Ireland under the Tudors. Bagwell Richard

reasons, says Sir John, the Kentish custom was always held good and lawful by the law of England. He admits, however, that the Irish custom had a counterpart in North Wales, which had been totally abolished by Henry VIII., along with other usages resembling those of Ireland. Edward I. had only ventured to exclude bastards, and to give widows their dowry.11

      Sir John Davies did not exhaust the subject.

      Notwithstanding the above decision, it is probable that a description of tanistry and gavelkind does not exhaust the subject. The theoretical division among all the males of a sept is not at all likely to have been carried out, except in very early times. Human nature was against it. From the twelfth century the example of the Anglo-Normans, which cannot have been altogether without weight, was against it. The interest of the chief was everywhere against it, because it would deprive him of the means of rewarding his friends, and because he was always tempted to seize lands to his own use. The tendency to private property would be always asserting itself, but the exact historical truth can never be known. Before the close of the mediæval period, a great part of Ireland had been reconquered by the tribes from Anglo-Norman hands. Is it possible that the Irish land system can have been anywhere restored in its integrity? On the whole, it is at least probable that English statesmen in the sixteenth century made as many mistakes about tenures in Ireland as their representatives in the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth made about tenures in India. Good faith may be generally granted in both cases, but the blunders made were no less disastrous. It is at all events clear that primogeniture was no Celtic usage, that it is no part of the law of nature, and that the Tudor lawyers treated it as an end in itself, and almost as a necessary element in the eternal fitness of things. In the twelfth century Irish practice may have come much nearer to theory than in the sixteenth; at all events, Henry II.’s grants to individuals were absolutely opposed to Celtic notions of justice.

      Composition for murder.

      Celtic usages part of the common Aryan stock.

      The conflict of laws is the key to Anglo-Irish history.

      The Irish admitted composition for murder. This blood-fine, called an eric, was an utter abomination to the English of the sixteenth century, who had quite forgotten the laws and customs of their own Teutonic ancestors. To men long used to a strong central government such a custom seemed impious. It was nevertheless part of the common heritage of the Aryan race, and had been in vogue among the peoples from whom the later English sprung. The Njal Saga illustrates its use among the Icelanders by many famous cases strictly in point. The feudal system and the canon law had caused the Teutonic nations to abandon a usage which they once had in common with the Irish. Celtic Ireland had never had a very strong central government, and such as it was it had sustained serious damage. Homicide was still considered a personal injury. The rule was not a life for a life, but adequate damages for the loss sustained. The idea of public justice, irrespective of private interests, was far in advance of the stage which had been reached by the Irish Celts. Irish history cannot be understood unless the fact is clearly grasped, that the development of the tribal system was violently interrupted by a feudal half-conquest. The Angevin and Plantagenet kings were strong enough to shake and discredit the native polity; but they had neither the power nor the inclination to feudalise a people which had never gone through the preliminary stages. When the Tudors brought a more steadfast purpose and better machinery to the task, they found how hard it was to evolve order out of the shattered remnants of two systems which had the same origin, but which had been so brought together as to make complete fusion impossible. From the first the subjects of England and the natives of Ireland had been on entirely different planes. Even for us it is extremely difficult to avoid confusion by applying modern terms to ancient things. The Tudor lawyers and statesmen could hardly even attempt to look at jarring systems from the outside. They saw that the common law was more advanced than that of the Brehons, but they could not see that they were really the same thing at different stages. In fact, plain Englishmen in the sixteenth century could not do what only the most enlightened Anglo-Indians can do in the nineteenth. They were more civilised than the Irish, but they were not educated enough to recognise the common ancestor. That there was a common ancestor, and that neither party could recognise him, is the key to Anglo-Irish history both before and after the Tudor times.

      Origin of the Irish Church. Patrick and Columba.

      Exile of Columba.

      Saint Bridget.

The early history of the native Irish Church is shrouded in much obscurity. The best authorities are disposed to accept St. Patrick as the apostle of Ireland, the fifth century as the period of his labours, and Armagh as his chief seat. He was not a native of Ireland; so much seems certain. A more interesting, because a more clearly defined figure, is that of Columba or Columkille, who was born in Donegal in 521. The churches of Derry, Durrow, Kells, Swords, Raphoe, Tory Island, and Drumcliff, claim him as their founder; but it is as the apostle of North Britain that he is best known. He was religious from his youth, but a peculiarly serious tinge was given to his mind by a feeling of remorse for bloodshed which he had partly caused. He had surreptitiously transcribed a psalter belonging to another saint, who complained of this primitive infringement of copyright. A royal decision that ‘to every cow belongs her calf’ was given, and was followed by an appeal to arms. Exile was then imposed as a penance on Columba, whose act had been the original cause of offence. Such was long the received legend, but perhaps the exile was voluntary.12 Whether his departure was a penance or the result of a vow, tradition says that he was bound never to see Ireland again, that he landed first on Oronsay, but found that Erin was visible from thence, and refused to rest until he had reached Iona. His supposed feelings are recorded in a very ancient poem:—

      ‘My vision o’er the brine I stretch

       From the ample oaken planks;

       Large is the tear of my soft grey eye

       When I look back upon Erin.

       Upon Erin my attention is fixed.’

Columba was the Paul of Celtic Christianity. By him and his disciples a great part of Scotland was evangelised, and it was to him that the British Church looked as a founder when the time came to decide between the relative pretensions of the Celtic and the Norman type of religion. St. Bridget or Bride, who died four years after Columba’s birth, is scarcely less celebrated. She was born near Dundalk, and her chief seat was at Kildare. She was the mother of Irish female monachism, and in popular estimation is not less famous than Patrick, and perhaps more so than Columba.13

      The Irish Church was originally monastic.

      Irish Christianity was at first monastic. A saint obtained a grant of land from a chief. A church was built, and a settlement sprung up round it. The family, as it was called, consisted partly of monks and partly of dependents, and the abbot ruled over all as chief of a pseudo-tribe. Like a lay chiefry the abbacy was elective, and the abbots wielded considerable power. These ecclesiastical clans even made war with each other. Thus, it is recorded that in 763 the family of St. Ciaran of Clonmacnoise fought with the family of St. Columba of Durrow, and that 200 of the Columbides fell. The head of such a confraternity was called coarb, or successor of the founder, and Irish writers sometimes called the Pope ‘coarb of Peter.’ In course of time the coarb of Patrick crystallised into the Archbishop of Armagh, and the coarb of Columba into the Bishop of Derry. Other saints were revered as the founders of other sees. Very often at least the abbot was chosen from among the founder’s kin.

      The early Church was episcopal, but not territorially so.

Episcopal orders were acknowledged from the first, but it was long before the notion of a territorial bishop prevailed. In early days there were many bishops, wanderers sometimes, and at other times retained by the abbot as a necessary appendage to his monastery. The bishop was treated with great respect, but was manifestly inferior to the head of a religious house. St. Patrick was said to have consecrated 350 bishops, founded 700 churches, and ordained 5,000 priests; a mere legend, but perhaps tending