To him succeeded Henry the Seventh, and the first of the Race of Tudor, a great, wise and valiant Prince, but rather too much inclined to Rigour, and Avarice; Imperfections which extremely blemished his other great Qualities.
In the tenth Year of this Reign, the Parliamentary Constitution of Ireland received a deeper Stab than had ever before, or since, been inflicted thereon, by a Statute Law, commonly called Poynin's Act; by which a new, and, till that wretched Period, an unheard of Order, was added to the three established Ranks of the State. By this Law, the English Privy-Council may impose a Negative on the free and unanimous Parliamentary Ordinances of the representative Body of the Kingdom of Ireland; a manifest Injury to the Authority and Dignity of Parliament; and an equal Diminution of the Royal Prerogative, that only should include, and should alone exert, a Power so important.
In Times dark, tumultuated and dangerous, no Wonder extraordinary Laws should pass: Desperate Diseases require desperate Remedies: But when the Fever is removed, it certainly is a [pg 038] horrid Management to leave the blistering Plaister still sticking to the recovered Patient's Back.
The Distempers of this Nation were heavy, complicated and chronic; and finally curable, only by the salutary all-healing Hands of our present King, and present Parliament.
To Henry the Seventh succeeded Henry the Eighth, as consummate a Tyrant, in every Sense, as ever swayed the British, or any other Sceptre; whose whole Life was so continued a Scene of wanton Dissipation, Lust, Cruelty, Rapine, Bloodshed and Sacrilege, that it must have been a peculiar Happiness, to any Part of his Dominions, to have been neglected or forgotten by him: Nor could the two succeeding Reigns of Edward the Sixth, and Queen Mary, short, various, cloudy, and vastly agitated on the Score of Religion, (which, in those two Reigns, took Faces almost diametrically opposite,) afford this Kingdom much reflected Sunshine.
To those ensued that of Queen Elizabeth, a Princess of powerful Abilities, who, truly intent on the Peace and Welfare of her Subjects, caused her Laws to operate, and Justice to circulate in this Kingdom, abandoned, as hath been observed, to a State almost of Anarchy, thro' a dismal Series of seventeen Reigns: But the Reformation in Religion, which she established in England, and introduced in Ireland, much obviated her Purposes for the latter Kingdom: For, the Irish, more tenacious of their Altars, than of their Fire-places, could not easily reconcile themselves to the Exchange of a Religion they deemed a new one, for that they had been in Possession of from the fourth, to [pg 039] the fifteenth Century: Which produced a rebellious Defection, in a few of the principal Chieftains of this Land, and gave Occasion to the greedy Provincial Precedents, of trumping up imaginary Rebellions, to pave the Way to real Forfeitures; thereby to aggrandize their own Houses; what some of them effectually accomplished, to the Ruin and Extirpation of many honest Families.
This great and illustrious Princess, (whose Reign had remained untarnished, had it not been for the Death of the ill-fated Queen of Scotland) was succeeded by James the Sixth of Scotland, and the first of the Stuart Race that governed England: From this Prince, descended of Irish Kings, the People of Ireland might have expected many Favours and Immunities; wherein, however, they were miserably disappointed: Which, with a Train of other Hardships and antiparental Severities, (particularly his alienating, at one Stroke, six of the best Counties in the Kingdom, on the procured Testimony of an obscure wretched Individual, one Teige Lenane,) is too sufficient and too lasting a Proof of: Heu! tot Conquesta Annorum, hauserit una Dies! The Possession of at least twenty Centuries, of the great and good, the heroic and hospitable O Neils, O Donnels, Mac Guires, Mac Gennises, O Reillys, O Cahanes, &c. ravished away to gratify hungry Favourites, and indigent Relatives! the six Counties, however, as the Law Term has it, escheated. Had the Highlands of Scotland, at that unhappy Period, been more populated, probably six or eight Counties more had been procured to escheat, and there had been a braa Clutch of bonny Traitors; the O Connors, Mac Carthys, O Briens, O Donnels, O Hares, [pg 040] O Malones, &c. had been all in the same Bottom with the Families above mentioned; especially, as they could not, according to James the First's own Phrase, look to the Pope, and row with him.
To James the 6th of Scotland, and first of England, succeeded Charles the First; who, notwithstanding his eminent Possession of all the Virtues that adorn and illustrate human Nature, could neither divert the adverse Fate of Subjects, or prevent his own.
The Disseisin of many honest Families in the County of Kilkenny, and elsewhere, by the Earl of Strafford, on stale Pretences of Non Performance of Covenants on their Part; his Attempt of confiscating twenty-five Parts in thirty of the whole Province of Connaught, on a Claim of Descent, dormant 300 Years, and originally ill founded, with the arbitrary Steps by him taken to the Accomplishment of this wasteful Purpose; too clearly proved that Nobleman a second Verres. The cruel and intoxicated Administration of the Rump Parliament; the insolent, licentious, and riotous Controul of the military Independents; the abject Tyranny of Oliver Cromwell, who prostrated Constitution, Church and State, will always be recollected with the Contempt, Horror, and Detestation of every good Subject.
The Calamities from 1641, to the happy Restoration of King Charles the Second, in 1660, being common to all good Subjects, were the more tolerable, ferre quam sortem patiuntur omnes, nemo recusat: But now or never, surely, might his ever loyal, ever faithful Irish Subjects have, with the most reasonable Assurance, hoped, if not for publick and lasting Rewards, the common [pg 041] Wages of uncommon Fidelity; at least, for a Restitution of what had been their own, through Ages immemorial.