My Lords of Strogue. Volume 1 of 3

High and low were stricken with the new enthusiasm; some generously, some driven by shame to assume a virtue which they had not. Laird, squire, and shopkeeper-all donned the Volunteer uniform. All looked, or affected to look, to the eagle of America as a symbol of a new hope. A race of serfs were transformed into a nation of soldiers. Many really thought themselves sincere who fell away when their own interests became involved.

And this sudden upheaving was at first without danger to the body politic. The French Revolution, with its overturning of social grades, had yet to come. Classes found themselves for a brief space thrown together, between whom usually a great gulf was fixed, and the temporary commingling was, by giving a new direction to the mind, for the mutual benefit of both. The very singularity of such a state of things (in an age before democratic principles began to obtain) showed a seriousness of purpose which caused the ruling spirits of the new military association to carry all before them by the impetus of self-respect. Their mother had suffered bitterly and long; no one denied that. The time was come for her rescue. The task was arduous, but the cause was excellent. It behoved her sons then to raise their minds above the trammels of the earth-to become Sir Galahads-for was not their task to the full as pious as the mystic quest after the Grail? It behoved them, while the holy fervour lasted (alas! man is unstable at the best, and the Irishman more so than most), to set their house thoroughly in order, and the powerless English Cabinet from across the Channel watched the operation with anxiety.

When a wedge is inserted in so unnatural a bundle as this was, it will speedily fall asunder, and that which was a formidable coalition will be reduced to a ridiculous wreck. Who was to insert the wedge? Would time alone do it, or would perfidious aid from London be required? That it should be inserted somehow, was decided nem. con. in London.

Alas! in the moment of supreme triumph, whilst the Volunteers caracole so bravely down Sackville Street, we may detect grave symptoms of danger, which argus-eyed England scans with hope, while the Viceroy is laughing in the Castle.

Ireland had during ages been the butt of fortune. A train of English kings had entreated her evilly, and the native bards reviewed the sad story with untiring zeal.

First they sang of Norman thieves-turbulent barons who, troublesome at home, were despatched to get rid of superfluous energy at the expense of Keltic princes. They slurred over the reign of the first Edward, for with him came a deceptive ray of hope. He threatened to visit the island in person. Had he done so, he would have quelled the Irish thoroughly, as he did the Welsh, and so have nipped their delusive dream of freedom in the bud. The most aristocratic race in the world would have become loyal, for they would have seen the face of their lord, and the face of royalty is as a sun unto them. But they did not become loyal, for they saw their lord's face as little then as they see that of their lady now. Nor he, nor any of the brave Plantagenets ever came to Ireland, for they were pursuing an ignis fatuus in France, instead of attending to their own business at home. Henry V. and Edward III. sought fame, which might not be obtained, they thought, by obscure squabbling with saffron-mantled savages in a barbarous dependency.

Events shuffled along in slipshod, careless fashion, till the period when crook-backed Richard met his end at Bosworth. By that time a mixed population held undisputed possession of the island-a bastard race, half Keltic, half Norman. The 'English of the Pale,' or early settlers, had found Irish brides. They wore the saffron mantle and spoke the Keltish tongue. But the first Tudor, who had no sympathy with savages, declared 'this might not be.' He had a spite against them which he was but too glad to gratify, for in the absence of a king they had crowned an ape-or rather an impostor, Simnel. In virtuous indignation, he vowed that it was revolting to see noble knights reduced to the serfs' level; to which the chiefs replied with one accord:

'We are no serfs, but freemen, as ye are yourselves; for Ireland was never conquered, though she did lip-homage.'

The Tudor did not choose to be so bearded. 'Indeed! You were not conquered?' he said, surprised. 'I will send commissioners who shall straightway solve for me this riddle.' And he sent Sir Edward Poynings, who arrived in state, with special instructions to set the chiefs a-quarrelling.

The guileless princes received the commissioner cordially, who diligently sowed dissensions, setting race against race, by declaring (in 1494) that none of English blood might wed a Keltic wife, or hold communion with the Irishry, or even learn their tongue. O'Neil was pitted against Geraldine, Desmond against Tyrone, with double-faced advice; and, his dastardly commission done, Sir Edward bowed himself away with smiles, leaving behind the celebrated act which bears his name, and which was as a red rag between the nations ever after, till it was taken in hand by the Volunteers.

Up to this moment the frequent bickerings which disturbed the fellowship of the two islands were concerning land or race; but with the reign of the eighth Henry, the true demon of discord woke to wave the sword of persecution over the distracted country. The Reformation, which brought so much trouble on the world, was no kinder to the Irish than to other nations. Henry, angry with a people who would not do as they were bid, drove the natives from the holdings which their septs had held for centuries, away to the wild fastness beyond the Shannon. (A sinful scheme, which is often fathered upon Cromwell, who has much besides to answer for.) He ravaged the land with fire and sword, resolved at least that it should have the peace of death if none other was attainable; and these tactics his dutiful child Elizabeth pursued, till her dependency was a waste of blood and ashes. Like her grandfather, she had a private cause for spite. As a nation, the Irish declined to be anything but Catholics; and so, refusing to acknowledge Queen Katherine's divorce, they looked on Anne Boleyn's daughter as a bastard and a usurper. This prompted her to filial piety. Hardly was she seated on the throne at Westminster, than she summoned a parliament in Dublin, and shook her pet prayer-book at the Catholics. The religion of Christ, the meek and lowly, she preached to them in this wise. Every layman who should use any prayer-book but her pet one was to be imprisoned for a year. On each recurring Sunday, every adult of every persuasion was to attend Protestant service, or be heavily mulcted for the benefit of her treasury. Not content with crushing their faith, she let loose a horde of adventurers upon the unhappy Irish. They fought for their fields as well as their religion. One of the characteristics of her reign was a spirit of adventure, which descended in regular gamut from the loftiest heroism to the vilest cupidity. The eagles sought doubloons on the Spanish main; the vultures swept down on Ireland with ravenous beaks. Elizabeth's own deputy wrote thus to her in horror:

'From every corner of the woods did the people come, creeping on their hands, for their legs would not bear them. They looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts; they did eat carrion, happy when they could find them, yea, and one another; in so much that the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves.'

Indeed, Queen Bess left her dependency a reeking slaughter-house, in so abject a misery, that when her successor cleared a whole province to plant it with Scotchmen, the natives made no resistance, but plodded listlessly away. Is it surprising that their descendants should have hated England, and its truckling Anglo-Irish Senate?

In due course followed Charles I., who, with the ingrained perfidy of all the Stuarts, fleeced his Irish subjects, and then cheated them by evading the graces for which they paid their gold. His creature Strafford went too far, and they turned as worms will. There was a grand Protestant massacre in Ulster, an appalling picture of a vengeance such as a brutalised people will wreak on its oppressor; and Cromwell took advantage of this as an excuse for still further grinding down the Catholics. It was a fine opportunity to avenge the sufferings of Protestants in other lands-the affair of Nantes, Bartholomew, and so forth. He made a finished job of it, as he did of most things to which he set his shoulder. It was no felony now to slay an Irishman, whose very name was a reproach. He was well-nigh swept from off the earth. Famine and pestilence reigned together alone. Wolves roamed at will in the dismantled towns. Newly-appointed colonists refused to build the walls of shattered cities, for the stench of the rotting bodies poisoned the breeze.

It remained for Orange William and good Queen Anne (neither of whom could be expected to feel interest in Ireland) to add a finishing touch, and the Penal Code was a chef d'œuvre. Under its sweet influence no Catholic could dwell in Ireland save under such conditions as no man who stood erect might bear, and so there commenced an exodus of independent spirits, who flocked into the service of France and Germany, and filled the navies of Holland and of Spain. Thus did British rulers educate their dependency to loving obedience, by teaching its children to revile the name of law. Verily it is no wonder that they loathed the English; that they distrusted British amenities, and looked askance at the half-English upper class.

When the Volunteers determined to regenerate their motherland, there were two great evils with which they had to cope. Two deep plague-spots. It remained to be seen whether they were wise enough and steadfast enough to eradicate the virus. A rotten legislature, an impossible Penal Code. Could Sir Galahad reform so base a parliament? Would the champion dare to free the serfs from thraldom? The first was a Herculean labour, because both Lords and Commons drew much of their revenue from British ministers; the second was even a more Titanic task. Possession is nine points of the law, and the soil was in possession of the small knot of Protestants, who knew that their existence depended on keeping the majority in chains. Like the emigrants of the Mayflower, they said: 'Resolved, that the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; that the Lord hath given the earth as an heritage unto His saints; and that we are His saints. Ergo: the earth is ours, to have and to hold by pillage and persecution, and murder, if need be, just as the chosen people of old seized and held Canaan, the land of promise, flowing with milk and honey.'

Truly the parliament was a plague-spot fit to gangrene a whole body; for it in nowise represented the nation, consisting as it did of three hundred members, seventy-two only of whom were elected by the people. The rest were nominees of large Protestant proprietors who returned members for every squalid hamlet on their estates, and kept their voters in the condition of tame dogs through a constant terror of ejectment. Of three million Catholics not one had a voice in the elections; for by law they existed not at all. Like Milton's devils they occupied no space, while the Protestant angels filled the air with their proportions.

It was said of the Irish gentry of the last century that they possessed the materials of distinguished men with the propensities of obscure ones, which is a picturesque way of admitting that they were incorrigibly idle. To indolence add poverty and a propensity for drink, and you have a promising hotbed for the growth of every ill. The aristocratic pensioners were, as a rule, lapped in excessive luxury, which could not be kept up without extraneous help; half English by education as well as origin, they naturally leaned for protection towards the English Government.

The gentry, ignorant and sensual, were given to profuse hospitality, regardless of mortgaged acres and embarrassed lands. Dog-boys and horse-boys hung about their gates; keepers and retainers lolled upon their doorsteps, together with a posse of half-mounted poor relations-all of them too genteel to do anything useful-fishing for the speckled trout by day, drinking huge beakers of claret and quarrelling among themselves by night, till in many cases there was little left, after a few years, for the filling of a hundred mouths beyond a nominal rent-roll and the hereditary curse of idleness. Not a squire but was more or less floundering in debt, and (his sense of honour blunted by necessity) only too anxious for a little cash at any price. Government agents were always conveniently turning up ready and willing to purchase mortgages and notes of hand, which were duly stored in the coffers of the Castle as a means of prospective coercion by-and-by.

With such materials for a national 'Lords and Commons,' it is little wonder if a sudden revulsion in favour of patriotism on the part of a body of enthusiasts should threaten to set the country agog. How was the parliament to be purified? That was the rub. Was it to be exhorted to virtue gently, or flogged into improvement? The leaders of the Volunteers had carried their first point with a rush. The parliament was with them, or feigned to be so. But what if the existence of the Parliament should come to be threatened? The sincerity of its professions would be put to a crucial test. Careless lords and impecunious squires babbled of freedom and cackled of free trade, because it was become the fashion and pleased the Volunteers. What cared they for free trade? That was a question which affected the men of Ulster, to whom commerce was as lifeblood, and who indeed were the prime workers in this movement. The dissenting traders of Belfast had demanded a free trade, and British ministers had given way. Therefore Lords and Commons joined in the popular cry, and pretended that it interested them. The position was a paradox. Here was all at once a military supremacy independent of the crown, and ministers in London were compelled to countenance it. It was humiliating; but their comfort lay in this. Would the Volunteer leaders allow zeal to overstep prudence? Probably they would. They might be coaxed by crafty submission to do so. If a collision could only be brought about between a self-elected military despotism and an effete but constitutional senate, there were the materials for such a pretty quarrel as might produce a repetition of the fate of the Kilkenny cats. One would devour the other, and England would gloat over the tails. The British premier made a parade of 'doing something for Ireland' to oblige the Volunteers.

With a flourish of alarums he repealed some obnoxious laws, which graceful conduct was received in Dublin with gratitude, till somebody pointed out that Albion was at her tricks again: whilst seeming gracefully to give way, she was really strengthening her own position by establishing a new precedent on the basis of the Poynings statute, to the effect that such favours were in the gift of England's Parliament-not Ireland's-and might accordingly be withdrawn at any time. The Volunteers were furious, Albion was perfidious; the Irish senate was playing a double game, there was no use in mincing matters in the way of compromise. England must distinctly abdicate all parliamentary dominion; parliament must be remodelled on new lines. In the future the senate must be upright, zealous, independent, incorruptible; English gold must be as dross; an English coronet hold no allurement.

As might be expected, the new cry created a commotion. Patriots there were both in Lords and Commons, who were prepared to sacrifice part of their income for the general good, but they were few. If pensions were withdrawn and mortgages foreclosed and proprietors in prison, what mattered to these last a national liberty? The notion was an insult, and parliament stood at bay. But the ardour of the Volunteers would brook no dallying. Ulster, as usual, took the lead. Sharpwitted, frugal, Scotch, the battalions of the North convened a general assembly. On Feb. 15, 1782, one of the most impressive scenes which Ireland ever witnessed took place at Duncannon, where two hundred delegated volunteers marched two and two, calm, steadfast, virtuous, determined to pledge themselves before the altar of that sacred place to measures which might save their motherland or kill her. After earnest thought, a manifesto was framed-a dignified declaration of rights and grievances, a solemn statement of the people's will, a protest against English craft and Irish corruption-inviting the armed bodies of other provinces to aid in the process of regeneration.

Can you conceive anything more glorious and touching than the quiet gathering on the promontory of Duncannon? A towering fort frowns down upon the harbour, commanding a spacious basin formed by the waters of three rivers. Imagine the simple country gentlemen, the homely squires, the traders of Belfast, abandoning for a while their vices and their quarrels, to deliberate sword in hand over the grievous shortcomings of their brethren. I see them in the gloaming, with high-collared coats and anxious faces, puzzling their poor brains over a way out of the labyrinth. The lovely land, stretched out on either side in a jagged line of coast, whose slopes had been watered to greenness with blood and tears, must haply be soaked again in the stream of war. For the last time. Once more-only once-a final sanctifying baptism which should leave it clean and sweet for evermore. They penned a temperate document-a dignified manifesto. Could they be single-minded to the end, or would discord fling her apple among them?

So soon as the delegates of the North received the concurrence of the provinces, the senate in Dublin changed its tone, for no immediate succour could be hoped from England. It affected a complete patriotism, and made believe to go all lengths with the Volunteers. Patriots-real and sham-thundered in the House, and were applauded to the echo. It was impossible to tell who was in earnest and who was not. First, said the wily senators, make it clear that we are free, and then by remodelling the Senate we will prove ourselves worthy of the gift you have bestowed. Grattan towered above all others. He spoke as one inspired, and the meshes of the web seemed to shrivel before his breath.

The army patrolled the streets, and review succeeded review in the Phœnix Park; the national artillery lined the quays. Loyalty, Dignity, Forbearance, were grouped round the god of war. All the virtues, posing around Mars, hovered in ether over Dublin. Never was a city so happy or so proud. But the English Viceroy, though outwardly perturbed, was laughing in the Castle while the ignorant people jigged.

'Fools!' he scoffed. 'The meeting at Duncannon, of which you are so vain, was but the thin end of the wedge which we were looking for. You shall be played one against the other-people against parliament and parliament against people-till you break your silly pates. We stoop to conquer, as your own Goldy hath it. A little more and you will be undone. A little, little more!'-and he was right. The Commons, with mortgages before their eyes, wavered and prevaricated. The Volunteers, exasperated, openly denounced the senate. The people, taking fire, vowed they would obey no laws, whether good or bad, which were dictated under the rose by the perfidious one. The statute-book was rent in pieces; anarchy threatened to supervene; England prepared to take possession again. But the Volunteers, sublime at this moment, came once more to the rescue. They chid the weak and reproved the strong; even formed themselves into a night-police for the security of the capital. This hour was that of pride before a fall.

In prosperity they gave way to indiscretion. Enjoying as they did an unnatural existence, for which the only excuse was transcendent virtue, it was the more needful for them to be of one mind as to a chief. But they split on this important point. One party declared for the Earl of Charlemont, an amiable nobleman of whose mediocrity it was said that his mind was without a flower or a weed; another was for my lord of Deny, a bold, unsteady prelate, who, sincere or not, was but too likely to lead his flock into a quagmire.

They wavered, when to hesitate was to be lost. They did worse; they dirtied their own nest in a public place. Each rival chief, in his struggle for supremacy, lost more than half his influence. Tongues wagged to the discredit of all parties. Sir Galahad, feeling that he was in the toils of sirens, made a prodigious effort to escape with dignity. If parliament were not remodelled the fire would end in smoke. Coûte qui coûte, this must be done at once, or England would step in triumphant, and dire would be the vengeance. All hands were quarrelling. Was it already too late? A wild and desperate effort must be made to regain ground, lost by infirmity of purpose. The Volunteers, all prudence cast aside, determined to strike a blow in sledge-hammer fashion. They deliberately decided to send three hundred of their number in open and official manner to Lords and Commons, bidding them reform themselves at once; offering even to teach them how to do it. And so the extraordinary spectacle came to be seen in Dublin, of two governments-one civil, one military-sitting at the same moment in the same city-within sight of each other-each equally resolved to strain every nerve in order that the other might not live.

Sir Galahad blundered woefully! He had concentrated his attention with all his muddled might and main on the lesser instead of the greater plague-spot. 'Free Trade' had been his shibboleth, then a 'Reformed Parliament,' though how it was to be reformed he did not know. It escaped the shortness of his vision that 'Freedom of Conscience' would have been the nobler cry. Had he first freed the three million slaves from the bondage of the half million, the air would have been cleared for the disinfecting of his senate. But no. He was blind and tripped, and England saw the stumble. Well might the Viceroy laugh, while he made believe to tremble, as he thought of the Kilkenny cats.

CHAPTER III.

SHADOWS

As day waned, the Volunteers perceived that they must pass the night as watchmen if they wished the capital to be sufficiently peaceful on the morrow to attend to the parliamentary tournament. What the gownsmen intended for a frolic developed into a riot, thanks to the national love of a row and the complicated feuds which were continually breaking forth. No sooner had the undergraduates pumped upon the Graces and driven the English detachment into Castle Yard than they found themselves hemmed in by their natural enemies, the butchers of Ormond Quay, who owed the college gentlemen a grudge because they invariably took up the cudgels of the Liberty-lads when these sworn foes thought fit to have a brush.

The weavers were every bit as pugnacious as the butchers. Dulness of trade, hot weather, a passing thunder-shower, were excuse sufficient for a breaking of the peace; and then shops were closed and business suspended along the Liffey banks, as bridges were taken and retaken amid showers of stones, till one or other of the belligerents was driven from the field. It was one of the singular contradictions of the time that youths of high degree should always be ready to join the dregs of the city in these outrages; that members of an intensely exclusive class should unite with coal-porters or weavers against butchers, to the risk of life and limb. But so it was, and frightful casualties were the result sometimes; for the butchers were playful with their knives, using them, not to stab their opponents, which they would have considered cowardly, but to hough or cut the tendon of the leg, thus rendering their adversaries lame for life. Sometimes they dragged their captives to the market, and hung them to the meat-hooks by the jaws until their party came to rescue them. Not but what the aristocratic gownsmen were quite capable of holding their own, as had been proved, a few weeks before the commencement of this history, by the result of a conflict on Bloody Bridge, on which occasion a rash detachment of the Ormond Boys was driven straight into the river, where many perished by drowning before they could be extricated. The butchers vowed vengeance for this feat, yet were kept quiet for a while by the attitude of the Volunteers; but now they sprang blithely to arms with marrow-bone and cleaver upon hearing that their foes were on the war-path.