PATER’S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3111, 29 October 1913, Page 70

PATER’S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND. Last ■week I promised to write another Chat upon the antagonism existing in earlier clays between the English and the Irish. Various books can be read to get a picture of the times of the Tudors, but for my purpose I am confining myself to Fronde’s “English in Ireland” ; “A History of England for Catholic Schools” (Longmans); “An Outline of Irish History, by Justin M'Carthy; and “A Class Book of English History” (Rivingtons); for these furnish me with more than enough material for half a dozen Chats. Take M'Carthy to begin with. The chapter headed Elizabeth opens with these sentences: “The Reformation begun under Henry VIII was carried out with pitiless determination under Edward VI [last week’s Chat, you will remember, referred to Henry VII and Henry VIII], and was met by the Catholics with unflinching opposition. Under Mary there was a period of respite; but the strife was renewed with greater fierceness in the succeeding reign. As authentic Irish begins with St. Patrick, so with Elizabeth modern Irish history may be said to begin.” To this may* be added what Hassall says —viz., that the death'of Queen Elizabeth coincided with the conquest of Ireland. THE O’NEILS OF ULSTER. As Ulster is in the forefront just now, a word about the O’Neils may be interesting. In 1541 the head of this powerful clan had been created Earl of Tyrone. “He was indebted to her [Queen Elizabeth] for life, rank, and fortune. . . . He ‘ had been brought up at Court [the English Court] as a Protestant, in the midst of the most brilliant circle which any capital in Europe could show. No pains were spared to make him a fit instrument for the reclamation of h : s country; and when of age he received the patents of his grandfather’s earldom and returned to Ireland.” But Froude adds that “the wolf which is treated as a dog remains a wolf still.” He turned Catholic, proved to be an unruly chief and a skilful and dangerous conspirator. Letters were intercepted which he was sending to Philip and' to other Spaniards. The Queen did not want to have more trouble than she could help, so tried to make terms, but “he required the dismissal out of almost the whole of Ulster of every English soldier, sheriff, magistrate, or other officer whose business was to set in action English law ; he demanded, further, free liberty of conscience, by which he meant free liberty of religious worship throughout Ireland, and the restoration of the Church 'lands to Catholics.” Then commenced the work of extirpation in which each s.de tried to exceed the other in ruthlessness, a ruthlessness made more uncompromisingly bitter because of the religious venom working in both. In 1602 “the country was so dreadfully wasted that children were killed and eaten for food. In one place three wretched little creatures were eating the dead body of their mother.” In reading of these times we must picture the civilisation then existing and the contempt both sides had for life. “Free right to make war upon his neighbours at pleasure was the Magna Charta of Irish liberty”; and, on the other hand, “young English gentlemen described expeditions into the mountains ‘to have some killing’ as if a forest was being driven for a battue.” Again, the English soldiers were badly paid, and what pay they were to get was generally in arrears ; so murdering and plundering "became second nature to them. THE DESMOND REBELLION. This was a very wide one, and included Limerick, Kerry, Cork, and a part of Waterford, and these areas were assisted by the Barons of the Pale. This vras looked upon as a life-and-death struggle, and Elizabeth was determined to wipe it out at all costs, for she could not afford to have the Papal flag flying on any spot in her dominions. “Troops were sent over. A fleet came round to the western coast. Lord Grey, the Viceroy, by a rapid march to Dingle, blocked tho Italian troops into a fort from which there avhs no escape, bombarded it and destroyed them to a man. But the Queen was not content to do the work alone. Against the Irish lighting on their own soil, among bogs, and mountains, and forests, other allies were more efficient than English soldiers. The Butlers were let loose upon their ancient enemies. Every living thing was destroyed by which the insurrection could maintain itself. The corn was burnt in the fields; tho cattle were driven into the camp and slaughtered. Tho men who could bear arms were out with their chief; tho aged and the sick, the women and the little ones, perished all in the flames of their burning houses. The official records of this deadly war return the killed and hanged in tens of thousands, and famine took up the work where neither sword nor rope could roach. . . . Pardon and reward were offered to those who would kill their comrades, and the bloody heads of noted leaders were brought in by sackfuls to be paid for in land and money. . . . Desmond himself, after three years-of outlaw work, was betrayed by bis own people; he was stabbed in his bed, and bis head was set on a spike on London bridge; while so utterly desolated was Munster that the lowing" of a cow, or the .sound of a ploughboy’s whistle, was not to lie heard from Valentia to the Ruck of Cashel. . . . Half a million of fertile acres were escheated ta the Crown.

They were granted away among Elizabeth’s favourites as a reward for service, or among undertakers who were allowed at last to carry out their project of occupation. But the colonisation was irregular, unsystematic, and imperfect. The essential conditions of residence . . • was invaded in act . . . and did little more than create a fresh batch of absentee proprietors, while the lands were still occupied by an Irish tenantry, who w’aited for, and in due time found, their opportunity for revenge.” These wholesale murders, the forcing of the Acts of Supremacy and of Uniformity upon the Irish, and the extortions of absentee landlords, intensified in subsequent generations, are largely at the root of the intense feeling existing at the present time. Lei me refer to M‘Car thy to show; what treachery could do and how little human life was valued. Another O’Neil —Shane — was murdered by his enemies, his head struck off to adorn the walls of Dublin, his estates were forfeited, and his vassals made vassals of the English Crown. English soldiers were given portions, but these were extirpated; others followed, and these, to make sure of their lives, exterminated the Irish —men, women, and children. In another case one of the Queen’s representatives to anticipate and prevent a rising asked the chiefs and their kinsmen to a banquet in the fort of Mullaghmast, were the whole 400, except one man, were massacred. Among the commanders were Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser. Raleigh took part in the siege and capture of Smerwick held by some 800 Italians and Spaniards—it is astonishing what help the Irish have received at times from Continental nations. The besieged had to surrender at discretion, when they were all killed in cold blood by Raleigh’s orders. “Holinshed declares the traveller would not meet any man, woman, or child, saving in towns and cities, and would not see any beast, and Spenser, gives a melancholy picture of the misery of the inhabitants “as that any stonv heart would rue the same.’ They were driven by misery to eat dead bodies scraped out of the grave”; and Sir William Pelham proudly told the Queen how l ho had reduced the inhabitants to prefer being slaughtered to dying of starvation. In this way Munster was “pacified;” and the land divided up into areas from 4000 to 12,000 acres ‘to be held in fee of the Crown at a quit rent of 2d or 3d per acre to such adventurers as oared to struggle with the dispossessed Irish.” Perhaps I’ll give another Chat, one dealing with the Cromwellian and Restoration periods.