Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 3 of 3

by Henry Hallam

Protestant church established by Elizabeth.—Another scene of revolution ensued in a very few years. Elizabeth having fixed the protestant church on a stable basis in England, sent over the Earl of Sussex to hold an Irish parliament in 1560. The disposition of such an assembly might be presumed hostile to the projected reformations; but, contrary to what had occurred on this side of the channel, though the peers were almost uniformly for the old religion, a large majority of the bishops are said to have veered round with the times, and supported, at least by conformity and acquiescence, the creed of the English court. In the House of Commons, pains had been taken to secure a majority; ten only out of twenty counties, which had at that time been formed, received the writ of summons; and the number of seventy-six representatives of the Anglo-Irish people was made up by the towns, many of them under the influence of the Crown, some perhaps containing a mixture of protestant population. The English laws of supremacy and uniformity were enacted in nearly the same words; and thus the common prayer was at once set up instead of the mass, but with a singular reservation, that in those parts of the country where the minister had no knowledge of the English language, he might read the service in Latin. All subjects were bound to attend the public worship of the church, and every other was interdicted.[506]

There were doubtless three arguments in favour of this compulsory establishment of the protestant church, which must have appeared so conclusive to Elizabeth and her council, that no one in that age could have disputed them without incurring, among other hazards, that of being accounted a lover of unreasonable paradoxes. The first was, that the protestant religion being true, it was the queen's duty to take care that her subjects should follow no other; the second, that, being an absolute monarch, or something like it, and a very wise princess, she had a better right to order what doctrine they should believe, than they could have to choose for themselves; the third, that Ireland, being as a handmaid, and a conquered country, must wait, in all important matters, on the pleasure of the greater island, and be accommodated to its revolutions. And, as it was natural that the queen and her advisers should not reject maxims which all the rest of the world entertained, merely because they were advantageous to themselves, we need not perhaps be very acrimonious in censuring the laws whereon the church of Ireland is founded. But it is still equally true that they involve a principle essentially unjust, and that they have enormously aggravated, both in the age of Elizabeth and long afterwards, the calamities and the disaffection of Ireland. An ecclesiastical establishment, that is, the endowment and privileges of a particular religious society, can have no advantages (relatively at least to the community where it exists), but its tendency to promote in that community good order and virtue, religious knowledge and edification. But, to accomplish this end in any satisfactory manner, it must be their church, and not that merely of the government; it should exist for the people, and in the people, and with the people. This indeed is so manifest, that the government of Elizabeth never contemplated the separation of a great majority as licensed dissidents from the ordinances established for their instruction. It was undoubtedly presumed, as it was in England, that the church and commonwealth, according to Hooker's language, were to be two denominations of the same society; and that every man in Ireland who appertained to the one ought to embrace, and in due season would embrace, the communion of the other. There might be ignorance, there might be obstinacy, there might be feebleness of conscience for a time; and perhaps some connivance would be shown to these; but that the prejudices of a majority should ultimately prevail so as to determine the national faith, that it should even obtain a legitimate indulgence for its own mode of worship, was abominable before God, and incompatible with the sovereign authority.

This sort of reasoning, half bigotry, half despotism, was nowhere so preposterously displayed as in Ireland. The numerical majority is not always to be ascertained with certainty; and some regard may fairly, or rather necessarily, be had to rank, to knowledge, to concentration. But in that island, the disciples of the reformation were in the most inconsiderable proportion among the Anglo-Irish colony, as well as among the natives; their church was a government without subjects, a college of shepherds without sheep. I am persuaded that this was not intended nor expected to be a permanent condition; but such were the difficulties which the state of that unhappy nation presented, or such the negligence of its rulers, that scarce any pains were taken in the age of Elizabeth, nor indeed in subsequent ages, to win the people's conviction or to eradicate their superstitions, except by penal statutes and the sword. The Irish language was universally spoken without the pale; it had even made great progress within it; the clergy were principally of that nation; yet no translation of the scriptures, the chief means through which the reformation had been effected in England and Germany, nor even of the regular liturgy, was made into that tongue; nor was it possible, perhaps, that any popular instruction should be carried far in Elizabeth's reign, either by public authority, or by the ministrations of the reformed clergy. Yet neither among the Welsh nor the Scots Highlanders, though Celtic tribes, and not much better in civility of life at that time than the Irish, was the ancient religion long able to withstand the sedulous preachers of reformation.

It is evident from the history of Elizabeth's reign, that the forcible dispossession of the catholic clergy, and their consequent activity in deluding a people too open at all times to their counsels, aggravated the rebellious spirit of the Irish, and rendered their obedience to the law more unattainable. But, even independently of this motive, the Desmonds and Tyrones would have tried, as they did, the chances of insurrection, rather than abdicate their unlicensed but ancient chieftainship. It must be admitted that, if they were faithless in promises of loyalty, the Crown's representatives in Ireland set no good example; and, when they saw the spoliations of property by violence or pretext of law, the sudden executions on alleged treasons, the breaches of treaty, sometimes even the assassinations, by which a despotic policy went onward in its work of subjugation, they did but play the usual game of barbarians in opposing craft and perfidy, rather more gross perhaps and notorious, to the same engines of a dissembling government.[507] Yet if we can put any trust in our own testimonies, the great families were, by mismanagement and dissension, the curse of their vassals. Sir Henry Sidney represents to the queen, in 1567, the wretched condition of the southern and western counties in the vast territories of the Earls of Ormond, Desmond, and Clanricarde.[508] "An unmeasurable tract," he says, "is now waste and uninhabited, which of late years was well tilled and pastured." "A more pleasant nor a more desolate land I never saw than from Youghall to Limerick."[509] "So far hath that policy, or rather lack of policy, in keeping dissension among them prevailed, as now, albeit all that are alive would become honest and live in quiet, yet are there not left alive in those two provinces the twentieth person necessary to inhabit the same."[510] Yet this was but the first scene of calamity. After the rebellion of the last Earl of Desmond, the counties of Cork and Kerry, his ample patrimony, were so wasted by war and military executions, and famine and pestilence, that, according to a contemporary writer, who expresses the truth with hyperbolical energy, "the land itself, which before those wars was populous, well inhabited, and rich in all the good blessings of God, being plenteous of corn, full of cattle, well stored with fruit and sundry other good commodities, is now become waste and barren, yielding no fruits, the pastures no cattle, the fields no corn, the air no birds, the seas, though full of fish, yet to them yielding nothing. Finally, every way the curse of God was so great, and the land so barren both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from the one end unto the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to the head of Limerick, which is about six-score miles, he should not meet any man, woman, or child, saving in towns and cities; nor yet see any beast but the very wolves, the foxes, and other like ravening beasts."[511] The severity of Sir Arthur Grey, at this time deputy, was such that Elizabeth was assured he had left little for her to reign over but ashes and carcasses; and, though not by any means of too indulgent a nature, she was induced to recall him.[512] His successor, Sir John Perrott, who held the viceroyalty only from 1584 to 1587, was distinguished for a sense of humanity and justice, together with an active zeal for the enforcement of law. Sheriffs were now appointed for the five counties into which Connaught had some years before been parcelled; and even for Ulster, all of which, except Antrim and Down, had hitherto been undivided, as well as ungoverned.[513] Yet even this apparently wholesome innovation aggravated at first the servitude of the natives, whom the new sheriffs were prone to oppress.[514] Perrott, the best of Irish governors, soon fell a sacrifice to a court intrigue and the queen's jealousy; and the remainder of her reign was occupied with almost unceasing revolts of the Earl of Tyrone, head of the great sept of O'Neil in Ulster, instigated by Rome and Spain, and endangering, far more than any preceding rebellion, her sovereignty over Ireland.

The old English of the pale were little more disposed to embrace the reformed religion, or to acknowledge the despotic principles of a Tudor administration, than the Irish themselves; and though they did not join in the rebellions of those they so much hated, the queen's deputies had sometimes to encounter a more legal resistance. A new race of colonists had begun to appear in their train, eager for possessions, and for the rewards of the Crown, contemptuous of the natives, whether aboriginal or of English descent, and in consequence the objects of their aversion or jealousy.[515] Hence in a parliament summoned by Sir Henry Sidney in 1569, the first after that which had reluctantly established the protestant church, a strong country party, as it may be termed, was formed in opposition to the Crown. They complained with much justice of the management by which irregular returns of members had been made; some from towns not incorporated, and which had never possessed the elective right; some self-chosen sheriffs and magistrates; some mere English strangers, returned for places which they had never seen. The judges, on reference to their opinion, declared the elections illegal in the two former cases: but confirmed the non-resident burgesses, which still left a majority for the court.

The Irish patriots, after this preliminary discussion, opposed a new tax upon wines, and a bill for the suspension of Poyning's law. Hooker, an Englishman, chosen for Athenry, to whose account we are chiefly indebted for our knowledge of these proceedings, sustained the former in that high tone of a prerogative lawyer which always best pleased his mistress. "Her majesty," he said, "of her own royal authority, might and may establish the same without any of your consents, as she hath already done the like in England; saving of her courtesy, it pleaseth her to have it pass with your own consents by order of law, that she might thereby have the better trial and assurance of your dutifulness and good-will towards her." This language from a stranger, unusual among a people proud of their birthright in the common constitution, and little accustomed even to legitimate obedience, raised such a flame that the house was adjourned; and it was necessary to protect the utterer of such doctrines by a guard. The duty on wines, laid aside for the time, was carried in a subsequent session in the same year; and several other statutes were enacted, which, as they did not affect the pale, may possibly have encountered no opposition. A part of Ulster, forfeited by Slanes O'Neil, a rebel almost as formidable in the first years of this reign as his kinsman Tyrone was near its conclusion, was vested in the Crown; and some provisions were made for the reduction of the whole island into shires. Connaught, in consequence, which had passed for one county, was divided into five.[516]

In Sir Henry Sidney's second government, which began in 1576, the pale was excited to a more strenuous resistance, by an attempt to subvert their liberties. It had long been usual to obtain a sum of money for the maintenance of the household and of the troops, by an assessment settled between the council and principal inhabitants of each district. This, it was contended by the government, was instead of the contribution of victuals which the queen, by her prerogative of purveyance, might claim at a fixed rate, much lower than the current price.[517] It was maintained on the other side to be a voluntary benevolence. Sidney now devised a plan to change it for a cess or permanent composition for every plough-land, without regard to those which claimed exemption from the burthen of purveyance; and imposed this new tax by order of council, as sufficiently warrantable by the royal prerogative. The landowners of the pale remonstrated against such a violation of their franchises, and were met by the usual arguments. They appealed to the text of the laws; the deputy replied by precedents against law. "Her majesty's prerogative," he said, "is not limited by Magna Charta, nor found in Littleton's Tenures, nor written in the books of Assizes, but registered in the remembrances of her majesty's exchequer, and remains in the rolls of records of the Tower."[518] It was proved, according to him, by the most ancient and credible records in the realm, that such charges had been imposed from time to time, sometimes by the name of cess, sometimes by other names, and more often by the governor and council, with such of the nobility as came on summons, than by parliament. These irregularities did not satisfy the gentry of the pale, who refused compliance with the demand, and still alleged that it was contrary both to reason and law to impose any charge upon them without parliament or grand council. A deputation was sent to England in the name of all the subjects of the English pale. Sidney was not backward in representing their behaviour as the effect of disaffection; nor was Elizabeth likely to recede, where both her authority and her revenue were apparently concerned. But, after some demonstrations of resentment in committing the delegates to the Tower, she took alarm at the clamours of their countrymen; and, aware that the King of Spain was ready to throw troops into Ireland, desisted with that prudence which always kept her passion in command, accepting a voluntary composition for seven years in the accustomed manner.[519]

James I. ascended the throne with as great advantages in Ireland as in his other kingdoms. That island was already pacified by the submission of Tyrone; and all was prepared for a final establishment of the English power upon the basis of equal laws and civilised customs; a reformation which in some respects the king was not ill fitted to introduce. His reign is perhaps on the whole the most important in the constitutional history of Ireland, and that from which the present scheme of society in that country is chiefly to be deduced.

1. The laws of supremacy and uniformity, copied from those of England, were incompatible with any exercise of the Roman catholic worship, or with the admission of any members of that church into civil trust. It appears indeed that they were by no means strictly executed during the queen's reign; yet the priests were of course excluded, so far as the English authority prevailed, from their churches and benefices; the former were chiefly ruined; the latter fell to protestant strangers, or to conforming ministers of native birth, dissolute and ignorant, as careless to teach as the people were predetermined not to listen.[520] The priests, many of them, engaged in a conspiracy with the court of Spain against the queen and her successor, and all deeming themselves unjustly and sacrilegiously despoiled, kept up the spirit of disaffection, or at least of resistance to religious innovation, throughout the kingdom.[521] The accession of James seemed a sort of signal for casting off the yoke of heresy; in Cork, Waterford, and other cities, the people, not without consent of the magistrates, rose to restore the catholic worship; they seized the churches, ejected the ministers, marched in public processions, and shut their gates against the lord deputy. He soon reduced them to obedience; but almost the whole nation was of the same faith, and disposed to struggle for a public toleration. This was beyond every question their natural right, and as certainly was it the best policy of England to have granted it; but the king-craft and the priest-craft of the day taught other lessons. Priests were ordered by proclamation to quit the realm; the magistrates and chief citizens of Dublin were committed to prison for refusing to frequent the protestant church. The gentry of the pale remonstrated at the court of Westminster; and, though their delegates atoned for their self-devoted courage by imprisonment, the secret menace of expostulation seems to have produced, as usual, some effect, in a direction to the lord deputy that he should endeavour to conciliate the recusants by instruction. These penalties of recusancy, from whatever cause, were very little enforced; but the catholics murmured at the oath of supremacy, which shut them out from every distinction: though here again the execution of the law was sometimes mitigated, they justly thought themselves humiliated, and the liberties of their country endangered, by standing thus at the mercy of the Crown. And it is plain that, even within the pale, the compulsory statutes were at least far better enforced than under the queen; while in those provinces within which the law now first began to have its course, the difference was still more acutely perceived.[522]

2. English law established throughout Ireland.—The first care of the new administration was to perfect the reduction of Ireland into a civilised kingdom. Sheriffs were appointed throughout Ulster; the territorial divisions of counties and baronies were extended to the few districts that still wanted them; the judges of assize went their circuits everywhere; the customs of tanistry and gavelkind were determined by the court of king's bench to be void; the Irish lords surrendered their estates to the Crown, and received them back by the English tenures of knight-service or socage; an exact account was taken of the lands each of these chieftains possessed, that he might be invested with none but those he occupied; while his tenants, exempted from those uncertain Irish exactions, the source of their servitude and misery, were obliged only to an annual quit-rent, and held their own lands by a free tenure. The king's writ was obeyed, at least in profession, throughout Ireland; after four centuries of lawlessness and misgovernment, a golden period was anticipated by the English courtiers; nor can we hesitate to recognise the influence of enlightened, and sometimes of benevolent minds, in the scheme of government now carried into effect.[523] But two unhappy maxims debased their motives, and discredited their policy; the first, that none but the true religion, or the state's religion, could be suffered to exist in the eye of the law; the second, that no pretext could be too harsh or iniquitous to exclude men of a different race or erroneous faith from their possessions.