property of the chiefs, without in any way conveying to them the estates of the free clansmen.[1]
The clansmen, moreover, had in most cases taken no steps to secure their rights against the Crown. Their rights as against the chiefs had been recognised, at least implicitly, and it had probably never occurred to them or to anyone else that the Crown would ever seek to deny them any title to what they held.[2]
Now they received a rude awakening. It was discovered that no length of occupation could give an Irishman any right to lands which had once been in English hands. None of the actual inhabitants, therefore, could have any rights to land unless they could show a grant from the former English owners, or—since the rights of these had largely fallen to the Crown—from the Crown.
The native inhabitants naturally enough protested against this theory. They pointed out that they had held their lands for at least two centuries, that they had been recognized as subjects and treated as landowners under Elizabeth and even under James himself, and that during the 16th century no Irish had been deprived of their lands on such grounds as were now put forward.
To this the answer was that the lands held by them had descended, in the case of the chieftaincies by Tanistry, and in the case of the
- ↑ The grant for example to O'Molloy is explicit as to this. Carew MSS. Vol. 625.
- ↑ See the lists of chief rents, and the dues of cattle, hogs, oats, reapers, ploughdays, mowers, &c. in grants such as those to O'Dunne and to Mac I Brien of Ara in Cal. Pat. Rolls James I. and to O'Molloy. Carew MSS., Lambeth Vol. 625. Q. Elizabeth's grant to MacCoghlan granted to the chief all lands, &c. in his possession, and the "rest," i.e., evidently the clansmen, were to have letters patent. Car. MSS., Vol. 625.
