grant was to be void if a title for the Crown could be established by any other means.[1] And although the Act 12th of Elizabeth, empowering the Lord Deputy to accept the surrenders of the Irish chiefs and to regrant to them the lands thus surrendered, appears to have been framed so as to enable the Crown to give a valid grant to the de facto holders of the chieftainship, yet the decision of the judges in the "Case of Tanistry" was in effect that these surrenders and the consequent validity of the Elizabethan grants might be successfully challenged.[2]
Furthermore, there was frequently a pretext for challenging the legitimacy of the chiefs.
The Canon Law had multiplied impediments to marriage. The Irish chiefs had often taken advantage of this to obtain from the Papal authorities a dissolution of their marriages and liberty to contract new ones.[3] The government by
- ↑ So in Elizabeth's grant to O'Molloy there was a clause that the grant was to be void if Her Majesty had any other right to the land either by record, Act of Parliament or otherwise, other than by O'Molloy's surrender. Car. MSS., Vol. 625.
- ↑ Le Case de Tanistry turned on the point as to whether a surrender by Conor of the Rock, Lord of the O'Callaghans by Tanistry, was valid in face of the fact that his predecessor in the lordship, who was the senior representative of the family, had under the Common Law made a settlement of his lands and lordship on his grandson and greatgrandson. This by Irish law he had of course no right to do. The Judges held that Conor had had no estate which he could surrender, hence the re-grant to him was void. I can find no instance in which this precedent was extended to other cases.
- ↑ For cases of doubtful marriages of the chiefs see those of the first Earl of Clanrickard, three of whose wives appeared before the Commissioners who were sent to decide who was heir to the Earldom; Sir Cormac MacTeig MacCarthy of Muskerry speaks of Ellen Barrett "whom he had used" as his wife. The marriages of the Barretts themselves werea source of litigation.
