 Chapter 7 of A Popular History of Ireland, Book 6 by Thomas Darcy McGee Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain Chapter 7 Continued Division and Decline of the English Interest Richard, Duke of York, Lord Lieutenant Civil War again in England Execution of the Earl of Desmond Ascendancy of the Kildare Geraldines We have already described the limits to which the pale was circumscribed at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The fortunes of that inconsiderable settlement during the following century hardly rise to the level of historical importance, nor would the recital of them be at all readable but for the ultimate consequences which ensued from the preservation of those last remains of foreign power in the island. On that account, however, we have to consult the barren annals of the pale through the intermediate period, that we may make clear the accidents by which it was preserved from destruction and enabled to play a part in after-times, undreamt of and inconceivable, to those who tolerated its existence in the ages of which we speak. On the northern coasts of Ireland the co-operation of the friendly Scots with the native Irish had long been a source of anxiety to the palesmen. In the year 1404, Dongan, Bishop of Derry, and Sir Genico Artois were appointed commissioners by Henry IV, to conclude a permanent peace with Macdonald, Lord of the Isles, but not withstanding that form was then gone through during all the reigns of the Lancastrian kings, evidence of the Hibernos-Scotch alliance being still in existence constantly recurs. In the year 1430 an address or petition of the Dublin Council to the king sets forth that the enemies and rebels, aided by the Scots, had conquered or rendered tributary almost every part of the country except the county of Dublin. The presence of Henry V in Ireland had been urgently solicited by his leges in that kingdom, but without effect. The hero of Agincourt, having set his heart upon the conquest of France, left Ireland to his lieutenants and their deputies. Nor could his attention be aroused to the English interest in that country, even by the formal declaration of the speaker of the English Parliament, that the greater part of the lordship of Ireland had been conquered by the natives. The comparatively new family of Talbot, sustained by the influence of the great Earl of Shrewsbury, now Senegal of France, had risen to the highest pitch of influence. When on the accession of Henry VI, Edward Mortimer, Earl of March, was appointed lord lieutenant, and Dancy, bishop of Miath, his deputy, Talbot, archbishop of Dublin, and lord chancellor, refused to acknowledge Dancy's pretensions because his commission was given under the private seal of Lord Mortimer. Having affected his object in this instance, the archbishop directed his subsequent attacks against the House of Ormond, the chief favorites of the king, or rather of the council in that reign. In 1441, at a Dublin Parliament, messengers were appointed to convey certain articles to the king, the purport of which was to prevent the Earl of Ormond from being made lord lieutenant, alleging against him many misdemeanors in his former administration, and praying that some mighty lord of England might be named to that office to execute the laws more effectively than any Irishman ever did or ever will do. This attempt to destroy the influence of Ormond led to an alliance between that Earl and Sir James, afterwards Seventh Earl of Desmond. Sir James was son of Gerald, Fourth Earl, distinguished as the Rimer or Magician, by the Lady Eleanor Butler, daughter of the Second Earl of Ormond. He stood, therefore, in the relation of cousin to the co-temporary head of the Butler family. When his nephew Thomas openly violated the statute of Kilkenny by marrying the beautiful Catherine McCormick, the ambitious and intriguing Sir James, anxious to enforce that statute, found a ready seconder in Ormond, Earl Thomas, forced to quit the country, died in exile at Ruin in France, and Sir James, after many intrigues and negotiations, obtained the title and estates. For once the necessities of Desmond and Ormond united these houses, but the money of the English Archbishop of Dublin, backed by the influence of his illustrious brother, proved equal to them both. In the first twenty-five years of the reign of Henry VI, fourteen twenty-two to fourteen forty-seven, Ormond was five times deputy or lieutenant, and Talbot five times deputy, lord justice or lord commissioner. Their factious controversy culminated with the articles adopted in fourteen forty-one, which altogether failed of the intended effect. Ormond was reappointed two years afterwards to his old office, nor was it till fourteen forty-six, when the Earl of Shrewsbury was a third time sent over, that the Talbots had any substantial advantage over their rivals. The recall of the Earl for service in France and the death of the Archbishop two years later, though it deprived the party they had formed of a resident leader, did not lead to its dissolution. Bound together by common interests and dangers, their action may be traced in opposition to the Geraldines, through the remaining years of Henry VI, and perhaps so late as the earlier years of Henry VII, fourteen eighty-five to fifteen hundred. In the struggle of dynasties from which England suffered so severely during the fifteenth century, the drama of ambition shifted its scenes from London and York to Calais and Dublin. The appointment of Richard, Duke of York, as Lord Lieutenant in fourteen forty-nine, presented him an opportunity of creating a Yorkist party among the nobles and people of the pale. His able and ambitious prince possessed in his hereditary estate resources equal to great enterprises. He was in the first place the representative of the third son of Edward III. On the death of his cousin the Earl of March in fourteen twenty-two, he became heir to that property in title. He was Duke of York, Earl of March, and Earl of Rutland, in England, Earl of Ulster, and Earl of Cork, Lord of Canot, Clare, Meath, and Trim in Ireland. He had been, twice, regent of France, during the minority of Henry, where he upheld the cause of the plentangent king with signalability. By the peace concluded at tour between England, France, and Burgundy in fourteen forty-four, he was unable to return to England, where the king had lately come of age, and begun to exhibit the weak, though amiable disposition which led to his ruin. The events of the succeeding two or three years were calculated to expose Henry to the odium of his subjects and the machinations of his enemies. Town after town and province after province were lost in France. The regent Somerset returned to experience the full force of this unpopularity. The royal favorite Suffolk was banished, pursued, and murdered at sea. The king's uncles, Cardinal Beaufort and the Duke of Gloucester, were removed by death, so that every sign and circumstance of the time whispered encouragement to the ambitious Duke. When, therefore, the Irish lieutenancy was offered in order to separate him from his partisans, he at first refused it. Subsequently, however, he accepted, on conditions dictated by himself, calculated to leave him wholly his own master. These conditions, reduced to riding in the form of an indenture between the king and the Duke, extended his lieutenancy to a period of ten years, allowed him, besides the entire revenue of Ireland, an annual subsidy from England, full power to let the king's land, to levy and maintain soldiers, to place or displace all officers, to appoint a deputy, and to return to England at his pleasure. On these terms the ex-regent of France undertook the government of the English settlement in Ireland. Arrived at Dublin, the Duke, as in his day he was always called, employed himself rather to strengthen his party than to extend the limits of his government. Soon after his arrival a son was born to him and baptized with great pomp in the castle. On these terms, 5th Earl of Ormond and Thomas, 8th Earl of Desmond, were invited to stand as sponsors. In the line of policy indicated by this choice, he steadily persevered during his whole connection with Ireland, which lasted till his death in 1460. Alternately he named a butler and a Geraldine as his deputy, and although he failed ultimately to win the Earl of Ormond from the traditional party of his family, he secured the attachment of several of his kinsmen. During events in England, the year after his appointment made it necessary for him to return immediately. The unpopularity of the administration which had banished him had rapidly augmented. The French king had recovered the whole of Normandy for four centuries annexed to the English crown. Nothing but Calais remained of all the continental possessions which the Plantagenets had inherited, and which Henry V had done so much to strengthen and extend. Domestic abuses aggravated the discontent arising from the foreign defeats. The Bishop of Chichester, one of the ministers, was set upon and slain by a mob at Portsmouth. Twenty thousand men of Kent, under the command of Jack Cade and Anglo-Irishmen, who had given himself out as a son of the last Earl of March, who died in the Irish government twenty-five years before, marched upon London. They defeated a royal force at Seven Oaks, and the city opened its gate at the summons of Cade. The Kentish men took possession of Sothec, while their Irish leader, for three days, entering the city every morning, compelled the mayor and the judges to sit in the guild hall, tried and sentenced, Lord say to death, who, with his son-in-law Cromer, Sheriff of Kent, was accordingly executed. Every evening, as he had promised the citizens, he retired with his guards across the river, preserving the strictest order among them. But the royalists were not idle, and when, on the fourth morning, Cade attempted, as usual, to enter London proper, he found the bridge of Sothec barricaded and defended by a strong force under the Lord's scales. After six hours' hard fighting, his raw levies were repulsed, and many of them accepted a free pardon tender to them in a moment of defeat. Cade retired with the remainder on Deptford in Rochester, but gradually abandoned by them, he was surprised, half famished, in a garden at Hayfield and put to death. His captor claimed and received the large reward of a thousand marks offered for his head. This was in the second week of July. On the first of September, news was brought to London that the Duke of York had suddenly landed from Ireland. His partisans eagerly gathered round him at his castle of Fatheringay, but for five years longer, by the repeated concessions of the gentle-minded Henry and the interposition of powerful mediators, the actual war of the roses was postponed. It is beyond our province to follow the details of that ferocious struggle, which was waged almost incessantly from 1455 till 1471, from the first battle of St. Albans till the final battle at Tewkesbury. We are interested in it mainly as it connects the fortunes of the Anglo-Irish earls with one or other of the dynasties, and their fortunes again with the benefit or disadvantage of their allies and relatives among our native princes. Of the transactions in England it may be sufficient to say that the Duke of York, after his victory at St. Albans in 55, was declared Lord Protector of the Realm during Henry's invocality, that the next year the king recovered and the Protector's office was abolished, that in 57 both parties stood at bay, in 58 an insecure peace was patched up between them, in 59 they appealed to arms, the Yorkists gained a victory at Bloorheath, but being defeated at Ludiford, Duke Richard, with one of his sons, fled for safety into Ireland. It was the month of November when the Fugitive Duke arrived to resume the Lord Lutenancy which he had formally exercised. Legally his commission, for those who recognized the authority of King Henry, had expired four months before, as it bore date from July 5, 1449, but it is evident the majority of the Anglo-Irish received him as a prince of their own election, rather than as an ordinary viceroy. He held, soon after his arrival, a parliament at Dublin, which met by adjournment at Drugheada the following spring. The English parliament, having declared him, his duchess, sons and principal adherents, traitors, and rits to that effect having been sent over, the Irish parliament passed a declaratory act, 1460, making the service of all such rits treason against their authority, it having been ever customary in their land to receive and entertain strangers with due respect in hospitality. Under this law, an emissary of the Earl of Orman, upon whom English rits against the fugitives were found, was executed as a traitor. This independent parliament confirmed the duke in his office, made it high treason to imagine his death, and taking advantage of the favourable conjuncture of affairs, they further declared that the inhabitants of Ireland could only be bound by laws made in Ireland, that no rits were of force unless issued under the great seal of Ireland, that the realm had, of ancient rite, its own Lord Constable and Earl Marshall, by whom alone trials for treason alleged to have been committed in Ireland could be conducted. In the same busy spring the Earl of Warwick, so celebrated as the king-maker of English history, sailed from Calais, of which he was Constable, with the Channel Fleet, of which he was also in command, and doubling the land's end of England, arrived at Duke Dublin to concert measures for another rising in England. He found the duke at Dublin, surrounded by his earls and his omageurs, and measures were soon concerted between them. An appeal to the English nation was prepared at this conference, charging upon Henry's advisers that they had written to the French king to beseige Calais, and to the Irish princes to expel the English settlers. The loyalty of the fugitive lords and their readiness to prove their innocence before their sovereign were stoutly asserted. Emissaries were dispatched in every direction, troops were raised, Warwick soon after landed in Kent, always strongly pro-Yorkist, defeated the royalists at Northampton in July, and the duke reaching London in October, a compromise was agreed to, after much discussion, in which Henry was to have the crown for life, while the duke was acknowledged as his successor and created president of his council. We have frequently remarked in our history the recurrence of conflicts between the north and south of the island. The same thing is distinctly traceable through the annals of England down to a quite recent period. Whether difference of race or of admixture of race may not lie at the foundation of such long living enmities we will not hear attempt to discuss. Such, however, is the fact. Queen Margaret had fled northward after the defeat of Northampton towards the Scottish border, from which she now returned at the head of twenty thousand men. The duke advanced rapidly to meet her, and engaging with a far inferior force at Wakefield, was slain in the field, or beheaded after the battle. All now seemed lost to the Yorkist party, when young Edward, son of Duke Richard, advancing from the marches of Wales at the head of an army equal in numbers to the royalists, won in the month of February, fourteen sixty-one, the battles of Mortimer's Cross and Barnet, and was crowned at Westminster in March by the title of Edward IV. The sanguinary battle of Tauton, soon after his coronation, where thirty-eight thousand dead were reckoned by the heralds, confirmed his title and established his throne. Even the subsequent hostility of Warwick, though it compelled him once to surrender himself a prisoner, and once to fly the country, did not finally transfer the scepter to his rival. Warwick was slain in the battle of Tuxbury, fourteen seventy-one, the land Castrian Prince Edward was put to death on the field, and his unhappy father was murdered in prison. Two years later, Henry Earl of Richmond, grandson of Catherine, Queen of Henry V, and Owen Optutor, the only remaining leader capable of rallying the beaten party, was driven into exile in France, from which he returned fourteen years afterwards to contest the crown with Richard III. In these English wars the only Irish nobleman who sustained the land Castrian cause was James, V Earl of Ormond. He had been created by Henry, Earl of Wiltshire, during his father's lifetime, in the same year in which his father stood sponsor in Dublin for the son of the Duke. He succeeded to the Irish title and estates in fourteen fifty-one, held a foremost rank in almost all the engagements from the battle of St. Albans to that of Tauton, in which he was taken prisoner and executed by order of Edward IV. His blood was declared attainted, and his estates forfeited, but a few years later both the title and property were restored to Sir John Butler, the sixth Earl. On the eve of the open rupture between the roses another name intimately associated with Ireland disappeared from the role of the English nobility. The veteran Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, in the eightieth year of his age accepted the command of the English forces in France, retook the city of Bordeaux, but fell in attack on the French camp at Châtillon, in the subsequent campaign, fourteen fifty-three. His son, Lord Lyle, was slain at the same time, defending his father's body. Among other consequences which ensued, the Talbot interest in Ireland suffered from the loss of so powerful a patron at the English court. We have only to add that at Wakefield, and in most of the other engagements, there was a strong Anglo-Irish contingent in the Yorkist ranks, and a smaller one, chiefly tenants of Ormond, on the opposite side. Many writers complained that the House of York drained the pale of its defenders, and thus still further diminished the resources of the English interest in Ireland. In the last forty years of the fifteenth century, the history of the pale is the biography of the family of the Geraldines. We must make some brief mention of the remarkable men to whom we refer. Thomas, Eighth Earl of Desmond, for his services to the House of York, was appointed Lord Deputy in the first years of Edward IV. He had naturally made himself obnoxious to the Ormond interest, but still more so to the Talbots, whose leader in civil contests was Sherwood, Bishop of Mjeth, for some years, in despite of the Geraldines, Lord Chancellor. Between him and Desmond there existed the bitterest animosity. In fourteen sixty-four, nine of the deputies men were slain in a broil in Fingal by tenants or servants of the bishop. The next year each party repaired to London to vindicate himself and criminate his antagonist. The bishop seems to have triumphed, for in fourteen sixty-six, John Tiptoff, Earl of Worcester, called in England for his barbarity to land castry in prisoners, the butcher, superseded Desmond. The movement of Thaddeus O'Brien, already related the same year, gave Tiptoft grounds for accusing Desmond, Kildare, Sir Edward Plunkett, and others of Treason. On this charge he summoned them before him at Drugheada in the following February. Kildare wisely fled to England, where he pleaded his innocence successfully with the king. But Desmond and Plunkett, overconfident of their own influence, repaired to Drugheada, were tried, condemned, and beheaded. Their execution took place on the fifteenth day of February fourteen sixty-seven. It is instructed to add that Tiptoff, a few years later, underwent the fate in England without exciting a particle of the sympathy felt for Desmond. Thomas, Seventh Earl of Kildare, succeeded on his safe return from England to more than the power of his late relative. The office of Chancellor, after a sharp struggle, was taken from Bishop Sherwood, and confirmed to him for life by an act of the twelfth, Edward the Third. He had been named Lord Justice after Tiptoff's recall in fourteen sixty-seven, and four years later exchanged the title for that of Lord Deputy to the young Duke of Clarence, the nominal lieutenant. In fourteen seventy-five, on some change of court favor, the supreme power was taken from him, and conferred on the old enemy of his house, the Bishop of Mith. Kildare died two years later, having signalized his latter days by founding an Anglo-Irish order of chivalry called the Brothers of St. George. This order was to consist of thirteen persons of the highest rank within the pail, one hundred and twenty mounted archers, and forty horsemen, attended by forty pages. The officers were to assemble annually in Dublin, on St. George's Day, to elect their captain from their own number. After having existed twenty years, the Brotherhood was suppressed by the jealousy of Henry the Seventh in fourteen ninety-four. Gerald, Eighth Earl of Kildare, called in the Irish annals Gerrit Mor, or the Great, succeeded his father in fourteen seventy-seven. He had the gratification of ousting Sherwood from the government the following year, and having it transferred to himself. For nearly forty years he continued the central figure among the Anglo-Irish, and as his family were closely connected by marriage with the McCarthy's, the O'Carrolls of Eli, the O'Connor's of Offaly, O'Neill's and O'Donnell's, he exercised immense influence over the affairs of all the provinces. In his tune, moreover, the English interest under the auspices of an undisturbed dynasty, and a cautious, politic prince, Henry the Seventh, began by slow and almost imperceptible degrees to recover the unity and compactness it had lost ever since the Red Earl's death. CHAPTER VIII. THE AGE AND RULE OF GERREL, EIGHTH EARL OF KILDARE. THE TIDE BEGINS TO TURN FOR THE ENGLISH INTEREST, THE YORKUS PROTENDERS SIMNAL AND WARBEK, POININGS PARLUMENT, BATTLES OF NOC-DOE AND MONABRAIR. Perhaps no preface could better introduce the reader to the singular events which marked the times of Gerald, Eighth Earl of Kildare, then a brief account of one of his principal partisans, Sir James Keating, prior of the Knights of St. John. The family of Keating, of Norman Irish origin, were most numerous in the fifteenth century in Kildare, from which they afterwards spread into Tipperary and Limerick. Sir James Keating, a mere Irishman, became prior of Kilmanum about the year fourteen sixty-one, at which time Sir Robert Dowdle, deputy to the Lord Treasurer, complained in Parliament that being on a pilgrimage to one of the shrines in the pale, he was assaulted near Clonif by the prior with a drawn sword and thereby put in danger of his It was accordingly decreed that Keating should pay to the King a hundred pounds fine, and to Sir Robert a hundred marks, but from certain technical errors in the proceedings he successfully evaded both these penalties. When in the year fourteen seventy-eight the Lord Grey of Codner was sent over to supersede Kildare, he took the decided step of refusing to surrender to that nobleman the Castle of Dublin, of which he was constable. Being threatened with an assault he broke down the bridge and prepared his defense, while his mend, the Earl of Kildare, called a Parliament at Nuss, in opposition to Lord Grey's assembly at Dublin. In fourteen eighty, after two years of rival parties and viceroys, Lord Grey was feigned to resign his office, and Kildare was regularly appointed deputy to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. Two years later, Keating was deprived of his rank by Peter d'Aubisson, grand master of Rhodes, who appointed Sir Marmaduke Lumley an English knight in his stead. Sir Marmaduke landed soon after at Clontarf, where he was taken prisoner by Keating, and kept in close confinement until he had surrendered all the instruments of his election in confirmation. He was then enlarged and appointed to the commandery of Kilsuran, near Castle Bellingham, in Louth. In the year fourteen eighty-eight Keating was one of those who took an active part in favour of the pretender, Lambert Simnell, and although his pardon had been sternly refused by Henry VII, he retained possession of the hospital until fourteen ninety-one, when he was ejected by force, and ended his turbulent life, as we are told, in the most abject poverty and disgrace. All whom he had appointed to office were removed, an act of Parliament was passed, prohibiting the reception of any mere Irishman into the order for the future, and enacting that whoever was recognized as prior by the Grand Master should be of English birth, and one having such a connection with the order, there as might strengthen the force and interest of the Kings of England in Ireland. The fact most indicative of the spirit of the times is that a man of prior Keating's disposition could, for thirty years, have played such a daring part as we have described in the City of Dublin. During the greater part of that period he held the office of Constable of the Castle, and prior of Kilmanum, in defiance of English deputies and English Kings, then which no farther evidence may be adduced to show how completely the English interest was extinguished, even within the walls of Dublin, during the reign of the last of the Plantagenet Princes, and the first years of Henry VII. In fourteen eighty-five Henry, Earl of Richmond, grandson of Queen Catherine and no oh not tutor, returned from his fourteen years exile in France, and by the victory of Bosworth took possession of the throne. The Earl of Kildare, undisputed deputy during the last years of Edward IV, had been continued by Richard, and was not removed by Henry VII. Though a staunch Yorkist he showed no outward opposition to the change of dynasty, for which he found a graceful apology soon afterwards. Being at Mass in Christchurch Cathedral on the second of February fourteen eighty-six, he received intelligence of Henry's marriage with Elizabeth of York, which he had once communicated to the Archbishop of Dublin, and ordered an additional mass for the King and Queen. Yet from the hour of that union of the Houses of York and Lancaster it needed no extraordinary wisdom to foresee that the exemption of the Anglo-Irish nobles from the supremacy of their nominal King must come to an end, and the freedom of the old Irish for many formidable external danger must also close. The union of the Roses, so full of promise of peace for England, was to form the date of a new era in her relations with Ireland. The tide of English power was at that hour at its lowest ebb. It had left far in the interior the landmarks of its first irresistible rush. It might be said, without exaggeration, that Gaelic children now gathered shells and pebbles where that tide once rolled, charged with all its thunders, it was now about to turn, the first murmuring menace of new encroachments began to be heard under Henry VII. As we listen they grow louder on the ear. The waves advance with a steady deliberate march, unlike the first impetuous onslaught of the Normans, they advance and do not recede till they recover all the ground they had abandoned. The era which we dated from the Red Earl's death in 1333 has exhausted its resources of aggression and assimilation. A new era opens with the reign of Henry VII, or more distinctly still, with that of his successor Henry VIII. We must close our account of the old era before entering upon the new. The contest between the Earl of Kildare and Lord Grey for the government, 1478-1480, marks the lowest ebb of the English power. We have already related how prior Keating shut the castle gates on the English deputy, and threatened to fire on his guard if he attempted to force them. Lord Portolestor also, the Chancellor, and father-in-law to Kildare, joined that Earl and his parliament at Nass with the Great Seal. Lord Grey, in his Dublin Assembly, declared the Great Seal cancelled, and ordered a new one to be struck, but after a two-years contest he was obliged to succumb to the greater influence of the Gerald Eames. Kildare was regularly acknowledged Lord Deputy under the King's privy seal. It was ordained that thereafter there should be but one parliament convoked during the year, that but one subsidy should be demanded annually, the sum not to exceed a thousand marks. Certain acts of both parliaments, Grey's and Kildare's, were by compromise confirmed. Of these were two which do not seem to collate very well with each other, one prohibiting the inhabitants of the Pale from holding any intercourse whatsoever with the mere Irish, the other extending to Con O'Neill, Prince of Tyrone, and Brother-in-Live Kildare, the rites of a naturalized subject within the Pale. The former was probably Lord Grey's, the latter was Lord Kildare's legislation. Although Henry VII had neither disturbed the Earl in his governments nor his brother Lord Thomas as Chancellor, it was not to be expected that he could place entire confidence in the leading Yorkist family among the Anglo-Irish. The restoration of the Ormond Estates, in favour of Thomas the Seventh Earl, was both politic and just, and could hardly be objectionable to Kildare, who had just married one of his daughters to Pierce Butler, nephew and heir to Thomas. The want of confidence between the new king and his deputy was first exhibited in 1486, when the Earl, being summoned to attend on his majesty, called a Parliament at Trim, which voted him in a dress, representing that in the affairs about to be discussed, his presence was absolutely necessary. Henry effected to accept the excuses valid, but every arrival of court news contained some fresh indication of his deep-seated mistrust of the Lord Deputy, who, however, he dared not yet dismiss. The only surviving Yorkists who could put forward pretensions to the throne were the Earl of Lincoln, Richard's declared heir, and the young Earl of Warwick, son of that Duke of Clarence who was born in Dublin Castle in 1449. Lincoln, with Lord Lovell and others of his friends, was in exile at the court of the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, sister to Edward IV, and the son of Clarence, a lad of fifteen years of age, was a prisoner in the Tower. In the year 1486 a report spread of the escape of his prince, and soon afterwards Richard Simon, a priest of Oxford, landed in Dublin with a youth of the same age, of prepossessing appearance and address who could relate with the minutest detail the incidents of his previous imprisonment. He was at once recognized as the son of Clarence by the Earl of Kill-Dare and his party, and preparations were made for his coronation by the title of Edward VI. Henry, alarmed, produced from the Tower the genuine Warwick, whom he publicly paraded through London in order to prove that the pretender in Dublin was an imposter. The Duchess of Burgundy, however, fitted out a fleet containing two thousand veteran troops under the command of Martin Swart, who, sailing up the Channel, reached Dublin without interruption. With this fleet came the Earl of Lincoln, Lord Lovell, and the other English refugees, who all recognized the protege of Father Simon as the true prince. Octavius, the Italian Archbishop of Armagh, then residing at Dublin, the Bishop of Clogger, the Butler's, and the Baron of Houth were incredulous or hostile. The great majority of the Anglo-Irish lords, spiritual and temporal, favored his cause, and he was accordingly crowned in Christ's Church Cathedral with a diadem taken from an image of Our Lady on the twenty-fourth of May, 1487. The Deputy, Chancellor, and Treasurer were present, the sermon was preached by Paine, Bishop of Meth. A Parliament was next convoked in his name, in which the butlers and citizens of Waterford were prescribed as traitors. A herald from the latter city, who had spoken overboldly, was hanged by the Dubliners as proof of their loyalty. The Council ordered a force to be equipped for the service of his new Majesty in England, and Lord Thomas Fitzgerald resigned the Chancellor's Sip to take the command. This expedition, the last which invaded England from the side of Ireland, sailed from Dublin about the first of June, and landed on the Lancashire shore at the Pile of Foudre, marched to Overstone, where they were joined by Sir Thomas Broughton and other devoted Yorkists. From Overstone the whole force, about eight thousand strong, marched into Yorkshire, and from Yorkshire southwards into Nottingham. Henry, who had been engaged in making a progress through the southern counties, hastened to meet him, and both armies met at Stoke-upon-Trent, near Newark, on the sixteenth day of June, 1487. The battle was contested with utmost obstinacy, but the English prevailed. The Earl of Lincoln, the Lords Thomas and Maurice Fitzgerald, Plunkett, son of Lord Caleen, Martin Swart, and Sir Thomas Broughton were slain. Lord Lovell escaped, but was never heard of afterwards. The pretended Edward VI was captured, and spared by Henry only to be made a scullion in his kitchen. Father Simon was cast into prison, where he died, after having confessed that his protege was Lambert Simnell, the son of a joiner at Oxford. Nothing shows the strength of the Kildare Party, and the weakness of the English interest, more than that the deputy and his partisans were still continued in office. They dispatched a joint letter to the king, deprecating his anger, which he was prudent enough to conceal. He sent over the following spring Sir Richard Edgecombe, Comptroller of his household, accompanied by a guard of five hundred men. Sir Richard first touched at Kinsle, where he received the homage of the Lord's Berry and Decorsi. He then sailed to Waterford, where he delivered to the mayor royal letters confirming the city and its privileges, and authorizing its merchants to seize and distress those of Dublin, unless they made their submission. After leaving Waterford, he landed at Malahide, passing by Dublin, to which he proceeded by land, accompanied with his guard. The Earl of Kildare was absent on a pilgrimage, from which he did not return for several days. His first interviews with Edgecombe were cold and formal, but finally, on the twenty-first of July, after eight or ten days' disputation, the Earl and the other lords of his party did homage to King Henry in the great chamber of his townhouse in Thomas Court, and thence proceeding to the chapel, took the oath of allegiance on the consecrated host. With this submission Henry was feigned to be content. Kildare, Portolester, and Plunkid were continued in office. The only one to whom the King's pardon was persistently refused was Sir James Keating, prior of Kilmanum. In the subsequent attempts of Perkin Warbeck, 1492 to 1499, in the character of Richard, Duke of York, one of the princes murdered in the tower by Richard III, the Anglo-Irish took a less active part. Warbeck landed at Cork from Lisbon and dispatched letters to the Earls of Kildare and Desmond, to which they returned civil but evasive replies. At Cork he received an invitation from the King of France to visit that country, where he remained till the conclusion of peace between France and England. He then retired to Burgundy, where he was cordially received by the Duchess, after an unsuccessful descent on the coast of Kent. He took a refuge in Scotland, where he married a lady closely allied to the Crown. In 1497 he again tried his fortune in the south of Ireland, was joined by Maurice, Tenth Earl of Desmond, the Lord Barry, and the citizens of Cork. Having laid siege to Waterford, he was compelled to retire with loss, and Desmond, having made his peace with Henry, Warbeck was forced again to fly into Scotland. In 1497 and 8 he made new attempts to excite the insurrection in his favour in the north of England and in Cornwall. He was finally taken and put to death on the 16th of November 1499. With him suffered his first and most faithful adherent, John Waters, who had been mayor of Cork at his first landing from Lisbon in 1492, and who is ignorantly or designedly called by Henry's partisan a water. History has not yet positively established the fraudulency of this pretender. A late, eminently cautious rider, with all the evidences which modern research has accumulated, speaks of him as one of the most mysterious persons in English history, and in mystery we must leave him. We have somewhat anticipated events in other quarters in order to dispose of both the Yorkist pretenders at the same time. The situation of the Earl's of Kildare in this and the next reign, though full of grandeur, was also full of peril. Within the pale they had one part to play, without the pale another. Within the pale they held one language, without it another. At Dublin they were English Earl's, beyond the Boine or the Barrow, they were Irish chiefs. They had to tread their cautious and not always consistent way through the endless complications which must arise between two nations occupying the same soil, with conflicting allegiance, language, laws, customs, and interests. While we frequently feel indignant at the tone they take towards the Irish enemy in their dispatches to London, the pretended enemies, being at that very time their confidants and allies, on further reflection we feel disposed to make some allowance on the score of circumstance and necessity, for duplicity which, in the end, brought about as duplicity in public affairs ever does, its own punishment. In Ulster as well as in Lenster, the ascendancy of the Earl of Kildare over the native population was widespread and long sustained. Con O'Neill, Lord of Tyrone, from 1483 to 1491, and Turlow, Con and Art, his sons and successors, from 1498 to 1548, maintained the most intimate relations with this Earl and his successors. To the former he was brother-in-law, and to the latter, of course, uncle. To all he seems to have been strongly attached. Hugh Rowe O'Donnell, Lord of Tyre Connell, 1450 to 1505, and his son and successor, Hugh Dew O'Donnell, 1505 to 1530, were also closely connected with Kildare both by friendship and intermarriage. In 1491 O'Neill and O'Donnell mutually submitted their disputes to his decision at his castle of Maynooth, and though he found it impossible to reconcile them at the moment, we find both of these houses cordially united with him afterwards. In 1498 he took Dunganon and O'Mogh with great guns from the insurgents against the authority of his grandson, Turlow O'Neill, and restored them to Turlow. The next year he visited O'Donnell and brought his son Henry to be fostered among the kindly Irish of Tyre Connell. In the year 1500 he also placed the castle of Canard in the custody of Turlow O'Neill. In Lentster the Geraldine interest was still more entirely bound up with that of the native population. His son, Sir Oliver of Killay, married an O'Connor of Woffley. The daughter of another son, Sir James of Lexup, sometimes called the night of the valley, became the wife of the chief of Himmell. The Earl of Ormond and Ulick Burke of Clenrecard were also sons and laws of the Eighth Earl, but in both these cases the old family feud survived in despite of the new family alliances. In the fourth year after his accession Henry VII, proceeding by slow degrees to undermine Killay's enormous power, summoned the chief Anglo-Irish nobles to his court at Greenwich, where he reproached them with their support of Simnell, who, to their extreme confusion, he caused to wait on them as butler at dinner. A year or two afterwards he removed Lord Portolester from the treasurer's ship, which he conferred on Sir James butler, the bastard of Ormond. Plunkett, the chief justice, was promoted to the chancellor's ship, and Killayre himself was removed to make way for Fitz Simon's Archbishop of Dublin. This, however, was but a government ad interim, for in the year 1494 a wholly English administration was appointed. Sir Edward Poynings, with a picked force of one thousand men, was appointed Lord Deputy. The Bishop of Banger was appointed Chancellor. Sir Hugh Conway, an Englishman, was to be treasurer, and these officials were accompanied by an entirely new bench of judges, all English, whom they were instructed to install immediately on their arrival. There had resisted the first changes with vigor, and a bloody feud had taken place between his retainers and those of Sir James of Ormond, on the green of Oxmontown, now Smithfield in Dublin. On the arrival of Poynings, however, he submitted with the best possible grace, and accompanied that deputy to Dragheda, where he had summoned a parliament to meet him. From Dragheda they made an incursion into O'Hanlon's country, Orier in Ormog. On returning from Dragheda, Poynings, on a real or pretended discovery of a secret understanding between O'Hanlon and Kildare, arrested the latter in Dublin, and at once placed him on board a bark kept waiting for that purpose, and dispatched him to England. On reaching London he was imprisoned in the Tower for two years, during which time his party in Ireland were left headless and dispirited. The Government of Sir Edward Poynings, which lasted from fourteen ninety-four till Kildare's Restoration in August fourteen ninety-six, is most memorable for the character of its legislation. He assembled a parliament at Dragheda in November fourteen ninety-five, at which were passed the statutes so celebrated in our parliamentary history as the Tenth Henry the Seventh. These statutes were the first enacted in Ireland in which the English language was employed. They confirmed the provisions of the Statute of Kilkenny, except that prohibiting the use of the Irish language, which had now become so deeply rooted, even within the pale, as to make its immediate abolition impracticable. The hospitable law passed in the time of Richard, Duke of York, against the arrest of refugees by virtue of rits issued in England was repealed. The English Acts against Provisors to Rome, ecclesiastics who applied for or accepted preferment directly from Rome, were adopted. It was also enacted that all offices should be held at the King's pleasure, that the lords of Parliament should appear in their robes as the lords did in England, that no one should presume to make peace or war except with license of the Governor, that no great guns should be kept in the fortresses except by similar license, and that men of English birth only should be appointed constables of the castles of Dublin, Trim, Lexlip, Athelon, Wicklow, Green Castle, Carlingford and Carrick-Fergus. But the most important measure of all was one which provided that thereafter no legislation whatever should be proceeded with in Ireland, unless the bills to be proposed were first submitted to the King and Council in England, and were returned, certified under the great seal of the realm. This is what is usually, and specially called in our Parliamentary History, Poinings Act, and next to the Statute of Kilkenny it may be considered the most important enactment ever passed at any Parliament of the English settlers. The liberation of the Earl of Kildare from the Tower, and his restoration as deputy, seems to have been hastened by the movements of Peck and Warbeck, and by the visit of Hugh Rowe O'Donnell to James IV, King of Scotland. O'Donnell had arrived at Eyre in the month of August 1495, a few weeks after Warbeck had reached that court. He was received with great splendor and cordiality by the accomplished Prince, then lately come of age, and filled with projects natural to his youth and temperament. With O'Donnell, according to the Four Masters, he formed a league, by which they bound themselves mutually to assist each other in all their exigencies. The knowledge of this alliance, and of Warbeck's favour at the Scottish court, no doubt decided Henry to avail himself, if possible, of the assistance of his most powerful Irish subject. There was, moreover, another influence at work. The first Countess had died soon after her husband's arrest, but he now married in England Elizabeth St. John, cousin to the King. Fortified in his allegiance and court favour by this alliance, he returned in triumph to Dublin, where he was welcomed with enthusiasm. In his subsequent conduct as Lord Deputy, an office which he continued to hold till his death in 1513, this powerful nobleman seems to have steadily upheld the English interest, which was now in harmony with his own. Being driven off Warbeck in his last visit to Ireland, 1497, he received extensive estates in England as a reward for his zeal, and after the victory of Nocto, 1505, he was installed by proxy at Windsor as Night of the Garter. This long-continued reign, for such in truth it may be called, left him without arrival in his latter years. He marched to whatever end of the island he would, pulling down and setting up chiefs and castles. His garrisons were to be found from Belfast to Cork, and along the valley of the Shannon, from the Athleeg to Limerick. The last event of national importance connected with the name of Garrett Moore arose out of the battle of Nocto. Battle Axe Hill fought within seven or eight miles of Galway town on the 19th of August, 1504. Few of the cardinal facts in our history have been more entirely misapprehended and misrepresented than this. It is usually described as a pitched battle between English and Irish, the turning point in the War of Races, and the second foundation of English power. The simple circumstances are these. Ulrich III, Lord of Clan Ricard, had married and misused the Lady Eustacea Fitzgerald, who seems to have fled to her father, leaving her children behind. This led to an embittered family dispute, which was expanded into a public quarrel by the complaint of William O'Kelly, whose castles of Garbole, Montevay, and Gallag, Burke had seized and demolished. In reinstating O'Kelly, Kildare found the opportunity which he sought to punish his son-in-law, and both parties prepared for a trial of strength. It so happened that Clan Ricard's alliances on that day were chiefly with O'Brien and the Southern Irish, while Kildare's were with those of Ulster. From these causes, what was at first a family quarrel, and at most a local feud, swelled into the dimensions of a national contest between North and South, Leith Magda and Leith Khan. Under these terms, the native analysts accurately described a belligerence on either side. With Kildare were the lords of Tirkanal, Sligal, Moilurg, Brefney, Oriel, and Orior, O'Farrell, Bishop of Ardagh, the Tonnest of Tyroin, the heir of Iwag, O'Kelly of Haimani, McWilliam of Mayo, the barons of Slain, Delvin, Houth, Donsani, Gormanstown, Trimblestown, and John Blake, mayor of Dublin, with the city militia. With Clan Ricard were Turlog O'Brien, son of the Lord of Thomand, McNamara of Clare, O'Carroll of Eli, O'Brien of Ara, and O'Kennedy of Ormand. The battle was obstinate and bloody. Artillery and musketry, first introduced from Germany some twenty years before, 1487, were freely used, and the plow share of the peasant has often turned up bullets, large and small, upon the hillside where the battle was fought. The most credible account sets down the number of the slain at two thousand men, the most exaggerated nine thousand. The victory was with Kildare, who, after encamping on the field for twenty-four hours, by the advice of O'Donnell, marched next day to Galway, where he found the children of Clan Ricard, whom he restored to their injured mother. Athen reopened its gates to receive the conquerors, and after celebrating their victory in the stronghold of the vanquished, the Ulster chiefs returned to the north, and Kildare to Dublin. Less known is the battle of Montabrayer, which may be considered the offset of Nocto. It was fought in 1510, the first year of Henry VIII, who had just confirmed Lord Kildare in the government. The younger O'Donnell joined him in Munster, and after taking the castles of Cantark, Palis, and Castlemane, they marched to Limerick, where the Earl of Desmond, the McCarthy's of both branches, and the Irish of Meth and Lenster, in alliance with Kildare, joined them with their forces. The old allies, Tarlag O'Brien, Clan Ricard and the McNamarras, attacked them at the bridge of Portrush, near Castle Connell, and drove them through Montabrayer, the Friarsbog, with the loss of the barons Barnwell and Kent, and many of their forces. The survivors were feigned to take refuge within the walls of Limerick. Three years later, Earl Gerald sent out to besieged Leap Castle in O'more's country, but it happened that as he was watering his horse in the Little River Grease at Kilkea, he was shot by one of the O'mores. He was immediately carried to Athne, where shortly afterwards he expired. If we accept the first Hugh de Lacey and the red Earl of Ulster, the Normans in Ireland had not produced a more illustrious man than Gerald, Eighth Earl of Kildare. He was, says Stainhurst, of tall stature and goodly presence, very liberal and merciful, of strict piety, mild in his government, passionate, but easily appeased. And our justice-loving four masters have described him as a night in valor and princely and religious in his words and judgment. End of CHAPTER IX of a popular history of Ireland, book VI by Thomas Darcy McGee, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. CHAPTER IX The State of Irish and Anglo-Irish Society during the 14th and 15th centuries. The main peculiarities of social life among the Irish and Anglo-Irish during the 14th and 15th centuries are still visible to us. Of the dredges of the earth, as in all other histories, we see or hear little or nothing, but of those orders of men of whom the historic muse takes account, such as bards, rulers, builders, and religious, there is much information to be found scattered up and down our annals, which, if properly put together and clearly interpreted, may afford us a tolerably clear view of the men and their times. The love of learning, always strong in this race of men and women, revived in full force with their exemption from the immediate pressure of foreign invasion. The person of Bard and Brehen was still held invaluable. To the malediction of the Bard of Osnog was attributed the sudden death of the deputy, Sir John Stanley. To the murder of the Brehen MacIgdon is traced all the misfortunes which befell the sons of Iriel O'Farrell. To receive the poet graciously, to seat him in the place of honor at the feast, to listen to him with reverence, and to reward him munificently, were considered duties incumbent on the princes of the land. And these duties, to do them justice, they never neglected. One of the O'Neils is specially praised for having given more gifts to poets and having a larger collection of poems than any other man of his age. In the struggle between O'Donnell and O'Connor for the northern corner of Sligo, we find mention made of the books accidentally burned in the house of the manuscripts in Law Gill. Among the spoils carried off by O'Donnell, on another occasion, were two famous books, one of which, the Leigh Hardgear, short book, he afterwards paid back, as part of the ransom for the release of his friend, O'Doherty. The Bards and Olims, though more dependent on their princes than we have seen them in their early palmy days, had yet ample hereditary estates in every principality and lordship. If natural posterity failed, the incumbent was free to adopt some capable person as his heir. It was in this way, the family of O'Cleary, originally of Tiroli, came to settle in Tirkanal, towards the end of the fourteenth century. At that time, O'Sgingan, chief Olim to O'Donnell, offered his daughter in marriage to Cormac O'Cleary, a young professor of both laws in the monastery near Ballyshannon, from condition that the first male child born of the marriage should be brought up to his own profession. This was readily agreed to, and from this auspicious marriage descended the famous family, which produced three of the four masters of Donegal. The virtue of hospitality was, of all others, that which the old Irish of every degree in rank and wealth most cheerfully practiced. In many cases it degenerated into extravagance and prodigality. But, in general, it is presented to us in so winning a garb that our objections on the score of prudence vanished before it. When we read of the freeness of heart of Henry Avery O'Neill, who granted all manner of things that came into his hands to all manner of men, we pause and doubt whether such a virtue in such excess may not lean toward vice. But when we hear of a powerful Lord, like William O'Kelly of Galway, entertaining throughout the Christmas holy days all the poets, musicians, and poor persons who chose to flock to him, were of the pious and splendid Margaret O'Carroll, receiving twice a year in awfully all the bards of Elbin and Aaron, receiving twice a year in awfully all the bards of Elbin and Aaron, we cannot but envy the professors of the gentle art their good fortune in having lived in such times and shared in such assemblies. As hospitality was the first of social virtues, so in hospitality was the worst of vices, the unpopularity of a churl descended to his posterity through successive generations. The high estimation in which women were held among the tribes is evident from the particularity with which the historians record their obits and marriages. The maiden name of the wife was never wholly lost in that of her husband, and if her family were of equal standing with his before marriage, she generally retained her full share of authority afterwards. The Margaret O'Carroll already mentioned, a descendant and progenitress of illustrious women, rode privately to trim, as we are told, with some English prisoners, taken by her husband, O'Connor of Offaly, and exchanged them for others of equal worth lying in that fortress, and this she did, it is added, without the knowledge of her husband. This lady was famed not only for her exceeding hospitality and her extreme piety, but for other more unexpected works. Her name is remembered in connection with the erection of bridges in the making of highways, as well as the building of churches, and the presentation of missiles and mass-books. And the grace she thus acquired long brought blessings upon her posterity, among whom there never were wanting able men and heroic women, while they kept their place in the land. An equally celebrated but less amiable woman was Margaret Fitzgerald, daughter of the Eighth Earl of Kildare and wife of Pierce, Eighth Earl of Ormond. She was, says the Dublin analyst, a lady of such port that all the estates of the realm couched to her, so politic that nothing was thought substantially debated without her advice. Her decision of character is preserved in numerous traditions in and around Kilkenny, where she lies buried. Of her is told the story that when exhorted on her deathbed to make restitution of some ill-got lands, and being told the penalty that awaited her if she died impenitent, she answered, It was better one old woman should burn for eternity than the butlers should be curtailed of their estates. The fame of virtuous deeds, of generosity, of peacemaking, of fidelity, was in that state of society as easily attainable by women as by men. The unas, fenolas, sabias, lasurinas were as certain of immortality as the Hughes, Cathals, Donalds, and Connors, their sons, brothers, or lovers. Perhaps it would be impossible to find any history of those or of later ages in which women are treated upon a more perfect equality with men where their virtues and talents entitle them to such consideration. The piety of the age, though it had lost something of the simplicity and fervor of older times, was still conspicuous and edifying. Within the island, the pilgrimage of St. Patrick's Purgatory, the Shrine of Our Lady of Trim, the virtues of the Holy Cross of Rapha, the miracles wrought by the Baccholam Christi, and other relics of Christchurch, Dublin, were implicitly believed and piously frequented. The long and dangerous journeys to Rome and Jerusalem were frequently taken, but the favourite foreign vow was to Compostela in Spain. Chiefs, ladies, and bards are almost annually mentioned as having sailed or returned from the city of St. James. Generally these pilgrims left in companies and returned in the same way. The great Jubilee of 1450, so enthusiastically attended from every corner of Christendom, drew vast multitudes from our island to Rome. By those who returned, tidings were first brought to Ireland of the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. On receipt of this intelligence, which sent a thrill through the heart of Europe, Tregary, Archbishop of Dublin, proclaimed a fast of three days, and on each day walked in sackcloth with his clergy through the streets of the city to the cathedral. By many in that age the event was connected with the mystic utterances of the Apocalypse, and the often apprehended consummation of all time. Although the Irish were then, as they still are, firm believers in supernatural influences working visibly among men, they do not appear to have ever been slaves to the terrible delusion of witchcraft. Among the Anglo-Irish we find the first instance of that mania which appears in our history, and we believe the only one if we accept the Presbyterian witches of Carrick-Fergus in the early part of the 18th century. The scene of the ancient delusion was Kilkenny, where Bishop Ledred accused the Lady Alice Kettle and William, her son, of practicing black magic in the year 1327. Sir Roger Outlaw, prior of Kilmanum, and stepson to Lady Alice, undertook to protect her, but the fearful charge was extended to him also, and he was compelled to enter on his defense. The tribunal appointed to try the charge, one of the main grounds on which the Templars had been suppressed twenty-five years before, was composed of the Dean of St. Patrick's, the Prior of Christ Church, the Abbot of St. Mary's in St. Thomas's, Dublin, Mr. Elias Lawless, and Mr. Peter Willoughby, lawyers. Outlaw was acquitted, and Ledred forced to fly for safety to England, of which he was a native. It is pleasant to remember that, although Irish crujulity sometimes took shapes absurd and grotesque enough, it never was perverted into diabolical channels or directed to the barbarities of witch-finding. About the beginning of the fifteenth century we meet with the first mention of the use of Uskva, or Aquavida, in our annals. Under the date of 1405 we read that McRannell, or Reynolds, chief of Montirolis, died of a surfeit of it about Christmas. Acquaint Elizabethan rider thus decants on the properties of that liquor, as he found them by personal experience. For the rawness of the air, they, the Irish, have an excellent remedy by their Aquavida, vulgarly called Uskva, which binds up the belly and drieth up moisture more than our Aquavida, yet in Flemeth not so much. And as the opening of the century may be considered notable for the first mention of Uskva, so its close is memorable for the first employment of firearms. In the year 1489, according to the Anglo-Irish annals, six handguns, or muskets, were sent to the Earl of Kildare out of Germany, which is guard bore while on sentry at Thomas Court, his Dublin residence. But two years earlier, 1487, we have positive mention of the employment of guns at the Siege of Castlecar in Letrum by Hugh Rowe O'Donnell. Great guns were frequently used ten years later in the taking of Dunganon and O'Mog, and contributed not a little to the victory of Nocto in 1505. About the same time we begin to hear of their employment by Siege in a rather curious connection. A certain French knight, returning from the pilgrimage of Lochte-Durg, visiting O'Donnell at Donegal, heard of the anxiety of his entertainer to take a certain castle which stood by the sea in Sligo. This knight promised to send him, on his return to France, a vessel carrying great guns, which he accordingly did, and the castle was in consequence taken. Nevertheless, the old Irish, according to their habit, took but slowly to this wonderful invention, though destined to revolutionize the art to which they were naturally predisposed, the art of war. The dwellings of the chiefs and of the wealthy among the proprietors, near the marches, were chiefly situated amid palisaded islands, or on promontories naturally moted by lakes. The houses in these circumstances were mostly a framework, though the Malaysian nobles in less exposed districts had castles of stone after the Norman fashion. The castle-bond was usually enclosed by one or more strong walls, the inner sides of which were lined with barns, stables, and the houses of the retainers. Not unfrequently the thatched roofs of these outbuildings taking fire compelled the castle to surrender. The castle green, whether within or without the walls, was the usual scene of rural sports and athletic games, of which at all our periods our ancestors were so fond. Of the interior economy of the Malaysian wrath, or Done, we know less than of the Norman Tower, where before the huge kitchen chimney the heavy laden spit was turned by hand, while the dining hall was adorned with the glitter of the dresser, or by tapestry hangings, the floors of hall and chambers being strewn with rushes and odorous herbs. We have spoken of the zeal of the Malaysian chiefs in accumulating manuscripts and in rewarding bards and scribes. We are unable to form some idea of the mental resources of an Anglo-Irish nobleman of the fifteenth century, from the catalog of the library remaining in Maynooth Castle, in the reign of Henry VIII. Of Latin books there were the works of several of the schoolmen, the dialogues of St. Gregory, Virgil, Juvenal, and Terence, the Holy Bible, Bothias' Consolations of Philosophy, and St. Thomas' Summa, of French works, François, Mandeville, two French Bibles, a French Levy and Caesar, with the most popular romances. In English there were the Polychronicon, Cambrensis, Littleton's Tenures, Sir Thomas Moore's Book on Pilgrimages, and several romances. Moreover, there were copies of the Salter of Casual, a book of Irish Chronicles, Lives of St. Bergen, St. Feck, and St. Finian, with various religious tracks and romantic tales. This was perhaps the most extensive private collection to be found within the pale. We have every reason to infer that, at least in Irish and Latin works, the castles of the older race, lovers of learning, and entertainers of learned men, were not worse furnished than Maynooth. CHAPTER X of a popular history of Ireland, book VI by Thomas Darcy McGee, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. STATE OF RELIGION AND LEARNING DURING THE 14TH AND 15TH CENTURES Although the English and Irish professed the same religion during these ages, yet in the appointment of bishops, the administration of ecclesiastical property, and in all their views of the relation of the church to the state, the two nations differed almost as widely as in their laws, language, and customs. The Plantagenet princes and their parliaments had always exhibited a jealousy of the sea of Rome, and statute upon statute was passed, from the reign of Henry II to that of Richard II, in order to diminish the power of the supreme pontiffs in nominating to English beneficies. In the second Richard's reign, so eventful for the English interest in Ireland, it had been enacted that any of the clergy procuring appointments directly from Rome, or exercising powers so conferred, should incur the penalty of a premonere, that is, the forfeiture of their lands and chattels, beside being liable to imprisonment during the king's pleasure. This statute was held to apply equally to Ireland, being confirmed by some of those petty conventions of the pale, which the Dublin governors of the fourteenth century dignified with the name of parliaments. The ancient Irish method of promoting to a vacant sea, or abacusy, though modelled on the electoral principle which penetrated all Celtic usages, was undoubtedly open to the charge of favouring nepotism, down to the time of St. Malachi, the restorer of the Irish church. After that period the prelates elect were ever careful to obtain the sanction of the holy sea, before consecration. Such habitual submission to Rome was seldom found, except in cases of disputed election, to interfere with the choice of the clergy, and the custom grew more and more into favour, as the English method of nomination by the crown was attempted to be enforced, not only throughout the pale, but by means of English agents at Rome and Avignon, in the appointment to seize, within the provinces of Armagh, Casual, and Tom. The ancient usage of farming the church lands under the charge of a lay steward, or Aernock, elected by the clan, and the division of all the revenues into four parts, for the bishop, the vicar, and his priests, for the poor, and for repairs of the sacred edifice, was equally opposed to the pretensions of princes, who looked on all their bishops' barons and church temporalities, like all other fives, as held originally of the crown. Even if there had not been those differences of origin, interest, and government which necessarily brought the two populations into collision, these distinct systems of ecclesiastical polity could not well have existed on the same soil, without frequently clashing one with the other. In our notice of the association promoted among the clergy, at the end of the thirteenth century, by the patriotic MacMellisa, of Jesus, and in our own comments on the memorable letter of Prince Donald O'Neill to Pope John XXII, written in the year 1317 or 18, we have seen how wide and deep was the gulf then existing between the English and Irish churchmen. In the year 1324 an attempt to heal this un-Christian breach was made by Philip of Slain, the Dominican who presided at the trial of the Knights Templars, who afterwards became Bishop of Cork, and rose into high favour with the Queen Mother, Isabella. As her ambassador, or in the name of King Edward III, still a minor, he is reported to have submitted to Pope John certain propositions for the promotion of peace in the Irish church, some of which were certainly well calculated to promote that end. He suggested that the smaller bishoprics yielding under sixty pounds per annum should be united to more eminent seas, and that Irish abbots and priors should admit English lay brothers to their houses, and English superiors, Irish brothers in like manner. The third proposition, however, savours more of the politician than of the peacemaker. It was to bring under the ban of excommunication, with all its rigorous consequences in that age, those disturbors of the peace who invaded the authority of the English king in Ireland. As a consequence of this mission, a concordant for Ireland seems to have been concluded at Avignon, embracing the first two points, but omitting the third, which was, no doubt, with the English court, the main object of Friar Philip's Embassy. During the fourteenth century, and down to the election of Martin V, A.D. 1417, the Pope sat mainly at Avignon in France. In the last forty years of that melancholy period, other prelates, sitting at Rome, or elsewhere in Italy, claimed the apostolic primacy. It was in the midst of these troubles and trials of the Church that the powerful kings of England, who were also sovereigns of a great part of France, contrived to extort from the embarrassed Pontiff's concessions which, however gratifying to royal pride, were abhorrent to the more Catholic spirit of the Irish people. A constant struggle was maintained during the entire period of the captivity of the Popes in France, between Roman and English influence in Ireland. There were often two sets of bishops elected in such border seas as Meth and Louth, which were districts under a divided influence. The bishops of Limerick, Cork, and Waterford, liable to have their revenues cut off, and their personal liberty endangered by sea, were almost invariably nominees of the English court. Those of the province of Dublin were necessarily so, but the prelates of Ulster, of Canot, and of Munster, the southern sea ports accepted, were almost invariably native ecclesiastics, elected in the old mode, by the assembled clergy and receiving letters of confirmation direct from Avignon or Italy. A few incidents in the history of the Church of Casual will better illustrate the character of the contest between the native Episcopacy and the foreign power. Towards the end of the thirteenth century Archbishop Maccarwell maintained with great courage the independence of his jurisdiction against Henry III and Edward I. Having inducted certain bishops into their seas without waiting for the royal letters, he sustained a long litigation in the Anglo-Irish courts, and was much harassed in his goods in person. Seizing from a usurer four hundred pounds, he successfully resisted the feudal claim of Edward I as Lord Paramount to pay over the money to the royal ex-checker. Edward having undertaken to erect a prison, or fortress in disguise in his Episcopal city, the bold prelate publicly excommunicated the Lord Justice who undertook the work, the escheter who supplied the funds, and all those engaged in its construction, nor did he desist from his opposition until the obnoxious building was demolished. Ralph O'Kelly, who filled the same sea from 1345 to 1361, exhibited an equally dauntless spirit. An Anglo-Irish parliament having levied a subsidy on all property, lay antichlesiastical, within their jurisdiction, to carry on the war of races before described, he not only opposed its collection within the province of Casual, but publicly excommunicated Epworth, Clark of the Council, who had undertaken that task. For this offence an information was exhibited against him, laying the king's damages at a thousand pounds, but he pleaded the liberties of the church and successfully traversed the indictment. Richard O'Heddean, Archbishop from 1406 to 1440, was a prelate of similar spirit to his predecessors. At a parliament held in Dublin in 1421, it was formerly alleged, among other enormities, that he made very much of the Irish and loved none of the English, that he presented no Englishman to a benefice, and advised other prelates to do likewise, that he made himself king of Munster, alluding probably to some revival at this time of the old title of Prince-Bishop, which had anciently belonged to the prelates of Casual. O'Heddean retained his authority, however, till his death, after which the sea remained twelve years vacant, the temporalities being farmed by the Earl of Ormond. From this conflict of interests, frequently resulting in disputed possession and intrusive jurisdiction, religion must have suffered much, at least in its discipline and decorum. The English Archbishops of Dublin would not yield in public processions to the Irish Archbishops of Armagh, nor permit the Crozier of St. Patrick to be borne publicly through their city. The English Bishop of Waterford was the public accuser of the Irish Archbishop of Casual, last mentioned, before lay tribunal, the nice and burgesses of the pale. The annual expeditions sent out from Dublin to harass the nearest native clans were seldom without a bishop or abbot, or prior of the temple or hospital in their midst. Scandals must have ensued, hatreds must have sprung up, prejudices, fatal to charity and unity, must have been engendered both on the one side and the other. The spirit of party carried into the church can be cherished in the presence of the altar, and cross only by doing violence to the teachings of the cross and the sanctity of the altar. While such was the troubled state of the church, as exemplified in its twofold hierarchy, the religious orders continued to spread, with amazing energy among both races. The orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic, those twin giants of the thirteenth century, already rivaled the mighty brotherhood which St. Bernard had consecrated and St. Malachi had introduced into the Irish church. It is observable that the Dominicans, at least at first, were most favored by the English and the Anglo-Irish, while the Franciscans were more popular with the native population. Exceptions may be found on both sides, but as a general rule this distinction can be traced in the strongholds of either order, and in the names of their most conspicuous members, down to that dark and trying hour when the tempest of the Reformation involved both in a common danger, and demonstrated their equal heroism. As elsewhere in Christendom, the sudden aggrandizement of these mendicant institutes excited jealousy and hostility among certain of the secular clergy and bishops. This feeling was even stronger in England during the reigns of Edward III and Richard II, when according to the popular superstition the devil appeared at various places in the form of a gray friar. The great champion of the secular clergy, in the controversy which ensued, was Richard, son of Ralph, a native of Dundalk, the Erasmus of his age. Having graduated at Oxford, where the Irish were then classed as one of the four nations of students, Fitz Ralph achieved distinction after distinction, till he rose to the rank of Chancellor of the University in 1333. Fourteen years afterwards he was consecrated by provision of Pope Clement VI, Archbishop of Armagh, and is by some writers styled cardinal of Armagh. Inducted into the chief sea of his native province and country, he soon commenced those sermons and writings against the mendicant orders which rendered him so conspicuous in the church history of the fourteenth century. Summoned to Avignon in 1350 to be examined in his doctrine, he maintained before the consistory the following propositions. First that our Lord Jesus Christ, as a man, was very poor, not that he loved poverty for itself. Second that our Lord had never begged. Third that he never taught men to beg. Fourth that on the contrary he taught men not to beg. Fifth that man cannot, with prudence and holiness, confine himself by vow to a life of constant mendicity. Sixth that minor brothers are not obliged by their rule to beg. Seventh that the bull of Alexander IV, which condemns the Book of Masters, does not invalidate any of the aforesaid conclusions. Eighth that by those who, wishing to confess, exclude certain churches, their parish one should be preferred to the oratories of monks, and ninth that for a curricular confession the diocesan bishop should be chosen in preference to friars. In a defense of parish priests and many other tracts, in several sermons preached at London, Litchfield, Drugheada, Dondalc and Armagh, he maintained the thesis until the year 1357, when the superior of the Franciscans at Armagh, extended by the influence of his own and the Dominican order, caused him to be summoned a second time before the Pope. Fitzrauff promptly obeyed the summons, but before the cause could be finally decided he died at Avignon in 1361. His body was removed from thence to Dondalc in 1370 by Stephen de Valle, Bishop of Meth. Miracles were said to have been wrought at his tomb. A process of inquiry into their validity was instituted by order of Boniface the Ninth, but abandoned without any result being arrived at. The bitter controversy between the mendicant and other orders was revived towards the end of the century by Henry, a Cistercian monk of Baltenglas, who maintained opinions still more extreme than those of Fitzrauff, but he was compelled publicly and solemnly to recheck them before commissioners appointed for that purpose in the year 1382. The range of mental culture in Europe during the fourteenth century included only the scholastic philosophy and theology with the physics taught in the schools of the Spanish Arabs. The fifteenth century saw the revival of Greek literature in Italy and the general restoration of classical learning. The former century is especially barren of original bellette writings, but the next succeeding ages produced Italian poetry, French chronicles, Spanish ballads, and all that wonderful efflorescence of popular literature, which in our far advanced cultivation we still so much envy and admire. In the last days of scholasticism Irish intelligence asserted its ancient equality with the best minds of Europe, but in the new era of national literature, unless there are buried treasures yet to be dug out of their Gaelic tombs, the country fell altogether behind England and even Scotland, not to speak of Italy or France. Archbishop Fitzrauff, John Scottus of Down, William of Dragheda, Professor of Both Laws at Oxford, are respectable representatives among the last and greatest group of the school men. Another illustrious name remains to be added to the role of Irish scholastics, that of Maurice O'Filly, Archbishop of Tom. He was a thorough Scottist in philosophy, which he taught at Padua in discourses long afterwards printed at Venice. His commentaries on Scottus, his Dictionary of the Sacred Scriptures, and other numerous writings go far to justify the compliments of his co-temporaries, though the fond appellation of the flower of the earth given him by some of them sounds extravagant and absurd. Soon after arriving from Rome to take possession of his sea he died at Tom in 1513 in the fiftieth year of his age, an early age to have won so colossal a reputation. Beyond some meager annals compiled in monastic houses and a few rhymed panagerics, the muses of history and of poetry seem to have abandoned the island to the theologians, jurists, and men of science. The bardic order was still one of the recognized estates, and found patrons worthy of their harps in the Lady Margaret O'Carroll of O'Filly, William O'Kelly of Galway, and Henry Avery O'Neill. Full collections of the original Irish poetry of the Middle Ages are yet to be made public, but it is scarcely possible that, if any composition of eminent merit existed, we should not have had additions and translations of it before now. End of Chapter 10. End of a Popular History of Ireland, Book 6 by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read by Cibella Denton in Carrollton, Georgia, in September 2008. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit Librebox.org.