The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

The very policy of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, as displayed in their attempt to break down the clans by favoring "well-disposed Irishmen" and setting them up, by fraudulent elections, as chiefs of the various septs, proves that the English themselves admitted the clans to be real nation—nationes—as they were called at the time by Irish chroniclers and by English writers even. It was an acknowledgment of the plain fact that the natives possessed and exercised their own laws of succession and election, their own government and autonomy.

The disappearance of the Ard-Righ, who had held the titular power over the whole country, is no proof that the Irish possessed no government: for they themselves had refused for several centuries to acknowledge his power. The island was split up into several small independent states, each with the right of levying war, and making peace and alliance. Gillapatrick, of Ossory, dispatched his ambassador to Henry VIII. to announce that if he, the English king, did not prevent his deputy, Rufus Pierce, of Dublin, from annoying the clans of Ossory, Gillapatrick would, in self-defence, declare war against the King of England. And the imperious Henry Tudor, instead of laughing at the threat of the chieftain; was shrewd enough to recognize its significance, and prevented it being carried into execution by admitting the cause as valid, and submitting the conduct of his deputy to an investigation.

Moreover, the principles by which Christendom had been ruled for centuries, were just then being broken up by the advent of Protestantism; and novel theories were being introduced for the government of modern nations. What were the old principles, and what the new; and how stood Ireland with respect to each?

In the old organization of Christendom, the key-stone of the whole political edifice was the papacy. Up to the sixteenth century, the Sovereign Pontiff had been acknowledged by all Christian nations as supreme arbiter in international questions, and if England did possess any shadow of authority over Ireland, it was owing to former decisions of popes, who, being misinformed, had allowed the Anglo-Norman kings to establish their power in the island. Whatever may be thought of the bull of Adrian IV., this much is certain: we do not pretend to solve that vexed historical problem.

But, by rebelling against Rome, by rejecting the title of the Pope, England threw away even that claim, and by the bull of excommunication, issued against Elizabeth, the Irish were released from their allegiance to her, supposing that such allegiance had existed, solely built upon this claim.

So well was this understood at the time, that the Roman Pontiffs, as rulers of the Papal States, the Emperors of Germany, as heads of the German Empire, and the Kings of Spain and France, always covertly and sometimes openly received the envoys of O'Neill, Desmond, and O'Donnell, and openly dispatched troops and fleets to assist the Irish in their struggle for their de facto independence.

All this was in perfect accordance, not merely with the authority which Catholic powers still recognized in the Sovereign Pontiff, but even with the new order of things which Protestantism had introduced into Western Europe, and which England, as henceforth a leading Protestant power, had accepted and eagerly embraced. By the rejection of the supreme arbitration of the Popes, on the part of the new heretics, Europe lost its unity as Christendom, and naturally formed itself into two leagues, the Catholic and the Protestant. An oppressed Catholic nationality, above all a weak and powerless one, had therefore the right of appeal to the great Catholic powers for help against oppression. And the pretension of England to the possession of Ireland was the very essence of oppression and tyranny in itself, doubly aggravated by the fact of an apostate and vicious king or queen making it treason for a people, utterly separate and distinct from theirs, to hold fast to its ancient and revered religion.

Who can say, then, that Gregory XIII. was guilty of injustice and of abetting rebellion when, in 1578, he furnished James Fitzmaurice, the great Geraldine, with a fleet and army to fight against Elizabeth? The authority greatest in Catholic eyes, and most worthy of respect in the eyes of all impartial men—the Pope— thus endorsed the patent fact that Ireland was an independent nation, and could wage war against her oppressors. Here we have a stand-point from which to argue the question for future times.

The rash or, perhaps, treacherous share taken by a few Irish chieftains, in the schismatical and heretical as well as unpatriotic decrees of the Parliament of 1541, and in the subsequent ones of 1549, could compromise the Irish nation in nowise, inasmuch as the people, being still even in legal enjoyment of their own government, their chieftains possessed no authority to decide on such questions without the full concurrence of their clans, and these had already pronounced, clearly enough and unmistakably, on the return of their lords from their title-hunting expedition in England.

All the chroniclers of the time agree that "the people" was invariably sound in faith, siding with the chieftains wherever they rose in opposition to oppressive decrees, abandoning them when they showed signs of wavering, even; but, above all, when they ranged themselves with the oppressors of the Church. The English Protestant writers of the period confirm this honorable testimony of the Irish bards, by constantly accusing the natives of a "rebellious" spirit.