Lord Lieutenant of Ireland

“ Ireland, as well as England and America, was in a state of trouble and commotion. At this time it was overrun by Levellers, White-boys, Oak-boys, and Hearts-of-Steel—factions which were bound together by secret oaths and a mutual detestation of tithes. Nor was the Irish parliament less disorderly. In the month of October a bill was brought into the Irish house of commons for increasing the military establishment in that country, which was recommended by the lord-lieutenant, and although it was carried, it was not till after it had encountered a violent opposition. ”

“ In January 1646 the House of Commons resolved that the Government of Ireland should be vested in a single person of honour, and that there should be a fresh appointment every year. In April Philip Lord Lisle, who as Leicester’s son might be supposed to have some claim, was made Lord Lieutenant accordingly, with power to appoint officers for two regiments of foot and one of horse, and with the command of all troops raised and to be raised for the reduction of Ireland. ”

“ Their presence in the fleet, the existence of the correspondence, and the progress of the revolt itself, will sufficiently account for the apparent vacillations of English policy in Ulster in the last months of 1597. Shortly before Christmas, Ormond, now Lord Lieutenant, accompanied by the Earl of Thomond, attended only by their personal followers, visited Dungannon, and remained three days in conference with O'Neil and O'Donnell. The Irish chiefs reiterated their old demands: freedom of worship, and the retention of the substantial power attached to their ancient rank. ”

“ It might pursue a commercial policy absolutely inconsistent with Imperial interests, and bring Ireland into intimate commercial connection with the enemies of England; and if English party spirit extended to Ireland and ran in opposite directions in the two legislatures, a collision was inevitable. The Lord Lieutenant and Chief Secretary, who administered the [80] government of Ireland, were appointed by a British Ministry representing the dominant British party; the counsels of the Irish Government were framed in a British Cabinet ”

“ May the railroads build more hotels in Ireland!
At Newbridge, a few miles farther, are extensive barracks, a city of red brick, where a large body of Irish troops is quartered. Military life appeals to a great number of Irishmen and some of the crack British regiments are recruited in the Island. The Irishman may justly be proud of his reputation as a fighting man and he never wearies of telling you of the nativity of the Duke of Wellington and of Lord Roberts, the present chief of the British army. ”

“ An English Lord Deputy ruled the "Pale", or portion of Ireland that England held more or less securely, and from that vantage ground made spasmodic war upon the rest of Ireland, and was forever warred on, in large attacks and small, by Irish chieftains.
The Irish were the fighting race now if ever. Without hope of outside assistance, facing a foe ever reinforced from a stronger, richer, more fully organized country, nothing but their stubborn character and their fighting genius kept them in the field. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fifty thousand of them have joined the army, and of the rest many are not of military age, are not physically fit, or are prevented from joining the army by just the same reasons as prevented thousands of men in this country. But these men are all quite capable of home defence. On August 3 in the House of Commons I told the Government that, for the first time in the history of the relations between England and Ireland, Ireland could be left safely to the defence of her own sons, and I appealed to the Government to allow the Irish to undertake that duty. ”

“ They are nearly all Irishmen, so it is not a foreign army, but they are seldom assigned to the districts where they were born and reared; and the men who command them from Dublin Castle are English army officers, who are in no way responsible to the public. All, in fact, that Ireland has to do with the Royal Irish Constabulary is to foot the bills. ”

“ He says, "The Irish, whom we have seen such good soldiers in France and Spain, have always fought poorly at home"! They had not fought poorly at home. It took four hundred years of English effort to complete, merely on its face, the conquest of Ireland, and all of that long sweep of the sword of Time was a time of battle. The Irish were fought with every appliance of war, backed by the riches of a prospering, strongly organized country, and impelled persistently by the greed of land and love of mastery ”

“ In 1540 he was appointed lord deputy of Ireland. His first task was to repress disorder, and he at once proceeded with severity against the Kavanaghs, permitting them, however, to retain their lands, on their accepting feudal tenure on the English model. By a similar policy he exacted obedience from the O'Mores, the O'Tooles and the O'Conors in Leix and Offaly; and having conciliated the O'Briens in the west and the earl of Desmond in the south, the lord deputy carried an act in the Irish parliament in Dublin conferring the title of king of Ireland on Henry VIII. and his heirs. ”

“ There were two other infantry regiments, known as Luttrel's and Dorrington's—and a regiment of Irish marines, of which the Grand Prior, Fitzjames, was colonel. During the latter years of Louis XIV., there could not have been less, at any one time, than from 20,000 to 30,000 Irish in his armies, and during the succeeding century, authentic documents exist to prove that 450,000 natives of Ireland died in the military service of France. ”

“ The king had four thousand men-at-arms at his back, of whom no less than four hundred were knights. In addition his ships contained vast stores of provisions, a variety of war devices never before seen in Ireland, artizans for building bridges and making roads--a whole war train, in short. Such a display of force was felt to be irresistible. The chieftains one after the other came in and made their submission. Dermot McCarthy, lord of Desmond and Cork, was the first to do homage, followed by Donald O'Brien, Prince of Thomond ”

“ The record so far brings Ireland great honour. And this excites no jealousy in the Army—for it is from the other corps in the Army itself comes the most generous testimony to the work of the Irish soldiers and the most comrade-like regret where it is thought there has been lack of recognition. What stands out is that on every front, and whether new levies or regulars, the work of the Irish troops has not only been of great merit in every instance, but of exceptional merit, and they have to their credit some of the most splendid and astonishing achievements. ”

“ The soldiers in the army knew that of all the Irish prisoners of '66 and '67, there were none who risked more or who would have been more valuable than a trained dragoon, the indispensable artilleryman, and the steady linesman. To see their [Pg 205] comrades forgotten and left to rot in their dungeons was enough to make the Irishmen of the army abjure their nationality and accept the English dominion in Ireland.
This has been averted by the rescue. The soldiers in the English army will read the news with a deeper thrill than any other Irishmen. It has a larger meaning to them than to others. ”

“ It is these soldiers of ours, with their astonishing courage and their beautiful faith, with their natural military genius, with their tenderness as well as strength; carrying with them their green flags and their Irish war-pipes; advancing to the charge, their fearless officers at their head, and followed by their beloved chaplains as great-hearted as themselves; bringing with them a quality all their own to the sordid modern battlefield; exhibiting the character of the Irishman at its noblest and greatest—it is these soldiers of ours to whose keeping the Cause of Ireland has passed to-day. ”

“ Ireland's highest material interests were at stake in the war. After referring to the high proportion of Irishmen in the Army from the Peninsular War onwards he said that Ireland wanted an Irish Army Corps, and at the same time the Irish National Volunteers would be kept intact, and would be an inexhaustible source of strength to the new Army Corps and Army. Speaking for an overwhelming majority of the Nationalists, he said to the Prime Minister and Great Britain: "You have kept faith with Ireland; Ireland will keep faith with you." ”

“ Back from the continent sails the nephew of the great O'Neill, who had left Ireland a little boy in the flight of the Earls, and the dispossessed clansmen, robbed of all but their strength of body and heart, gathered to the summons of Owen Roe.
Again it was the same issue: the courage and hardihood of the Irishman to set against the superior arms, equipment, and wealth of a united Britain. Irish valor won the battle; a great state organization won the campaign. England and Scotland combined to lay low a resurgent Ireland ”

“ For the first time since the surrender of Limerick there was an armed force in Ireland able and willing to support a national cause. Suddenly, almost in the twinkling of an eye, Ireland found herself for the first time for generations in the possession of a well-armed, well-disciplined, and well-generalled military force. ”

“ If they were seldom obeyed, the divisions in the enemies' camps prevented any chance of their being overthrown. Thus the Irish went on living a rude, turbulent life of perpetual purposeless war and bloodshed. Ireland was a wilder, larger, more remote Welsh march, and the resemblance was heightened by the fact that many of the Anglo-Norman principalities were in the hands of great English or marcher families, and that the Irish foot-soldier played only a less important part than the Welsh archer and pikeman among the light-armed soldiers of the English crown. ”

“ The British Government saw that either temporising or an appeal to force would occasion the final loss of Ireland: 150,000 independent soldiers, well armed, well clothed, and well disciplined, were not to be coped with,—and England yielded. [27] Thus the volunteers kept their oaths: they redeemed their pledge, and did not lay down their arms until the independence of Ireland had been pronounced from the throne, and the distinctness of the Irish nation promulgated in the government gazette of London. ”

“ It drained the national resources—it disgusted the national understanding—it made Ireland disunited, and England at once contemptuous of Irish feeling, and suspicious of Irish loyalty. The safety of the empire obviously rendered it impossible to leave in its rear a nation which might throw itself, at a moment’s notice, into the arms of France, Spain, or America—which had actually solicited a French army, and which still carried on transactions amounting to treason at home, and alliance abroad. Thus, the regenerators of Ireland, instead of raising her to a republic, sank her into a province. ”

“ At this moment, in a period of the most profound peace, there are twenty-five thousand of the best disciplined and best appointed troops in the world in Ireland, with bayonets fixed, presented arms, and in the attitude of present war: nor is there a man too much—nor would Ireland be tenable without them. When it was necessary last year (or thought necessary) to put down the children of reform, we were forced to make a new levy of troops in this country; not a man could be spared from Ireland. ”

“ Nothing like such a chance has ever offered itself in Irish history before. Everything goes to show that this is our opportunity. England is weaker than she has been for centuries, is clinging desperately to the last tatters of her old prestige. She hasn’t a single statesman capable of thinking or acting vigorously. Her Parliament is the laughingstock of Europe. Her Irish policy may be summed up in four words—intrigue with the Vatican. In Ireland the power of the faithful garrison is gone. ”

“ Depute your worthiest citizens to approach the throne, and before that throne let the will of the Irish people be uttered with dignity and decision. If nothing comes of this," he added, "if the constitution opens to us no path to freedom, if the Union be maintained in spite of, the will of the Irish people, if the government of Ireland insist on being a government of dragoons and bombadiers, of detectives and light infantry, then," he exclaimed in the midst of tumultuous cheering, "up with the barricades, and invoke the God of Battles!" ”

“ For the present, then, we bid him and his noble comrades adieu; hoping the next time we shall have occasion to refer to them, the power of England may be broken on this continent, and the green flag of old Ireland floating over the Castle of Dublin. Our hopes of success were never brighter than they appear to be at this, the moment of our writing. We have an immense army in preparation for the field, and a noble and self-sacrificing Senate and band of Organizers that may well command his confidence and that of every Irish Nationalist in the world. ”

“ It can be truly said that these young Irishmen gave their lives for civilisation and the freedom of Nationalities. But the immediate inspiration of their bravery was love of Ireland, and the resolve which sprang from it, that there should be no occasion for a word to be spoken in prejudice of the fighting qualities of the race, of the valour which Irish regiments have displayed on the battlefield at all times and in every clime. ”