Galway has a history of its own. The O’Connors had a fortified post there before the Anglo-Norman invasion, and it soon attracted the attention of the invaders. In 1232 it was for the first time taken by Richard de Burgo, who lost it once, but recovered it and made it the capital of his province. The building of the walls was begun about the beginning of the reign of Edward I., and murage charters were granted probably by that king, and certainly by Edward III. and Richard II. A charter of incorporation was granted in 1396, but the names of certain chief magistrates, provosts, portreeves, and sovereigns, are preserved from 1274 to 1485, when the first mayor took office. Fourteen English families, afterwards known as the tribes of Galway, engrossed civic power, and from 1485 to 1654 every mayor, with a single doubtful exception, was chosen from among them. When the De Burgos turned Irish and renounced their allegiance, the loyal citizens soon learned to treat them as enemies, and in 1518 the corporation resolved that no inhabitant should receive into his house ‘at Christmas, Easter, nor no feast else, any of the Burkes, MacWilliams, the Kellys, nor no sept else, without licence of the mayor and council, on pain to forfeit 5l. that neither O nor Mac shall strut nor swagger through the streets of Galway.’ Their great enemies were the O’Flaherties of Iar-Connaught, and it is said the prayer ‘from the ferocious O’Flaherties, good Lord, deliver us,’ was once inscribed over the west gate of the town. Athenry, which was built by the Bermingham family, was long and closely connected with Galway. It received a murage charter in 1312.36
Anglo-Norman families of importance.
Besides the three great earldoms, there were several Anglo-Norman families who continued to have considerable importance in Tudor times. Robert le Poer, or De Poher, received a grant from Henry II., which made his descendants, now generally called Power, supreme in the eastern half of the county Waterford. In the middle ages they were often at war with the citizens of Waterford. Their chief seat was Curraghmore, and they are represented, through a lady, by the Marquis of Waterford. The western half of the same county, which came by marriage to the Desmonds, fell to the descendants of the seventh earl’s second son, known as the Fitzgeralds, of Decies, and seated at Dromana. The Fitzmaurices, descended from Raymond le Gros, occupied that part of north Kerry which is still called Clanmaurice. They became Barons of Lixnaw, and are represented by the Marquis of Lansdowne. The family of the White Knight was descended from Gilbert, eldest son of John More Fitzgerald by his second wife, Honora O’Connor; his half brother by Margery Fitz-Anthony being the first Earl of Desmond. The White Knights were called Macgibbon and Fitzgibbon, and their memory is preserved by the barony of Clangibbon, in the county of Cork. From John, the second of Honora O’Connor’s sons, is descended the Knight of the Valley, or of Glin on the Shannon. Maurice, the third brother, was the first Knight of Kerry. Another branch of the Fitzgeralds, known as hereditary seneschals of Imokilly, were settled in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at Castle Martyr. The Barrys, descendants of Nesta as well as the Geraldines, were settled in that part of the county of Cork called Barrymore; and the Roches were established soon after the first invasion about Castletown-Roche, and Fermoy. Of the families who obtained portions of De Lacy’s great territory, the most important were the Nugents, Barons of Delvin, and the Flemings, Barons of Slane on the Boyne. The Plunkets, who are supposed to be of Danish origin, were in the middle ages settled chiefly in Meath; and there they are still. They became Barons of Killeen, Dunsany, and Louth. The Prestons, Viscounts of Gormanston, and the Barnewalls, Barons of Trimleston, may also be noticed; but all the families of the Pale were overshadowed by the House of Kildare.
The colony steadily declines under Edward III.
So far as the English colony in Ireland is concerned, the long reign of Edward III. must be regarded as a period of decay. The murder of the last Earl of Ulster in 1333, and the consequent secession of the De Burghs, hastened the destruction of a fabric which had always hung loosely together. The sons of Hugh Boy O’Neill, who was killed in 1283, established themselves firmly in Eastern Ulster, and undid nearly all the work of De Courcey and his successors. They gave to Antrim the name of Clan-Hugh-Boy, or Clandeboye, as it is now written. Only the Savages maintained themselves in Ardes; and the MacQuillins, a family of Welsh origin, between the Bush and the Bann, in the district afterwards called the Route. The three royal fortresses which bridled Connaught, Athlone, Roscommon, and Randon, all fell into the hands of the Irish. In Leinster also the natives rapidly gained ground. Lysaght O’More formed a confederacy of nearly all the midland tribes, and expelled the settlers from the district between the Barrow and the Shannon. His career was short, but his work was lasting. ‘In 1342,’ says Clyn, ‘he was killed when drunk by his own servant. He was a rich and powerful man, and honoured among his own people. He expelled nearly all the English from his lands, and burned eight of their castles in one evening. He destroyed Roger Mortimer’s noble fortress of Dunamase, and usurped the lordship of his own country. He was a servant, he became a lord; he was a subject, he became a prince.’ Bunratty Castle in Clare was dismantled by the O’Briens and Macnamaras, and a branch of the former established themselves in Tipperary. Of William Carragh O’Brien, of Aherlow, one of the chiefs of this sept, Clyn gives a very unflattering account. ‘He was,’ he declares, ‘a bad and perverse man who lived ill and died ill, passing all his time in waylayings, thefts, spoils, and murders.’
Dissension rife among the colonists.
The constant quarrels of the colonists, and the corruption of their officials, laid them open to the attacks of the natives, and the state of Ireland attracted so much attention that the Parliament held at Westminster in 1331 advised the King to cross the Channel himself. Edward III. never had much time to attend to Ireland, but he seems to have been aware that he had duties in the matter. In 1338 he decreed that none but Englishmen born should fill legal offices; but this did not mend matters, and the administration of justice continued to be as corrupt as ever. The new comers married in Ireland, and were as ready to job for their children as if they had been descended from the first colonists. In 1341 the King ordered that Englishmen with estates in England should be preferred, but the supply of such men was necessarily limited. The main cause of the corruption prevalent was no doubt the poverty of the Crown. Officials were ill paid, or not paid at all, and they supported themselves by embezzling funds or by selling justice. An unjust proposal to increase the revenue by resuming royal grants naturally aggravated every evil, and the English by blood were arrayed against the English by birth. Sir John Morris, the deputy who was ordered to carry out the new policy, summoned a Parliament to meet at Dublin in October, 1341. But Maurice Fitz-Thomas, first Earl of Desmond, persuaded a large section of the nobility to ignore the writs, to attend a rival assembly at Kilkenny, and to draw up a remonstrance addressed to the King. The malcontents wished to be informed how a governor without military skill could rule a land where war never ceased, how an official could become quickly rich, and how it came about that the King was never the richer for Ireland? Edward abandoned the intention of resuming the grants, but subsequent events show that he did not really forgive Desmond.
D’Ufford’s futile attempts to recover the Earldom of Ulster.
Ralph d’Ufford had married Maud Plantagenet, widow of the murdered Earl of Ulster, and in 1344 he was sent over as Viceroy with very large powers. One of his objects was to resume possession of Ulster for the benefit of his step-daughter, the royal ward; but he totally failed in obtaining rent out of the lands, or in ousting those who had seized them. After chastising the Irish in the neighbourhood of Dublin, d’Ufford resolved to invade Ulster with a regular army. The MacArtanes attacked him at the Moyrie Pass, and he narrowly escaped annihilation. Having cut his way through with the help of the settlers in Louth and Monaghan, he made his way into the northern province, but no permanent results followed. Desmond and others having refused to attend his Parliament, the Viceroy went to Kerry, took Castle Island, and hanged its principal defenders. He imprisoned the Earl of Kildare and seized his estates, and then took action upon a bond executed in 1333, by which twenty-six of the chief men of the colony became bound for Desmond’s good behaviour. Many of the sureties had aided the Viceroy, but he, nevertheless, seized their lands. The Earl of Ormonde and two more were the only exceptions. The ruin caused by this policy was out of all proportion to the good, and in the history of the English in Ireland no one has a worse name than Sir Ralph d’Ufford, except perhaps