Ireland, 1300–1558
The kings of England justified their rule over Ireland by the pretext that one of the European powers might at any moment make the island a base for attacking England. The failure of Protestant England to separate Ireland from the Roman Catholic Church pushed the kings to struggle harder to keep their hold. The Irish, a heroic, unruly, strong, headstrong and poetic people, politically unformed, never ceased trying to free themselves from the rule of men who shared neither their blood nor their tongue.
The evil results of England's occupation kept growing. In the time of Edward III many Anglo-Irish landlords returned to England to live comfortably on the income of their Irish estates. Although the English Parliament several times declared this form of ownership improper, absentee landlordism over three centuries drove the Irish to revolt. The English who remained in Ireland married Irish girls, mixed their blood with the Irish and took on their ways. The Irish Parliament, in which the English held sway, passed to stop this mingling the famous Statute of Kilkenny (1366). Along with some wise and generous provisions, this law forbade the English to marry the Irish, to give their infants to Irish nurses, to speak Irish, to wear Irish dress, to imitate Irish customs and to form close ties with the Irish, and it condemned offenders to prison or confiscation of property. From then on no Irishman might attend the English religious assemblies, and no Irish minstrel or storyteller might enter English houses. The law could not keep the English from mixing with the Irish, and the blending of the two peoples continued in the March, the Border and the Pale, the only lands in which the English dared to live.
The Wars of the Roses gave the Irish a chance to break the chains of English bondage, but instead of helping one another the Irish chiefs turned to killing their own kin, and the English fed that fratricide with money. Henry VII made the Pale obedient to England again, and his governor, Sir Edward Poynings, forced on the Irish Parliament the humiliating "Poynings' Law," which stripped it of the right to pass any law without the prior approval of the king and the English privy council (1494). The kings of England trampled all the rights of the Irish and ruled Ireland with a corruption, weakness and tyranny without equal in the whole Christian world. The most favored English method was to choose one of the sixty Irish clan chiefs as the lord deputy's assistant and empower him to buy and subdue the other chiefs.
Gerald, eighth Earl of Kildare, appointed to this post, tried to ease the disorder and hostility among the Irish clans, which were the cause of Ireland's poverty and weakness and of England's extortion. After his death (1513) his son Gerald Fitzgerald was chosen to succeed him. The ninth Earl of Kildare met a fate like that of many Irish nobles. He was accused of plotting with the Earl of Desmond to land French soldiers in Ireland, was called back to England and imprisoned. Henry VIII freed him after he promised to cooperate with the English and sent him back to Ireland in his former post. But soon afterward he summoned him to England on a charge of neglect in governing Ireland, Gerald was jailed again, and a year later he died in prison (1534). His loyal son Thomas Fitzgerald, known as "Silken Thomas," declared war on England, fought the English for fourteen months with courage and gallantry, and was finally beaten and hanged (1537).
Henry VIII, now entirely separated from the Roman Catholic Church, with his usual boldness made the Irish Parliament recognize him as head and authority of the Church of Ireland and of England, and the Irish Parliament submitted. All Irish officials were required to recognize Henry as head of the Church, and the tithe that had gone to the Church was paid thenceforth to the king. Religious reformers in the Pale stormed the churches and broke the sacred images. All the monasteries of Ireland, except those in remote places, were dissolved, their property passed to the state, and pensions were fixed for the expelled monks provided they avoided disorder. Part of the spoils was given to the Irish chiefs, who, thus won over, received noble titles from the king, accepted his religious leadership and turned from the pope (1539). The clan system in Ireland was dissolved and Ireland was declared part of the Kingdom of England (1541).
Henry died five years after this triumph, and Catholicism lived on in Ireland. The chiefs forgot their apostasy as if it had been a matter of past policy and, like Henry himself, stayed Catholic, but no longer obeyed the pope. The Irish clergy, who had the chiefs' support, also stayed faithful to Catholicism. The Irish people's faith not only did not change but, from national pride, grew firmer and more persistent against the defiant, hypocritical king and the future Protestant queen of England. The Irish struggle for freedom and independence sharpened, for liberation from English rule had now become their only way to freedom of body and soul.
An Absolute King
In 1540 Henry ruled England with a despotism the country had never known. The old Norman nobles, whose forefathers had imposed their views even on William the Conqueror, bowed before Henry and forgot Magna Carta, which had given them special privileges. The new upstart nobles, enriched by trade and by the king's gifts, left aristocrats and clergy no room to rebel. The House of Commons, once the bearer of the rights and liberties of the English people, whose members Henry now chose, gave the king unprecedented wide powers. With them the king could seize any estate, name anyone he wished his successor, distinguish orthodoxy from heresy, condemn men to death after a trial of form, and issue decrees that had formerly required Parliament's approval. "In the reign of Henry the spirit of liberty in the English nation withered." The English accepted Henry's tyranny partly out of fear, and partly because they believed his rule prevented a civil war like the Wars of the Roses. They now preferred order and quiet to liberty.
The English Bible
The same considerations forced the English to accept Henry's religious leadership and Church. Seeing that Protestants and Catholics had drawn up to shed each other's blood and that his Catholic subjects, in league with Catholic envoys and agents, plotted even at the price of occupying the country to overthrow him, Henry decided to control religious beliefs and rites himself. He tacitly admitted the Church's religious authority and gave himself the right to permit the reading of the Bible to whomever he thought fit. When the bishops forbade reading Tyndale's English translation of the Bible, Henry ordered them to produce a better English version, and when it became clear they were dragging their feet, Cromwell, by his order, commissioned Miles Coverdale to translate the Bible. The complete Bible rendered into English by Coverdale was printed in 1535 (the book says in Zurich). A revised English text appeared in 1539, and Cromwell ordered every church in England to obtain a copy of this "Great Bible." Henry, "out of royal liberality and goodwill," allowed his subjects to read the Bible in their homes, and soon the Bible reached all English homes. But the spread of the English text, while it inspired the people, also fed disorder and discord.
Every village interpreted the book to its own taste. Zealous Christians raised an uproar over its contents in churches and came to blows in taverns. Some men abandoned their wives, and some contracted a second holy marriage, and both groups justified their acts by citing particular passages of the Bible. The king regretted having let the people read the Bible, and in 1543 he had Parliament pass a law under which only nobles and landowners might read the Bible, and only the clergy might teach it to the people and discuss and give opinions on its contents.
Heresy, Treason and the Six Articles
It was hard not only for the people but for the king himself to grasp his real intent. Catholics were burned or beheaded for denying the king's religious and ecclesiastical headship, and Protestants for criticizing Catholic theology. Forest, the superior of the Franciscan house at Greenwich, was executed for refusing to deny the religious authority of the pope (13 May 1547 in the book, an evident slip for 1538). The Protestant John Lambert was imprisoned for denying the real presence of Christ in the sacrament; tried and condemned by Henry himself, he was burned at Smithfield (16 November 1538). The growing influence of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, made Henry increasingly conservative and inclined toward Catholic belief. In 1539 the king, Parliament and the Convocation of the clergy affirmed in the "Act of Six Articles" the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the celibacy of the clergy, monastic vows, Masses for the dead, confession of sins to a priest, and the need for uniformity in the manner of receiving the Eucharist. From then on, anyone who denied the real presence in speech or writing was burned without the right to defend himself. Those who denied the other articles first had their property seized and, if they persisted, were condemned to death. The marriages of priests were declared invalid, and priests who did not dissolve their marriages were counted among criminals. The English people, still attached to Catholicism, welcomed the new rules with satisfaction. But Cromwell in practice softened them. In 1540 the king changed course again and stopped the harassment of the people that the law had provided for. Yet bishops who opposed the Act, such as Latimer and Shaxton, were removed from their offices and imprisoned. On 30 July 1540, three Protestants for criticizing Catholic beliefs, and three Catholics for not recognizing the king as head of the English Church, were executed at Smithfield.
The King at Work
In governing the country, as in settling religious questions, Henry was resolute and active. Though he lived in a magnificent palace and was a heavy eater, he ran the business of state with tireless industry. The aides he chose were as able and as hard as he. He reorganized the English army, equipped it with modern weapons and learned the newest techniques of war. The Royal Navy, which came into being through his efforts, not only cleared the coasts of England and the Channel of pirates but also secured Elizabeth's victories in her sea battles. Yet he exhausted the people with heavy taxes, repeatedly debased the currency, seized people's property on trivial pretexts, asked the people for "benevolences," shirked his own debts, borrowed from the Fugger family, and expanded the country's economy in the hope of raising his revenue.
Land, Prices and Poverty
English agriculture was stagnant and in decline, and serfdom was still common. Pastures were in the hands of a few, and the new upstart landlords, not bound by feudal tradition, raised rents two to four times on the pretext of the rising cost of living and refused to renew expired leases. "Thousands of homeless tenants flocked to London and, without result, raised an outcry before the courts." The Catholic Thomas More depicted the sad plight of the poor peasants, and the Protestant Hugh Latimer denounced the landlords who had raised rents and, like Luther, painted the old days of the Church's history as though "the people were all compassionate." To prevent vagrancy and begging Parliament enacted harsh and merciless punishments. A law passed in 1530–31 ordered that any able-bodied man or woman who begged be publicly flogged through the town until bloody, with further bodily penalties for repeating the offense; in 1536 the penalty of death was set for those who begged again after two convictions. Little by little the homeless peasants found work in the towns, and the charity set aside for the poor reduced the number of beggars.
In the end, with the growth of large farms, agricultural output rose, but the government's weakness and indulgence during this transitional stage was an unpardonable political crime.
The same government protected the country's industries with tariffs, and the migration of villagers to the towns supplied cheap labor to industrial owners. The weaving industry came to rest on capitalist foundations, and a new wealthy class arose that, like the merchants, supported the king. Cloth, rather than wool, became England's chief export. The country's exports were mostly necessities made by the lower classes, and its imports mostly luxuries only the rich could reach. Merchants and manufacturers benefited from the law of 1536 that recognized ten percent as the lawful rate of interest, and capitalists gained from the rapid rise of prices, while the rise in the cost of goods people needed fell like a mortal blow on workers, peasants and the old feudal landlords. Between 1500 and 1576 housing rents rose by 1,000 percent, food prices by 250 to 300 percent and wages by 150 percent. Thomas Starkey wrote about 1537: "Poverty and want are now so widespread that the like could not endure in any prosperous commonwealth." Guild members enjoyed relative comfort thanks to fire insurance and mutual aid; but in 1545 Henry seized the property of the guilds too.