lieutenant, in order to preserve or defend them against the Irish rebels, or they should be confiscated and conferred upon others.

20. Whilst the duke of Clarence was Lord-lieutenant, the famous statute of Kilkenny was passed, which Sir J. Davies (Disc. p. 125) observes, was made only for the degenerate English, and did not extend to the Irish; admitting that no provision was made thereby for the mere Irish. The substance of that singular statute is offered as a specimen of the ferocious arrogance with which the English then treated the Irish. It was enacted, that intermarriages with the natives, or any connection with them as fosterers, or in the way of gossipred, should be punished as high treason; that the use of their name, language, apparel, or customs, should be punished with the forfeiture of lands and tenements; that to submit to be governed by the Brehon laws was treason; that the English should not make war upon the natives without the permission and authority of government; that the English should not permit the Irish to graze upon their lands; that they should not admit them to any benefice or religious privilege, or even entertain their bards; that to compel English subjects to pay or maintain soldiers was felony (this respected the oppressive imposition of coigne and livery); that traitors and felons should not be protected by flying to sanctuaries, which, by affording assylumns to criminals, had been found very detrimental to the public tranquility. It was likewise enacted, that wardens should be appointed to estimate the men and armour which each of the king's vassals was obliged to provide for military service.

21. As the Irish rebels continued to carry war and devastation through the land, notwithstanding all former ordinances and writs for its defence, the king, in the forty-second year of his reign, issued fresh ordinances to his chief officers in Ireland, commanding them to summon a parliament, and communicate the ordinances to them, to supply any defects that should appear therein, which were to be certified to him, together with the quantity and real value of the lands which residents in England held in Ireland, and the number of men they ought to array for her defence.

22. In the forty-sixth year of this reign the barons of the exchequer in Ireland issued a process to levy escuage from the king's subjects, as well for the lands which the Irish HIST. IREL. VOL. I.

7

rebels had seized and taken from them, as for those which they held; whereupon the king, at the petition of the parties aggrieved, issued a writ for their relief. He also issued another singular writ, upon the complaint of his Irish subjects, to inquire into and rectify some new and perpetual customs and imposts, fraudulently pretended to have been granted and imposed by an Irish parliament upon sundry mercantile commodities, by the king's lieutenant, Sir William Windsor, who, with a very considerable minority against the negative votes of the majority, had procured such grant to be entered as passed by the majority.

23. Edward, to the very close of his reign, uniformly manifested his anxiety to do justice to his Irish subjects. In the fiftieth year of his reign the commonalty of the several counties, cities, and boroughs in Ireland elected persons to repair to the king's council as informers or commissioners, to treat with them about the affairs of Ireland; on whose behalf the king issued new writs to his chief justice and chancellor there, to levy the reasonable expenses of their journey to England, of their stay there, and return thence to their homes. In the true spirit of redress and conciliation, he gave to the chief governor, the earl of Ormond, very special powers to receive all rebels, as well Irish as English, into the king's faith and peace, to grant them pardons, general and special, to receive fines and ransoms from them for all crimes and offences; and to replace corrupt or insufficient officers with able and honest men, according to the advice of his council there: and by another patent of the same date he declared, that this power should not extend to any felonies, treasons, forfeitures of prelates or earls in Ireland, or any capital or other offences committed by them, the judgment and pardon of which he reserved to himself.

147

CHAPTER VIII,

1377.-RICHARD II.

1. In the reign of Richard II. few circumstances occurred material to the state of Ireland. The unequivocal proof of the mal-administration of that country is more visibly discovered in this than in any former reign by the rapid succession of deputies, who were kept in perpetual motion to and from the seat of that ill-fated government. Barring the two periods during which Richard ruled the country in person, there appear twenty-five distinct changes within the space of twenty-two years, two months, and eight days. Making reasonable allowances for the uncertainty of weather, the slowness of travelling, and the general difficulties of communication in those days, the averaged interval between each appointment and recall would scarcely cover the term of nine calendar months.* The beginning of the king's reign, who was but eleven years of age when he ascended the throne, was conducted by the regency, under the influence of his uncle, the duke of Lancaster.

2. Sir John Davies gives the following concise view of the beginning of this monarch's reign. "In the beginning of this reign the state of England began to think of the recovery of Ireland. For then was the first statute made against absentees, commanding all such as had land in Ireland to return and reside thereupon, on pain of forfeiting two-third parts of the profit thereof. The king committed the government of Ireland first to the earl of Oxford, his chief favourite, whom he created marquis of Dublin and duke of Ireland, next to the duke of Surrey, his half brother, and lastly to Lord Mortimer, earl of March and Ulster, his cousin and heir apparent." In the fifth year of his reign a writ was issued to the deputy of Ireland, to summon a parliament for the good government of the realm, and to provide for the king's expenses in war.

* Dav. Dis. In the intermediate time, namely, in the year 1382, Philip de Courtenay, a cousin of the king, was appointed Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, by patent, for the term of ten years; but in less than two was superseded, arrested for oppression and extortion, and his effects were seized to answer for the losses of the persons aggrieved. + Dav. Disc.

3 Ric. II. Arch. Tur. Lond. Rot. Parl. p. 42.

3. The dominion which the English monarch exercised at this time over the Irish people appears to have been arbitrary and unconstitutional. In the ninth of Richard II. a most extraordinary grant was made (and with the consent of parliament) to the favourite, Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, afterwards duke of Ireland, by which he was entrusted with the absolute and entire regal dominion of the realm during his life, without making any payment for or rendering any account of it: he had the power to pass all writs under his own test, to place and displace all officers, even the chancellor, treasurer, and admiral, and to name his own deputy and ministers. He received a second patent in the same year, by which he was invested with the full dominion of all the land and islands belonging to Ireland, together with all royalties that ever had been holden and enjoyed by any of the king's predecessors. Of this grant Sir Edward Coke said,* * "By the law the king by his letters patent could not grant so royal a member of his imperial style to any, no more than he could do his kingdom of England."

4. Although the English interest in Ireland from various causes yearly ran into decline, the expence and pomp with which Richard went over in person to complete the subjection of that country appear to have been occasioned not by state necessity, but by the romantic vanity of the monarch to retrieve his honour, which he conceived had been touched by the sarcastic reflections of some of the German princes, who had declined supporting his pretensions to be elected emperor; viz. that he was unfit to command the empire who was neither able to hold what his ancestors had gained in France, nor to rule his insolent subjects in England, nor master his refractory people of Ireland. Richard's force sufficed to have reduced the whole island. Satisfied, however, with a slight submission, he specially authorized Thomas Mowbray, the earl of Nottingham and marshal of England, to receive the homages and oaths of fidelity of all the Irish in Leinster. They were bounden by several indentures under great penalties to remain loyal, and by a certain day to give up to the king and his successors all their lands and possessions in Leinster, and to serve him in his wars against his other rebels. These indentures and submissions were so

* 4 Inst. p. 357. He says also of this grant, "Sed novus iste insolitus et umbratilis honor citò vanuit; and this also did first begin and end in him."

lemnly enrolled and testified by a notary public, and the enrolments delivered by the king himself to the bishop of Salisbury, then lord treasurer of England.

5. The young king, satisfied with these external acts of submission, broke up his army, and returned to England with much honour and little profit. He had spent a mass of treasure in transporting the army which commanded these submissions, but had not increased his revenue by one pound, nor the English territory by one acre. The jurisdiction of his courts of justice remained confined to the English colonies, and the Irish lords, scorning the forces which were left behind, began to infest the borders, in defence of which Lord Roger Mortimer, the king's lieutenant and heir apparent of the crown of England, was slain. To avenge his death, the king again appeared at the head of a powerful army, firmly resolved upon the full conquest of the island. He suffered much from marching his army through a desolated country without provisions. Internal commotions in England obliged him to leave Ireland; and he had scarcely landed in Wales, when he was taken and delivered into the hands of his rival, the duke of Lancaster. His inglorious reign was terminated in the 33d year of his age, by a resignation of the crown and a parliamentary deposition.

CHAPTER IX.

1399.-HENRY IV.

1. LITTLE was it to be expected, that Henry IV. surnamed Bullingbroke from the place of his nativity in Lincolnshire, should enjoy a reign of serenity, when he had worked his way to the throne by procuring or countenancing the deposition and murder of the king and the exclusion of the right heir from the crown he himself was wearing. His personal acccomplishments had acquired him, whilst duke of Lancaster, the estimation and interests of a large party in the nation, by means of which he had the address, notwithstanding his want of title, to engage Arundell, archbishop of