The History of Ireland: 17th Century. Bagwell Richard

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      CHAPTER V

       THE SETTLEMENT OF ULSTER

       Table of Contents

      Ulster before the settlement.

The tribal system known to the writers of what are called the Brehon laws survived much longer in Ulster than elsewhere. In the other three provinces the Anglo-Norman invaders may not have made a complete conquest, but they had military occupation and many of their leaders took the position of Irish chiefs when the weakening power of the Crown made it impossible to maintain themselves otherwise. Yet they never forgot their origin, and were ready enough to acquiesce when the Tudor sovereigns reasserted their authority. But there were no Butlers, Fitzgeralds, or Barries in Ulster, while the Burkes withdrew into Connaught and assumed Irish names. For a long time the native clans were left almost to their own devices. Con Bacagh O’Neill, when he accepted the earldom of Tyrone in 1543 and went to England to be invested, took a long step towards a new state of things. Through ignorance or inadvertence the remainder was given to Matthew Ferdoragh, who was perhaps not an O’Neill at all. Shane O’Neill, the eldest son of undoubted legitimacy, kept the leadership of his clan, while insisting in dealing with the government that he was Con’s lawful heir. Even Shane admitted that Queen Elizabeth was his sovereign. When the original limitation of the peerage took practical effect, and Hugh O’Neill became Earl of Tyrone, the feudal honour was most useful on one side while the tribal chiefry was still fully maintained on the other. In two cases, decided by the Irish judges in 1605 and 1608 respectively, gavelkind or inheritance by division among all males was abolished as to lands not forming part of the chief’s demesne, and Tanistry as to the land of the elective chief. This purely judge-made law was followed in the settlement of Ulster with far too little regard to the actual state of things there.[55]

      The tribal system.

      Backward state of the natives.

Without going into the technicalities of Celtic tenure it may be assumed for historical purposes that the Ulster Irish consisted of the free tribesmen who had a share in the ownership of the soil and the mixed multitude of broken men who were not only tolerated but welcomed by the great chiefs, but who were not joint proprietors though they might till the land of others. A large part of the inferior class consisted of the nomad herdsmen called creaghts, who were an abomination to the English. There was always much more land than could be cultivated in a civilised way, and the cattle wandered about, their drivers living in huts and sheds till the grass was eaten down, and, then removing to a similar shelter in another place. One main object was to turn these nomads into stationary husbandmen, and it was not at all easy to do. Still more troublesome were the ‘swordsmen’—that is, the men of free blood whose business had always been fighting and who would never work. They formed the retinue of Tyrone and the rest, and when the chiefs were gone they had nothing to do but to plunder or to live at the expense of their more industrious but less noble neighbours. ‘Many natives,’ says Chichester, ‘have answered that it is hard for them to alter their cause of living by herds of cattle and creaghting; and as to building castles or strong bawns it is for them impossible. None of them (the Neales and such principal names excepted) affect above a ballybetoe, and most of them will be content with two or three balliboes; and for the others, he knows whole counties will not content the meanest of them, albeit they have but now their mantle and a sword.’ Some of these men owned land with or without such title as the law acknowledged. The radical mistake of the English lawyers was in ignoring the primary fact that land belonged to the tribe and not to the individual. It is true that the idea of private property was extending among the Irish, and that the hereditary principle tended to become stronger, but the state of affairs was at best transitional, СКАЧАТЬ