William Francis Thomas Butler

“ It is sufficient to say that over fiftygreat proprietors—all English and Protestant—were to be created, each of whom was within a given time to settle a specified number of English families, some as freeholders, some by lesser tenures, on his properties. Irish tenants, if allowed at all, were to be moved from the wilder and more inaccessible lands, and to be settled in the open country, where they would be less able to give trouble. ”

“ Common to the whole island was an almost complete divorce between occupancy of the land and the legal ownership of it. The whole of Ireland had been parcelled out among the invaders, and the claims of their descendants still held good in law. No length of occupation could give a valid title to an Irishman to any lands ever held by an Englishman. Even where there had never been effective occupation it would seem doubtful, whether any Irishman could claim a legal estate.
And in the districts in the hands of the colonists there was a great confusion as to title. ”

“ Henry at once grasped the necessity of a settlement of the land question. As heir to the vast Mortimer inheritance he was already owner of Ulster, Connaught, Leix, and other lands. Here he could give legal titles to the actual occupiers, whether Irish or Anglo-Irish. But over the rest of the island any policy of settlement and reconciliation was hampered by claims of the settlers to lands actually held by the Irish. ”

“ But the great Irish chiefs had skilled lawyers at their command; they knew that their claims might be made to appear plausible in an English court; they had rendered very great services to the Crown; above all, since a verdict for them would undoubtedly have been to the immediate advantage of the clansmen in the lands concerned, they might hope for a favourable verdict if the case was submitted to a Cork or Kerry jury. ”

“ As to the title of the Crown to the lands, Offaly had been claimed with more or less of legal right by the Earls of Kildare, and by their attainder their rights were vested in the Crown. Leix as part of the Mortimer inheritance already was Crown property. The fact that the O'Conors had never been dispossessed of their lands and that the O'Mores had recovered theirs two centuries before was not allowed by the authorities to have any weight, since as alien enemies the Irish had no rights valid according to English law. ”

“ The rebellion and forfeiture of the house of Kildare, and the famous statute of Absentees, greatly simplified this difficulty as regards Leinster and Munster, and left Henry free to deal directly with the Irish clans. [12] It has often been said that what he did amounted in reality to a concealed system of confiscation. The lands belonging to the clan were to be handed over to the chief, and in case of his rebellion would then be seized and divided among English settlers. ”

“ On the demesne lands of the lord lived a mass of cultivators, mostly of Irish origin, all tenants at will, or at best holding by Irish custom, which would not be recognised by English law. Many of these were still for all practical purposes serfs, and looked on as such both by Irish and English; for villeinage lasted in Ireland long after it had disappeared in England, and was finally only abolished by Chichester in 1604—5. Others were in a better position, the descendants of the Betagii of the earlier inquisitions. ”

“ In each manor the chief lord had a castle, the head of the manor, and a certain extent of land in demesne, worked by servile or semi-servile labour, while other portions were held by free tenants, either by Knight's service, or for fixed rents with various defined obligations towards the lord. [35]
In the sixteenth century this state of things persisted in outline, although much overgrown and disguised by Irish usages, and by innovations which had grown out of the lawless state of the country. ”

“ All who could make reasonable proof of being freeholders were secured in their property, paying to the Crown or to the Undertakers whatever fixed rents and services they had paid to the Earl, and compounding at a certain sum for all the uncertain payments which did not clearly rest on mere extortion. ”

“ Inter-marriages had become fairly frequent. A very large number of the settlers had adopted Irish laws and manners, and ruled their lands after the fashion of the Celtic chiefs. Nearly all of them had learned the Irish tongue, having in many cases completely abandoned the French or English of their forefathers.
Here and there, too, we find Irish landholders in the districts occupied by the settlers. There were such under the Butlers in south and mid Tipperary, under the Desmonds in Limerick, under the Barrys in Cork. ”

“ We constantly read statements to the effect that the vast estates of the Earl of Desmond and his adherents, covering half of three counties, and amounting to half a million acres, were confiscated and divided among English "planters." As a matter of fact the three counties of Cork, Kerry, and Limerick have an area of over 3,600,000 acres, and of this extent at the outside 400,000 English acres were finally confiscated. ”

“ With the reign of Mary we come to the first actual case of confiscation accompanied by the dispossession of the occupants of the land, since the days of the invasion. [15]
The territories of Leix and Offaly lay near to the borders of the Pale, touching for a considerable stretch the lands lately subject to the Earl of Kildare. Leix, the south-eastern portion of the modern Queen's County, had been occupied, in part at least, in the early days of the conquest. In the division of the great Marshall inheritance it had come to the Mortimers. ”

“ The result was that, instead of the estimated 577,000 acres, only 202,000 were confiscated and given to the Undertakers. [44] So far, therefore, was the project of a great English colonisation defeated. Besides, those "Undertakers" who finally secured lands did not fulfil the conditions laid down for them; far fewer English families were brought over than had been arranged for, and Irish tenants were brought in to fill the gaps. ”

“ By the attainder of O'Rourke only his own lands came to the Crown, and the other great lords of Connaueht, O'Kelly and others are in like case. "Not one acre of land (in Leitrim) but is ownered properly by one or other, and each man knows what belongs to himself." {Ibid., p. 469) . ↑ It was pretty certain that once MacCarthy Mór was in possession of the lands there would be no plantation of English settlers, and therefore no eviction of the clansmen. ”

“ The MacCarthys, as hereditary enemies of the house of Desmond, had supported the Crown against the Earl. But the fact that MacCarthy Mor stood by the Crown was enough to throw some of the Irish clans who were nominally subject to him on the side of the Earl. So we find among the list of those attainted, MacCarthy lord of Sliocht Owen Mor of Coshmaing, O'Donoghue Mór of Ross, some minor MacCarthy chiefs in Bere and Bantry, and O'Mahony of Kinelmeaky in Cork. [48]
The attainder of these chiefs opens a new era in the history of confiscation in Ireland. ”

“ Coshmaing, Eóghanacht, and Clan Donnell Roe had, however, actually been set out to Valentine Browne and his son Nicholas who were in possession. [52] They were hard to move, and MacCarthy was an improvident drunkard without any legitimate male children. Accordingly a compromise was arrived at. In consideration of a sum of less than £600 the lands in question were mortgaged to the Brownes, and the latter got a Crown grant securing the lands to them on the death of the Earl without heirs. ”

“ No doubt the servile classes did rise in position, or, what was much the same, saw those who had been their superiors depressed to their own level. [6] But to the free clansmen, and above all to the leading families, the new state of affairs must have been intolerable. ”

“ Earl Hugh O'Neill claimed that the grant to Con O'Neill made him landlord of all Tir Owen (see Cal. St. Papers, 1606, p. 210) . O'Shaughnessy in Cromwell's time appears as owner of the whole clan territory. ↑ Of course when, in the fourteenth century the Irish recovered lands from the settlers they slew or expelled the foreign occupants. This was the case notably in north Tipperary, in Leix, and in most of Carlow also. This of course from the settlers' point of view was "confiscation." ”

“ Cal., 1573. ↑ Sir Peter seems to have maintained his claims to the end; but he would appear to have been ready to be satisfied with a head rent from the Anglo-Norman lords and Irish chiefs who were in actual possession of the lands he claimed.
In 1603 Thomas Wadding writes to Sir George Carew on Sir Peter's title in terms that suggest that he hoped Sir George would prosecute the claim. Car. Cal. ↑ Dr. Bonn puts it that 577,000 acres wore held at first to have fallen to the Crown, and that of these finally only 200,000 acres were confiscated. ”