CHAPTER II
The Reformation Period Continued—Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth, and “John the Proud”
WHEN Edward VI, another boy-king, came to the throne, in 1547, Ireland was pretty well distracted, owing to the seeds of discord sown by his ferocious father. The young monarch was under the absolute control of his maternal kinsmen, the Seymours, and all that was done to forward the Reformation in Ireland during his brief reign may be justly attributed to them. On his death, in 1553, Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and wife of Philip II of Spain, succeeded. She was a bigoted Catholic and soon made things decidedly warm for the Protestants in England. Many of these fled for safety to Ireland, where the Catholic people—incapable of cruelty until demoralized by the ruthless tyranny of religious persecution—received and sheltered them—a noble page of Anglo-Irish history.
The Reformation, of course, came to a standstill in Ireland, during this queen’s reign, but the plunder and persecution of the Irish people did not, therefore, abate. There were raids and massacres and confiscations, as usual. Of course there were bloody reprisals on the part of the Irish, also—as was but natural. Some of the old Irish districts—particularly Leix and Offaly—were, under the sway of Mary, called the King’s and Queen’s Counties—the chief town of the one being named Philipstown, after the queen’s Spanish husband, and the capital of the other Maryborough, after herself. The Irish Reformers “laid low,” as was prudent in them, during Mary’s period of power, because she had the unpleasant Tudor habit of putting to death, by divers violent modes of punishment, those who presumed to differ from her rather strong opinions. The English, who sincerely rejoiced when, after reigning about five years, she passed to her account, nicknamed her “Bloody Mary,” although she was not a whit “bloodier” than her awful father, and had a very formidable rival for sanguinary “honors” in her younger half-sister, Elizabeth. Mary Tudor was the last avowed Catholic monarch who reigned in England, except the ill-fated James II. In this reign, the English law of primogeniture was first generally introduced into the Celtic districts annexed to the Pale, which had been divided into “shire-ground,” and this was the cause of much internal disorder among the Irish tribes that clung to the old elective system of chieftaincy.
Elizabeth, called by her admiring English subjects “Good Queen Bess,” on very insufficient grounds, ascended the throne in 1558. She had, apparently, “conformed” to Catholicity during the lively reign of her half-sister, fearing, no doubt, for her head in case of refusal. Henry VIII’s daughter, by Anne Boleyn, she inherited great energy of character, a masculine intellect, superabundant vanity, a passion for empire, and a genius for intrigue. Her morals were none of the best, according to many historians. She was, for that age, highly educated, could speak divers tongues, and possessed many of the polite accomplishments. Indeed, she was somewhat of a female pedant. In person, while yet young, she was not ill-favored, being well-formed and of good stature. Her complexion was fair, her hair auburn, and her eyes small, but dark and sparkling. Her temper was irritable; she swore when angry, and, at times, her disposition was as ferocious as that of “Old Hal” himself. Like his, her loves were passing passions, and her friendship dangerous to those on whom she lavished it most freely. Flattery was the surest way by which to reach her consideration, but, in affairs of state, not even that could cloud her powerful understanding or balk her resolute will. She resolved to finish what her father and brother had begun, and finish it to the purpose—namely, the Reformation—in both England and Ireland. In the former country, her will soon became law, and Rome ceased to be considered, for generations, as a factor in English affairs. In Ireland, it was different. The people there refused, as a great majority, to conform to the new order of things. They obeyed the Pope, as their spiritual chief, and went to mass and received the sacraments as usual. In Ulster, particularly, the people, headed by John O’Neill, Prince of Tyrone, surnamed “The Proud,” resisted all English encroachments, civil and religious. A bloody war resulted. The English generals and some of the Anglo-Irish lords were commissioned by Elizabeth to force the new religion down the throats of the Irish people at the point of the sword. The Liturgy, she proclaimed, must be read in English, the mass abandoned, and she herself be recognized as Pope in Ireland, as well as in England. Accordingly, the English armies burned the Catholic churches and chapels, assassinated the clergy, and butchered the people wherever resistance was offered. But John O’Neill was a great soldier and managed, for many years, to defend his country with great success, defeating the best of the English captains in several fierce conflicts. Elizabeth, struck with his bravery and ability, invited him to visit her at her palace of Greenwich. The invitation was sent through Gerald of Kildare, O’Neill’s cousin. The Irish prince accepted and proceeded to court with a following of three hundred galloglasses, or heavy infantry, clad in saffron-colored jackets, close-fitting pantaloons, heavy shoes, short cloaks, and with their hair hanging down their backs, defiant of Poynings’ Law, and all other English enactments. They were gigantic warriors—all more than six feet tall—and with huge mustaches, the drooping ends of which touched their collarbones. They also carried truculent-looking daggers and immense battle-axes, such as might have won the admiration of Richard Cœur de Lion himself. The English courtiers—pigmies compared with the galloglasses—might have been inclined to make fun of their costumes, but those deadly appearing axes inspired awe, and no unpleasant incident occurred during the visit. “Shane the Proud” made a deep impression on Elizabeth, for he was physically magnificent and as fierce as her dreaded father. “By what right do you oppose me in Ulster?” she asked. “By very good right, madam,” he answered. “You may be queen here, but I am king in Ulster, and so have been the O’Neills for thousands of years!” Then she offered to make him Earl of Tyrone by letters patent. “Earl me no earls, madam,” he replied. “The O’Neill is my title! By it I stand or fall!” There was nothing more to be said, so the queen made him rich presents, after asking him to be her “good friend,” which, being a gallant, he promised, and then he went back to Ulster.
But Shane, although a good general and a great fighter, was a bad statesman, and by no means a conscientious character. He oppressed the neighboring Irish chiefs, being, indeed, half mad with pride, and made a most unjust and unnecessary attack on the Clan O’Donnell, next to the O’Neills the most powerful of Ulster tribes. He not alone ruined the O’Donnell, but also dishonored him, by carrying his wife away and making her his mistress, in mad disregard of Irish public opinion. He also quarreled with the old MacDonald colony of Antrim—said by some writers to be Irish, not Scotch, in their origin—and used them with extreme harshness. In the end, his misconduct produced a revolt even among his own followers. His enemies, including the injured O’Donnells, speedily multiplied, and he who had been fifty times victorious over the English, was, at last, signally defeated by his own justly indignant fellow-countrymen. In this extremity, he fled with his mistress and a few followers for refuge to the MacDonalds, who, at first, received the fugitives hospitably, but soon, instigated, it is said, by one Captain Piers, an Englishman, fell upon O’Neill at a banquet and stabbed him to death. Had he loved his own people as much as he hated the English, he might have lived and died a conqueror. The MacDonalds did not respect the body of this dead lion. They severed the head from the trunk, pickled it, and sent the ghastly present to the English Lord Deputy in Dublin, who caused it to be spiked on the tower of Dublin Castle. O’Neill’s death, in the very prime of his military genius, relieved Elizabeth of her most dangerous Irish enemy. But another scion of that warrior race was under the queen’s “protection” in London, and was destined to raise the Bloody Hand, the cognizance of his house, to a prouder eminence than it had attained in Irish annals since the far-off days of Nial of the Hostages.
Treacherous massacres of Irish chieftains dangerous to England’s supremacy in their country would appear to have been a special feature of Elizabeth’s reign. Under the Lord Deputy Sydney’s régime, A.D. 1577, Sir Francis Cosby, the English general commanding in the ancient territories of Leix and Offaly, unable to obtain the submission of the native chiefs by force of arms, invited several hundred of them to a banquet at the rath of Mullaghmast, in the present county of Kildare. The principal families represented were the O’Mores, O’Nolan’s, O’Kelly’s, and Lalors. The rath, or fort, was fitted up for the occasion, and, through the entrance, the unsuspecting Irish chieftains and their friends rode with happy hearts and smiling faces. But one of the Lalors who was rather belated, had his suspicions aroused by the dead silence which seemed to prevail in the rath, and by the peculiar circumstance that none of those who had entered came out to welcome the later arrivals. He bade the few friends who had accompanied him to remain outside, while he entered the fort to investigate. He took the precaution to draw his sword before he went in. Proceeding with caution, he was horrified at stumbling over the dead bodies of some of his neighbors just beyond the entrance. He retreated at once, but was set upon by assassins placed there to murder him. A powerful man, he wielded his blade with such good effect that he cut his way out, mounted his horse, and set off with his horrified associates at full gallop to his home at Dysart. More than four hundred confiding Irish gentlemen had entered the rath that day, and of all of them, only the sagacious Lalor escaped. The tribe of O’More alone lost nearly two hundred of its foremost members, but was not entirely exterminated. Rory Oge O’More, son of the slaughtered head of the tribe, made relentless war on the English Pale, and never desisted until he had more than avenged his kindred slain in the foul massacre of Mullaghmast.