SOURCE: "Edmund Spenser and the Development of an Anglo-Irish Identity," in The Yearbook of English Studies: Colonial Imperial Themes, Special Number, Vol. 13, 1983, pp. 1-19.

[In the following essay Canny argues for the value of Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland as a contribution to the political theory of colonization and the history of Ireland.]

Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland, composed in 1596, has long been accepted as a fundamental contribution to the theory of colonization, but it has not been adequately appreciated as a political text because commentators have at once exaggerated and diminished its originality.¹ The exaggeration has happened because scholars have contended that Spenser's opinions were altogether more advanced than those held by any of his contemporaries in Ireland, and the diminution has resulted from the attribution of these advanced opinions to the influence of Machiavelli, Montaigne, Bodin, and, most recently, of Calvin.² It is argued in this paper that neither exaggeration nor diminution is warranted; both tendencies can be accounted for by the application of that approach to intellectual history whereby the scholar who proceeds from the assumption that all ideas can be traced to a fundamental thinker sets himself the task of identifying the influence exerted by one of these great progenitors upon his chosen author. This method has frequently been challenged, and the most convincing alternative approach to the study of intellectual history has been well demonstrated in Quentin Skinner's Foundations of Modern Political Thought³ Here Skinner proceeds from the assumption that all political theorists are acquainted with a broad range of ideas, and that it is the force of circumstances which compels each author to select from those available to him that body of ideas which provides him with a sense of purpose and direction. Thus, as Skinner sees it, the intellectual historian should continue the effort to trace influences, but should also seek to relate each text to the context in which it was produced, with a view to explaining the author's process of selection.⁴

When Spenser's View is analysed in this fashion it immediately becomes evident that it was a tract designed to serve the interests of those engaged upon the conquest and colonization of Ireland at the end of the sixteenth century, and that the advanced opinion to be found there can be explained by the peculiar, not to say precarious, circumstances in which these individuals found themselves. Furthermore it becomes evident that the ideas expressed there were the product of a conscious process of selection and rejection by the author, and a glance at the letters and political texts composed by Spenser's English contemporaries in Ireland shows that they resorted to similar ideas in response to the challenges that confronted them. This last observation deprives Spenser of any claims to uniqueness, but his is still the most elegant and coherent expression of that particular set of ideas which those engaged upon the conquest of Ireland found particularly useful during the final decades of the sixteenth century. But, as will be argued, these ideas were considered relevant not only by Spenser and his contemporaries but by successive generations of English settlers in Ireland, at least until the end of the seventeenth century. These had resort to Spenser's ideas (and they even referred to and imitated his View) with such frequency that we can accept the ideas enunciated by him as having provided them with an identity and sense of moral purpose which sustained them throughout the travails of the seventeenth century.

When placed under scrutiny it appears that Spenser's View comprises three separate but related sections. The central section (pp. 37-95), devoted to describing the barbaric condition of the Gaelic Irish, has little by way of description that was not to be found in literally scores of compositions by English or Old English authors from the time of Giraldus Cambrensis forward. In delineating a series of stages of social development, and in situating the Irish (with their supposed progenitors the Scythians) at the least developed stage, Spenser was advancing a notion that had become a commonplace among those engaged upon the conquest of Ireland for the previous thirty years.⁵ Of more recent adoption among English settlers in Ireland was the contention that most of the Old English population had degenerated from their original placing of about midway on the scale of social development to a position so lowly as to allow the conclusion that 'the chiefest abuses which are now in that realm are grown from the English, and the English that were are now much more lawless and licentious than the very wild Irish' (View, p. 63, and see p. 151).

In making this assertion Spenser was clearly attempting the denigration of that element of the population of Ireland which had most influence with the queen and her government in England. That he should seek to do so is consistent with his concern in the first section of the book to discredit the policy favoured by the Old English for the reform of their Gaelic neighbours. But while dismissing the Old English as unfit to undertake any work of reform, Spenser also declared as hopeless the reform strategy they favoured, because it failed to take cognizance of the cardinal assumption around which the View was organized: that man's social condition is determined by his environment (p. 68, and see pp. 151-53). To seek the uplift of a socially backward or a degenerate population without first destroying those environmental factors which imprisoned it in its backwardness was, in Spenser's opinion, a futile exercise, and was more likely to occasion revolt than to promote social accommodation (pp. 94-95).

Lest any should miss the drift of his argument, Spenser devoted the lengthy first section of his work (pp. 1-37) to demonstrating the specific shortcomings of the Old English reform strategy, and he returned repeatedly to these points throughout his discourse. By sponsoring the regnal act of 1541 and by encouraging the government to engage in compacts with Gaelic chieftains, the Old English members of that parliament had 'instead of so great and meritorious a service as they boast they performed to the king in bringing all the Irish to acknowledge him for their liege, [done] great hurt unto his title and [had] left a perpetual gall in the mind of that people' (p.9). This dramatic rejection of developments in which the Old English took pride, and which a recent historian has elevated to the plane of a constitutional revolution,⁶ was justified by Spenser's assertion that Henry VIII had inherited from his predecessor clear title to all of Ireland by the right of conquest, and that the recognition of this fact had made the Irish population 'bound to his obedience'. Now that this reality had been cast in doubt by the act of kingship, and now that the government had sought to win by persuasion the allegiance of the Gaelic chiefs, it was being suggested to them that they were bound to the English crown 'but with terms' where previously they recognized that 'their lives, their lands, and their liberties were in his free power to appoint what tenures, what laws, what conditions he would over them, against which there could be no rightful resistance; or if there were, he might when he would establish them with a stronger hand' (pp. 9-10).

The extension of the English common law to the entire population of Ireland which followed upon the events of 1541 had, in Spenser's opinion, inflicted a further hurt upon the king's interests because it enabled those who bore no respect for the common law to exploit its safeguards to serve their own advantage. Several instances of how such exploitation could occur were cited by Spenser, and almost all of these related to trial by jury. This system, which could operate successfully in England, was totally unsuited to Irish conditions where people considered themselves bound in conscience more by the will of their lord than by their oaths. Under such circumstances, Spenser averred, the Irish had no scruples over presenting false evidence or returning unfair verdicts when this served their own or their master's ends. As a consequence, Spenser claimed, grave injustice was being inflicted alike upon the crown and upon English settlers in Ireland, and these examples supported Spenser's more sweeping contentions that each system of law was appropriate only for that society which produced it, and that injustice would invariably result from any attempt to transfer law from one society to another 'according to the simple rule of right' (pp. 10-11, 21-31).

Having thus disposed of the Old English reform strategy, and having dismissed the Old English as potential reformers, the way was clear for Spenser in the third section of his work (pp. 91-170) to advance his own proposals. Like the Old English, Spenser stressed that the Irish were amenable to reform, but having rejected the notion that the English common law might be applied to them to achieve their regeneration he set himself to describe how it was possible 'to apply the people and fit them to the laws' (pp. 141-42).

The programme outlined by Spenser involved the pursuit of five sequential processes before the Irish population would attain a level of social development sufficiently advanced to enable them to derive benefit from the English commom law, the application of which would thereafter prevent them from relapsing to their former condition. The first process, lasting for about eighteen months, was the military one, whereby the English government would provide a force of 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse which would move against the principal seats of rebellion in the country (p. 98). It was recommended that the rebel leaders should be given an opportunity to submit, but that no quarter should be given in the event of their rejecting this overture for unconditional surrender. Those remaining in arms would be those who would 'never be made dutiful and obedient, nor brought to labour or civil conversation', and Spenser had no scruple about recommending the summary execution of those who were so addicted to 'a licentious life' that there was 'no hope of their amendment or recovery'. Having said this, he expressed himself satisfied that the amount of blood-letting would be negligible, and he predicted, on the basis of his experience in Munster, that far more people would die as a consequence of the famine which would result from the persistence of the rebel leaders with a hopeless struggle. Spenser considered this the most unfortunate aspect of his programme, and he was clearly moved to pity by the terrible scenes of starvation which he had witnessed during the previous war in Munster, and which he graphically described (p. 104).

But in describing this episode Spenser defended the actions of Lord Grey de Wilton, who had been accused by his enemies of being 'a bloody man' who regarded the lives of the queen's Irish subjects 'no more than dogs'. During that war, Spenser professed, 'there perished not many by the sword', and even then it was 'the necessity of that present state of things [which] enforced him to that violence'. Since the greatest loss of life among the Irish had been effected 'by the extremity of famine, which they themselves had wrought', Spenser found little difficulty in citing Grey's military endeavours as an example of the campaign that he envisaged for all of Ireland (pp. 104-06).

In doing so, however, Spenser indicated how the beneficial consequences of Grey's actions had been defeated because the queen had hearkened to those who criticized his actions, with the result that

the noble lord eftsoons was blamed, the wretched people pitied and new counsels plotted in which it was concluded that a general pardon should be sent over to all that would accept of it; upon which all former purposes were blanked, the governor at a bay, and not only all that great and long charge which she had before been at quite lost and cancelled, but also all that hope of good which was even at the door put back and clean frustrate, (p. 106)

Thus, as Spenser saw it, there was no point in the government undertaking the war against the crown's rebels in Ireland unless there was a firm determination to proceed to the second process, which involved placing the subdued country under military control and introducing English settlers to the confiscated lands of the erstwhile rebels (pp. 125-29).

The purpose behind the second process was to substitute a new focus of power and authority for the lords whose tyrannical rule was held responsible for corrupting the environment in which the Irish population lived. Existing septs and kinship groups were to be dissolved, and the Irish population was to be resettled on seignories, or in towns to be situated close to the proposed fortifications. There they were to be intermingled with English settlers who would instruct them in the ways of civil living and acquaint them with manufacturing skills and advanced agricultural methods. In this way an apparently military arrangement could become a first step towards the erection of 'that perfect establishment and new commonwealth' (p. 121) which Spenser envisaged for Ireland.

Once organized within this new framework, Spenser recommended that each Irishman should be sworn to the crown, and become a pledge for the loyalty of his neighbours. All would be obliged to pay a composition rent to the crown, which would meet the cost of maintaining soldiers in the country, and each province should be subject to a president and council who would have responsibility for the maintenance of civil order. The people, organized in hundreds, would be required to 'assemble themselves once every year with their pledges, and to present themselves before the justices of the peace which shall be thereunto appointed to be surveyed and numbered'. The purpose of these annual surveys was to detect any defectors from the new dispensation, and to ensure that every individual would have a surname peculiar to himself, as well as 'a certain trade of life'. By thus promoting individualism and self-sufficiency, and by insisting that English people be intermingled with the Irish population, it was hoped that the Irishman would 'not only not depend upon the head of [his] sept as now they do but also [would] in short time learn quite to forget his Irish nation'. This, it was believed, would bring the Irish to identify with their English superiors, thus effecting 'an union of manners and conformity of minds, to bring them to be one people'.⁷

Idleness was to be prohibited within this new arrangement, and those who had hitherto led an idle life, or who had concentrated on pastoral farming, were to devote themselves to intensive farming or be cut off by martial law. This stage of the reform process would thus open the way for the proper development and exploitation of Ireland's natural resources, and it was required that the first generation of Irishmen born into this new condition would be instructed at school

in grammar and in the principles of sciences …. whereby they will in short time grow up to that civil conversation that both the children will loathe the former rudeness in which they were bred, and also their parents will, even by the ensample of their young children, perceive the foulness of their own brutish behaviour compared to theirs, for learning hath that wonderful power of itself that it can soften and temper the most stern and savage nature.⁸

Once this stage had been attained the way was open for the missionary endeavour if 'some discreet ministers of their countrymen' who 'by their mild persuasions and instructions as also by their sober life and conversation, may draw them first to understand and afterwards to embrace the doctrine of their salvation' (p. 161). Finally it was conceded that upon the successful completion of this missionary endeavour the Irish population would have been sufficiently advanced to appreciate and derive full benefit from the operation of the English common law.

The novelty of the proposals being advanced by Spenser becomes apparent when we compare them with the issues that concerned political theorists in contemporary England. Like Spenser, they considered reform to be a worthy objective of government, but their principal concern in advocating reform was to uphold the status quo by forestalling social dislocation.⁹ Spenser on the other hand was dismissing the social order that he had witnessed in Ireland as unacceptable, and was providing a formula for its overthrow and for the erection of a new social order to replace it. In doing so Spenser was recommending innovation as a desirable end, and he cited necessity as a justifiable pretext for employing questionable means to the attainment of that end. This strictly secular approach, which bears striking resemblance to Machiavellian thought, was provided with a humane appearance by Spenser's insistence that the employment of the sword as an instrument of reform was altogether less destructive of human life than its alternative, the halter.¹⁰ Spenser also reiterated his claim that his objective was an essentially humanistic one, and his juxtaposing the barbarism of Ireland with the civility of England suggested that it was also a Christian objective. By thus focusing attention on the desirability of the ends which were held in prospect, he hoped to divert attention from any doubts that might be fostered over his citing necessity as a justification for action. Then, for the benefit of those whose faintheartedness derived from concern over the costs involved, Spenser laid emphasis on the material benefits which would accrue to England, no less than to Ireland, from the implementation of his programme.

The advanced character of the ideas enunciated by Spenser will be evident from this analysis, but it will now be shown that these ideas were commonplace among Spenser's English contemporaries in Ireland and that it was the circumstances in which they found themselves which forced them to adopt ideas which, initially at least, they did not find particularly congenial.

Almost every English-born author writing of Ireland during the 1580s and 1590s was insistent upon the development of a clearly-defined radical programme of reform which would involve the erection of a completely new commonwealth upon firm foundations. Most, like Spenser, had resort to surgical or horticultural metaphors, but one original spirit likened Ireland to an old cloak which had been patched and mended so frequently that it would bear with no further repair and required replacement.¹¹ This insistence upon novelty implied a rejection of the conciliatory measures favoured by the Old English in Ireland, but many writers went beyond implications to launch an open attack upon the Old English and to question their very civility. These were most vulnerable to attack on account of their lack of enthusiasm for the established church, but Barnaby Rich, who had been berating the Old English for this ever since the 1560s, was (and saw himself to be) an isolated figure among the New English in Ireland.¹² Then suddenly, in the 1580s, accusations such as Rich had always been associated with became a standard ingredient in the letters and tracts of the New English. The most strident critic of the Old English, against whom Barnaby Rich sounds moderate and tolerant, was Andrew Trollope, who composed two lengthy tracts on Ireland during the late 1580s.¹³ In the first of these he proved himself the most negative critic of the Gaelic Irish population, and his lurid description of their barbarism led him to the conclusion that they were not 'thrifty and civil or human creatures, but heathen or rather savage and brute beasts' (f. 97^r). When launching on this description Trollope excluded, in conventional fashion, the residents of 'the walled towns' from his blanket condemnation of the Irish, but their exclusion was ignored as he proceeded, as when he remarked of the Old English that 'when they might get opportunity [they] spared not the committing of any kind of treason or mischief and manifested themselves to burning hatred and malice against all the English nation'. Support for this charge was provided by reference to an onslaught made by a mob in Waterford ('one of the civilest towns in Ireland') upon the wife of Sir William Drury, and to the popular expectation in Dublin that 'the throats of all the English nation had been cut at one instant' (ff. 98^v-99^r).

Incidents such as these were sufficient to satisfy Trollope that the outward appearance of civility presented by the Old English lawyers was no more than a veneer to cloak their evil intent. Those who attended service were declared hypocrites, and those Old English officials who partook of communion, and even Old English bishops, were found inadequate because some of their relatives were notorious Catholics. The advances made by the Counter-Reformation among the Old English justified Trollope's remark (to Burghley, f. 204^r) that he would 'undertake sooner reform of religion [of] a country among the wild Irish than the English Pale', and he cited 'the chronicles and common experience' as proof that there had never been 'Irish man in authority which upon trial had proved a true subject'. This meant in effect, claimed Trollope (to Walsingham, ff. 99^v-100^v), that Ireland would never be reformed until 'true English hearts [would] rule there', and he called for the summary dismissal of 'all Irish councillors, Irish judges, and all Irish officers' as the first step towards reform.

But as well as dismissing the Old English strategy for reform and denouncing the Old English as would-be reformers, the New English had come increasingly to insist on their right to step outside the law when seeking to implement their programme. Richard Beacon, who had served with Spenser as an official on the provincial council of Munster, devoted an entire pamphlet, entitled Solon His Follie (Oxford, 1594), to the defence of Sir Richard Bingham, who had acknowledged that when serving as president of Connacht he had ignored legal niceties to prosecute those whom he suspected of plotting insurrection against the state. In Beacon's allegorical account of this episode, Bingham in Connacht was likened to a Roman general who was forced by necessity to take summary action against the rebellious Gauls who, if given time, would have been able to achieve his overthrow.

The defence of Bingham became as important as the defence of Lord Grey de Wilton to the New English in Ireland, and the fact that one John Merbury, a captain who had served under Bingham in Connacht, could advance rationalizations similar to those of Spenser and Beacon is one measure of the popularity these views enjoyed even among the less well educated of the New English. Merbury was concerned with proving 'it necessary to make war in Connacht', and he justified Bingham in taking the offensive because war was the means 'to have that province, and her realm of Ireland replenished with people'. 'Rigour', averred Merbury, 'hath his time in all governments', and its employment in the particular circumstances was justified because the number who would suffer was 'so small in respect of the multitude of the rest that in good policies and in the use of many old commonwealths the lives of so few have been thought well given for the preservation of so many'. Realizing, however, that this secular argument would provoke moral objections, Merbury posed the rhetorical question if it was 'against Christian policy for the safety of all the rest to punish by justice and utterly to root out a few inveterate tyrants ravening robbers and violent murderers of mankind?'. The question required no answer for Merbury, but by way of consolation for those whose consciences were not yet put at rest he protested that:

If the customs they pretend can stand with any law divine, natural or civil, if they can convey unto themselves any title of inheritance by succession lawful, or by good purchase to those lands they claim, I say God forbid they should be taken from them; yea I say more if they can present in good reason and not as rebels …. of fresh memory it might be thought wrong to take such their living from them. But on the otherside if they whom they have dispossessed by meer wrong make continual claim, have the help of the law on their side, by good means repossess their own, yield their duty to God first and to her Majesty their prince and country next. Wherefore then I say hath God ordained her Majesty prince over them, but to defend them and maintain them in their right against the destroyer?

Thus, as Merbury saw it, the government was required by moral not less than pragmatic considerations to dispense with due legal process whenever circumstances dictated that this best served its purpose. 'These carrion crows devour the seed, these weeds choke the corn: why should they not be killed and weeded out in time?'¹⁴ While Merbury recognized that conflict could occur, between the moral code by which officers of the crown should always be bound and the secular expedients that seemed to provide a solution to their difficulties, others did not admit of this possibility. Some even went so far as to suggest that no tension would exist as long as men were guided by reason in choosing their ends. Sir John Perrott, who served as lord deputy of Ireland in 1584-88, remarked that when discussing secular expedients 'a man should set aside God, who in government admitteth no policy that is besides, much less directly against, His will', but he then proceeded to demonstrate that when argued 'with good reason' the policy that would emerge would be in full conformity with Christian principles.¹⁵

Besides his concern to dovetail the new English reform programme with Christian morality, Perrott, again like Spenser and his contemporaries, drew attention to the material benefits that would derive from the implementation of the programme and cited these as evidence of its godly purpose. Lest men think that his call for 'severe correction' be considered 'a more cruel sentence' than he intended, Perrott emphasized that it was far from his purpose 'to desire any expiration, but rather that all might be saved that were good for the country to be saved'. While stressing the humane considerations that dictated restraint, Perrott also conceded that moderation was essential because 'otherwise there would be such a vacuity of ground there (as it is already too great) that your realm of England though it be most populous …. were not able to spare people to replenish the wastes'. Developing this point Perrott asserted that

scarce the fourth foot of Ireland [was] at this hour manured; and of that scarce the fourth penny profit made that the soil would yield, if through a reformation the husbandman might have a safe and peaceable use both of it and his cattle. And yet I say nothing of mines, and a number of other hidden commodities that a civil reformed government would bring with it. (sig. A⁴, B³)

Thus, as Perrott saw it, nothing should be permitted to stand in the way of reformation because the existing condition of Ireland was 'neither godly, nor honourable', whereas 'a reformation will breed competent wealth, and competent wealth containeth men in a liking obedience where desperate beggary runneth headlong to rebellion' (sig. D²).

Much the same point was developed by Andrew Trollope (to Walsingham f. 98) and, as was noted, this utilitarian rationalization also characterized Spenser's text. But while it is possible to demonstrate that several of Spenser's ideas enjoyed common currency among his contemporaries in Ireland, the most convincing evidence that Spenser's View was a representative statement is the striking similarity between his argument and that developed in the treatise Croftus, Sive de Hibernia composed by Sir William Herbert, a close neighbour and fellow planter with Edmund Spenser in Munster.¹⁶ Insufficiency and degeneracy of the earlier English settlers in Ireland was thought by Herbert to be principally responsible for the barbaric condition of Ireland, and, like Spenser, he advocated a thorough conquest followed by plantation as the only means to achieve a regeneration of Irish society. Herbert also identified various stages in the process of uplift, and he differed from Spenser only in advancing the missionary endeavour by two stages. This was possible in Herbert's scheme because he recognized the possibility of training missionaries to preach in the Irish language and of translating the Bible and religious discourses into Irish. In recommending this course of action, and in giving it practical demonstration on his Munster estate, Herbert made it quite clear (pp. 5455) that he was merely exploiting the Irish language as an instrument to hasten the Irish population to a level of civility equal to that of the English, at which point they would abandon their native language in favour of that of the conqueror.

These few example serve to sustain the point that Spenser's opinions were quite typical of those engaged upon the conquest of Ireland, and also make it clear that the View can no longer be regarded as the quick response of one individual to the overthrow by Irish rebels of the recently-established English settlement in Munster. The elegance of the discourse suggests that Spenser's View was composed only after long cognition, and the coincidence of opinion between himself and his contemporaries in Ireland suggests that Spenser engaged in discussion with his fellow planters and officials before he committed himself to paper. The outbreak of rebellion in Munster in 1594-95 may have added a new urgency to the composition and may explain its appearance in 1596, but we can safely assume that Spenser's View, like Herbert's Croftus, would have been written even without the overthrow of his plantation in Munster: a suggestion that becomes all the more plausible when it is recognized that it was the civil Old English of the Pale, rather than the rebellious population of Munster, who were isolated by Spenser for particular criticism. In seeking for the context in which the View was produced we must look therefore beyond the outbreak of rebellion in 1594 to seek for a general breakdown of relations between the more articulate members of the Old English community and the New English settlers in Ireland.

Tension between these two elements had been evident since at least the middle decade of the sixteenth century, and the Palesmen had repeatedly displayed their ability to exert influence over the queen and bring her to recall a lord deputy whose policies did not meet with their approval. Such endeavours had naturally produced friction between the Pale community and the English followers of the particular lord deputy, but did not have lasting effects, and successive governors were forced willy-nilly to combine whatever policy they favoured for Ireland with some variant upon the surrender and regrant strategy that had become an idée fixe with Old English reformers. This did much to win the acquiescence of political spokesmen from the Pale with continued rule from England; the alienation of the Palesmen from English rule was also avoided because most administrative and judicial posts in Dublin were held by people of Irish birth and because some English-born officials identified closely with the interests and ideas of the Pale community. This last development was facilitated by the conformity of most prominent Irish-born officials with the established church, and whatever their differences over policy, Old and New English were united by their mutual contempt for the Gaelic inhabitants of the island. Interest rather than principle explains the occasional breakdown in relations between the Pale community and their succession of governors that usually occurred when the governor's call for financial support from the Pale towards the maintenance of the army exceeded the communal perception of what was just and equitable.

This tense but highly predictable relationship between government and community suddenly gave way in 1579 to a collapse which resulted in the alienation of the Pale community from all English-born servitors in the country. Events of the following years exacerbated an already difficult situation, and by the mid 1580s it was acknowledged by both sides that mutual trust and understanding would never again be restored. Each side stove for the total victory which could only result from the destruction of the other, and it was against this background and in this atmosphere of mutual recrimination that Spenser's View and the other discourses that have been discussed were produced.

Religious considerations (the increasing attachment of English servitors to a more stridently Protestant position, and the gradual penetration of Counter-Reformation ideas within the Pale) contributed to the polarization between government and community, but of far greater consequence was the chain of events that followed upon the outbreak of the second Desmond rebellion in 1579. Gerald Fitzgerald, the fourteenth earl of Desmond, had long resented what he regarded as the intrusion upon his authority that resulted from the introduction of a provincial presidency in Munster, but he had studiously held back from the brink, and the government had made some tactful compromises to retain his allegiance. But official concern with compromise was abandoned once the earl's cousin, James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, returned from the continent backed by a Papally appointed force, and once the earl's brother, John of Desmond, symbolized his rejection of English rule by the murder of Captain Henry Davells. Here was evidence, protested the English-born officials in Dublin, of a general revolt of the Irish population against English rule, and their case for a general conspiracy spearheaded by the Pope was substantiated by the outbreak in July 1580 of a second religiously-inspired revolt, this time within the Pale itself and led by James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass.¹⁷ No opportunity should be lost, it was averred, to make an example of those of English descent who had so flagrantly made manifest their disobedience to the crown, and the government pressed home its advantage to track down and prosecute all who had engaged in the Munster rebellion.¹⁸

The ruthlessness with which the Earl of Desmond and his followers were pursued and the plans that were outlined for the future reorganization of Munster left the entire Old English community in disarray: first because the clear distinction that had previously been maintained in the treatment accorded Gaelic and Old English lords was now being suspended; and secondly because the implementation of the proposed plantation in Munster threatened to strengthen the position of the New English in Ireland, thus enabling them to challenge the dominant position hitherto enjoyed by the Old English in parliament and government. Thus, as the Old English saw it,' their very survival as a privileged élite depended upon their ability to frustrate the intentions of the New English, and the only means that they could see to achieving this was to seek to discredit all New English servitors in the eyes of the queen. The severe measures taken by Arthur Lord Grey de Wilton in the suppression of the rebellions in both Munster and the Pale provided the Old English with an ideal subject on which to base their allegations, and they pressed also for an official investigation of the conduct of Sir Richard Bingham as president in Connacht.¹⁹ The essential point being made was that no conspiracy existed, but that the Old English lords (who were well disposed towards the crown) were being goaded into rebellion by the harsh, ill-advised, and frequently illegal actions of English officials and soldiers whose only concern was self-advancement. This argument, and the investigations that produced evidence to substantiate it, were pursued with such persistence that the New English were thrown back on the defensive, and literature such as we have been considering was that produced in defence of their actions and ambitions.

The discussion of the context in which Spenser's View and other such works were produced will explain why the Old English were isolated for particular attack. But since the Old English had taken the initiative, the New English authors were forced to defend themselves in the terms that had been selected by their opponents, and the extent to which the terms of the exchange were set by the Old English will become evident from a study of a letter composed in 1581 by Sir Nicholas White, an Irish-born barrister who served as Master of the Rolls during the late sixteenth century. Borrowing the medical metaphors so beloved by the New English, White contended that his long service in Ireland had taught him 'by experience what things the stomach of that body can and cannot digest'. The reform of the Gaelic Irish was, he admitted, an intractable problem that called for severe measures, and his purpose in writing was to persuade the queen that the 'violent and warlike government' which might be appropriate for the Gaelic Irish should not be extended to the Old English population. The policy being pursued by the queen's officers in Ireland would, he averred, 'exhaust her Majesty's treasure, waste her revenue, depopulate the Pale, weaken her [Old] English nobility, that have been and may be made the security of this state, leave the wild Irish to their desires that be the peril thereof, and consume with misery of the wars her soldiers which she sendeth hither'. Of these possible consequences, the most serious in White's eyes was that of losing the traditional allegiance of the Old English nobility, and he emphasized 'what a strong garrison without pay the seed of English blood hath made to her crown since their first planting, which are easier reformed than supplanted and more to be esteemed for the priority of their tenures than others that seek by posteriority to go before'.²⁰

The others being referred to by White were the New English servitors, and as well as providing details of their corruption and insensitivity, White questioned the motives that underlay their military policy. Those who advised the queen 'to spare for no cost to translate this kingdom of the new' were likened by White to 'artisans that persuade owners of ancient houses to pull them down for altering of fashion wherein they seek more their own setting a work than to do the owners' profit'. As White warmed to his theme he contrasted himself, a native of Ireland who through years of service had proved his concern for his country, with the New English 'malcontents' who would 'seek to better [their] state by change', and he concluded with the aphorism that 'innovations hath been in all ages accounted dangerous, and the busiest men that way be not the profitablest ministers'. By thus accusing the New English of being innovators, White was in effect identifying them with the political philosophy of Machiavelli which he knew to be repugnant to the queen and her advisers in England. The queen should, he claimed, avoid committing the government of Ireland 'to such as cannot govern themselves', lest it lose her the loyalty of her subjects; she should avoid 'the rooting out of ancient nobility' lest it alter the situation whereby she was 'of all her nobility feared for love, and not loved for fear'; she should avoid the appointment of 'judges that be bloody' lest their severe judgements 'work things of dangerous effects'; and he warned that the queen should above all avoid extending 'the uttermost of her correction' to those who were wanting in duty lest 'it may so happen that, thinking all law were ended, there might arise other men' more difficult to control. In other words, while advocating the merits of 'a temperate and peaceable government', White was hoping, by drawing attention to the chaos that would result from innovation, to deflect the queen from the policy being recommended to her by her officials in Ireland.

That Nicholas White was not alone in implying that the New English were being guided by the godless Machiavelli is evident from William Herbert's curt denial of the charge of 'being Italianated', stating that there was 'nothing more swerving from [his] conscience and course of life'.²¹ But deny what they would, the New English could not conceal the fact that innovation was their ambition and necessity their guiding principle, which explains their need to argue that a policy of innovation was dictated and justified by the moral imperatives of the particular situation. Then, as if by way of consolation to those who were not fully satisfied, the New English laid stress on the material benefits that would derive from their chosen course of action, and they looked forward to the day when the Irish population, once relieved from the tyranny of their lords, would recognise the good that was being placed before them and would thus come to embrace English culture and civility.

The New English were, as we have seen, forced to resort to these rationalizations in order to vindicate themselves in the eyes of the government in England, but it is also probable that the various arguments served to sustain those who engaged in the more gruesome aspects of the Elizabethan conquest. That the ideas of Spenser and his contemporaries did provide the New English with a sense of moral purpose is also suggested by the continued popularity of these ideas throughout the seventeenth century. John Davies, who had witnessed the completion of the conquest and was responsible both for arranging a plantation in Ulster and for extending English common law into the hitherto rebellious provinces, adhered rigidly to the ideas of Spenser when outlining his Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was Never Entirely Subdued until the commencement of the reign of James I. Davies chose a historical framework for his work, and explained the failure of all previous attempts to bring Ireland to subjection by reference to the failure of successive monarchs to recognize the parallel between good husbandry and good government:

For the husbandman must first break the land before it be made capable of good seed: and when it is thoroughly broken and manured, if he do not forthwith cast good seed into it, it will grow wild again, and bear nothing but weeds. So a barbarous country must be first broken by a war before it will be capable of good government; and when it is fully subdued and conquered, if it be not well planted and governed after the conquest, it will eftsoons return to the former barbarism.

The first to recognize the parallel, claimed Davies, was Queen Elizabeth, who duly broke the country by war and who thus made it possible for him, as the attorney general of King James I, to set about planting and governing the country. There was no doubt in his mind that the plans laid by himself for a mixed plantation of settler and native in the province of Ulster would produce a more prosperous and harmonious outcome than any previous effort at colonization in Ireland. But since Davies, like Spenser, believed 'the principal mark and effect of a perfect conquest' to be the extension of 'laws to a conquered people', he took special satisfaction from the eagerness with which the Irish population availed themselves of the benefit of English common law. Even then, Davies realized that he operated in a period of transition and that it would continue to be necessary for law to 'make her progress and circuit about the realm, under the protection of the sword (as Virgo the figure of Justice is by Leo in the Zodiac) until the people have perfectly learned the lesson of obedience and the conquest be established in the hearts of all men'. Judging from the evidence of improvement that he witnessed about him, Davies did not think it long before this would be accomplished, and he looked forward eagerly to 'the next generation' who would 'in tongue and heart, and every way else become English; so as there [would] be no difference or distinction but the Irish sea between us'.²²

Belying the optimism of Davies was, however, his suspicion of closely-knit kinship groups the members of which would 'assemble and conspire, and rise in multitudes against the crown', and would 'even now, in the time of peace', hinder 'an indifferent trial …. between the king and the subject, or between party and party, by reason of this general kindred and consanguinity' (pp. 172-73). This, we will recall, was seen by Spenser as the principal obstacle in the way of reform in Ireland, and Davies's acknowledgement that Irish kinship groups were still dominant in particular areas was an admission on his part that Spenser's prescription for reform had not been adhered to in every detail.

This was so obvious to one of Davies's contemporaries that he donned the mantle of Spenser under the pseudonym 'E.S.' and presented King James with A Survey of the Present Estate of Ireland, Anno 1615. The purpose of the author's survey was to measure the extent to which Spenser's advice had been followed, and he concluded, on the basis of his knowledge of conditions in Munster, that the conquest had not been fully implemented and that the educative and missionary aspect of the programme had been totally neglected. This meant that the indigenous lords still enjoyed excessive authority over the population and were able to provide support and patronage to seminary priests who, in turn, were taking it upon themselves to adjudicate upon disputes between the king's subjects. The extension of common law, the advancement of English to displace Irish as the dominant language of the country, and the progress of the reformation in Ireland were all thought to be hindered by these impediments to reform. Even more disastrous, in the opinion of E.S., was the decay of the recently-established plantation in Munster because the settlers, having been situated in an environment which was still corrupt, had succumbed to that corruption in the same way that all previous English settlers in Ireland had done. If anything was to survive of the Munster plantation it was essential, claimed E.S., that the settlers be strictly segregated from the natives until such time as those had been freed from the tyranny of their lords and had been exposed to the full thrust of the projected effort towards education and reform. Failing that, claimed E.S., there was nothing in prospect but a relapse of Ireland to its former barbarism:

Every Irish lord in this country doth hold it for a principal maxim to keep his tenants and vassals in ignorance, not suffering a schoolmaster to come amongst them, nor suffer them to learn to speak English, because they shall neither understand God, the King, nor his laws, but repair always to their lord who is the man that they say under God knows and can do all things, and their prayer is God, our Lady and my Lord such a one help me, and their ordinary oath is by their lord's hand.²³

This criticism was quite close to that offered previously by Edmund Spenser and his contemporaries, and it was also commonplace among English settlers in Ireland who were almost driven to despair by the crown's reluctance to have them push the conquest of Ireland to its conclusion. The continued popularity and relevance of Spenser to planters in Ireland explains why Spenser's View, which had previously circulated in manuscript, was finally published in Dublin in 1633, and we can assume that it provided wonderful consolation to the New English planters when they struggled with Thomas Wentworth (afterwards Earl of Strafford) to retain political and social control over the country of their adoption.²⁴

But while all the New English planters in Ireland felt threatened by the survival of knots of kinship within the Irish lordships, they did not all agree with E.S. that they should stand aloof from the Irish population who lived within those parts of the country which had been brought under effective planter control. Native cultivators of the soil were seen to be essential to the economical survival of the planters, who could justify retaining them in their midst by claiming that they were being reformed by the example of civil living presented to them by the settler population. This concern to justify a departure from the strict letter of Spenser's prescription goes some way towards explaining the attention devoted by the principal planters to the promotion of manufacturing centres and advanced agriculture on their estates: all of which they described as works of charity. Their success in attracting many Irish to participate in these endeavours satisfied them that they had been correct not only in choosing, with Spenser, the sword instead of the halter, but in choosing to accelerate the reform stage of Spenser's programme and to permit mixed plantation within their own spheres of influence even before the desired conquest had been implemented throughout the country as a whole.²⁵

The confidence and optimism of the planters was particularly evident in their strong attachment to place, and in their assumption of the description 'Irishman' at a time when the long established Catholic settlers of Norman descent had, for political reasons, taken to describing themselves as Old English. But the confidence and complacency which had previously characterized planter society in Ireland suddenly gave way to fear and suspicion with the unexpected outburst of rebellion in 1641. The planters more than ever protested their attachment to the localities that had been recently developed and improved by themselves, and they took credit for having been 'the introducers of all good things to Ireland'. But the description 'Irish', which they had previously inclined towards, was now utterly rejected as something contemptible, and they proclaimed themselves British Protestants who had been set upon by the Irish 'barbarians', who had both declined the hand of friendship that had been extended towards them and had, by their mindless destruction, 'endeavoured quite to extinguish the memory of [the planters] and of all the civility and good things by them introduced amongst all that wild nation'.²⁶

In this atmosphere of hate and revenge it was to be expected that Spenser's preference for the sword over the halter would be reversed, and the call now was for execution and for an abandonment of any effort to reform a people who, by their actions, had shown themselves unworthy of commiseration. Many of the English who came in Cromwell's army to suppress the revolt were of this same opinion, and one of their number, Captain Richard Lawrence, advocated a rigid policy of apartheid in a pamphlet entitled The Interest of England in the Irish Transplantation Stated (Dublin, 1655).²⁷ By this time, however, the initial shock of the rebellion had been absorbed and wiser counsels were beginning to prevail even in England, where one brave spirit recommended that 'he that desire to advance the plantation of Ireland can hardly find better hints than are in Mr. Ed. Spenser his View of the State of Ireland, published almost three score years ago, 1596'.²⁸ But by then this advice was hardly necessary for those who had been previously involved with Ireland, because they recognized that a strict policy of segregation would spell economic disaster for themselves. This explains why Vincent Gookin, a Munster planter and prominent political figure among the New English, rushed immediately to contradict the contentions made by Lawrence. Mixed plantation was, protested Gookin, a sound method of settlement once political dominance had been achieved over the Irish, because the planters might then 'safely taste the good of the Irish without fearing the ill'.²⁹

What Gookin had to say was in strict conformity with Spenser's thinking, and it is significant that the next author writing anonymously (from the planter's perspective) on the subject of reform of the Irish should adopt a title, The Present State of Ireland, Together with some Remarks upon the Ancient State Thereof (London, 1673), which was reminiscent of Spenser's discourse. The efforts at settlement previous to 1641 had, however laudable, suffered from one major defect in that they had been attempted before the conquest of the country had been fully implemented. The planters in Ireland had failed, according to this anonymous writer, to 'translate the ancient inhabitants to other dwellings', and by leaving them undisturbed in their traditional places of habitation had 'left the old inhabitants to shift for themselves, who being strong in body and daily increasing in number …. would undoubtedly be ready, when any occasion offered itself, to disturb our quiet'. The occasion had come in 1641, but the author was satisfied that this had provided the planters with an opportunity to rectify the previous deficiency by implementing a total conquest of the country. Thus, as he saw the situation in 1673, 'the eternal peace of Ireland which was so solidly discoursed of and stoutly fought for in Queen Elizabeth's time; and very far proceeded in by King James I, had been absolutely perfected …. according to all human appearance by the last settlement of Ireland confirmed by his gracious Majesty King Charles the Second' (pp. 59, 74).

Because the conquest had been fully implemented, the author of The Present State of Ireland believed there was 'no need to fear as formerly' since the 'numerous habitations in most parts of the kingdom' would 'draw the Irish from their wonted barbarism', while the English would 'no longer lapse to barbarism through intermarriage' (p. 74). By thus laying stress on the environmental transformation that had occurred, this author was placing himself in the direct tradition of Spenser, whose ideas now served to provide planters in Ireland with a sense of mission, and of identity. The development of yet another rebellion at the end of the seventeenth century occasioned some planters to regret that they had not resorted to the halter in preference to the sword, but optimism was restored with the suppression of that rebellion, and the Protestant ascendancy of the eighteenth century symbolized their confidence in the future by promoting manufacturing on their estates and by creating artificial towns and villages.³⁰ In practice these did little to achieve the uplift of the native population, which would have been evidenced in the final analysis by their identification with the established church, but the effort did much to satisfy the Protestant population that they had a positive role in Ireland and that, with Spenser (View, p. 2), they believed 'nothing so hard but that through wisdom may be mastered and subdued, since the poet says that the wise man shall rule even over the stars, much more over the earth'.

Notes

¹A View of the Present State of Ireland, edited by W. L. Renwick (Oxford, 1970), is referred to hereafter as View, with page references in the text.

² See View, pp. 188-90; Brendan Bradshaw, 'Sword, Word and Strategy in the Reformation in Ireland', Historical Journal, 21 (1978), 475-502, and 'The Elizabethans and the Irish: A Muddled Model', Studies, 70 (1981), 233-44.

³ Two volumes (Cambridge, 1978).

⁴ See Foundations, I, x-xv, and 'Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas', History and Theory, 8 (1969), 3-53.

⁵ See Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established, 1565-76 (Brighton, 1976), pp. 116-36.

⁶ Brendan Bradshaw, The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979).

⁷View, pp. 140-56 (pp. 153, 156).

⁸View, pp. 156-59. (p. 159).

⁹ See G. R. Elton, Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge, 1973); Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli (London, 1964).

¹⁰ See Skinner, Foundations, 1, 128-38; Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini (Princeton, 1965); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975), especially pp. 156-82; View, p. 95.

¹¹ ' See, for an example of the more common treatment, the anonymous 'Discourse for the Government of Ireland' (P.R.O., S.P. 63/87/81, f. 28).

¹² See, 'Book of Barnaby Rich on the Reformation in Ireland', 1589 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/144/35, ff. 104-13); Rich to Burghley, 20 May 1591 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/158/12, ff. 21-23).

¹³ Andrew Trollope to Walsingham, 12 September 1585 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/85/39, ff. 96^v-102^r); Trollope to Burghley, 26 October 1587 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/131/64, ff. 200^v-204^r).

¹⁴ Captain John Merbury on Revolt in Connacht, 27 September 1589 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/146/57, ff. 177-79).

¹⁵ E.C.S., The Government of Ireland under Sir John Perrott, 1584-8 (London, 1626), sig. D¹-D²

¹⁶ Edited by W. E. Buckley (London, 1887).

¹⁷ See A New History of Ireland, edited by T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, and F. J. Byrne, Volume III, Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 105-15, 107.

¹⁸ For the government's determination in this respect see Geoffrey Fenton to Burghley, 6 December 1583 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/106/4).

¹⁹ On Connacht during this period see Bernadette Cunningham, 'Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1569-164' (M.A. thesis, University College, Galway, 1979).

²⁰ Nicholas White to Burghley, 23 December 1581 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/87/55, ff. 151^r-52^v).

²¹ Sir William Herbert to Sir Valentine Browne, 1 January 158/9 (P.R.O., S.P. 63/140/14).

²²A Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was Never Entirely Subdued, and Brought under Obedience of the Crown of England, until the Beginning of His Majestie's Happy Reign (London, 1612), pp. 4-5, 100, 74, 272.

²³A Survey of the present Estate of Ireland, Anno 1615, Addressed to His Most Excellent Majesty James the First…. by His Most Humble Subject E:S (San Marino, California, Huntington Library, EL. 1746), ff. 10^r-15^V. This vellum-bound tract was obviously the work of an individual who had been engaged upon the plantation effort in Munster.

²⁴ For the New English struggle with Wentworth see H. F. Kearney, Strafford in Ireland, 1633-41 (Manchester, 1961).

²⁵ This point is developed in Nicholas Canny, The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566-1643 (Cambridge, 1982), see especially pp. 19-40, 124-38.

²⁶ Gerard Boate, Ireland's Natural History (London, 1652), pp. 89, 114. Although composed by two Dutch scientists, Arnold and Gerard Boate, who accompanied Cromwell's army to Ireland, the ideas expressed there can be accepted as those of the New English because the authors 'discussed the matter with several gentlemen who had been to Ireland, especially Sir William Parsons and Sir Richard Parsons'.

²⁷ The author recommended that the English in Ireland settle apart even from those Irish 'late deemed converts to the Protestant religion' (p. 18).

²⁸ This is a statement from the paper Perfect Diurnali, No. 130, 7 June 1652, p. 1928. I am grateful to my colleague Dr Tadgh Foley for this reference.

²⁹The Author and Case of Transplanting …. Vindicated (London, 1655), pp. 40-41.

³⁰ See L. M. Cullen, The Emergence of Modern Ireland, 1600-1900 (London, 1981), especially pp. 39-60. It will be clear that the present author disagrees fundamentally on this point with Brendan Bradshaw, who has written that Ireland emerged from the seventeenth century 'with an apartheid constitution in law and in practice, religion providing the criterion for discrimination. The protestant ascendancy had acquired a strong incentive to leave Ireland for the greater part Catholic' ('Sword, Word and Strategy', p. 502).