CHAPTER XIV
Prince Lionel Viceroy for Edward III—The Statute of Kilkenny
EDWARD III, that valiant, vigorous, and ambitious “English” king—he was almost a pure-blooded Frenchman and about the last Norman monarch who occupied the throne of England that did not speak with fluency the language of the people he governed—was so occupied with his unjust wars against France that he gave but small heed to Irish affairs and never visited the island at all. But he sent over his third son, Prince Lionel, ancestor of the royal house of York and Clarence, as viceroy. Lionel had with him a well-equipped army of native-born English, but he treated his Anglo-Irish allies so contemptuously that many fell away from him and joined the ranks of the Old Irish. His English army, unaccustomed to the Irish climate and mode of warfare, made but a poor figure in the field, and was everywhere beaten by the dauntless Irish clansmen. At last he was compelled to lower his imperious tone to the Anglo-Irish and these foolishly helped him out of his scrape. It is said that a more than doubtful campaign in the present county of Clare procured for him, from his flatterers, the title of Duke of Clarence—a title, by the way, which brought more or less misfortune to every English prince who has borne it, except William IV, from his day to our own.
Lionel was particularly jealous of the friendship which seemed to exist between old Anglo-Irish and the old Celtic-Irish, and his small mind conceived a method of putting an end to it. He summoned a parliament to meet at Kilkenny, and there it was enacted, among other things, “that all intermarriages, fosterings, gossipred, and buying or selling with the (Irish) enemy shall be accounted treason; that English names, fashions, and manners (most of these having disappeared) shall be resumed under penalty of confiscation of the delinquent’s lands; that March laws (Norman) and Brehon laws (Irish) are illegal, and that there shall be no laws but English laws; that the Irish shall not pasture their cattle on English lands; that the English shall not entertain Irish rhymers, minstrels, or newsmen, and, moreover, that no ‘mere Irishman’ shall be admitted to any ecclesiastical benefice or religious house (England was then all Catholic) situated within the English district.”
Other provisions of the Statute of Kilkenny, as this precious “law” is called in Irish history, forbade the wearing of long hair, mustaches, and cloaks, after the manner of the Irish, and the use of the Gaelic speech was also forbidden, under heavy penalties. With their usual subserviency to English demands, the Anglo-Irish barons of the Pale—the portion of Ireland held by the English settlers, as already explained—passed this barbarous enactment without opposition, although they themselves were the chief “offenders” against it, in the eyes of the tyrannical viceroy.
To the honor of the Anglo-Normans and Celtic-Irish be it remembered, the base statute became almost immediately inoperative, and the Norman lords and Irish ladies, and the Irish princes and the Norman ladies, intermarried more numerously than before—an example generally followed by their dependants. The gallant house of Fitzgerald, or Geraldine, as usual, set the example of disregard.
“These Geraldines! These Geraldines! Not long her air they breathed—
Not long they fed on venison in Irish water seethed—
Not often had their children been by Irish mothers nursed,
When from their full and genial hearts an Irish feeling burst!
The English monarch strove in vain, by law and force and bribe,
To win from Irish thoughts and ways this ‘more than Irish’ tribe;
For still they clung to fosterage—to Brehon, cloak, and bard—
No king dare say to Geraldine: ‘Your Irish wife discard!’”
The immediate effect of the Statute of Kilkenny was to temporarily unite most of the Irish clans against the common enemy. They fell fiercely upon the Pale and again shut up the Normans in their fortresses. Prince Lionel returned to England grieved and humiliated. His viceroyalty had been a signal failure.
Throughout the viceroyalty of Clarence and his successor, William de Windsor, the desultory war between the Old Irish and the Anglo-Normans made many districts, in all the provinces, red with slaughter. The power of the De Burgos declined in Connaught after the death of the warlike Red Earl, who was the scourge of the O’Conors, and the latter family brought his descendants, who had assumed the name of MacWilliam, under their sway. The fierce tribes of Wicklow, Wexford, and Carlow harried the Pale, and were frequently joined by the O’Mores of Leix, and the Fitzpatricks of Ossory. In Ulster, Niel O’Neill, Prince of Tyrone, attacked and defeated the English armies and garrisons with so much success that he cleared Ulster of all foreigners, and won the title of Niel the Great. The Earl of Desmond met with a severe defeat at the hands of O’Brien, Prince of Thomond, who assailed him near the abbey of Adare in Limerick, and routed his army with terrible carnage. Desmond himself was mortally wounded and died upon the field. The Earl of Kildare, Desmond’s kinsman, attempted to avenge his rout, but met with scant success, because the Irish had, by this time, grown used to the Norman method of warfare, and, in many cases, improved upon the tactics of their oppressors.
Edward III, just before his death in 1376, attempted to get the settlements of the Pale to send representatives to London to consult about the affairs of Ireland, but they demurred, saying that it was not their custom to deliberate outside of their own country. However, they sent delegates to explain matters to the king, who did not further insist on convening a Pale Parliament in the English capital. It is strange that so able a monarch as Edward was, even in his declining years, never thought of visiting Ireland. Of course, most of his reign was taken up with the wars in France, in which he proved so signally victorious, and he had but little time for other occupations. In truth, Edward III, although nominally English, was, in reality, a Frenchman in thought and speech, and his dearest dream was to rule over the country of his Plantagenet ancestors, with England as a kind of tributary province. Of course, the English people would never have acquiesced in this arrangement, for, however willing to impose their yoke on other peoples, they are unalterably opposed to having any foreign yoke imposed upon themselves.