reign was marked in 
 Ireland by numerous statutes, is completely omitted,'^ while 
 that of Henry the Seventh is only very imperfectly ex- 
 hibited. ^ At the end of George the Third's reign pro- 
 positions were set on foot by the Irish Record Commissioners 
 for supplying the defects of the imperfect edition issued at 
 its commencement, and for editing the statutes, so far as they 
 remained extant, from the original roll of Parliament. But 
 this project remained in abeyance until the beginning of the 
 present century, when the task of producing a complete and 
 
 ' Parliaments were, undoubtedly, called in Ireland with great frequency 
 in the reigns of the Lancastrian and Yorkist sovereigns. At least ten Parlia- 
 ments were called in Ireland under Henry VI ; and it was even found necessary 
 to enact that the Deputy should not summon Parliament more than once in the 
 same year. In the reign of his successor the Legislature met almost annually ; 
 while under Richard III two Parliaments were held, the first in 1482, the 
 second in 1483-84. In the first of these Parliaments no less than twenty- 
 seven statutes were enacted, and in the second, eighteen. See transcripts of the 
 statutes made nearly a century ago under the direction of the Irish Record 
 Commissioners, and preserved at the Irish Record Office ; and also an annotated 
 copy of the printed statutes in the same repository, which affords much valuable 
 information on the early statutes. 
 
 - Under Henry VII at least six Parliaments were called. Of these the 
 first was held in 1492 by Walter, Archbishop of Dublin, as deputy for the Lord 
 Lieutenant, Jasper, Duke of Bedford. It passed in the course of its two sessions 
 as many as thirty-two statutes — the last which were drawn in Norman-French. 
 Of the other Parliaments of Henry VII, besides the celebrated one summoned 
 by Sir Edward Poynings, two were held by Robert Preston, Lord Gormanston, 
 the first at Trim, and the second, which was subsequently declared void for want 
 of any formal summons of the Knights of the Shire, at Drogheda. A Parlia- 
 ment was held in 1498 by Gerald, Earl of Kildare, at Castledermot, and another, 
 which may, however, have been no more than a second session of the same 
 Parliament, was held by the same Deputy in Dublin in the following year. 
 Ware laments in his Annals that the laws made in this Parliament were not 
 upon record in his time. He mentions that one Nangle was imprisoned in 
 England on a charge of having surreptitiously taken away the Rolls. Henry 
 VII's last Parliament, which was likewise summoned by an Earl of Kildare, 
 held three sessions in Dublin, and one at Castledermot in the last year of the 
 reign. See authorities cited above. 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 199 
 
 definitive edition of the hitherto unedited Irish statutes was 
 taken up by the present heads of the Irish Pubhc Record 
 Office.i 
 
 In the attempt to trace the evolution of Parhament, in 
 the modern conception of the institution from the inchoate 
 legislature of the early Plantagenet councils, the most reliable 
 clue is furnished by an examination of the history of the 
 greatest of all Parliamentary offices, the Speakership of 
 the House of Commons. Apart from the great interest of the 
 Speaker's constitutional functions, in which were early crystal- 
 lised the liberties of the Commons, the creation of the office 
 must manifestly mark the commencement of the separate 
 existence of the Lower House as a distinct branch of the 
 legislature. From what period we are to date this commence- 
 ment in the case of the English House of Commons has never 
 been precisely determined, but it was certainly not later than 
 1377, as from that date onwards the Speaker is mentioned 
 in all the records, and the succession of the Speakers is complete. 
 In the case of Ireland unfortunately no such record is avail- 
 able. Until very lately only the names of those Speakers 
 who had been chosen since the Parliament of 1613 had been 
 ascertained, and some competent authorities even appear to 
 have considered that the separation of the two Houses, or 
 at least the separate sitting of the two Houses in Ireland, 
 could not be dated further back than Stuart times. Recent 
 research has, however, shown conclusively that, as might be 
 expected from the practical identity of ceremonial in the two 
 legislatures, the Irish Speakership can boast of much earlier 
 antiquity. Not only has the succession of the Irish Speakers 
 been definitely ascertained from Henry the Eighth's Parliament 
 of 1541, in which the title of King of Ireland was first conferred 
 on the sovereign, but it has been demonstrated that as early 
 as the middle of the fifteenth century the Speaker was a well 
 understood essential of the Irish Parliamentary system. It 
 has been discovered that the Statute Roll for the year 1449, 
 by some curious and fortunate exception to the case of every 
 
 ^ The first volume was published in 1907 : — Statutes and Ordinances and Acts 
 of the Parliament of Ireland ; King John to Henry V, edited by Henry F. Berry, 
 D.Litt., I.S.O. 
 
200 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 other extant roll, contains a complete record of the formalities 
 attending the opening of the Parliament to which it related, 
 that, namely, which was held in Dublin in that year by Sir 
 Richard Nugent, Lord Delvin, as Deputy for the Lord 
 Lieutenant, Richard Duke of York. The entry is so curious 
 that it is worth extracting in its entirety. It sets forth that 
 on the Tuesday following the opening of Parliament : 
 
 ' The Commons presented one John Chever for their Speaker, 
 and the said Deputy-Lieutenant graciously agreed and well 
 accepted of him : and hereupon the said John delivered to the said 
 Deputy a schedule of his protestation, supplicating him most humbly 
 that his said protestation be entered of record in the roll of Parha- 
 ment, which schedule of the said protestation was read in Parliament : 
 And hereupon the said Deputy charged the Clerk of the said Parha- 
 ment to enter it in the roll of Parliament of record, the tenor of 
 which protestation is as follows : 
 
 ' " The Commons of the said Parliament have elected John 
 Chever for their Speaker, to show and declare for them in the said 
 Parliament all manner of business which they have to declare in 
 the said Parliament, with the protestation following ; that is to say, 
 that if it happen that the said Speaker (which God forbid should be 
 his intention) should show anything or say anything to the dis- 
 pleasure of the said Deputy, prelates, lords and peers of the said 
 Parliament, through ignorance, mistake, or surplusage, without 
 assent or by assent of the said Commons, that it be not recorded or 
 reported ; but that at such time as it be perceived or challenged by 
 the said Deputy and the Council of the King, prelates, lords and peers 
 aforesaid, he may, by good advice and much deliberation of the said 
 Commons, reconsider, amend, augment, or abate the business and 
 matters aforesaid, the which protestation is enacted by authority 
 of the said Parliament." 'i 
 
 It will be seen that in this ' protestation,' which is again 
 recorded in the roll of a Parliament held in Drogheda in the suc- 
 ceeding year, the rights of freedom of speech and favourable in- 
 terpretation were vindicated by the Irish Speaker, as far back as 
 the twenty-sixth year of Henry the Sixth, in strict accordance 
 with the English usage. The fact affords a strong presump- 
 tion, in spite of the absence of any earlier record of the office, 
 
 1 Transcripts of Irish statutes preserved at the Irish Record Office. 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 201 
 
 that the Irish Speakership was of practically equal antiquity 
 with its English prototype ; and that in other respects the 
 Dublin House of Commons followed the forms and copied 
 the observances of the Second Chamber at Westminster. It 
 is clear, too, from this record that not only was the form 
 of protestation practically identical with that employed in 
 England, but that the conception of the office of Speaker 
 which prevailed in early times was the same in the Irish as 
 in the English House of Commons. Formerly, as is well 
 known, and as his title denotes, the functions of the Speaker 
 were not only those of the spokesman of the Commons : they 
 were those of a nominee of the Crown, and in effect a repre- 
 sentative of the Government. One of the earliest writers on 
 the English Constitution, Sir Thomas Smith, writing of the 
 Tudor House of Commons, defines the duties of the Speaker's 
 office, and states that ' the Speaker is he that doth commend 
 and prefer the bills exhibited into the Parliament, and is 
 the mouth of the Parliament. He is commonly appointed 
 by the King or Queen, though accepted by the assent of the 
 House.' 1 The Irish State Papers make it abundantly clear that 
 this was the view of the Speakership entertained in Ireland 
 by the advisers of the Crown throughout the Tudor period. 
 The Speaker was invariably a nominee of the Crown ; he had 
 either been a judge, like Sir Thomas Cusake, the first recorded 
 Speaker of Henry the Eighth's reign, or he actually held 
 concurrently with his Parliamentary post a judicial office. 
 Chever, the fifteenth-century Speaker, was while holding 
 that position Master of the Rolls, and probably owed to the 
 favour earned by the discharge of his functions in the House 
 of Commons the Chief Justiceship of the King's Bench to which 
 he ultimately attained. Speaker Cusake, at all events, seems 
 to have thoroughly understood what was expected of him 
 by the power to which he owed his nomination to the Chair 
 of the House of Commons. For while he followed his pre- 
 decessor's example in addressing to Sir Anthony St. Leger 
 what that Deputy described as ' a right solemn proposition,' 
 vindicating the liberties of his order, he was even more vigorous 
 
 ^ Commonwealth of England, edition 1633, p. 77. 
 
202 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 in his assertion of the authority of the Crown, and the respect 
 due to the royal prerogative.^ 
 
 In Hohnshed's ' Chronicles of Ireland ' we have, from the 
 pen of one who was himself a member of it, a report of the 
 proceedings at the opening of Sir Henry Sidney's Parliament,^ 
 which has preserved for us an epitome of the speeches inter- 
 changed between the Lord Deputy and the Speaker of the 
 House of Commons. The language of Speaker Stanihurst 
 on that occasion again illustrates the fidelity with which the 
 constitutional forms of Westminster were imitated in Dublin. 
 The Speaker made the customary declaration of unworthiness 
 and incapacity, desiring that some man of more gravity and of 
 better experience, knowledge, and learning might supply his 
 place ; and went on to claim the immemorial liberties of the 
 Commons — freedom from arrest and freedom of speech. He 
 did not, however, petition, as was then usual in England, 
 that a favourable construction might be put upon his actions ; 
 nor did he, as had been customary in England from the time 
 of Henry the Eighth, require freedom of access to the person of 
 the sovereign, or claim any corresponding privilege in relation 
 to his representative in Ireland ; but, in lieu of this, he 
 demanded that in the event of misconduct, the punishment 
 of the offending member should be in the exclusive control 
 of the House of Commons itself .^ 
 
 In general it may be pretty confidently predicated of any 
 institution or usage introduced into Ireland under its Planta- 
 genet or Tudor rulers — or, for the matter of that, by much 
 later governors of the island — that it is likely to present a 
 more or less perfect copy of an English model. This is pre- 
 eminently true of the Parliamentary institutions of Ireland, 
 which were fashioned with careful regard to English precedent, 
 in almost every particular. Accordingly, although the infor- 
 mation which can be collected either from the statutes or 
 
 1 See Appendix A for succession of the Speakers of the Irish House of 
 Commons, with biographical notices of the early Speakers. 
 
 2 This Parhament met on January 17, 1568-69, and holding three sessions 
 did not terminate until December 1570. 
 
 3 Holinshed, vol. vi. pp. 342, 353 ; Stubbs's Constitutional History, vol. iii. 
 p. 472. 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 203 
 
 from the State Papers touching the formal procedure of early 
 Parliaments in Ireland is slender enough, we find that such 
 indications as are available confirm the evidence which the 
 history of the Speakership affords that the Dublin legislature 
 closely followed the example of the English one in the methods 
 of its arrangements and the order of its sessions. The formal 
 recital prefixed to the statutes of most of the Plantagenet 
 and Tudor Parliaments gives evidence of two features in 
 which this characteristic is exhibited. That in regard to 
 Parliamentary times and seasons the Irish practice corre- 
 sponded with the English is shown by the coincidence of the 
 dates and periods of the Parliamentary session with the terms 
 of the law courts ; while the influence of the early practice 
 in England in determining the place at which Parliaments 
 should be held, is shown in the peripatetic character of the 
 High Court of Parliament, which may be described as having in 
 early times gone on circuit almost as regularly as the judges. 
 The latter fashion, indeed, prevailed even as late as Tudor 
 times, for it was not until Elizabeth's reign that Dublin 
 became the invariable scene of the deliberations of Parliament. 
 The practice on this point varied, indeed, at different periods. 
 In the earliest period of which there is any clear record, the 
 Parliaments of Edward the Second and the Third were certainly 
 without any fixed place of meeting, and were doubtless sum- 
 moned pretty much in accordance with the political exigencies 
 of the moment or the convenience of the Viceroy for the time 
 being. Kilkenny, Drogheda, and Trim were favourite venues 
 with the Plantagenet Deputies ; but Parliament also sat in 
 places now of no importance, such as Castledermot in Kildare, 
 and Baldoyle,^ within a very short distance of Dublin. Later 
 on, but prior to the Tudor period, it appears to have been 
 enacted that no Parliament should be held elsewhere than in 
 Dublin and Drogheda. Yet in 1541 this limitation, which 
 was probably never very closely observed, was repealed.^ 
 and the provincial sessions of earlier times again became the 
 
 1 See Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, by C. Litton Falkiner, 
 p. 28, note 1. 
 
 2 See Statute 33 Hen. VIII. c. 1, s. 2. 
 
204 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 rule rather than the exception in the Parhaments called by 
 the Deputies of Henry the Eighth. Thus Lord Leonard Gray's 
 Parliament i sat successively in Dublin, Kilkenny, Cashel, and 
 Limerick. That summoned by Sussex under Queen Mary 
 sat in turn in Dublin, Limerick, and Drogheda ; and even as 
 late as 1585 Sir John Perrot's Parliament was prorogued to 
 the last-named town on one occasion, though owing to the 
 want of proper accommodation it never sat there.^ 
 
 It followed from the perambulatory character of its sessions 
 that the Irish Parliament long remained without a definite 
 place of meeting, and Ireland was long without its West- 
 minster. When convened in the country, Parliament usually 
 sat in the great hall of some principal ecclesiastical foundation. 
 Thus the celebrated Parliament of Sir Edward Poynings held 
 its deliberations in the great hall of the Dominican monastery 
 in Drogheda. The earliest Parliaments in Dublin were doubtless 
 held in the long- vanished ' Great Hall ' of Dublin Castle, 
 though certain Deputies who happened to be Priors of Kilmain- 
 ham seem to have summoned the legislators to meet in the 
 equally splendid apartment of the Priory of the Knights 
 Hospitallers at that place. Later, however, and down to 
 post-Restoration times, Christ Church Cathedral was the most 
 usual meeting-place, if not of the whole Parliament, at all 
 events of the House of Commons.^ Strafford's Parliaments 
 
 1 It held as many as eight sessions between May 1, 1536, and December 
 20, 1537. 
 
 2 Calendar of State Papers {Ireland), 1586-88, p. 30, Perrot to 
 Walsingham, February 20, 1585-86. 
 
 ^ The Commons most probably sat in Christ Church in the ' Common 
 House.' This building, which is referred to in an Act of Henry VI as ' the 
 Common House within the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity,' may perhaps have 
 been on the site of the ' sumptuous fabric ' in the precincts of Christ Church in 
 which the Four Courts were situate in the seventeenth century. See Harris's 
 History of Dublin, p. 43 ; Camden's Britannia, p. 1367. As regards the times 
 and hours at which Parliament met, sittings were held every week-day while 
 Parliament was in session, excepting the principal feasts of the Church. The 
 hours, which were from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. (the afternoons being devoted to 
 Committees), were apparently governed by the difficulty of providing artificial 
 light. Hooker, in his account of the proceedings in Sidney's Parliament, 
 mentions the sitting of the House of Commons till 2 p.m. as quite exceptional. 
 ' The time and day was so far spent above the ordinary hour, being well-nigh 
 two of the clock in the afternoon, that the Speaker and the Court rose up and 
 departed.' This is the nearest approach in Tudor times to an all-night sitting 
 in the Irish House of Commons. Holinshed, vol. vi. p. 345. 
 
lEISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 205 
 
 were held in Dublin Castle ; where, however, the apartments 
 formerly devoted to them had been wrecked thirty years 
 earlier by an accidental explosion of gunpowder, and the 
 Houses of Parliament are described by Sir William Brereton 
 as much meaner than the English House of the same time.^ 
 The Duke of Ormond was the first Viceroy to hold Parliament 
 in the neighbourhood now associated with the meetings of 
 the Irish legislature. The Restoration Parliament held its 
 sittings in Chichester House, on the site of the famous building 
 erected in 1729 ; and with the unfortunate exception of James 
 the Second's Parliament, which was held at the King's Inns, 
 College Green was the scene of every meeting of the Irish 
 legislature from the Restoration to the Union. 
 
 Except in the case of the entry in the Statute Roll of 
 Henry the Sixth, already cited, there are practically no materials 
 available for a history of the Irish Parliament, from the point 
 of view here contemplated, of earlier date than the sixteenth 
 century. And for the first half of that century the extant 
 documents bearing on the subject are very slight. The State 
 Papers of Henry the Eighth afford, however, a valuable picture 
 of the early constitution of Parliament, and illustrate the 
 manner in which the application of English systems to Ireland 
 is apt to preserve forms and institutions in that country to 
 a date long after that at which they fell into desuetude in 
 England. Thus it was not until the Parliament of 28th Henry 
 VIII, held by Lord Leonard Gray, that the clerical proctors 
 were adjudged to have ceased to possess the right of partici- 
 pating in the legislative functions of the Irish Parliament. 
 In England clerical proctors had originally formed part of 
 the representatives of the spiritual estate ; but there is no 
 record of the date at which, if they ever possessed them, the 
 proctors had ceased to exercise legislative rights. Long before 
 the Tudor era they had ceased to be summoned to Parliament, 
 their Parliamentary privileges having merged in those which 
 they possessed as members of Convocation. In Ireland, how- 
 ever, it appears to have been otherwise. ' At every Parliament 
 
 * See Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, by C. Litton Falkiner, 
 p. 380. 
 
206 ESSAYS KELATING TO IKELAND 
 
 begun and holden within this land,' to quote the language 
 of the statute by which the proctorial rights were extinguished, 
 * two proctors of every diocese within the same land have 
 been used and accustomed to be summoned and warned to 
 be of the same Parliament.' Whether they were present in 
 a purely consultative capacity, or were deemed to possess like 
 legislative powers with the lay members, is a matter of some 
 doubt. It is certain, however, that their rights in this regard 
 were not considered absolutely obsolete and incapable of revival. 
 In the endeavour to defeat the ecclesiastical legislation of Henry 
 the Eighth's Irish Ministers, the opponents of the royal policy 
 were fain to resort to the proctorial vote as a Parliamentary 
 weapon. It was claimed that the proctors had a like status 
 in the House of Commons with that enjoyed by the prelates 
 in the House of Peers, and their complete equality with the 
 Commons was asserted. The spiritual peers in the Upper 
 House even went the length of declining to consider the bills 
 sent up by the Lower until they should be assured that the 
 concurrence of the proctors had been obtained. However 
 extravagant such a claim may have been, it could hardly 
 have been seriously put forward had the Parliamentary 
 functions of the proctors faded to the insignificant and sub- 
 ordinate point which they had reached in England, where 
 the heads of the Church in a like contingency at Westminster 
 had not ventured to do more than mildly petition that the 
 clergy of the Lower House of Convocation might ' be adjoined 
 and associate with the Lower House of Parliament.' i It was, 
 however, too late in the day, even in Ireland, to procure the 
 effective revival of the legislative status of the proctors. The 
 Deputy referred the constitutional question to the judges, 
 who reported that the proctors had no voice in Parliament, 
 and that even were it otherwise, their voice might be ignored, 
 since there was abundant evidence of the passing of many 
 Acts of Parliament notwithstanding that, as it was recorded, 
 ' procuratores cleri non consenserunt.' ^ The result of the 
 
 ^ Stubbs's Constitutional History of England, iii. 462. 
 
 - Gray, and Brabazon to Cromwell, May 18, 1537, State Papers, Henry 
 VIII, vol."ii/pt. iii. p. 438. 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 207 
 
 abortive claim thus put forward was to put a final and formal 
 end to the proctorial vote. For the Deputy, urging that 
 the effect of their interposition would be to give them ' such 
 a pre-eminence in Parliament that though the King, Lords 
 and Commons assent to an Act, the Proctors in Convocation 
 House (though they were but eight or nine in number, as 
 sometimes they be here no more) shall stay the same at their 
 pleasure, be the matter never so good, honest, and reasonable,' 
 at once brought in legislation to put an end to their juris- 
 diction. A bUl ' against proctors to be any members of 
 Parliament ' was accordingly passed, which deprived the 
 proctors of any voice in the proceedings of the legislature, 
 declaring that they ' should not be accepted, reputed, deemed 
 or taken as parcel or any member of the said Parliament, but 
 only as counsellors to the same.' i The period thus put to 
 the legislative functions of the proctors as representatives 
 of the clergy was no more than the inevitable result of the 
 challenge of the prelates. The latter had attempted to enforce 
 a constitutional anachronism, and Parliament did no more 
 than formulate a declaration of what in England had already 
 become settled constitutional practice. It is difficult to see 
 any warrant for the view put forward recently that the Act 
 against proctors was part of a deliberate scheme to limit the 
 powers of Parliament, and that the abolition of ' the Second 
 Estate of the Realm ' constituted the second step in ' the 
 reduction of the Irish Parliament. 2 
 
 It is in connexion with the sessions of the Second Parlia- 
 ment of Elizabeth, which assembled in January 1569, that 
 we meet with the first authentic evidence of Parliamentary 
 manners and customs. Of the first meeting of this legislature 
 several notices survive. The historian Campion chanced to 
 be living in Dublin, in the family of Speaker Stanihurst, at 
 the time of the assembling of the Parliament, which met at 
 Christ Church Cathedral in response to the summons of the 
 Lord Deputy. To Campion accordingly we are indebted for 
 an authentic report of the speech of the Lord Deputy, Sir 
 
 1 Statute 28 Henry VIII. c. 12. 
 
 - The Closing of the Irish Parliament, by John Roche Ardill, LL.D. 
 
208 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Henry Sidney, at the opening of the Parhament, and of the 
 Speaker to the Lord Deputy.^ But there are much more 
 detailed references to the same Parhament in two documents 
 which were lately found. They contain respectively the 
 evidence of an independent spectator of the ceremonies 
 attending the opening of the Parliament, and the diary of 
 its session kept by one of its members. The first of these 
 documents is a ' List of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal 
 in the Irish Parliament 1568-9,' ^ which not only preserves 
 for us the roll of the peers summoned to that assembly, but 
 includes several interesting particulars of a picturesque and 
 personal kind. The recorder of these details was one Robert 
 le Commaundre, Rector of Tarporley in Cheshire, and a 'protege 
 apparently of the Lord Deputy.^^ He was, as appears from 
 the other contents of the commonplace book from which this 
 record is taken, an antiquary with heraldic leanings, closely 
 interested in the minutiae of ceremonial, and his observations 
 
 ' Campion had come over as a tutor to young Richard Stanihurst, the 
 Speaker's son. Residing in the Speaker's house, he was, as he states in the 
 preface to his History, in ' such famiUar societie, and dayUe table-talke with 
 the worshipfull Esquire, James Stanihurst, Recorder of Dublin,' that he knew 
 everything that went on. Campion was present at the prorogation of Parlia- 
 ment at the close of the first session. His summary of what passed on that 
 occasion is the first conscious attempt at reporting the proceedings of an Irish 
 Parliament, and Campion gives this account of his work as reporter : — ' The 
 day of prorogation, when the Knights and Burgesses of the Commonalty 
 resorted to the Lordes of the Upper House, much good matter was there uttered 
 between the Deputy and the Speaker, whereof comming home to my lodging 
 I took notes, and here I will deliver them as neere as I can call them to minde, 
 in the same words and sentences that I heard them.' The principal matter of 
 these orations related to educational topics, Stanihurst felicitating his audience 
 on the passing of the Act for the erection of Free Grammar Schools (12 
 Elizabeth, cap. 1), while regretting that ' our hap is not to plant yet an Univer- 
 sity here at home.' Campion's History of Ireland. 
 
 " See Appendix B. 
 
 •* To the compiler's own description of himself as Rector of Tarporley and 
 Chaplain to Sir Henry Sidney, little information can be added. Tarporley is 
 a small town about midway between Chester and Crewe, which lay directly on 
 the road from London to Holyhead, and through which, in the sixteenth 
 century, as Commaundre records in some notes to a list of the Lord Lieutenants 
 and Deputies of Ireland, the Viceroys were in the habit of passing with their 
 retinues on their way to Ireland. Whether or not it was in this way that 
 Commaundre made the acquaintance of Sir Henry Sidney, it is certain that he 
 accompanied that nobleman to Dublin, in 1568, in the capacity of chaplain, 
 and was a witness of the proceedings at the opening of the Parliament in Christ 
 Church, on January 17 of that year. He does not appear to have remained 
 long in Ireland. Unlike a good many viceregal chaplains of that age, he did 
 not reach the Irish Episcopal Bench, but died Rector of Tarporley in 1613. 
 He did, however, profit by the pluralism which was so common in his time. 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 209 
 
 have the air of careful and accurate notes. The descriptive 
 part of Commaundre's document, presenting the scene in 
 the House of Lords on the opening day, is curious, and is 
 better given in his own words : 
 
 * The Lord Deputy of Ireland sat under the cloth of estate in his 
 robes of crimson velvet, representing the Queen's Majesty's most 
 royal person. Item, Robert Weston, doctor of laws, and Dean of 
 the Cathedral Church of St. Patricks Dublin, Lord Chancellor of 
 Ireland, sat on the right of the said Lord Deputy. Item Thomas 
 Butler, Earl of Ormond and Ossory, Viscount Thurles, High Treasurer 
 of Ireland, sat on the left of the said Lord Deputy. Memorandum 
 that these two lords sat severally above by themselves, one either 
 side of the said Lord Deputy, having their seats enrailed about, 
 and hanged or covered with green ; and the said Lord Deputy 
 had steps or greeses [stairs] made and covered for the seat of estate, 
 being richly hanged. . . . Memorandum that the Chief Justices 
 of the one bench and the other, the Chief Baron, the Master of the 
 Rolls, and the Queen's Majesty's Attorney-General and her High- 
 ness' Sohcitor, did sit together at a table in the midst of the Parha- 
 ment House. Memorandum that Mr. Stanihurst, Recorder of the 
 City of Dubhn, was Speaker of the Lower House, and did wear for his 
 upper garment, when the Lord Deputy sat in the higher house 
 under the cloth of estate, a scarlet gown ; and this Mr. Stanihurst 
 was a very wise man and a good member of the Commonwealth of 
 Ireland.' 
 
 The presence of the Lord Chancellor and the High Treasurer 
 at the opening ceremony as late as Elizabethan times is a 
 fresh illustration of the conservatism of Irish usage. For in 
 the Plantagenet Parliaments these functionaries appear to have 
 enjoyed a similar precedence : the preamble to early Acts of 
 the Irish Parliament commonly reciting that the legislature 
 was constituted of ' the Deputy, the Chancellor and Treasurer, 
 
 being appointed Rector and Prebendary of the Parish of Kilmactalway, County 
 Dublin, and Vicar of Bodenstown, County Kildare. But that Commaundre 
 did not account the personal charge of these cures as necessarily obligatory on 
 him, appears from a bond executed on March 14, 1570-71, wherein he acknow- 
 ledges himself indebted to one John Thomas in the sum of £100, in consideration 
 whereof he made over to Thomas for the term of his own life both the parsonage 
 of Kilmactalway, with its prebend, and the vicarage of Bodenstown ' frank 
 and free, without payment of any rent.' — Morrin's Calendar of Patent and Close 
 Bolls in Ireland, ii. 039. 
 
210 ESSAYS EELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 and all the lords spiritual and temporal, and the King's Council 
 in Ireland.' The presence of the chief judges and the law 
 officers of the Crown was in conformity with contemporary 
 practice at Westminster, it being customary in the Parliaments 
 of the Tudor sovereigns for the more eminent legal and judicial 
 functionaries to attend the opening ceremony in their robes. 
 
 The second manuscript referred to above is a brief narrative 
 of the proceedings of the same Parliament in the form of a 
 diary kept by John Hooker, the well-known contributor to 
 Holinshed.i Like Henry Flood two centuries later, Hooker 
 enjoyed a seat in the English House of Commons as well as 
 in the Irish one, sitting for the city of Exeter in the former 
 and for the ancient borough of Athenry in the latter. His 
 experience in the first capacity was of much value to him in 
 the second, at a period when it was sought to improve upon 
 the previously irregular methods in vogue in Dublin, and to 
 conform more closely to the English method. It was in aid 
 of this endeavour that Hooker, who was not merely a member 
 of the English House of Commons, but a well-known authority 
 on matters of form and procedure, drew up for the information 
 of his fellow-members at Dublin the book of the orders of the 
 Parliaments used in England which, as already mentioned, is 
 printed in Holinshed. But in addition to this service to his 
 contemporaries. Hooker has left for the benefit of posterity a 
 diary of the proceedings of Sir Henry Sidney's Parliament, 
 which, though brief, may be fairly enough described as the 
 first extant Journal of the Irish House of Commons.^ For 
 though only relating to the doings of the first session of this 
 Parliament, it is a manifestly accurate record of the business 
 transacted, and contains exact particulars of matters not 
 ascertainable in the case of any other of the Tudor Parlia- 
 ments. The diarist was at pains to set down, for example, 
 the figures of the divisions which took place on the principal 
 questions debated, and thus not only to supply us with par- 
 ticulars of the first recorded divisions of the Irish House of 
 
 ^ Hooker, who was an uncle of the eminent theologian, Judicious Hooker, 
 had come to Ireland in connexion with Sir Peter Carew's litigation about his 
 Irish estates. 
 
 " See Appendix C. 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 211 
 
 Commons, but to give us some insight into the state of parties 
 at the time. Hooker also throws valuable light upon the 
 functions discharged by the judges in relation to the deliber- 
 ations of Parliament. It is noteworthy that in Sidney's 
 Parliament, as in that of which Sir John Davis was Speaker 
 nearly half a century later, much of the time of the House 
 was devoted to the discussion of constitutional issues, such 
 as the validity of the sheriff's returns to the writs of summons, 
 and the title of certain members to be returned to Parliament. 
 It was in respect of this topic that the opinion of the judges 
 was required ; and it is noticeable that the matter having 
 been referred to the judges' decision, the House declined to 
 accept the account of their judgment returned by the Lord 
 Deputy through the Speaker. Even when the Attorney- 
 General came down to the House with a like announcement 
 of its purport, the majority were still dissatisfied, and required 
 the presence of the judges themselves, who were accordingly 
 obliged to appear and declare their opinions in person. 
 
 But by far the most important result of an analysis of the 
 constitutional history of Ireland as disclosed in such frag- 
 mentary notices of the Tudor Parliament as have come down 
 to us is the conclusion it enables us to reach as to the true 
 origin of the remarkable enactment known as Poynings' Law, 
 the circumstances which led to the introduction of that measure, 
 and the motives which induced the Irish Parliament not 
 merely to acquiesce in its adoption, but to insist on its reten- 
 tion in the Statute Book. Paradoxical as it may appear, it 
 is nevertheless the case that this celebrated measure, which 
 is commonly adverted to as the first attempt of the English 
 governors of Ireland to shackle the independence of its Parlia- 
 ment, really originated in the desire of that Parliament to 
 limit the authority of the Deputies appointed by the Crown. 
 And not only was this so in relation to the origin of the 
 measure, but it remained the view of its object and effect 
 which continued to be held for many generations and in 
 successive Parliaments by the national party in the Irish 
 legislature. It is worth while to consider the course of events, 
 both as regards the original inception of Poynings' Law and 
 
 p2 
 
212 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 its subsequent operation, in the light of the information which 
 the State Papers and other recently discovered evidence have 
 made available. 
 
 The immediate occasion of the limitation which was placed 
 by Poynings' Act on the power of the Irish executive to 
 initiate legislation is to be found in the dissatisfaction engen- 
 dered in Ireland by the manner in which the Deputies of the 
 later Plantagenet sovereigns had exercised the powers previously 
 vested in them. From the accession of Edward the Fourth 
 — that is, for more than a generation prior to the government 
 of Sir Edward Poynings — none of the eminent personages 
 nominated to the great office of Lord Lieutenant had person- 
 ally visited the seat of their government. Power had fallen 
 into the hands of the Deputies to whom the executive authority 
 was confided ; and these Deputies had been exclusively 
 chosen either from the heads of the Irish nobility of the Pale 
 and its environs, or from the higher ecclesiastics. The govern- 
 ment was thus in exclusively Irish hands, and the nominal 
 authority in England made no attempt to control the action 
 of its subordinates. But, as has often happened since, the 
 surrender of English power to Irish instruments was far from 
 giving universal satisfaction in Ireland. Each new Deputy 
 had his own axe to grind, and he usually sharpened it at the 
 expense of his personal enemies. The history of Ireland 
 under the sovereigns of the House of York, as disclosed in 
 the unpublished statutes, is in a great degree the story of 
 the rivalry between the great Houses of Butler and FitzGerald, 
 varied only by the occasionally successful assertion of the 
 ambition of such lesser lords of the Pale as the heads of the 
 Barnewall family. The statutes of Edward the Fourth offer con- 
 clusive evidence of the extent to which the Earls of Kildare 
 during the period of their practically uncontrolled rule utilised 
 Parliament for purely personal objects and made it the 
 instrument of family aggrandisement. Accordingly, after 
 the troublesome experience of the Simnel business, and the 
 crowning of ' the ladde,' as one of the Irish statutes terms 
 the impostor, had obliged the English sovereign to turn his 
 attention to Ireland, and take measures to depress the power of 
 
IRISH PAELIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 213 
 
 the adherents of the House of York in that country, the ministers 
 of Henry the Seventh had no difficulty in procuring the consent of 
 the Irish Parliament to a law which would deprive future Depu- 
 ties of the power of initiating legislation on their own account. 
 Not the least curious feature in the history of the subse- 
 quent operation of Poynings' Law is the great inconvenience 
 which it occasioned to the English Government and its corre- 
 sponding popularity with the anti-English element in the Irish 
 legislature. A law which rendered it impossible to propose 
 legislation until its provisions had first been communicated 
 to the English Government was manifestly likely to hamper 
 administration ; and this was quickly found to be its effect. 
 The Deputies of Henry the Eighth had of course no difficulty in 
 arranging the preliminaries of Parliamentary business, and 
 in submitting to the English ministers the legislation which in 
 the first instance they proposed to introduce in Parliament. 
 But it was otherwise with measures of urgent necessity, 
 arising out of unforeseen circumstances. At a time when cross- 
 channel communications were slow, tedious, and uncertain, 
 and when the interchange of dispatches between Dublin and 
 London might occupy a month, the necessity for certifying 
 every item of a proposed new enactment to the English Privy 
 Council before submitting it to the Dublin Parliament was 
 extremely irksome to the executive. Accordingly, it is not 
 surprising to find that when in 1533 it became necessary to 
 call the first of Henry the Eighth's Irish Parliaments, the very 
 first preoccupation of ministers was to devise measures for 
 modifying Poynings' Law. A communication addressed by 
 Audeley, the English Chancellor, to Thomas Cromwell, shows 
 clearly that ministers had to count with strong Irish opposition 
 to any attempt to ignore Poynings' legislation. ' I have seen,' 
 Audeley said, ' the Act made in Ireland in Poynings' time. 
 I do not take that Act as they take it in Ireland ; neverthe- 
 less ... I have made a short Act that this Parliament and 
 everything to be done by authority thereof, shall be good 
 and effectual, the said Act made in Poynings' time, or any 
 other Act or usage of the land of Ireland notwithstanding.' ^ 
 
 ' State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 440. 
 
214 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 A measure of this scope was accordingly passed by the Irish 
 ParHament i providing that the Acts of Lord Leonard Gray's 
 Parhament should be valid, Poynings' Act notwithstanding. 
 But that this was intended by the Parliament which passed 
 it to be no more than a temporary and limited dispensation, 
 is shown by the fact that the statute, though applicable to 
 legislation required for ' the king's honour, the increase of 
 his Grace's revenues and profits, and the commonweal of the 
 land and dominion of Ireland,' did not sanction legislation 
 relating to private property, or to corporate bodies. Even 
 as so limited the dispensing statute was very unpopular in 
 Ireland, and attempts which were made to restrict its operation 
 still further had to be dealt with by a further Act, declaratory 
 of the true intent of the statute. 
 
 The legislation of 1533 seems to have sufficed for the re- 
 mainder of Henry the Eighth's reign, and no difficulty appears 
 to have arisen as to the true construction of Poynings' Act in 
 the Parliament of 1541. But in 1557 the Earl of Sussex, who 
 held the sole Parliament called in Ireland during Mary's reign, 
 found himself confronted with the same difficulties which had 
 embarrassed the advisers of Lord Leonard Gray. An Act 
 which that Deputy was obliged to bring forward ' declaring 
 how Poynings' Act shall be expounded and taken ' 2 shows 
 in its terms the exact nature of the practical difficulty involved 
 in a strict adherence to the statute of Henry the Seventh and 
 the expedient adopted to cure it. ' Forasmuch,' it recites, * as 
 many events and occasions may happen during the time of 
 the Parliament, the which shall be thought meet and necessary 
 to be provided for, and yet at or before the time of the summon- 
 ing of the Parliament, was not thought nor agreed upon.' 
 Yet Sussex did no more than provide for the extension of 
 Poynings' Act to legislation formulated during the session of 
 Parliament. He made no attempt to suspend the operation 
 of the law itself, as the Act of 1533 had done ; and in the first 
 Parhament of Ehzabeth, held while Sussex was still Deputy, 
 though many important measures were submitted, no attempt 
 
 1 Statute 28 Henry VIII, cap. iv. 
 
 - Statute 3 and 4 Philip and Mary, cap. 4. 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 215 
 
 was made to infringe or limit what was deemed to be the 
 secure charter of the ParKamentary Hberties of Ireland. 
 
 Of the views of the Irish Parliaments of Henry the Eighth 
 and Mary in reference to the amendments of Poynings' Act, 
 the indications, though clear enough, are mainly those which the 
 terms of the amending measures themselves supply. But in 
 the case of the Parliament of Sir Henry Sidney, called in 1568, 
 we have the accompaniment of the evidence furnished by 
 Hooker in the narrative and diary already referred to, and 
 by several letters and dispatches which survive in the State 
 Papers of Elizabeth. Although this Parliament did not meet 
 till the close of the year 1568-69, it had been intended that it 
 should have met three years earlier, and authority had been 
 given to the Lord Deputy to summon it, notwithstanding 
 that Elizabeth was herself averse from calling it. Sidney, 
 however, was desirous on financial grounds of calling Parlia- 
 ment together, and wrote requiring the royal sanction. In 
 giving it the Queen used language which, having regard to 
 the subsequent course of events, is not a little remarkable. 
 She relied on the provisions of Poynings' Act to safeguard 
 the Crown from reckless legislation. 
 
 ' Whereas,' she wrote, ' we understand you are desirous to have 
 authority to call a Parliament, the rather for the receiving of our 
 subsidy there . . . before we assented thereunto we could have 
 been contented to have had advertisement from you what other 
 matters you thought most meet to be commended in the same for 
 the benefit of our service. For, except the same might appear 
 very necessary, we have small disposition to assent to any ParUa- 
 ment. Nevertheless when we call to remembrance the ancient 
 manner of that our realm, that no manner of thing ought to be 
 commended or treated upon, but such as we shall first understand 
 from you, and consent thereunto ourself, and consequently return 
 the same under our great seal of this our realm of England, we are 
 the better minded to assent to this your request. And I authorise 
 you to devise with our council there only of such things as may 
 appear beneficial for us and that our realm.' i 
 
 ' Calendar of State. Papers (Ireland), 1509-73, p. 324, Elizabeth to Lord 
 Deputy Sidney, January 16, 1567, 
 
216 ESSAYS EELATINQ TO lEELAND 
 
 But though this language not only has the true touch of 
 Tudor absolutism, but shows that Elizabeth's view of the effect 
 of Poynings' Act was the modern one, it is evident that 
 Sidney's knowledge of the practical difficulties in enforcing 
 it disposed him to take the course which had commended 
 itself to his predecessors, Gray, St. Leger, and Sussex. He 
 refrained from using the authority thus given him, preferring 
 to suspend the law of Poynings, and to rely for the prevention 
 of any untoward consequences and the safeguarding of English 
 interests upon the presence of a large number of English 
 members who should be nominated to sit in the Irish House 
 of Commons for such boroughs as were in the control of the 
 Crown. Accordingly, when, two years after the authority to 
 hold a Parliament had been granted by Elizabeth, Parliament 
 was actually summoned, the Deputy, so far from acting in 
 the manner desired by Elizabeth, caused a bill for the repeal 
 of Poynings' Act to be submitted as the first measure of the 
 Government, and as the preliminary to the initiation of such 
 other measures as the Viceroy and the Irish Privy Council 
 had resolved to introduce. But he quickly found that the state 
 of feeling in the House of Commons remained exactly what it 
 had been shown to be in the Parliaments of Henry the Eighth 
 and Mary ; and that Irish opinion still looked to the law of 
 Poynings as the one effective weapon of defence against 
 unpopular measures. In spite, therefore, of the presence in 
 the Dublin Parliament of the numerous English members who 
 had been returned in the Government interest, Sidney's bill 
 to enable the Parliament to deal with measures ' concerning 
 the government of the Commonwealth and the augmentation 
 of Her Majesty's revenues ' met with an extremely hostile 
 reception. For when after three or four days' wrangling over 
 the validity of the return of the English members — who were 
 objected to as non-resident in their constituencies — during 
 which, according to the account of an eye-witness, ' the lower 
 house was very disquiet . . . and in some disorder,' i the 
 House of Commons proceeded to discuss the bill, the Irish 
 Opposition not only proved unexpectedly formidable, but 
 
 ' Holinshed, vol. vi. p. 343. 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 217 
 
 increased at every day's sitting in Parliamentary strength till 
 finally it proved to be in a majority. 
 
 From Hooker's Diary it appears that the bill passed its 
 first reading without a division, that on its second reading 
 there were ' of the one part forty for the negative, and of the 
 other fifty English for the afiirmative,' but that on the third 
 reading ' the said byll of poyninges being redd the third tyme 
 was miche debated and dyscoursed but at lengthe overthrowen, 
 for the polls of thenglysche were forty-four, and of the irishe 
 forty-eight.' Lord Chancellor Weston thus reports to Cecil 
 what was evidently deemed by Sir Henry Sidney and his Irish 
 advisers a great Parliamentary catastrophe : 
 
 ' The first bill that was read was touching the suspending of 
 Poynings' Act ; a good and profitable bill, and worthy of much 
 favour ; and so we thought it would have found. But it was 
 handled as things are used to be that fall into angry men's hands : 
 without good advice and consideration it was with great earnestness 
 and stomach overthrown and dashed.' i 
 
 Inconvenient as this rebuff must have been to ministers, 
 it soon appeared that a rigid insistence on the letter of the 
 law on the part of the Irish House of Commons would involve 
 an almost complete paralysis of its legislative functions, unless 
 the Parliament were prepared to accept without the alteration 
 of a syllable the measures which had been approved by the 
 English Privy Council. For it was ruled by the judges that 
 no amendments would be in order, since measures altered in 
 Ireland could no longer be deemed to have been approved 
 in England ; and consequently that nothing was open to 
 the Dublin legislature but the acceptance or rejection of the 
 Government bills as drafted. Faced with the alternative of 
 being thus reduced to a position of legislative impotence, the 
 Commons gave way, and Parliament having been formally 
 prorogued to enable the rejected bill to be reintroduced in a 
 fresh session, the measure was passed through all its stages 
 in a single day. Hooker's Diary accordingly contains the 
 
 ' Letter of Lord Chancellor Weston to Cecil, dated February 17, 1569, 
 State Papers (Ireland), vol. 27, No. 25, 
 
218 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 triumphant entry : ' Item on moneday the 21 of february 
 the parhament assembled and that day the act for the repeale 
 of ponynges act was passed and then the parlament proroged 
 tyll the wenesday.' 
 
 But though thus driven to consent to the suspension of 
 the Act, the Irish Parhament took effective measures to insist 
 upon the principle underlying Poynings' Law, and to mark 
 their belief in its importance as a security against the abuse 
 of viceregal power they passed an Act ' that there be no bill 
 certified into England for the repeal or suspending of the 
 statute passed in Poynings' time before the same bill be first 
 agreed on in a session of a Parliament holden in this realm 
 by the greater number of the lords and commons.' i The 
 position thus taken up by the Irish legislature with reference 
 to Poynings' Act, and the determination not to permit any 
 relaxation of its provisions, was still more strongly emphasised 
 when in the last Parliament of Elizabeth — that called by Sir 
 John Perrot in 1585 — a bill was introduced for the total 
 repeal of this statute. It was pointed out by ministers that 
 the effect of the original Act, coupled with the further measure 
 of 16th Elizabeth, was that Parliament was ' shut up and 
 forbidden to make any law or statute unless the same be first 
 certified into England.' Yet though the Deputy in proposing 
 the repeal intimated his readiness to confer with Parliament 
 touching the heads of any legislation proposed to be brought 
 in, the measure was rejected by the House of Commons by 
 the large majority of thirty-five.^ And even when Perrot, 
 following Sidney's precedent, prorogued Parliament and sub- 
 mitted the bill in a second session, his proposals were again 
 rejected. It is a somewhat curious circumstance that the 
 earliest divisions of the Irish House of Commons of which 
 there is any record should be those in which successive Parlia- 
 ments of the sixteenth century declined on patriotic grounds to 
 abrogate the very statute the repeal of which was to become the 
 greatest triumph of Irish patriotism in the eighteenth century. 
 
 1 Statute 11 Elizabeth, c. 8, s. 3. 
 
 2 Letter dated May 27, 1585, from Sir Nicholas White, Master of the Rolls 
 in Ireland, to Burghley, State Papers {Ireland), vol. 116, No. 56, 
 
IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ANTIQUITIES 219 
 
 It is plain from this analysis of the dealings of the Tudor 
 Parliaments with Poynings' Law that the view commonly 
 entertained of the famous legislation of Henry the Seventh is in 
 a great degree erroneous. It would, of course, be only a very 
 perverse reading of the facts which would find in the Irish 
 support of Poynings' proposal a proof that its author had 
 no intention to fetter the independence of the legislature, or 
 which would attempt to deny either that it was capable of 
 being used for that purpose, or that the long-accepted view of 
 its ultimate operation was a correct appreciation of its legal 
 and practical effect. Whatever the motives which induced 
 the Irish element in the Dublin Parliament to assent to the 
 measure, it remains true that, in Hallam's language, ' by 
 securing the initiative power to the English Council, a bridle 
 was placed in the mouth of every Irish Parliament ' ; and 
 this, as we have seen, was Elizabeth's own view of the Act. 
 The Irish Parliament, as Lecky puts it,i was undoubtedly 
 * absolutely precluded from originating any legislative measures, 
 and its sole power was that of accepting or rejecting such 
 measures as were laid before it under the sanction of the 
 Great Seal of England.' But what is not less certain than all 
 this is, not only that the bridle was placed in the mouth of 
 the Irish legislature with its own assent, but that it was so 
 placed by its own desire, and that the Irish Parliament long 
 and strenuously resisted its removal. It is clear that, however 
 true it be that Henry the Seventh's advisers had their own 
 reasons, which were pretty certainly not exclusively Irish reasons, 
 for proposing this legislation, there were strong inducements, 
 of a purely Irish and patriotic kind, to lead Irishmen not 
 merely to acquiesce in but to desire it. If it be true that, 
 as the late Dr. Eichey put it,^ ' this, the most disgraceful Act 
 ever passed by an independent legislature . . . bound future 
 Irish Parliaments for three hundred years,' it is equally certain 
 that the same writer's assertion that the measure was ' wrung 
 from the local assembly of the Pale ' is a very great exaggera- 
 tion of the facts. For, as has been shown, it is abundantly 
 
 ' History of England in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd edition, vol. iv. p. 358. 
 * Short History of the Irish People, p. 232. 
 
220 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 proved that for at least one of those three centuries the 
 powerful and sufficient obstacle to the repeal of the disabling 
 Act was the opposition, repeatedly offered and as often 
 vehemently expressed, of the representatives of the patriotic 
 interest in the Irish Parliament, 
 
APPENDICES 
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 The Succession of the Speakers op the Irish House of 
 Commons, with Biographical Notices of the early 
 Speakers 
 
 In no publication is there any list of the Speakers of the Irish House 
 of Commons. Lascelles' 'Liber Munerum Publicorum Hibernise,' 
 to which one naturally turns for such a record, does not, of course, 
 include any record of an office which does not derive directly from the 
 Crown. And that useful compilation, Haydn's ' Book of Dignities,' 
 will also be consulted in vain for a succession of the Irish Speakers. 
 From the Stuart period onwards the names can be collected without 
 much trouble from the Commons Journals ; but prior to that time 
 there is no source of information except the State Papers, and one 
 or two chance references in contemporary histories. From these 
 sources the names of the early Speakers in the following list, of each 
 of whom a brief account is appended, have been taken. 
 
 During the period for which the succession is complete, from the 
 year 1541 to 1800, there were in all twenty-five elections to the Chair 
 of the House of Commons ; but as several Speakers held office in 
 more than one Parliament, the roll of actual Speakers includes no 
 more than eighteen names. Of these the first thirteen were members 
 of the legal profession. This was in accordance with the early 
 precedents in the English Parliament, where the practice of choosing 
 a lawyer for the Chair doubtless originated in the duty formerly cast 
 upon the Speakers of expounding to the House of Commons the 
 purport of the measures laid before it, and the consequent desirabihty 
 of some legal training in the persons charged with such a task. 
 The invariable choice of a lawyer had perhaps a further justification 
 by analogy to the practice of the House of Lords, of which the Lord 
 
 221 
 
222 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Chancellor was the immemorial Speaker. In times when, as already 
 noted, the championship of the royal prerogative seems to have been 
 one of the primary functions of the Speaker, it became habitual 
 to select not merely a member of the legal profession, but one directly 
 connected with the Government, or, as we should now say, a law 
 officer. Thus of the Tudor and Stuart Speakers, four held the 
 office of Attorney-General, two that of Solicitor-General, and 
 two that of Prime Serjeant ; Sir Thomas Cusake had been a 
 Judge of the Common Pleas before his election to the Chair, 
 and Sir Nicholas Walsh was Chief Justice of the Presidency of 
 Munster and Second Justice of the Queen's Bench. There are 
 three examples of the selection of the Recorder of Dublin — those of 
 Stanihurst, Catelyn, and Forster ; and the last-named was also 
 Attorney-General at the same time. All three represented the city 
 of Dublin. From the reign of Henry the Eighth to that of Queen 
 Anne the legal tradition remained unbroken ; and although from 
 the accession of the House of Hanover to the Union there is no 
 example of the nomination of a Crown lawyer to the Chair, every 
 one of the eighteenth-century Speakers, with a single exception, 
 had been called to the Bar. The exception is eminently one of 
 those which prove the rule, since the case of Speaker Conolly, 
 who filled the Chair during the reign of George the First, is an 
 example which is unique in the ParUamentary history of the Three 
 Kingdoms, of the selection of the first Commoner from the ranks of 
 the solicitors' profession. 
 
 An examination of the careers of the legal Speakers subsequent 
 to their election to the Chair shows that the pursuit of politics as a 
 royal road to professional preferment is no very modern practice. 
 Many of them attained to the highest judicial emmence, and almost 
 all of them ultimately ascended the Bench. Three of them — Sir 
 Thomas Cusake, Sir Maurice Eustace, and Alan Brodrick — reached 
 the Woolsack, thus exchanging the Speakership of the House of 
 Commons for that of the House of Lords ; and the first-named was 
 also for a time Master of the Rolls. Three — Sir Nicholas Walsh, Sir 
 Richard Levinge, and John Forster — not Lord Oriel, but the Speaker 
 of Queen Anne's time — presided over the Court of Common Pleas ; 
 and one Speaker, Rochfort, became Lord Chief Baron.i To Stani- 
 hurst and Catelyn, who had earned, respectively, the favour of such 
 powerful Viceroys as Sidney and Strafford, the Speakership would 
 
 1 Rochfort was also named one of the three Commissioners of the Great 
 Seal in 1690. 
 
APPENDIX A 223 
 
 doubtless have proved no more than an episode in their legal careers, 
 had they Uved beyond middle age. But both of these Speakers died 
 prematurely. There is no need to dwell on the causes which inter- 
 fered with the further promotion of Sir Richard Nagle. The case 
 of Sirj^Audley Mervyn is a solitary example of the neglect of Govern- 
 ment to utiUse an opportunity of rewarding a Speaker. There 
 appears to have been abundant ground for this omission, if Mervyn 
 was justly suspected of a plot to overturn the Government. But 
 whether he was not promoted because he plotted against the 
 Government, or whether, as is not impossible, he plotted against 
 Government because he was not promoted, it is impossible now to 
 determine. 
 
 Speaker Stanihurst is the first Speaker of whose official utterances 
 any trace remains. As already mentioned. Campion has epitomised 
 his speech at the prorogation of the last Parhament over whose 
 deUberations he presided. Richard Stanihurst mentions three of 
 his father's speeches as existing in his time ; but these do not 
 appear to be anywhere extant. They may have perished among the 
 lost manuscripts of Stanihurst's distinguished grandson, Archbishop 
 James Ussher. Speaker Walsh's observations at the dissolution of 
 Perrot's Parliament are very fully summarised in the ' Irish State 
 Papers Calendar,' i and the remarkable speech of Sir John Davis 
 before Lord Deputy Chichester, which is, of course, a classic among 
 such utterances, has been more than once published. The speeches 
 of the later occupants of the Chair of the House of Commons are 
 noted in the Journals of that House. 
 
 The Succession op the Speakers of the Irish House 
 OF Commons 
 
 1449 John Chever, Master of the Rolls. 
 
 1541 Sir Thomas Cusake, Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 1557 James Stanihurst, Recorder of Dublin. 
 
 1560 James Stanihurst, again elected. 
 *1569 James Stanihurst, ,, „ 
 
 1585 Sir Nicholas Walsh, Chief Justice of Munster and Second 
 Justice of the Queen's Bench. 
 *1613 Sir John Davis, Attorney-General. 
 
 1634 Sir Nathaniel Catelyn, Recorder of Dublin. 
 
 1639 Sir Maurice Eustace, Prime Serjeant. 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers {Ireland), 1586-88, p. 55. 
 
224 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 1661 Sir Audley Mervyn,^ Prime Serjeant. 
 1689 Sir Richard Nagle, Attorney-General. 
 
 1692 Sir Richard Levinge, Solicitor-General. 
 
 1695 Robert Rochfort, Attorney-General. 
 
 1703 Alan Brodrick, Solicitor-General, 
 
 1710 Hon. John Forster, Recorder of DubUn and Attorney-General. 
 
 1713 Alan Brodrick.3 
 
 1715 WilUam ConoUy. 
 
 1727 William ConoUy, again elected. 
 
 1729 Sir Ralph Gore, Bart., Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 1733 Henry Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 1756 John Ponsonby, First Commissioner of Customs and Excise. 
 *1761 John Ponsonby, again elected. 
 
 1769 John Ponsonby, ,, „ 
 
 *1771 Edmund Sexton Pery, afterwards Viscount Pery. 
 *1776 Edmund Sexton Pery, again elected. 
 
 1783 Edmund Sexton Pery, ,, ,, 
 
 1785 John Foster, afterwards Lord Oriel. 
 *1790 John Foster, again elected. 
 
 1798 John Foster, „ 
 
 In the above list the office mentioned after the Speaker's name in 
 each case indicates an office held concurrently with the Speakership. 
 
 An asterisk prefixed to the date denotes a contested election to the 
 chair. The Speakers not so marked were elected nemine contradicente' 
 
 Biographical Notices of the early Speakers 
 John Chever 
 
 John Chever, who was twice elected to the Speaker's Chair, was 
 Master of the Rolls at that time, and is in all probability identical 
 
 1 During Sir Audley Mervyn's absence in England in 1661, Sir John Temple, 
 the Solicitor-General, was temporarily elected Speaker. 
 
 Temple was designed by the Duke of Ormond for the Speakership in the 
 intended Parliament of 1678, which, however, was never called, as appears by 
 a letter in the Ormonde papers at Kilkenny. 
 
 - Brodrick vacated the Chair on his appointment in 1710 to the position 
 of Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench. Being dismissed from that office by 
 Harley in the following year, he re-entered the House of Commons in 1713, 
 and was elected Speaker by a majority of four. Brodrick's re-election is 
 perhaps the first instance of the choice of a Speaker in opposition to the wishes 
 of the Court. 
 
APPENDIX A 225 
 
 with the John Chever who is mentioned in the ' Chartulary 
 of St. Mary's Abbey ' as having been Chief Justice of the Chief 
 Place in 1472.' He is probably also identical with the John 
 Chever mentioned in a document printed in the ' Council Book 
 of Richard IT,'- who is described in the year 1442 as of Lincoln's Inn, 
 and a brother of William Chever who was then Second Justice of the 
 King's Bench, and as concerned in the defence of James, fourth Earl 
 of Ormond, against charges of maladministration which had been 
 brought against that nobleman. Chief Justice Chever died in 1474 ; 
 and his will, dated June 4 of that year, has been printed in Arch- 
 bishop Tregury's Register of Dublin Wills, 1457-83,'' so carefully 
 edited by Dr. Berry. Besides legacies to John, sixth Earl of 
 Ormond, it contains bequests of masses for the soul of the testator, 
 and of James, fifth Earl of Ormond, who was Lord Lieutenant in 
 1453, which seem to indicate that Chever was a 'protege of the 
 latter nobleman, and probably owed his promotion to his influence. 
 
 Sir Thomas Cusake 
 
 Sir Thomas Cusake sprang from a stock which, though not en- 
 nobled, was among the most ancient families of the Pale — the 
 Cusacks of Cosyneston, or Cussington, in Meath. It had become 
 connected by marriage with more than one of the oldest houses of that 
 county, and had acquired so much property as justified Sir Anthony 
 St. Leger in describing the Speaker as ' a gentilman of the beste 
 possessions of any man of his degre within this your Inglisshe 
 paale.' ^ Cusake's mother appears to have been a Wesley, and 
 his daughter married Sir Henry Colley ; so that, if the pedigree 
 given by Sir Bernard Burke may be relied on, the Duke of 
 WeUington was directly descended from the first Speaker of the 
 Assembly of which Arthur Wellesley was one of the youngest and 
 latest members. 
 
 Nothing is known of Cusake's early professional career, but there 
 are many evidences of his success in attaining its prizes. In 1535 he 
 first received important preferment, being appointed a Judge of the 
 Common Pleas. But he held this office for a very short time, his 
 
 ' Chartularies of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, ii. p. 24. 
 " Roll Series, Appendix, p. 287. 
 
 * Register of Wills and Inventories of the Diocese of Dublin in the times of 
 Archbishops Tregury and Walton, 1457-1483 : edited, with Translation, Notes, 
 and Introduction, by Henry F. Berry, D.Litt., I.S.O., p. 146. 
 
 * State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. iii. pt. iii. p. 320. 
 
 Q 
 
226 ESSAYS EELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 patent being revoked on his nomination a year later to the Chancellor- 
 ship of the Exchequer. His tenure of that office in 1536-37 renders 
 it certain that Cusake was a member of the House of Commons in 
 Lord Leonard Gray's Parliament ; and it is highly probable, though 
 the fact cannot be demonstrated, that he had his first experience of 
 the Speakership in that Parliament. Cusake's election to the Chair 
 in St. Leger's ParUament took place on June 18, 1541, immediately 
 after the formal opening of the session by the Deputy. We have no 
 record of his conduct in the Chair ; but at the end of his first session 
 he was dispatched to England to report its proceedings to Henry the 
 Eighth, St. Leger commending him to his sovereign as ' Speaker of 
 your ParUament here, who hathe taken greate paynes in setting forth 
 of your Highnes causis.' ^ That he acquitted himself on this mission 
 to the satisfaction of the King and his advisers appears by the 
 encomium passed upon him in Henry's letter to the Deputy, in which 
 the Speaker, who was charged with the bringing over of the Acts 
 approved of by the English Privy Council for submission at the next 
 session of ParUament, is commended as ' a man of wit, servyce and 
 good actyvyte, and afieccion to travail in our afEayres for the benefyte 
 of the lande.' In token of this good opinion, the Deputy was notified 
 of the royal pleasure that ' immediately after his cummyng home ' 
 he should ' swere hym of our Pryvye Counsail there, and so use his 
 advise in all occurrentes accordingly.' - 
 
 In June 1542, on the elevation of Sir John Alen to the Woolsack, 
 Cusake became Master of the Rolls. It does not appear whether his 
 appointment to this office interrupted his discharge of his ParUa- 
 mentary duties ; but as the Mastership of the Rolls in Ireland at 
 this time, and long subsequently, did not involve the discharge of 
 judicial functions, he probably retained his seat in the House of 
 Commons, and continued to preside over its deUberations. Cusake 
 continued in this post for eight or nine years, until in 1551 he in 
 turn succeeded to the Chancellorship. In 1550 he was temporarily 
 appointed to the custody of the Great Seal, in the absence of Sir John 
 Alen, and a year later was confirmed in his office. The patent 
 appointing him recites the King's approval of ' the wisdom, learning, 
 good experience, and grave behaviour ' exhibited by Cusake. 
 
 Cusake's elevation to the ChanceUorship took place in the third 
 year of Edward the Sixth's reign, and was doubtless the reward 
 of his devotion to Reformation principles. He had asserted his 
 
 1 State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. iii. pt. iii. p. 320. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 334. 
 
APPENDIX A 227 
 
 allegiance to Henry the Eighth's views of the ecclesiastical supremacy 
 of the Crown in his address to the Deputy on his appointment as 
 Speaker ; and on the dissolution of the monasteries the Abbey of 
 LismuUen had been assigned to him. Under Henry's successor the 
 Chancellor became a principal pillar of the Reformation in Ireland, 
 and in 1552 was nominated a Lord Justice in the absence of the 
 Deputy. In this capacity he became in effect the principal governor 
 of Ireland for the remainder of the reign. On May 8, 1552, he 
 dispatched to the Duke of Northumberland a ' boke of the present 
 state of Ireland,' containing a minute account of the condition of 
 Ireland. This important State Paper, which has been printed in the 
 ' Calendar of Irish State Papers,' ' gives us perhaps the best account 
 extant of the state of the provinces and the disposition of the septs 
 during Edward's reign. More than one copy was made of it ; 
 and being known to Sir James Ware, it earned for its author the 
 distinction of being included among that great antiquary's ' Writers 
 of Ireland.' 
 
 On the accession of Mary, Cusake was for a time continued in the 
 Chancellorship. But he had been too closely identified with the 
 poHcy of Edward the Sixth's advisers to be suffered to remain in 
 power ; and in 1555 he had to give place to Sir WilUam Fitzwilliam. 
 Being then stripped of judicial office, Cusake resumed his Parliamen- 
 tary career, and in the two ParUaments of Sussex, in 1557 and 
 1559-60, was again a member of the House of Commons. In the 
 latter he was returned for Athenry, and appears to have been thought 
 of as a possible Speaker by Sussex, though Stanihurst was in the end 
 preferred to him.- It is curious that, though he survived until 
 1571, and was much employed in Elizabeth's reign under the 
 Governments of Sussex and Sidney, Cusake never again received 
 legal preferment. Archbishop Curwen, who succeeded Fitzwilliam 
 after a few months, retained the Chancellorship after Mary's death ; 
 and although, in view of the Archbishop's expected death or resigna- 
 tion in 1563, Cusake was designated as Lord Chancellor, on the 
 recommendation of Sussex, yet when the vacancy actually occurred 
 three years later his claims were overlooked by Sidney, who 
 
 ' 1509-73, p. 126. 
 
 2 See a document printed in the Hatfield Papers, part iii. p. 459, in which 
 it is stated by the writer that ' Cusack or Stanhurst will be fit to be speaker.' 
 This document, which is conjecturally dated by the editor of the Calendar, 
 1589, manifestly belongs to 1559, and was written by Sussex in view of the 
 approaching session of Parliament. From its mention of Scurlocke as Attorney- 
 General, the document cannot be of later date than 1559, since Scurlocke died 
 in that year. 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 appointed Robert Weston. The ex-Chancellor remained, however, 
 an active member of the Irish Privy Council, undertaking several 
 expeditions through the country, and reporting his observations to 
 England. He frequently corresponded with Cecil, to whom he wrote 
 in 1566 that his services in Munster would not be forgotten for a 
 hundred years.^ Cusake died at his seat of Lismullen on April 1, 
 1571, and was buried in the parish church of Tryvett, Co. Meath. 
 His son Robert became in 1560 a Baron of the Exchequer, but died 
 before his father in 1570. 
 
 Some account of Cusake is given in the ' Dictionary of National 
 Biography' (vol. xiii. p. 355), where his birth year is stated as 1490, 
 for which no authority is given, but without any mention of his having 
 been Speaker. A very full biography of him, in which his Uneage 
 and antecedents are minutely traced, appears in O'Flanagan's 
 'Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland ' (vol. i. pp. 207-37). The 
 State Papers of Henry the Eighth contain very numerous references to 
 Cusake ; and he is also frequently mentioned in the general ' Calendar 
 of Irish State Papers.' 
 
 James Stanihurst 
 
 In contrast to his predecessor in the Chair of the House of 
 Commons, Stanihurst belonged to a family long settled in the city of 
 Dublin, and closely associated with the commerce of the Irish capital. 
 Both the father of the Speaker, Nicholas, and his grandfather, 
 Richard Stanihurst, held the office of Mayor of Dublin, the latter in 
 1489, and the former in 1542. Nicholas Stanihurst is described in 
 the Ust of churchwardens of St. Werburgh's, Dublin, as a public 
 notary ; but he seems to have dabbled in medicine, and is counted 
 by Ware in his Ust of Irish writers as the author of a Latin treatise 
 entitled ' Dieta Medicorum.' One John Stanihurst, who was Arch- 
 deacon of Kells early in the fifteenth century, was probably of the 
 same family. 
 
 The connexion of his father and family with the city was the 
 means of procuring for Stanihurst his first professional advancement. 
 He was little more than thirty, and cannot have been many years at 
 the Bar, when, in 1554, he was appointed to act as deputy during 
 the illness of the Recorder of Dublin, Thomas FitzSimon, with the 
 reversion of the office so soon as it should become actually vacant. 
 A few months later, on the death of FitzSimon, he was formally 
 J Calendar of State Papers (Ireland), 1509-73, p. 296. 
 
APPENDIX A 229 
 
 appointed Kecorder.' It was, perhaps, fortunate for Stanihurst that 
 the tenure given him was for life, for it would appear from the action 
 of the city assembly when appointing his successor that his absorption 
 in pohtical and other affairs was somewhat resented. This can 
 hardly be deemed surprising, since within a few years, as appears 
 from various Fiants, Stanihurst was appointed successively to the 
 positions of Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, Seneschal of Esker, 
 Master in Chancery, Customer of Dublin, and General Escheator. 
 His successor in the office of Recorder was, therefore, appointed 
 only ' durynge the good wyll and pleasure of the assemblye ' ; was 
 required to ' be resydent and keape his contynuall dwellinge within 
 the lymyttes and fraunches ' of the city ; and was enjoined not to 
 ' receave office of the prynce, ne yearelye fee or annuytie.' ^ 
 
 It was within three years of his appointment to the Recordership 
 that Stanihurst was first returned to Parliament, where he represented 
 the city with which he was so closely identified. Of his first election 
 to the Parliament of Philip and Mary, called by Sussex in 1557, 
 there is no record. Nor have we any account of the circumstance of 
 his election to the Chair of the House of Commons, for which not 
 merely his legal training, but his association with Dublin, the long 
 connexion of his family with its neighbourhood, and his consequent 
 acquaintance with the principal members from the Pale, doubtless 
 rendered him an appropriate choice. It is curious to find that 
 concurrently with the Speakership Stanihurst also held, in the three 
 Parliaments of 1557, 1559, and 1568, the office of Clerk of the 
 
 ^ The terms of the Recorder's oath of office are given in Gilbert's Dvblin 
 Corporation Records, vol. i. p. 250, from the Dublin Chain Book, and are worth 
 reproducing : — 
 
 ' The oath yeven by Mr. Patrick Sarsfeld, Maior of this cittye of DubUn, 
 unto James Stanyhurst, the Recorder of the said cittye, the xviiith daye of 
 January, in the first and second yeres of the reignes of our soverain lord King 
 Philhp, and of our soverain lady Queen Mary : 
 
 ' First you shall sweare to be faithful! and true unto our soveraigne lord, 
 the King, and to our soverain lady, the Queen, King and Queen of England, 
 France and Ireland, their heirs and successours for evermore. You shall geve 
 your faithfull and true counsaill unto the Maior of this cittye for the tyme 
 beinge, as a Recorder should doe, and shall at all tymes annswer hym for 
 counsaill without lawful impediment. You shall justly and truely minister 
 justice unto all the King's and Queen's subjects that shall have to doe before 
 you, and in right and true manner execute all and singular things appertaining 
 and belonging to the office of Recorder of this cittye. These and all other 
 things for the King's majestie and Queene's weale, and the weale of this cittie, 
 to your power you shall keape, doo and execute. Soe God you helpe, and by 
 the holy contents of this book.' 
 
 - Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 85, 86. 
 
230 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Parliaments in the Upper House — a position which his father had 
 filled in St. Leger's Parliament of 1541. Unless the two Houses sat 
 on separate days, it is plain that Stanihurst can only have dis- 
 charged the duties of this office through a deputy. 
 
 Stanihurst died in Dubhn on December 27, 1573, in his fifty-first 
 year. His will, dated a week earlier, is in the Dublin Record Office. 
 His son, Richard Stanihurst, the well-known translator of Virgil, and 
 author of the Description of Ireland in Holinshed, who is the chief 
 authority for the facts of the Speaker's career, states that he ' wrote 
 in English the three " orations " which it fell to his lot as Speaker 
 to address to the Lords Deputies Sussex and Sidney.' From the 
 son's language it is to be inferred that these survived the Speaker, 
 either in print or manuscript ; but except for Campion's report 
 of the last of them in his History, they have not come down to us. 
 Richard Stanihurst's references to his father are couched in 
 a strain of afiectionate admiration ; and the Latin verses he 
 composed in his honour will be found in his ' Description of 
 Ireland.' 
 
 It would appear, too, from the few independent references to him 
 which survive, that the Speaker's was a very interesting personality. 
 Campion's remarks, too, are couched in a strain which indicates that 
 that very able writer was greatly impressed with the abiUty and 
 character of the Speaker, in whose house in Dublin the author of 
 the History of Ireland for a time resided. In acknowledging the 
 assistance he received from the Speaker in writing his History, 
 Campion dwells with evident affection on Stanihurst's character : — 
 ' Notwithstanding as naked and simple as it [Campion's narrative] 
 is, it could never have grown to any proportion in such post-haste, 
 except I had entered into such famihar societie, and day lie table- 
 talke with the worshipfull esquire James Stanihurst, Recorder of 
 Dublin. Who besides all curtesie of hospitaUtie, and a thousand 
 loving turnes not here to be recited, both by word and written 
 monuments, and by the benefit of his owne Library nourished 
 most effectually mine endeavour.' According to his son, Stanihurst, 
 besides being learned in the business of his profession, was 
 ' a good orator and a proper divine.' His claim to the former 
 character is vindicated by his official addresses as Speaker. Two 
 specimens of his writings remain to testify to the extent of his 
 theological learning. But the title of a lost Latin work, ' Piae 
 Orationes,' and his correspondence with O'Heirnan, Dean of Cork, 
 whom Ware describes as a learned divine, suggest that this erudite 
 
APPENDIX A 231 
 
 Speaker was an appropriate ancestor to the great Archbishop 
 Ussher. A short account of Speaker Stanihurst is prefixed to the 
 notice of his better-known son, Richard, in the ' Dictionary of 
 National Biography ' (vol. liv. p. 89). 
 
 Sir Nicholas Walsh 
 
 Of the Speaker of Perrot's Parliament much less is known than 
 of either of his predecessors in the Chair of the House of Commons. 
 No particulars of a personal kind seem to be now recoverable con- 
 cerning his career ; and it does not appear whether he was related 
 to an eminent namesake who became Bishop of Ossory in 1577, and 
 who was murdered at Kilkenny in 1585, Nicholas Walsh was, 
 however, eminently successful in the pursuit of the legal profession, 
 in which he held successively a number of important offices. His 
 first judicial position was that of Second Justice of the Presidency 
 Court of Munster, to which he was appointed in 1571, during Sir 
 John Perrot's administration of that province. Five years later 
 he was raised to the Chief Justiceship of the same Court. In 
 1585 he was nominated Second Justice of the King's Bench, Three 
 years later he was sworn of the Irish Privy Council, The Queen's 
 letter directing his appointment states that ' Nicholas Walsh, having 
 been here in this realm about such suits and causes as concerned his 
 private estate, now departs hence with our good favour, for that we 
 are not ignorant how long and faithfully he hath served us as our 
 Chief Justice of Munster, and now Ukewise in the second Justiceship 
 of our bench at Dublin.' But, though the letter does not mention it, 
 the Privy Councillorship must have been intended mainly as the 
 reward of Walsh's services as Speaker in 1585-86 ; for in that 
 capacity, as the tone of his ' oration ' at the dissolution of Perrot's 
 ParUament indicates, he had shown his allegiance to the Tudor 
 view of the Speaker's ofl&ce, and had steadily vindicated the pre- 
 rogatives of the Crown, This speech is very fully summarised in the 
 ' Calendar of State Papers,' ' His ' dihgence in Parliament ' had, 
 however, been expressly recognised by a grant of £40 in lands. 
 Walsh doubtless owed his selection for the Chair by Perrot to the 
 acquaintance he had previously had with the Deputy when the 
 latter filled the office of President of Mimster ; and it may have 
 
 > Calendar of State Papers {Ireland), 1586-88, pp. 55-58, 
 
232 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 been with a view to this selection that Walsh was transferred to 
 the King's Bench the year before the meeting of Parliament. 
 
 In 1597 Walsh was appointed to the Chief Justiceship of the 
 Common Pleas, and held this office till his death. In the same 
 year he received the honour of knighthood through the Lord Justice, 
 Sir Thomas Norris. He appears to have been in the confidence of 
 Sir John Davis, and was frequently sent on special commissions to 
 Munster. His report on the circuit of 1606 to the Earl of SaUsbury 
 has been printed from the ' State Papers ' in the present writer's 
 ' Illustrations of Irish History and Topography,' p. 141. Walsh 
 died in DubUn in April 1615, His will, dated March 9, 1613, is at 
 the Record Office. 
 
APPENDIX B 
 
 List of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Irish 
 Parliament, 1568-69 i 
 
 The Names of all the Noble men as well Spiritual as Temporal, 
 
 which were summoned to appear at a parliament holden at 
 
 the City of DubHn within her Majesty's realm of Ireland 
 
 xvij° die Januarij Anno Dm 1568 et regni dne nfe Regine 
 
 Elizabeth undecimo. Sir Henry Sydney, knight of the 
 
 most noble order of the Garter, Lord President of Wales, 
 
 then Lord Deputy of the said Realm of Ireland. 
 
 The said Lord Deputy of Ireland sat under the Cloth [of] Estate 
 
 in his robes of crimson velvet, representing the Queen's Majesty's 
 
 most royal person. 
 
 Item, Robertus Weston, Legum Doctor ac Decanus eccfie 
 cathis Sci Patricij Dublyn, dns Cancellarius regni Hibernie, 
 Qui assidebat a dextris dicti dni deputati. 
 Item, Thomas Butler alias Beckett [sic] Comes Ormond et 
 Ossorye, vicecomes Thurles, magnus Thesaurarius Hibernie, 
 Qui assidebat in sinistris dicti dni deputati. 
 M" that these two lords sat severally above by themselves, one 
 either side of the said Lord Deputy, having their seats enrailed about, 
 and hanged or covered with green, and the said Lord Deputy had 
 steps or greeses made and covered for the seat of estate, being richly 
 hanged. 
 
 Archiepiscopi et Episcopi 
 
 Archiepiscopus Armachanen Metropolitanus et tocius Regni 
 Hibernie Primas 
 
 ^ The document is contained in a manuscript volume entitled The Book 
 of Heraldrye and other things, together with the Order of Coronacions, — Egerton 
 MS. (British Museum), 2642, No. 29 (fo. 282). 
 
 233 
 
234 
 
 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 Dns Arcliiepiscopus Dublyn 
 
 Dns Arcliiepiscopus Casshallencis 
 
 DiTs Arcliiepiscopus Tuameii Tomonen 
 
 Episcopus Midencis et Li 
 
 Episcopus Waterforden et Limoren 
 
 Epus Corkagen et Cloneii 
 
 Epus Ossoriensis et Kilkenencis 
 
 Epus Killdareii 
 
 Epus Elpliinencis 
 
 Epus Duanencis 
 
 Epus Rossen 
 
 Epus Clonforten 
 
 Epus Fernen 
 
 Epus Leiglinencis 
 
 Epus Aladeneii 
 
 Epus Duneri et Conneren als Connlen 
 
 Epus Arfertensis 
 
 Epus Limerecencis 
 
 Epus Ardachaden 
 
 Epus Dromoren 
 
 Epus Rapoten 
 
 Epus Cloghrensis 
 
 Epus Cluanen / 
 
 Archiepi et Epi xxiiij 
 
 Domini Tempoeales 
 
 Comes Kildarie Admirallus Hibernie 
 
 Comes Ormonde Thesaurarius Hibernie 
 
 Comes Desmonde 
 
 Comes Tyron 
 
 Comes Clanricard 
 
 Comes Tomond 
 
 Comes Clincarre 
 
 Vicecomes Barrye 
 
 Vicecomes Roche 
 
 Vicecomes Gormanston 
 
 Vicecomes Baltinglas 
 
 Vicecomes Mountgarret 
 
 Vicecomes Deyesses 
 
 Comites et Vicecomites 
 xiij 
 
APPENDIX B 235 
 
 Barones 
 
 Dominus de Kyrrey 
 
 Dominus Brymecliam de Atli*'^° 
 
 Dns de Athynrii ats Atlianrye 
 
 Dris Coursey dns de Kynsale 
 
 Dns Newgent Baron de Delven 
 
 Dns Flerayng Baro de Slane 
 
 Dns Plonckett Baro de Killyne 
 
 Dns de St. Lawrencio Baro de Hothe 
 
 Dns Barnewell Baro de Trymellston 
 
 Diis Plonckett Baro de Donsannye 
 
 Dns de Donganon 
 
 Dns de Donboyne 
 
 Dns Plonckett Baro de Lowthe 
 
 Dns de Kelleene 
 
 Dns Michellpatricke ais Barnaby Fitzpatricke Baro de Upper 
 
 Osserey 
 Dns Curraghmore 
 Dns Powre ais Powar 
 Dns de Cabyre 
 
 Dns obreyne Baro de Ibrecane 
 Dns Garrott Baro de Offalley 
 Dns Butler 
 Dns de Fermoye 
 
 SuMMA Baronum xxij° ' 
 
 M' tbat tbe Cbief Justices of tbe one Bench, and tbe other, the 
 Chief Baron, the Master of the Rolls, and the Queen's Majesty's 
 Attorney General and her Highness' SoUcitor, did sit altogether at a 
 table in the myddes of the parliament house. 
 
 1 Writing under date December 19, 1905, Mr. G. D. Burtchaell, Athlone 
 Pursuivant, says : ' It seems to me that Commaundre endeavoured to reproduce 
 from memory the official list which was, no doubt, as on previous and subse- 
 quent occasions, prepared by Ulster King of Arms. The Earls and Viscounts 
 are right enough, but Viscount " Deyesses' " Patent was not passed till Slst 
 January, a fortnight after Parliament met. This is, however, not of much 
 importance, as the Queen's letter was dated several months previously, and 
 his name may therefore have been entered as a Viscount on the Official Roll. 
 But the list of Barons is certainly not in accordance with any possible Official 
 Roll. There is no precedent for placing " Dominus de Kyrrey " first. The 
 next two on the list, " Dominus Brymecham de Ath'ye " and " Dns de Athynrii 
 als Athanrye," refer to one and the same person. " Dns de Dongaiion " is 
 
236 ESSAYS KELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 M~ that Mr. Stanhurst, Recorder of the city of Dublin, was 
 Speaker of the lower house, and did wear for his upper garment, 
 when the Lord Deputy sat in the higher house under the cloth of 
 estate, a scarlet gown ; and this Mr. Stanhurst was a very wise man, 
 and a good member of the Commonwealth of Ireland. 
 
 Hugh O'Neill, whose right to the Earldom of Tyrone had not at this date been 
 decided, so " Comes Tyron " among the Eark was an empty title with no 
 person representing it in this Parliament. " DrTs de Kelleene " must be the 
 same as "Di5 Plonckett Baro de Killyne" who appears higher up. " Dns 
 Curraghmore " and " Dns Powre ats Powar " are one and the same person. The 
 last four names on this list are peculiar : "Dns obreyne Baro de Ibrecane " was 
 the eldest son of the Earl of Thomond, and was not a peer. Possibly he 
 might have been summoned to Parliament in his father's Barony, but in the 
 absence of any evidence on this point, I do not think it likely. The next 
 name, however, there can be no doubt about. " Dns Garrott Baro de Offalley," 
 the eldest son of the Earl of Kildare, was then only nine years of age, so he 
 cannot have been summoned as a Baron. It was usual, however, for the 
 train of the Chief Governor on proceeding to Parliament (on subsequent 
 occasions) to be borne by the sons of Peers. I am therefore of opinion that 
 Lord Ibricken and Lord Offaly were present, or were summoned, to act 
 in that capacity. The last two names also probably refer to sons of Peers. 
 The Lord Butler, probably the eldest son of Viscount Mountgarret, and " Dns de 
 Fermoye," eldest son of Viscount Roche. Of course Viscounts' sons were not 
 known as " Lords," but Commaundre may be excused for not knowing this. 
 I may also observe in addition to the Earldom of Tyrone being vacant, the 
 Earl of Desmond was at this time in durance in the Tower of London, but 
 that of course would not prevent his name appearing on the Roll. The hst 
 of Bishops is peculiar inasmuch as Elphin and Clonfert were at this date 
 held by Roland de Burgo, who on the Roll of the previous Parliament is 
 rightly described as " Clonferten et Elphinefi." " Duanencis " I take it is for 
 " Duacensis " (Kilmacduagh), but that See was then held in commendam by 
 the Archbishop of Tuam.' 
 
APPENDIX C 
 
 John Hooker's Diary, or Journal, January 17 to 
 February 23, 1568-69 i 
 
 M* that one mone[day, the 17th of January, 1568-9] 17 
 
 the parlament beganne [in 
 Robert weston [ 
 
 court adiorned vntyll the thurs[day following] 
 
 w"*^ thursday beinge the xx*'' of Januarie [ 20 
 
 was assembled and there accordinge to the [ 
 
 dyd chose theire speker namely M'^' James [Stanihurst] Recorder of 
 Dublin who forthw"' was presented to the L. depute & made his 
 oration before him, w"'' L: deputie awnswered verie eloquentlye. 
 
 On friday greate contention did growe yn the lower house, by 21 
 S"" chrestopher barnewell 3 & others of meth who thought not that 
 assembly to be lauffuU for sundry causses, fyrst because that some 
 burgesses were returned for suche townes as were no corporations, 
 then that some beinge shirifies of countyes & some maiors of townes 
 had named & apoynted them selfEes, but specially because there were 
 a number of englysshe m[embers] returned for burgesses whom the 
 saide Irish m[embers] wolde not admytt because they were resyaunt 
 [without] the townes for w"'' they were chosen. These [matters] 
 were had yn greate questyon & miche stomake [dyd] growe thereof 
 & dyd contynew from the [same] fryday vntyll the Twesday 25 
 folowenge the 29["' of] Januarie : at w*^ day the matter being 
 before [referred] to the L. depute & Judges of the realme, the speker 
 being sent to the saide L. depute for resolucion brought awnswere 
 that it was concluded by the L. depute, that all suche shiriffes or 
 maiors as had returned them selfies, and also all such burgesses as 
 were for no corporatt townes sholde be dysmyssed out of the house / 
 
 1 MS. Mm. 1, 32, Cambridge University Library. 
 
 " Sir Christopher Barnewall of Turvey, who was probably M.P. for Co. 
 Dublin. See an interesting account of him in Lodge's Peerage, edited by 
 Archdall, under Viscount Kingsland. 
 
 237 
 
238 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 but as for the resydew w*"'' [were not resident] notw^'standing they 
 beinge returned [by the maiors and shiriffs] might sytt there lawfully 
 so [ ] if any wolde fre them, upon the [ ] answere they 
 
 wolde not credytt [ ] Luke Dyllon ' the Queues atturney was 
 
 sent from the L. depute w"' the lyke advertysement, who lykewise 
 coulde not be credytted oneles the iudges wolde come them selffes / 
 wherevpon a byll being redd they wolde not abyde the hiringe of it. 
 On Wednesday S'' John pluncketf- S'' Robert Dillon-^ beinge the 
 chefEe Justyces, M"" fynlas,-* the Queues sergent / M'' Luke Dillon the 
 queues atturney / M'" nugent ^ the Queues soUycitor / came to the 
 house and there affirmed theire resolucions w'^'' they before had bothe 
 saide & written / This same day at after none the lord depute willed 
 the house to be before him at the castle savinge suche as were the 
 dysturbers / neverthelesse some of them appered there w''' the 
 resydewe / where my L. havinge all before him blamed miche such 
 vaunt parlers as beinge selff willed wolde not yelde to that that was 
 reason / and notw'standinge M'' barnewell "^ & others wolde scorne to 
 humble them selffes / yet my L. gave this commandment that the 
 house sholde assemble them selffs the day folowinge & to proceade 
 to theire matters, willinge that such as wolde not be resolved to take 
 choyse what they wolde do / And chardgd also the speker to have 
 regarde bothe to the chardge comitted vnto him as also to see 
 punyshment to be donne vpon such as dyd dysorder them selffes yn 
 
 27 the house / / / The thursday the house assembled agayne / where 
 one buttler demaundinge my L. resolucion was advertysed thereof / 
 who saide he wolde yelde vnto it, but nevertheles his conscience 
 dyd know the lawe to be to the contrarie / w^'' barnewell affirmed to 
 be trew ; also the cavenaghts the same day had the overthrow / and 
 the same daye there passed a byll for lymy[ting] places by the L. 
 
 28 depute & counsayle for tannyng of lether / / / on ffrydaye there 
 was adoo about the byll for the repeale of the L. poynynges act, 
 but at lengthe dyverse were resolved / / / / about the byll ; on 
 
 ' Sir Luke Dillon, Attorney-General, 1566-70 ; Chief Baron, 1570-93. 
 
 2 Sir John Plunkett, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, 1559-83. 
 
 ^ Sir Robert Dillon, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, 1559-93, and 
 again 1594-97. 
 
 * Richard Finglas, Queen's Serjeant-at-law, 1554-74. He had previously 
 held his office of Principal Solicitor. 
 
 '" Nicholas Nugent, Solicitor-General, 1565-70 ; a Baron of the Exchequer, 
 1570-78. 
 
 ^ Probably Richard Barnewall of Crickstown, who was M.P. for Co. Meath 
 in the next Parliament, erroneously styled ' Sir ' in Lodge's Peerage. 
 
APPENDIX C 239 
 
 thursday befor said the house was devyded by polls / and of thone 
 parte were xF for the negatyve & of thother L. englyshe affirmatyve 29 
 / on saterday the sayde byll of poynynges being redd the third 
 tyme was miche debated & dyscorsed but at lengthe overthrowen / 
 for the polls of thenglysche were 44 / & of the irishe 48. / 
 
 one moneday a byll made that no capteyne nor lordes sholde vse 
 any lyberties oneles he were therevnto admytted by lettres patentes 
 was redd threes & passed / and then sent to the lordes. 
 
 on tueseday a byll passed that the L: depute sholde for x yeres februarij 1 
 promote & give all the dignyties in the churches of Monster & 
 Connagh / on saterday a byll passed that the L: depute may chose 6 
 skottes to serve w*'' in the realme notw"'standinge former actes to 
 the contrarie. 
 
 Item an acte passed one wenesday agaynst gray merchantes / 9 
 Item an acte that none shall foster children to irishe lordes / M*^ this 
 day I spake yn the byll of impost & made an oration yn the des- 
 cribyng the offyce & authoritie of a prynce / the dewte of a Judge 
 &c. / w*^^' was well lyked but by some myslyked/ on frydaye then ii 
 folowenge buter ' & bathe ^ laweirs & S'' Christopher b[arnewell] 
 claymed the lybertie to inveighe agaynst me chardgyng that I had 
 naughtyly compared phillip & the queue vnto pharao & that I sholde 
 name them to be kernes and that the Queue dyd tak bysid the lawe / 
 but they were willed to put yn wrytinge agaynst monday next / at 
 the same tyme also butler, being yn a coller, seyde if these wordes 
 had benne spoken yn any other place then yn this house there be a 
 great many here that they wolde rather have dyed then to have 
 suffred it / on saterday the byll passed for a subsyde of xiij^ iiii'' 12 
 vpon everie ploughe land &c. / On weneseday the 16. of februarye 
 the statute past for thattendure of Thomas eustac / on thuresday the 17 
 parlament was proroged tyll moneday foloweing / In this cessyons 
 ther passed these statutes folowing. 
 
 Item on moneday the 21 of february the parlament assembled and 21 
 that day the act for the repeale of poynynges act was passed & then 
 the parlament proroged tyll the wenesday. 
 
 On wenesday the 23 day the cessyons beganne & then iij bylls 23 
 were redd / & passed namely that the L. depute shall geve all the 
 
 1 Evidently Edmund Butler of Callan, who was Attorney for the Liberties 
 of Tipperary about that time, and who eventually became Attorney- General 
 and Second Justice of the Queen's Bench. 
 
 - John Bathe of Drumcondra, afterwards Solicitor and Attorney- General 
 and Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
240 ESSAYS RELATING TO IRELAND 
 
 dignyties yn mounster excepte waterford corke lymerick & cassyle / 
 also that none shall water any hempe or flax yn any rinnynge stream 
 or ryver / And also that the landes of Thomas fytzgareld knyght 
 of the valley beinge atteynted shalbc to the quene & hir heires. 
 
 Item the xj"' of marche being fryday the parlament was proroged 
 vntyll the xij'" of October foloweng / and on saterday foloweng the 
 xij"' of marche S'' peter ' was sworne one of the privie counseU / / / 
 
 1 Sir Peter Carew, in connexion with whose claims to certain estates in 
 Munster Hooker had come to Ireland. 
 
INDEX 
 
 (The letter 'n' after figures signifies note; Abp. = Archbishop.) 
 
 Abbot, Charles (afterwards 1st Baron 
 
 Colchester), 138 
 Addington administration, leniency of, 
 
 137, 138-40 
 Aix la Chapelle, Peace of, 106 
 Alen, Sir John, 226 
 Amiens, Peace of (1801), 130, 131, 133 
 Andrews, Dr. Francis, 103 
 Annaly, John, Earl of, 100 
 Anne, Queen, 158, 190, 222 
 Ardilaun, Lord (A. E. Guinness), and 
 
 St. Stephen's Green, 157 
 Arlo, allusions to, in Spenser's poetry, 
 
 17, 18, 30 
 Armagh, town of, 44 ; robbery of the 
 
 mail, 108 ; antiquity of, 180-1 ; 
 
 destruction of, by fire, 180-1 ; 
 
 ' Book ' of, 182 ; Archbishops of, 
 
 183-4; Cathedral of (the older), 
 
 184-5 
 Arran, Charles, Earl of, 57-8 ; Chan- 
 cellor of University of Oxford, 59 
 Arran, House of, derived from Gore 
 
 family, 100 
 Arran, Richard, Earl of, 160 
 Aubrey, John, 5, 13 
 Audeley, Thomas, Lord Chancellor of 
 
 Ireland, quoted on Poynings' Act, 
 
 213 
 Audley, Lady Eleanor, eccentricity of, 
 
 37, 38 and n. 
 Aulaf , King, 148-9, 150 
 
 Bagnal, Sir Nicholas, 45 
 
 Bagwell, Richard, his Ireland under 
 
 tfie Stuarts, 69 ; his Ireland under 
 
 the Tudors, 197 
 Baltinglass, Lord, attainder of, 14 
 Bannockburn, Battle of, 40 
 Barnewall, Sir Christopher (of Turvey ), 
 
 237 n., 238 
 Barnewall, Richard, 238 
 
 Barrington, Sir Jonah, on Irish in- 
 temperance, 91 
 
 Bathe, John, 239 
 
 Bedford, John, 4th Duke of, Vice- 
 royalty of, 86, 87, 93, 114 
 
 Benson, Edward, Abp. of Canterbury, 
 185 
 
 Beresford, family of, 99 
 
 Beresford, John, 101 
 
 Beresford, Lord John, Abp. of 
 Armagh, 184, 185 
 
 Beresford, Marcus Gervais, Abp. of 
 Armagh, 185 
 
 Berkeley, Frederick, 5th Earl of, 104 
 
 Berkeley, George, Bishop of Cloyne, 
 103, 175 
 
 Berry, Dr. Henry F., his Statutes 
 and Ordinances and Acts of the 
 Parliament of Ireland, 199 n. ; his 
 Register of Dublin Wills, 425 
 
 Bessborough, William, 2nd Earl of, 
 113 
 
 Betham, Sir William, his investigation 
 of early Irish Parliamentary pro- 
 cedure, 196 
 
 Binghams of Mayo, family of, 99 
 
 Black Monday in Dublm (1209), 151 
 
 Bolton, Sir Richard, 197 
 
 Borlase, Sir John, 71 
 
 Borumha, Brian, 149, 182 
 
 Boulter, Hugh, Abp. of Armagh, is 
 Lord Justice in Ireland, 86, 87, 88, 
 89, 103, 104 ; improvements of, in 
 Armagh, 184 
 
 Boyle, Bellingham, 1 10 
 
 Boyle, Elizabeth, 7, 169 
 
 Boyle, Henry (afterwards Earl of 
 Shannon), principal Undertaker 
 and Speaker, 86, 94 ; falls out with 
 Stone, 96 ; rejects a peerage, 97 ; 
 struggle of, with Stone, 97-8, 108 ; 
 supported by Malone, 101, 102-3, 
 104 ; and the Treasury surplus, 
 
 241 
 
242 
 
 INDEX 
 
 106; threatened with removal, 110; 
 removed from office. 111 ; triumph 
 of, 112; accepts an earldom and 
 resigns, 113 ; burnt in effigy, 114 ; 
 alliance of, with Stone, 114-15 ; 
 referred to, 92, 105, 109, 224 
 
 Boyne, Battle of, 82, 162 
 
 Brereton, Sir William, 205 
 
 Brodrick, Alan (afterwards Lord 
 Midleton), 222, 224 
 
 Bruce, Edward, his invasion of Ire- 
 land, 40, 45, 161, 166, 188 
 
 Bryskett, Ludovic, 3, 13, 15 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 3, 84, 115, 159 
 
 Burke, Sir Edmond, 188 
 
 Burke, Sir Bernard, 225 
 
 Burke, Sir William, 188 
 
 Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury, 
 cited on Earl of Ossory, 74 ; on 
 Duke of Ormond, 81 
 
 Burtchaell, G. D., quoted 235-6 n. 
 
 Burton, banking house of, 99 
 
 Butler, Edmund, 239 
 
 Butler, Lady Elizabeth (afterwards 
 Countess of Desmond), 63, 64 ; 
 death of, 65 
 
 Buttevant, David, Viscount, 50 
 
 Campion, Edmund, his notes on the 
 
 Irish Parliament of 1568-9, 207-8, 
 
 223, 230 
 Carew, Sir George, 42 ; and Cary's 
 
 Hospital, 154 
 Carew, Sir Peter, 240 
 Carlyle, Thomas, cited on the Duke of 
 
 Ormond, 61 
 Carte, Thomas, his Life of the Duke of 
 
 Ormond cited and commented on, 
 
 56-60, 65, 72, 75, 78, 79, 80 ; his 
 
 vindication of Charles I, 57 
 Carter, Thomas, Master of the Rolls, 
 
 qualities and career of, 104, 105, 
 
 110,113 
 Castlehaven, George, Earl of, 37 
 Castlereagh, Robert, Viscount, 130 
 Catelyn, Sir Nathaniel, 222, 223 
 Catherine of Braganza, Queen, 
 
 76 
 Caulfields of Tyrone, family of, 99 
 Cavendish, Lady Elizabeth, 101 
 Cecil, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, 89, 
 
 232 
 Cecil, William, Baron Burghley, 217, 
 
 228 
 Chaloner, John, 11 
 Charleroi, siege of, 76 
 Charles I, Ireland during reign of, 33, 
 
 37, 60, 67, 69, 72, 79, 162, 189 
 
 Charles 11, Ireland during reign of. 
 43, 60, 66, 72, 74, 77, 78, 79, 89, 164; 
 and Duke of Ormond, 80, 81 ; 
 Blue Coat School of, in Dublin, 157 
 
 Chesterfield, Philip, 4th Earl of, and 
 Irish System of Undertakers, 84-5, 
 86, 94, 95 ; on Irish intemperance, 
 91, 92 ; on the triumph of the 
 ' Patriots,' 110, 112-13 ; on Abp. 
 Stone, 114 
 
 Chever, John, Speakership of, 200, 
 201, 223 ; biographical notice of, 
 224-5 
 
 Chever, William, Chief Justice, 225 
 
 Chichester, Sir Arthur, 48, 49-50, 
 154, 223 
 
 Church, Dean R. W., his monograph 
 on Spenser, 9, 10 
 
 Clare, John (Fitzgibbon), Earl of, and 
 the ' Patriots,' 115, 116, 129 
 
 Clarence, Lionel, Duke of, 172, 188 
 
 Clarendon, Edward, Earl of, 57 ; 
 bequest of his MSS. to the Bod- 
 leian, 59 ; quoted on Duke of 
 Ormond, 81 
 
 Clements, Nathaniel, Teller of the 
 Exchequer, 104-5 ; question of his 
 dismissal, 112; questionable sin- 
 cerity of, 113 
 
 Cloncurry, Valentine, 2nd Baron, 132 
 
 Clontarf, Battle of, 149, 150, 182 
 
 Cogan, Miles de, 150 
 
 Colley, Sir Henry, 225 
 
 Commaundre, Robert le, an account 
 of, 208-9 and nn., 235 n., 236 n. 
 
 Congreve, William, educated at Kil- 
 kenny, 175 
 
 Conolly, William, Speaker, 222, 224 
 
 Cork, Richard, 1st Earl of, 7 and n., 
 32, 34, 86, 168 
 
 Coventry, Sir Henry, quoted, 76 
 
 Cox, Sir Richard, his True Life of 
 Betty Ireland, 1 10 
 
 Crew, Sir Randolph, Chief Justice, 
 discharged from office, 37 
 
 Croker, John Wilson, cited on Lord 
 Hardwicke's administration, 137 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, connexion of, with 
 Irish affairs, 33, 66, 167, 168, 174, 
 178, 179, 190 ; contempt of, for 
 symbols of authority, 194 
 
 Cromwell, Thomas, 213 
 
 Cumberland, Richard, quoted, 91-2 
 
 Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke 
 of, 108 
 
 Curran, John Philpot, 125, 142, 143 
 
 Curran, Sarah, attachment of, to 
 Robert Emmet, 117, 118, 141-3 
 
 Curwen, Hugh, Abp. of Dublin, 227 
 
INDEX 
 
 243 
 
 Cusake, Robert, 228 
 
 Cusake, Sir Thomas, Speakership of, 
 
 201-2, 222, 223; biographical 
 
 notice of, 225-8 
 
 Daebe, King of Oriel, 181 
 
 Danes, the, and building of Dublin, 
 147 ; invasions and settlements of, 
 148-9, 165, 170, 176 
 
 Davenant, Sir William, 13 
 
 Davis, Edward, 34 
 
 Davis, Sir John, importance of his 
 work in Ireland, 32-3, 36, 38-9, 54 ; 
 ancestry and studies of, 34 ; writings 
 of, in favour with Royalty, 34-5 ; 
 Solicitor- General, 36 ; death of, 
 37 ; and the shiring of Ulster, 46-7 ; 
 reforms of, in Irish Parliament, 48, 
 49, 53-4 ; speech of, at opening of 
 Parliament in 1603, 52-3 ; adminis- 
 trative capacity of, 55 ; difficulty 
 of, in ascertaining Irish Parlia- 
 mentary procedure, 195 ; referred to, 
 41, 51, 196, 211, 223, 232 ; works of : 
 his Orchestra, 34 ; his Nosce Teipsum, 
 35 ; his Hymns to Astrcea, 35 ; his 
 Discourse on Ireland, 38 
 
 De Burgo Earls, The, 187, 188 
 
 Desmond, Gerald, Earl of, attainder 
 of, 49 ; and sack of Youghal, 167 
 
 Despard, Edward Marcus, 132 
 
 Devonshire, William, 4th Duke of, 93 
 
 Dillon, Sir Luke, 238 
 
 Dillon, Sir Robert, 238 
 
 Dineley, Rose, 7 
 
 Dingwall, Lord (afterwards Earl of 
 Desmond), lawsuit of, with Walter, 
 Earl of Ormond, 63, 64 ; death of, 
 65 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beacons- 
 field), cited on Cardinal Newman, 
 46-7 
 
 Dodington, G. Bubb, on rejection of 
 the Money Bill, 110; his Diary 
 cited, 114 
 
 Dorset, Lionel, 1st Duke of. Vice- 
 royalties of, 92, 93, 94-8, 100, 101, 
 106-11 ; superseded by Hartington, 
 112 
 
 Dowdall, William, 132 
 
 Drogheda, strategical advantages of, 
 176-7 ; two castles of, 177 ; mayors 
 of, and architectural remains in, 
 178-9 ; connexion of, with early 
 Irish Parliamentary history, 179, 182 
 
 Dryden, Thomas, quoted on the death 
 of the Earl of Ossory, 77 ; on James, 
 Duke of Ormond, 80 
 
 Dublin, Danish origin of, 147-9 ; 
 earliest Norman records of, 150 ; 
 resemblance of, to Bristol, 151 ; 
 Castle, and boundaries of, 151-3 ; 
 slow development of, 153 ; under 
 the Restoration, 154-7 ; Sackville 
 Street, and enlarging of the river 
 channel, 158 ; cathedrals and 
 public buildings in, 158-9 ; street 
 nomenclature in, 160-1 ; joy in, 
 at the Restoration, 162 ; meeting 
 of the Ulster Volunteers in, 163 ; 
 in nineteenth century, 163-4 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria, 190 
 
 Edward I, Ireland during reign of, 52 
 
 Edward II, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 40, 52, 161, 197, 198, 203 
 Edward III, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 166, 203 
 Edward IV, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 166, 178, 188, 212 
 Edward VI, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 41, 42, 226, 227 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, Spenser received 
 by, 6 ; vacillation of, 25 ; and Sir 
 John Davis, 35 ; her view of 
 Poynings' Act, 215-16, 219; Ire- 
 land during reign of, 10, 24, 26, 32, 
 41, 49, 53, 62, 161, 167, 173, 183, 
 203, 207-9, 214, 218, 227 
 
 Ellesmere, Chancellor, 34 
 
 Emmet, Jane, 142 
 
 Emmet, Robert (father of the pa- 
 triot), character and opinions of, 
 124, 125 
 
 Emmet, Robert, tributes to his 
 memory, 117-20; connexion of, with 
 rebellion of 1803, 122-3, 131-8, 
 140-1 ; birth of, 124 ; influenced 
 by his brother Thomas, 125-6, 128 ; 
 and rebellion of 1798, 129 ; ex- 
 pelled from Trinity College, 130 ; 
 goes abroad, 130-1 ; interview of, 
 with Napoleon, 131, 135 ; testi- 
 mony of, to Addington adminis- 
 tration, 138 ; attachment of, to 
 Sarah Curran, 141-3 ; death of, 163 
 
 Emmet, Temple, career of, 125, 126 
 
 Emmet, Thomas Addis, his Memoirs 
 of the Emmet Family, 119, 120; 
 character of, 125-6 ; political ideals 
 and writings of, 126-9 ; connexion 
 of, with rebellion of 1803, 133-5 ; 
 differences of, with Arthur O'Connor, 
 134-5 ; referred to, 130, 131, 142 
 
 Essex, Earl of (Arthur Capel), on the 
 extension of Dublin, 155, 160 
 
 R 2 
 
244 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Essex, Robert, 2nd Earl of, 32, 43 
 Eustace, Sir Maurice, 222, 223 
 Evelyn, John, quoted on death of 
 
 the Earl of Ossory, 77 
 Everard, Sir John, 48, 51-2 
 
 Faery Queene, the, see under Spenser 
 Falkiner, C. Litton, works of, referred 
 
 to, 87 n., 152, 155, 203 n., 205, 232 
 Fanshawe, Anne, Lady, on the 
 
 Duchess of Ormond, 66 
 Fenton, Sir Geoffrey, 3, 11 
 Finglas, Richard, 238 
 FitzGerald, Lord Edward, 103, 123-4, 
 
 126, 134; Life of, 117; death of, 
 
 163 
 FitzGerald, Maurice, 166 
 FitzGerald, Lord Thomas, rebellion of, 
 
 161 
 FitzHenry, Justiciary Meiller, 151 
 FitzMaurices of Kerry, family of, 
 
 99 
 FitzSimon, Thomas, 228 
 FitzStephen, James Lynch, unique 
 
 example of, 189 
 FitzStephen, Robert, 166 
 Fitzwilliam, Sir William, 227 
 Flatman, Thomas, 77 
 Flood, Henry, 83, 163, 193, 210 
 Fontenoy, Battle of, 100 
 Forster, John, afterwards Chief 
 
 Justice of Common Pleas, 222, 
 
 224 
 Fortescues of Louth, family of, 99 
 Foster, John (afterwards Lord Oriel), 
 
 224 
 Fox, Henry (1st Baron Holland), 104, 
 
 HI, 112, 113 
 
 Galway, social atmosphere of, 186, 
 
 190; history of, 187-90; Arch- 
 
 seological and Historical Society of, 
 
 190 n. 
 George I, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 89-90, 157, 222 
 George II, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 87, 88, 98, 99, 105-8, 110-11, 112, 
 
 157, 158-9 
 George III, 74, 132 ; Ireland under, 
 
 197, 198 
 Gibbons, Grinling, 163 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 3, 159 
 Googe, Barnaby, 3 
 Gore, family of, 99, 100, 105, 113 
 Gore, Sir Ralph, 224 
 Gormanston, Viscount, Parliament 
 
 called by, in 1493, 53 
 
 Granby, John, Marquis of, 73 
 
 Grattan, Henry, 83, 90, 98, 99, 102, 
 118, 159, 163, 193 ; cited on Malone, 
 101 ; on Robert Emmet, Senr., 125 
 
 Gray, Lord Leonard (Viscount Grane), 
 204, 205, 214, 226 
 
 Grey, Arthur, 14th Baron Grey de 
 Wilton, Viceroyalty of, 3, 6, 10, 
 11, 12, 13, 26; allusions to, in 
 Spenser's poetry, 19, 23-4, 25 ; 
 death of, 24 
 
 Grosart, Dr. A. B., his Life and 
 Works of Spenser cited, 6, 7, 8, 
 13 n. 
 
 Hall, Joseph, Bishop of Exeter and 
 Norwich, cited, 11 
 
 Hallam, Henry, his History of Litera- 
 ture cited, 35 ; quoted on Poynings' 
 Act, 219 
 
 Hamilton, William Henry, 132 
 
 Hampton, Christopher, Abp. of 
 Armagh, 50 
 
 Hardiman, James, his edition of the 
 ' Statute of Kilkenny,' 196 
 
 Hardwicke, Philip, 3rd Earl of, his 
 Viceroyalty, 120-1, 137, 138, 143 
 
 Harington, Sir Henry, 14, 89 
 
 Harlech, House of, derived from Gore 
 family, 100 
 
 Harley, Robert, 1st Earl of Oxford, 
 57 
 
 Harrington, William, 1st Earl of, 
 Viceroyalty of, 93, 94, 106, 107 
 
 Hartington, Marquis of (afterwards 
 4th Duke of Devonshire), Vice- 
 royalty of, 112, 114 
 
 Hely- Hutchinson, John, 103, 105 
 
 Henry II, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 52, 150, 196 
 
 Henry III, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 39, 152 
 Henry IV, 177 
 Henry VI, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 179, 198, 200, 205 
 Henry VII, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 53, 166, 183, 198 n., 213, 214, 219 
 Henry VIII, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 40-1, 53, 161, 199-207, 213-16, 
 222, 226, 227 
 Hoadly, John, Abp. of Armagh, 86 
 Hooker, John, his Order and Usage 
 how to keep a Parliament in England 
 cited, 196, 197 ; his account of the 
 Irish Parliament of 1568-9, 204 n., 
 210-11, 215, 217-18; his Diary 
 quoted, 237-40 
 Howe, Admiral Lord Richard, 74 
 
INDEX 
 
 245 
 
 Humbert, commander of French 
 
 expedition to Mayo, 133 
 Hunsdon, George, 2nd Baron, 35 
 
 Ireland, celebrated Englishmen in, 
 3-4, 32 ; eilects of residence in, 
 on Spenser's works, 8, 12, 14-31 ; 
 rivers of, 20-1 ; Sir John Davis's 
 connexion with, 32-3, 38-9, 46-55 ; 
 in early seventeenth century, 33-4, 
 39 ; Ulster, plantation and shiring 
 of, 38, 39, 44-6, 48 ; appointment 
 of provincial Presidents in, 42, 43 ; 
 the Parliament of 1613, 48-53 
 (see also under Irish Parliaments) ; 
 fusion of races in, 54-5, 115 ; con- 
 dition of, during middle period of 
 seventeenth century, 56-7 ; the 
 rebellion of 1641 in, 68, 69, 70-1 ; 
 and Act of Settlement, 72-3, 99 ; 
 calm periods in, 82 ; influence of 
 character in, 83 ; government by 
 Undertakers in, 84-6, 114, 115; 
 and the Money Bill, 84, 106-7, 
 108-11, 115; Erastianism in, 88; 
 combination of civil and ecclesias- 
 tical jurisdiction in, 89-90 ; pre- 
 valence of intemperance in, 91, 
 92 ; debasement of the currency in, 
 95-6 ; constitution of Irish House 
 of Commons, 97-103 ; of House 
 of Lords, 103-5 ; rebellions, and 
 United Irish Movement in, 117-24, 
 126-30, 132-8, 140-1 ; French 
 influence in, 120, 121-2, 131-6 
 
 Irish Parliament, the ; paucity of 
 information regarding its origin 
 and early development, 193-7 ; 
 the Statutes of, 197-9 ; the 
 Speakership, 199-202, 221-4 ; 
 resemblance of its procedure to 
 English, 203 ; meeting-places of, 
 204 71., 205 ; rights of clerical 
 proctors in, 205-7 ; origin of, and 
 subsequent operation of, Poynings' 
 Law in, 211-20 ; lists of the Lords 
 in, in 1568-9, 233-5 
 
 Irving, Washington, tribute of, to 
 Emmet, 117, 118 
 
 Iveagh, Lord (Edward Cecil Guin- 
 ness), munificence of, 164 
 
 James I and Sir J. Davis, 32, 35 ; 
 Ireland during reign of, 38-9, 
 45, 46, 48, 53-5, 89, 151, 154, 167, 
 189; and Lord Dingwall, 63; 
 and Butler family, 79 
 
 James II, Ireland during reign of, 
 61, 69, 74, 157, 162, 174, 205 
 
 John, King of England, connexion of, 
 with Dublin, 150, 151 ; with 
 Youghal, 166 ; with Drogheda, 178 
 
 Jones, Michael, Parliamentary Gover- 
 nor of Dublin, 162 
 
 Jones, Nevill, arraigned, 107, 109 
 
 Joyce, Dr. P. W., article of, in 
 Frazer's Magazine, 9, 20 w., 21 
 
 Keightley, S. R., contributions of, 
 to Notes and Queries, 9 
 
 Keroualle, Louise de (Duchess of 
 Portsmouth), 66 
 
 Kilcolman, Castle of, Spenser at, 6, 
 9, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 29 
 
 Kildare, Gerald, 9th Earl of, 161 
 
 Kildare, James, 20th Earl of (after- 
 wards Duke of Leinster), 103-4 ; 
 his memorial against Dorset and 
 Stone, 107 ; and the ' Patriots,' 
 109, 110-11 ; named Lord Justice, 
 113 
 
 Kilkenny, Statute of, 52, 172, 196 ; 
 no early history of, 170 ; until 
 Norman period, 171 ; political 
 importance of, 172 ; meetings of 
 the Irish Catholic Confederation in, 
 173-4 
 
 Kilmainham, Priory of, 154, 155 
 
 Kilwarden, Viscount (Arthur Wolfe), 
 murder of, 118, 163 
 
 Knox, Alexander, quoted on the 
 conciliation of Ulster, 139-40 
 
 Lacy, Hugo De, first 'V^iceroy of 
 
 Ireland, 177 
 Lamb, Charles, cited on Spenser, 4 
 Lambyn, Thomas, 14 
 Langrishe, Sir Hercules, 115 
 Lascelles, Rowley, 221 
 La Touche, banking house of, 99 
 Lecky, Rt. Hon. W. E. H., quoted on 
 
 rebellion of 1641, 70 ; praises Lord 
 
 Chesterfield's Viceroyalty, 84 ; on 
 
 Poynings' Act, 219 
 Lee, Sidney, his Great Englishmen of 
 
 the Sixteenth Century cited, 4, 9, 
 
 13 n., 22, 25-6 
 Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of, 6 
 Lever, Charles, 186 
 Levinge, Sir Richard, 222, 224 
 Loftus, Adam, Abp. of Armagh, 
 
 89 
 Londres, Henri de, Abp. of Dublin, 
 
 152 
 
246 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lorraine, Duke of, his projected 
 invasion of Ireland, 189 
 
 Lucas, Charles, 84, 163 
 
 Lynch, William, liis View of the Legal 
 Institutions, cfcc, of Ireland criti- 
 cised, 195-6 and n. 
 
 Macattlay, Lord (T. B.), on Spenser's 
 
 Faery Queene, 5 ; on the Duke of 
 
 Ormond, 60 
 Macha of the Golden Hair, legend of, 
 
 181 
 Macray, Rev. W. D., on the Ormond 
 
 MSS., 59 
 McMurrough, Eva, 171 
 McTorkil, Hasculf, 150 
 Madden, Dr. R. R., his view of 
 
 Emmet, 119, 120, 122, 123 
 Mahaffy, Dr., his Epoch in Irish 
 
 History, 34 
 Malone, Anthony, rise of Parlia- 
 mentary Opposition under, 83 ; 
 
 oratory of, 99, 101 ; abilities and 
 
 career of, 101-3 ; alliance of, with 
 
 Boyle, 101, 102, 104, 108; and 
 
 Treasury surplus, 106 ; dismissal 
 
 of, 110 ; return of, to power, 113 ; 
 
 hooted at, 114 
 Margetson, James, Abp. of Armagh, 
 
 183 
 Martin, Richard, 34 
 Mary I, Ireland during reign of, 41, 
 
 42, 53, 214, 215, 216, 227, 229 
 Mary II, marriage of, 76 
 Mason, Elizabeth, 124 
 Mason, J. Monck, cited on antiquity 
 
 of Irish Parliaments, 196 
 Mervyn, Sir Audley, 223, 224 
 Minden, Battle of, 100 
 Molyneux, Thomas, 185 
 Mons, Battle of, 73, 76 
 Moore, Thomas, 3, 130 ; tribute of, 
 
 to Emmet, 117, 118 
 Morley, Viscount, cited on the Duke 
 
 of Ormond, 61 
 Mountjoy, Charles, 8th Baron, 32, 
 
 35, 36, 42, 189 
 Mountmorres, Viscount (Hervey 
 
 Redmond Morres), writings of, 
 
 196 
 Murray, William (afterwards Earl 
 
 Mansfield), influence of, in Irish 
 
 affairs, 11 
 
 Nagle, Sir Richard, 223, 224 
 Napoleon I, and the United Irishmen, 
 121, 128, 131, 133-5 
 
 Narbrough, Sir John, 74 
 
 New Abbey, in Co. Kildare, description 
 and history of, 14 
 
 Newcastle, Thomas, Duke of, 87, 
 89, 94, 112; and Abp. Stone, 
 95 ; quoted on possibility of Dor- 
 set's resignation, 108 ; inclines to 
 moderation, 1 10 ; collapse of his 
 Government, 114 
 
 Newman, Cardinal (John Henry), 
 Disraeli on, 46-7 
 
 Newport, Robert, Lord (afterwards 
 Viscount Jocelyn), 103 
 
 Norbury, John, 1st Earl of, 125 
 
 Normans, the, coming of, to Ireland, 
 149, 150 
 
 Norris, Sir Thomas, 232 
 
 Nugent, Nicholas, 238 
 
 Nugent, Sir Richard (Lord Delvin), 200 
 
 Gates, Titus, his plot, 64, 75 
 
 O'Brien, Murrough, execution of, 12 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 83, 159, 164; 
 cited on Emmet, 118-19 
 
 O'Connor, Arthur, 128 ; differences 
 of, with Thomas Emmet, 134—5 
 
 O'Donnell, Clan of, 44 
 
 O'Donoghue, D. J., his Life of Robert 
 Emmet cited, 119, 123, 126, 138, 
 140, 141 
 
 O'Flaherty, Clan of, 187 
 
 O'Heirnan, Dean, of Cork, 230 
 
 Oldys, William, 5 
 
 O'Neill, Clan of, 44, 45, 177, 183 
 
 O'Neill, Owen Roe, 126 
 
 O'Neill, Shane, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, 
 attainder of, 49 
 
 O'Neill, Sir Phelim, rebellion of, 162 
 
 Ormond, Duchess of. See Preston, 
 Lady Elizabeth 
 
 Ormond, James, 1st Duke of, 43, 
 75 ; documentary remains of, 56-7, 
 58, 59 ; length of his career, 60 ; 
 integrity of his character and 
 administration, 61 ; visits Earl 
 Thomas, 62 ; education of, 63 ; 
 religious tolerance of, 64 ; marriage 
 of, 65 ; relations of, with Earl 
 Strafford, 66-7 ; difficulties of his 
 Irish administration, 68-73 ; his 
 conversation, 78 ; keynote of his 
 character and policy, 79, 80-1 ; 
 connexion of, with Dublin, 154, 
 155-6, 160, 162, 205 ; and Kilkenny, 
 174 
 
 Ormond, James, 2nd Duke of, 
 attainder of, 103 ; at Kilkenny, 174 
 
 Ormond, James, 3rd Earl of, 172 
 
INDEX 
 
 247 
 
 Ormond, James, 4th Earl of, 225 
 Ormond, James, 5th Earl of, 225 
 Ormond, John, 6th Earl of, 225 
 Ormond, Thomas, 10th Earl of, 10, 
 19, 61, 167, 173, 209 ; predictions 
 of, 62 ; death of, 63 
 Ormond, Walter, 11th Earl of, feud 
 of, with Earl of Desmond, 63, 64 ; 
 death of, 65 
 Orrery, John, 5th Earl of, quoted on 
 the debasement of the currency, 
 95-6 ; warns Speaker Boyle, 96-7 
 Ossory, See of, foundation of, 171 
 Ossory, Thomas Butler, Earl of, his 
 personal prowess, 66, 73, 74 ; rela- 
 tions of, with Shaftesbury and 
 James II, 75 ; and with William 
 of Orange, 75, 76 ; death of, 77 ; 
 tributes to, 78, 79 
 Overbury, Sir Thomas, death of, 36 
 
 Paine, Thomas, 125 
 
 Palatio, Octavian de, Abp. of Armagh, 
 quoted on Armagh, 183 
 
 Parnell, Charles S., 164 
 
 Parsons, Sir William, 71 
 
 ' Patriots,' the, 109-15 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 90 
 
 Pelham, Henry, his administration, 
 89, 92, 94, 95, 97, 108 ; cited on 
 the 'Patriots,' 110; death of, HI 
 
 Pembroke, William, Earl of, 171 
 
 Perrot, Sir John, his Irish administra- 
 tion, 41, 43, 44-5, 53, 204, 218, 231 
 
 Pery, Edmond Sexton (afterwards 
 Viscount), cited on the Undertakers, 
 86 ; on Irish intemperance, 92 ; 
 referred to, 103, 104, 113, 224 
 
 Philip II of Spain, 47 
 
 Phoenix Park, formation of, 155-6; 
 murders in, 164 
 
 Pitt, William, 1st Earl of Chatham, 
 114 
 
 Pitt, William (the younger), 124 
 
 Plunkett, Sir John, 238 
 
 Ponsonby, family of, 101 
 
 Ponsonby, John, 98 ; influence of, 
 101 ; becomes Speaker, 113, 114, 
 224 
 
 Poynings, Sir Edward, his Parliament 
 and Act, 53, 179, 193, 198 n., 204, 
 238, 239 ; origin and operation of 
 his Law, 211-20 
 Poyntz, Sir John, 61 
 Preston, Lady Elizabeth (afterwards 
 Duchess of Ormond), 60, 64 ; court- 
 ship and marriage of, 65 ; character 
 of, 65-6 
 
 QuAiD, David A., 124 n. 
 Quigley, Michael, 132 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 4, 6, 16, 32 ; at 
 
 Youghal, 167-8 
 Rathmines, Battle of, 162 
 Rich, Barnaby, 3 
 Richard II, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 172, 173, 178, 188 
 Richard III, Ireland during reign of, 
 
 166, 189, 196, 198 n. 
 Richey, Dr. A. G., quoted on Poyn- 
 ings' Act, 219 
 Richmond, Charles, Duke of, 104 
 Robinson, Richard, Abp. of Armagh, 
 
 184 
 Rochfort, Robert (afterwards Lord 
 
 Chief Baron), 222, 224 
 Royal Hospital, Dublin, 156, 157, 159 
 Russell, Thomas, and rebellion of 
 
 1803, 131, 132, 136 
 Ryves, Dr. Thomas, quoted on Irish 
 
 Parliament of 1603, 51-2 
 
 Sackville, Lord George (afterwards 
 
 Viscount), 95, 108 ; qualities and 
 
 defects of, 100 
 St. Canice, 170, 171 
 St. Ciaran, founder of Ossory, 171 
 St. Columba, 171 
 St. John, Henry, 1st Viscount 
 
 Bolingbroke, 57 
 St. John, Sir Oliver, quoted on the 
 
 use of Parliament, 51 
 St. Leger, family of, 99 
 St. Leger, Su- Anthony, 201, 216, 225, 
 
 226 230 
 St. Patrick, 148, 171, 181, 182 
 St. Stephen's Green, history of, 154, 
 
 155, 156-7 
 Sarsfield, Patrick, 126 
 Shaftesbury, Anthony, 1st Earl of, 
 
 and Earl of Ossory, 75 ; the Duke 
 
 of Ormond on, 78 
 Sheridan, R. Brinsley, 3 
 Sheridan, Thomas, and the ' Patriots,' 
 
 109 
 Sidney, Sir Henry, his Irish adminis- 
 tration, 3, 4, 6, 11, 12, 32, 41-2, 
 
 43, 44, 53, 202, 207, 208, 209-11, 
 
 215-17, 222, 227, 230 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, visits Ireland, 4 ; 
 
 makes Spenser's acquaintance, 6 
 Simnel. Lambert, rebellion of, 161, 
 
 166-7, 212 
 Sitric, the Dane, 149, 150 
 Skeffingtons of Antrim, family of, 99 
 
248 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Smith, Sir Thomas, quoted on the 
 office of Speaker, 201 
 
 Smyth, Edward, 163 
 
 Somerset, Frances, Countess of, tried 
 for murder, 36 
 
 Southwell, Sir Robert, 60, 64, 78-9 ; 
 quoted on Duke of Ormond, 80 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, students of, not 
 numerous, 4 ; little authenticated 
 knowledge of his life, 5-6 ; it is 
 recently increased, 6-7 ; identity 
 of his wife, 7 «., 8, 169; effects of 
 Irish environment upon character 
 of his work, 8, 9, 22-3 ; particu- 
 larly the Faery Queene, 9-10, 11, 12, 
 14-15, 16, 17-19, 20-1 ; offices 
 of, in Ireland, 11 ; appointed 
 Registrar of the Court of Chancery, 
 13 n., 15 ; granted lease of New 
 Abbey, 14 ; accepts the Munster 
 Secretaryship, and settles at 
 Kilcolman, 15-16 ; Irish scenery 
 pictured in Colin Clout, 21-2 ; re- 
 proached with contempt for Ireland, 
 25 ; deplores the inconsistency of 
 the English administration, 26-7, 
 28, 29 ; motives underlying 
 ' Mutability,' 26-8 ; affection of, 
 for Kilcolman, 29-30 ; last lines 
 of, 31 ; referred to, 32, 167, 168, 
 169, 173 ; works of : Astrophel, 3, 
 
 6, 17 ; The Shepherd's Calendar, 5, 
 
 7, 8 ; Colin Clout's Come Home 
 Again, 5, 6, 9, 21, 22 ; Amoretti, 
 6, 168; Epithalamion, 6, 21, 22, 
 168, 169; View of the State of 
 Ireland, 12, 13, 23, 26, 27 ; Adventure 
 of Irene and Legend of Justice, 23-4, 
 26 
 
 Stanihurst, James, Speakership of, 
 201, 202, 207, 208 n., 209, 222, 223, 
 227, 236 ; biographical notice of, 
 228-31 
 
 Stanihurst, John, 228 
 
 Stanihurst, Nicholas, 228 
 
 Stanihurst, Richard (the elder), 228 
 
 Stanihurst, Richard (the younger), 
 cited, 40, 151 ; on his father, 223, 
 230, 231 
 
 Stone, George, Abp. of Armagh, 
 qualities of, 86-7, 88 ; administra- 
 tive talent of, 89 ; letters of, 90, 94 ; 
 convivial excesses of, 90, 91, 92 ; re- 
 lations of, with Dorset, 95 ; conflict 
 of, with Boyle, 96, 97, 98, 108; 
 supported by Ponsonby, 98, 101 ; 
 quoted on Malone, 102-3 ; attitude 
 of, towards Clements, 104, 112 ; 
 attacked through his protege, Nevill 
 
 Jones, 107 ; supported by Pelham, 
 1 10 ; supported by Murray, 111; 
 resignation of, 113; alliance of, 
 with Boyle, 114-15 ; referred to, 
 184 
 
 Strafford, Thomas, 1st Earl of, 
 relations of, with Duke of Ormond, 
 66-7, 68 ; Viceroyalty of, 69, 70, 
 162, 204-5, 222 
 
 Strangways, Leonard, his map, 152-3 
 
 Strongbow, Richard, in Ireland, 149, 
 150, 161, 166, 170, 171 
 
 Sussex, Thomas, 3rd Earl of. Vice- 
 royalty of, 3, 32, 42, 204, 214, 216, 
 227, 229, 230 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, Dean of St. Pat- 
 rick's, 3, 83, 95, 104, 163, 175 
 
 Synot, Richard, 14 
 
 Thomond, Donough, 4th Earl of, 
 
 50 
 Tisdal, Philip, 103 
 Todd, Henry J., his edition of 
 
 Spenser's works, 6 
 Tone, Wolfe, and the United Irish- 
 men, 123, 124, 126, 131 
 Townshend, Dorothea, her Life and 
 
 Letters of the First Earl of Cork, 
 
 34 and n. 
 Trinity College, Dublin, erection of, 
 
 153-4 
 Troy, John Thomas, Abp. of Dublin, 
 
 and College of Maynooth, 139 
 Tulleophelim, Theobald, Viscount, 
 
 61-2 
 Turgesius, the Dane, 176 
 Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of, 
 
 flight of, 44, 46, 47, 54 
 
 United Irishmen, the, 119, 121-37 
 Ussher, Arland, 13 
 Ussher, James, Abp. of Armagh, 223, 
 231 
 
 ViLLiEES, Barbara, Duchess of Cleve- 
 land, 66, 78 
 
 Wallop, Sir Henry, 14 
 
 Walpole, Horace, cited, on Ireland, 
 82, 92-4; on Abp. Stone, 90, 
 91, 113 ; on Speaker Boyle, 96, 97, 
 113; on Lord George Sackville, 
 100 ; on Thomas Carter, 104 ; on 
 Kildare's memorial, 107-8 ; on the 
 triumph of the ' Patriots,' 109 
 
INDEX 
 
 249 
 
 Walsh, Sir Nicholas, 222-3; bio- 
 graphical notice of, 231-2 
 
 Warbeck, Perkin, rising of, 167 
 
 Waterford, Richard Chenevix, Bishop 
 of, 85 
 
 Wellesley, Sir Arthur (afterwards 
 Duke of Wellington), 3, 118, 225 
 
 Wesleys of Meath, family of, 99 
 
 Weston, Robert, Lord Chancellor of 
 Ireland, 209, 217, 228 
 
 Wickham, William, secret memor- 
 andum drawn up by, 131 ; referred 
 to, 137, 138, 142 
 
 William III, and Earl of Ossory, 75-6 ; 
 Ireland under, 89-90, 163, 174 
 
 Wogan, Sir John, calls first formal 
 
 Irish Parliament, 52 
 Wood, Anthony a , cited on Sir J. 
 
 Davis, 35 ; on Earl of Ossory, 74 
 Wood's halfpence, 82 
 Wren, Sir Christopher, 157 
 Wynnes of Sligo, family of, 99 
 
 York, Richard, 3rd Duke of. Vice- 
 royalty of, 179, 200 
 
 Youghal, description and history of, 
 165-6 ; early importance of, 166 ; 
 sack of, 167 ; memorials of Raleigh 
 and Lord Cork in, 168 
 
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