Ireland under the Tudors. Volume 3 (of 3)

The question of toleration

Tyrone had made an unconditional submission, so far as it was possible to make it by letter; but the Queen was very unwilling to pardon him or to grant him anything more than bare life. At the same time there was a disposition to press the matter of religious uniformity, and to revive the Ecclesiastical Commission which had long lain dormant. Vice-Treasurer Carey was not content with the mischief done by the new coin, but must needs recommend a sharper way with recusants as a means of pacifying the country, and perhaps of filling official pockets. Mountjoy, whose great object was to end the war and get home, in effect told Carey that Satan was finding mischief for his idle hands in Dublin, while the army was half-starved, and the Lord Deputy himself likely to be reduced to salt ling. ‘If,’ he wrote from Trim, ‘you did but walk up and down in the cold with us, you would not be so warm in your religion.’ Mountjoy had his way on this point, and nothing was done to frighten the Irish unnecessarily, or to drive the towns into Spanish alliances. He reminded Cecil that Philip II. had lost the Netherlands by bringing in the Inquisition, and that the States, who at one time held nearly all the provinces, had lost many of them by pressing the matter of religion too hotly. All religions, he said, grew by persecution, but good doctrines and example would work in time. In the meanwhile he advised discreet handling as the only means of avoiding a new war, of which, he said, ‘many would be glad, but God deliver us from it.’419

Death of Queen Elizabeth

At the beginning of March, Mountjoy received two letters from the Queen, written on February 6 and 17, and another from Cecil, written on the 18th. In the first of these despatches, which were all delivered together, Elizabeth told her Deputy to send for Tyrone on promise of life only, and to detain him; in the second she authorised him to offer life, liberty, and pardon; and in the third, speaking through Cecil, she rather enlarged his powers, while laying some stress on altering the title of Tyrone, on reducing the size of his country, and on forcing him to keep the roads into it always open. There was no difficulty about the last covenant, for the felling of a few trees would always nullify it; but Mountjoy pointed out that O’Neill, and not Tyrone, was the dangerous word, and that it was great gain to have an earl by any name instead of a chieftain by that one. As to curtailing the repentant rebel’s land, he thought that obedience would be more probable from one who would lose rather than gain by change. The great Queen was no more when the letter containing this reasoning was sent, so that we cannot tell whether she would have agreed to it or not. On the very day of her death, commission was given to Sir William Godolphin and Sir Garret Moore to treat with Tyrone, and he and his adherents were protected for three weeks. Elizabeth died on March 24, and Mountjoy knew this on the 27th; but his secretary, the historian Moryson, had the address to prevent the news from being publicly known before April 5, and in the meantime Tyrone had made his submission.420

Submission of Tyrone

To save time under the extraordinary circumstances in which he was placed, Mountjoy sent Godolphin to tell Tyrone that the least hesitation would probably be fatal to him, and that his former delays had much incensed the Queen. Godolphin was not in the secret, but he felt that it was no time for ceremony, and in the belief that confidence would beget confidence he rode several miles beyond Dungannon to meet Tyrone, who readily accompanied him to the fort at Charlemont. Next day the commissioners brought their prize early to Mellifont, where Mountjoy lodged. There, says the secretary, who was present, ‘Tyrone being admitted to the Lord Deputy’s chamber, kneeled at the door humbly on his knees for a long space, making his penitent submission to Her Majesty, and after being required to come nearer to the Lord Deputy, performed the same ceremony in all humbleness, the space of one hour or thereabouts.’ He had ever preferred the substance to the shadow, and his formal humility stood him in good stead. The written submission was equally complete, and contained not one word about liberty of conscience or in favour of that Church as whose champion the Pope had sent him a crown. He renounced all dependence upon foreign principles, and especially upon Spain, abjured the name of O’Neill, abandoned all his claims over the lands of neighbouring chiefs, and agreed to accept such estates only as the Queen should grant him by patent. He promised to disclose all he knew about dealings with Spain, to bring his son back from thence if possible, and, in short, to do everything that might become a faithful subject of the English crown. Mountjoy in return promised a royal pardon, and a patent for nearly all the lands which he held before his rebellion. 300 acres were reserved for the fort of Mountjoy and 300 for Charlemont, and Ulster was to submit to a composition as Connaught had done. On April 4, Tyrone reached Dublin with the viceregal party, and on the 5th, Sir Henry Danvers arrived from England with official tidings of the great change. King James was at once proclaimed, and the people shouted for joy; but Tyrone, on whom all eyes were fixed, shed abundant tears, and he was fain to hint at grief for the loss of the mistress whom he had been fighting for the last ten years. ‘There needed,’ says the observant secretary, ‘no [OE]dipus to find out the true cause of his tears; for, no doubt the most humble submission he made to the Queen he had so highly and proudly offended, much eclipsed the vain glory his actions might have carried if he had held out till her death; besides that by his coming in, as it were, between two reigns, he lost a fair advantage, for (by England’s estate for the present unsettled) to have subsisted longer in rebellion (if he had any such end) or at least an ample occasion of fastening great merit on the new King, if at first and of free will he had submitted to his mercy.’421

The conquest of Ireland Queen Elizabeth’s work

During the last four years and a half of the Queen’s reign, it was computed that the Irish war had cost her about 1,200,000l., and this was an enormous demand upon the slender revenue of those days. The drain upon the life-blood of England was also terrible. Droves of recruits were forced annually into the ranks, to perish among the bogs and woods, while the most distinguished officers did not escape. The three Norrises, Clifford, Burgh, Bagenal, and Bingham died in Ireland, while Essex and Spenser were indirectly victims of the war there. The price was high, but it secured the conquest of Ireland. Lawyers in the next reign might ascribe the glory to James; but the hard work was all done ready to his hand, and it would not have been done at all had it been left to him. It was by Elizabeth that the power of the chiefs was broken, and until that was done neither peaceable circuits nor commercial colonies were possible in Ireland. The method pursued was cruel, but the desired end was attained. It is easy to find fault; but none who love the greatness of England will withhold their admiration from the lonely woman who repelled all attacks upon her realm, who broke the power of Spain, and who, though surrounded by conspirators and assassins, believed that she had a mission to accomplish, and in that faith held her proud neck unbent to the last.

CHAPTER LIII.

ELIZABETHAN IRELAND

Natural features of Ireland

The physical features of a country must always have great influence on its history. Plains naturally submit to strong and centralised government, while mountains tend to isolation and to the development of local liberties. Where races have warred for the possession of a country, the weaker has been often driven into some mountainous corner, which the conquerors have been contented to bridle by castles or fortified towns. But where mountains or other natural strongholds are scattered over the face of the land, the conditions of conquest are different. It has been noted that while no country is more easily overrun than Spain, none is more difficult to occupy permanently. And this was the case of Ireland. As long as the Anglo-Norman settlement retained its vigour, the natives were driven into the less fertile districts, while fortresses protected the good land. But as the policy of the Plantagenet kings gradually weakened the colony, the castles were deserted and the native race resumed possession of the soil. Feudal law sought the protection of walled towns, which were of Danish or Anglo-Norman origin; and those nobles who retained their power did so only upon condition of more or less perfectly assimilating themselves to Irish chiefs. When the Tudor reconquest began, it was seen that two courses were open to the Crown. Englishmen were encouraged to settle, and a system of garrisons was gradually established. Sometimes the prevailing idea was to substitute English for Irish proprietors; at other times it was thought better to conciliate the native chiefs, while taking such military precautions as might prevent them from preying upon the settlers. During the whole of the sixteenth century statesmen did what they could to persuade the Irish chiefs to hold of the Crown, and thus to become liable to forfeiture.

Want of communicationsIrish strongholds

Ireland has long been covered with a network of good roads, but a glance at any tolerable map will show how difficult it was to occupy before the roads were made. In clear weather mountains are always visible, both to the crew of a circumnavigating ship and to the sportsman who seeks snipe or waterfowl in the central bogs. It is said that when the ordnance survey was made, fires lit upon the Galties in Tipperary were answered by fires on a mountain in Cavan; and the great range of Slieve Bloom must be passed between those two points. Nor was it with mountains only that Elizabethan generals had to deal. Lord Grey is said to have introduced the first coach, but Ireland had no tolerable roads for long after his time. There were a few stone causeways, but great part of the island was covered with natural woods, and these could be crossed only by passes which the chiefs periodically agreed to cut both for troops and for peaceful travellers. When war broke out – and the doors of Janus were seldom shut for long – these rudimentary roads were easily closed. A few trees were felled, so as to prevent horse from passing at all. The branches of others were partially cut and skilfully interlaced, so that even infantry, while they struggled through the barrier, were exposed to the fire of an unseen enemy. Bridges were but few, and holes dug in the beds of rivers made the fords impassable, or at least very dangerous. When the Irish were hard pressed, they could retire to dry spots surrounded by bogs, and nearly every little lake contained a crannoge, where some oats had been stored, and which might be held until the assailants had exhausted their provisions. The little active cattle accompanied their light-footed masters, while the soldiers, whose clothes were seldom dry, perished miserably of dysentery and marsh-fever. In the absence of field artillery, very rude earthworks might be long held, and in any case they could be easily abandoned, while Tyrone made it a point of not defending castles, which experience had shown to be untenable against cannon. Garrisons, and garrisons only, could starve out the guerillas, and it was by their multiplication and maintenance that Mountjoy was enabled to accomplish Elizabeth’s lifelong task.

Natural defences. UlsterConnaughtLeinsterMunster

Ulster is, on the whole, very hilly, and it is easy to see how strong it must have been when the woods were still uncut, when there were practically no roads, and when drainage had not yet been thought of. The most inaccessible forest was that of Glenconkein, about Draperstown in Londonderry; but the whole province was a stronghold, and a mere enumeration of woods and bogs would be useless. Connaught also is a land of mountains and bogs, and was once a land of woods. It was about the Curlews that the hardest fighting took place, and the northern part of Leitrim was very difficult to attack. In Leinster Glenmalure was famous for a great disaster to the English arms, and was the chief stronghold of Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne. The oak wood of Shillelagh in Wicklow was a noted fastness, and, from having given its name to a rustic weapon, it is of all the best remembered. Both King’s and Queen’s Counties were full of woods and lurking places, the great bog called the Togher, near Maryborough, being one of the most important. The Slievemargy range between Monasterevan and Carlow was the frequent resort of Rory Oge O’More and of his son Owen MacRory, and the O’Byrnes were not very far off. Wexford had many bogs and woods; but the Kavanaghs and other turbulent clans were scarcely formidable towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, except during the general collapse of authority which followed the disaster of 1598. In Munster what was generally called the ‘great wood’ lay to the north of Mallow. Glengariffe was another great Cork stronghold, and Limerick was full of forests. In Kerry, besides Glanageenty, where Desmond was killed, there was Glenflesk near Killarney, and indeed the whole county is evidently suited for guerilla warfare. Sir Nicholas Browne reported, in 1597, that Iraghticonnor, the country of O’Connor Kerry, was wedged in between his deadly enemies, Lord Fitzmaurice and the Knight of Glin: ‘his country is but small, and he is not able to make above seven score men, but by reason of his woods and bogs he was wont to hold his own in spite of them both.’ But of all the Munster strongholds none was so famous as the glen of Aherlow in Tipperary. ‘Who knows not Arlo-hill?’ says Spenser, applying the name of the vale to the lofty peak of Galtymore which overshadows it. The poet had much to tell of a mythical golden age in those wilds, but a curse had come upon them, and in his time, he says:

‘those woods, and all that goodly chase,Doth to this day with wolves and thieves abound;Which too, too true that land’s indwellers since have found.’

Inseparably connected as it is with his memory, that glen of Aherlow caused Spenser’s ruin; for from it Owen MacRory and Tyrrell issued forth to destroy the undertakers and all their works.

Field sportsHawksHoundsHorsesGame

Fighting in Ireland was the serious business of life, but soldiers, officials, and settlers found some time for amusement also. Irish hawks, hounds, and horses were all thought worthy to be sent as presents to great men in England; and hawks were often made the subject of treaties with Irish chiefs. Falconry no doubt was practised in Ireland, but we hear much more of hunting, and the game was plentiful. Irish wolf-hounds were famous, and were considered handsome presents; the Great Mogul, Jehangir, being glad to accept some in 1615. Perrott sent a brace, one black and the other white, to Walsingham. ‘This great white dog,’ said Sir S. Bagenal when sending one to Cecil, ‘is the most furious beast that ever I saw.’ These hounds were of great size, but doctors differ as to their points, and it is not even certain whether they had rough or smooth coats. A modern club, which has tried to restore the breed, lays down that the Irish wolf-hound should be ‘not quite so heavy or massive as the Great Dane, but more so than the deer-hound, which in general type he should otherwise resemble.’ Red deer abounded all over the country; and martens, now almost extinct, were so plentiful that the Earl of Ossory, in Henry VIII.’s time, kept a pack of hounds for them alone. As many as twelve dozen marten-skins could sometimes be sent as a present, and even Strafford hoped to get enough to line a gown for Archbishop Laud. The ambling nags called hobbies were also much valued in England. Wolves were very common, and neither they nor the hounds which pursued them died out until the eighteenth century. Wild fowl, of course, abounded, and Moryson says he had seen sixty pheasants served at one feast; but partridges were scarce. Magpies seem to have been introduced late in the seventeenth century.422

AgricultureCattle

About the towns, and in the parts settled by Englishmen, tillage was carried on as in England. Many of the Irish chiefs also encouraged corn-growing, and in time of war the soldiers were much occupied in destroying these crops. No doubt the husbandry was rude, as it long continued to be, and the barbarous custom of ploughing by the tail was restrained by order in Council in 1606, but was still practised in remote places as late as Charles II.’s reign, when it was prohibited by Act of Parliament. The custom of burning oats from the straw, and so making cakes without threshing, was equally long-lived and had also to be restrained by authority. But the chief wealth of the Irish was in their cattle, and the following statement of Moryson is sustained by innumerable letters: —

‘Ireland, after much blood spilt in the civil wars, became less populous, and as well great lords of countries as other inferior gentlemen laboured more to get new possessions for inheritance than by husbandry and peopling of their old lands to increase their revenues, so as I then observed much grass (with which the island so much abounds) to have perished without use, and either to have rotted, or in the next spring-time to be burned, lest it should hinder the coming of new grass. This plenty of grass makes the Irish have infinite multitudes of cattle, and in the late rebellion (Tyrone’s) the very vagabond rebels had great multitude of cows, which they still (like the Nomades) drove with them, whithersoever themselves were driven, and fought for them as for their altars and families. By this abundance of cattle the Irish have a frequent, though somewhat poor, traffic for their hides, the cattle being in general very small, and only the men and the greyhounds of great stature. Neither can the cattle possibly be great, since they eat only by day, and then are brought at evening within the bawns of castles, where they stand or lie all night in a dirty yard, without so much as a lock of hay, whereof they make little for sluggishness, and that little they altogether keep for their horses. And they are thus brought in by night for fear of thieves, the Irish using almost no other kind of theft, or else for fear of wolves, the destruction whereof being much neglected by the inhabitants, oppressed by greater mischiefs, they are so much grown in numbers, as sometimes in winter nights they will come to prey in villages and the suburbs of cities… The wild Irish feed mostly on whitemeats, and esteem for a great dainty sour curds, vulgarly called by them bonnyclabber. And for this cause they watchfully keep their cows, and fight for them as for religion and life; and when they are almost starved, yet they will not kill a cow, except it be old and yield no milk. Yet will they upon hunger in time of war open a vein of the cow, and drink the blood, but in no case kill or much weaken it.’

Sir Nicholas White has recorded that the first red cattle were brought to Dingle from Cornwall, and it is probably from the cross between these red Devon or Cornish beasts and the black cattle of the country that the famous Kerry breed is descended. The butter commonly made in Ireland in the sixteenth century is described as very bad.423

Exports. Fish

Guicciardini says the Irish exported hides, fur, and coarse linens and woollens to Antwerp. The consumption of wine was great; and for this the chief article sent in exchange was fish. In 1553 Philip II. agreed to pay 1,000l. a year for twenty-one years to gain for his subjects the right to fish on the Irish coast. Fishermen of all nations resorted to Berehaven, paying O’Sullivan Bere for leave. In the North O’Donnell was called the King of Fish, and he owned the salmon-leap at Ballyshannon. A Norse writer, older than the Tudor period, had already noted that Lough Erne contained salmon enough to feed all the people in Ireland. The fisheries of the Bann and Foyle were also of great importance, and Spenser says that both the Suir and the Barrow were full of salmon. As to sea fish, we hear more of foreign than of native vessels. The few port towns certainly produced good sailors, and among native clans the O’Driscolls, O’Flaherties, and O’Malleys loved the sea. About the famous sea-Amazon, Grace O’Malley, many legends have been preserved; but of her, and of all the other Celtic rovers, it may be said that they were rather pirates than peaceful traders or fishermen.424

ManufacturesWoollens

The only Irish manufacture of much importance was that of woollens, though frequent attempts were made to introduce others. Linen was made to a limited extent, and furnished the material for the enormous shirts, ‘thirty or forty ells in a shirt, all gathered and wrinkled and washed in saffron, because they never put them off till they were worn out,’ which fashion died out with the sixteenth century; but flax continued to be grown and yarn exported chiefly from Ulster, and it was upon this foundation that Strafford built. Irish frieze and other coarse woollens had been famous in the middle ages. Drugget is said by French antiquaries to have been so called from Drogheda. In the sixteenth century Ireland had come to be specially famous for a kind of rug, of which Moryson says the best were made at Waterford. They were thought worthy of kings’ houses, and Vice-Chamberlain Heneage asked Sir George Carew to ‘provide half-a-dozen of the finest and lightest Irish rugs to lay upon beds, that can be gotten.’ The little sheep of the country were numerous, but it is agreed that the wool was coarse. The making of the rugs was a craft in itself, and was probably known to few. Petty, who wrote under Charles II., remarks that the rebellion had injured the cloth trade, and that making the ‘excellent, thick, spungy, warm coverlets’ was a lost art. In Elizabeth’s time restraints were placed on the export of wool, with a view to encourage manufactures, but the prohibition was never really effective.425

DrinkingWineWhiskyAle and beer

Hard drinking was but too common, and the materials were abundant. The trade in claret had gone on from the time when Gascony belonged to the kings of England. But sherry and other strong vintages of the Peninsula were even more popular. ‘When they come to any market town,’ says Moryson, ‘to sell a cow or a horse, they never return home till they have drunk the price in Spanish wine (which they call the King of Spain’s daughter) or in Irish usquebagh, and till they have outslept two or three days’ drunkenness. And not only the common sort, but even the lords and their wives, the more they want this drink at home, the more they swallow it when they come to it, till they be as drunk as beggars.’ Usquebagh, that is whisky, was made in many places in the primitive fashion followed by illicit distillers in our own time. It was generally considered more wholesome than any spirit produced in England, and the damp climate was made the excuse for excessive indulgence. Raisins and fennel-seeds were used to flavour it. An Act of Parliament passed in 1556 recites that ‘aqua vitæ, a drink nothing profitable to be daily drunken and used, is now universally throughout this realm of Ireland made, and especially in the borders of the Irishry, and for the furniture of Irishmen; and thereby much corn, grain, and other things are consumed, spent, and wasted;’ and its manufacture was prohibited except with the Lord-Deputy’s licence. A fine of 4l. and imprisonment during pleasure were the prescribed penalties for each offence; but peers, landowners worth 10l. a year, and freemen of cities and boroughs were allowed to make enough for their own use; and the Act was probably a dead letter. Bodley, who wrote in 1603, tells us that it was usual for lay and cleric, churl and noble, in short ‘men and women of every rank, to pour usquebaugh down their throats by day and by night; and that not for hilarity only (which would be praiseworthy), but for constant drunkenness, which is detestable. Beer made of malt and hops was not yet brewed in Ireland, and what the soldiers consumed was imported. But strong ale was produced in the country and was probably preferred by the people, for hops were not in general use even in 1690. Early in James I.’s reign nothing struck an Englishman more than the number of alehouses in Dublin. ‘I am now,’ says one, ‘to speak of a certain kind of commodity that outstretcheth all that I have hitherto spoken of, and that is the selling of ale in Dublin: a quotidian commodity that hath vent in every house in the town every day in the week, at every hour in the day, and in every minute in the hour. There is no merchandize so vendible, it is the very marrow of the commonwealth in Dublin: the whole profit of the town stands upon ale-houses and selling of ale.’426