Ireland under the Tudors. Volume 3 (of 3)

Description of the peopleDymmokMorysonTrollope

‘The people,’ says Dymmok, ‘are of nature very glorious, frank, ireful, good horsemen, able to endure great pains, delighted in war, great hospitality, of religion for the most part Papists, great gluttons, and of a sensual and vicious life, deep dissemblers, secret in displeasure, of a cruel revenging mind and irreconcilable. Of wit they are quick and capable, kind-hearted where they take, and of exceeding love towards their foster brethren. Of complexion they are clear and well-favoured, both men and women, tall and corpulent bodies, and of themselves careless and bestial.’ This is very much the view taken by English travellers generally, and in many points they are confirmed by the Spaniard Cuellar. Mountjoy complains of the want of clean linen, and his secretary has much to say on that subject. ‘Many of the English-Irish,’ he tells us, ‘have by little and little been infected with the Irish filthiness, and that in the very cities, excepting Dublin, and some of the better sort in Waterford, where the English continually lodging in their houses, they more retain the English diet… In cities passengers may have feather-beds soft and good, but most commonly lousy, especially in the high ways; whether that come by their being forced to lodge common soldiers or from the nasty filthiness of the nation in general. For even in the best city, as at Cork, I have observed that my own and other Englishmen’s chambers hired of the citizens, were scarce swept once in the week, and the dust laid in a corner was perhaps cast out once in a month or two. I did never see any public inns with signs hanged out among the English or English-Irish; but the officers of cities and villages appoint lodgings to the passengers, and perhaps in each city they shall find one or two houses where they will dress meat, and these be commonly houses of Englishmen, seldom of the Irish; so as these houses having no sign hung out, a passenger cannot challenge right to be entertained in them, but must have it of courtesy and by entreaty… Some of our carriage horses falling into wild Irish hands, when they found soap or starch carried for the use of our laundresses, they did eat them greedily, and when they stuck in their teeth, cursed bitterly the gluttony of us English churls, for so they term us.’ And Andrew Trollope, an English lawyer, who wrote with more force than politeness, says the Irish, except in the walled towns, were almost savages, and that ‘at night Mr., or Mrs., or dame, men-servants, maid-servants – women-servants I should have said, for I think there be no maids – guests, strangers, and all, lie in one little room not so good or handsome as many a hogscote in England, and when they rise in the morning they shake their ears and go their ways, without any serving of God or other making of them a-ready.’ On arriving in Dublin, he says, ‘I lodged in a lawyer’s house, a man of my own profession, where I found my entertainment better than my welcome, as all Englishmen shall do.’427

Tyrone’s soldiersHow they were armedDiet and pay

The gallowglasses, with their axes, and the kerne, with their darts, became gradually obsolete during the Elizabethan period, pikemen taking the place of the former and musketeers of the latter. Tyrone taught his men the use of firearms, and they became better shots than the English. The difficulty of recruiting in England was great, and deserters were habitually replaced by Irishmen, who often passed over to their countrymen, arms and all. When Tyrone was loyal he was allowed a certain number of men in the Queen’s pay, and these he frequently changed, so as to increase the number of trained soldiers about him; thus anticipating on a small scale the famous expedient of Scharnhorst. From Spain there was a constant supply of arms, and the merchants in corporate towns made no difficulty about selling contraband of war to rebels with whom they had religious sympathies. Deserters sold their matchlocks, and they were resold to the Irish. Even officers were accused of selling powder. Nor were English ports closed to such good customers. ‘I dare not trust any Chester man,’ said the mayor of that town, and Liverpool turned an honest penny in the same way. Powder could not be made in Ulster, for there was no sulphur, but it was imported even from Dantzig. There was also a constant supply of ammunition from Scotland, and Fenton proposed that the Queen should employ factors to buy up all the powder at Glasgow and Ayr, which could only have made the trade more lucrative. Tyrone fed his men on oatmeal and butter, which was exacted, according to certain rules, from the people on whom they were billeted. The pay was at the rate of 24s. a quarter, and when money was scarce the deficiency was made up in milk. If a prisoner was ransomed, his captor had one-third of the amount and the rest went to the chief. Mountjoy believed that Tyrone raised a revenue of more than 80,000l. a year in Ulster.428

DressThe Irish mantle

‘In Ireland,’ says Moryson, who spoke from actual observation, ‘the English and the English-Irish are attired after the English manner, for the most part, yet not with such pride and inconstancy, perhaps for want of means: yet the English-Irish, forgetting their own country, are somewhat infected with the Irish rudeness, and with them are delighted in simple light colours, as red and yellow. And in like sort the degenerated citizens are somewhat infected with the Irish filthiness, as well in lousy beds, foul sheets, and all linen, as in many other particulars; but as well in diet and apparell, the citizens of Dublin most of all other, and the citizens of Waterford and Galway in some good measure, retain the English cleanliness. Touching the meer or wild Irish, it may truly be said of them, which of old was spoken of the Germans, that they wander slovenly and naked, and lodge in the same house (if it may be called a house) with their beasts. Among them the gentlemen or lords of countries wear close breeches and stockings of the same piece of cloth, of red or such light colour, and a loose coat, and a cloak or three-cornered mantle, commonly of coarse, light stuff made at home, and their linen is coarse and slovenly. I say slovenly, because they seldom put off a shirt till it be worn; and these shirts, in our memory before the last rebellion, were made of some twenty or thirty ells folded in wrinkles and coloured with saffron to avoid lousiness, incident to the wearing of foul linen… Their wives living among the English are attired in a sluttish gown, to be fastened at the breast with a lace, and in a more sluttish mantle and more sluttish linen; and their heads be covered after the Turkish manner with many ells of linen: only the Turkish heads or turbans are round in the top, but the attire of the Irish women’s heads is more flat in the top and broader on the sides, not much unlike a cheese-mot, if it had a hole to put in the head.’ Moryson also mentions the loose mantles worn by both men and women, often as an excuse for wearing nothing else, which Spenser, who is very eloquent on the subject, calls ‘a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloke for a thief.’ The shock-heads of curled hair called glibbs also excited the poet’s wrath, ‘being as fit masks as a mantle is for a thief. For whensoever he hath run himself into that peril of law, that he will not be known, he either cutteth of his glibb quite, by which he becometh nothing like himself, or putteth it so low down over his eyes that it is very hard to discern his thievish countenance.’ In a contemporary drawing of Tirlogh Luineach’s submission to Sidney all his followers are represented with glibbs, and it became a matter of treaty with Tyrone that he should allow none of his people to wear them.429

Progress of civilisation. Richard, Earl of Clanricarde

As the tribal age passed away, Irish and Anglo-Irish chiefs became more civilised. Among the native nobility the house of Clanricarde had been remarkable for lawlessness; but Earl Richard, who succeeded in 1601, not only distinguished himself at Kinsale but also made a great figure at court. ‘The affairs of Ireland,’ said the French ambassador, ‘prosper, so that not a single rebel keeps the field. I believe that this prosperous condition of things proceeds from the favour which that Irish Earl enjoys here. On the other hand, he is very cold by nature and in his love, and has neither understanding nor conduct to lift himself high, although there is no lack of counsel and support to him. Flatterers of the court, to curry favour, say that he resembles Essex; on the other hand the Queen declares, with equal dissimulation, that she cannot love him, inasmuch as he recalls her sorrow for the Earl; and this contest occupies the entire court.’ Clanricarde, who is described by another contemporary as ‘a goodly, personable gentleman, something resembling the late Earl of Essex,’ spent lavishly but paid honestly. The gossips at first coupled his name with that of Lady Strange, but in the autumn of 1602 he married Frances Walsingham, widow of the unfortunate favourite whom he was thought to resemble, and of Sir Philip Sidney. In 1604 Sir John Davies saw the Earl and Countess living together at Athlone in most honourable fashion, and reported that she was very well contented, and every way as well served as ever he saw her in England.430

Bards and musiciansGamblers

Spenser, and every other Englishman, condemned the Irish bards as stirrers of sedition and preservers of barbarism. They were often very highly paid, and were feared as well as admired, for they knew how to satirise their hosts where the cheer was not abundant or to their liking. The bagpipe was commonly used in the field, and harps became scarce towards the close of the sixteenth century, so that in 1588 Maguire said he hardly knew of a good one in his country. It sometimes formed part of the furniture of a gentleman’s house, the portion of a bride in Tipperary being sworn to as ‘four score cows, four-and-twenty mares, five horses, and a pair of playing tables (backgammon probably), and a harp, besides household stuff.’ Professional card-players, called carrows, abounded, and Campion says they would play away their clothes, and then, wrapping themselves in straw, would stake their glibbs, or bits of their flesh, against any chance-comer’s money. Captain Bodley tells how certain Irish gentlemen came masquerading to the officers’ quarters at Downpatrick, asking to be allowed to play. These prudent gamblers brought ten pounds of the new debased currency wrapped up in a dirty pocket-handkerchief, and their hosts sent them empty away at two o’clock in the morning. Sometimes higher stakes were played for than a few pounds of copper, and there is a tradition that Kilbritain Castle was lost by Lord Courcey to MacCarthy Reagh, who only risked a white weasel or ferret.431

Introduction of tobacco

Tobacco was still too dear to be generally used in Ireland, but English officers could enjoy this consolation. We have seen that one was killed in the retreat from the Blackwater while indulging in a pipe by the roadside. Carew was a smoker, and both Raleigh and Cecil were among those who kept him supplied with tobacco. Captain Bodley, to whom we owe so many interesting details, is most eloquent on this subject, and will not allow that the enemies of tobacco have any reason on their side. ‘Almost all,’ he says, ‘have but one argument, that would make a dog laugh and a horse burst his halter, saying that neither our sires or grandsires took tobacco, yet lived I know not how long. Indeed they lived till they died without tobacco, but who knows whether they would not have lived longer had they used it. And if a smoker now dies of any disease, who knows if he might not have died sooner had he abstained from it.’432

Garrison life

Irish warfare was full of misery, but garrison life had its pleasures, such as they were. Captain Bodley has left an account of a week’s visit paid in January 1603 to Sir Richard Moryson, the historian’s brother, who was in command at Downpatrick. At Newry they found only lean beef, scarcely any mutton, very bad wine, and no bread; biscuit being used even in the governor’s house. Bodley, with Captains Caulfield and Jephson, halted at Magennis’s house at Castle Wellan, which he calls an island. They were entertained by Lady Sara Magennis, Tyrone’s daughter, ‘a very beautiful woman, and the three hours’ halt seemed to pass in one minute. We drank ale and whisky with our hostess, and, having all kissed her in turn, took the road again.’ At Downpatrick the visitors were well treated, and their horses attended to, but they all occupied one bed-room. They washed before dinner, all in the same silver basin, and seemingly had but one towel, and this was done in the dining-room. Healths were drunk from a glass goblet of claret nearly a foot in circumference, which went from hand to hand, and there was a good deal of conviviality, whisky flowing freely as well as claret. The dishes mentioned are brawn, stuffed geese, venison pasties, and game-pies, mince-pies, and tarts – that is Bodley’s word – made of beef, mutton, and veal. Besides drinking there was smoking, dicing, and a kind of horseplay which has been called cock-fighting in modern times. The Irish gentlemen who came in to gamble, and lost their money, wore long shirts decked with ivy-leaves, dog-skin masks, and paper noses, and tall paper caps with ivy wreaths. In the morning, ale or beer, with spices or toast, was taken ‘to allay thirst, to steady the head, and to cool the liver,’ and pipes were smoked before breakfast. The life was rough enough, but Bodley wrote in Latin, and shows a knowledge of Latin authors, and he and his friends conversed learnedly about Roman history.433

Spenser and his friendsHow Ireland affected Spenser’s poetry

Constant warfare and the absence of a University hindered the growth of a literary class in Ireland. Native chiefs were content to patronise bards who sang their achievements, and annalists who recorded their genealogies. But the English language was just attaining its full stature, and men could not but feel a pleasure in writing it sometimes. Of letters and treatises describing the state of Ireland there is no lack, and many of them show considerable literary force. But the cultivation of letters for their own sake was scarcely to be looked for. Sir Geoffrey Fenton, who had translated many books from the French, including the French version of Guicciardini, appears to have given up such work after he became Secretary for Ireland. Nathaniel Baxter, a long-forgotten poet, seems to have produced something while teaching a school at Youghal. Ludovic Bryskett, born in Italy, or of an Italian mother, translated Italian books directly, and not through the French. Bryskett was an official, like most of the English then in Ireland, and at his house near Dublin we find the first germ of literary society. It was here that the ‘Fairy Queen’ was promised by Spenser himself to a company consisting of Archbishop Long, and of several lawyers and soldiers, among which Sir Thomas Norris was perhaps the most distinguished. Raleigh, who visited Spenser at Kilcolman in 1589, saw the early part of the poem before it appeared, and he encouraged the poet. At court Spenser was befriended both by Raleigh and Sidney, and the poet seems to have thought that such kindness as he did receive from the Queen was owing to his intimacy with the latter, whose influence long outlived him. But Spenser was not a successful suitor, and he has left a bitter diatribe against the courtier’s profession. He learned to look upon Ireland as his home, and to praise the country’s natural beauties, while sighing for the peace and refinement of England. No doubt the woods and glens, with their wolves and robbers, furnished the poet with much of his imagery, if they did not suggest his great work; but it must be remembered that he was an undertaker and official as well as a writer. The lady whom he made so famous by his pen, and whom he married at Cork, was Elizabeth Boyle, Richard Boyle’s cousin, and so connected with Secretary Fenton. Raleigh and the rest of his friends were engaged in forming estates, and his sympathies were necessarily with the settlers and not with the natives. He tries to raise the Irish rivers to a level with those of England:

Sith no less famous than the rest they be,And join in neighbourhood of kingdom near,Why should they not likewise in love agree?

But he can never forget that the woods upon their banks were haunted by men who wished him only death and destruction. He felt the weakness of his own position, and so was ready to praise Arthegal, or any other, whose severity might make the land reasonably safe. If the readers of Spenser’s verses, and still more of his treatises, find fault with his truculence, they should forget that he was a poet, and remember that he was trying to improve forfeited lands.434

CHAPTER LIV.

THE CHURCH

Elizabeth’s bishopsPapal bishops. O’HarteMatthew de OviedoPeter LombardRibera

Of twenty-four archbishoprics and bishoprics existing in Ireland at the date of Queen Elizabeth’s death, nineteen were filled by her nominees. In Ulster, Dromore, Derry, and Raphoe were left vacant on account of the wars, and the custody of Kilmore was given to a Dublin clergyman without episcopal rank, the papal bishop remaining in actual possession. Eugene O’Harte, one of the Tridentine fathers, was made Bishop of Achonry in Connaught by papal provision in 1562, and he died at the age of a hundred in the same year as the Queen, without being troubled by any Protestant rival. It is said, indeed, that Bishop O’Connor of Killaloe, was appointed by the Queen to administer O’Harte’s see in 1591, but that he compounded with his old friend for 120l. a year. In the greater number of sees there were papal bishops, but not in all, and in some cases they were practically mere bishops in partibus, with no more real power over their flocks than De Retz had over the people of Corinth. Matthew de Oviedo was Archbishop of Dublin, but probably never saw his diocese, and Peter Lombard does not seem to have been at Armagh. Ribera, the Spanish Franciscan, who was bishop of Leighlin from 1587 to 1604, is believed never to have visited Ireland at all. But the succession was maintained, and vicars were appointed when sees lay vacant or when bishops were absent.435

Forlorn state of the Church, 1587

In Sir William Fitzwilliam’s time there was not one serviceable church from Dublin to the farthest end of Munster, except in the port towns. And the plain-spoken English lawyer, Andrew Trollope, has furnished many details. Out of thirty bishops not seven were able to preach, and the practice of alienating property was so rife that all the sees in Ireland would not be able to support one man worthy of his calling. The common secular clergy were mere stipendiaries, few having 5l. a year, and the majority not more than half that sum. ‘In truth,’ Trollope adds, ‘such they are as deserve not living or to live. For they will not be accounted ministers but priests. They will have no wives. If they would stay there it were well; but they will have harlots which they make believe that it is no sin to live and lie with them, and bear them children. But if they marry them they are damned. And with long experience and some extraordinary trial of these fellows, I cannot find whether the most of them love lewd women, cards, dice, or drink best. And when they must of necessity go to church, they carry with them a book in Latin of the Common Prayer set forth and allowed by her Majesty. But they read little or nothing of it or can well read it, but they tell the people a tale of Our Lady or St. Patrick, or some other saint, horrible to be spoken or heard, and intolerable to be suffered, and do all they may to allure the people from God and their prince, and their due obedience to them both, and persuade them to the Devil and the Pope. And sure the people so much hear them, believe them, and are led by them, and have so little instruction to the contrary, as here is in effect a general revolt from God and true religion, our prince, and her Highness’s laws.’436

Spenser on the Church, 1596Zeal of the Roman party

‘Whatever disorders,’ says Spenser, ‘you see in the Church of England, ye may find in Ireland, and many more: namely gross simony, greedy covetousness, fleshly incontinency, careless sloth, and generally all disordered life in the common clergymen.’ Priests of Irish blood behaved like laymen, neither reading, preaching, nor celebrating the Communion, and ‘christening after the Popish fashion.’ They were diligent only in collecting tithes and dues. When the bishops were Irishmen their government was lax, and very often corrupt. English candidates for livings they rejected whenever they could, and a reason was generally available, since such aspirants were mostly either unlearned, or ‘men of some bad note, for which they have forsaken England.’ In the wilder districts the livings were so miserable that an English minister could scarcely support himself, and so dangerous that no man of peace could venture to reside. Where the benefices were somewhat fat, the incumbents, ‘having the livings of the country offered unto them without pains and without peril, will neither for the same, nor any love of God, nor zeal of religion, nor for all the good they may do by winning souls to God, be drawn forth from their warm nests, to look out into God’s harvest, which is ever ready for the sickle, and all the fields yellow long ago.’ And in the meantime Jesuits and friars came continually from France, Italy, and Spain, ‘by long toil and dangerous travailing thither where they know peril of death awaiteth them, and no reward or riches is to be found, only to draw the people unto the Church of Rome.’ Most of the churches were utterly ruined, and some were ‘so unhandsomely patched and thatched’ as to repel worshippers by their mere ugliness. Carelessness and stinginess were to blame, but the mischief was unwittingly increased by the Puritans, ‘our late too nice fools, who say there is nothing in the seemly form and comely order of the Church.’ Spenser proposed that there should be a strict law strictly enforced against sending young men to Rheims, Douai, Louvain, and such places, ‘whose private persuasions do more hurt than the clergy can do good with their public instructions.’ English ministers, neat churches with proper churchwardens, and efficient schools, might follow. But he was not sanguine, ‘for what good should any English minister do among them by teaching or preaching to them which either cannot understand him or will not hear him.’437

Ireland devoted to RomeJesuit schools

The energy of the Jesuits and friars in Ireland was one sign of a revival in the Church of Rome; no longer the Church of the Borgias or even of the Medici, but of Loyola and Contarini, of St. Carlo Borromeo and St. Vincent de Paul. Fasts were more strictly observed, and it became more and more difficult to secure even occasional and outward conformity to the State Church. In the early years of the Queen’s reign the inhabitants of the towns generally attended service, but the women wearied and were not punished. When the Tyrone war began, even mayors, portreeves, and other local officials had given up their attendance, and most of the children were christened in private houses. The Jesuits had schools in nearly all the towns, and young men resorted in great numbers to foreign seminaries. Priests and friars swarmed everywhere, especially at Waterford, and were sheltered by householders, under whose roofs they sometimes preached quite openly. And the steady influence of these priests was directed to making Ireland dependent on foreign aid. Cornelius Ryan, papal bishop of Killaloe, advised O’Rourke to get some learned Irishman to write to the Pope, begging him to separate Ireland from England for ever and to make Tyrone king. The Jesuit Dominic O’Colan confessed that the designs of Rome and Spain extended even further than this, Philip intending with his army ‘to overrun Ireland, and to make that realm his ladder or bridge into England.’ The questions of religious belief and of civil allegiance are inextricably connected at this period, and it is impossible for us, as it was for Elizabeth, to treat them as really separate.438

Waterford Bishop MiddletonA model dean

Waterford was by all accounts the greatest resort of priests and friars. Miler Magrath was too busy jobbing to take much notice, and he held the see from 1582 to 1589, and again from 1592 to 1608. But Marmaduke Middleton, who was bishop of Waterford from 1579 to 1582, took his trust seriously, and found life uncomfortable in proportion. The marriage ceremony was scarcely thought necessary. Beads were publicly used, and prayers offered for the dead; nor did Middleton dare, for fear of a tumult, to remove images from the churches. ‘There is,’ he says, ‘no difference between the clergy and the laity here, for they have joined together to prevent her Majesty’s most godly proceedings – both by defacing of the see, which is not annually, at this instant, worth 30l. a year, and all the spiritual living in temporal men’s hands so surely linked that they cannot be redeemed. And the most of the incumbents are little better than wood-kerne.’ Middleton’s life was thought to be in danger, and he was translated to St. David’s. He succeeded in preventing the succession from falling to the dean, David Clere, who had thwarted him in every way, and whom Pelham wished to deprive even of that which he had. The deanery, however, remained with Clere, ‘who was well friended, as none better in this world than the wicked,’ and Magrath had his help in despoiling the church of Waterford.439