High King of Ireland

“ The High-kingship being thus thrown open, as it were, to any Irish chief sufficiently powerful to wrest it from the others, became an object of constant dispute and warfare, the O'Neills kings of Ulster, the O'Conors of Connacht, the O'Briens of Munster, and the princes of Leinster, all contended for it, so that from the death of Malachy, Brian Boru's successor, there was scarcely a single High-king who was not, as the Irish annalists call it, "a king with opposition." ”

“ Those old, barbaric Irish kings and chieftains must have been lovers of the beautiful, for they almost invariably fixed their strongholds not only in the fairest parts, but in places commanding the fairest prospects. There are hardly two other places in Ireland the surroundings of which are more beautiful than those of Tara and Uisneach, or from which fairer prospects are to be seen. They were, from far-back antiquity, the seats of those by whom the country was supposed to be ruled, for it often happened that he who was styled chief king had but little control over his vassals. ”

“ Well, one might say, it had been for Ireland if she had developed that assimilating power which made her successive conquerors in process of time the feeders of her greatness, but the Irish would not and could not. Instead, they developed the pride of race that no momentary defeat could down. They became inured to battle and dreamt of battle when the peace of an hour was given them. When the four kings of Ireland were feasted in Dublin by King Richard II. of England, an English chronicler remarked, "Never were men of ruder manners" ”

“ An Irish body, on Irish soil, no matter what its constitution, could not remain aloof from the needs, and blind to the facts, of Ireland, like strangers in another land. The good-will of the people abounded; even the poorer farmers showed in a better dress, in cleanliness, in self-respect, how they had been stirred by the dream of freedom, the hope of a country. The connection with England, the dependence on the king, was fully accepted, and Ireland prepared to tax herself out of all proportion to her wealth for imperial purposes. ”

“ The kingdom of Ireland has been, is, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, as being inseparably united and annexed thereunto; and the King, with the consent of the Lords and Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament, hath power to make laws of sufficient force to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland. ”

“ In fact all the Irish monarchs may be best described not as Kings of Ireland, but Kings of the Irish. They had no power to alienate, or transfer, the tribe lands from the people, and held them only in trust for their voluntary subjects. Modern Irish landlordism is founded on the feudal, not the tribal, system. Hence its unfitness to satisfy a people in whom lingers the heredity of the ancient Celtic custom. King Brian, the most absolute of all the Irish rulers, is described by some annalists as “Emperor of the Irish.” ”

“ The position of an Irish chieftain--with his practically limitless powers of life and death, his wild retinue of retainers whose only law was the will of their chief--offered an irresistible temptation to men of their type, and had many more charms than the narrow and uninteresting rôle of liegeman to a king whom they never saw, and the obeying of whose behests brought them harm rather than good. England had shown only too plainly that she had no power to protect her Irish colonists, of what use therefore, it was asked, for them to call themselves any longer English? ”

“ Hundreds of years ago, when Ireland was all but a terra ignota to the rest of the world—when the natives of Connaught passed their rude lives little better than did the beasts of the field—when to be an Irish king was synonymous with every species of dissension and turbulence, there was yet one bright spot amidst the gloominess of those uncivilised times. ”

“ They do not want another nation, and an unfriendly one, to tell the world what Ireland and its people are. The ear of the world has been held by England with regard to Ireland, particularly in this country, since the foundation of it. Very few men in America who were not Irish have realized that the Irish question is, as I have said, more largely material than sentimental. In 1696, the King of England sent to Ireland a commission of five men to examine the country and report to the king and council as to the best means of holding the Irish in subjection. ”

“ A prince who was heir presumptive to the throne as Viceroy, and who, when he ascended the throne, should be crowned King of Ireland, as well as King of Great Britain, crowned in his own Irish palace, and on the Lia Fail or stone of destiny, preserved at Westminster, would save many a million to the British exchequer, for it would be no longer necessary to support a large army of occupation to keep the country. ”

“ No people admittedly are more intensely loyal by nature than the native Irish. By their failings no less than their virtues they are extraordinarily susceptible to a personal influence, and that devotion which they so often showed towards their own chiefs might with very little trouble have been awakened in [pg 114] favour of a king. It is one of the most deplorable of the many deplorable facts which stud the history of Ireland that no opening for the growth of such sentiment was ever once presented--certainly not in such a form that it would have been humanly possible for it to be embraced. ”

“ He is the world’s lawful Sovereign and rightful Lord. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.” But God is not King de facto. His kingship is not effective. His people do not obey. There are large sections of the world, whole departments of human activity, where His rule is not recognised. Ireland is part of the Queen’s dominions; but there have been times when the Queen could scarcely be said to reign in Ireland. ”

“ Not a single discordant note was struck throughout the series of public and private ceremonies performed by the king and queen, and well might Nationalists fear that the spectacle of Irish men and women outdoing the welcome accorded to the king and queen at their Coronation would give to all the world the impression that Ireland's dislike of England was purely a paper one. ”

“ The political aspect of affairs in Ireland is ever and ever improved by the periodic and frequent visits of royalty. These ought to do much good, for the idea should be fostered that the people of Ireland have the same king as Britain across the Channel. Some there be, in both islands, who would have this forgotten, and many happy ideas for the encouragement of Irish affairs have been strangled by hands both from within and without the green isle. ”

“ The Anglo-Irish, who formed the majority of the Supreme Council, connected by blood and language with England, had entered into the war, purely as one of religious liberty. Nationally, they had, apart from the civil disabilities imposed on religious grounds, no antipathy, no interest, hostile to the general body of English loyalists, represented in Ireland by the King's lieutenant, Ormond. On his side, that nobleman gave all his thoughts to, and governed all his actions by the exigencies of the royal cause, throughout the three Kingdoms. ”

“ The last chief king of Ireland of the ancient line was the Maelsechlainn whom Brian had for a time dispossessed, and when he died in 1022 no king of Tara was ever after able to enforce even the slight general control exercised in former times, and the king James, who united the rule of England and Scotland, was the next real king of the whole of Ireland. ”

“ Yet, from the hour of that union of the houses of York and Lancaster, it needed no extraordinary wisdom to foresee that the exemption of the Anglo-Irish nobles from the supremacy of their nominal King must come to an end, and the freedom of the old Irish from any formidable external danger must also close. The union of the Roses, so full of the promise of peace for England, was to form the date of a new era in her relations with Ireland. ”

“ King Edward and Queen Alexandra entered Ireland to the accompaniment of ringing cheers, the people being independent of Crown jewels or any other baubles to symbolize their loyalty. The Irish love a sportsman, and if he should happen to be a king as well they love him all the better for that. The magnetic personality of Edward VII. and the infectious charm of Queen Alexandra triumphed in Ireland, and everybody forgot for the time being that there was a Home Rule Government in power, and that a Liberal peer was their Majesties' host. ”

“ From time immemorial two adverse parties have always existed among the Catholics of Ireland. The first are called the 'old Irish.' They are most numerous in Ulster, where they seem to have their head-quarters; for even the Earl of Tyrone placed himself at their head, and maintained a protracted war against Elizabeth. The second may be called the 'old English,'—a race introduced into Ireland in the reign of Henry II., the fifth king in succession from William the Conqueror; so called to distinguish them from the 'new English,' who have come into the kingdom along with the modern heresy. ”

“ The object of the duke and duchess was, of course, to gain adherents in Ireland for the coming conflict between the rival claimants to the throne of England. For hundreds of years Ireland had been looked upon as a source of income to the Kings of England; the viceroyalty was a place of profit, and most of the profits went into the king's treasury. ”

“ If this often-told anecdote is of any historical value, it only shows the ignorance of the representatives of France in yielding their pretensions on so poor a quibble. Neither Henry V., nor any other English sovereign before him, had laid claim to the title of "Monarch of Ireland." The indolence or ignorance of modern writers has led them, it is true, to adopt the whole series of the Plantagenet Kings as sovereigns of Ireland—to set up in history a dynasty which never existed for us; to leave out of their accounts of a monarchical people all question of their crown ”

“ During the centuries of English occupation several great Anglo-Irish families had arisen, and, fattening upon their spoils, gradually came to occupy positions more powerful than the representatives of the king. The heads of the Desmonds, the Geraldines, the De Burghs, and {31} others, resented the intrusion of English warriors sent to Dublin to refill their treasure chests. They wished to rule Ireland, and declined to bow the knee to impecunious adventurers invested with royal powers by the King of England. ”

“ We see here the full contrast between the ideal of kingship in Ireland and that which grew up among the Norman conquerors of the Saxons. The Irish king was always in theory and often in fact a real representative, duly elected by the free suffrage of his tribesmen; he was not owner of the tribal land, as the duke of the Normans was; he was rather the leader of the tribe, chosen to guard their common possessions. The communal system of Ireland stands here face to face with the feudal system of the Normans. ”

“ But to any one really acquainted with Irish character, to dream of such institutions for ages to come seems utterly vain. All the qualities which go to make a republican, in the true sense of the term, are wanting in the Irish nature; and, on the other hand, there is a superabundance of all the opposite qualities which go to make a loyal subject of a king,—not too despotic, but still a strong-handed, visible, audible, tangible ruler of men. ”

“ Yet, in truth, he was not their king;—not the ideal king of the Irish race. That should be a native king; one infusing nationality through every hamlet in the land, and defending its liberties against a world in arms! Six hundred years had failed to eradicate the hope of such a king from the hearts of every successive generation, and every outrage of the invader only rendered it the more indelible. The place, too, was historic. Every hill and valley, from Drogheda to Clonard, in rath and ruin, bore ample testimony of their aspiration for native rule. ”

“ It was the first occasion a King of England was seen in Ireland for eighty-two years, and the people marked the honour by a display of enthusiasm unequalled in the history of the country. The king and queen were greatly touched by the loyalty of the Irish, and under the capable direction of Lord and Lady Dudley the series of festivities went with a vim that gratified the distinguished visitors and added fresh laurels to those already earned by the chatelaine of the Viceregal Lodge and Dublin Castle. ”

“ The Irish Monarchy or Pentarchy.
There was a monarch of all Ireland, who had Meath—the Middle—as his official appanage, and who reigned originally at Tara. There were provincial kings of Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught. A primacy was given to the race of Niall, who lived presumably in the fourth and fifth centuries, and from whom the O’Neills, O’Donnells, and others trace their descent. The theory is thought to have been pretty closely adhered to until the desertion of Tara in the sixth century of our era. After that the over-king lived in his own territory ”

“ Any increase in Irish wealth necessitated an increase in the King's hereditary revenue, and therefore rendered him more independent of the English legislature. It was all this which made England nervously anxious to restrict Irish resources in all those directions which might even indirectly interfere with the growth of English power.
The religion of the mass of the Irish people naturally complicated matters still further and gave England fresh political reasons for interfering in Ireland. ”