612 DECLINE OF JACOBITISM. CHAP. XVII. Tweed. It is believed that some persons in that country kept up an intercourse with Charles Edward as their sovereign till his decease in 1787. They had given, forty years before, abundant testimonies of their activity to serve him. That rebellion is, in more respects than one, disgraceful to the British government; but it furnished an opportunity for a wise measure to prevent its recurrence and to break down in some degree the aristocratical ascendency, by abolishing the hereditary jurisdictions which, according to the genius of the feudal system, were exercised by territorial proprietors under royal charter or prescription. CHAPTER XVIII. ON THE CONSTITUTION OF IRELAND. 1. Ancient State of Ireland. 2. Its Kingdoms and Chieftainships. 3. Law of Tanistry and Gavel-kind. § 4. Rude State of Society. § 5. Invasion of Henry II. Acquisitions of English Barons. 6. Forms of English Constitution established. 7. Exclusion of native Irish from them. § 8. Degeneracy of English Settlers. § 9. Parliament of Ireland. § 10. Disorderly State of the Island. The Irish regain Part of their Territories. § 11. English Law confined to the Pale. 12. Poyning's Law. 13. Royal Authority revives under Henry VIII. § 14. Resistance of Irish to Act of Supremacy. 15. Protestant Church established by Elizabeth. 16. Effects of this Measure. § 17. Rebellions of her Reign. § 18. Opposition in Parliament. 19. Arbitrary proceedings of Sir Henry Sidney. 20. James I. Laws against Catholics enforced. § 21. English Law established throughout Ireland. § 22. Settlements of English in Munster, Ulster, and other Parts. § 23. Injustice attending them. 24. Constitution of Irish Parliament. 25. Charles I. promises Graces to the Irish. Does not confirm them. § 26. Administration of Strafford. § 27. Rebellion of 1641. Subjugation of Irish by Cromwell. 28. Restoration of Charles II. 29. Act of Settlement. 30. Hopes of Catholics under Charles and James. 31. War of 1689, and Final Reduction of Ireland. Penal Laws against Catholics. 32. Dependence of Irish on English Parliament. 33. Growth of a patriotic Party in 1753. § 1. THE antiquities of Irish history, imperfectly recorded, and rendered more obscure by controversy, seem hardly to belong to our present subject. But the political order or state of society among that people at the period of Henry II.'s invasion must be distinctly apprehended and kept in mind before we can pass a judgment upon, or even understand, the course of succeeding events, and the policy of the English government in relation to that island. It can hardly be necessary to mention that the Irish are descended from one of those Celtic tribes which occupied Gaul and Britain some centuries before the Christian era. Their language, however, is so far dissimilar from that spoken in Wales, though evidently of the same root, as to render it probable that the emigration, whether from this island or from Armorica, was in a remote age; while its close resemblance to that of the Scottish Highlanders, which hardly can be called another dialect, as unequivocally demonstrates a nearer affinity of the two nations. It seems to be generally believed, that the Irish are the parent tribe, and planted their colony in Scotland since the commencement of our era. About the end of the eighth century some of those swarms of Scandinavian descent which were poured out in such unceasing and 614 KINGDOMS AND CHIEFTAINS. CHAP. XVIII irresistible multitudes on France and Britain began to settle on the coasts of Ireland. These colonists were known by the name of Ostmen, or men from the east, as in France they were called Normans from their northern origin. They occupied the sea-coast from Antrim easterly round to Limerick; and by them the principal cities of Ireland were built. They waged war for some time against the aboriginal Irish in the interior; but, though better acquainted with the arts of civilized life, their inferiority in numbers caused them to fail at length in this contention; and the piratical invasions from their brethren in Norway becoming less frequent in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they had fallen into a state of dependence on the native princes. § 2. The island was divided into five principal kingdoms, Leinster, Munster, Ulster, Connaught, and Meath; one of whose sovereigns was chosen king of Ireland in some general meeting, probably of the nobility or smaller chieftains and of the prelates. But there seems to be no clear tradition as to the character of this national assembly, though some maintain it to have been triennially held. The monarch of the island had tributes from the inferior kings, and a certain supremacy, especially in the defence of the country against invasion; but the constitution was of a federal nature, and each was independent in ruling his people, or in making war on his neighbours. Below the kings were the chieftains of different septs or families, perhaps in one or two degrees of subordination, bearing a relation which may be loosely called feudal, to each other and to the crown. § 3. These chieftainships, and perhaps even the kingdoms themselves, though not partible, followed a very different rule of succession from that of primogeniture. They were subject to the law of tanistry, of which the principle is defined to be that the demesne lands and dignity of chieftainship descended to the eldest and most worthy of the same blood; these epithets not being used, we may suppose, synonymously, but in order to indicate that the preference given to seniority was to be controlled by a due regard to desert. No better mode, it is evident, of providing for a perpetual supply of those civil quarrels in which the Irish are supposed to place so much of their enjoyment could have been devised. Yet, as these grew sometimes a little too frequent, it was not unusual to elect a tanist, or reversionary successor, in the lifetime of the reigning chief, as has been the practice of more civilized nations. An infant was never allowed to hold the sceptre of an Irish kingdom, but was necessarily postponed to his uncle or other kinsman of mature age; as was the case also in England, even after the consolidation of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy. The landowners who did not belong to the noble class bore the same name as their chieftain, and were presumed to be of the same lineage. But they held their estates by a very different and an extraordinary tenure, that of Irish gavel-kind. On the decease of a proprietor, instead of an equal partition among his children, as in the gavel-kind of English law, the chief of the sept, according to the generally received explanation, made, or was entitled to make, a fresh division of all the lands within his district; allotting to the heirs of the deceased a portion of the integral territory along with the other members of the tribe. It seems impossible to conceive that these partitions were renewed on every death of one of the sept. But they are asserted to have at least taken place so frequently as to produce a continual change of possession. The policy of this custom doubtless sprung from too jealous a solicitude as to the excessive inequality of wealth, and from the habit of looking on the tribe as one family of occupants, not wholly divested of its original right by the necessary allotment of lauds to particular cultivators. It bore some degree of analogy to the institution of the year of jubilee in the Mosaic code; and, what may be thought more immediate, was almost exactly similar to the rule of succession which is laid down in the ancient laws of Wales. § 4. In the territories of each sept, judges called Brehons, and taken out of certain families, sat with primeval simplicity upon turfen benches in some conspicuous situation, to determine controversies. Their usages are almost wholly unknown; for what have been published as fragments of the Brehon law seem open to great suspicion of having at least been interpolated. It is notorious that, according to the custom of many states in the infancy of civilization, the Irish admitted the composition or fine for murder, instead of capital punishment; and this was divided, as in other countries, between the kindred of the slain and the judge. In the twelfth century it is evident that the Irish nation had made far less progress in the road of improvement than any other of Europe in circumstances of climate and position so little unfavourable. They had no arts that deserve the name, nor any commerce; their best line of sea-coast being occupied by the Norwegians. They had no fortified towns, nor any houses or castles of stone; the first having been erected at Tuam a very few years before the invasion of Henry. Their conversion to Christianity, indeed, and the multitude of cathedral and conventual churches erected throughout the island, had been the cause, and probably the sole cause, of the rise of some cities or villages with that name such as Armagh, Cashel, and Trim. But neither the chiefs nor the people loved to be confined within their precincts, and chose rather to dwell in scattered cabins amidst the free solitude of bogs and mountains. As we might expect, their qualities were such as 616 RUDE STATE OF SOCIETY. CHAP. XVIII. belong to man by his original nature, and which he displays in all parts of the globe where the state of society is inartificial: they were gay, generous, hospitable, ardent in attachment and hate, credulous of falsehood, prone to anger and violence, generally crafty and cruel. With these very general attributes of a barbarous people, the Irish character was distinguished by a peculiar vivacity of imagination, an enthusiasm and impetuosity of passion, and a more than ordinary bias towards a submissive and superstitious spirit in religion. This spirit may justly be traced in a great measure to the virtues and piety of the early preachers of the Gospel in that country. Their influence, though at this remote age, and with our imperfect knowledge, it may hardly be distinguishable amidst the licentiousness and ferocity of a rude people, was necessarily directed to counteract those vices, and cannot have failed to mitigate and compensate their evil. In the seventh and eighth centuries, while a total ignorance seemed to overspread the face of Europe, the monasteries and schools of Ireland preserved in the best manner they could such learning as had survived the revolutions of the Roman world. But the learning of monasteries had never much efficacy in dispelling the ignorance of the laity; and, indeed, even in them it had decayed long before the twelfth century. The clergy were respected and numerous, the bishops alone amounting at one time to no less than three hundred; and it has been maintained by our most learned writers that they were wholly independent of the see of Rome till, a little before the English invasion, one of their primates thought fit to solicit the pall from thence on his consecration, according to the discipline long practised in other western churches. It will be readily perceived that the government of Ireland must have been almost entirely aristocratical, and, though not strictly feudal, not very unlike that of the feudal confederacies in France during the ninth and tenth centuries. It was perhaps still more oppressive. The ancient condition of the common people of Ireland was very little different from slavery. Unless we believe this condition to have been greatly deteriorated under the rule of their native chieftains after the English settlement, for which there seems no good reason, we must give little credit to the fanciful pictures of prosperity and happiness in that period of aboriginal independence which the Irish, in their discontent with later times, have been apt to draw. They had, no doubt, like all other nations, good and wise princes, as well as tyrants and usurpers. But we find by their annals that, out of two hundred ancient kings, of whom some brief memorials are recorded, not more than thirty came to a natural death; while, for the later period, the oppression of the Irish chieftains, and of those degenerate English who trod in their steps and emulated the vices they should have restrained, is the one |