Don't have an account? Sign in via your Institution. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Show Summary Details Overview statutes of Kilkenny. All rights reserved. Sign in to annotate. Delete Cancel Save. They sounded a voice that echoed in untold suffering down long centuries. By them all relations with the Irish nation were penalised.
It was forbidden to speak the Irish language, to wear the Irish fashion of dress, to wear beards as did the Irish, to ride a horse barebacked, to have an Irish name, to take judgment by Irish law, to marry an Irish man or woman, to interchange children in fosterage as did the Irish, to entertain an Irish poet or minstrel, or to hear Irish history, to admit an Irishman to sanctuary, to permit an Irishman to graze cattle, or to graze cattle on an Irishman's land, to cease at any time to war upon the Irish, or to hold any manner of commerce with an Irishman.
These things were declared high treason; and the penalty attached was the forfeiture of all property and imprisonment. The two most powerful of the Connaught De Burgos seized the estates, declared themselves independent of England, and adopted the Irish dress and language.
They took also Irish names, one of them calling himself Mac William Oughter Upper as being lord of upper, or south, Connaught; he was ancestor of the earls of Clanrickard: the other, Mac William Eighter i. And their example was followed by many other Anglo-Irish families, especially in the west and south. The English of the Pale were now so weak that they had to pay some of the Irish septs of their borders to protect them from the attacks of the natives.
Payments of this kind subsequently became very common, and were called "Black rents. After a considerable interval, Sir John Morris came in as deputy, to attempt what Lucy had failed in. He took back all the lands and all the privileges which either the king himself or his father had granted; and he re-claimed all debts that had been cancelled. But there came a much worse measure than this. The king issued an ordinance in that all natives, whether of Irish or English descent, who were married and held public offices in Ireland, should be dismissed, and their places filled up by English-born subjects who had property in England.
These measures caused intense surprise and indignation among the Anglo-Irish of every class. The earls of Desmond and Kildare refused to attend Morris's parliament, and in convened a parliament of their own in Kilkenny. They spoke openly of armed resistance and drew up a spirited remonstrance to the king. In this document they complained bitterly of the intolerable conduct of the English officials, exposed their selfishness and fraud, and represented that to their corruption and incompetency were due the recent losses of territories and castles.
The appeal was successful: the king granted almost everything they asked for; and at the same time requested assistance from them for his French wars. But after all this, still another attempt was to be made. Sir Ralph Ufford was now—in —appointed lord justice, whose wife was Maud, widow of the Brown earl of Ulster. He turned out a most intolerable tyrant, and quite overshot the mark; and his wife was blamed for instigating him to some of his worst deeds. He seized the earl of Desmond's estates, hanged several of his knights, and threw the earl of Kildare into prison.
But he died in the midst of his tyranny, "to the great joy of everyone;" and so fierce was the rage of the people against him, that his wife, who had lived with the grandeur and state of a queen, had now to steal away from Dublin Castle through a back gate, with the coffin containing her husband's body.
After his death Kildare was released, and joined the king at the siege of Calais in , where he was knighted for his bravery. Desmond's wrongs were also redressed and he was made lord justice for life. With these proceedings of Ufford's the attempts of the king to break down the power of the Irish nobles may be regarded as having terminated.
During all this time the people of the country, English and Irish alike, were sunk in a state of misery that no pen can describe.
At this period the "black death" was in full swing, and was as bad in Ireland as elsewhere. Once it entered a house, all the family generally fell victims; and it swept away the inhabitants of whole towns, villages, and castles.
The plague was not all: the people's cup of misery was filled to overflowing by perpetual war and all its attendant horrors. The inhabitants of the Pale were perhaps in a worse condition than those of the rest of Ireland; for they were tyrannised over and robbed by the soldiers.
The colonists, exposed to all sorts of exactions and hardships, and scourged by pestilence, quitted the doomed country in crowds—every one fled who had the means—and the settlement seemed threatened with speedy extinction.
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