Irish English Part 2 doc

32 History I: The coming of the English

stake in a fence. In the post-invasion period it denoted the part of Ireland which

was firmly under English (and Anglo-Norman) control beyond which the native

Irish lived. Its actual size varied, reaching a maximum in the fourteenth century

when it covered an area from Drogheda north of Dublin to at least Waterford

in the south south-east and included some of the midlands (Meath) and south

midlands (parts of Tipperary). With the resurgence of Gaelic influence in Ire￾land in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Pale shrank (Palmer 2000:

41). However, with the settlements (plantations, Andrews 2000) in the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries, the English presence spread gradually throughout the

entire countryside and the term ‘Pale’ lost its relevance. The phrase beyond the

pale‘socially unacceptable’ suggests that those inside the Pale in the late medieval

period regarded the natives outside as unruly and uncivilised.

Within the boundaries of the Pale the political influence of England never

ceased to exist. This is basically the reason for the continuous existence of English

in Dublin: in the history of Ireland the English language has maintained the

strongest influence in those areas where English political influence has been

mostly keenly felt.

After the twelfth century settlements spread to other cities, e.g. in the south

(Cork) and in the west (Limerick and Galway). The impact on rural Ireland

(T. Barry 2000a) was slight. This is of importance when considering the linguis￾tic status of English vis-a-vis Irish in the late Middle Ages. English was not a `

dominant language at this stage (as it was to become in the early modern period).

Indeed English competed with Anglo-Norman in medieval Ireland and both of

these definitely interacted with the quantitatively more significant Irish language.

An ever increasing assimilation of the original settlers by the native Irish

occurred in the post-invasion period. This assimilation had two main reasons.

For one thing the English settlers of this early, pre-Reformation time were of

course Catholic and for another the connections with England were in fact quite

loose. Those adventurers who had sought land and political influence in Ireland

evinced only nominal allegiance to the English crown. They had become to a

large extent independent in Ireland (Moody and Martin 1967: 133ff.). Indeed

one can interpret the visits of English kings in Ireland, such as that of Henry

in Dublin in the late twelfth century, as a scarcely concealed attempt to assert

the influence of the English court in a colony which did not lay undue emphasis

on crown loyalty. In later centuries other monarchs were to follow suit. Thus

John came to Ireland in 1210 and Richard II twice, in 1394 and 1399. Each of

these visits was intended to serve the purpose of constraining the power of the

ostensibly English nobility. With the severing of ties with England the original

English naturally drew closer to the native Irish.

This development explains the decline of English in Ireland in the late four￾teenth and fifteenth centuries. Especially after the adoption of Protestantism by

the English government, initiated by the ‘Reformation Parliament’ (1529–36)

of Henry VIII, the English settlers in Ireland, ‘Old English’ as they are often

termed, felt cut off and identified themselves increasingly with the native Catholic

2.1 External developments 33

population. The fortunes of the English language were at their lowest in the first

half of the sixteenth century (Moody and Martin 1967: 158ff.).

..      

The history of English in Ireland is not that of a simple substitution of Irish by

English. When the Anglo-Normans and English arrived in Ireland the linguistic

situation in Ireland was quite homogeneous. In the ninth century Ireland had

been ravaged by Scandinavians just like most of northern Britain. The latter,

however, settled down in the following three centuries. The decisive battle against

the Scandinavians (Clontarf, 1014) is taken to represent on the one hand the

final break with Denmark and Norway, and on the other to have resulted in

the complete assimilation of the remaining Scandinavians with the native Irish

population, much as happened in other countries, such as large parts of northern

Britain and northern France. At the time of the English invasion one can assume,

in contradistinction to various older authors such as Curtis (1919: 234), that the

heterogeneity which existed was more demographic than linguistic. Old Norse

had indeed an effect on Irish, particularly in the field of lexis (see Sommerfelt

in O Cu ´ ´ıv 1975; Geipel 1971: 56ff.), but there is no evidence that a bilingual

situation obtained any longer in late twelfth-century Ireland.

As one would expect from the status of the Anglo-Normans in England and

from the attested names of the warlords who came to Ireland in the late twelfth

century, these Anglo-Normans were the leaders among the new settlers. The

English were mainly their servants, a fact which points to the relatively low

status of the language at this time. As in England, the ruling classes and the

higher positions in the clergy were occupied by Normans soon after the invasion.

Their language was introduced with them and established itself in the towns.

Evidence for this is offered by such works as The Song of Dermot and the Earl

and The Entrenchment of New Ross in Anglo-Norman as well as contemporary

references to spoken Anglo-Norman in court proceedings from Kilkenny (Cahill

1938: 160f.). Anglo-Norman seems to have been maintained in the cities well

into the fourteenth century as the famous Statutes of Kilkenny (1366) attest

(Lydon 1973: 94ff.; Crowley 2000: 14–16). These were composed in Anglo￾Norman and admonished both the French-speaking lords and the native Irish

population to speak English. The statutes were not repealed until the end of

the fifteenth century but they were never effective. The large number of Anglo￾Norman loanwords in Irish (Risk 1971: 586ff.), which entered the language in

the period after the invasion, testifies to the existence of Anglo-Norman and the

robustness of its position from the late twelfth to the fourteenth century (Hickey

1997b). In fact as a language of law it was used up to the fifteenth century, as

evidenced by the Acts of Parliament of 1472 which were in Anglo-Norman.

The strength of the Irish language can be recognised from various comments

and descriptions of the early period. For instance, Irish was allowed in court

proceedings according to the municipal archives of Waterford (1492–3) in those

34 History I: The coming of the English

cases where one of the litigants was Irish. This would be unthinkable from the

seventeenth century onwards when Irish was banned from public life.

Still more indicative of the vitality of Irish is the account from the sixteenth

century of the proclamation of a bill in the Dublin parliament (1541) which

officially declared the assumption of the title of King of Ireland by Henry VIII

(Dolan 1991: 143).2 The parliament was attended by the representatives of the

major Norman families of Ireland, but of these only the Earl of Ormond was

able to understand the English text and apparently translated it into Irish for

the rest of the attending Norman nobility (Hayes-McCoy 1967). Needless to say,

the English viewed this situation with deep suspicion and the lord chancellor

William Gerrard commented unfavourably in 1578 on the use of Irish by the

English ‘even in Dublin’, and regarded the habits and the customs of the Irish as

detrimental to the character of the English. Furthermore, since the Reformation,

Irishness was directly linked to popery. Accordingly, the Irish and the (Catholic)

Old English were viewed with growing concern.

..    

The view of Ireland which prevailed in the Tudor period (1485–1603) was one

of a country peopled by primitive tribes, permanently involved in internecine

strife. There is undoubtedly some truth in this view: family and neighbourhood

hostilities have always been characteristic of Irish life. The English stance was

clear from the beginning: the salvation of the Irish lay in the imposition of

English government and public order. Only this could guarantee a stable state

of affairs. Added to this was the desire to impose Protestantism as the state

religion of England on the popish Irish. The self-righteousness of the English

attitude in this period is perhaps difficult to appreciate for present-day observers

with an awareness of ethnic individuality and claims to independence. But the

unquestioned conviction that English rule was divinely inspired, and the only

option for the ‘wild Irish’, is one which permeates English writings on matters

Irish from this period. One of the more representative authors and major poets

of the time, Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–99), is no exception in this respect.3

Historians vary in their interpretation of Tudor and later Elizabethan atti￾tudes towards the Irish. In her discussion of the matter, Palmer (2000: 15f.) notes

2 Henry VIII became King of Ireland in 1541. Before that Ireland had technically been a ‘lordship’

of the English crown (Foster 1988: 3), though various laws severely curtailed the parliamentary

freedom of the Irish. The most notorious of these was Poynings’ Law, introduced by Sir Edward

Poynings in 1494, which specified that meetings of the Irish parliament had to be sanctioned by

the Council in Ireland (headed by the king’s deputy) and by the king with the Council in England.

This was later regarded as one of the main fetters in the Irish struggle for independence.

3 Spenser’s views are to be found in A View of the Present State of Ireland (Canny 2001: 42–55), a

dialogue between proponents of strict and of liberal policies in Ireland which was written in the

1590s. There is disagreement among historians in their assessment of Spenser, some seeing him

as a proponent of English colonial policy and others regarding him as an advocate of an ideal and

liberal pastoral society (Rankin 2005).

2.1 External developments 35

that some believe the early modern English stance towards Ireland was part of

a ‘Renaissance anthropology’ which saw the Irish as inherently inferior because

they were outside the realm of civilisation and ordered government. Other his￾torians see the attitude towards the Irish as more pragmatic, determined by

Protestantism, the state religion of England by then, and by the need to tame the

unruly neighbours to the west who were a constant source of rebellion.

Given the Reformation, the Tudors were particularly concerned with the

anglicisation of the inhabitants of Ireland (of whatever origin). Henry VIII’s

daughter Elizabeth I inherited this concern from her father. Initially, her attitude

to the Irish would appear to have been reasonably conciliatory: it is even reported

that she expressed the wish to understand Irish. In keeping with the aims of

the Reformation, Elizabeth decided to have the Bible translated; she provided a

press with an Irish font to print it and commissioned Irish bishops to organise

the work (though these were later chided for not moving this project forward

speedily enough).

The press supplied by Elizabeth was first used for poetry in 1571 but it was not

until almost thirty years later in 1602–3 that the New Testament was printed in

Dublin by one Sean Francke. The task of translation would not have presented ´

insuperable difficulties given the presence of Irish scholars in Dublin and the

favour or at least tolerance many of them enjoyed at the hands of the English.

Indeed the vibrancy of intellectual life in Dublin is attested by the founding of

Trinity College Dublin as a university in 1592 by Elizabeth I, albeit solely for the

benefit of the Protestant classes.

2.1.3.1 The Munster plantation

Of all the events which affected Ireland in the Tudor era, it is the organised

settlement of the Irish landscape which was to have the greatest consequence in

terms of anglicisation. These settlements are known collectively as ‘plantations’

and were carefully planned (Foster 1988: 59–78; MacCurtain 1972: 89ff.; see

Dudley Edwards with Hourican 2005: 158 for maps). The practical success of

plantations depended on a number of factors and there were many setbacks.

But in the long run they were responsible for the establishment of a large-scale

English presence throughout the country. The first plantations originated in the

period from 1549 to 1557 (Moody and Martin 1967: 189ff.) when the two counties

Offaly and Laois (read: [liʃ])4 in the centre of the country were settled (Duffy

et al. 1997: 58f.).

Apart from a few cases of private initiatives, the plantations in Ireland were

affairs devised and sanctioned by the English government. In terms of size and

scope, two can be highlighted. The first is the Munster plantation and the second

is the Ulster plantation, which will be dealt with below (see section 3.1.2).

4 These counties were formerly called King’s and Queen’s County respectively (Lalor 2003: 815f.

and 609f.).

36 History I: The coming of the English

The prerequisites for the plantations were provided by Henry VIII who was

the first English king to lay a practical claim to all of Ireland (Bardon 1996: 45).

The old distinction between the English within the Pale and the Irish beyond

was to be abolished and English rule was to apply to the entire island.

The trigger for the plantations was the confiscation of lands after the defeat of

the Earl of Desmond in north Munster (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 16ff.). With

this defeat a large amount of land (some 300,000 acres, Duffy et al. 1997: 58)

fell to the government and it was decided to settle English on the escheated land

(McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 29f.). The system provided for the establishment

of seignories, land units allotted to Englishmen who were to assume a leading

role in recruiting further English settlers on the land. These people came to

be termed ‘undertakers’ and the number of settlers was stipulated for each unit

of land (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 30f.). In 1586 land in Munster was divided

into seignories of 12,000, 8,000, 6,000 and 4,000 acres. On the largest seignory

an undertaker had to plant ninety-one families including his own. The tenants

were also subdivided: freeholders obtained 300 acres each, farmers 400 acres,

copyholders 100 acres, the rest being at the discretion of the undertaker. A

seven-year time schedule was assumed for the realisation of a seignory; in the

case of the Munster plantation of 1586 the task was to have been completed by

1593 (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 30f.). Certain other provisions were made, for

instance for the defence of the lands. By and large the native Irish were excluded

from tenancy on seignories, but the Old English were not, as land could be

granted to ‘such as be descended from Englishmen’.

Among the English who came to Ireland at this time was the poet Edmund

Spenser who was appointed secretary in 1580 to the then governor of Ireland,

Lord Grey de Wilton. Spenser was allotted land in Munster (north Co. Cork).

However, his efforts did not bear fruit; his own castle being burnt down in 1598

a year before his death.

The Munster plantation was beset by certain difficulties from the start. Many

of the English who moved to the province in 1586–92 (Moody and Martin

1967: 190) assimilated to the local Irish. Furthermore, many of the undertak￾ers failed to carry out their commitments so that the plantation finally failed in

1598 (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 119). Historians mention that there may have

been other extenuating reasons, which McCarthy-Morrogh attempts to identify,

but the net result is that the English population in Munster did not increase

appreciably in the late 1580s and the 1590s. The estimated 4,000 newcomers –

spread across four counties: north Kerry, Limerick, north and north-east Cork,

west Waterford (McCarthy-Morrogh 1986: 130) – would not have had a signifi￾cant effect on the nature of English in the province.

Of course, the major reason for the failure of the plantation of Munster was

the rebellion of 1598 (Canny 2001: 162). This uprising, along with the Spanish

intervention on the side of the Irish under Hugh O’Neill, was a cause of serious

concern to the Elizabethan administration which saw the real likelihood of a

collapse of the English presence in Ireland (Canny 2001: 165).