A History of Ireland: From the Earliest Times to 1922 by Edmund Curtis

Author:Edmund Curtis [Curtis, Edmund]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Humanities
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2005-07-28T04:00:00+00:00

he said, though weary of the war, feared that a reformation in religion would follow upon a peace. The Church as established was full of abuses. There should be no persecution for religion's sake, save the oath of Supremacy for office, and there should be no plantations save on the seacoast or the great rivers. And actually that a general 'Reformation' would follow upon peace was shown in the fact that after the defeat of Kinsale the Recusancy fines were generally inflicted and a High Commission Court, set up in 1593, began to act with vigour. But according to the charges of Councillors such as Loftus, the liberal-minded Mountjoy put an end to it and stopped rigorous measures in the matter of religion.

From the battle of Kinsale onwards Ireland entered upon a new phase in her history. A new Irish nationality emerged, Catholic by conviction, a mixture of English and Gael by race, becoming in the upper classes ever more and more English-speaking. But in the common people we see a blended race who in the long run have proved to be the characteristic Irish people, feeling a sense of common history and a common Faith, with an intense passion for the land which nothing has been able to shake, and speaking that Gaelic language which was the speech of the majority up to 1800. Milesian or Old English, Danish or Norman, whatever their origin they have all accepted the Irish legend as against the English legend. How to reconcile this Catholic nation, fast forming because of a general ill-treatment, with an Anglican government was a problem, but how to make it fit in with a greedy, intolerant, and pampered Protestant ascendancy, which increased with every plantation, was a harder problem still.

There was no doubt that a new order had begun and that all Ireland was to be united as a kingdom under an English monarchy. The whole country was for the first time shired, and English sheriffs, justices on assize, juries, and all the other forms of English law, land-tenure, and local administration appeared everywhere. Sir John Davies, an exceedingly able Englishman, was made Attorney-general for Ireland, and in his circuits through the country enforced for the first time the Common law and inquired into the principles of the Brehon code and the Irish system of land-tenure, which was now swept away and replaced by the ordinary rules of English landlordism. At first, in the cases of Cavan and Fermanagh, he gave decisions recognizing great numbers of the Irish as freeholders, but when later ways had to be found of ousting them he was not above making judgments unworthy of law and his former impartiality.

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