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Art. 7.-THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.

1. Calendar of the Justiciary Rolls, Edward I. Edited by James Mills. Stationery Office, 1905.

Ireland, 23-31
Dublin: H. M.

2. Statutes and Ordinances and Acts of the Parliament of Ireland: King John to Henry V. Edited by Henry F. Berry. Dublin: H. M. Stationery Office, 1907. 3. Statute Rolls of the Parliament of Ireland: Reign of King Henry the Sixth. Edited by Henry F. Berry. Dublin: H. M. Stationery Office, 1910.

4. Ireland under the Normans, 1169-1216. By Goddard Henry Orpen. Two vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911.

5. Revolutionary Ireland and Its Settlement. By Robert H. Murray. London: Macmillan, 1911.

6. The Life of James, First Duke of Ormonde, 1610-1688. By Lady Burghclere. Two vols. London: Murray, 1912. 7. The Beginnings of Modern Ireland. By Philip Wilson. Dublin and London: Maunsel, 1912.

IT has been the policy of generation after generation of English statesmen to create out of Ireland another England. For centuries Englishmen have been content, with this object in view, to pour out their blood and treasure like water; and to-day they are compelled to admit their failure. We ourselves have seen the downfall of the Irish Church, and we are now witnessing the expropriation of the descendants of those Englishmen who, at much peril to themselves and much suffering to the Irish, were planted there as the representatives of English civilisation in the 16th and 17th centuries. We are sorry for them. We think they have been scurvily treated. No doubt there were bad ones among them— rotten members who deserved to be cut off; but the bulk of Irish landlords were sound-too sound in fact for their own interests. They would be neither degenerate English' nor 'King's rebels.' They sought to be true to the connexion at the risk of forfeiting the adherence of their tenants, and they are paying the penalty of their loyalty. We will not say that they are blameless-far from it; but, with Grattan's warning ringing in our ears, we are bound to ask whether we, as Englishmen, are not

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mainly responsible for their fate. We carried the Act of Union over their heads and against their wishes. We appealed to their lowest instincts to support a policy their consciences condemned. We urged the incapacity of the Irish Parliament to rule Ireland. We seized the occasion of a rising, hardly to be dignified as a rebellion, to put an end to its legislative independence.

To-day we are compelled to admit our own failure. We are going to repair the mistake we made in 1801. But let us not be under the delusion that by so doing we can set back the clock of history. The Ireland of to-day is a very different country from the Ireland of the latter part of the 18th century. The balance of power has shifted into the hands of the democracy, and we have no longer a landed aristocracy on which we can reckon to control the destinies of the country. It remains to be seen whether our new friends are so entirely loyal to the connexion as they would have us believe, or whether in fact they will have the power to keep their promise.* But, in meditating on the fate that has overtaken the English colony in Ireland, we are forcibly reminded that it is not the first time that England has sacrificed her own flesh and blood to the exigencies of a false line of political conduct. The history of the first English colony in Ireland-of that colony that came in with Henry II and received its deathblow in 1691-is not so well known that we need offer an excuse for attempting to trace the causes of its downfall. Its lessons come unfortunately too late to possess any practical value, but for those who desire' rerum cognoscere causas' the enquiry is not

without interest.

*Those who, like the present writer, have lived for years in a clergyridden country and have witnessed the ineffectual efforts of a liberal minority to influence legislation, will feel the force of Prof. Mahaffy's remark in his interesting Introduction to Dr Murray's 'Revolutionary Ireland' (p. xx). People commonly believe that the power of the clergy cannot but wane with the spread of secular education. I... have watched for fifty years the effect of so-called modern enlightenment on the clergy and their flocks. I cannot but say that the current expectations have been disappointed.' Englishmen, in their blessed ignorance of their own happy condition, are a little too apt to judge the world by their own limited experience. For those who live under different conditions a prophet's vision is not necessary to enable them to see that for many a year to come Home Rule will practically, as the phrase runs, mean Rome Rule for Ireland.

The origin of that colony has recently been written afresh by Mr Goddard Orpen. Mr Orpen is not one of those writers who think it necessary either to their own reputation or to the cause of Irish history to upset all our traditional notions as to what that history actually is. He is content to take his facts as he finds them and to accommodate his views to his facts. For him Giraldus Cambrensis is still a credible authority, not merely as to events of which he was an eye-witness, but also in regard to matters which he had to take on trust. The Expugnatio Hibernica' remains the chief source of our knowledge of what is perhaps the most important event in the history of Ireland since the arrival there of the Celt.

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The mischief, if such it is to be accounted, began on that May-day morning in 1169, when Robert Fitzstephen, attended by a small band of armed followers (thirty knights and sixty other horsemen, and about 300 archers on foot) landed at Bannow Bay in the County of Wexford. His countrymen's curse has fallen heavily on Dermot Mac Murrough for bringing the English into the land. But Dermot was merely the occasion, not the cause of the invasion. The attempt was bound to have been made sooner or later. Norman, if not actually AngloNorman influences, as seen in the abbeys of the Cistercian order,* had long been at work; and it was a mere accident that had prevented Henry II from taking advantage some years earlier of Adrian's famous donation. Circumstances favoured the invaders. The friendship of Mac Murrough secured them a firm footing in Leinster; the sparsely populated country afforded them ample elbow-room; new arrivals added to their numbers and increased their strength; the natives, distracted by their own dissensions, armed with inferior weapons and without a leader of unquestioned ability and authority, fled from them like chaff before the wind. Their rapid progress and the marriage of their leader, Strongbow,

* The list of Cistercian abbeys in Ireland founded between 1139 and 1170 is a long one. It includes St Mary's, Dublin; Mellifont in Louth; Bective in Meath; Baltinglas in Wicklow; Boyle in Roscommon; Monaster-Nenagh in Limerick; Athlone in Roscommon; Newry in Down; Odorney in Kerry; Innislonnagh in Tipperary; Fermoy in Cork. We cannot help expressing our regret that this side of his subject has been entirely overlooked by Mr Orpen.

with Mac Murrough's daughter, Eva, awakened Henry's jealous fears lest the enterprise he had permitted should result in the establishment of an independent AngloNorman kingdom in his rear. He no sooner realised the danger that menaced him than he took steps to counteract it by preventing further assistance reaching Strongbow and by recalling those adventurers who had taken part with him in his enterprise.

On Oct. 17, 1171, he landed at Waterford at the head of an army sufficiently imposing to overawe the Irish and to convert what was intended as a conquest into something resembling a royal progress.* He had two objects before him, viz.: (1) to get himself generally recognised by the native chieftains as their over-lord, and (2) to provide against the possible contingency of the establishment of an independent Anglo-Irish kingdom. At the time the latter was the more important. Accordingly, while he consented to recognise the claims of Strongbow and his companions to the lands they had acquired and to confirm them in the possession of them by an act of feudal donation, he took the precaution to retain the chief seaports in his own hand and to appoint a visible representative of the authority of the Crown in the person of a justiciar or viceroy. So far as the management of the internal affairs of the colony was concerned, it was to be based on the polity of England. In other words, what Henry seems to have had in view was the extension of the colony till it embraced the whole island, or, to express it more accurately, the absorption of the whole island within the limits of the polity, which he had marked out for the colony. He had made no conquest of Ireland, but such a contingency was amply provided for in the territorial letters of marque't granted by him and his successors to such adventurers as were willing to take the risk of conquest on themselves.

* We do not follow Mr Orpen's argument that the late period of the year is of itself sufficient proof that Henry did not meditate 'forcibly imposing his rule over the Irish.' That the necessity for such a proceeding did not arise is quite another matter; as for the time of the year, Henry had apparently little choice. Cf. Stubbs' 'Const. Hist.,' ch. xii, § 143.

†This useful phrase owes its origin, we believe, to the late Prof. George Stokes, whose merits as an historian have been strangely underrated.

It is a favourite theory with modern writers, but one to which Mr Orpen lends no countenance, that Henry completely misunderstood the problem that confronted him in Ireland. We do not think he did; we believe that in treating O'Conor as the lord paramount of Ireland, and O'Brien, O'Rourke and the rest as his vassals, holding their lands directly under him, he was nearer the actual reality than those writers who, basing their conclusions on evidence drawn from an earlier (and later) period, insist so strongly on the theory of tribal ownership. The only question of importance for Henry, as it had been for O'Conor, was the power to enforce his authority. Henry fully recognised the fact, but it affected him less from the side of the natives than from that of the colonists. When he left Ireland he appointed Hugh de Lacy his viceroy. But the arrangement did not entirely satisfy his jealous fears; and, at a Council at Oxford in May, 1177, he announced his intention of creating his youngest son, John, King of Ireland. The consent of Urban III was obtained, and preparations were made for John's coronation in 1187. But the final step was never taken; and the government of Ireland continued, as it had begun, to be exercised by a justiciar. Though greatly impeded by the habitual absence of the sovereign, the progress of the colony was most remarkable. When John visited Ireland, in 1210, the entire coast from Carrickfergus southwards as far as Cork was in the possession of the new settlers. Leinster and Munster were dotted with colonies; and the invaders were rapidly pushing their way westward through the great central plain of Connaught. In 1216 the limits of the colony had been practically reached.

In his concluding chapter Mr Orpen sums up the

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* Mr Orpen suggests that in the account given of the Oxford Council in the Gesta Henrici II' we should read dominum' instead of 'regem,' and he points out that these titles do not differ so much in degree as in character; 'rex' being a national title, 'dominus' a territorial. Perhaps so; but the words of the chronicler are precise, and for ourselves we think 'rex' is a higher title than dominus. 'Dominium' Henry could and did confer on John, but he could not make him 'rex' without the Pope's consent. It should be noticed in this connexion that Richard never was 'dominus Hiberniæ,' and that Edward I occupied the same position as John during his father's lifetime.

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