Having thus reduced the clerical opposition in the Upper House, the work of monastic spoliation, covertly commenced two years before, under the pretence of reforming abuses, was more confidently resumed. In 1536, an act had been passed vesting the property of all religious houses in the Crown; at which time the value of their moveables was estimated at 100,000 pounds and their yearly value at 32,000 pounds. In 1537, eight abbeys were suppressed during the King's pleasure; in 1538, a commission issued for the suppression of monasteries; and in 1539, twenty-four great Houses, whose Abbots and Priors had been lords of Parliament, were declared "surrendered" to the King, and their late superiors were granted pensions for life. How these "surrenders" were procured we may judge from the case of Manus, Abbot of St. Mary's, Thurles, who was carried prisoner to Dublin, and suffered a long confinement for refusing to yield up his trust according to the desired formula. The work of confiscation was in these first years confined to the walled towns in English hands, the district of the Pale, and such points of the Irish country as could be conveniently reached. The great order of the Cistercians, established for more than four centuries at Mellifont, at Monastereven, at Bective, at Jerpoint, at Tintern, and at Dunbrody, were the first expelled from their cloisters and gardens. The Canons regular of St. Augustine at Trim, at Conal, at Athassel and at Kells, were next assailed by the degenerate Augustinian, who presided over the commission. The orders of St. Victor, of Aroacia, of St. John of Jerusalem, were extinguished wherever the arm of the Reformation could reach. The mendicant orders, spread into every district of the island, were not so easily erased from the soil; very many of the Dominican and Franciscan houses standing and flourishing far into the succeeding century.
If the influence of the clergy counterbalanced the policy of the chiefs, the condition of the mass of the population—more especially of the inhabitants of the Pale and the marches—was such as to make them cherish the expectation that any governmental change whatever should be for the better. It was, under these circumstances, a far-reaching policy, which combined the causes and the remedy for social wrongs, with invectives against the old, and arguments in favour of the new religion. In order to understand what elements of discontent there were to be wrought to such conclusions, it is enough to give the merest glance at the social state of the lower classes under English authority. The St. Leger Commission represents the mixed population of the marches, and the Englishry of "the Pale" as burthened by accumulated exactions. Their lords quartered upon them at pleasure their horses, servants, and guests. They were charged with coin and livery—that is, horse-meat and man's-meat —when their lords travelled from place to place—with summer-oats, with providing for their cosherings, or feasts, at Christmas and Easter, with "black men and black money," for border defence, and with workmen and axemen from every ploughland, to work in the ditches, or to hew passages for the soldiery through the woods. Every aggravation of feudal wrong was inflicted on this harassed population. When a le Poer or a Butler married a daughter he exacted a sheep from every flock, and a cow from every village. When one of his sons went to England, a special tribute was levied on every village and ploughland to bear the young gentleman's travelling expenses. When the heads of any of the great houses hunted, their dogs were to be supplied by the tenants "with bread and milk, or butter." In the towns tailors, masons, and carpenters, were taxed for coin and livery; "mustrons" were employed in building halls, castles, stables, and barns, at the expense of the tenantry, for the sole use of the lord. The only effective law was an undigested jumble of the Brehon, the Civil, and the Common law; with the arbitrary ordinances of the marches, known as "the Statutes of Kilcash"—so called from a border stronghold near the foot of Slievenamon—a species of wild justice, resembling too often that administered by Robin Hood, or Rob Roy.
Many circumstances concurring to promote plans so long cherished by Henry, St. Leger summoned a Parliament for the morrow after Trinity Sunday, being the 13th of the month of June, 1541. The attendance on the day named was not so full as was expected, so the opening was deferred till the following Thursday—being the feast of Corpus Christi. On that festival the Mass of the Holy Ghost was solemnly celebrated in St. Patrick's Cathedral, in which "two thousand persons" had assembled. The Lords of Parliament rode in cavalcade to the Church doors, headed by the Deputy. There were seen side by side in this procession the Earls of Desmond and Ormond, the Lords Barry, Roche and Bermingham; thirteen Barons of "the Pale," and a long train of Knights; Donogh O'Brien, Tanist of Thomond, the O'Reilly, O'Moore and McWilliam; Charles, son of Art Kavanagh, lord of Leinster, and Fitzpatrick, lord of Ossory. Never before had so many Milesian chiefs and Norman barons been seen together, except on the field of battle; never before had Dublin beheld marshalled in her streets what could by any stretch of imagination be considered a national representation. For this singularity, not less than for the business it transacted, the Parliament of 1541 will be held in lasting remembrance.
In the sanctuary of St. Patrick's, two Archbishops and twelve Bishops assisted at the solemn mass, and the whole ceremony was highly imposing. "The like thereof," wrote St. Leger to Henry, "has not been seen here these many years." On the next day, Friday, the Commons elected Sir Thomas Cusack speaker, who, in "a right solemn proposition," opened at the bar of the Lords' House the main business of the session—the establishment of King Henry's supremacy. To this address Lord Chancellor Allen—"well and prudentlie answered;" and the Commons withdrew to their own chamber. The substance of both speeches was "briefly and prudentlie" declared in the Irish language to the Gaelic Lords, by the Earl of Ormond, "greatly to their contentation." Then St. Leger proposed that Henry and his heirs should have the title of King, and caused the "bill devised for the same to be read." This bill having been put to the Lords' House, both in Irish and English, passed its three readings at the same sitting. In the Commons it was adopted with equal unanimity the next day, when the Lord Deputy most joyfully gave his consent. Thus on Saturday, June 19th, 1541, the royalty of Ireland was first formally transferred to an English dynasty. On that day the triumphant St. Leger was enabled to write his royal master his congratulations on having added to his dignities "another imperial crown." On Sunday bonfires were made in honour of the event, guns fired, and wine on stoop was set in the streets. All prisoners, except those for capital offences, were liberated; Te Deum was sung in St. Patrick's, and King Henry issued his proclamation, on receipt of the intelligence, for a general pardon throughout all his dominions. The new title was confirmed with great formality by the English Parliament in their session of 1542. Proclamation was formally made of it in London, on the 1st of July of that year, when it was moreover declared that after that date all persons being lawfully convicted of opposing the new dignity should "be adjudged high traitors"—"and suffer the pains of death."
Thus was consummated the first political union of Ireland with England. The strangely-constituted Assembly, which had given its sanction to the arrangement, in the language of the Celt, the Norman, and the Saxon, continued in session till the end of July, when they were prorogued till November. They enacted several statutes, in completion of the great change they had decreed; and while some prepared for a journey to the court of their new sovereign, others returned to their homes, to account as best they could for the part they had played at Dublin.
CHAPTER IV.
ADHESION OF O'NEIL, O'DONNELL AND O'BRIEN—A NEW ANGLO-IRISH PEERAGE—NEW RELATIONS OF LORD AND TENANT—BISHOPS APPOINTED BY THE CROWN—RETROSPECT.
The Act of Election could hardly be considered as the Act of the Irish nation, so long as several of the most distinguished chiefs withheld their concurrence. With these, therefore, Saint Leger entered into separate treaties, by separate instruments, agreed upon, at various dates, during the years 1542 and 1543. Manus O'Donnell, lord of Tyrconnell, gave in his adhesion in August, 1541, Con O'Neil, lord of Tyrowen, Murrogh O'Brien, lord of Thomond, Art O'Moore, lord of Leix, and Ulick Burke, lord of Clanrickarde, 1542 and 1543; but, during the reign of Henry, no chief of the McCarthys, the O'Conors of Roscommon or of Offally, entered into any such engagement. The election, therefore, was far from unanimous, and Henry VIII. would perhaps be classed by our ancient Senachies among the "Kings with opposition," who figure so often in our Annals during the Middle Ages.
Assuming, however, the title conferred upon him with no little complacency, Henry proceeded to exercise the first privilege of a sovereign, the creation of honours. Murrogh O'Brien, chief of his name, became Earl of Thomond, and Donogh, his nephew, Baron of Ibrackan; Ulick McWilliam Burke became Earl of Clanrickarde and Baron of Dunkellin; Hugh O'Donnell was made Earl of Tyrconnell; Fitzpatrick, became Baron of Ossory, and Kavanagh, Baron of Ballyan; Con O'Neil was made Earl of Tyrone, having asked, and been refused, the higher title of Earl of Ulster. The order of Knighthood was conferred on several of the principal attendants, and to each of the new peers the King granted a house in or near Dublin, for their accommodation, when attending the sittings of Parliament.
The imposing ceremonial of the transformation of these Celtic chiefs into English Earls has been very minutely described by an eye-witness. One batch were made at Greenwich Palace, after High Mass on Sunday, the 1st of July, 1543. The Queen's closet "was richly hanged with cloth of arras and well strawed with rushes," for their robing room. The King received them under a canopy of state, surrounded by his Privy Council, the peers, spiritual and temporal, the Earl of Glencairn, Sir George Douglas, and the other Scottish Commissioners. The Earls of Derby and Ormond led in the new Earl of Thomond, Viscount Lisle carrying before them the sword. The Chamberlain handed his letters patent to the Secretary who read them down to the words Cincturam gladii, when the King girt the kneeling Earl, baldric-wise, with the sword, all the company standing. A similar ceremony was gone through with the others, the King throwing a gold chain having a cross hanging to it round each of their necks. Then, preceded by the trumpeters blowing, and the officers at arms, they entered the dining hall, where, after the second course, their titles were proclaimed aloud in Norman-French by Garter, King at Arms. Nor did Henry, who prided himself on his munificence, omit even more substantial tokens of his favour to the new Peers. Besides the town houses near Dublin, before mentioned, he granted to O'Brien all the abbeys and benefices of Thomond, bishoprics excepted; to McWilliam Burke, all the parsonages and vicarages of Clanrickarde, with one-third of the first-fruits, the Abbey of Via Nova and 30 pounds a year compensation for the loss of the customs of Galway; to Donogh O'Brien, the Abbey of Ellenegrane, the moiety of the Abbey of Clare, and an annuity of 20 pounds a year. To the new lord of Ossory he granted the monasteries of Aghadoe and Aghmacarte, with the right of holding court lete and market, every Thursday, at his town of Aghadoe. For these and other favours the recipients had been instructed to petition the King, and drafts of such petitions had been drawn up in anticipation of their arrival in England, by some official hand. The petitions are quoted by most of our late historians as their own proper act, but it is quite clear, though willing enough to present them and to accept such gifts, they had never dictated them.
In the creation of this Peerage Henry proclaimed, in the most practical manner possible, his determination to assimilate the laws and institutions of Ireland to those of England. And the new made Earls, forgetting their ancient relations to their clans—forgetting, as O'Brien had answered St. Leger's first overtures three years before, "that though he was captain of his nation he was still but one man," by suing out royal patents for their lands, certainly consented to carry out the King's plans. The Brehon law was doomed from the date of the creation of the new Peers at Greenwich, for such a change entailed among its first consequences a complete abrogation of the Gaelic relations of clansman and chief.