An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland

 
“Far Westward, lies an Isle of antient Fame,
By Nature bless'd, and Scotia is her Name;
Enroll'd in Books: Exhaustless is her Store
Of veiny Silver, and of Golden Ore:
Her fruitful Soil for ever teams with Wealth,
With Gems her Waters, and her Air with Health:
Her verdant Fields with Milk and Honey flow;
Her woolly Fleeces vie with Virgin Snow:
Her waving Furrows float with bearded Corn,
And Arms and Arts her envy'd Sons adorn.
No savage Bear, with lawless Fury, roves;
No rav'nous Lion, thro' her peaceful Groves;
No Poison there infects; no scaly Snake
Creeps thro' the Grass, nor Frog annoys the Lake:
An Island worthy of its pious Race,
In War triumphant, and unmatch'd in Peace.”
 

This Donat, Bishop of Fesula, was an Irishman, of the antient and hospitable Family, afterwards O Hogan; a Family which held ample and fair Possessions in the Province of Munster, and which, in former Times, adorned the See of Killaloe, with four very learned and exemplary Prelates; namely, with Matthew O Hogan, who succeeded to this Bishoprick, in the Reign of Henry the IIId, and in the Year of our Lord 1267; and who, having much enlarged his Diocese, and done many signal Acts of popular Charity, died in the Year, 1281, and was buried in Limerick, in a Convent of Dominican Friars. To this Bishop succeeded Maurice O Hogan, who governed this See with peculiar Zeal and Charity, upwards of sixteen Years, and died in 1298, or the Year following, and was buried in his own Church. Thomas O Hogan, Canon of Killaloe, was consecrated in 1343, and died on the 30th of October, 1354; five Days after which, he was buried among his worthy Ancestors at Nenagh; as may be seen in the Annals of that Place.

Richard O Hogan succeeded to the See of Killaloe, in 1525, and was in 1539 translated to Clon Mac Nois: He was a Prelate of great Learning and Capacity, in all spiritual and ecclesiastical Matters.

This antient Family is, at this Time, represented by Edmund O Hogan, Esq; High Sheriff of the County of Clare, a Gentleman, who, by the whole Tenor of his Life, hath proved Generosity of Heart, Charity, and Hospitality, to be Qualities inherent.

Dermod Mac Murchad, sovereign Prince of Hy-Kinsellagh, banished by Roderick O Connor, King of Ireland, for his various and high State Crimes, sought Sanctuary and Redress in the Court of England; where, in the Absence of Henry, then in Normandy, diverse adventurous Normans, Flemings, Saxons, and old Britons, (being themselves unsettled, and unestablished) acceded to the Fate and Fortunes of Dermod, under the Conduct of Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke; whose casual Success in Ireland, against Roderick (owing more to the general Defection, at that fatal Period, of the Irish Chiefs against their lawful Sovereign, than to any superior Valour or Address of those Adventurers) induced Henry to a deliberate and grand Invasion of a Kingdom, to which he could lay no Claim on the Score of Nature, Reason, or Right, and whither his pretended Mission, on the Score of collecting St. Peter's Dues, (which St. Peter himself never once thought of, or imagined) was as ridiculous as groundless. The Summa Dies, however, arrived: and the People of Ireland, wearied out with intestine Strife, acknowledged Henry for their Sovereign Lord; and a grand Charter of Rights and Covenants, mutual Protection and Allegiance, was entered into, anteriorly to that of England. How well this Charter was observed on the protective Side, the absolute Anarchy of near four Centuries, from its original Date and Perfection, to the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, demonstrates: A whole Nation, that sought Protection, and that agreed for quiet, regular, and lawful Government, upon rationable Terms, deprived of the Power of ordaining Laws for its own Security and Well-being, and precluded (all to four or five great and favourite Families) from the Benefits and Advantages accruing from those of that Kingdom, to which it had voluntarily united itself; exposed, through such a Length of Time, to arbitary Depredations, and unpunished, unredressed, uncensured Rapine, Quis talia sando temperet a Lachrymis!

King Henry called back into England, to lay the Storms raised by his rebellious Sons, with whom and Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, he was so constantly embroiled to the End of his Life, that he could little attend to the Settlement of the Affairs of this new acquired Sovereignty.

Richard the First, his immediate Successor, called away to the Holy Wars against the Saracens, had as little Leisure as his Predecessor to promote the Quiet, or Happiness of Ireland.

From the usurped Authority of King John, a continued Series of Papal Animosity, Bloodshed, Calamities and Piracies, closed at last by Poison; little beside political Disasters of all Sorts, could be expected.

Henry the Third, through a Reign of Fifty-six Years, was continually involved in Troubles and Hostilities, with his inflexible English Barons.

Edward the First, a great and warlike Prince, was, throughout his whole Reign, engaged in the Reduction of the Welch and Scots, and so intent thereon, that he could turn his Thoughts to no other Object.

Edward the Second, indeed, sent Gaveston hither, more to screen him from the implacable Resentments of the stubborn English Nobility, than to render any good Offices to the Inhabitants of this Country; who, indiscriminately, (Strongbownians as well as Irish) felt the Severity of that insolent Favourite's Measures.

Richard the Second visited this Kingdom in Person, with the good Intentions of establishing Peace, Order, and Harmony, in a valuable but long neglected Estate: Yet his own adverse Fate, conspiring with that of this Land, called him back, before he could carry his favourable Resolutions into Execution, to defend his English Dominions from the hostile Attacks of Henry, Earl of Hereford, who, with the Duke of Norfolk, Son to John of Gaunt, had some Years before been banished by Richard, to prevent a personal Combat: This King, worthy more propitious Stars, long agitated and afflicted by the Turbulence and irreconcilable Obstinacy of his British Subjects, perished at last under the impious Hands of Sir Pierce of Exton, who, at the Head of eight barbarous armed Assassins, rushed into his Chamber, and murdered him.

The Reign of Henry the Fourth was short, tumultuous, and bloody; Deluges of noble Blood having been shed by the bare Hands of the common Executioner, to confirm a Throne acquired by abominable Crimes, and Violence! And no sooner had these dreadful Storms begun to abate, than Henry was forced to depart from a Scene he had more adorned, (for he was, without Question, a great and valiant Man) had not his Ambition blindly hurried him beyond the Bounds of Justice and Nature.

Henry the Fifth, his Son and Successor, and truly Inheritor of his Ambition and warlike Genius, imagining himself aggrieved by the Salique Law, which excluded his Great Great-Grandmother, Isabel, from the Monarchy of France, turned his elevated Thoughts intirely to the Conquest of that Kingdom: Wherein, by his own vast Merit in martial Affairs, and the Co-operation of the Queen of France, (Consort of Charles the Sixth, then frantick,) and that of the Duke of Burgundy, a great and powerful Prince, he so far succeeded, as, after his Marriage with Catharine de Valois, Daughter of Charles the Sixth, to be crowned, and acknowledged King of France.

To this great and victorious Monarch succeeded Henry the Sixth, who, through a long, various, and constantly clouded Reign, seemed the very Play of Fortune! This Day a King, the next a Prisoner! One Day acknowleged by his Parliament, the next attainted! One Day a Conqueror, and the next a Captive!

Fierce, frequent, and bloody, were the Conflicts between the Houses of York and Lancaster, the White and Red Roses; the former endeavouring to recover its Loss, the latter to maintain its usurped Authority. In this dreadful Quarrel perished two hundred thousand of private Soldiers; ten thousand of the Nobility, Gentry, and Persons of Distinction; three Kings; and, at last, the entire Race of Plantagenet.

Edward the Fourth soon fell, by his natural Intemperance, or rather by the insatiable Cruelty of Gloucester; who had already sacrificed his Brother Clarence, to pave his Way to the Throne. Nor better fared it with Edward the Fifth, who, by all the Arts of Seduction and Delusion, which his unnatural Uncle and Guardian, Richard, practised on the Fears and Weakness of the Queen Dowager; was, with his Brother the Duke of York, conveyed with great Pomp to the Tower; where the bloody Tyrant, aided by the Duke of Buckingham, soon sacrificed those young, innocent and hopeful Princes to his wicked and boundless Ambition. But he soon after lost his own flagitious Life, and a most cruelly-acquired Crown, on the Plains of Bosworth.

To him succeeded Henry the Seventh, and the first of the Race of Tudor, a great, wise and valiant Prince, but rather too much inclined to Rigour, and Avarice; Imperfections which extremely blemished his other great Qualities.

In the tenth Year of this Reign, the Parliamentary Constitution of Ireland received a deeper Stab than had ever before, or since, been inflicted thereon, by a Statute Law, commonly called Poynin's Act; by which a new, and, till that wretched Period, an unheard of Order, was added to the three established Ranks of the State. By this Law, the English Privy-Council may impose a Negative on the free and unanimous Parliamentary Ordinances of the representative Body of the Kingdom of Ireland; a manifest Injury to the Authority and Dignity of Parliament; and an equal Diminution of the Royal Prerogative, that only should include, and should alone exert, a Power so important.

In Times dark, tumultuated and dangerous, no Wonder extraordinary Laws should pass: Desperate Diseases require desperate Remedies: But when the Fever is removed, it certainly is a horrid Management to leave the blistering Plaister still sticking to the recovered Patient's Back.

The Distempers of this Nation were heavy, complicated and chronic; and finally curable, only by the salutary all-healing Hands of our present King, and present Parliament.

To Henry the Seventh succeeded Henry the Eighth, as consummate a Tyrant, in every Sense, as ever swayed the British, or any other Sceptre; whose whole Life was so continued a Scene of wanton Dissipation, Lust, Cruelty, Rapine, Bloodshed and Sacrilege, that it must have been a peculiar Happiness, to any Part of his Dominions, to have been neglected or forgotten by him: Nor could the two succeeding Reigns of Edward the Sixth, and Queen Mary, short, various, cloudy, and vastly agitated on the Score of Religion, (which, in those two Reigns, took Faces almost diametrically opposite,) afford this Kingdom much reflected Sunshine.

To those ensued that of Queen Elizabeth, a Princess of powerful Abilities, who, truly intent on the Peace and Welfare of her Subjects, caused her Laws to operate, and Justice to circulate in this Kingdom, abandoned, as hath been observed, to a State almost of Anarchy, thro' a dismal Series of seventeen Reigns: But the Reformation in Religion, which she established in England, and introduced in Ireland, much obviated her Purposes for the latter Kingdom: For, the Irish, more tenacious of their Altars, than of their Fire-places, could not easily reconcile themselves to the Exchange of a Religion they deemed a new one, for that they had been in Possession of from the fourth, to the fifteenth Century: Which produced a rebellious Defection, in a few of the principal Chieftains of this Land, and gave Occasion to the greedy Provincial Precedents, of trumping up imaginary Rebellions, to pave the Way to real Forfeitures; thereby to aggrandize their own Houses; what some of them effectually accomplished, to the Ruin and Extirpation of many honest Families.

This great and illustrious Princess, (whose Reign had remained untarnished, had it not been for the Death of the ill-fated Queen of Scotland) was succeeded by James the Sixth of Scotland, and the first of the Stuart Race that governed England: From this Prince, descended of Irish Kings, the People of Ireland might have expected many Favours and Immunities; wherein, however, they were miserably disappointed: Which, with a Train of other Hardships and antiparental Severities, (particularly his alienating, at one Stroke, six of the best Counties in the Kingdom, on the procured Testimony of an obscure wretched Individual, one Teige Lenane,) is too sufficient and too lasting a Proof of: Heu! tot Conquesta Annorum, hauserit una Dies! The Possession of at least twenty Centuries, of the great and good, the heroic and hospitable O Neils, O Donnels, Mac Guires, Mac Gennises, O Reillys, O Cahanes, &c. ravished away to gratify hungry Favourites, and indigent Relatives! the six Counties, however, as the Law Term has it, escheated. Had the Highlands of Scotland, at that unhappy Period, been more populated, probably six or eight Counties more had been procured to escheat, and there had been a braa Clutch of bonny Traitors; the O Connors, Mac Carthys, O Briens, O Donnels, O Hares, O Malones, &c. had been all in the same Bottom with the Families above mentioned; especially, as they could not, according to James the First's own Phrase, look to the Pope, and row with him.

To James the 6th of Scotland, and first of England, succeeded Charles the First; who, notwithstanding his eminent Possession of all the Virtues that adorn and illustrate human Nature, could neither divert the adverse Fate of Subjects, or prevent his own.

The Disseisin of many honest Families in the County of Kilkenny, and elsewhere, by the Earl of Strafford, on stale Pretences of Non Performance of Covenants on their Part; his Attempt of confiscating twenty-five Parts in thirty of the whole Province of Connaught, on a Claim of Descent, dormant 300 Years, and originally ill founded, with the arbitrary Steps by him taken to the Accomplishment of this wasteful Purpose; too clearly proved that Nobleman a second Verres. The cruel and intoxicated Administration of the Rump Parliament; the insolent, licentious, and riotous Controul of the military Independents; the abject Tyranny of Oliver Cromwell, who prostrated Constitution, Church and State, will always be recollected with the Contempt, Horror, and Detestation of every good Subject.

The Calamities from 1641, to the happy Restoration of King Charles the Second, in 1660, being common to all good Subjects, were the more tolerable, ferre quam sortem patiuntur omnes, nemo recusat: But now or never, surely, might his ever loyal, ever faithful Irish Subjects have, with the most reasonable Assurance, hoped, if not for publick and lasting Rewards, the common Wages of uncommon Fidelity; at least, for a Restitution of what had been their own, through Ages immemorial.

Will late Posterity believe, that, in Favour of mercenary Adventurers, who advanced Money to provide for a desperate regicide Army; in Favour of the Officers of this same Army, whom their Ringleader Cromwell, seared as his Conscience was, indulged with no more than temporary Grants of the Estates belonging to the King's most faithful Subjects: Will Posterity, I say, believe, that, in special Favour of such Men, those identical Subjects, the bravest Advocates, as well as the most affectionate undeviating Friends of the Monarchy and Constitution, were for ever deprived of their Properties! To remunerate the others, the most inveterate and implacable Enemies of EITHER! Doing Good for Evil is a Divine Precept, and certainly includes a most sublime Moral; but rendering Evil for Good, is such a Principle as must carry Horror with it, among savage Nations!

The King of France's immediate Letter, on this Subject, to King Charles the Second, as it reflects Honour on the Memory of those illustrious Sufferers, I therefore take Leave to transcribe in this Place.

* * * * *

His Most Christian Majesty's Letter to the King of Great Britain, in Favour of the Roman Catholicks of Ireland.

“Most High, Most Excellent, and Most Potent Prince, our dear and well-beloved Brother and Cousin! At the same Time that we have been told of your Majesty's great Goodness towards your Subjects, and the Precedent you have given of an extraordinary Clemency, in granting them your general Amnesty (some few only excepted, of those whom the Blood of their King, and that of his People, cry aloud to Heaven for Revenge against). We could not but let your Majesty know, that we were extremely surprized to hear, that the Catholicks of Irelandwere excluded from that Act of Oblivion, and, by that Means, put into the Number of the most criminal! This News has so much the more excited our Compassion towards them, that we have been informed, that, in all the Changes which have hitherto happened in your Dominions, and in the almost general Defection of your Subjects, none stood more constantto their lawful Sovereign, even in the greatest Streights, than the Catholicks: So that, if they are now branded for their Religion, it may be said, for their Honour, that, in Times past, none could be found readier, or more cheerfully disposed, than they, to serve and assist their Prince; and that with so much Ardour, that their Zeal then for the Royal Family was reckoned a certain Mark of their true Religion. It is for that Reason that we now become their Intercessors to you: For, otherwise, had they failed in the Fidelity they owe you, instead of interceding for them, we would join with you in using them with all imaginable Rigour; and it would never come into our Thoughts to concern ourselves, as we do, for the Catholicks of Ireland; though we were obliged to it, by the last Treaty of Peace made with the Marquess of Ormond, and which was granted them by our Mediation. And, as we are well assured, that, since the Conclusion of that Peace, they have done Nothing which can be called a Failure of their Duty to you, we find ourselves under so much the greater Obligation to conjure you, to make good that Treaty to them, in that they religiously observed it on theirSide, in all its Parts: And to beseech you not to suffer, that either the Hatred, which an immoderate Zeal swells some bigotted Sectaries with, nor the unlucky Spoils of these poor People, render criminal or miserable the most faithful of your Subjects; to whom their lawful King, as you are, is not the less dear, nor less respected, because of a different Belieffrom theirs. We propose Nothing to ourselves in this, nor ask any Thing, but what we daily practise (as you may know) towards those of our Subjects who are of the reformed Religion. And, as we have commanded the Sieur Marquis de Rouvigny to explain our Sentiments more amply on this Subject to you, be pleased to give him a favourable Audience: And, above all Things, be perswaded, that, in this Affair, we have no less your own true Interest in View, than what natural Reason and Equity requires; and that our sincere Friendship for you is the principal Motive of this Request. Dated at Paris, the 7th of September, 1660.”

The good King Charles, regardless of this important Solicitation, unattentive to the plain Suggestions of common Right, and unaccountably forgetful of all their past signal Services and inviolate Zeal; observed indeed that those faithful Irish Subjects had no Stock; consequently, that dispossessing the Adherents of Oliver, who, with the Land, had pirated the national Stock, would cause much Confusion. As for the former, he hoped some Settlement might in Time be found for them; (in Truth, I believe, for aught his Majesty in Reality concerned himself, this might have been in Terra Australis Incognita). Their Want of Stock is the less to be admired at, it being well known, that, with their Pay in foreign Service, chiefly expended to contribute all in their Power to the Royal Support, they even went so far as to sell their Plate, and valuable Moveables, to answer the same generous Purpose: But, when every known Acre in the Kingdom, that could be disposed of, was given away by Wholesale to the Duke of York, the Heir-apparent of the Crown, (partial Distribution!) to new-fangled Favourites, and the staunch old Enemies of Church and Crown; it was hoped some Lands might be yet discovered, to satisfy and compensate those Irish Worthies, who had Nothing left for their Support, beside an inalienable Sense of Honour and Loyalty, and a Character of invincible Fidelity (which all Nations admired and applauded). No such Discovery, however, was made, nor any relative to the Irish, under that Administration, but what tended to convince them, by the famous Act of Settlement, &c. of the extraordinary severe Peculiarity of their Fate! Yet, ordained to shew Posterity unprecedented Specimens of Loyalty and Zeal, they still adhered, with inflexible Constancy, to the Fortunes of King James the Second, not mindful of their Injuries by James the First, their unexampled Sufferings by the excessive harsh Measures of King Charles the First, his Ministers, and Deputies, or their unheard-of Treatment (I won't say Wrongs, it being a Maxim the King of England can do none) by King Charles II. Little Wonder, a House, constantly sapping it's own best Pillars, should at length fall.

King James the Second, constrained to abdicate the Throne of England, endeavoured the Preservation of this his Kingdom of Ireland, where his faithful Subjects, (a Remnant of the various and manifold Wastes of foregoing Reigns) considering the thousand Disadvantages they laboured under, made such a Stand as later Ages will look up to with Astonishment! A Parcel of Men, congregated in the utmost Hurry and Confusion, undisciplin'd, unarm'd, uncloathed, unpaid! Yet did those very Men, animated by the Example of their heroick Leaders, (I mean their immediate Lords and Countrymen) on the Plains of Aughrim, convince the best veteran Army that Day in Europe, superior in Numbers, excellently provided for in every Respect, and conducted by a Prince of singular Valour and Address, that Irishmen were deserving of more auspicious Stars.