Ireland Two Hundred Years Ago.

Evening Star, Issue 7361, 5 November 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

Ireland Two Hundred Years Ago.

Some interesting glimpses of Irish politics, life, and character between 1660 and 1690 are given in Mr John P. Prendergast's ' Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution,' just published by Messrs Longman. Cromwell had confiscated the lands of the ancient Irish nobility and bestowed them upon his own adherents When Charles 11. came in, it was hoped that the former holders would recover their possessions; but in the majority of cases they were disappointed. The Court which decided the rival titles was called the Court of Claims. "Round the doors of the newly-opened Court may be pictared an anxious crowd of impoverished noblemen and tattered gentlemen of old descent, some of English blood, some of pure Irish, many of them soldiers of foreign air, ' with patched buff coats, jack boots and Bilboa blade,' broken-hearted widows and orphans. These were the Irish. Some of these officers had spent six years in misery in Connaught; some, ten years in sieges and battles under perpetual fire in France, Italy, and Flanders. For, from the known bravery of their race, they were ever allowed the post of honor, while it happened also to be the post of danger. Others had dwelt in garrets and cellars at Paris or Bruges. By the King's Declaration of the 30th of November, 1660, embodied in the Act of Settlement, the restorablo Irish were of four classes :—lnnocents; Ensignmen, as those were styled who had rallied to the King's Ensigns abroad ; Article men, or those promised pardon and restoration by the Articles of the Peace made between the Duke of Ormonde on the King's behalf and Confederate Catholics in 16-18; and the King's Nominees, thirty-six Irish noblemen and gentlemen, named in the Declaration, to be restored without further proof by the special favor of the King." The Ensignmen especially fared badly. One of them was Lord Castleconnell. He had "served your Royal Majestic five or six years in the Netherlands, trailing a pike in the Duke of York's regiment (i.e., as a common soldier)" ; but he had " run into debt for food and raiment, and is at the end of his credit, in imminent hazard of imprisonment for his debts, and unable further to subsist if your Majestie relieve him not." He was allowed a pension of LI ,000 a-year, which, after falling greatly into arrear, was reduced to LIOO. At one time he had to pawn his clothes for L2O. But Lord Castleconnell was not the only man of rank and late of estate obliged to hide for want of clothes to appear abroad in. Hundreds were in the same plight—fathers, mothers, daughters, sons. Colonel Charles MacCarthy Reagh, of Kilbrittan Castle, near Bandon, in the county of Cork, was once the owner of a principality. The ruins of Kilbrittan and of other dependent castles near the Bandon River attest the former splendor of the MacCarthy Reaghs. Colonel Charles MacCarthy had married the sister of the Earl of Clancarty, Ormonde's brother-in-law. He was named among the Ensjignmen as having served the King in foreigu parts ; but finding no provision made for the Ensignmen in the Act of Explanation, he besought Ormonde to save from utter ruin an ancient loyal family related to his Grace. He (Colonel Charles MacCarthy Reagh), his wife, the Earl of Clancarty sister, and their seven children were (he said) in a most sad and deplorable condition, himself and his wife and some of his children being forced for want of means or habitation to repair to Dublin, where they were then destitute even of necessary clothes to appear in, not having penny or penny's worth to relieve them, but in the words of truth (added Colonel MacCarthy) in a condition ready to perish with starving ; and such of them as were in the countty, he said, had no other being or subsistence than wandering from house to house looking for bread." Many details are given of the exploits of the toric3—torics, as everybody knows, being rebels in a small way. One of the most notable was Daniel O'Keefe. " There is a great cave in the cliff over the Blackwater, called the Outlaw's Cave, because there Daniel O'Keefe, after being stripped of his lands, led an outlaw's life, with Mary O'Kelly as his solace. It was Mary O'Kelly that he employed to bring him necessaries from Mallow, One day, fondling this mistress of his heart on her return, he felt a paper in the bosom of her dress, and, taking it in his hand, he found it was a letter from the commander of the garrison at Mallow. It disclosed her treachery. She had been bought over. O'Keefe plunged his d-eane, or long Irish knife, into her heart."

Tory hunting and tory killing became a regular business, under the inducement of the law, and this lasted down to nearly the end of last century. " In 1695 a law was made that any tory killing two other tories, proclaimed and on their keeping, was entitled to pardon for all former crimes except murder. Such distrust and alarm now ensued among their bands on finding one of their number so killed, that it became difficult to kill a second. Therefore, in 1718, it was declared a sufficient qualification for pardon for a tory to kill one of his fellow tories. These Acts were put in force in the reign of King George 111. They only expired in 1776. No wonder, therefore, that the name of tory and the sport of tory hunting became familiar words. Well can I remember how my father has told me (who died 31st May, 1846) that his father, a solicitor and deputy registrar ef the Court of Chancery, from the county of Tipperary, dwelling, and dying in 1803, in Chancery lane, Dublin, had seen the proprietor, or his son or grandson, once ownpr of broad lands, going about as a beggar with his old title-deeds tied up in a common cotton handkerchief; these, and the respect paid him by the common Irish, being the only signs left to show the world he was a gentleman. About twenty-five years ago I was myself shown at the Rolls Office of Chancery, by one of the gentlemen there, a privy seal of King Charles 11., brought thither the day before by some peasant of the county of Longford, descendant of some O'Reilly, ordering his ancestor to be restored to all such of his lands as were not in the hands of adventurers or soldiers, of as much real value as if it had ordered him lands in the moon. His decendants, occupants of a cabin, had preserved it in cottonwool as a precious inheritance for 200 years, being the choicest preservative they knew of, though singularly unfit for preserving a paper document. Hundreds' of original privy seals of the same class have I seen among the Ormonde papers at the Bjodleian Library, Oxford—the same hand.

' with the privy seal on paper, on a large wafer stamped at the upper corner on the left hand above the King's sign-manual." The "coercive" measures of those days were somewhat more severe than at the present time, though the circumstances were not dissimilar, and boycotting at least was practiced. "One design of these men is," says Sir George Acheson, " that thus terrifying and discouraging the British, having nothing certain, but all at their mercy, they will induce them by degrees to leave those places of danger and recede into those more secure, which they daily begin now to do; and so the lands will be laid waste, none else daring to take them, whereby the natives will rent them at such mean values as they please, and thereby embody themselves and grow numerous and opuleut." Sir Georgo Acheaon's remedy was a truly military kind of justice. An officer with a " volant (or flying) party " of troopere was to be established, with liberty to call upon any man to stand in the King's name and give an account of himself, and to shoot him if he didn't; if he did, to try him by a jury on the spot, and if guilty, "to proceed to sentence, and (after Christian preparation) to hang him"; in which circumstances many a man would rather stand his chance of a volley from the troopers than a verdict of the jurors. The following is "an odd incident that lately happened at Downpatrick": "Three grand tories having been this assizes condemned there for robbery, the gaoler, executioner, etc., went into the gaol at the time appointed to bring forth the prisoners to execution, and the executioner offering to put a halter round Doran's neck (one of the three) who had a nheim, or madogue, privately conveyed to him that morning by his wife, he therewith stabbed the hangman to the heart, who fell dead on the spot, and wounded the gaoler and two more before they could get the skeine out of his hand. This so terrified the executioners of that country that none of the trade would venture on these tories, which forced the sheriff to deal (by promise of a reprieve) with one of the three, to hang his two comrades, whereof Doran one, which a Judge has since granted, and I believe the new executioner will have the favor to be transported." Chief among the tories of the counties of Down, Armagh, and Tyrone, was Redmond O'Hanlon, sometimes called Count O'Hanlon. A pric3 of L'2oo was put upon his head ; but still he lived, uncaught, among the rocks of Slieve Gullion, in the recesses of the Moyry Pass, or amongst the broken hills around Forkhill. "Though great attempts were made and large rewards offered for bringing in his head—the army being put to more trouble in attending and pursuing him and his party than all the tories in the Kingdom since the general rebellion of Ireland--it was all in vain. But the Duke of Ormonde took at last his own way, seeming quiet, and giving the Count no disturbance. And that there should be no taking air of his design, the Duke drew a commission and instructions, all with his own hand, for two gentlemeu he employed. And these were so well pursued by the gentlemen entrusted, that on Monday, the 25th April, at two in the afternoon, Connt O'Hanlon was shot through the heart."

Mr Prendcrgastvisited 0 Hanlon's country in ISO!!. " When I got near Augh-na clocliMullan I was still asking the way, but found the place little known. At length I came to a house, and, knocking at the door, a hearty old woman came out to me, and went for her as hearty old husband. ' Oh, you want Redmond O'Hanlon's Cave,' and lie pointed to a field about half a-mile off, and in the middle of it some old blackthorns, near somo huge mossy granite stones—thorns that so often mark in Ireland ancient sites; the reason being that they protect the remains ; for no one would dare to stir old solitary bushes; they are the haunts of 'good people.' He seemed surprised at the interest I took in it, and doubted the answera&gave lfs(n. But when 1 pulled out a wax candle and matches I had brought to light up the cave, he said, with emphasis: 'By dad, but I would like to go with you; you are after some of Redmond O'Hanlou's goold. Will you promise me a share of what you find ?' I promised to call in on him on my way back, and walked off to Anna-gle-million. But I found, to my regret, that the huge upright stones that had formed the cave underground to the centre of what had once been a barrow or earth mound, had been first made a quarry of by the masons when Mr Synnot's new house at Ballymoyer was built, some thirty years ago ; and since then this curious monument of the earliest times lias been utterly ruined. The name of Redmond O'Hanlon is kept fresh in the memory of the Irish of Ulster. In the neighborhood of his former haunts every cave is ' Redmond O'Hanlan's parlor,' ' Redmond O'Haulon's stable,' or ' Redmond O'Hanlon's -bed.' And in a small ancient graveyard near Tanderagee, the former seat of the O'Jlanlons, any Irish peasant will point out among the green mounds, the greenest of all, Redmond O'Hanlon's grave."