Part 24 (1/2)

But the great fact of the birth of a nation, in the midst of those throes of anguish, will lessen their atrocity in the mind of the reader, and explain to some extent the wonderful designs of Providence.

From an English state paper, published by M. Haverty, we learn that, in 1515, a few years before the revolt of Luther, the island was divided into more than sixty separate states, or ”regions,” ”some as big as a s.h.i.+re, some more, some less.”

Had it not been for this division and the constant feuds it engendered, in the north between the O'Neills and O'Donnells, in the south between the Geraldines (Desmonds and Kildares) and the Butlers (Ormonds), the authority of the English king would have been easily shaken off. The policy so constantly adopted by England in after-times--a policy well expressed by the Latin adage, Divide et impera--preserved the English power in Ireland, and finally brought the island into outward subjection at least, to Great Britain--a subjection which the Irish conscience and the Irish voice and Irish arms yet did not cease to protest against and deny. But the nation was divided, and it required some great and general calamity to unite them together and make of them one people.

That, even spite of those divisions, they were at the time on the point of driving the English out of the island, we need no better proofs than the words of the English themselves. The Archbishop of Dublin, John Allen, the creature of Wolsey, who was employed by the crafty cardinal to begin the work of the spoliation of convents in the island, and oppose the great Earl of Kildare, dispatched his relative, the secretary of the Dublin Council, to England, to report that ”the English laws, manners, and language in Ireland were confined within the narrow compa.s.s of twenty miles;” and that, unless the laws were duly enforced, ”the little place,” as the Pale was called, ”would be reduced to the same condition as the remainder of the kingdom;” that is to say, the Pale itself, which had been brought to such insignificant limits, would belong exclusively to the Irish.

It was while affairs were at this pa.s.s that the revolt of ”silken Thomas” excited the wrath of Henry VIII., and brought about the destruction of almost the whole Kildare family.

It was about this time, also, that Wolsey fell, and Cromwell, having replaced him as Chancellor of England, with Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, the Reformation began in England with the divorce of the king, who shortly after a.s.sumed supremacy in spirituals as a prerogative of the crown, and made Parliament -- in those days himself--supreme law-giver in Church and state.

Cromwell, known in history as the creature and friend of Cranmer, like his protector a secret pervert to the Protestant doctrines of Germany, and the first arch-plotter for the destruction of Catholicity in the British Isles, undertook to save the English power in Ireland by forcing on that country the supremacy of the king in religious matters, knowing well that such a step would drive the Irish into resistance, but believing that he could easily subdue them and make the island English.

Having been appointed, not only Chancellor of England, but also king's vicar-general in temporals and spirituals, Cromwell inquired of his English agents in Ireland the best means of attaining his object--the subjection of the country. Their report is preserved among the state papers, and some of their suggestions deserve our attentive consideration. If Henry VIII.

had consented to follow their advice, he would have himself inaugurated the b.l.o.o.d.y policy so well carried out long after by another Cromwell, the celebrated ”Protector.”

The report sets forth that the most efficient mode of proceeding was to exterminate the people; but Henry thought it sufficient to gain the n.o.bility over--the people being beneath his notice.

The agents of the vicar-general were right in their atrocious proposal. They knew the Irish nation well, and that the only way to separate Ireland from the See of Peter was to make the country a desert.

Their means of bringing about the destruction of the people was starvation. The corn was to be destroyed systematically, and the cattle killed or driven away. Their operations, it is true, were limited to the borders of the Pale. The gentle Spenser, at a later period, proposed to extend them to all Munster, and it was a special glory reserved for the ”Protector” to carry out this policy through almost the whole of the island.

”The very living of the Irishry,” says the report, ”doth clearly consist in two things: take away the same from them, and they are pa.s.sed for ever to recover, or yet to annoy any subject Ireland. Take first from them their corn, and as much as cannot be husbanded, and had into the hands of such as shall dwell and inhabit in their lands, to burn and destroy the same, so as the Irishry shall not live thereupon; and then to have their cattle and beasts, which shall be most hardest to come by, and yet, with guides and policy, they may be oft had and taken.”

The report goes on to point out, most elaborately and ingeniously, every artifice and plan for carrying this policy into effect. But here we have, condensed, as it were, in a nutsh.e.l.l, and coolly and carefully set forth, the system which was adopted later on, and almost crowned with a fiendish success.

But the moment for the execution of this barbarous scheme had not yet come, and we find no positive results following immediately.

This project, complete as it was, was far from being the only one proposed at that time for ”rooting out the Irish” from Ireland. Mr. Prendergast, in his ”Introduction to the Cromwellian Settlement,” says:

”The Irish were never deceived as to the purport of the English, and, though the Pale had not been extended for two hundred and forty years, their firm persuasion in the reign of Henry VIII.

was, that the original design was not abandoned. 'Irishmen are of opinion among themselves,' said Justice Cusack to the king, 'that Englishmen will one day banish them from their lands forever.'”

In fact, project after project was then proposed for clearing Ireland of Irish to the Shannon. Some went so far as already to contemplate their utter extirpation; but ”there was no precedent for it found in the chronicles of the conquest. Add to this the difficulty of finding people to reinhabit it if suddenly unpeopled.

”The chiefs and gentlemen of the Irish only were to be driven from their properties,” according to some of those projects, ”and they only were to be driven into exile, while their lands should be given to Englishmen.”

”The king, however, seems to have been satisfied with confiscating the estates of the Earl of Kildare and of his family. Fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y though he was, there was something lion-like in his nature; notwithstanding all those promptings, he left to the Irish and old English their possessions, and seemed even anxious to secure them, but failed to do so for want of time.”

We think Mr. Prendergast's judgment of Henry VIII. too favorable.

Generosity did not prompt him to spare the people and the n.o.bles, with the exception of the Kildares. We believe that he never contemplated the extirpation of the people, because such a political element could not enter into his mind. As for the n.o.bles, he wished to gain them over, because of the long wars he foresaw necessary to bring about their utter extinction or exile.

He adopted, accordingly, a plan of his own, holding firm to his design of having his new t.i.tle of ”Head of the Church”

acknowledged in Ireland as well as in England.

Cromwell commenced his work by two measures which had met with perfect success in the latter country, but which were destined to fire the sister isle from end to end, and make ”the people,”

in course of time, really one. These measures were acts of Parliament: 1. Establis.h.i.+ng 'the king's spiritual supremacy; 2.

Suppressing, at once, all the monasteries existing in the country, and giving their property to the n.o.bles who were willing to apostatize.

The necessity of convening Parliament resulted from the failure of the first attempt, already made, to establish the king's supremacy. Browne, the successor of Allen in the See of Dublin, a rank Lutheran at heart, had been commissioned by the king and by Cranmer, his consecrator, to establish the new doctrine at once. His want of success, is thoroughly explained in a letter to Cromwell, which is still preserved, and which remains one of the proudest monuments of the steadfastness of the Irish in their religion.

He complains that not only the clergy, but the ”common people,”