The Gaelic State in the Past & Future/Chapter 5
V.
The Broken State.
Henry of Anjou and England, when he came to Ireland, with a somewhat munificent gesture made grants of large tracts of territory to his underlings. It was nobly done; to make gifts of other people's property to one's own friends requires a noble mind. Therefore the lordly underlings settled along the waterways of the territory allotted to them, built castles, and from these castles raided the economic life of the country around them. At first the stateships received the newcomers as strangers coming into the country, who would in time become part of its life. They did not conceive of such a thing as an attempted national conquest. Then when they rose to resist, they were handicapped. They had no national army; and, though the freemen could be called upon for military service, they could not be called for more than six weeks at a time, and then not during Spring or Harvest, whereas the Normans lived only by the sword in the close militarist organisation known as feudalism. The eleventh century in Ireland had seen a long dynastic war, but it had also seen a full scholarly and artistic activity. With the coming of the Normans all this activity was stilled and hushed for two centuries. And that was the sign-manual of the new era that had dawned.
After a while, preoccupied as they necessarily were with their economic life, the people invited their Hebridean cousins to come over as a paid militia. They came, at first into the north, and were quartered on the stateships; and from the time of their coming the Normans began to be pressed back toward Dublin, and the annals record the taking one by one of the Norman castles. That was the first attempt to throw off the national danger that was now appreciated. The second was to restore the executive authority. O'Neill, O'Brien and O' Conor had contended in rivalry, but the Ui Niall dynasty held the more ancient claim; therefore in 1258 Aodh O'Conor and Tadhg O'Brien made a hosting together to Brian O'Neill to offer their submission to him if he would lead them against the foreigner. He did so, but was overthrown and slain. Therefore an offer of the monarchy was sent to Hakon of Norway five years later. He was on his way over when he died at sea. Finally an invitation was sent to Edward Bruce by Domhnaill O'Neill in the name of Ireland. Bruce tame in 1315, was crowned Monarch of Ireland, and carried a war throughout the country that wasted the land. When he fell three years later at the battle of Faughert, the country was in a desperate condition; but the invader was thrown back to a small tract of country around Dublin that became known as the Pale.
Such were the attempts, made too late, to restore the State and eject the invader. One was dependent on the other. It was clearly impossible to restore the State until the invader had first been cast out. His presence in the country necessarily acted like an obstruction in the blood, and made it impossible for the body of the State to resume its health and perfect its functions until the poison had been expelled. This was so in the natural law of things; but, in addition to this natural and inevitable result, the invaders, in order to maintain their position in the country, set to work to create division between the scattered portions of the broken State. That was easy to do. The leaders in the different parts of the country have been blamed (by none more than by their nation) for serving their own sectional interests instead of the national unity. But how were they to discover the national unity, and how were they to distinguish, as we now can distinguish, between sectional and national interests? The history of mankind proves that in a broken State it is a simple task to create discord, and a giant's task to create unity. The invaders acted at first from a common centre; and the nature of the case robbed the Irish Nation of any common centre from which to act. That was the first difficulty. Secondly, there are always men in every Nation who r <are willing to sell their honour. So long as Nations can repel invasion that fact does not become an active danger within the security of its State; but directly an invader enters a country, with gold a.nd honours in his gift, it becomes almost impossible to overtake the poison that runs in every direction. Men grow suspicious of the most honest purpose if that purpose is not at once apparent; and if it is at once apparent it is thereby at once revealed to the enemy. Finally, most men are near-sighted; they judge of large issues by their immediate effects, and so mistake those immediate effects for the large issues, making it easy for an enemy to drive divisions in between sectional interests. These things are so, not necessarily because men are corrupt, but by the nature of things; and their combined result was the broken State of Ireland.
A further difficulty was the fact that the Nation had new elements cast into it that it had to digest; and in some places it had those new elements cast into it in large numbers. The Normans were mostly driven out of the north; but others had settled and made their positions secure in other parts, the De Burgos in the west, for instance, and the FitzGeralds and Butlers in the south. The old State was broken by their forcible seizure of land; but then we find it automatically setting to work to mend the broken fabric, to restore the stateships, and to include the stranger within its ancient constitution. In that it was successful. The De Burgos and FitzGeralds became, as the English declared, more Irish than the Irish themselves. The former publicly repudiated their very names, and took Irish names, as Mac William Uachtar and Mac William Iachtar. They simply displaced, or depressed, the kingly households of earlier territories. The same was true of the FitzGeralds, though with them, as far as we can judge, there w r ere certain changes introduced, not into the stateships, but into the larger territories in which these were comprised. The chief of these changes seems to have been that the FitzGeralds held their kingships by right of primogeniture and not by election. Yet in the main the changes were not many or fundamental. Irish was spoken as the native language; Irish courts were kept, of brehons, poets and historians, exactly as the older Irish kingships had maintained them; and by force of marriage in a few generations the intermixture of the new blood was hardly to be discovered beside the permanence of the old. Only the Butlers in the south-east kept their connection with England. The others broke away from the common centre of the invader, and, became included in the elder national continuity.
Nevertheless the State was scattered. The stateships continued their life; the parts, that is to say, were complete, except for a portion of country around Dublin and another about Waterford; but they were only parts, for the whole was in disrepair. And now a definite war between State and State was declared, the end of which has not yet been seen. By the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1367 every sign of national life in Ireland was penalised by English law. It was forbidden to hear an Irish poet, to take judgment from a brehon, to foster children in the Irish way, to speak the Irish language, and even to wear a beard as the Irish did, or ride a horse barebacked. It is true these things were only forbidden within the Pale, because only within the Pale had the invader any authority; but they were in fact, and afterwards became, a declaration in Ireland of a war between an English State and an Irish State. They were an intimation that the old Irish culture and State were marked for extinction. It is interesting to remember that at the moment this declaration was made England had little culture, no literature, only the beginnings of law, and a very rudimentary State. The Statutes of Kilkenny were very like a young vulgarian raging against an elder's manners that made his own lack of courtesy apparent.
Fortunately at this time England herself was plunged into a bitter dynastic war. The immediate result on Ireland was that, relieved from the pressure of her neighbour, a great period of prosperity began. The beginnings were slow, for the land was wasted after the Bruce campaign; but the progress quickened with each decade. It began with the integration of the Normans in the middle of the fourteenth century; and it continued till the end of the English Wars of the Roses. The poet took up his song again; the historian his pen; and the scholar his books. Great convocations of learned men were held; and new law tracts were written, drafted for changed conditions. The stateships became the centres of new activity. Corn was exported in considerable quantities. The guilds of artisans became busy again, to judge from the exports of woollen, linen, leather and metal wares. The literary activity—or at least such of it as escaped the soldiers' burning—has remained to us. The other activity can only be discovered by the trade books of other countries; for Ireland, having no organised State of her own, could keep no record of her commerce. But these books reveal the considerable trade Ireland conducted with the continent of Europe. The Irish ports, chiefly on the western and southern coasts, with their own corporate stateships, became the avenue through which the industry of the internal stateships supplied the demand of Europe. And since there was no Irish State to create a medium of exchange, at least one of the territories, that of the O'Reillys, had to mint its own coinage for the conduct of its trade.
It seemed as though once again the Irish State was about to complete itself. But once again an invading soldiery brought, ruin. This time it was the final ruin. England had settled her dynastic war, and turned her attention to Ireland. The old methods were renewed with a new perfection of craft. The Statutes of Kilkenny became an active weapon of offence; and with each new monarch of the Tudor dynasty the war between State and State was carried to a closer issue. The Irish language was interdicted; the Irish manner of dress was forbidden; and finally every attempt was made to blot out every memory of the Irish stateships and to create English counties in their stead. Kings of territories were offered pompous English titles if they pledged to abtsain from the use of their simple Irish titles. To help them to a decision they were offered the land over which they ruled, to be held by feudal knight's service and to descend by feudal right of primogeniture. Those who accepted this offer at once found the stateships in rebellion against them, for that land did not lie in the gift of any man but belonged only to the freemen. They rose in protection of their rights since time immemorial; and they rose to repudiate their elected officer; with the result that a soldiery was sent against them that burned their crops and left their land a waste.
Such was the last phase of the war by which the State was to be broken, not only as a whole, but in its several parts. The country far and wide became acquainted with a soldiery whose business it was to tear out all memory of the National State. At the end of that war there arose a figure who saw clearly all that was involved. That was Hugh, the descendant by Irish election of the O'Neill monarchy. He had worked long to link all parts of the country together under his leadership; and, knowing the power against which he was opposed, he had entered into treaty with the Spanish Crown to assist him. Feeling that these Spanish promises were not sincerely given, so often had they been made and as often broken, he thought to save what he could from the wreckage.
When in 1598 the Earl of Essex was sent against him he met him in parley and made him an offer to bear to Elizabeth. Whether that offer was sincerely made, or only put out to save time, does not matter here; but it contained one article that is very significant. It runs thus: "That all nations in Ireland shall enjoy their living as they did two hundred years ago." Now it is clear that he uses the word "nations " in some special sense—that he is, in fact, rendering some word from Irish. Nor is it difficult to discover what that word is. He can only be referring to the tuatha, or stateships, on which the State was based that was now threatened with extinction; and his demand was that they should remain intact and unmolested as they had been "two hundred years ago," when England was busy with civil war. The demand was rejected. He could hardly have expected anything else. And when he was finally defeated five years afterwards, those "nations," or stateships, were doomed to a final and terrible ruin.