Through
Irish History
And
The Fighting Irish
And
The Fighting Irish
these many dread centuries England's energies were concentrated upon an
effort, seemingly to annihilate the Irish race.
Says Edmund Burke ( Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe ) : " All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people whom the victors delighted to trample upon and were not at all afraid to provoke. They were not the effect of their fears but of their security . . whilst that temper prevailed, and it prevailed in all its force to a time within our memory, every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked upon as enemies to God and man; indeed, as a race of savages who were a disgrace to human nature itself. "
Yet with that sublime disregard of humour which is the privilege of an elect people, one old English historian and champion piously exclaims anent " how much Ireland is beholden to God for suffering them to be conquered, whereby many of their enmities were cured - and more might be, were themselves only pliable "
Differing from most other conquered peoples the Irish have been made to suffer through the centuries not only from the conqueror's dreadful sword but perhaps even more from the conqueror's far more dreadful
" Justice " The laws imposed upon Ireland from the Norman's first coming, down till to-day or yesterday, far surpassed in ferocity any of the repressive systems temporarily imposed upon any other of the sorest suffering conquered ones of the world.
For many cruel centuries British law in Ireland only took notice of the native as a subject on which to exercise its repressive or exterminating power. We have record of a trial in Waterford as early as 1310 - When the British law was still new to the nation - in which Robert le Waleys, a Briton was charged with the murder of John, son of Ivor MacGillemory. The defence taken was that while admitting the prisoner had killed John, yet it was no murder, since the slain one was only an Irishman ! To meet this effective line of defence the public prosecutor contended that the man killed was not Irish but Ostman ( Dane ) In the same era we find Donal O'Neill, in his remonstrance addressed to Pope John XX stating that the murder of an Irishman was not a felony and " It is no more sin say even some of their religious to kill an Irishman than to kill a dog. " " They were out of the protection of the law, " says John Davies, " so that every Englishman might oppresse, spoile, and kill them without controulement. "
And Sir Richard Cox, himself one of the elect, records: " If an Englishman be damnified by an Irishman, not amenable to law, he may reprise himself on the whole tribe or nation. " Says the English historian Leland :
" Every inconsiderable party, who, under pretence of loyalty, received the king's commission to repel the adversary in some particular district became pestilent enemies to the inhabitants. Their properties, their lives, the chastity of their families, were all exposed to barbarians, who sought only to glut their brutal passions, and by their horrible excesses, saith the annalist, purchased the curse of God and man. " The solemn and well considered statutes of the realm ere likewise well designed to make smooth the lot of English exiles among the wild Irishrie. " It shall be lawful, " says one of these statutes ( 5 Ed. IV ) " to all manner of men that find any thieves robbing by day or by night, or going or coming to rob or steal, having no faithful man of good name in their company, in English apparel, upon any of the liege people of the king, to take and kill them, and to cut off their heads, without any impeachment of our sovereign lord the king, his heirs, officers, or ministers, or of any others. " In plain language this empowered any of the British in Ireland to kill at sight any Irishman whom he wished to kill.
In the reign of the third Edward was passed the famous Statute of Kilkenny for reclaiming or preserving the English in Ireland from Irish witchery. Although the beneficent laws had branded Irishmen outlaws in their own country, and the rulers had proclaimed them savages, barbarians, it was noticed that their manners, their customs, their dress, their ways, their language, had uncanny attraction for the Anglo-Norman settlers who quickly became Irish in all these things; so the Statute of Kilkenny was in 1367 considered necessary. This Statute made it high treason to adopt the Irish dress, speak the Irish language, practice the Irish customs, avail of the Irish laws ( which were ' wicked ' and damnable ) follow Irish fosterage or gossipred, or intermarry with the Irish. Yet, despite this Statute, and many others to the same purport passed again and again in later generations, the ways - and the women - of the outlawed ' barbarian ' still bewitched and won the hearts of the Anglo-Normans, till at length they became - in the historic phrase used in the English complaint " ipis Hibernicis Hiberniores " - more Irish than the Irish themselves. They had become savage of the savage, adopting all the " savage " manners, customs, dress and language. The idea that the Irish invited the Normans to Ireland who then turned the country into its English ways is a myth.
Languages it should be said for the Irish " savages " spoke Irish and Latin indifferently. Sir Richard Cox complained that " every cowboy in Ireland " tried his tongue at Latin. Sir John Perrot ( 1585 ) reported of
one of " the degenerate English " - the term applied to those who had voluntarily resigned their English heritage, and assimilated with the Irish - " I found MacWilliam very sensible, amd though wanting the English tongue yet understanding Latin. "
When the De Burghos renounced England to become Irish in all things ( under the name MacWilliam ) they came before the English Castle at Athenry, and in sight of the garrison there, threw off their English dress, and donned the Irish costume. In 1569 one of the Galway English, Dominick Linche, makes complaint to the English Privvy Council that " the brothers of the erle of clan-Rickerde, yea, and one of his uncles, and he a byeshop ( bishop ) can neither speak nor understand anything of the English language. " Their languages, like that of the Irish of their class, were Irish and Latin. In 1535 a Welsh officer marching in the south with Lord Butler, wrote in surprise of the type of " degenerate English " which he met. One of them, a brother-in-law of Lord Butler, whose name, had he not fallen away, would have been FitzGerald, but who now wore the Irish name of MacShean, could speak never a word of English " but he made the troops good cheer in the gentlest fashion that could be. " Refinement and gentility, in a man who scorned the English language, were amazing to find !
And in 1589, after Munster had been successively devastated by first ruthless war, then famine, and then planted with English undertakers, one of the latter, Robert Paine, writing from Limerick to his partners in England, says that " English is being taught to Irish pupils there through the medium of Latin. "
" The verie English of birth, " complains Campion, " Conversant with the brutish sort of that people ( the Irish ) become degenerate in short space and quite altered into the first ranke of Irish rogues. " Yet elsewhere we discover from Campion regarding these brutish Irish: " They speak Latine like a vulgar tongue, learned in their common schools of leachcraft and law, whereat, they begin children, and hold on sixteene or twentie years conning by roate the aphorisms of Hypocrates, and the Civill Institutions. "
After the new religion had been introduced to Ireland, new doors were open to the persecution of the Irish Race, and fresh inspiration for the work was supplied. By virtue of Henry's warrant, the churches and monasteries were robbed of their riches, shrines were defiled, sacred relics were burned or scattered, beautiful statues were smashed, orders of religious were expelled from hundreds of their houses - which went to enrich his minions - and beautiful churches were wrested from the people.
And as the Reformation progressed in age, its ingenious methods for bringing the knowledge of the true God to the people progressed likewise. Some of the subjects chosen for inducting of religion " were burned before a slow fire: some were put on the rack and tortured to death; whilst others, like Ambrose Cahill and James O' Reilly, were not only slain with the greatest cruelty, but their inanimate bodies were torn into fragments, and scattered before the wind. " The fait of the gentle and saintly Archbishop Plunkett is only too well known: " His speech ended and the cap drawn over his eyes, Oliver Plunkett again recommended his happy soul, with raptures of devotion into the hands of Jesus his Saviour, for whose sake he died, till the cart was drawn under him. As soon as he expired the executioner ripped his body open and pulled out his heart and bowels, and threw them in the fire already kindled near the gallows for that purpose. "
Says Edmund Burke ( Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe ) : " All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people whom the victors delighted to trample upon and were not at all afraid to provoke. They were not the effect of their fears but of their security . . whilst that temper prevailed, and it prevailed in all its force to a time within our memory, every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked upon as enemies to God and man; indeed, as a race of savages who were a disgrace to human nature itself. "
Yet with that sublime disregard of humour which is the privilege of an elect people, one old English historian and champion piously exclaims anent " how much Ireland is beholden to God for suffering them to be conquered, whereby many of their enmities were cured - and more might be, were themselves only pliable "
Differing from most other conquered peoples the Irish have been made to suffer through the centuries not only from the conqueror's dreadful sword but perhaps even more from the conqueror's far more dreadful
" Justice " The laws imposed upon Ireland from the Norman's first coming, down till to-day or yesterday, far surpassed in ferocity any of the repressive systems temporarily imposed upon any other of the sorest suffering conquered ones of the world.
For many cruel centuries British law in Ireland only took notice of the native as a subject on which to exercise its repressive or exterminating power. We have record of a trial in Waterford as early as 1310 - When the British law was still new to the nation - in which Robert le Waleys, a Briton was charged with the murder of John, son of Ivor MacGillemory. The defence taken was that while admitting the prisoner had killed John, yet it was no murder, since the slain one was only an Irishman ! To meet this effective line of defence the public prosecutor contended that the man killed was not Irish but Ostman ( Dane ) In the same era we find Donal O'Neill, in his remonstrance addressed to Pope John XX stating that the murder of an Irishman was not a felony and " It is no more sin say even some of their religious to kill an Irishman than to kill a dog. " " They were out of the protection of the law, " says John Davies, " so that every Englishman might oppresse, spoile, and kill them without controulement. "
And Sir Richard Cox, himself one of the elect, records: " If an Englishman be damnified by an Irishman, not amenable to law, he may reprise himself on the whole tribe or nation. " Says the English historian Leland :
" Every inconsiderable party, who, under pretence of loyalty, received the king's commission to repel the adversary in some particular district became pestilent enemies to the inhabitants. Their properties, their lives, the chastity of their families, were all exposed to barbarians, who sought only to glut their brutal passions, and by their horrible excesses, saith the annalist, purchased the curse of God and man. " The solemn and well considered statutes of the realm ere likewise well designed to make smooth the lot of English exiles among the wild Irishrie. " It shall be lawful, " says one of these statutes ( 5 Ed. IV ) " to all manner of men that find any thieves robbing by day or by night, or going or coming to rob or steal, having no faithful man of good name in their company, in English apparel, upon any of the liege people of the king, to take and kill them, and to cut off their heads, without any impeachment of our sovereign lord the king, his heirs, officers, or ministers, or of any others. " In plain language this empowered any of the British in Ireland to kill at sight any Irishman whom he wished to kill.
In the reign of the third Edward was passed the famous Statute of Kilkenny for reclaiming or preserving the English in Ireland from Irish witchery. Although the beneficent laws had branded Irishmen outlaws in their own country, and the rulers had proclaimed them savages, barbarians, it was noticed that their manners, their customs, their dress, their ways, their language, had uncanny attraction for the Anglo-Norman settlers who quickly became Irish in all these things; so the Statute of Kilkenny was in 1367 considered necessary. This Statute made it high treason to adopt the Irish dress, speak the Irish language, practice the Irish customs, avail of the Irish laws ( which were ' wicked ' and damnable ) follow Irish fosterage or gossipred, or intermarry with the Irish. Yet, despite this Statute, and many others to the same purport passed again and again in later generations, the ways - and the women - of the outlawed ' barbarian ' still bewitched and won the hearts of the Anglo-Normans, till at length they became - in the historic phrase used in the English complaint " ipis Hibernicis Hiberniores " - more Irish than the Irish themselves. They had become savage of the savage, adopting all the " savage " manners, customs, dress and language. The idea that the Irish invited the Normans to Ireland who then turned the country into its English ways is a myth.
Languages it should be said for the Irish " savages " spoke Irish and Latin indifferently. Sir Richard Cox complained that " every cowboy in Ireland " tried his tongue at Latin. Sir John Perrot ( 1585 ) reported of
one of " the degenerate English " - the term applied to those who had voluntarily resigned their English heritage, and assimilated with the Irish - " I found MacWilliam very sensible, amd though wanting the English tongue yet understanding Latin. "
When the De Burghos renounced England to become Irish in all things ( under the name MacWilliam ) they came before the English Castle at Athenry, and in sight of the garrison there, threw off their English dress, and donned the Irish costume. In 1569 one of the Galway English, Dominick Linche, makes complaint to the English Privvy Council that " the brothers of the erle of clan-Rickerde, yea, and one of his uncles, and he a byeshop ( bishop ) can neither speak nor understand anything of the English language. " Their languages, like that of the Irish of their class, were Irish and Latin. In 1535 a Welsh officer marching in the south with Lord Butler, wrote in surprise of the type of " degenerate English " which he met. One of them, a brother-in-law of Lord Butler, whose name, had he not fallen away, would have been FitzGerald, but who now wore the Irish name of MacShean, could speak never a word of English " but he made the troops good cheer in the gentlest fashion that could be. " Refinement and gentility, in a man who scorned the English language, were amazing to find !
And in 1589, after Munster had been successively devastated by first ruthless war, then famine, and then planted with English undertakers, one of the latter, Robert Paine, writing from Limerick to his partners in England, says that " English is being taught to Irish pupils there through the medium of Latin. "
" The verie English of birth, " complains Campion, " Conversant with the brutish sort of that people ( the Irish ) become degenerate in short space and quite altered into the first ranke of Irish rogues. " Yet elsewhere we discover from Campion regarding these brutish Irish: " They speak Latine like a vulgar tongue, learned in their common schools of leachcraft and law, whereat, they begin children, and hold on sixteene or twentie years conning by roate the aphorisms of Hypocrates, and the Civill Institutions. "
After the new religion had been introduced to Ireland, new doors were open to the persecution of the Irish Race, and fresh inspiration for the work was supplied. By virtue of Henry's warrant, the churches and monasteries were robbed of their riches, shrines were defiled, sacred relics were burned or scattered, beautiful statues were smashed, orders of religious were expelled from hundreds of their houses - which went to enrich his minions - and beautiful churches were wrested from the people.
And as the Reformation progressed in age, its ingenious methods for bringing the knowledge of the true God to the people progressed likewise. Some of the subjects chosen for inducting of religion " were burned before a slow fire: some were put on the rack and tortured to death; whilst others, like Ambrose Cahill and James O' Reilly, were not only slain with the greatest cruelty, but their inanimate bodies were torn into fragments, and scattered before the wind. " The fait of the gentle and saintly Archbishop Plunkett is only too well known: " His speech ended and the cap drawn over his eyes, Oliver Plunkett again recommended his happy soul, with raptures of devotion into the hands of Jesus his Saviour, for whose sake he died, till the cart was drawn under him. As soon as he expired the executioner ripped his body open and pulled out his heart and bowels, and threw them in the fire already kindled near the gallows for that purpose. "
