Ireland

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Geography

Ireland lies in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Great Britain, from which it is separated in the north-east by the North Channel, in the east by the Irish Sea, and in the south-east by St. George's Channel. Situated between the fifty-first and fifty-sixth degrees of latitude, and between the fifth and eleventh parallels of longitude (Greenwich), its greatest length is 302 miles, its greatest breadth 174 miles, its area 32,535 square miles. It is divided into four provinces, these being subdivided into thirty-two counties. In the centre the country is a level plain; towards the coast there are several detached mountain chains. Its rivers and bays are numerous, also its bogs; its climate is mild, though unduly moist. In minerals it is not wealthy like Great Britain, but is soil is generally more fertile, and is specially suitable for agriculture and pasturage.

Early history

In ancient times it was known by the various names of Ierna, Juverna, Hibernia, Ogygia, and Inisfail or the Isle of Destiny. It was also called Banba and Erin, and lastly Scotia, or the country of the Scots. From the eleventh century, however, the name Scotia was exclusively applied to Caledonia, the latter country having been peopled in the sixth century by a Scottish colony from Ireland. Henceforth Ireland was often called Scotia Major and sometimes Ireland, until, after the eleventh century, the name Scotia was dropped and Ireland alone remained. Even yet it is sometimes called Erin—chiefly by orators and poets. Situated in the far west, out of the beaten paths of commercial activity, it was little known to the ancients. Festus Avienus wrote that it was two days' sail from Britain. Pliny thought that it was part of Britain and not an island at all; Strabo that it was near Britain, and that its inhabitants were cannibals; and all that Caesar knew was that it was west of Britain, and about half its size. Agricola beheld its coastline from the opposite shores of Caledonia, and had thought of accepting the invitation of an Irish chief to come and conquer it, believing he could do so with a single legion. But he left Ireland unvisited and unconquered, and Tacitus could only record that in soil and climate it resembled Britain, and that its harbours were then well known to foreign merchants.

But if we have not any detailed description from his lively pen, the native chroniclers have furnished us with abundant materials, and, if all they say be true, we can understand the remark of Camden that Ireland was rightly called Ogygia, or the Ancient Island, because in comparison, the antiquity of all other nations is in its infancy. Passing by the absurd story that it was peopled before the Deluge, we are told that, beginning with the time of Abraham, several successive waves of colonization rolled westward to its shores. First came Parthalon with 1000 followers; after which came the Nemedians, the Firbolgs, and the Tuatha-de-Dananns, and lastly the Milesians or Scots. In addition, there were the Fomorians, a people of uncertain origin, whose chief occupation was piracy and war, and whose attacks on the various settlers were incessant. These and the Milesians excepted, the different colonists came from Greece, and all were of the same race. The Milesians came from Scythia; and from that country to Egypt, from Egypt to Spain, from Spain to Ireland their adventures are recorded in detail. The name Scot which they bore was derived from Scota, daughter of Pharaoh of Egypt, the wife of one of their chiefs; from their chief Miledh they got the name Milesians, and from another chief Goidel they were sometimes called Gadelians, or Gaels. The wars and battles of these colonists are largely fabulous, and the Partholanians, Nemedians, and Fomorians belong rather to mythology than to history. So also do the Dananns, though sometimes they are taken as a real people, of superior knowledge and skill, the builders of those prehistoric sepulchral mounds by the Boyne, at Dowth, Knowth, and Newgrange. The Firbolgs however most probably existed, and were kindred perhaps to those warlike Belgae of Gaul whom Caesar encountered in battle. And the Milesians certainly belong to history, though the date of their arrival in Ireland is unknown. They were Celts, and probably came from Gaul to Britain, and from Britain to Ireland, rather than direct from Spain. Under the leadership of Heremon and Heber they soon became masters of the island. Some of the Firbolgs, it is said, crossed the seas to the Isles of Arran, where they built the fort of Dun Engus, which still stands and which tradition still associates with their name. Heber and Heremon soon quarrelled, and, Heber falling in battle, Heremon became sole ruler, the first in a long line of kings. This list of kings, however, is not reliable, and we are warned by Tighearnach, the most trustworthy of Irish chroniclers, that all events before the reign of Cimbaeth (300 B.C.) are uncertain. Even after the dawn of the Christian Era fact and fiction are interwoven and events are often shrouded in shadows and mists. Such, for instance, are the exploits of Cuchullain and Finn Macumhael. Nor have many of these early kinds been remarkable, if we except Conn of the Hundred Battles, who lived in the first century after Christ; Cormac, who lived a century later; Tuathal, who established the Feis of Tara; Niall, who invaded Britain; and Dathi, who in the fifth century lost his life at the foot of the Alps.

The Irish were then pagans, but not barbarians. Their roads were indeed ill-constructed, their wooden dwellings rude, the dress of their lower orders scanty, their implements of agriculture and war primitive, and so were their land vehicles, and the boats in which they traversed the sea. On the other hand, some of their swords and shields showed some skill in metal-working, and their war-like and commercial voyages to Britain and Gaul argue some proficiency in shipbuilding and navigation. They certainly loved music; and, besides their inscribed Ogham writing, they had a knowledge of letters. There was a high-king of Ireland (ardri), and subject to him were the provincial kings and chiefs of tribes. Each of these received tribute from his immediate inferior, and even in a sept the political and legal administration was complete. There was the druid who explained religion, the brehon who dispensed justice, the brughaid or public hospitaller, the bard who sang the praises of his chief or urged his kinsman to battle; and each was an official and had his appointed allotment of land. Kings, though taken from one family, were elective, the tanist or heir-apparent being frequently not the nearest relation of him who reigned. This peculiarity, together with gavelkind by which the lands were periodically redistributed, impeded industry and settled government. Nor was there any legislative assembly, and the Brehon law under which Ireland lived was judge-made law. Sometimes the ardri's tribute remained unpaid and his authority nominal; but if he was a strong man he exacted obedience and tribute. The Boru tribute levied on the King of Leinster was excessive and unjust, and led to many evils. The pagan Irish believed in Druidism, resembling somewhat the Druidism Caesar saw in Gaul; but the pagan creed of the Irish was indefinite and their gods do not stand out clear. They held the immortality and the transmigration of souls, worshipped the sun and moon, and, with an inferior worship, mountains, rivers, and wells. And they sacrificed to idols, one of which, Crom Cruach, they are said to have propitiated with human sacrifices. They also believed in fairies, holding that the Tuatha-de-Dananns, when defeated by the Milesians, retired into the bosom of the mountains, where they held their fairy revels. One of the women fairies (the banshee) watched the fortunes of great families, and when some great misfortune was impending, the doomed family was warned at night by her mournful wail.

Early Christian period

Intercourse with Britain and the Continent through commerce and war sufficiently accounts for the introduction of Christianity before the fifth century. There must have been then a considerable number of Christians in Ireland; for in 430 Palladius, a bishop and native of Britain, was sent by Pope Celestine "to the Scots believing in Christ". Palladius, however, did little, and almost immediately returned to Britain, and in 432 the same pope sent St. Patrick. He is the Apostle of Ireland, but this does not imply that he found Ireland altogether pagan and left it altogether Christian. It is however quite true that when St. Patrick did come paganism was the predominant belief, and that at his death it had been supplanted as such by Christianity. The extraordinary work which St. Patrick did, as well as his own attractive personal character, has furnished him with many biographers; and even in recent years his life and works have engaged erudite and able pens. But in spite of all that has been written many things in his life are still doubtful and obscure. It is doubtful when and where he was born, how he spent his life between his first leaving Ireland and his return, and in what year he died. It has been maintained that he never existed; that he and Palladius were the same man; that there were two St. Patricks; again, some, like Jocelin, have multiplied his miracles beyond belief. These contradictions and exaggerations have encouraged the scoffer to sneer; and Gibbon was sure that in the sixty-six lives of St. Patrick there must have been sixty-six thousand lies. In reality there seems no solid reason for rejecting the traditional account, viz., that St. Patrick was born at Dumbarton in Scotland about 372; that he was captured and brought to Ireland by the Irish king, Nial; that he was sold as a slave to an Ulster chief Milcho, whom he served for six years; that he then escaped and went back to his own people; that in repeated visions he, a pious Christian, heard the plaintive cry of the pagan Irish inviting him to come amongst them; that, believing he was called by God to do so, he went first to the monastery of St. Martin of Tours, then to that of St. Germanus of Auxerre, after which he went to Lérins and to Rome; and then, being consecrated bishop, he was sent by Pope Celestine to Ireland, where he arrived in 432.

From Wicklow, where he landed, his course is traced to Antrim; back by Downpatrick, near which he converted Dichu and got from him a grant of land for his first church at Saul; then by Dundalk, where Benignus was converted; and to Slane, where in sight of Tara itself he lighted the paschal fire. The enraged druids pointed out to the ardri the heinousness of the offence, for during the great pagan festival then being celebrated it was death to light any fire except at Tara. But St. Patrick came to Tara itself, baptized the chief poet, and even the ardri; then marched north and destroyed at Leitrim the idol, Crom Cruach, after which he entered Connaught, and remained there for seven years. Passing through Connaught to Ulster, he went through Donegal, Tyrone, and Antrim, consecrated Macarten Bishop of Monaghan, and Fiace Bishop of Sletty; after which he entered Munster. Finally he returned to Ulster, and died at Saul in 493. His early captivity in Ireland interfered seriously with his education, and in his Confession and in his Epistle to Caroticus, both of which have survived the wreck of ages, we can discover no graces of style. But we see his great familiarity with the Scripture. And the man himself stands revealed; his piety, his spirit of prayer, his confidence in God, his zeal, his invincible courage. But while putting his entire trust in God, and giving Him all the glory, he rejected no human aid. Entering into a pagan territory he first preached to the chief men, knowing that when they were converted the people would follow. Wonderful indeed was his labour, and wonderful its results. He preached in almost every district in Ireland, confounded in argument the druids and won the people from their side; he built, it is said, 365 churches and consecrated an equal number of bishops, established schools and convents, and held synods; and when he died the whole machinery of a powerful Church was in operation, fully equal to the task of confirming in the faith those already converted and of bringing those yet in darkness into the Christian fold.

One of the apostle's first anxieties was to provide a native ministry. For this purpose he selected the leading men—chiefs, brehons, bards—men likely to attract the respect of the people, and these, after little training, and often with little education, he had ordained. Thus equipped the priest went among the people, with his catechism, missal, and ritual, the bishop in addition his crosier and bell. In a short time, however, these primitive conditions ceased. Abut 450 a college was established at Armagh under Benignus; other schools arose at Kildare, Noendrum, and Louth; and by the end of the fifth century these colleges sent forth a sufficient supply of trained priests. Supported by a grant of land from the chief of the clan or sept and by voluntary offerings, bishop and priests lived together, preached to the people, administered the sacraments, settled their disputes, sat in their banquet halls. To many ardent natures this state of things was abhorrent. Fleeing from men, they sought for solitude and silence, by the banks of a river, in the recesses of a wood, and, with the scantiest allowance of food, the water for their drink, a few wattles covered with sods for their houses, they spent their time in mortification and prayer. Literally they were monks, for they were alone with God. But their retreats were soon invaded by others anxious to share their penances and their vigils, and to learn wisdom at their feet. Each newcomer built his little hut, a church was erected, a grant of land obtained, their master became abbot, and perhaps bishop; and thus arose monastic establishments the fame of which soon spread throughout Europe. Noted examples in the sixth century were Clonard, founded by St. Finian, Clonfert by St. Brendan, Bangor by St. Comgall, Clonmacnoise by St. Kieran, Arran by St. Enda; and, in the seventh century, Lismore by St. Carthage and Glendalough by St. Kevin.

There were still bardic schools, as there was still paganism, but in the seventh century paganism had all but disappeared, and the bardic were overshadowed by the monastic schools. Frequented by the best of the Irish, and by students from abroad, these latter diffused knowledge over western Europe, and Ireland received and merited the title of Island of Saints and Scholars. The holy men who laboured with St. Patrick and immediately succeeded him were mostly bishops and founders of churches; those of the sixth century were of the monastic order; those of the seventh century were mostly anchorites who loved solitude, silence, continued prayer, and the most rigid austerities. Nor were the women behindhand in this contest for holiness. St. Brigid is a name still dear to Ireland, and she, as well as St. Ita, St. Fanchea and others, founded many convents tenanted by pious women, whose sanctity and sacrifices it would be indeed difficult to surpass. Nor was the Irish Church, as has been sometimes asserted, out of communion with the See of Rome. The Roman and Irish tonsures differed, it is true, and the methods of computing Easter, and it may be that Pelagianism found some few adherents, though Arianism did not, nor the errors as to the natures and wills of Christ. In the number of its sacraments, in its veneration for the Blessed Virgin, in its belief in the Mass and in Purgatory, in its obedience to the See of Rome, the creed of the early Irish Church was the Catholic creed of today (see CELTIC RITE). Abroad as well as at home Irish Christian zeal was displayed. In 563 St. Columba, a native of Donegal, accompanied by a few companions, crossed the sea to Caledonia and founded a monastery on the desolate island of Iona.

Fresh arrivals came from Ireland; the monastery with Columba as its abbot was soon a flourishing institution, from which the Dalriadian Scots in the south and the Piets beyond the Grampians were evangelized; and when Columba died in 597, Christianity had been preached and received in every district in Caledonia, and in every island along its west coast. In the next century Iona had so prospered that its abbot, St. Adamnan, wrote in excellent Latin the "Life of St. Columba", the best biography of which the Middle Ages can boast. From Iona had gone south the Irish Aidan and his Irish companions to compete with and even exceed in zeal the Roman missionaries under St. Augustine, and to evangelize Northumbria, Mercia, and Essex; and if Irish zeal had already been displayed in Iona, equal zeal was now displayed on the desolate isle of Lindisfarne. Nor was this all. In 590 St. Columbanus, a student of Bangor, accompanied by twelve companions, arrived in France and established the monastery of Luxeuil, the parent of many monasteries, then laboured at Bregenz, and finally founded the monastery of Bobbio, which as a centre of knowledge and piety was long the light of northern Italy. And meantime his friend and fellow-student St. Gall laboured with conspicuous success in Switzerland, St. Fridolin along the Rhine, St. Fiacre near Meaux, St. Kilian at Wurzburg, St. Livinus in Brabant, St. Fursey on the Marne, St. Cataldus in southern Italy. And when Charlemagne reigned (771-814), Irishmen were at his court, "men incomparably skilled in human learning".

In the civil history of the period only a few facts stand out prominently. About 560, in consequence of a quarrel with the ardri Diarmuid about the right of sanctuary, St. Columba and Rhodanus (Reudan) of Lorrha publicly cursed Tara, an unpatriotic act which dealt a fatal blow at the prospect of a strong central government by blighting with maledictions its acknowledged seat. Nearly thirty years later the National Convention of Drumceat restrained the insolence and curtailed the privileges of the bards. In 684 Ireland was invaded by the King of Northumbria, though no permanent conquest followed. And in 697 the last Feis of Tara was held, at which, through the influence of Adamnan, women were interdicted from taking part in actual battle. At the same time the ardri Finactha, at the instance of St. Moling, renounced for himself and his successors the Boru tribute. As the eighth century neared its close, religion and learning still flourished; but unexpected dangers approached and a new enemy came, before whose assaults monk and monastery and saint and scholar disappeared.

These invaders were the Danes from the coasts of Scandinavia. Pagans and pirates, they loved plunder and war, and both on land and sea were formidable foes. Like the fabled Fomorians of earlier times they had a genius for devastation. Descending from their ships along the coast of western Europe, they murdered the inhabitants or made them captives and slaves.

In Ireland as elsewhere they attacked the monasteries and churches, desecrated the altars, carried away the gold and silver vessels, and smoking ruins and murdered monks attested the fury of their assaults. Armagh and Bangor, Kildare and Clonmacnoise, Iona and Lindisfarne thus fell before their fury. Favoured by disunion among the Irish chiefs, they crept inland, effected permanent settlements at Waterford and Limerick and established a powerful kingdom at Dublin; and, had their able chief Turgesius lived much longer, they might perhaps have subdued the whole island. For a century after his death in 845 victory and defeat alternated in their wars; but they clung tenaciously to their seaport possessions, and kept the neighbouring Irish in cruel bondage. They were, however, signally defeated by the Ardri Malachy in 980, and Dublin was compelled to pay him tribute. But, able as Malachy was, an abler man soon supplanted him in the supreme position. Step by step Brian Boru had risen from being chief of Thomond to be undisputed ruler of Munster. Its chiefs were his tributaries and his allies; the Danes he had repeatedly chastised, and in 1002 he compelled Malachy to abdicate in his favour.

It was a bitter humiliation for Malachy thus to lay down the sceptre which for 600 years had been in the hands of his family. It gave Ireland, however, the greatest of her high-kings and unbroken peace for some years. War came when the elements of discontent coalesced. Brian had irritated Leinster by reviving the Boru tribute; he had crushed the Danes; and these, with the Danes of the Isle of Man and those of Sweden and the Scottish Isles, joined together, and on Good Friday, 1014, the united strength of Danes and Leinstermen faced Brian's army at Clontarf. The victory gained by the latter was great; but it was dearly bought by the loss of Brian as well as his son and grandson. The century and a half which followed was a weary waste of turbulence and war. Brian's usurpation encouraged others to ignore the claims of descent. O'Loughlin and O'Neill in the North, O'Brien in the South, and O'Connor beyond the Shannon fought for the national throne with equal energy and persistence; and as one set of disputants disappeared, others replaced them, equally determined to prevail. The lesser chiefs were similarly engaged. This ceaseless strife completed the work begun by the Danes. Under native and Christian chiefs churches were destroyed, church lands appropriated by laymen, monastic schools deserted, lay abbots ruled at Armagh and elsewhere. Bishops were consecrated without sees and conferred orders for money, there was chaos in church government and corruption everywhere. In a series of synods beginning with Rathbreasail (1118) and including Kells, at which the pope's legate presided, many salutary enactments were passed, and for the first time diocesan episcopacy was established. Meanwhile, St. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh, had done very remarkable work in his own diocese and elsewhere. His early death in 1148 was a heavy blow to the cause of church reform. Nor could so many evils be cured in a single life, or by the labours of a single man; and in spite of his efforts and the efforts of others the decrees of synods were often flouted, and the new diocesan boundaries ignored.

The Anglo-Normans

In Henry II of England an unexpected reformer appeared. The murderer of Thomas a' Becket seemed ill-fitted for the role, but he undertook it, and in the first year of his reign (1154) he procured a Bull from the English-born Pope Adrian IV authorizing him to proceed to Ireland "to check the torrent of wickedness to reform evil manners, to sow the seeds of virtue." The many troubles of his extensive kingdom thwarted his plans for years. But in 1168 Macmurrogh, King of Leinster, driven from his kingdom sought Henry's aid, and then Adrian's Bull was remembered. a first contingent of Anglo-Normans came to Ireland in 1169 under Fitzgerald, a stronger force under Strongbow (de Clare, Earl of Pembroke) in 1170, and in 1171 Henry himself landed at Waterford and proceeded to Dublin, where he spent the winter, and received the submission of all the Irish chiefs, except those of Tyrconnell and Tyrowen. These submissions, however, aggravated rather than lessened existing ills. The Irish chiefs submitted to Henry as to a powerful ardri, still preserving their privileges and rights under Brehon law. Henry, on his side, regarded them as vassals holding the lands of their tribes by military service and in accordance with feudal law. Thus a conflict between the clan system and feudalism arose. Exercising his supposed rights, Henry divided the country into so many great fiefs, giving Meath to be Lacy, Leinster to Strongbow, while de Courcy was encouraged to conquer Ulster, and deCogan Connaught. At a later date the deBurgos settled in Galway, the Fitzgeralds in Kildare and Desmond, the Butlers in Ossory. Discord enfeebled the capacity of the Irish chiefs for resistance; nor were kernes and gallowglasses equal to mail-clad knights, nor the battle-axe to the Norman lance, and in a short time large tracts had passed from native to foreign hands.

The new Anglo-Irish lords soon outgrew the position of English subjects, and to the natives became tyrannical and overbearing. Ignoring the many evidences of culture in Ireland, her Romanesque architecture, her high crosses, her illuminated manuscripts, her shrines and crosiers, the scholars that had shed lustre on her schools, the saints that had hallowed her fame throughout Europe — ignoring all these, they despised the Irish as rude and barbarous, despised their language, their laws their dress, their arms; and, while not recognizing the Brehon law, they refused Irishmen the status of English subjects or the protection of English law. At last, despairing of union among their own chiefs, or of justice from Irish viceroy or English king, the oppressed Irish invited Edward Bruce from Scotland. In 1315 he landed in Ireland and was crowned king. Successful at first, his allies beyond the Shannon were almost annihilated in the battle of Athenry (1316); and two years later he was himself defeated and slain at Faughart. His ruin had been effected by a combination of the Anglo-Irish lords, and this still further inflated their pride. Titles rewarded them. Birmingham became Lord of Athenry and Earl of Louth, Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, his kinsman Earl of Desmond, de Burgo Earl of Ulster, Butler Earl of Ormond. But these titles only increased their insolence and disloyalty. Favoured by the weakness of the viceroy's government the native chiefs recovered most of the ground they had lost.

Meanwhile the De Burgos in Connaught changed their name to Burke, and became Irish chiefs; many others followed their example; even the ennobled Butlers and Fitzgeralds used the Irish language, dress, and customs, and were as turbulent as the worst of the native chiefs. To recall these colonists to their allegiance the Statute of Kilkenny made it penal to use Irish customs, language, or law, forbade intermarriage with the mere Irish, or the conferring of benefices on the native-born. But the barriers of race could not be maintained, and the intermarrying of Irish with Anglo-Irish went on. The long war with France, followed by the Wars of the Roses, diverted the attention of England from Irish affairs; and the viceroy, feebly supported from England, was too weak to chastise these powerful lords or put penal laws in force. The hostility of native chiefs was bought off by the payment of "black rents". The loyal colonists confined to a small district near Dublin, called "the Pale", shivered behind its encircling rampart; and when the sixteenth century dawned, English power in Ireland had almost disappeared. Those within the Pale were impoverished by grasping officials and by the payment of "black rents". Outside the Pale the country was held by sixty chiefs of Irish descent and thirty of English descent, each making peace or war as he pleased. Lawlessness and irreligion were everywhere. The clergy of Irish quarrelled with those of English descent; the religious houses were corrupt, their priors and abbots great landholders with seats in Parliament, and more attached to secular than to religious concerns; the great monastic schools had disappeared, the greatest of them all, Clonmacnoise, being in ruins; preaching was neglected except by the mendicant orders, and these were utterly unable to cope with the disorders which prevailed.

The Tudor period

Occupied with English and Continental affairs, Henry VIII, in the beginning of his reign, bestowed but little attention on Ireland, and not until he was a quarter of a century on the throne were Irish affairs taken seriously in hand. The king was then in middle age, no longer the defender of the Faith against Luther, but, like Luther, a rebel against Rome; no longer generous or attractive in character, but rather a cruel capricious tyrant whom it was dangerous to provoke and fatal to disobey. In England his hands were reddened with the best blood of the land; and in Ireland the fate of the Fitzgeralds, following the rebellion of Silken Thomas, struck Irish and Anglo-Irish alike with such terror that all hastened to make peace. O'Neill, renouncing the inheritance of his ancestors, became Earl of Tyrone; Burke became Earl of Clanrickard, O'Brien Earl of Thomond, Fitzpatrick Lord of Ossory; the Earl of Desmond and the other Anglo-Irish nobles were pardoned all their offences, and at a Parliament in Dublin (1541) Anglo-Irish and Irish attended. And Henry, who like his predecessors had been hitherto but Lord of Ireland (Dominus Hiberniae), was now unanimously given the higher title of king. This Parliament also passed the Act of Supremacy by which Henry was invested with spiritual jurisdiction, and, in substitution for the pope, proclaimed head of the Church. As the proctors of the clergy refused to agree to this measure, the irate monarch deprived them of the right of voting, and in revenge confiscated church lands and suppressed monasteries, in some cases shed the blood of their inmates, in the remaining cases sent them forth homeless and poor. These severities, however, did not win the people from their faith. The apostate friar Browne, whom Henry made Archbishop of Dublin, the apostate Staples, Bishop of Meath, and Henry himself, stained with so many adulteries and murders, had but poor credentials as preachers of reform; whatever time-serving chiefs might do, the clergy and people were unwilling to make Henry pope, or to subscribe to the varying tenets of his creed. His successor, an ardent Protestant, tried hard to make Ireland Protestant, but the sickly plant which he sowed was uprooted by the Catholic Mary, and at Elizabeth's accession all Ireland was Catholic.

Like her father Henry, the young queen was a cruel and capricious tyrant, and in her war with Shane O'Neill, the ablest of the Irish chiefs, she did not scruple to employ assassins. She was neither a sincere Protestant nor a willing persecutor of the Catholics; and though she re-enacted the Act of Supremacy and passed the Act of Uniformity, making Protestantism the state creed, she refused to have these acts rigorously enforced. But when the pope and the Spanish king declared against her, and the Irish Catholics were found in alliance with both, she yielded to her ministers and concluded, with them, that a Catholic was necessarily a disloyal subject. Henceforth toleration gave way to persecution. The tortures inflicted on O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, and O'Hely, Bishop of Mayo, the Spaniards murdered in cold blood at Smerwick, the desolation of Munster during Desmond's rebellion, showed how cruel her rule could be. Far more formidable than the rebellion of Desmond, or even than that of Shane O'Neill, was the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill, Early of Tyrone. No such able Irish chief had appeared since Brian Boru. Cool, cautious, vigilant, he laid his plans with care and knew how to wait patiently for results. Never impulsive, never boastful, wise in council and wary in speech, from his long residence in London in his youth he learned dissimulation, and was as crafty as the craftiest English minister. Repeatedly he foiled the queen's diplomatists in council as he did her generals in the field, and at the Yellow Ford (1598) gained the greatest victory ever won in Ireland over English arms. What he might have done had he been loyally supported it is hard to say. For nearly ten years he continued the war; he continued it after his Spanish allies had brought upon him the disaster of Kinsale; after his chief assistant, O'Donnell, had been struck down by an assassin's hand; after Carew had subdued Munster, and Mountjoy had turned Ulster into a desert; after the Irish chiefs had gone over to the enemy. And when he submitted it was only on condition of being guaranteed his titles and lands; and by that time Elizabeth, who hated him so much and so longed for his destruction, had breathed her last.

Under the Stuarts

James I (1603-25) was the first of the Stuart line, and from the son of Mary Stuart the Irish Catholics expected much. They were doomed, however, to an early disappointment. The cities which rejoiced that "Jezabel was dead", and that now they could practise their religion openly, were warned by Mountjoy that James was a good Protestant and as such would have no toleration of popery. Salisbury, who had poisoned the mind of the queen against the Catholics, was equally successful with her successor, with the result that persecution continued. Proclamations were issued ordering the clergy to quit the kingdom; those who remained were hunted down; O'Devany, Bishop of Down, and others were done to death. The Acts of Supremacy and uniformity were rigorously enforced. The Act of Oblivion, under which participants in the late rebellion were pardoned, was often forgotten or ignored. English law, which for the first time was extended to all Ireland, was used by corrupt officials to oppress rather than to protect the people. The Earl of Tyrone and the Early of Tyroconnell (Rory O'Donnell) was so spied upon and worried by false charges of disloyalty that they fled the country, believing that their lives were in danger; and to all their pleas for justice the king's response was to slander their characters and confiscate their lands. It is indeed true that Irish juries found the earls guilty of high treason, and an Irish Parliament, representing all Ireland, attained them. But these results were obtained by carefully packing the juries, and by the creation of small boroughs which sent creatures of the king to represent them in Parliament. And the Catholic members acquiesced under threat of having enacted a fresh batch of penal laws. Thus, aided by corrupt juries and a complaisant Parliament, James I was enabled to plant the confiscated lands of Ulster with English Protestants and Scotch Presbyterians. Other plantations had fared badly. That of King's and Queen's County in Mary's reign had decayed; and the plantation of Munster after the Desmond war had been swept away in the tide of O'Neill's victories. The plantation of Ulster was more thorough and effective than either of these. Whole districts were given to the settlers, and these, supported by a Protestant Government, soon grew into a powerful and prosperous colony, while the despoiled Catholics, driven from the richer to the poorer lands, looked helplessly on, hating those colonists for whose sake they had been despoiled.

Under the new king, Charles I (1625-49), the policy of persecution and plantation was continued. Under pretence of advancing the public interest and increasing the king's revenue, a crowd of hungry adventurers spread themselves over the land, inquiring into the title by which lands were held. With venal judges, venal juries, and sympathetic officials to aid them, good titles were declared bad, and lands seized, and the adventurers were made sharers in the spoil. The O'Byrnes were thus deprived of their lands in Wicklow, and similar confiscations and plantations took place in Wexford, King's County, Leitrim, Westmeath, and Longford. Hoping to protect themselves against such robbery, the Catholics offered the king a subsidy of £120,000 in exchange for certain privileges called "graces", which among other things would give them indefeasible titles to their estates. These "graces" granted by the king, were to have the sanction of Parliament to make them good. The money was paid, but the "graces" were withheld, and the viceroy, Strafford, proceeded to Connaught to confiscate and plant the whole province. The projected plantation was ultimately abandoned; but the sense of injustice remained. All over the country were insecurity, anxiety, unrest, and disaffection; Irish and Anglo-Irish were equally menaced. Seeing the futility of appealing to a helpless Parliament, a despotic viceroy, or a perfidious king, the nation took up arms.

To describe the rebellion as the "massacre of 1641" is unjust. The details of cruel murders committed and horrible tortures inflicted by the rebels are mischievously untrue. On the other hand, it is true that the Protestants suffered grievous wrong, and that many of them lost their lives, exclusive of those who fell in war. The Catholics wanted the planters' lands; when driven away in wintry weather, without money, or food, or sufficient clothes, many planters perished of hunger and cold. Others fell by the avenging hand of some infuriated Catholic whom they might have wronged in the days of their power. Many fell defending their property or the property and lives of their friends. The plan of the rebel leaders, of whom Roger Moore was chief, was to capture the garrison towns by a simultaneous attack. But they failed to capture Dublin Castle, containing large stores of arms, owing to the imprudence of Colonel MacMahon. He imparted the secret to a disreputable Irishman named O'Connolly, who at once informed the Castle authorities, with the result that the Castle defences were strengthened, and MacMahon and others arrested and subsequently executed. In Ulster, however, the whole open country and many towns fell into the rebels' hands, and Munster and Connaught soon joined the rebellion, as did the Catholics of the Pale, unable to obtain any toleration of their religion, or security of their property, or even of their lives. Before the new year was far advanced the Catholic Bishops declared the rebellion just, and the Catholics formed a confederation which, from its meeting place, was called the "Confederation of Kilkenny". Composed of clergy and laity its members swore to be loyal to the king, to strive for the free exercise of their religion, and to defend the lives, liberties, and possessions of all who took the Confederate oath. Supreme executive authority was vested in a supreme council; there were provincial councils also, all these bodies deriving their powers from an elective body called the "General Assembly".

The Supreme Council exercised all the powers of government, administered justice, raised taxes, formed armies, appointed generals. One of the best-known of these officers was General Preston, who commanded in Leinster, having come from abroad with a good supply of arms and ammunition, and with 500 trained officers. A more remarkable man still was General Owen Roe O'Neill, nephew of the great Earl of Tyrone, who took command in Ulster, and whose defence of Arras against the French caused him to be recognized as one of the first soldiers in Europe. He also, like Preston, brought officers, arms, and ammunition to Ireland. At a later state came Rinuccini, the pope's nuncio, bringing with him a supply of money. Meanwhile, civil war raged in England between king and Parliament; the Government at Dublin, ill supplied from across the Channel, was ill fitted to crush a powerful rebellion, and, in 1646, O'Neill won the great victory of Benburb. But the strength of which this victory was the outcome was counterbalanced by elements of weakness. The Catholics of Ulster and those of the Pale did not agree; neither did Generals O'Neill and Preston. The Supreme Council, with a feeble old man, Lord Mountgarret, at its head, and four provincial generals instead of a commander-in-chief, was ill-suited for the vigorous prosecution of a war. Moreover, the influence of the Marquis of Ormond was a fatal cause of discord. A personal friend of the king, and charged by him with the command of his army and with the conduct of negotiations, a Protestant with Catholic friends on the Supreme Council, his desire ought to have been to bring Catholic and Royalist together. But his hatred of the Catholics was such that he would grant them no terms, even when ordered to do so by His Majesty. The Catholics' professions of loyalty he despised, and his great diplomatic abilities were used to sow dissensions in their councils and to thwart their plans. Yet the Supreme Council, dominated by an Ormondist faction, continued fruitless negotiations with him, agreed to a cessation when they themselves were strong and their opponents weak, and agreed to a peace with him in spite of the victory of Benburb, and in spite of the remonstrances of the nuncio and of General O'Neill. Nor did they cease these relations with him even after he had treacherously surrendered Dublin to the Parliament (1647), and left the country. On the contrary, they still put faith in him, entered into a fresh peace with him in 1648, and when he returned to Ireland as the Royalist viceroy they received him in state at Kilkenny. In disgust, General O'Neill came to a temporary agreement with the Parliamentary general, and Rinuccini, despairing of Ireland, returned to Rome.

The Civil War in England was then over. The Royalists had been vanquished, the king executed, the monarchy replaced by a commonwealth; and in August, 1649, Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland with 10,000 men. Ormond meanwhile had rallied his supporters, and, with the greater part of the Catholics of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, the Protestants of the Pale and of Munster, and great part of the Ulster Presbyterians, his strength was considerable. His obstinate bigotry would not allow him to make terms with the Ulster army, and he thus lost the support of General O'Neill at a critical time. Early in August he had been disastrously beaten by the Puritan general Jones, at Rathmines; in consequence he offered no opposition to Cromwell's landing and made no attempt to relieve Drogheda. It was soon captured by Cromwell and its garrison put to the sword. A month later the same fate befell Wexford. Waterford repelled Cromwell's attack, and Clonmel and Kilkenny offered him a stout resistance; but other towns were easily captured, or voluntarily surrendered; and when he left Ireland, in May, 1650, Munster and Leinster were in his hands. His successors, Ireton and Ludlow, within two years reduced the remaining provinces. Meanwhile Owen Roe O'Neill had died after making terms with Ormond, but before meeting with Cromwell. The Catholic Bishops, however, repudiated Ormond, who then left Ireland. Some negotiations subsequently between Lord Clanricarde and the Duke of Lorraine came to nothing, and the long war was ended in which more than half the inhabitants of the country had lost their lives.

In the beginning of the rebellion many Englishmen subscribed money to put it down, stipulating in return for a share of the lands to be forfeited, and thus hatred of the Catholics was mingled with hope of gain. The English Parliament accepted the money on the terms proposed, and the subscribers became known as "adventurers", because they adventured their money on Irish land. When the rebellion was over, the problem was to provide the lands promised, and also to provide lands for the soldiers who were in arrears of pay. It was a difficult problem. There was an Act for Settling Ireland, and Act for the Satisfaction of Adventurers in Lands and Arrears due to the soldiers and other public Debts; there was a High Court of Justice to determine who were guilty of rebellion; there were soldiers who had got special terms when laying down their arms; and there were those who had never had a share in the rebellion, but had merely lived in the rebel quarters during the war. The best of the lands east of the Shannon were for the adventurers and soldiers, the dispossessed being driven to Connaught. To determine where the planters were to be settled and where the transplanted, and what amount they were to get, there were commissions, and committees, and surveys, and court of claims. Nor was it till 1658 that the Cromwellian Settlement was complete, and even then many of the transplanted protested their innocence of any share in the rebellion, and many of the adventurers and soldiers complained that they had been defrauded of their due. In the amount of suffering it entailed and wrong inflicted the whole scheme far exceeded the plantation of Ulster. But it failed to make Ireland either English or Protestant, and in setting up a system of alien landlords and native tenants it proved the curse of Ireland and the fruitful parent of many ills.

To the Irish Cromwell's death in 1658 was welcome news, all the more so because Charles II (1660-85) was restored. For their attachment to the cause of the latter they had suffered much; and now the Catholic landlord in his Connaught cabin and the Irish soldier abroad felt equally assured that the recovery of their lands and homes was at hand. They soon learned that Stuart gratitude meant little and that Stuart promises were written on sand. Had Charles been free to act, the Cromwellian Settlement would not have endured; for he loved the Catholics much more than he loved the Puritans. But the planters were a dangerous body to provoke, sustained as they were by the English Parliament and by the king's chief adviser, Ormond, who indeed hated the Cromwellians, but hated the Catholics much more. Some attempt, however, was made to right the wrong that had been done, and by the Act of Settlement, six hundred innocent Catholics were restored to their lands. Many more would have been restored had the court of claims been allowed to continue its sittings. The irate planters wanted to know what was to become of them if the despoiled papist thus back their lands; utterings threats and even breaking out into rebellion they alarmed the king. Under Ormond's advice the Act of Explanation was then passed (1665) and the court of claims set up by the Act of Settlement closed its doors, though three thousand cases remained untried. Thus the Cromwellians who had murdered the king's father were, with few exceptions, left unmolested while the Catholics were abandoned to their fate. Before the rebellion two-thirds of the lands of the country were in the hands of the latter; after the Act of Explanation scarcely one-third was left them, a sweeping confiscation especially in the case of men who were denied even the justice of a trial. After this the toleration of the Catholics was but a small concession. Not, however, during the whole of Charles's reign; for Ormond, now a duke, filled the office of viceroy for many years; he at least would maintain Protestant ascendancy, and exclude the Catholics from the bench and the corporations. In the English Council and in Parliament he bitterly attacked and defeated the proposed revision of the Act of Settlement. He does not appear to have had any sympathy with the lying tales of Oates and Bedloe, or with the storm of persecution which followed, and he disapproved of the judicial murder of Oliver Plunket. But his aversion from the Catholics continued, and was in no way chilled by advancing age. One of the last acts of Charles was to dismiss him from office as an enemy to toleration. The king himself soon after died in the Catholic Faith, and James II, an avowed Catholic, succeeded, the first Catholic sovereign since the death of Mary Tudor.

Religious toleration had then made little progress throughout Europe, and England, aggressively Protestant, looked with special disfavour on Catholicism. In these circumstances James II should have moved with caution. He should have taken account of national prejudices and the temper of the times, and respected established institutions; while conscientiously practising his own religion, he should have sought for no favour for it, at least until the nation was in a more tolerant and yielding mood. Instead of this, and in defiance of English bigotry and English law, he appointed Catholics to high civil and military offices, opened the corporations and the universities to them, had a papal nuncio at his court, and issued a declaration of Indulgence suspending the penal laws. When the Protestant bishops refused to have this declaration read from their pulpits he prosecuted them. Their acquittal was the signal for revolt, and James, deserted by all classes, fled to France leaving the English throne to William of Orange, whom the Protestants invited from Holland. Meanwhile sweeping changes had been effected in Ireland by the viceroy, the Duke of Tyreconnell, a militant Catholic and a special favourite of King James. Protestant magistrates, sheriffs, and judges had been displaced to make room for Catholics; the army and corporations underwent similar changes; and the Act of Settlement was to be repealed. Timid Protestants trembling for their lives fled to England; others formed centres of resistance to the viceroy in Munster and Connaught, and, in Ulster, Derry and Enniskillen expelled the Catholics and closed their gates against the viceroy's troops. This was rebellion, for James, though repudiated in England, was still King of Ireland. In March, 1689, he arrived at Kinsale from France to subdue these rebels. But the task was beyond his strength. Derry and Enniskillen defied all his attacks, and a Wiliamite force, issuing from the latter town, almost annihilated a Jacobite army at Newton-Butler.

Disaffection became general among the Protestants when the Irish Parliament repealed the Act of Settlement and attained eighteen hundred persons who had fled to England through fear; and when, in August, a Williamite force of twenty thousand landed at Carrickfergus, the Protestants everywhere welcomed it. This great force, however, effected nothing, and in June, 1690, William himself came and encountered James on the banks of the Boyne. The battle was fought on 1 July, and resulted in the defeat of James. Hastening to Dublin he told the Duchess of Tyrconnell that the Irish soldiers had shamefully run away, to which the lady is said to have replied; "But your Majesty won the race." The retort was just. The Irish cavalry behaved with conspicuous gallantry, as did the greater part of the infantry. Some of the latter did run away, but not so fast as James himself, who fled taking the ablest of the Irish generals, Sarsfield, with him. That the Irish were no cowards was soon shown by their defence of Athlone and the still more glorious defence of Limerick. After being compelled to raise the siege of the latter city, King Williams left for England, committing the civil authority to lords justices and the military command to General Ginkel. In the following year Ginkel captured Athlone, owing to the carelessness of the Jacobite general, St-Ruth; and on 12 July, 1691, the last great battle of the war was fought at Aughrim. The Irish were not inferior to their opponents in numbers, discipline, or valour, and though overmatched in heavy guns they had the advantage of position. Nor was St-Ruth inferior to Ginkel in military capacity. His dispositions were excellent, and after several hours' desperate fighting Ginkel was driven back at every point. Just then St-Ruth was struck down by a cannon ball. Panic-stricken, the Irish fell back, allowing their opponents to advance and inflict on them a crushing defeat. The surrender of Galway and Sligo followed, and in a short time Ginkel and his whole army were before the walls of Limerick. When he had effectually surrounded it and made a breach in the walls, further resistance was seen to be hopeless, and Sarsfield and his friends made terms. By the end of the year the war was over, King William had triumphed, and Protestant ascendancy was secure.

The eighteenth century

By the Treaty of Limerick the Catholic soldiers of King James were pardoned, protected against forfeiture of their estates, and were free to go abroad if they chose. All Catholics might substitute an oath of allegiance for the oath of supremacy, and were to have such privileges "as were consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II". King William also promised to have the Irish Parliament grant a further relaxation of the penal laws in force. This treaty, however, was soon torn to shreds, and in spite of William's appeals the Irish Parliament refused to ratify it, and embarked on fresh penal legislation. Under these new laws Catholics were excluded from Parliament, from the bench and bar, from the army and navy, from all civil offices, from the corporations, and even from the corporate towns. They could not have Catholic schools at home or attend foreign schools, or inherit landed property, or hold land under lease, or act as executors or administrators, or have arms or ammunition, or a horse worth £5. Neither could they bury their dead in Catholic ruins, or make pilgrimages to holy wells, or observe Catholic holidays. They could not intermarry with the Protestants, the clergyman assisting at such marriages being liable to death. The wife of a Catholic landlord turning Protestant got separate maintenance; the son turning Protestant got the whole estate; and the Catholic landlord having only Catholic children was obliged at death to divide his estate among his children in equal shares. All the regular clergy, as well as bishops and vicars-general should quit the kingdom. The secular clergy might remain, but must be registered, nor could they have on their churches either steeple or bell. This was the Penal Code, elaborated through nearly half a century with patience, and care, and ingenuity, perhaps the most infamous code ever elaborated by civilized man.

Such legislation does not generate conviction, and, in spite of all, the Catholics clung to their Faith. Deprived of schools at home, the young clerical student sought the halls of Continental colleges, and being ordained returned to Ireland, disguised perhaps as a sailor and carried in a smuggler's craft. And in secrecy and obscurity he preached, taught, lived, and died, leaving another generation equally persecuted to carry on the good fight. Poverty was his portion, and frequently the prison and the scaffold; and yet, while Protestantism made no progress, Catholicism more than held its own. In 1728 the Catholics were to the Protestants as five to one, and half a century later Young calculated that to make Ireland Protestant would take 4000 years. Indeed the Protestant clergy made no serious effort to convert the Catholics; nor was this the object of the Penal Code. Passed by Protestants possessing confiscated Catholic lands, it object was to impoverish, to debase, to degrade, to leave the despoiled Catholics incapable of rebellion and ignorant of their wrongs. In this respect it succeeded. A few Catholics, with the connivance of some friendly Protestants, managed to hold their estates; the remainder gradually sank to the level of cottiers and day-labourers, living in cabins, clothed in rags, always on the verge of famine. Shut out from every position of influence, rackrented by absentee landlords, insulted by grasping agents and drunken squireens, paying tithes to a Church they abhorred, hating the Government which oppressed them and the law which made them slaves, their condition was the worst of any peasantry in Europe. From a land blighted by such laws the enterprising and ambitious fled, seeking an outlet for their enterprise and ambition in happier lands. In the time of Elizabeth and James, and still more in Cromwell's time, thousands joined the army of Spain. But in the latter half of the seventeenth century the stream was diverted to France, then the greatest military power in Europe. Thither Sarsfield and his men went after the fall of Limerick, and in the fifty years which followed 450,000 Irish died in the service of France. They fought and fell in Spain and Italy, in the passes of the Alps, in the streets of Cremona, at Ramillies and Malplaquet, at Blenheim and Fontenoy. Irishmen were marshals of France; an Irishman commanded the armies of Maria Theresa; another the army of Russia; and there were Irish statesmen, generals, and ambassadors all over Europe. Beyond the Atlantic, Irish had settled in Pennsylvania and Maryland, in Kentucky and Carolina and the New England states; Irish names were appended to the Declaration of Independence; and Irish soldiers fought throughout the War of Independence.

Now were soldiers and statesmen the only Irish exiles whom penal laws had sent abroad. The decay of schools and colleges continued from the eleventh to the sixteenth century; nor did Ireland in that period produce a single great scholar, except Duns Scotus, who was partly educated broad. Any hope of a revival of learning in the sixteenth century was blasted by the suppression of monasteries and the penal laws; early in the seventeenth century, however, Irish colleges were already established at Louvain, Salamanca, and Seville, at Lisbon, Paris, and Rome. In these colleges the brightest Irish intellects learned and taught, and Colgan and O'Clery, Lynch and Rothe, Wadding and Keating recalled the greatest glories of their country's past. At home Trinity College had been established (1593) to wean the Irish from "Popery and other ill qualities"' but the Catholics held aloof, and either went abroad or frequented the few Catholic schools left. The children of the poor, avoiding the Protestant schools, met in the open air, with only some friendly hedge to protect them from the blast; but they met in fear and trembling, for the hedge-school and its master were proscribed. Thus was the lamp of learning kept burning during the long night of the penal times.

In the Irish Parliament meanwhile a spirit of independence appeared. As the Parliament of the Pale it had been so often used for factious purposes that in 1496 Poyning's Law was passed, providing that henceforth no Irish Parliament could meet, and no law could be proposed, without the previous consent of both the Irish and English Privy Councils. Further, the English Parliament claimed the right to legislate for Ireland; and in the laws prohibiting the importation of Irish cattle (1665), and Irish woollen manufactures (1698), and that dealing with the Irish forfeited estates (1700), it asserted its supposed right. The Irish Parliament, dominated by bigotry and self-interest, had not the courage to protest, and when one member, Molyneux, did, the English Parliament condemned him, and ordered his book to be burned by the common hangman. Moreover, it passed an Act in 1719 expressly declaring that it had power to legislate for Ireland, taking away also the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords. The fight made by Swift against Wood's halfpence showed that, though Molyneux was dead, his spirit lived; Lucas continued the fight, and Grattan in 1782 obtained legislative independence. England was then beaten by the American colonies; an Irish volunteer force had been raised to defend Ireland against a possible invasion, and it seems certain that legislative independence was won less by Grattan's eloquence than by the swords of the Volunteers. These events favoured the growth of toleration. The Catholics, in sympathizing with Grattan and in subscribing money to equip the Protestant Volunteers, earned the goodwill of the Protestant Nationalists; in consequence the penal laws were less rigorously enforced, and from the middle of the century penal legislation ceased. In 1771 came the turn of the tide, when Catholics were allowed to hold reclaimed bog under lease. The grudging concession was followed in 1774 by an Act substituting an oath of allegiance for the oath of supremacy; in 1778 by an Act enabling Catholics to hold all lands under lease; and in 1782 by a further Act allowing them to erect Catholic schools, with the permission of the Protestant bishop of the diocese, to own a horse worth more than £5, and to assist at Mass without being compelled to accuse the officiating priest. Nor were Catholic bishops any longer compelled to quit the kingdom, nor Catholic children specially rewarded if they turned Protestant. Not for ten years was there any further concession, and then an Act was passed allowing Catholics to erect schools without seeking Protestant permission, admitting Catholics to the Bar, and legalizing marriages between Protestants and Catholics. Much more important was the Act of 1793 giving the Catholics the Parliamentary and municipal franchise, admitting them to the universities and to military and civil offices, and removing all restrictions in regard to the tenure of land. They were still excluded from Parliament, from the inner Bar, and from a few of the higher civil and military offices.

Always in favour of religious liberty, Grattan would have swept away every vestige of the Penal code. But, in 1782, he mistakenly thought that his work was done when legislative independence was conceded. He forgot that the executive was still left independent of Parliament, answerable only to the English ministry; and that, with rotten boroughs controlled by a few great families, with an extremely limited franchise in the counties, and with pensioners and placement filling so many seats, the Irish Parliament was but a mockery of representation. Like Grattan, Flood and Charlemont favoured Parliamentary reform, but, unlike him, they were opposed to Catholic concessions. As for Foster and Fitzgibbon, who led the forces of corruption and bigotry, they opposed every attempt at reform, and consented to the Act of 1793 only under strong pressure from Pitt and Dundas. These English ministers, alarmed at the progress of French revolutionary principles in Ireland, fearing a foreign invasion, wished to have the Catholics contented. In 1795 further concessions seemed imminent. In that year an illiberal viceroy, Lord Westmoreland, was replaced by the liberal-minded Lord Fitzwilliam, who came understanding it to be the wish of Pitt that the Catholic claims were to be conceded. He at once dismissed from office a rapacious office-holder named Beresford, so powerful that he was called the "King of Ireland"; he refused to consult Lord Chancellor Fitzgibbon or Foster, the Speaker; he took Grattan and Ponsonby into his confidence, and declared his intention to support Grattan's bill admitting Catholics to Parliament. The high hopes raised by these events were dashed to the earth when Fitzwilliam was suddenly recalled, after having been allowed to go so far without any protest from Portland, the home secretary, or from the premier, Pitt. The latter, disliking the Irish Parliament because it had rejected his commercial propositions in 1785, and disagreed with him on the regency in 1789, already mediated a legislative union, and felt that the admission of Catholics to Parliament would thwart his plans. He was probably also influenced by Beresford, who had powerful friends in England, and by the king, whom Fitzgibbon had mischievously convinced that to admit Catholics to Parliament would be to violate his coronation oath. Possibly, other causes concurred with these to bring about the sudden and disastrous change which filled Catholic Ireland with grief, and the whole nation with dismay.

The new viceroy, Lord Camden, was instructed to conciliate the Catholic bishops by setting up a Catholic college for the training of Irish priests; this was done by the establishment of Maynooth College. But he was to set his face against all Parliamentary reform and all Catholic concessions. These things he did with a will. He at once restored Beresford to office and Foster and Fitzgibbon to favour, the latter being made Earl of Clare. And he stirred up but too successfully the dying embers of sectarian hate, with the result that the Ulster factions, the Protestant "Peep-of-Day Boys" and the Catholic "Defenders", became embittered with a change of names. The latter, turning to republican and revolutionary ways, joined the United Irish Society; the former became merged in the recently formed Orange Society, taking its name from William of Orange and having Protestant ascendancy and hatred of Catholicism as its battle cries. Extending from Ulster, these rival societies brought into the other provinces the curse of sectarian strife. Instead of putting down both, the Government took sides with the Orangemen; and, while their lawless acts were condoned, the Catholics were hunted down. An Arms' Act, an Insurrection Act, an Indemnity Act, a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act placed them outside the pale of law. An undisciplined soldiery, recruited from the Orange lodges, were than let loose among them. Martial law, free quarters, flogging, picketing, half-hanging, destruction of Catholic property and life, outrages on women followed, until at last Catholic blood was turned into flame. Then Wexford rose. Looking back, it now seems certain that, had Hoche landed at Bantry in 1796, had even a small force landed at Wexford in 1798, or a few other counties displayed the heroism of Wexford, English power in Ireland would, temporarily at least, have been destroyed. But one county could not fight the British Empire, and the rebellion was soon quenched in blood.

Camden's place was then given to Lord Cornwallis, who came to Ireland for the express purpose of carrying a Legislative Union. Foster refused to support him and joined the opposition. Fitzgibbon, however, aided Cornwallis, and so did Castlereagh, who for some time had discharged the duties of chief secretary in the absence of Mr. Pelham, and who was now formally appointed to the office. And then began one of the most shameful chapters in Irish history. Even the corrupt Irish Parliament was reluctant to vote away its existence, and in 1799 the opposition was too strong for Castlereagh. But Pitt directed him to persevere, and the great struggle went on. On one side were eloquence and debating power, patriotism, and public virtue, Grattan, Plunket, and Bushe, Foster, Fitzgerald, Ponsonby, and Moore, a truly formidable combination. On the other side were the baser elements of in Parliament, the needy, the spendthrift, the meanly ambitious, operated upon by Castlereagh, with the whole resources of the British Empire at his command. The pensioners and placemen who voted against him at once lost their places and pensions, the military officer was refused promotion, the magistrate was turned off the bench. And while anti-Unionists were unsparingly punished, the Unionists got lavish rewards. The impecunious got well-paid sinecures; the briefless barrister was made a judge or a commissioner; the rich man, ambitious of social distinction, got a peerage, and places and pensions for his friends; and the owners of rotten boroughs to large sums for their interests. The Catholics were promised emancipation in a united Parliament, and in consequence many bishops, some clergy, and a few of the laity supported the Union, not grudging to end an assembly so bigoted and corrupt as the Irish Parliament. By these means Castlereagh triumphed, and in 1801 the United Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland opened its doors.

Since the Union

The next quarter of a century was a period of baffled hopes. Anxious to stand well with the Government, Dr. Troy, the Archbishop of Dublin, had been a strong advocate of the Union, and had induced nine of his brother bishops to concede to the king a veto on episcopal appointments. In return, he wanted emancipation linked with the Union, and Castlereagh was not averse; but Pitt was non-committal and vague, though the Catholic Unionists had no doubt that he favoured immediate concession. Disappointment came when nothing was done in the first session of the United Parliament, and it was increased when Pitt resigned office and was succeeded by Addington, a narrow-minded bigot. Cornwallis, however, assured Dr. Troy that Pitt had resigned, unable to overcome the prejudices of the king, and that he would never again take office if emancipation were not conceded. Yet, in spite of this, he became premier in 1804, no longer an advocate of emancipation but an opponent, pledged never again to raise the question in Parliament, during the lifetime of the king. To this pledge he was as faithful as he had been false to his former assurances; and when Fox presented the Catholic petition in 1805, Pitt opposed it. After 1806, when both Pitt and Fox died, the Catholic champion was Grattan, who had entered the British Parliament in 1805. In the vain hope of conciliating opponents he was willing, in 1808, to concede the veto. Dr. Troy and the higher Catholics acquiesced; but the other bishops were unwilling, and neither they nor the clergy, still less the people, wanted a state-paid clergy or state-appointed bishops. The agitation of the question, however, did not cease, and for many years it distracted Catholic plans and weakened Catholic effort. Further complications arose when, in 1814, the prefect of the Propaganda, Quarantotti, issued a rescript favouring the veto. He acted, however, beyond his powers in the absence of Pius VII, who was in France, and when the pope returned to Rome, after the fall of Napoleon, the rescript was disavowed.

In these years the Catholics badly needed a leader. John Keogh, the able leader of 1793, was then old, and Lords Fingall and Gormanstone, Mr. Scully and Dr. Dromgoole, were not the men to grapple with great difficulties and powerful opponents. An abler and more vigorous leader was required, one with less faith in petitions and protestations of loyalty. Such a leader was found in Daniel O'Connell, a Catholic barrister whose first public appearance in 1800 was on an anti-Unionist platform. A great lawyer and orator, a great debater, of boundless courage and resources, he took a prominent part on Catholic committees, and from 1810 he held the first place in Catholic esteem. Yet the Catholic cause advanced slowly, and, when Grattan died in 1820, emancipation had not come. Nor would the House of Lords accept Plunket's Bill of 1821, even though it passed the House of Commons and conceded the veto. At last O'Connell determined to rouse the masses, and in 1823, with the help of Richard Lalor Sheil, he founded the Catholic Association. Its progress at first was slow, but gradually it gathered strength. Dr. Murray, the new Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, joined it, and Dr. Doyle, the great Bishop of Kildare; other bishops followed; the clergy and people also came in; and thus rose a great national organization, supervising from its central office in Dublin subsidiary associations in every parish; maintained by a Catholic rent; watching over local and national affairs, discharging, as Mr. Canning described it, "all the functions of a regular government, and having obtained a complete mastery and control over the masses of the Irish people". The Association was suppressed in 1825 by Act of Parliament; but O'Connell merely changed the name; and the New Catholic Association with its New Catholic rent continued the work of agitation as of old. Nor was this all. By the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 the forty-shilling freeholders obtained the franchise. These freeholders, being so poor, were necessarily in the power of the landlords and were wont to be driven to the pools like so many sheep. But now, protected by a powerful association, and encouraged by the priests and by O'Connell, the freeholders broke their chains, and in Waterford, Louth, Meath, and elsewhere they voted for the nominees of the Catholic Association at elections, and in placing them at the head of the pool humbled the landlords. When they returned O'Connell himself for Clare in 1828, the crisis had come. The Tory ministers, Welllington and Peel, would have still resisted; but the people were not to be restrained: it must be concession or civil war, and rather than have the latter the ministers h