The dissensions were not confined to the natives. The quarrels and bickerings of the nobles and officials of the Pale seemed to invite destruction. Rival parliaments were held; viceroys who were attached by policy or affection to the houses of York and Lancaster contended in the Castle of Dublin for the legitimacy of their respective factions; and even the Lord Chancellor Sherwood, Bishop of Meath, and the members of the privy council, whose office and duty it was to preserve the peace between all parties, were found the most turbulent; "the chancellor and chief-justice of the king's bench requiring the interposition of the king to keep them quiet, while the Irish so pressed upon the narrow limits of the English settlements that the statute requiring cities and boroughs to be represented by inhabitants of the same was obliged to be repealed upon the express ground that representatives could not be expected to encounter, on their journeys to parliament, the great perils incident from the king's Irish enemies and English rebels, for it is openly known how great and frequent mischiefs have been done on the ways both in the south, north, east, and west parts, by reason whereof they may not send proctors, knights, nor burgesses."[33] Such was the condition of Ireland in A.D. 1480, just three centuries after the advent of Henry II. to her shores.
One of the principal duties of the Irish lord chancellors, even to the very moment of its extinction, was the management of the Irish parliament. The body that for so many centuries bore that pretentious title, but which never spoke the voice of even a respectable minority of the people, is said to have owed its origin to the second Henry, though according to Whiteside, who follows the authority of Sir John Davies, no parliament was held in the country for one hundred and forty years after that king's visit.[34] Except in an antiquarian point of view, the matter is of little importance, as such gatherings in Ireland, even more so than those of England, could not at that time be called either representative or deliberative bodies, for their members were not chosen by even a moiety of the people, and they were mere instruments in the hands of the governing powers, who moulded them at will when they desired to impose new taxes or unjust laws on the people, ostensibly with their own sanction. From the days of Simon de Montfort to those of George IV., the English parliamentary system has been an ingeniously devised engine of general oppression under the garb of popular government.
Of the ancient parliaments, the most famous was that held at Kilkenny during the chancellorship of John Trowyk, Prior of St. John, in 1367, at which was passed the statute bearing the name of that beautiful city. Though the name only of the chancellor, who doubtless was the author ex officio, has come down to us, that delectable specimen of English legislation is doubtless destined to survive the changes of time, and expire only with the language itself. It prohibited marriage, gossipred, and fostering between the natives and the Anglo-Irish under penalty of treason, also selling to the former upon any condition horses, armor, or victuals, under a like penalty. All persons of either nationality living in the Pale were to use the English language, names, customs, dress, and manner of riding. No Irishman was to be admitted to holy orders, nor was any minstrel, story-teller, or rhymer to be harbored. English on the borders should hold no parley with their Irish neighbors, except by special permission, nor employ them in their domestic wars. Irish games were not to be indulged in, but should give place to those of the English, as being more "gentlemanlike sports." Any infraction of these provisions was to be punished with rigor, for, says the preamble to the act, "many of the English of Ireland, discarding the English tongue, manners, style of riding, laws, and usages, lived and governed themselves according to the mode, fashion, and language of the Irish enemies," etc., whereby the said "Irish enemies were exalted and raised up contrary to reason." This enactment is perhaps without a parallel in the history of semi-civilized legislation, if we except that passed at a parliament held at Trim in 1447, and for which we are indebted to no less a person than the Archbishop of Dublin, lord chancellor at that period. It enacts "that those who would be taken for Englishmen (that is, within the protection of law) should not wear a beard on the upper lip; that the said lip should be shaved once at least in every two weeks, and that offenders therein should be treated as Irish enemies." As no provision was inserted in the statute providing for the supply of razors, or mention made of the appointment of state barbers, we presume it soon became inoperative.
By such penal legislation it was weakly supposed the evils of the country could be cured most effectually, but, unfortunately for the lawmakers, it was easier to pass statutes than to enforce them. On the mass of the people they had no effect whatever, except, perhaps, to bind them faster to their ancient laws and customs, and he would have been a bold officer indeed who would have attempted to carry them out, even among the Anglo-Irish families outside of the Pale; for we find that, at a parliament held in Dublin in 1441, under the supervision of Archbishop Talbot, a strong request was made to the king to furnish troops for the defence of the colony, the privy council having some time previously represented "that the king should ordain that the Admiral of England should, in summer season, visit the coasts of Ireland to protect the merchants from the Scots, Bretons, and Spaniards, who came thither with their ships stuffed with men of war in great numbers, seizing the merchants of Ireland, Wales, and England, and holding them to ransom."[35]
The selfish but sagacious policy of Henry VII. had done so much to remedy the evils inflicted on England by the wars of the Roses that when his son, Henry VIII., ascended the throne in 1509, he found a united and contented people, a well-filled treasury, and a subservient parliament. The character of this notorious ruler is too well known to need comment, and the effects of his crimes are still perceptibly felt by the country that had the misfortune to have given him birth. His influence on Irish affairs, though more disastrous in its immediate results, has happily long since been obliterated. Dr. Rokeby, Bishop of Meath, and afterward Archbishop of Dublin, first appointed chancellor in 1498, was retained in his office by the new king. He is represented as a man of marked piety and learning, but he would have been unfitted to fill an office under the English crown had he allowed any scruples of conscience to stand between him and the behests of his royal master. What these were may be judged from a passage in a private letter from Henry to his viceroy. "Now," he writes, "at the beginning, political practices may do more good than exploits of war, till such time as the strength of the Irish enemy shall be enfeebled and diminished; as well by getting their captains from them, as by putting division among them, so that they join not together"[36]—an advice eminently suggestive, but by no means new, for the policy of arraying the Irish against each other had been practised long before with fatal effect. Rokeby held the great seal for twenty-one years, and his long term was marked by his successful efforts to reconcile the hostile Anglo-Irish factions, his negotiations with the native chiefs, for the purpose of inducing them to acknowledge the sovereignty of Henry, and the consequent extension of the functions of the courts over the greater part of the island. The success of the first and last of these measures was mainly due to the personal efforts of the lord chancellor, and the submission of the Irish party resulted from the loss of the battle of Knocktough, in 1504, and the favorable promises held out by the chancellor and viceroy, inducements, it is needless to say, which were never fulfilled. He was succeeded by the two St. Lawrences, father and son, of whom nothing notable is recorded, but that they were laymen and natives of the soil; and by Archbishop Ingle, who, however, held office for but one year.
The next ecclesiastical chancellor was Dr. Alan, commissioned in 1528. This distinguished official was remarkable not only for his great mental capacity, but as a not unfavorable sample of the English political churchmen of the era immediately preceding the so-called "Reformation"—men who, by their laxity of faith and worldly ambition, paved the way for the subsequent grand march of heresy and immorality. Born in England in 1476, he studied with credit both at Oxford and Cambridge, and at an early age entered the priesthood. His varied acquirements and experience of mankind gained him, in 1515, the degree of doctor of laws and the confidence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Lord Chancellor of England, by whom he was sent to Rome on a special mission. On his return, he was appointed chaplain to Cardinal Wolsey, and judge of his legantine court. In both capacities he appears to have given satisfaction, particularly in the latter, in which he materially assisted the ambitious cardinal in suppressing certain monasteries, and appropriating the revenues, it is more than suspected, to his own and his patron's use. For these services he was rewarded with the archbishopric of Dublin and the Irish chancellorship. His two great vices, avarice and the love of intrigue, became now fully developed. When not begging for increase of salary or emoluments, he was writing scandalous letters to his friends at the English court, complaining of the conduct of the viceroy, the unfortunate Earl of Kildare, and it was mainly through his instrumentality, supported by Wolsey, that that nobleman was called to England and committed to the Tower of London. His next step was to circulate a false report that the earl had been executed. This led, as he anticipated, to the rebellion of Kildare's son and deputy, better known as Silken Thomas, and a number of Irish chiefs with whom the Fitzgeralds were allied, and, upon its suppression, to the confiscation of vast estates in Leinster and Munster. But Alan did not live long enough to behold the result of his sanguinary policy. Alarmed at the storm he had raised, he endeavored to escape from the country, but the elements seem to have conspired against him, for he was cast ashore near Clontarf, and, on being discovered by some of Thomas's followers, he was put to death. He was succeeded as chancellor by Cromer, Archbishop of Armagh, who was, however, shortly after deprived of his office for his unflinching opposition to Henry's absurd pretensions of being considered "Head of the Church." It was of this prelate that Browne, the king's Archbishop of Dublin, wrote to Lord Henry Cromwell, in 1635, "that he had endeavored, almost to the hazard and danger of his temporal life, to procure the nobility and gentry of this nation to due obedience in owning his highness their supreme head, as well spiritual as temporal; and do find much oppugning therein, especially by his brother Armagh, who hath beene the main oppugner, and so hath withdrawn most of his suffragans and clergy within his see and diocese."[37]
Unable to coerce or cajole the Pope, Henry at length threw down the gauntlet to the Holy Father, and, emboldened doubtless by the ready submission of the English, resolved to enforce his new ideas of religion on the people of Ireland. The parliament of that country, pliant as ever, voted him king of Ireland and head of the church, and would as willingly have conferred on him any other title, no matter how far-fetched or absurd, had he desired it. Archbishop Browne, of Dublin, was a Christian after the king's own heart, and, in his way, as consistent and as zealous a reformer; and with the chancellor, Lord Trimblestown, at the laboring-oar, the task of converting the Irish to the new faith was considered quite easy. Here and there a stubborn recusant was anticipated, but were there not monasteries and nunneries enough to be confiscated, and lands and revenues to be given away, to satisfy those benighted adherents to the old faith? A grand tour of proselytism throughout the country was therefore projected, and the lord chancellor, the archbishop, and the other members of the privy council sallied out, accompanied by their men-at-arms, procurants, clerks, and retainers, to expound the Gospel according to King Henry, and to enforce their doctrines, if all else failed, by the carnal weapons of the lash and halter. They visited in succession Carlow, Kilkenny, Ross, Wexford, and Waterford, where they are mindful to acknowledge "they were well entertained." The archbishop on Sundays "preached the word of God, having very good audience, and published the king's injunctions and the king's translation of the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, the Articles of Faith, and the Ten Commandments in English," while on week-days the chancellor took his share of the good work; for, continues the report, "the day following we kept the sessions there (Waterford) both for the city and the shire, where was put to execution four felons, accompanied by another, a friar, whom, among the residue, we commanded to be hanged in his habit, and so to remain upon the gallows for a mirror to all his brethren to live truly."[38] This judicious mixture of preaching and hanging, the Lord's Prayer and the statute of Kilkenny, it was thought, would have a salutary effect on the souls and bodies of unbelievers, and was a fitting form of introducing the Reformation to the consideration of the Irish people.
The war on the faith of the nation having been thus openly and auspiciously inaugurated, we must henceforth look upon the chancellors of Ireland not only as the persistent defenders of the English interest in that country, but as the most dangerous because the most insidious and influential enemies of Catholicity.
Sir John Alan was appointed chancellor in 1539, and in the following year we find him at the head of a royal commission for the suppression of religious houses. The authority to the commissioners sets forth, with a mendacity never surpassed in a state paper, and rarely paralleled, even in the worst days of anti-Catholic persecution, the following pretexts for striking a deadly blow at the bulwarks of charity, religion, and learning: