Grattan's parliament : before and after

Front matter

Mut @ BoAtiu

GRATTAN’S PARLIAMENT BEFORE AND AFTER

‘anes Ramsay.) Py

Preface

IN this history of the most interesting and eventful periods of Irish history the author makes no further claim to impartiality than is involved in the careful collection of the facts from the most reliable authorities. From those facts he has himself formed strong opinions which he is at no pains to conceal. On the contrary, he makes plain his purpose to convert or confirm the reader. In furtherance of that purpose impartial or hostile witnesses are summoned to court and an earnest effort is made to obey the precept, “ Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.”

For the rest, the author is aware that as the first purpose of a book is to be read, its essential quality is to be readable. To this end he has endeavoured to reanimate the dead facts of history, to recall its striking characters, “in manner lively as they lived,’ to enliven the narrative with illustrative incident and anecdote and, so far as his powers permit, to present a vivid and faithful picture of the time.

CHAP.

I. Lhe

XII.

XIII.

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Contents

PARLIAMENTS IN IRELAND

THE POLICY OF ENGLISH GOVERNMENT “ OUTLAWS AND ALIENS”

“4 RICH AND GENEROUS SISTER”

Chapter I Parliaments In Ireland

Olam Fodlagh and his “ Council of the Nation”—Anglo-Irish Parliaments—The Statutes of Kilkenny—Strange enactments—The English “rebel” and the Irish ‘enemy ”— Coygn and livery—The kingdom of Belzebub—The Statutes of Trim—The penalties of the moustache—A premium on murder.

By Grattan’s Parliament Ireland’s freedom was achieved and betrayed. Within the brief period of its existence are embraced the most important events of Irish history. An attempt is here made to recall the incidents of that exciting drama, to depict the splendour of the stage and the genius of the actors, “‘ to show the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”

To solve the enigmas of Grattan’s Parliament, its strength and weakness, its glory and its shame, the previous history of the country, must be explored. Mr. Wells’s’ high-pressure “ Time Machine ’’ must be borrowed for a rapid flight through the centuries, from the first recorded Irish Parliament to the last.

“The grand epoch,” writes the historian Plowden, “of political eminence in the early history of the Irish is the reign of their great and favourite monarch, Olam Fodlah, who flourished, according to Keating, about 950 before Christ. Under his was established the great Feis at Teamor or Tara, which was, in fact, a triennial convention of the states, or a Parliament.”

“The monarch and the provincial and other kings, who had exclusive power in their hands, on one side, and the philosophers and druids, together with the deputies of the people on the other, formed the whole of this ancient legislation. When the great council was convened, previous to their entering on business they sat down to sumptuous entertainments for six days successively. Very minute accounts are given by the Irish annalists of the magnificence and order of these entertainments, from which we may collect the earliest traces of heraldry that occur in history and deduce that partiality for family distinctions which to this day forms a striking part of the Irish national character.”

‘To preserve order and regularity in the great number and variety of the guests who met together on those occasions, when the banquet was ready to be served up the shield-bearers of the princes and other members of the convention delivered in their masters’ shields, which were readily distinguished by the coats-of-arms emblazoned upon 16

Parliaments in Ireland them. These were arranged by the Grand Marshal and principal herald upon the walls upon the right sides of the table, and on entering the apartment each member took his seat under his respective shield without the slightest disturbance.

‘The first six days were not spent in disorderly revelling and excess, but were particularly devoted to the examining and settling of the historical antiquities and annals of the kingdom. They were publicly rehearsed and privately inspected by a select committee of the most learned of the members. When they had passed the approbation of the assembly they were transcribed into the authentic chronicles of the nation which was called ‘The Register of the Psalm of Tara.’ ”’

If Plowden’s description is to be accepted as correct, Ireland has good reason to be proud of her first Parliament, grave, deliberate, and sedate, without the faintest flavour of Donnybrook Fair. The Irish, too, seem to have been the first to discover how intimately law, learning, and politics are associated with food, how close is the relation between a good dinner and a _ good speech. Learned Benchers are but humble emulators of Olam Fodlagh when they make dinners at the Inns an essential part of legal education; and Prime Ministers when they planned the political campaign at a Greenwich dinner or delivered their most important announcements at a civil banquet at Guildhall were but following an Irish precedent thirty centuries old.

It is a long jump, almost twenty centuries, from 17 B

Olam Fodlagh to the first Anglo-Irish Parliaments, and the contrast is sharp between the grand representative assemblies of the Ancient Irish and the random gatherings of the British invader.

Mr. William Molyneux, in a remarkable pamphlet, to which it will be necessary to refer again, elaborately discusses the origin and authority of those Parliaments. Matthew Paris, stenographer to Henry III., is his warrant for the statement that “ Henry II. a little before he left Ireland in a public assembly and council at Lismore did cause the Irish to receive and swear to be governed by the laws of England.” Sir Edward Coke is cited to prove that Henry II. ‘did not only settle the laws of England in Ireland by the voluntary allowance and acceptance of the nobility and clergy but did likewise grant them the freedom of holding Parliaments in Ireland and did send them a ‘modus’ to direct how such Parliaments should be held.”

“Tam sure,” Molyneux adds, “ it is not possible to draw a more fair original compact between a king and people than between Henry II. and the people of Ireland, that they should enjoy the like liberties and immunities and be governed by the same mild laws, both civil and ecclesiastical, as the people of England.”

It is important, however, to clearly understand how that ‘‘ compact” was fulfilled, what “ liberties and immunities ” were extended to the Irish people by the Anglo-Irish Parliaments in order to appreciate the “ pleasing mildness ”’ of the laws by which they were governed. 18

Parliaments in Ireland

Plowden is warm in his praise of the “ singular caution ” exercised by Olam Fodlagh’s Parliament to prevent the introduction of any falsity or misrepresentation into the national history. ‘‘ Their precautions,” he writes, ‘“‘ would have furnished posterity with the most interesting and authentic relations of this ancient and most extraordinary kingdom had not the Danes in their frequent ravages and invasions of Ireland during the ninth and tenth centuries burned all books and monuments of antiquities that fell in their way.”

“We have still more reason,’ he adds, “to lament the shameful and fatal policy of our ancestors” (it must be remembered that Plowden was an Englishman), “‘ who from the first invasion of Henry Plantagenet down to the reign of James I. took all possible means of art and force to destroy whatever writings had by chance or care been preserved from destruction at the hands of the Danes. They imagined that the perusal of such work kept alive the spirit of the natives and kindled them to rebellion by reminding them of the power, independence, and prowess of their ancestry.”

Much of the same spirit has prevailed almost to the present day, excluding Irish history from school, college, and university, and urging a merciful oblivion for the wrongs and miseries Ireland has endured from English rulers. To this it may be fairly answered that when England remembers Ireland will be willing to forget. A very little knowledge of the subject should serve at least to dissipate English surprise at “Irish ingratitude.”

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We learn from Sir John Davis, than whom there can be no more reliable or impartial authority, that ‘“‘ notwithstanding the nominal or pretended conquest of the whole kingdom of Ireland by Henry IJ. and the confirmation thereof by Popes Adrian and Alexander, England’s actual authority in the country was confined to the small territory of the Pale. Hence it is,” he adds, “ that in all the parliamentary rolls that are extant from the fortieth year of Edward III., when the Statutes of Kilkenny were enacted, to the reign of Henry VIII. we find the disobedient English called ‘rebels’ but the Irish called ‘ enemies.’ ”’

The Irish “‘ enemies” were not provided for by Acts of Parliament, they were regarded as wholly outside the pale of law and humanity, and were dealt with as wild beasts. Nearly all the savage enactments of the Anglo-Irish Parliament in Kilkenny, held at the close of the reign of Edward III., were directed against the British “rebels > whose only crime seems to have been that they were willing to live in amity with the “Trish enemies.”

In the preamble of the Statutes of Kilkenny it is set out that “‘ the English in this realm before the coming over of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, were become mere Irish in their language, names, and apparel and in all their manner of living, and had rejected the English laws and subjected themselves to the Irish with whom they had made many marriages and alliances which tended to the utter ruin and destruction of the Commonwealth.”

Alliance by marriage or nurture of infants 20

Parliaments in Ireland between English and Irish were, therefore, by, this statute made high treason, with all the horrible penalties attached to this offence. It was further provided that “if any, man of English race should use an Irish name or an Irish apparel or any other fashion or guise of the Irish if he had lands or tenements the same should be seized until he had given surety to Chancery to conform himself in all points to the English manner of living and if he had no land his body should be taken and imprisoned until he found sureties as aforesaid.”

Those statutes sanctioned the custom of ‘“‘ coygne and livery,” or free quarters for the soldiery, which all Irish historians are unanimous in denouncing Sir John Davis describes it as a “‘ wicked and mischievous custom which consists in taking a man’s house, meat, and money from all the inhabitants of the country, for the oppression was not limited to time or place.”” “ It was indeed,” he adds, “ the most heavy oppression which was ever used in any heathen or Christian kingdom, and did draw down as great or greater plagues on Ireland than the oppression of the Israelites did draw down upon the land of Egypt. This extortion of Coygne and Livery, did produce two most notorious effects: first it made the land waste and then it made the people idle, for when the husbandman had laboured all the year the soldiery might in one night consume all the fruits of his labour.”

No doubt then, as in our own time, the promoters of the custom were loud in their denunciations of the ‘ innate idleness ” of the Irish race.

In a very, ancient discourse on the decay of 21

Ireland it is written that “ though this custom was first invented in Hell yet had it been used and practised there as it has been in Ireland it had long since destroyed the very kingdom of Belzebub.”

The briefest possible summary must suffice of the “ mild enactments ” of subsequent Anglo-Irish Parliaments and the further extension of “ English liberties and privileges” to the Irish people. By the fourth chapter of the Statutes of Trim it was enacted “that if any were found with their upper lips unshaven” (as was the Irish fashion), “ it would be lawful for any man to take them and their goods as Irish enemies.”

Another very singular statute was passed in the twenty-eighth year of Henry IV. which purported to ‘commit the punishment of offenders to every liege man of the king without any reference to trial by judge or jury.” The provision was in intention and in effect a direct incitement to the private murder and robbery of the Irish natives by the English settlers on any pretence that cruelty or cupidity might devise. The English were expressly authorised to “take or kill such natives without any impeachment or grievance.” As a further encouragement it was provided that every man “should be rewarded for such taking or killing by one penny of every plough and one farthing of every cottage within the barony ” where the murder was committed. By the fiftieth of Edward VI. the premium for murder was still further increased and special provision made for its extortion.