To Plant and Improve: Justifying the Consolidation of Tudor and Stuart Rule in Ireland, 1509 to 1625

Samantha Watson

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

School of Humanities and Languages

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

September 2014 THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Watson

First name: Samantha Other name/s:

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: School of Humanities and Languages Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Title: To plant and improve: justifying the consolidation of Tudor and Stuart rule in Ireland, 1509 to 1625.

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

This thesis aims to examine the ideologies employed in justifying English conquest and plantation of Ireland between 1509 and 1625. It adopts the methodology of a contextualist intellectual history, which situates the sources within the intellectual and material world, and in relation to the publically approved paradigms, available to the authors. The thesis encompasses a range of source material - correspondence, policy papers and published tracts - from major and minor figures in government and undertakers of colonisation schemes. The source material will be examined with respect to the major upheavals in intellectual culture in late medieval and early modern England and, in particular, the impact of major pan- European movements, the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance. Focussing on the ethics associated with the spread of Renaissance humanism and Calvinist Protestantism, it explores socio-political ideas in England and examines the ways that these ideas were expressed in relation to Ireland. A key theme is the humanist idea of the commonwealth, a neoclassical framework for thinking about the public good, which gave the English sanction to pass policies which would absorb the native Irish into an English state system. The second major movement, Protestantism, is found to be intimately linked with the theme of improvement. As the predestinarian ideas of Calvin gained traction, diligent toil and the ensuing material rewards were deemed to be evidence of personal salvation. As social paradigms shifted, the English became more aggressive in their pursuit of Irish land to farm and industrialise. By occupying and improving Irish soil, the English were performing service on behalf of God and the commonwealth. It concludes that the evolution of English colonial thought was synchronous with the progression of humanism and Protestantism. Importantly for the historiography of colonial thought, this thesis finds that neoclassical and biblical imperatives were being used to justify colonial enterprise from at least the early sixteenth century. The moral and ethical arguments for colonisation applied to early modern Ireland predated the apex of the colonial "improving" movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: a legacy unknowingly conveyed by Tudor theorists to their imperial British successors.

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Date Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the immense contribution of my supervisor, John Gascoigne, whose support and guidance has been invaluable. Without his astute suggestions, the assortment of half-formed ideas and hypotheses produced at the beginning of my research would never have developed into the coherent final form represented in these pages. I would also like to extend my gratitude to my co-supervisor, Hamish Graham, for his kindness and support, and especially for lending his expertise on the topic of environmental history. I am also indebted to the wisdom of various scholars with whom I have had the pleasure of correspondence or conversation at some point in my degree, such as Andrew Fitzmaurice and David Armitage, as well as those academics and fellow postgraduates who provided me with feedback and friendly discussion at conferences and seminars. I am grateful for the financial support provided by the University and the School of Humanities and Languages, without which I would not have been able to embark on a rewarding research trip or present my work at conferences. On a personal level, I owe a great debt to my friends and my family for their good humour, encouragement and understanding, and companions of the four-legged variety for forcing me to take much-needed breaks. Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge my husband, who is my greatest supporter and confidante. His contribution has been immeasurable. Abbreviations

APCI Acts of the Privy Council in Ireland, 1556-1571

BL British Library

Cal. Carew Calendar of Carew Manuscripts

Bodl. Bodleian Library, Oxford

CSPI Calendar of State Papers, Ireland

ERO Essex Records Office

NASPI UK National Archives: State Papers Ireland

NLI National Library of Ireland

OED Oxford English Dictionary Online

ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Phillips Papers Londonderry and the London Companies, 1609-1629: Documents of Sir Thomas Phillips

SP Hen.VIII State Papers of King Henry VIII

Sidney SP State Papers of Sir Henry Sidney, 1565-1570

TCD Trinity College, Dublin

Note on spelling

The original spelling of primary sources has been retained, except that I have silently regularised i, j, u and v in titles and quotations. Contents

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION...... 1

1. Prelude ...... 1 1.1. Early modern Ireland and historians...... 1 1.2. Historiography...... 3 1.3. Primary sources ...... 9 1.4. Aims and methodology...... 10

2. Humanism...... 15 2.1. The Renaissance idea of the commonwealth...... 15 2.1.1. Early humanists ...... 16 2.1.2. The Tudor commonwealth...... 18 2.2. Humanism and English society ...... 21 2.2.1. Education and moral values...... 21 2.2.2. Civic participation and the community...... 23 2.2.3. Wealth and the economy ...... 25 2.2.4. Military...... 27 2.2.5. Law, order and social reform...... 32

3. Improvement ...... 35 3.1. The rhetoric of plantations: some historical and etymological observations...... 35 3.2. Cultivating the Protestant mind ...... 39 3.3. Economic and agricultural development ...... 41 3.3.1. Nature in the English imagination ...... 43 3.3.2. The humanist background ...... 44 3.3.3. Protestant views...... 46

Conclusion...... 48

PART TWO: 1509-1558...... 50

1. The English in Ireland, c.1500 - 1558 ...... 50 1.1. The state of the country ...... 50 1.2. Reforming the lordship in the aftermath of the Kildare rebellion...... 54 1.3. Planting Ireland anew ...... 57 1.4. The plantation of Laois and Offaly...... 60

2. Humanism...... 65 2.1. The commonwealth movement ...... 68 2.2. Reforming the body politic...... 70 2.2.1. Advancing the common weal: the State of Ireland (1515) and changing approaches to government...... 70 2.2.2. Martial valour: reform and the promotion of citizen militia...... 72 2.2.3. Virtue...... 83 2.2.3.1. Colonisation and transformation ...... 84 2.2.3.2. Education...... 92 2.2.3.3. Faction, corruption and the governing classes...... 98

3. Improvement ...... 102 3.1. The spread of Protestant ideas to 1558...... 102 3.2. Ordering the landscape: contexts and ideals...... 104 3.3. Economic decline, idleness and the merits of labour...... 107 3.4. Transforming the landscape: programmes and proposals...... 111

Conclusion...... 117 PART THREE: 1558-1603 ...... 119

1. The Irish inheritance of Elizabeth I...... 119 1.1. Directions of Irish policy, 1558-1603...... 120 1.2. Laois and Offaly...... 122 1.3. Ulster ...... 124 1.4. Munster...... 129

2. Humanism...... 134 2.1. Introduction: humanism and reform in Elizabethan Ireland...... 134 2.2. Justifications for martial conquest and violence...... 138 2.3. Soldiers...... 145 2.4. Virtue...... 155 2.4.1. Humanist justifications for plantations and projects...... 155 2.4.2. The vita activa : adventurers and counsellors...... 165 2.4.3. Education...... 173

3. Improvement ...... 179 3.1. The Protestant Reformation and Ireland...... 179 3.2. Protestantism and humanism: irreconcilable concepts? ...... 181 3.3. Governing land and people in Elizabethan Ireland...... 183 3.4. Labour and economy ...... 184 3.5. Reorganising the environment: cultivation and civility...... 193 3.6. Ireland is a garden: agricultural metaphors and the nobility of reform ...... 200

Conclusion...... 205

PART FOUR: 1603-1625...... 207

1. A Stuart kingdom: Ireland under James I...... 207 1.1. Directions of Irish policy...... 209 1.2. The plantations ...... 213

2. Humanism...... 220 2.1. Humanism and reform in early seventeenth century Ireland ...... 220 2.1.1. Cicero in the seventeenth century: persona non grata ?...... 225 2.2. Commonwealth work ...... 227 2.3. Private profit and public duty: civic arguments for colonial projects...... 238 2.4. Corporate plantation and humanism...... 242 2.5. A reformation of manners ...... 247

3. Improvement ...... 253 3.1. Divided allegiances: recusancy and disunity in Jacobean Ireland ...... 253 3.2. Protestantism, agricultural improvement and theories of possession ...... 256 3.3. The campaign against idleness: new solutions ...... 260 3.4. Industrial innovation as a social catalyst ...... 267 3.5. By art and industry: arguments for the improvement of Ireland...... 273 3.6. The Catholic aristocracy as improvers ...... 285

Conclusion...... 286

CONCLUSION...... 289

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 297

Part One: Introduction

1. Prelude

1.1. Early modern Ireland and historians

In recent decades, the Tudor government of Ireland has increasingly occupied the attention of historians of early modern Britain, Ireland, and of the British Empire. It has been suggested that the English colonisation of Ireland in the sixteenth century was the first experiment of, and model for, British imperial expansion. 1 The historian David Beers Quinn first introduced the idea that Ireland was a ‘training ground’ for the British colonisation of America. Seizing on the ‘training ground’ thesis, historians since have looked to British colonial activity in Ireland to explain colonial strategy and ideology in the Atlantic territories. It is broadly accepted that colonisers in Ireland were influenced by classical texts and the Roman example to build settlements that would enable the English to govern Ireland, and that this was made possible with the humanist revival of ancient texts. 2 The accepted ideological account is that English colonisers looked to classical history to support the premise that they were bringing civilisation to Ireland as the Romans had brought it to Britain. This is not strictly untrue, for writers on Ireland certainly referred to Roman precedent. Yet, gauging the full dimension of the story requires more rigorous attention to movements in the field of intellectual history, as well as the institutional and social environments of early modern writers. When ample scope is established and the sources considered in context, the accepted account is revealed to be too narrow and limiting. Furthermore, the usefulness and moral qualities of ‘banal’ sources such as government memoranda have been underestimated and passed over in favour of a set of well-known literary texts.

1 N. Canny, ‘The Origins of Empire: An Introduction,’ in N. Canny (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire , Vol. I, The Origins of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 12. 2 N. Canny, ‘The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America,’ William and Mary Quarterly , third series, 30 (1973), pp. 589-90; D.B. Quinn, ‘Renaissance Influences in English Colonisation: The Prothero Lecture,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , fifth series, 26 (1976), pp. 79-80. 1 Looked at as a whole corpus, the sources for early modern Ireland offer up no single ideological paradigm driving the colonial modus operandi , but the frequency with which similar tropes and statements appear in even the most routine correspondence is evidence that the English governing class shared a number of common assumptions. This thesis is focused on locating the probable sources that guided these assumptions. The sources will be traced to institutions, which were the mechanisms of a social order that governed learning and behaviour. It will be shown that the mental world of the early modern coloniser was shaped by an array of moral authorities that encompassed the political and economic, secular and religious spheres.3 Each of the four parts of this thesis focuses on two major themes, humanism and improvement (which is linked to Protestantism in parts three and four), which allows the major cultural influences that governed English thinkers in the sixteenth century to be highlighted. It enables both humanist and Protestant thought to be explored in relation to the major themes in reform discourse. This prelude encompasses a historiographical overview of early modern Ireland. It will demonstrate that there is a need to reinvestigate source material from the perspective of the intellectual historian, charting the ideologies that bolstered colonial and reformist ambitions and relating key ideas back to movements in England and the continent. The channels of influence are described in chapter one. Chapter one defines the major cultural upheavals of the Renaissance period in England, humanism and Protestantism. In chapter one, the notions of social improvement that were propounded by humanists are examined. Chapter two encompasses changing attitudes to the natural world, and ties themes of soil and improvement with the emergence of a Protestant economic theory. Together, these chapters form an introduction to the relational network of ideas, values and institutions that informed the authors and texts that will be investigated in subsequent chapters.

3 On the varied methods, definitions and value of intellectual history, see S. Collini et. al. , ‘What is Intellectual History?’ History Today 35, 10 (1985), pp. 46-54. 2 1.2. Historiography

The Irish dimension of British history has been treated as marginal by historians of Britain until recent decades. To quote Ellis’s appraisal of the field, the research and writing on this period of Irish history has been ‘very uneven’ among Irish historians, while Tudor specialists ‘evinced little interest in Irish developments’ until recently.4 A pioneer among early modern Irish historians was Quinn, whose influential The Elizabethans and the Irish (1966) reconstructed Tudor Ireland and explored English views of Irish society. Since the 1970s, there has been a steady output of monographs on topics on the Irish state under sixteenth century governments. 5 Contrasting the wide-ranging studies by the likes of Canny, Bradshaw, Ellis and Brady, is a proliferation of local studies at county or township level. 6 Historical research on British plantations in Ireland attracted interest in the century following the publication of Bagwell’s general history of Tudor Ireland,7 Dunlop’s essays on sixteenth century plantations 8 and Hill’s account of the Ulster plantation. 9 The Munster plantation has been well surveyed

4 S.G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447-1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (London: Longman, 1998), p. xv. 5 D.B. Quinn, The Elizabethans and the Irish (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966); Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors ; N. Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established , 1565-76 (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1976); R.D. Edwards, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors: The Destruction of Hiberno-Norman Civilization (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1977); B. Bradshaw, The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); C. Brady, The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland, 1536-1588 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); C. Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1994); N. Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580-1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); J. Lyttleton and C. Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture, c.1550-c.1700 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009); C. Maginn, William Cecil, Ireland, and the Tudor State (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012). 6 R.J. Hunter, ‘An Ulster Plantation Town: Virginia,’ Breifne: Journal of Cumann Seanchais Bhréifne 4 (1970), pp. 43-51; R.J. Hunter, ‘Towns in the Ulster Plantation,’ Studia Hibernica 11 (1971), pp. 40-79; R.J. Hunter, ‘Sir William Cole and Plantation Enniskillen, 1607-41,’ Clogher Record 9, 3 (1978), pp. 336-350; R.J. Hunter, ‘Ulster Plantation Towns 1609-41,’ in D. Harkness and M. O’Dowd (eds.), The Town in Ireland (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1981), pp. 55-80; R.J. Hunter, The Plantation in Ulster in Strabane Barony, Co. Tyrone c.1600-41 (Derry: New University of Ulster, 1982); R.J. Hunter, ‘Plantation in Donegal,’ in W. Nolan, L. Ronayne and M. Dunlevy (eds.), Donegal: History & Society (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1995), pp. 283-324; T. Cronin, ‘The Elizabethan Colony in County Roscommon,’ in H. Murtagh (ed.), Irish Midland Studies: Essays in Commemoration of N.W. English (Athlone: Old Athlone Society, 1980), pp.107-120; K. O’Connor, ‘English Settlement and Change in Roscommon during the Late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ in A. Horning (ed.), The Post-Medieval Archaeology of Ireland, 1550-1850 (Bray: Wordwell, 2007), pp. 189-203. 7 R. Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors , 3 vols. (London: Longman, 1885-1890). 8 R. Dunlop, ‘Sixteenth Century Schemes for the Plantation of Ulster,’ parts I-III, Scottish Historical Review 22, 85-87 (1924-5), pp. 51-60, 115-126, 199-212. 9 G. Hill, An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster at the Commencement of the Seventeenth Century, 1608-1620 (1877, repr. Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970). 3 by MacCarthy-Morrogh.10 A vast historiography exists for the Ulster plantation, understandably so because Ulster was the largest of the plantation projects. 11 This project was notable for the involvement of the city of London, 12 and of the Scots as planters.13 However, many such studies are localised and focus on genealogy, geography or material culture.14 Plantations appeared in other areas in the reign of James I, including Wexford, 15 Leitrim and neighbouring Longford, 16 and unofficial plantations were established in the East Ulster counties of Antrim and

10 M. MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation: English Migration to Southern Ireland, 1583- 1641 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). 11 A selection of general accounts includes Hill, An Historical Account ; T.M. Healy, Stolen Waters: A Page in the Conquest of Ulster (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913); C. Falls, The Birth of Ulster (London: Methuen, 1936); C. Fitzgibbon, Red Hand: The Ulster Colony (London: Joseph, 1971); Hunter, Plantations in Ulster, c.1600-1641 (Belfast: H.M.S.O. for the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 1976); P. Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600-1670 (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1984); M. Sheane, Ulster Blood: The Story of the Plantation of Ulster (Devon: Arthur H. Stockwell, 2005). 12 T.W. Moody, The Londonderry Plantation: The City of London and the Plantation in Ulster (Belfast: Mullan, 1939); W.S. Ferguson, ‘Mathias Springham, 1561-1620,’ Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 23, 2 (1972), pp. 194-203; J.S. Curl, The History, Architecture and Planning of the Estates of the Fishmongers’ Company in Ulster (Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1981); J.S. Curl, The Londonderry Plantation, 1609-1914: The History, Architecture and Planning of the Estates of the City of London and its Livery Companies in Ulster (Chichester: Phillimore, 1986); R.J. Hunter, ‘The Fishmongers’ Company of London and the Londonderry Plantation 1609-41,’ in G. O’Brien (ed.), Derry and Londonderry: History and Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1999), pp. 205-58. 13 M. Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973); J.M Hill, ‘The Origins of the Scottish Plantations in Ulster to 1625: A Reinterpretation,’ Journal of British Studies 32 (1993), pp. 24-43; P. Fitzgerald, ‘Scottish Migration to Ireland in the Seventeenth Century,’ in A. Grosjean and S. Murdoch (eds.), Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 27-52; W.P. Kelly and J.R. Young (eds.), Scotland and the Ulster Plantations: Explorations in the British Settlements of Stuart Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009). 14 W.R. Hutchinson, Tyrone Precinct: A History of the Plantation Settlement of Dungannon and Mountjoy to Modern Times (Belfast: Erskine, 1951); M. Glancy, ‘The Incidence of the Plantation on the City of Armagh,’ Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society 1, 2 (1955), pp. 115-160; J.G. Simms, ‘The Ulster Plantation in County Donegal,’ Donegal Annual 10 (1971), pp. 3-14; J.G. Simms, ‘Donegal in the Ulster Plantation,’ Irish Geography 6 (1972), pp. 386-393; J. Cherry, ‘Colonial Appropriation of Gaelic Urban Space: Creating the First Ulster Plantation Town,’ Irish Geography 40, 2 (2007), pp. 112-127; D. McGettigan, The Donegal Plantation and the Tír Chonaill Irish, 1610-1710 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010). 15 H. Goff, ‘English Conquest of an Irish Barony: The Changing Patterns of Landownership in the Barony of Scarawalsh, 1540-1640,’ in K. Whelan and W. Nolan (eds.), Wexford: History and Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1987), pp. 122-149; R. Loeber and M.S. Loeber, ‘The Lost Architecture of the Wexford Plantation,’ in Whelan and Nolan (eds.), Wexford: History and Society , pp. 173-200. 16 D.A. Gallagher, ‘The Plantation of Longford, 1619-1641,’ unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1968; R. Loeber, ‘A Gate to Connacht: The Building of the Fortified Town of Jamestown, County Leitrim, in the Era of Plantation,’ Irish Sword 15 (1983), pp. 149-152; R. Gillespie, ‘A Question of Survival: The O’Farrells and Longford in the Seventeenth Century,’ in R. Gillespie and G. Moran (eds.), Longford: Essays in County History (Dublin: Lilliput, 1991), pp. 13-29; B. Mac Cuarta, ‘The Plantation of Leitrim, 1620-41,’ Irish Historical Studies 32 (2001), pp. 297-320. 4 Down. 17 From the late 1560s, a number of colonisation ventures in Ireland operated on joint stock principles, organised as collective enterprises by companies of stakeholders. 18 It remains to consider the state of historical research on imperial ideologies. Historians have tackled the subject of English or more broadly, European, colonial ideologies. Much of this literature targets Atlantic colonisation, particularly the American sphere.19 When one considers the emerging body of work explicating the rhetoric and ideologies buttressing English claims upon North America, the comparative lack of similar studies that focus on Ireland is obvious. In recent decades, a number of scholars have engaged with the ideological origins of the Tudor conquest of Ireland. 20 Few make more than incidental references to humanism or Protestantism. Quinn revived interest in early modern Ireland as an arena for colonial practice, as well as the Renaissance influences guiding colonists. Bradshaw has examined humanist influences on Old English advocates of reform, in a movement he describes as ‘commonwealth liberalism.’ These men were eventually eclipsed by newcomers who professed an unbending militant Puritanism that was irreconcilable with the tenets of humanism. 21 Bradshaw’s thesis that Protestant pessimism trumped humanist optimism in the later part of the century, and that the two ideologies were incompatible, has been subject to scrutiny. Canny has defended Spenser’s humanism against Bradshaw’s thesis, maintaining that Spenser’s humanist

17 R. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster, 1600-41 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1985). 18 P.J. Piveronus Jr., ‘Sir Warham St. Leger and the First Munster Plantation, 1568-69,’ Eire- Ireland 14 (1979), pp. 15-36; H. Morgan, ‘The Colonial Venture of Sir Thomas Smith in Ulster, 1571-5,’ Historical Journal 28 (1985), pp. 261-78. 19 S. Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); A. Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500- c. 1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); D. Armitage, Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); A. Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500-1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 20 Canny, ‘Ideology of English Colonization’; Canny, Making Ireland British ; Quinn, ‘Renaissance Influences’; Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution ; Armitage, Ideological Origins ; D.B. Quinn, ‘Sir Thomas Smith (1513-1577) and the Beginnings of English Colonial Theory,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 89 (1945), pp. 543-60; B. Bradshaw, ‘Sword, Word and Strategy in the Reformation in Ireland,’ The Historical Journal 21 (1978), pp. 475-502; J.P. Montaño , The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 21 Bradshaw, ‘Sword, Word and Strategy,’ p. 487; Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , pp. 49-57. 5 designs necessitated extreme martial policies in order for reform strategy to be effective.22 According to Canny, generations of settlers in Ireland were steeped in a tradition established by Spenser, who gave expression to the ideas shared by his contemporaries and single-handedly bestowed waves of English newcomers with an identity and ‘moral purpose’ in Ireland. 23 Ideological histories of Ireland overwhelmingly focus on Spenser and, by extension, his late Elizabethan associates. 24 Spenser may be the most prolific humanist writer in Tudor Ireland, but humanism was common to the literate classes in England and Ireland. A recent monograph by Campbell examines various applications of Renaissance humanism (specifically, Aristotelianism) in late sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland. Engaging with the writings of Old and New English and Gaelic Irish intellectuals in Ireland, Campbell argues that all of these groups were familiar with, and employed, Aristotelian moral philosophy, which they learned through exposure to European grammar school and university curricula. He contends that Aristotle’s theory of natural law, or the idea that men are innately capable of reason and, by extension, a political and therefore ‘civil’ life, was a major ideological resource in early modern Ireland. According to Campbell, Aristotelianism was utilised by both English and Irish writers to consider differences in human societies and as a base from which to classify the other as barbarian.25 As he unweaves Aristotelian concepts from his sources, Campbell shows that by the seventeenth century, humanism was deeply ingrained in social and political discourse in Ireland. Raymond Gillespie has rejected the notion of ideological complexity tied to plantation projects in Ireland, except for the large-scale, government-sponsored projects in Munster (1586) and Ulster (1609). Gillespie argues that ‘plantation’ as

22 Canny, Making Ireland British , p. 37. 23 N. Canny, ‘Edmund Spenser and the Development of an Anglo-Irish Identity,’ The Yearbook of English Studies 13 (1983), p. 2. Canny’s Making Ireland British is framed by the figure of Spenser who ‘sets the agenda’ for the New English (p. 1). 24 Over one hundred publications about Spenser and Ireland appeared between 1986 and 1996 alone, as listed in W. Maley, ‘Spenser and Ireland: An Annotated Bibliography, 1986-1996,’ Irish University Review 26, 2 (1996). Recent works include Canny, Making Ireland British (especially pp. 1-58); A. Hadfield, Edmund Spenser’s Irish Experience: Wilde Fruit and Salvage Soyl (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); W. Maley, Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); T. Herron, Spenser’s Irish Work: Poetry, Plantation and Colonial Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 25 I. Campbell, Renaissance Humanism and Ethnicity before Race: The Irish and the English in the Seventeenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 27, 34, 83. 6 a label for some Irish colonisation schemes is a lexicological fallacy because it suggests there was some significant ideology behind a process that was merely the reassignment of land into new hands. Gillespie maintains that plantations were formal, practical attempts to reshape Irish society, which had rules for settlement and centralised guiding ideas about the society that was to result. Gillespie states that this definition can only apply to the settlements in Munster and Ulster.26 This thesis will demonstrate that Gillespie’s definition does in fact justify the use of ‘plantation’ for smaller settlements, such as Laois and Offaly, and the various private ventures undertaken in the second half of the sixteenth century. Most exhibited characteristics of central planning, whether by the government or a business syndicate such as a corporation, company or society, and some acknowledgement that social engineering would take place. It will be shown in the following pages that projects involved the systematic relocation of people, the application of commonwealth ideals, the transmission of an idealised, industrialised civic framework that drew on English social structures and systems of law and religious worship, and reformist ambitions that anticipated the commercial benefits of a peaceable kingdom to mercantilist England. Underlying philosophy was not loudly sounded in the earliest experiments, but that should not lead to the conclusion that the ideological pulse was non-existent until Spenser and his contemporaries arrived. The import of humanist and Protestant ideas on the reformation of Ireland is gained when each text is looked at with a view to the contemporary institutions that supported an author, the intellectual traditions inherited by the author, the problems they were identifying and the modifications they proposed. The myth of a Spenserian Renaissance in Ireland persists despite having been disproven by several historians working on earlier periods. Bradshaw found classical example to be a force among reformers in the pre-Spenserian period, as he wrote about the Renaissance influences on Old English reformers in the mid- sixteenth century. Choosing the principal trope of cultivation as his focus, Montaño challenges the assumption that arguments from classical example were primarily espoused by writers in the later Elizabethan years. Montaño demonstrates that the attitudes of Spenser and his colleagues about civilised

26 R. Gillespie, ‘The Problems of Plantations: Material Culture and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland,’ in Lyttleton and Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture , p. 49. 7 culture had been advocated before, by officials in the reign of Henry VIII, and that both groups were influenced by the same classical sources.27 Montaño credits humanist learning with its ‘attendant devotion to personal as well as agricultural cultivation’ to denigrate the native Irish who were considered to be unfit to be custodians of the land they occupied. To solidify their arguments for dispossession, those authors cited the absence of physical evidence for husbandry and ordering of the environment in Irish areas.28 Montaño covers the Tudor regime, including a high age of Protestant zeal under Elizabeth, but he gives Protestant ideology a wide berth, registering only that religious difference was ‘absorbed into the cultural conflict.’29 Despite the resurgent interest in a turbulent and formative period of Irish and British history, the literature on ideological topics in Irish settlement is uneven at best, trending towards the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. Historians working in the field of Tudor Ireland have nonetheless produced a rich reservoir of historical research that can furnish new perspectives. Theories about the formation and consolidation of colonial ideologies can be well-served by a study that takes the cultural and intellectual movements of the Renaissance and Reformation as its starting point, charting the relationship between these movements and the language and politics of conquest in Ireland. An inquiry into the intellectual history of sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland can reveal the extent to which the major intellectual movements of the sixteenth century, humanism and Protestantism, intersected in their reforming assumptions and provided mandates for colonial activity. By moving outside of the Spenser industry it is possible to bring lesser known texts into equal consideration with more famous works – hence a multifarious network of probable guiding ideas will be unravelled. It is the very fabric of unsophisticated, unoriginal and otherwise unremarkable texts that reveals the familiar and the common, and the frameworks repeatedly employed to make sense of a country that the writers believed was profoundly disordered. This thesis encompasses a range of sources, including routine correspondence and reform proposals from self-appointed consultants, many of which failed to translate into policy and are now mostly forgotten.

27 Montaño, Roots of English Colonialism , p. 59. 28 Montaño, Roots of English Colonialism , p. 43. 29 Montaño, Roots of English Colonialism , p. 346. 8

1.3. Primary sources

The source material for Irish government has been described as a ‘combination of verbosity, pedantry and banality,’ involving a great deal of ‘prattling on,’ which for the researcher, can be ‘stultifying.’30 The immense corpus of administrative material from the Irish governments and English Privy Council on Irish matters consists of little that actually translated into policy. Disagreements over costs, strategies and extremities of reform meant that, although the available remedies were copious, the relationship between paper and action was fraught. The state papers consist of copious folios of administrative minutiae , routine correspondence and memoranda between Dublin and the Privy Council. State papers can reveal much about the assumptions inherent behind the assertions. Legislature, such as proclamations that reaffirmed the obligations of citizens of towns, as found in the statute books, and instructions drafted for incoming English settlers to the new plantations, reveal the designs of the governing elite. Law making was an attempt to fashion an ordered commonwealth by establishing state apparatus through the creation of shires and provincial presidencies, and legislating the lifestyle and activities of existing and incoming inhabitants. This thesis relies on material in the state papers collection and a number of published works. Remote access to a vast collection of Irish State Papers in calendar and manuscript form was made possible through the State Papers Online digital resource. 31 Additional material was collected from the British Library, Bodleian Library and the Essex Records Office in England, Trinity College Dublin and the National Library in Ireland, and the Huntington Library in the United States. A comparatively small but significant selection of published material exists. This category includes the propagandist tracts of Elizabethans Sir Thomas Smith and Robert Payne, and the Jacobean writer Thomas Blenerhasset. A number of posthumously published treatises provided commentary on government policy in Ireland. These works by the late Elizabethan administrators and planters, Edmund Spenser, Richard Beacon and William Herbert, are possibly the most overtly humanistic and, therefore, well-known of the sixteenth century

30 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , p. 36. 31 State Papers Online, 1509-1714 : http://gale.cengage.co.uk/state-papers-online-15091714.aspx. 9 reform literature by Protestant planters.32 When studied in conjunction with other material, the aims of all policy are found to be complementary: all proponents of reform aimed to achieve a well-ordered commonwealth in Ireland.

1.4. Aims and methodology

This chapter has established that the influence of English intellectual culture on colonial policy in Ireland is insufficiently understood. The approach adopted in this thesis is based upon the investigation of a more sweeping spectrum of source material by major and minor personalities, from the vanguard of contemporary thought to those who purveyed less innovative ideas. Skinner’s writings about the history of ideas emphasise the need to overcome the ‘Great Text’ tradition that inflates the significance of a canon of conventional texts or persons deemed representative or exemplary. Historians need a broad reading of sources to reconstruct historical situations.33 Le Van Baumer is similarly critical of the history of ideas expounded by Lovejoy, asserting that intellectual history is ‘the history of the whole intellectual class,’ rather than a handful of ‘great thinkers.’ 34 Only by moving past the traditional focus on a set of elite thinkers can we gain a credible picture of the intellectual mood of the period being studied. This thesis explores the moral philosophy employed by major and minor officials, in addition to those jostling for political advancement, stakeholders in the distribution of land, and adventurers. It diverges from other works on plantations by grounding the study on intellectual history, exploring the ideological context of Tudor and early Stuart policy in Ireland with a focus on the ideas that found expression in practical experiments, and the ways that ideas were reflected in policymaking. It will be shown that the ideas brought to England by the thinkers and texts of the Renaissance and Reformation informed the planning and implementation of plantations on Irish soil in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The

32 These include a number of works by New English Munster planters in the 1590s, including William Herbert, Croftus Sive De Hibernia Liber (c. 1591), ed. A. Keaveney and J.A. Madden (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1992); Richard Beacon, Solon His Follie, or a Politique Discourse Touching the Reformation of Common-Weales Conquered, Declined or Corrupted (1594), ed. C. Carroll and V. Carey (Binghamton, NY: Renaissance English Text Society, 1996); Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596) (Corpus of Electronic Texts edition, 2010: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E500000-001/ ). 33 Q. Skinner, ‘The Limits of Historical Explanations,’ Philosophy 41, 157 (1966), p. 213. 34 F. Le Van Baumer, ‘Intellectual History and its Problems,’ The Journal of Modern History 21, 3 (1949), p. 192. 10 importance of Fitzmaurice’s book, Humanism and America in informing the present work should be acknowledged. Fitzmaurice argues that the planners of the Virginia plantation were influenced by civic humanist ideals and that the creation of commonwealths on new soil was promoted as a virtuous activity. This thesis builds upon a similar premise to consider the intellectual impetus for colonising Ireland, and extends the orbit of influence to include Protestant theology. It explores the moral justifications available to reformers in their proposals for extending English rule across Ireland. It will demonstrate that the questions with which Ireland’s reformers concerned themselves were characteristic of cultural and religious movements in sixteenth century Europe. The literature will be examined with respect to the major upheavals in intellectual culture in late Medieval England. Contemporary political responses to social problems that were informed by social and economics shifts, such as legislation to repress vagrancy and unemployment, will be investigated for the answers they can provide about the prejudices and motivations of policymakers facing similar questions of order and disorder in Ireland. Contemporary manifestations of the new spirit of economic individualism, such as industrial ventures by corporations and projectors, show that humanist and Protestant language was employed by apologists of the planting and industrialisation of Ireland under the banners of ‘improvement’ and ‘the commonwealth.’ Seizing upon the themes of qualitative and spatial improvement, it explores popular cultural assumptions about the body politic, personal virtue and nature that were drawn upon as moral guides to improve the people and land of Ireland. The central headings into which each part of this thesis will be divided, ‘Humanism’ and ‘Improvement,’ encompass the aspirations and common concerns shared by reformers. Western cultures have long justified conquest and colonisation on the basis of a higher authority. The English justified their title to Ireland by right of their ancestral conquest during the Norman invasion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but the question of how to justify the forced expulsion of inhabitants from their lands presented greater difficulty. This thesis is concerned with the question of how English officials and proponents convinced themselves that their enterprise was a moral one, negotiating motives of political necessity, profit and virtue. It demonstrates that classical and biblical imperatives were already prevalent and adopted to justify colonial enterprise in an earlier period than the

11 colonisation of America and the high age of imperial Britain. The rhetoric of regeneration through plantation anticipated enlightenment ideologies of improvement that accompanied developments in scientific knowledge, and which became increasingly linked with political economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 35 In this thesis, plantations are studied not as physical artefacts but as ideals that were translated into action, and for the dialogue negotiated between opportunism, greed and virtue in their implementation. Plantations were central to reform policy from the 1550s onward, but other strategies for national regeneration should not be overlooked. The compass of this thesis includes all activities that could institute reform. Reformers ranged widely in their proposals, which encompassed industrial projects (which typically included an element of colonisation) and social reform such as building schools, providing for religious instruction, and the enforcement of civic involvement (typically in the form of defence and peace-keeping). Militia service, hue and cry, and pledge systems were common proposals for ensuring the continuity of existing municipalities and new settlements. This thesis broadly follows the approach of intellectual history. It will examine the transmission of suppositions about man, nature and society through time, and demonstrate that the intellectual attitudes of the British reformers were influenced by their social climate. Ideas ought to be contextualised within the intellectual and material world, with its ‘publicly approved paradigms,’ of the thinker. 36 The approach of this thesis is contextual and sociological, and rejects the notion of ‘great ideas’ existing in a vacuum of pure thought. 37 Methodologically, it falls within the orbit of an intellectual historical tradition that relates the texts to pertinent institutional and social contexts. As Baumer surmised, intellectual historians are concerned with ‘clusters of ideas [and] “climates of opinion” and the way they change,’ and they study ‘these climates in relation to the milieu or social context, and as they become objectified in institutions.’ Baumer took ‘climate of opinion’ to mean ‘the complex of

35 This phenomenon is explored in R. Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 36 J.G.A. Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 15-17. 37 The ‘Great Ideas’ approach to intellectual history is commonly attributed to Arthur O. Lovejoy. See A.O. Lovejoy , The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936). 12 assumptions in terms of which the majority of men in a given society think and talk and act; the idiom they use to express themselves, the ways they have of explaining phenomena.’ 38 The thinkers and traditions drawn upon in this thesis, which informed thinking about Ireland, are best described as an eclectic ‘cluster of ideas’ derived from a number of sources. It is necessary to explore the ideas that had currency among the educated classes as these ideas furnished writers’ assertions about Ireland. This thesis explores underlying ideological premises, social and political theories that gave moral validity to claims to Ireland. Cross-referencing historical research on sixteenth century theories about the ideal state, including notions of subjecthood, education, vocation, industry and agriculture, provide examples for how classical and religious ideas were applied to real-world problems in the sixteenth century. The importance of institutions in forming these opinions cannot be overstated, for institutions are conduits for thought, bodies that sustain popular ideas, and the connection between thought and action. 39 Schools and universities provided an education in religious, moral and civic values. The four Inns of Court provided training to the rising gentry as servants of the commonwealth. Clergy in the established church preached godliness and obedience from the pulpit. The introduction of printing allowed the wide circulation of classical and contemporary literature. Printed books exposed the literate to the doctrine that an informed mind was requisite for every gentleman. Many young men consequently received a classically inspired and reformed education that informed their outlook. The purpose of a Renaissance education was to teach citizens to live and act virtuously, to act in the interest of a greater good. The argument that the English were building a well-ordered commonwealth by means of conquest and colonisation shielded motives of self-preservation and aggrandisement. Plantation projects were encouraged by the English government because self-supporting colonies were a cheaper solution to guard against marauding Irish than permanent garrisons. Prospects of landed wealth and social ascent in Ireland were palpable drawcards for potential planters. Writers may or may not have believed in what they articulated, but they were, nonetheless, conditioned by their society to

38 F. Le Van Baumer, Main Currents of Western Thought: Readings in Western European Intellectual History from the Middle Ages to the Present (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 5. 39 Le Van Baumer, ‘Intellectual History and its Problems,’ p. 201. 13 moralise in their discourse. By appealing to virtue, they erected a moral buffer against the often unpleasant solutions they expressed for pacifying the island’s inhabitants, such as dispossession and martial law: the moral end justifying the questionable means. Solutions of government were ennobled because the end result would be the drawing of all subjects into acceptable patterns of moral behaviour. The thesis will attest to the imperative of reform in these areas, despite conflicting ideas about strategy and irregular government policies that wavered between moderate reform and militaristic compulsion. The ‘New’ English in Ireland depicted themselves as morally superior to the Old English (descendents of medieval settlers) and Gaelic Irish, and sometimes even competed with their New English neighbours. Greenblatt has stated that there was increased self- consciousness about the mutability of human identity in the sixteenth century, and of modes of behaviour. Greenblatt maintained that self-fashioning was achieved through language, and was formed at an encounter between the self and an alien that was ‘unformed or chaotic.’ The alien figure was attacked in the name of an authority (such as God, a sacred book, institution or administration). 40 Chaos was a common motif in the literature on Ireland,41 and English reformers found justification, in classical and theological sources, to govern the wayward Irish and to enforce ‘order’ upon them.

40 S. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 9. 41 Herron, Spenser’s Irish Work , p. 122. 14 2. Humanism

2.1. The Renaissance idea of the commonwealth

Canny’s assertion that contemporary writers saw Ireland as ‘no more than a natural geographic extension of England’ suggests that the English envisioned Ireland as a commonwealth requiring improvement, rather than a straightforward colony. 42 The cornerstone of civility was the Roman civitas or Greek polis , which meant city state or the political society. The ancients had believed that membership in the political body signified civility. As Pagden states, the ancient city ‘had the power to transform all those who entered it. So long, that is, as you were outside it, a barbarian or a provincial, you were in some sense less than human.’ 43 The classically defined conception of the body politic was appropriated and translated into the English vernacular as ‘commonwealth.’ In an age of reform, the disobedience of Irish subjects was often thought to be a symptom of slipshod enforcement of the law by inept administrators. Under precise conditions, the people could be taught sociability and absorbed into an ordered commonwealth. The reformation of the Irish, as read in humanist terms, stipulated that the Irish had to be drawn into the civitas , the fount of virtue and order. The English administrators in Ireland, therefore, equated policy with the common good. They believed that they were dealing with a disordered commonwealth and that their appointed task was to bring order to it. In order to understand why writers regularly made this assertion, it is necessary to clarify the meaning and corollary of ‘commonwealth’ in the context of the humanist movement. The ideal of the commonwealth was tied up in the ideology of public duty, and was widely understood in early modern England. Humanism stressed the propagation of civic duty, in which public action in pursuit of the public good was associated with personal virtue. Humanists believed that learning, and not lineage, conferred nobility, and that the evidence of nobility was the quality of service to the public good. Humanists expressed a preference for negotium (the active life), over otium (the contemplative life). To follow a life of negotium was to apply one’s

42 Canny, ‘The Origins of Empire: An Introduction,’ p. 6. 43 Pagden, Lords of All the World , p. 23. 15 wisdom and learning in service of the commonwealth. 44 A principal expression of public duty was in the foundation and maintenance of commonwealths.45 Concern for the commonwealth was nurtured in early modern education, which aimed at the cultivation of virtue and rejection of corruption in private and political life. The curriculum for moulding virtuous subjects, based on the revival of classical teachings known as humanism, had tremendous impact on European culture. These ideas reflected and informed subjects’ relations with communities and the wider world.

2.1.1. Early humanists Tudor rule in Ireland was defined by migration and settlement on a scale not seen since the Norman invasion. Political and colonial participation in Tudor Ireland was blanketed in a new vocabulary of Renaissance humanism, which stressed the virtue of activity and the moral necessity to achieve reform. Humanism had its origins in Quattrocento Italy before the Italian ideas were adopted and adapted in Northern Europe. Humanism was a self-conscious cultural and literary movement characterised by the imitation of ancient Greek and Roman culture. Deference to the classical tradition infused post-medieval European culture, including political thought, jurisprudence, education, science and theology. 46 Of all the ancient authors, it was Cicero who dominated Renaissance humanism. 47 The Ciceronian tradition informed sixteenth century political and civic thought, and the Roman author’s works formed part of grammar school and university syllabi.48 Renaissance humanists adopted studia humanitatis , a term used by Cicero, to define an education curriculum consisting of subjects that would shape the student towards humanity, including grammar, rhetoric, history and moral philosophy. These subjects were deemed most useful in preparing men for a life devoted to the

44 Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought , Vol. I, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 218. 45 A. Fitzmaurice, ‘The Ideology of Early Modern Colonisation,’ History Compass 2 (2004), p. 2. 46 N. Mann, ‘The Origins of Humanism,’ in J. Kraye (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 2. 47 P.O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanistic Strains (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), p. 18. 48 J. Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 86n. 16 state. 49 Humanism distinguished itself from medieval scholasticism by its urgings to active citizenship. Men continued to study Aristotle as the medieval scholastics did, but they focused on those aspects that could teach how to engage in effective action, or ‘learning at the service of living.’ 50 Before the Protestant Reformation, Christian humanists combined the teachings of the bible and classical pagan sources to pursue their rational, moral reform of the social order. Erasmians, followers of the Dutch theologian, Desiderius Erasmus, looked to the Roman stoics such as Cicero and Seneca, and, guided by scripture, sought to ‘liberate the rational soul within the individual and allow it to respond to the call of nature/God to act for the common weal.’ 51 Erasmus called on laymen to reject the cloistered contemplation idealised in the Middle Ages and instead called them to social action. Christian humanists advocated active Christianity professed in accordance with the virtues. 52 Erasmus demanded discipline and frugality in daily life and condemned debauchery, idleness and self-indulgence. The Erasmian concern with discipline was reflected in Thomas More’s fictional Utopia, an exemplary, well-ordered society of disciplined and industrious citizens. Christian humanists highlighted the institutional causes of social ills such as crime and unemployment. They sought institutional solutions to social disorder, and education was a key focus of reform. They believed that a ruler who provided his people with a system of public education was investing in virtuous and godly subjects. 53 Concern for social reform, driven by both humanist and Christian theory, was sustained through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a group of aggressive reformers in the 1530s who took up the responsibility of social reform that the weakened post- reformation church had become less capable of providing.

49 E.K. Rand, ‘The Humanism of Cicero,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 71, 4 (1932), pp. 207-16. 50 Simon, Education and Society , p. 80. 51 M. Todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 29. 52 Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought I , p. 232. 53 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 45. 17 2.1.2. The Tudor commonwealth The examples of Erasmus and More were carried forward by mid-century reformers seeking social and economic reform. Renaissance humanism was characterised by the interest of educated men in the problems of government and in their ability to contribute to solutions. Social and economic reform, preservation of social order, and condemnation of idleness and luxury were all preoccupations of reformers seeking the general good – the ‘common wealth’ – of England. 54 The ‘revolution’ in government engineered by Thomas Cromwell went hand-in-hand with a new emphasis on a paternal state, ‘the body politic knit together.’ 55 According to Elton, ‘all subjects of the imperial crown of England were joined with the holder of that crown in one body politic whose secular aspect might be called state or (more commonly) Commonwealth, while its spiritual aspect was comprised in the Church.’ 56 Radical Protestantism, preaching and the commonwealth movement gained momentum at the accession of Edward VI. The ‘Commonwealthmen,’ the retrospective name for a group of ‘commonwealth enthusiasts,’ were social reformers in the 1540s, who had their predecessors in the 1530s ‘among men working and thinking about the welfare of the community and putting their trust in Thomas Cromwell.’ 57 The Commonwealthmen came to prominence under the protectorate of Somerset in the reign of Edward VI. They were manifestly humanist in their education and politics, which stridently denounced individualism for undermining the public good. 58 Elton has described the general outlook of the period, in which all subjects ‘were joined with the holder of that crown in one body politic whose secular aspect might be called state or (more commonly) Commonwealth.’ 59 Authors of reform literature used the corruption and salvation of the commonwealth as a platform on which to push projects for confiscation, legislation and re-education. Commonwealth theory was reform-minded, and ‘commonwealth’ (also ‘commonweal’ or ‘common weal’) was one of the key phrases in the

54 The movement is closely associated with groups of mid-Tudor reformers known retrospectively as the ‘Commonwealthmen.’ See W.R.D. Jones, The Tudor Commonwealth, 1529-1559 (London: Athlone, 1970). 55 G.R. Elton, England under the Tudors (3 rd ed. London: Routledge, 1991), p. 185. 56 Elton, England under the Tudors , p. 287. 57 Elton, England under the Tudors , p. 185. 58 Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought I , pp. 224-6. 59 Elton, England under the Tudors , p. 287. 18 reformer’s rhetorical armoury. To pamphleteers, ‘commonwealth’ was used to mean the state, the government, or the national community. It was also used in the literal sense of the ‘common weal’ (or occasionally the ‘public weal’), meaning the general welfare of the people. 60 ‘Commonwealth’ was used as an equivalent of Res Publica , meaning the state, government, or the national community. The term could also be employed for emotional appeal, particularly if used in the literal sense of the common weal, or in the public interest. 61 From the mid-sixteenth century, commonwealth theory was reform-minded. The notion of the commonwealth was a fairly new one in Tudor England, a product of commentators and writers during a period of broad social change and political upheaval in early Tudor life. Ferguson neatly summarises the commonwealth concept as it would have been understood by the early modern citizen: ‘At its center is the political body, divinely ordained in a form analogous to the natural body, each part having its appointed function to perform for the good of the whole organism,’ and that this unity implied subordinating private interests to communal ones. Man pursues his private interest over the common interest ‘if he is moved by pride, avarice, or any other of the vicious drives inherent in his corrupted nature’ The purpose of the commonwealth was to ‘provide the conditions necessary for a life of virtue, led by the individual in diligent, contended, unambitious devotion to his temporal calling and, of course, in the confident and not unrelated hope of salvation hereafter.’ 62 Some of the more radical theorists ‘insisted on the need for the whole body of the citizens to acquire and practise the virtues as a precondition of attaining a “well-ordered” commonwealth.’ 63 A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England (1549), a commentary on political economy attributed to diplomat and scholar, Sir Thomas Smith, was the commonwealth party’s ‘literary monument.’ 64 Structured in dialogue form, the interlocutor Doctor Pandotheus quotes Cicero’s maxim that men

60 A.B. Ferguson, ‘The Tudor Commonweal and the Sense of Change,’ Journal of British Studies 3 (1963), p. 16. 61 Ferguson, ‘The Tudor Commonweal,’ p. 16. 62 Ferguson, ‘The Tudor Commonweal,’ p. 12. 63 Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought I , p. 229. 64 Elton, England under the Tudors , p. 207. Skinner assigns probable authorship of the Discourse to Thomas Smith: Foundations of Modern Political Thought I , p. 225. Dewar also attributes authorship to Smith: M. Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith: A Tudor Intellectual in Office (London: Athlone, 1964), pp. 390-4. 19 are not born to themselves but are made to serve their country, neighbours and kinsfolk. 65 The foundation and business of commonwealths was part and parcel of the humanist spirit. The reformers’ commonwealth ideal rested on the inherent perfectibility of man, which could be arrived at through the seeds of reason and virtue brought to fruition by education and law. ‘Commonwealth’ represented the achievement of man’s struggle from a primitive existence to an enlightened, civil and rational one, the attainment of perfection and the channelling of one’s virtue, skill and wisdom towards the benefit of the national community. Humanists were characteristically concerned with reform, both individual and institutional. They looked to the moral failings of the individual and the institutional defects in society and recommended reform measures to alleviate social ills. Davis has identified and surveyed a ‘genre’ of utopian literature that flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Davis states that ‘perfect moral commonwealth’ works imagined a reformation of individuals whose manners would be predicated ‘upon duty, loyalty, charity and virtue,’ for they foresaw the reformation of morals as ‘a precondition of society’s regeneration.’ 66 Humanists in Tudor England adopted classical republican texts to articulate their public consciousness. More than ever before, the nobility and the growing numbers of educated gentry were encouraged to fulfil their human potential through education and worldly activity. Individuals who were adventuring and politicking in Ireland and the Atlantic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were propelled by a value system that was civic, active and reformist. This value system permeated English society at all levels, affecting education, national and local government, the economy, the military, and the articulation of law and order.

65 Thomas Smith, A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England (1549), ed. E. Lamond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), p. 14. 66 J.C. Davis, Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing, 1516-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 31. 20 2.2. Humanism and English society

2.2.1. Education and moral values Mountains of policy papers, plans for colonial and economic projects, and formal attempts to centralise and stabilise government represent a vigorous interest in (if not love for) Ireland. Despite its reputation as a wild frontier with ungovernable natives, Ireland attracted theorists, entrepreneurs, adventurers and opportunists desirous to assert their talents and knowledge, which they regarded as a form of public service. The sudden zeal for reforming Ireland and the rhetoric of commonwealth that accompanied it, can only be understood in the context of the humanist curriculum that engaged the formative years of students in the Tudor age. The Renaissance educational experience promoted the development of a ‘homogenous national culture’ among the governing classes, fostered through grammar school curricula and common cultural experiences at the universities and Inns of Court. 67 Notions of human potential introduced by humanism were reflected in a renewed zeal for education. Several Tudor edicts promoted the foundation of schools in Ireland. An act of 1538 encouraged the establishment of parochial schools, primarily for the purpose of instructing pupils in English. Elizabeth I sought to establish diocesan schools that emulated the grammar schools of England, and which were intended to instil ‘a due and humble obedience,’ and of ‘bringing up of youth in good literature.’ By the 1630s, the purpose of education in Ireland, from the perspective of the English, was soundly humanist. In 1633, Lord Deputy Thomas Wentworth wrote that the Irish free schools endowed by James I were intended as ‘a Means to season the Youth in Virtue and Religion.’68 By the early seventeenth century, schooling had become a standard part of efforts at assimilation and social control. Pupils were to be made to abandon ‘wicked’ Irish habits and learn to think and act virtuously; a form of moral conditioning consistent with humanist educational theory. Humanist philosophers held that virtue, the basic knowledge of moral and religious truths, is a seed planted at birth, and requires education for it to be realised. Writers of republican liberty emphasised the quality of virtu , gained from a good humanist education, as

67 K. Wrightson, English Society 1580-1680 (London: Hutchinson, 1982), pp. 191-2. 68 P.J. Dowling, A History of Irish Education (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1971), pp. 41-5. 21 that which enables people to preserve and extend the greatness of their commonwealth. For Ireland’s reformers, virtue was both a means and an end. They believed that the achievement of a well-ordered commonwealth involved equipping the ignorant to realise their own virtue. They also believed that they themselves expressed virtue through their contributions to Irish reform, for proof of realised virtue was revealed in its application to public life. The writers explored in this thesis were influenced by a humanist education that encouraged men to emulate classical example, above all by engagement in civic life. In England, young men swarmed to schools, universities, and the Inns of Court for a humanist education that would equip them for lives devoted to the service of the commonwealth. Humanism changed the outlook on learning and the relation of education to one’s life. Simon has explained that the new curriculum was born of ‘concern for the affairs of this world and the use of learning to influence these affairs, a new interest in individual human beings, their potentialities and aspirations.’ 69 In A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (c.1529-32) , a work by the Tudor intellectual, Thomas Starkey, the eponymous interlocutors agree that the end of education is to apply oneself to the commonwealth, that ‘ev ery ma n ought to apply hymselfe to the settyng forward of the co mmyn wele, ev ery ma n ought to study to helpe hys cu ntrey.’ 70 Thomas Smith reflected on the value of education in A Discourse of the Common Weal . In the Discourse , Doctor Pandotheus defends the benefits of a humanistic education for grooming good members of the commonwealth, declaring that ‘the sonne is no more necessarie for the encrease of all thinges on the earthe, then learninge for the encrease of Civilitie, wisdome, and pollicie emonge men.’ 71 The lawyer Gerard Legh imagined the public role of the students at the Inns of Court was to serve the commonwealth and adhere to the principles of the classical polis .72 Attending the Inner Temple revels in 1561, Legh drew favourable comparisons with a Platonic academy, remarking that the students were learning to serve their ‘prince and common weale’ and to ‘use all

69 J. Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 61. 70 Thomas Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (c.1529-32), ed. T.F. Mayer (London: Royal Historical Society, 1989), p. 15. 71 Smith, A Discourse of the Common Weal , p. 30. 72 P. Raffield, ‘The Elizabethan Rhetoric of Signs: Representations of Res Publica at the Early Modern Inns of Court,’ Law, Culture and the Humanities 7, 2 (2010), pp. 248-9. 22 other exercises of bodye and minde whereunto nature most aptly serveth.’ 73 The expansion of the educational system in sixteenth and seventeenth century England was achieved through the founding of new schools and colleges in towns and parishes, where children of the wealthier classes could be prepared for university education. The number of endowed foundations in England grew to such an extent that, by the close of the sixteenth century, states Simon, ‘contemporaries affirmed that there was a grammar school in every market town and many another besides,’ a trend that attested to a new outlook on the role of education.74

2.2.2. Civic participation and the community The intellectual pursuit of classical learning in the Renaissance championed the standards of ancient republics and revivified the ideal of active citizenship. Civic humanism, a term introduced by Baron, propounded the central role of civic virtue in the spirit of Roman and Florentine republican politics. 75 Civic ideology was articulated in Ireland by service, which was held to be fundamental to the success of reform. Service in pursuit of the vita activa could include offers of counsel and advice or being employed in office. Writers saw Ireland as a commonwealth, and their function was to restore the commonwealth to good order on behalf of the English crown. Frequent assertions that the Irish commonwealth was decayed and that reform advanced a common good are clear indications that the designs of reformers were underlined by a humanist civic ideology. Commonwealth work was legitimate civic activity and an exercise of virtue, and was a convention of Ciceronian humanism. In De Re Publica , Cicero wrote that the existence of virtue depends entirely upon its use, and the noblest use of virtue is in the government of the state. 76 Cicero stressed the virtue of building and maintaining states, ‘[f]or there really is no other occupation in which human virtue approaches more closely the august function of the gods than that of founding new States or preserving those already in existence.’ 77 Articulating Ireland’s problems in terms of the commonwealth reflected a shift in civic consciousness informed by the

73 Raffield, ‘Elizabethan Rhetoric,’ p. 5. 74 Simon, Education and Society , p. 4. 75 H. Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). 76 Cicero, De Re Publica, De Legibus , trans. C. Walker Keyes (London: Heinemann, 1928), p. 15. 77 Cicero, De Re Publica , p. 29. 23 appropriation of classical republican values. England was a monarchy, but governance was increasingly delegated downwards such that England effectively became a ‘monarchical republic,’ a participatory state in which subjects across the social spectrum were afforded opportunities to participate in the commonwealth. Patrick Collinson ardently champions the existence of a monarchical republic in England, asserting that citizens were ‘concealed within subjects.’ Englishmen ‘imagined’ they were part of a monarchical republic and that members throughout the social order were actually afforded considerable opportunities to devote themselves to the welfare of their communities. These communities could be self-governing commonwealths in practice, linked at the highest level to form a single political body. 78 The monarchical republic thesis has been upheld by Peltonen, who argues that political thinkers were employing humanist and republican arguments from the middle of the sixteenth century, and by Fletcher, who maintains that social duty expressed through office holding was widely understood by the propertied classes in Stuart England: ‘[a]t its heart, in village and market town, Stuart government was government by participation.’ 79 A burgeoning political consciousness among the gentry was acted out through opportunities to participate in civic affairs. The government increasingly relied on networks of local officeholders to oversee the enforcement of policies in the localities. Royal authority was delegated to gentry and ‘middling men’ who were tasked with the governance of shires and parishes respectively. Positions were available across varying levels of government, from the royal court to parliament to the shires, and included service on juries, commissions and in local office.80

78 P. Collinson, ‘ De Republica Anglorum : Or, History with the Politics Put Back,’ in P. Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), pp. 17-19. See also: P. Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I,’ in Collinson, Elizabethan Essays , pp. 31-58; M. Goldie, ‘The Unacknowledged Republic: Officeholding in Early Modern England,’ in T. Harris (ed.), The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500-1850 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 153- 194. 79 A. Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 116, 369; M. Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 52. For a useful account of this debate in English history, see J.F. McDiarmid, ‘Introduction,’ in J.F. McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 1-17. 80 S. Hindle, ‘County Government in England,’ in R. Titler and N. Jones (eds.), A Companion to Tudor Britain (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004), p. 111. 24 Tudor governments were forced to rely on local initiative for defence and maintenance of public order as they lacked a standing army or police force.81 Delegation offered officeholders a powerful way to articulate a political voice by debating policy, formulating opinion and negotiating with the upper echelons of government. 82 The structure of local political organisation was based on a principal of the ‘body corporate.’ As Withington relates, corporations were ‘purposeful and voluntary associations – companies, societies and “body politics” imbued with a sense of “commonwealth,”’ enjoying freedoms and rights authorised by the state.83 Corporate towns, schools, hospitals, almshouses, and commercial and colonial companies sprang up across early modern England.84 The state was formed by incorporation of communities tied together by the concept of the commonwealth. 85

2.2.3. Wealth and the economy Among the upheavals of the sixteenth century was the development of the English economy from subsistence production to a diversified consumer society. Industrial development accelerated rapidly in the later years of Elizabeth and under James I. 86 Governments and individuals alike articulated a desire to obtain wealth. As Appleby relates, economic changes required ‘the endorsement of new values, the acknowledgement of new occupations and the reassessment of the obligations of the individual to the society,’ and ‘reorientation of goals and ideals’ of the ruling classes. 87 Humanism provided an ideological rationale for the endorsement of economic individualism. Assertions of public interest were underscored in the designs of industrial entrepreneurs in Ireland. To Renaissance humanists, responsible citizenship included a concern for acquisition. Profit was beneficial to

81 P. Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 219; M. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c.1550-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 136. 82 Wrightson, English Society , p. 153. 83 P. Withington, Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful Ideas (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), p. 217. 84 Withington, Society in Early Modern England , p. 219. 85 P. Withington, ‘Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England,’ The American Historical Review 112, 4 (2007), p. 1036. 86 J.U. Nef, ‘The Progress of Technology and the Growth of Large-Scale Industry in Great Britain, 1540-1640,’ The Economic History Review 5, 1 (1934), pp. 3-24. 87 J.O. Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 4, 11. 25 the commonwealth, provided that greed was not the primary motive for its acquisition. Medieval economic theories were primarily espoused by theologians and canonists, and were chiefly framed in ethical terms. The bible contained messages about the blessedness of the poor and warned that covetousness was a barrier to salvation. Writers acknowledged wealth to be useful for life as long as it was not desired for its own sake, as even Aristotle had conceded that some wealth was needed in the uses of a virtuous life. The medieval re-evaluation of work acknowledged the positive value of toil for its contribution to moral discipline, but the pursuit of wealth was not glorified. Furthermore, voluntary poverty was considered to be intrinsically holy. 88 The expanding economy of the sixteenth century and the accumulation of wealth meant that the moral implications of monetary gain had to be addressed by humanists. Translations of works by ancient authors transmitted the national advantages of wealth. Xenophon’s Oeconomicus , a dialogue concerning household management, was favourably disposed towards wealth earned by diligent toil. In De Officiis , Cicero stated merchants could be righteous provided that they behaved morally. 89 Classically-derived arguments for the attainment of wealth were propagated by fifteenth century Florentine civic humanist literature. Writers argued that wealth accumulation was integral to responsible citizenship, and that commercial pursuits were part of the vita activa . The Italian humanist Leonardo Bruni forwarded a civic argument for wealth, claiming that enrichment was one of the merits of an active life. The modernised economic views articulated by sixteenth century English humanists drew probable influence from Italian literature. Similarities included the emphasis on the active life over the unproductive, and an acknowledgement of the potential benefits of personal thrift for the state. 90 The development of a ‘philosophy of getting and spending’ in England provided the ability to reject moral arguments for voluntary poverty, and condemn dissolute enrichment governed by greed.91 Personal wealth

88 M.L. Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 326-7; D. Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 50-1. 89 C. Lis and H. Soly, Worthy Efforts: Attitudes to Work and Workers in Pre-Industrial Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 25, 223. 90 J.F. McGovern, ‘The Rise of New Economic Attitudes – Economic Humanism, Economic Nationalism – During the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, A.D. 1200-1550,’ Traditio 26 (1970), p. 240. 91 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 127. 26 accumulation was immoral when personal profit overcame responsibility to the commonwealth. Responsible ownership of riches was governed by concerns for social justice, rational government and standards of possession. 92 A major economic trend that exemplified the moral re-evaluation of individual wealth was ‘projecting,’ which encompassed schemes for economic development known as projects. Project activity in England intensified in the late sixteenth century. By the turn of the seventeenth century, large numbers of apprentices and merchants were aspiring to become successful projectors. 93 Thirsk places the beginnings of arguments in favour of projects to Smith’s Discourse of the Common Weal .94 Smith wrote that man’s innate covetousness can be utilised for public benefits. By allowing men to maximise their profits and minimise losses, the gains can then be harnessed to benefit the greatest number. Thirsk identifies a chain of influence from the exhortations of the Commonwealthmen down to the Elizabethan and Jacobean projectors who spoke in terms of the common interest. By providing employment for the jobless and boosting local manufacturing and trade, projectors found ready application to commonwealth ideals. Thirsk emphasises that economic projects ‘should not be separated from the social ideals which underlay them, and which forged strong links between the Commonwealthmen and projectors.’ 95

2.2.4. Military Military obligations had defined life in the anglicised parts of Ireland since the Middle Ages. Construction of tower houses and the enforcement of militia duties were reminders of the instability of life on the frontiers of the English Pale. 96 The role of paid soldiers in the colonisation of Ireland was controversial. Allegations of abuses by chronically underfunded English captains and soldiers against civilians dogged the government. Tudor Ireland was a militarised zone, infamous for endemic violence and the fearsome reputation of the murderous wood-kern

92 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 129. 93 J. Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 43, 97, 102. 94 Thirsk, Economic Policy , p. 13. 95 Thirsk, Economic Policy , p. 17. 96 S. Ellis, ‘The Tudors and the Origins of the Modern Irish States: A Standing Army,’ in T. Bartlett and K. Jeffery (eds.), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 118-120. 27 (Irish infantrymen), whose gruesome reputation was published for English consumption.97 Military men were front and centre throughout the period as peacekeepers and planters. Civilians, too, were expected to perform martial service. The conditions of a planter’s land grant included the requirement to perform military service and keep a personal store of weapons and armour in readiness to be called out to defend the settlement. The ideology of soldiering and military duties in Tudor Ireland has been largely overlooked, although recent work by Rapple engages with the Renaissance view of soldiering and the careers of captains in Elizabethan Ireland, revealing that the declining status and political opportunities for soldiers which resulted drove a number of military men to seek opportunities in Ireland. It is a compelling case study for linking analysis of actions back to relevant themes and contexts. 98 Attitudes towards the military in England ranged from pride to repulsion as humanists sought peace and diplomacy over warmongering. Writers grappled with the role to be played by soldiers in the new commonwealth. The imagined role of English soldiers and planter-soldiers in plantations was civic and humanist. Under Tudor governments, military duties in Ireland became construed in the language of the commonwealth. The willingness of a subject to guard English authority and travail against rebels on the Irish frontier was an expression of civic virtue and deference to the common good. Soldiers and militia were fundamental to building commonwealths by driving out disorder, permitting the application of justice and the final realisation of an ordered society where men would, in the tradition of the Romans, abandon their pike for the plough in times of peace.99

In pursuit of their ideal society, humanists sought to emulate the quintessential expression of cultural achievement found in Greco-Roman civilisation. The military ethic of the ancient Romans was widely appreciated. The Romans were studied as models for military organisation, particularly in their use of citizen armies. English theorists advocating the state’s use of citizen-militia over mercenary forces argued that military service was an honourable activity for

97 John Derricke, The Image of Irelande with a Discoverie of Woodkarne (1581), ed. D.B. Quinn (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1985). 98 R. Rapple, Martial Power and Elizabethan Political Culture: Military Men in England and Ireland, 1558–1594 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 99 In Stratioticos , Leonard and Thomas Digges declared that retired soldiers should ‘returne to an honest trade of life,’ using the Romans as an example: An Arithmeticall Militare Treatise, named Stratioticos (London: Henrie Bynneman 1579), p. 83. 28 exercising virtuous qualities. It was noted that citizens fought wars to advance their nation where mercenaries operated from selfish desire for the spoils of conquest. 100 In his essays on the greatness of kingdoms, Francis Bacon argued that the arming of every subject in the manner of the Roman Republic was a necessary quality for civic greatness. Bacon contended that the Roman Empire had declined because of the growth of effeminacy and decline of valour. Military valour of the people was more crucial for the greatness of the state than wealth and riches. The people were not as valiant as in times past, having given themselves over to idle and vain pastimes. 101

Military books became popular in England from the 1570s and 80s, partly due to a growing demand for practical knowledge, and because England was involved in wars in the Netherlands and against Spain. The publication of works on military arts inspired by Greek and Roman examples, particularly the works of the Roman writer Vegetius, encouraged the idea that communal defence was an act of virtue. By the end of the sixteenth century, Lawrence writes, ‘the vocabulary of war was very much part of the privileged language of the elite’ across Europe. 102 Theorists drew on classical texts to idealise both citizens and soldiers. As Withington states, the consequence of classical interest was ‘the proliferation of hybrid forms of the “citizen-soldier,” whereby citizens were encouraged to behave like soldiers and soldiers like citizens.’ He argues that British society exhibited ‘deep-seated attachment to the ideal of civic militias,’ and that ‘the force and longevity of the “citizen-soldier” (and “soldier-citizen”) was a defining feature of early modernity in England, Scotland, and Ireland.’ 103 A number of exhortations were published as reminders to observe military obligations. These included Richard Morison’s An Exhortation to Styrre All Englyshe Men to the Defence of Theyr Countreye (1539) and Edward Walshe’s The Office and Duety in Fightyng for Our Countrey (1545). Moralistic literature and royal reminders of the subject’s duty to defend the crown of England together

100 Peltonen, Classical Humanism , p. 41. 101 B. Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England , 3 vols. (New York: R. Worthington, 1884), I, pp. 36-7; II, pp. 224-5. 102 I.F.W. Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 1558-1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), p. 17; D.R. Lawrence, The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 38, 43-5. 103 P. Withington, ‘Introduction—Citizens and Soldiers: the Renaissance Context,’ Journal of Early Modern History 15, 1 (2011), pp. 5-6, 22. 29 formed a ‘heady mix of patriotic and confessional duty’ from Henry VIII to the Stuarts. 104 This coincided with a reorganisation of defence in the Tudor period from a quasi-feudal arrangement of private retinues supplied by landowners to a county militia system overseen by commissioners acting under royal authority. 105 The public duty of peace-keeping was upheld in the medieval Statute of Winchester, which designated the amount of armour that each man should keep proportionate to his wealth. The statute was confirmed by Henry VIII in 1511 and a further statute under Mary I imposed penalties for non-attendance at musters. 106

Martial activity was part of a rounded humanist education, and theorists stressed the value of physical and military training for the ruling classes. Thomas Starkey commented on the neglect of martial practice in the education of youth. Starkey advocated setting aside ‘a commyn place’ in the cities and towns for the exercise of youth in feats of arms under the direction of experienced instructors.107 When commissioned by Henry VIII to provide recommendations for the foundation of a school modelled on the Inns of Court, Thomas Denton, Nicholas Bacon and Robert Cary prescribed martial activities for recreation. The advisors thought it expedient ‘that such men should also besides their studies aforesaid, have some knowledge and practice in martial Feats, whereby they may be able to doe the King’s Grace and the Realm service both in time of peace and warre also.’ Martial exercises were to be encouraged by giving students liberty to practise shooting crossbows and longbows without licences.108 In The Boke named the Governour (1531), a treatise on the education of rulers, the humanist scholar Thomas Elyot wrote that the longbow ‘incomparably excelleth all other exercise,’ and prescribed archery practice for the physical health of young princes, nobles and ‘all others […] who determine to pass their lives in virtue and honesty.’ 109

104 D.B. Quinn (ed.), ‘Edward Walshe’s “The Office and Duety in Fighting for our Country” (1545),’ Irish Booklore 3 (1977), pp. 18-31; S.J. Gunn, D. Grummitt and H. Cools, War, State, and Society in England and the Netherlands 1477-1559 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 241-2. 105 Williams, The Tudor Regime , pp. 109-29. 106 Williams, The Tudor Regime , p. 123; L. Boynton, The Elizabethan Militia , 1558-1638 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), pp. 7-8. 107 Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset , p. 107. 108 The royal school was intended to provide an upper class education in preparation for a career in public service, but was never established: D.S. Bland, ‘Henry VIII’s Royal Commission on the Inns of Courts,’ Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law 10 (1969), p. 194. 109 Thomas Elyot, The Book Named the Governour , ed. A.T. Eliot (London: J. Hernaman, 1834), pp. 91-3. 30 Roger Ascham, scholar and tutor to Elizabeth Tudor, extolled the virtues of archery practice. Ascham published a dialogue about the longbow, Toxophilus (1545), replete with examples drawn from classical texts. The main disputant Toxophilus argues that archery is beneficial for men of all degrees, and has national and moral value. Youth should be encouraged to reject vice in the form of ‘idle’ amusements and partake in the honest and wholesome sport of archery. All boys should learn to shoot so that they are skilled enough to defend the commonwealth as men. The moral benefit would be the increase of virtue, for virtuous exercise encourages a virtuous mind: ‘For the foundation of youthe well set (as Plato doth saye) the whole bodye of the common wealthe shall flourishe thereafter.’ 110

Despite support for shooting as an accomplishment requisite for gentlemen and others, the introduction of firearms coincided with a sharp decline in longbow practice. The drop in interest was remarked upon with alarm by commentators who urged Englishmen to honour the longbow’s noble and glorious history. Elyot wrote that archery was ‘the feat, whereby Englishmen have been most dreaded and had in estimation with outward princes, as well enemies as allies.’ 111 The longbow played a crucial role in medieval English expansion, particularly in its wars with France, and the English archers were immortalised in national mythology.112 The practice of archery was encouraged by a series of royal acts and proclamations under Henry VIII, who was a keen participant and promoter of the sport. The English militia relied on the longbow until the end of the sixteenth century, but officials struggled to encourage regular practice in towns and villages. Royal acts attempted to enforce the medieval practice of shooting at targets in common areas. Militia service was promoted with the regulation that each English citizen between fourteen and forty was required to own a longbow,

110 Roger Ascham, Toxophilus, the Schole, or Partitions, of Shooting (1545, repr. Wrexham: J. Painter, 1821), pp. 19, 55, 58. 111 Elyot, The Book Named the Governour , pp. 91-3. 112 Henry VIII formed a Society of Archers, the Knights of Prince Arthur’s Round Table, whose members showed off their skills at ceremonies: T.S. Henricks, Disputed Pleasures: Sport and Society in Preindustrial England (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991), p. 83. 31 and armament practice was compulsory. The existing laws were reinforced by Elizabeth. 113

Regulation of archery and morality went together in some cases of local enforcement, 114 and ‘the duty to practice archery for the sake of king and kingdom’ continued to be stressed as a military exercise as well as a sport in Tudor England. 115 The enforcement of archery possessed a double utility. Martial practice kept the populace in a state of preparedness for occasions of war, and it provided an agreeable alternative to outlawed games that were considered a form of idleness, such as dice, cards, bowls and tennis.116 The moralising tone is evident in a sermon preached by Bishop Latimer in the presence of Henry VIII. Latimer railed that whereas ‘[t]he art of shooting hath been in times past much esteemed in this realme,’ and was ‘a gift of God, that he hath given us to excel all other nations withal,’ it was apparent that ‘now we have taken up horynge in towns instead of shutynge in the fyldes.’ 117 Injunctions against idle games encapsulate a trend in English jurisdictions towards regulating personal behaviour. As the following section will show, early modern governments treated idleness as a public concern. The enforcement of acceptable moral behaviour in England and Ireland underscored the view that personal behaviour was governed by the needs of the commonwealth.

2.2.5. Law, order and social reform The humanist focus on the dignity of man held that the human mind, much like the natural world, was innately improvable. In Starkey’s Dialogue , the interlocutor Lupset argues that it is the duty of wise men to maintain order among their fellow citizens. Men were first brought from a rude and bestial life to civility by the persuasion of wise men, and it is the duty of wise men to keep men in civility. 118 He stresses that natural law inclines all men to the desire to live in civil

113 J. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 85-6; S. Gunn, ‘Archery Practice in Early Tudor England,’ Past & Present 209 (2010), pp. 53-4. 114 Chaplin, Subject Matter , p. 86; Gunn, ‘Archery Practice,’ p. 59. 115 Gunn, ‘Archery Practice,’ pp. 64, 68-9. 116 Boynton, The Elizabethan Militia , pp. 65-69; Chaplin, Subject Matter , p. 84. 117 Henricks, Disputed Pleasures , p. 82. 118 Starkey, Dialogue between Pole and Lupset , p. 7. 32 order, but that man-made laws were the means by which man is made to observe the laws of nature, and thus to realise his innate virtues and achieve civility. Without laws, men fall to corruption. 119 As we have seen, the ultimate goal of humanist reformers was the achievement of a well-ordered commonwealth. In Ireland, it was hoped that obedience, and therefore order, would be won by persuasion and example rather than fear and compulsion, and to this end the inhabitants were to be shown the benefits of gainful employment in agriculture or industry. The Irish could be fashioned into good subjects, and there were those who believed that the potential to realise virtue through rational endeavour fostered by good laws, could realistically extend to the Irish. The idle population in Ireland aroused extreme reactions because the government feared their warlike disposition and ability to spread sedition and chaos in an already volatile realm. To explain the intolerant attitude to the itinerant or rootless Irish, it is necessary to look to the treatment of vagrancy within England.

The idea of the common good, the common or public weal, or commonwealth, was linked with the classical idea of civitas , the community. In the language of civic humanism, membership in the civitas entailed expressions of public spirit through participation in civic affairs. Lack of concern for the public good, or seeking personal profit at the expense of the wider community, was an intolerable evil. 120 Commonwealths were thought to be prone to decay if the magistrates or people were corrupt, irreligious or idle. As Slack relates, the concept of decay was resonant, a ‘process which produced the antithesis of order. That at least implied that right order lay in the past, and needed only to be restored or re-formed.’ 121 According to Braddick, the sense of sin and crime was ‘widely diffused’ in early modern England, and moral behaviour came within the purview of the government as a matter of public concern.122

As manorial ties were cut and people became subject to a market economy, poverty and vagabondage increased. Impermanence became dangerous

119 Starkey, Dialogue between Pole and Lupset , pp. 10-11. 120 Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought I , p. 222. 121 P. Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 8. 122 Braddick, State Formation , p. 139. 33 and undesirable.123 The dissolution removed traditional sources of poor relief, and social reformers on behalf of the poor commons beseeched the government to be the instrument to restore the health of the body politic. 124 Because the humanists’ programme for social reform required all men to be enjoined to labour, their campaign against idleness targeted those segments of the body politic that presented the greatest threat to public health, such as the able-bodied poor and vagrants. Analysts ruminated on the government’s remediating responsibilities towards the socially dislocated, particularly the increasing vagrant population caused by enclosures. 125

Those who would or could not perform to promote the public good, such as invalids and beggars, were seen to be at odds with the integrity of the realm. Together, the poor and idle represented an anti-society, and stood for ‘mutability, when those in power longed for stability.’ 126 As Braddick states, in Elizabethan and Stuart England, vagrants were ‘[r]emoved from the normal means of socialisation – parish and household – and from the established conceptual hierarchies that gave shape to contemporary perceptions of order, they were objects of suspicion and fear.’ 127 In a society where moral standards went hand-in- hand with social order, idleness was an affront to the commonwealth. In Starkey’s Dialogue , Cardinal Pole likens ‘idul p er sonys’ (youth who refused to learn a craft or trade) to ‘il humorys’ afflicting the country. An idle man was like a drone in a bee hive consuming the honey but producing none himself. Starkey proposed the placing of youth into trades and policing idle people in towns by officials modelled after the manner of Roman censors. 128

‘Masterless men’ existed outside of the social order. The actions of magistrates against them were vigorous and were accompanied by pamphlet campaigns that ‘elaborated and propagated’ theories of vagrancy. 129 The 1531 parliament passed a statute requiring justices of the peace to arrest and whip

123 A.L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560-1640 (London: Methuen, 1985), pp. 4-5. 124 P.A. Fideler, ‘Poverty, Policy and Providence: The Tudors and the Poor,’ in P.A. Fideler and T. Mayer (eds.), Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth: Deep Structure, Discourse and Disguise (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 203. 125 Fideler, ‘Poverty, Policy and Providence,’ p. 196. 126 Beier, Masterless Men , p. 9. 127 Braddick, State Formation , p. 151. 128 Starkey, Dialogue between Pole and Lupset , pp. 101, 103. 129 Beier, Masterless Men , pp. 7-8; Braddick, State Formation , pp. 151-2. 34 vagrants who were not in the category of ‘deserving’ poor and deposit them in their place of birth or the place they had last resided for three years. Widespread action was taken to address the social problem of vagrancy and idleness by making labour obligatory for the able-bodied poor. Under the 1563 Statute of Artificers, conditions of employment were recodified, and able-bodied workers who refused to work or who abandoned their position were liable to arrest and imprisonment.130 In his treatise on the state of England in 1600, Thomas Wilson observed that idleness was more forcefully legislated against in England than other Christian countries. Wilson explained that the people ‘are not suffred to be idle in their Cittyes as they be in other parts of Christendome,’ and that ‘every child of 6 or 7 yeares old is forced to some art whereby he gayneth his own lyvinge and some thing besides to helpe to enriche his parents or master.’ Wilson also noted the existence of houses of correction for the idle and unlicensed beggars, where inmates were set to work and forced to earn their living.131 Tudor and Stuart governments clearly did not tolerate the intransigent and idle, and the punishments and remedial measures that were forced on those caught living immorally point to a rising paranoia about the subversive potential of people who eked out their existence on the fringes of society.

3. Improvement

3.1. The rhetoric of plantations: some historical and etymological observations

When he described the kingdom of Ireland as ‘an overgrown garden that must first be purged of the weeds before it can be planted with the good herbs,’ Lord Deputy Charles Blount employed one of the commonplaces of English political thought, the organic metaphor.132 In explaining the initiatives of government to extend control to provinces where English power had long been resisted, the English made substantial use of language that evoked the cycles of agriculture. In

130 5. Eliz., c.4, as reprinted in R.H. Tawney and E. Power (eds.), Tudor Economic Documents , Vol. I (London: Longman, 1924), pp. 338-50. 131 F.J. Fisher (ed.), ‘The State of England, Anno Dom. 1600 by Thomas Wilson,’ Camden Miscellany 16 (Camden Society, Third Series, 52 (1936)), pp. 20, 38. 132 CSPI 1601-3, p. 379. 35 early modern discourse, the commonwealth took the form of a corporal entity, such as a body or tree. The life cycles of corporeal bodies and organisms were ready models found in nature for the themes of decay and growth that pervaded early modern political theory. A pervasive axiom in the political lexicon was that the commonwealth was a ‘body politic’ with interdependent parts that functioned harmoniously as an integrated whole, analogous to a human body with its constituent limbs and organs. The composition and functions of the state were analogous to those of a biological organism. Social problems were refigured metaphorically as ‘diseases’ and ‘illnesses’ that compromised the health of the whole body of the commonwealth. 133 Another recurring mode of metaphor was agricultural. The garden as metaphor for the state was a popular motif in Renaissance literature.134 The comparison of people and plants in literary texts was a device that drew parallels between the cultivation of plants and the humanist educational programme for moulding and shaping young minds. 135 Commentators on Ireland associated their political programmes with organic processes of growth, renewal and unity that governed biological organisms. Through metaphors of cultivation and husbandry, the English defined their mission and articulated transforming assumptions. The honourable reputation of husbandry was used by authors as a rhetorical tool that legitimised and glorified martial conquest and political reformation in Ireland. As the government proceeded with policies to destroy the Gaelic order and introduce English settlers as the main beneficiaries of Irish land, apologists drew comparisons between the activities of officials and the exertions of gardeners and husbandmen. Plantations were the centrepieces of Elizabethan and Jacobean Irish policy, and the success of securing the Gaelic periphery to English rule hinged on the vitality of these foundling colonies. Colonisation was an innately agricultural

133 D.G. Hale, The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in Renaissance English Literature (The Hague: Mouton, 1971); J.G. Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); M. Healy, Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England: Bodies, Plagues and Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). 134 H. Lees-Jeffries, ‘Literary Gardens, from More to Marvell,’ in M. Hattaway (ed.), A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture , Vol. I (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 391. 135 R. Bushnell, Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 137. 36 activity that harked back to example of the Romans, and the early modern colonial vocabulary was indebted to cultivation and improvement. The legacy of the ancient world pervaded English expansionist efforts. Thomas Smith appealed to Roman models of colonisation when planning his plantation in Ulster.136 Instructions drawn up between 1572 and 1573 indicate that the settlement was to be called ‘Smith’s Colen,’ and the English settlers were to be known as ‘Coloni’ or ‘Coloners.’ The governor was to be called the ‘Colonel,’ a title Smith made clear did not designate a military commander but ‘a leader forthe of men to enhabite, and till wast and desolate places, who in auncient tyme were Deductores Coloniarum .’ 137 The modern word ‘colony’ derives from the Latin colonia , a collective noun describing a community of coloni , or Roman tenant farmers. This term is derived, in turn, from colere , ‘to till’ or ‘to cultivate.’ The imprecise translation of coloni would therefore be ‘tillers of the soil.’ 138 In its root meaning of agricultural settlement, the Roman colonia was equivalent to ‘plantation.’ The term ‘plantation’ and its derivative ‘planter’ entered common usage as colonial words with the establishment of American colonies in the late sixteenth century. ‘Plantation’ became the primary descriptor for projects involving the movement of British families into Ireland, and settlers or colonists were commonly known as planters.139 The unambiguous agricultural connotations of these terms are confirmed by the Oxford English Dictionary , which defines a planter as one ‘who plants seeds, bulbs, etc.; (hence) a farmer, a cultivator of the soil, an agriculturist,’ and shows examples of use from the Middle Ages, centuries before the colonial association began.140 Writers on Ireland had long exaggerated the neglected state of Irish soil, decrying the Irish whose ‘idleness,’ or a perceived attachment to a pastoral lifestyle, was a contributing factor to the corrupted state of the country. In the sixteenth century, officials and theorists pushing for a thorough dismantlement of the Gaelic order in Ireland advocated tillage and agriculture as the starting point for wider social transformation. The intense focus on planting was tied to the

136 Quinn, ‘Sir Thomas Smith,’ p. 547. 137 ERO MS D/DSH/O1/2; ERO MS D/DSH/O1/3; Bodl. Carte MS 57, f. 380. 138 E.T. Salmon, Roman Colonization under the Republic (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969), p. 15. 139 H. Mumford Jones, ‘Origins of the Colonial Idea in England,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 85, 5 (1942), p. 449. 140 ‘Planter, n.,’ OED , definition I.1. 37 Renaissance confidence in a rationally ordered universe. Renaissance gardens grew from the concept that man could understand and structure his environment, and by extension, understand and structure the universe at large. Published gardening manuals ‘multiplied exponentially’ in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which fed the growing interest in formal gardening discourse. 141 As Montaño asserts, gardens ‘became key manifestations of a tamed wilderness,’ representing the ideal state of society.142 As gardening became a popular pursuit among the gentry, the cultivated landscape was adopted as a metaphor for the individual and the nation. The image of the cultivated landscape became a powerful expression of the country and the cultivation of the human spirit. 143 Tropes of garden cultivation intersected with the humanist focus on nurturing human potential and improving the condition of society. Tacit in the organic-based rhetoric that pervaded letters on Ireland was the assumption that an ordered landscape correlated with an ordered commonwealth. This assumption was expressed rather more explicitly by the men who devised and implemented policy and plantation. Appeals to turn the land towards improvement were sounded repeatedly across the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Improvement, or enclosing and turning land to agricultural use, is the theme to which I now turn. The literal meaning of ‘improvement’ was to enclose land for agricultural use. According to McRae, improvement was ‘a concept which conflated qualitative changes in agricultural productivity with increases in financial returns.’ 144 By the seventeenth century, however, popular usage conflated agricultural improvement with national improvement.145 It was thought that improvement of the land was tied to improvement of the self that can only be achieved after accomplishing mastery over nature through earthly toil. The economic development of Ireland accelerated in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by entrepreneurs who were educated at a time when

141 J. Munroe, ‘Gender, Class, and the Art of Gardening: Gardening Manuals in Early Modern England,’ Prose Studies 28, 2 (2006), p.198. 142 Montaño, Roots of English Colonialism , p. 23. 143 M. Leslie and T. Raylor, ‘Introduction,’ in M. Leslie and T. Raylor (eds.), Culture and Cultivation in Early Modern England: Writing and the Land (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), pp. 3-4. 144 A. McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 137. 145 For explanations of early modern usage, see McRae, God Speed the Plough , pp. 136-7; Slack, From Reformation to Improvement , p. 80; Drayton, Nature’s Government , p. 51. 38 Protestantism was striking deep roots in English institutions. Protestantism, whose principal leaders were influenced by humanist scholarship, 146 was characterised by a return to original sources, a new respect accorded to the individual and an orientation to the material world. For an intellectual history of the English conquest of Ireland, meaningful attention to theological culture is indispensible.

3.2. Cultivating the Protestant mind

Despite the religious and intellectual upheavals of the sixteenth century, religious instruction was as deeply fixed in English education as it had been in former times. The Protestant emphasis on preaching, or salvation through the word, meant that education of the laity was of prime importance. The Protestant reformer Thomas Becon believed that all English counties should enlist ‘learned, grave and godly’ schoolmasters to ‘bring up youth not only in the knowledge of human letters and civil manners, but also in the fear of the Lord.’147 Becon believed the role of education was for students to ‘become the faithful servants of God and profitable members of the commonweal, yea, and good citizens of the country where they inhabit.’ 148 Instructors at grammar schools were given orders to ‘bring up their scholars in the fear of God, and reverence towards all men,’ encourage obedience and punish vices, for ‘that men seeing the ende of virtue in their youth, may be stirred up to bless and praise God for their pious education.’ 149 Religious instruction was deeply fixed in the classroom. Laying the path to virtue and piety was a central part of childhood and adolescent instruction, where the study day was broken up by recitations of prayers and psalms, reading, translating and copying scripture, and recounting of sermons. 150 The safeguarding of the nation was reliant on the virtue instilled in citizens. In their reforming aims, Protestants shared the short term goals of humanists. As Fideler states, Protestant reformers articulated an altogether more

146 A.E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (4 th ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 35-58. 147 Quoted in D. Cressy, Education in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Edward Arnold, 1975), p. 20. 148 Quoted in Cressy, Education in Tudor and Stuart England , p. 21. 149 Quoted in F. Watson, The English Grammar Schools to 1660: Their Curriculum and Practice (1908, repr. London: Frank Cass, 1968), p. 44. 150 Watson, The English Grammar Schools to 1660 , p. 60; I. Green, Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 280-6. 39 conservative programme of social reform that amounted to a ‘reaffirmation of social hierarchy and avoidance of rebellion; greater liberality to the deserving poor and the elimination of vagrancy; and the achievement of concord and common weal.’ 151 The demand for an organised preaching effort reflected concerns that congregations should be educated in correct morality and discipline. For the Protestant, preaching and religious instruction ‘were not merely desirable religious activities: they were vital political necessities.’ 152 The extension of preaching to the ‘dark corners’ of the kingdom was intended to spread social doctrines to guard against rebellion. 153 The creed of the dignity of work propagated by Protestants can be seen in the furious English reaction to the ‘idleness’ of the Irish. Protestant theology hinged on God’s providential hand deciding the fortunes of the nation, as each individual practised virtue by toiling in their worldly ‘calling,’ or the vocation by which a person is chosen to serve God in the world. Nothing happened on earth that was without purpose, as failing to explain the purpose of something ‘was tantamount to ignoring the Creator.’ 154 The doctrine of providence assumed that continuous and diligent labour was the outward sign that the individual was one of the ‘elect.’ Worldly prosperity was interpreted as temporary confirmation that one was destined for salvation in the hereafter. This view was highlighted in the works of historian and martyrologist, John Foxe, who reiterated the parable of the tree and fruits, the lesson given by Christ that a person’s goodness was characterised by equally good labours: ‘you (saith christ) shall know the tree by the fruites. A good tree bringeth foorth good fruites, and a badde tree bringeth forth bad fruits: so by fruits I know them.’155 Protestants held spiritual and temporal human work to be labour in the Lord’s garden. Work was the means by which people could serve God and affirm his grace. 156 The metaphors of English Protestantism frequently involved manual

151 Fideler, ‘Poverty, Policy and Providence,’ p. 203. 152 C. Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London: Mercury Books, 1966), p. 49. 153 C. Hill, ‘Puritans and “The Dark Corners of the Land,”’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , fifth series, 13 (1963), pp. 77-102. 154 J. Dillenberger, Protestant Thought and Natural Science: A Historical Interpretation (London: Collins, 1961), p. 69. 155 John Foxe, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online (1563 edition) (Sheffield: HRI Online Publications, 2011: http//www.johnfoxe.org). 156 McGrath, Reformation Thought , pp. 256-7. 40 labour, the gardener or husbandmen being a favourite image. The preacher Thomas Adams compared Christian labour to ‘the labour of a husbandman […] it is endlesse; they have perpetually somewhat to doe, either plowing, or sowing, or reaping.’ 157 Reciprocal bonds and responsibilities extended to the doctrine of stewardship, which held that possession of land constituted stewardship sanctioned by God, a type of moral code. 158 McRae has found that Elizabethan agricultural texts drew the ‘industrious husbandman or yeoman’ as the ‘moral centre of Protestant representations of rural life, his productivity claimed as tangible evidence of moral rectitude.’ 159 Protestantism, therefore, provided the psychological conditions for great acquisitive undertakings: the earth was created for the use of man and the glory of God. The importance of doctrine in reading the history of the English in early modern Ireland is that Protestant culture encouraged the Godly to ‘seize’ the earth. The overwhelming Irish preference for Catholicism provided further evidence that the English were the land’s rightful claimants under the doctrine of God’s ‘elect nation,’ a ‘theatre of action’ in which the English could articulate a civic consciousness. 160

3.3. Economic and agricultural development

At the beginning of our period, the English economy was in a state of transition. In the early sixteenth century, the economy was principally based upon agricultural, subsistence-orientated farming. The population was just over two million, and this number increased by at least seventy-five percent by the seventeenth century.161 The pressure on existing resources contributed to growing unease over scarcity of goods, inflation caused by multiple debasements of the English coinage, and unemployment. This period also marked a struggle between traditional economic models and new ones, including a move from subsistence farming to commercial production and a market economy. The conversion of mixed farms to pasture attracted a great deal of attention from the government and

157 Quoted in C.H. George and K. George, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation, 1570- 1640 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 131. 158 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 39. 159 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 60. 160 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (2 nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 337. 161 C.G.A. Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, Vol. I, People, Land and Towns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 1, 3. 41 moralists who claimed to speak on behalf of the poor. 162 Agrarian discontent was also caused by engrossment (the augmentation of larger farms by buying up neighbouring ones) and the over-stocking of common land by yeomen and gentry, both outcomes of the extension of commercial farming. 163 By the seventeenth century, complaint over enclosures gave way to a more favourable view of the economic advantages of the new agriculture. Clay relates that public opinion ‘was increasingly inclined to favour agrarian change,’ and concerns about social consequences that preoccupied the early reformers were replaced by ‘an appreciation of the economic advantage to the nation of a more efficient and productive agriculture.’ 164 Land was a profitable investment in a market economy, and landlords saw the remunerative benefits of sinking capital in their estates. The wealth of printed agrarian texts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reveals the significant attention directed towards the land. Initially, sixteenth century husbandry manuals were directed towards the ‘gentleman farmer,’ 165 but a new literature emerged that targeted small farmers, suggesting a filtering of commercial values down the social ladder. 166 The humble ploughman toiling at his fixed position at the base of the post-feudal manorial structure was eventually replaced by the godly individualist of the seventeenth century. 167 The wealth of the environment was exploited in a capitalist urban economy, and demand for timber drove forest clearing and exploitation. A rising European population fuelled demand for land to cultivate and the wood needed for transportation and industry. 168 Deforestation met the demands of this growing market, which ‘symbolized the triumph of civilisation’ to many. 169 The forest provided raw materials to an expanding population and urbanising economy with the tools for industry and exploration. In the early modern imagination, undeveloped, unbound wildernesses, such as the bogs and forests found in Ireland, were reminders of the failure to exploit the natural world for the furtherance of

162 Clay, Economic Expansion , p. 75. 163 Clay, Economic Expansion , p. 76. 164 Clay, Economic Expansion , p. 79. 165 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 138. 166 McRae, God Speed the Plough , pp. 144-5. 167 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 60. 168 M. Williams, Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis, An Abridgement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 151. 169 K. Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500-1800 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 194. 42 humanity. English society took an anthropocentric view of the bible, believing that God planted mankind to dominate all other things in nature.170 The world and all of its animals, plants and minerals were made for the sustainment and enrichment of human life. Veneration of nature was considered strange and unnatural, and an impediment to the empire of man over nature. To the early modern English, the world existed ‘to be shaped, moulded and dominated.’ 171 Opportunists who grasped at Irish land in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were recipients of a doctrine that undomesticated soil symbolised chaos and disorder.

3.3.1. Nature in the English imagination In English culture, the wild environment subverted the principles of order and resisted the knowledge and mastering attained by gardening and agriculture. The English asserted control over their forests by systematically demarcating and governing them by laws. 172 The English in Ireland saw the Irish to be more at home in the myriad woods, forests and bogs than in settled agricultural communities. Their perceived living arrangements were confirmation that they existed outside of any civilised social order and by existing among wilderness, were defying God’s mandate to dominate it. The wilderness symbolised the outer periphery of polite society, the abode of savages and outlaws, who threatened to ‘transgress the fragile boundaries between man and the animal creation.’ 173 The association between savagery and wilderness was solidified in the meaning of savage , which derived from the Latin sylva , meaning ‘a wood.’ 174 The forest was symbolic of man’s evil. It was a place where, Williams states, ‘social order and the Christian concept of morality seemed to stop on the edge of the cleared land;’ and that civilised people in ‘wild’ territory risked devolution: ‘without the ameliorating regulations of organized communities, social cohesion, and the ties

170 Thomas, Man and the Natural World , p. 18. 171 Thomas, Man and the Natural World , p. 22. 172 A forest was defined under English law as ‘a Territorie of wooddy grounds and fruitful pastures, priviledged for wild beastes and foules &c.’ This is the definition provided in John Manwood, A Treatise and Discourse of the Lawes of the Forrest (London: Thomas Wight and Bonham Norton, 1598), sig. A2v. 173 Thomas, Man and the Natural World , p. 38. 174 Williams, Deforesting the Earth , p. 146. 43 of positive Christianity, frontier man could become less civilized and degenerate into license and even savagery.’ 175

3.3.2. The humanist background English attitudes towards nature were more confident in the Renaissance than ever before. Classical agricultural texts upheld the value of labour, which could be pursued for profit and pleasure. The number of published books on botany or horticulture increased in the second half of the sixteenth century. 176 Classical works on husbandry, by writers such as Columella, Cato, Varro, Diophanes and Palladius became widely available in print from the late fifteenth century. 177 There was an eager audience for these works. Ambrosoli’s survey of private libraries between 1550 and 1650 has revealed that, of the classical agricultural authors whose works were owned, Virgil appeared frequently (although it is not always specified whether the works include the Georgics 178 ), as did Xenophon, Pliny, Columella, Cato, Varro and Palladius. 179 Contemporary (or near contemporary) continental authors owned by Englishmen included Pietro de’ Crescenzi, Conrad Heresbach, and various translations of Charles Estienne and Jean Liebault’s Maison Rustique . Such writers were also part of grammar school curriculums. A Short Dictionarie for Younge Beginners Gathered of Good Authors Specially of Columella, Grapald and Plinj [sic], a 1556 Latin-English dictionary for schoolboys, contains many agricultural examples. 180 Improvement was capitalist and individualistic, but in the early modern period personal accumulation was tied up in values of the commonwealth. Production was virtuous if it was pursued in the common interest. The agricultural entrepreneur Robert Payne shamed landowners who did not convert their land to

175 Williams, Deforesting the Earth , p. 147. 176 B. Henrey, British Botanical and Horticultural Literature before 1800, Vol. I (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 3. 177 J. Thirsk, ‘Making a Fresh Start: Sixteenth-Century Agriculture and the Classical Inspiration,’ in Leslie and Raylor (eds.), Culture and Cultivation , pp. 18-19. 178 L. Wilkinson, The Georgics of Virgil: A Critical Survey (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 295-6. According to McRae, the Georgics gained readership and appreciation from the late sixteenth century. He cites this remark by John Kay in 1576: ‘Good husbandrye ys fitt for me as Virgill doth me teache.’ See McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 204. 179 M. Ambrosoli, The Wild and the Sown: Botany and Agriculture in Western Europe, 1350-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Appendix, tables 4-6, pp. 423-5. 180 Ambrosoli, The Wild and the Sown , p. 238. 44 agriculture. Payne (who would later turn his entrepreneurial eye towards Ireland 181 ) accused unproductive landowners of being enemies of the commonwealth: 182

The cankred Carle 183 in fertile soyle, which doth much ground possesse, And suffereth not the Plough-mans toile, his lande to take and dresse. Nor yet himselfe convert the same, unto his Countries use, deserveth well the shamefull name, of common-weales abuse.

A return to the tradition of the pastoral tradition of the ‘pious ploughman’ and ‘happy husbandman’ in English literature held the diligent agriculturalist to symbolise a return to virtue. The hero in Spenser’s epic The Fairie Queene , for example, was brought up a ploughman, which McRae argues, assumes an association between labour and national honour. 184 Conrad Heresbach’s Foure Bookes of Husbandry (translated into English in 1577 and dedicated to the lord deputy of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam) upheld rustic values of honesty, labour and godliness, which ‘underpin[ned] a sense of both individual and national renewal.’ 185 In England, profit-minded gentlemen farmers actively sought out neglected land to improve.186 They may well have been inspired by Xenophon’s treatise of household management, in which the character of Isomachus recounts advice from his father, ‘that I shulde never bye that ground, the whyche hath benne well laboured and tylled, but suche a grounde, as remayned unlaboured and

181 Payne’s Irish project will be examined in part three. 182 Robert Payne, The Vale Man’s Table (London: s.n., 1583), broadside. 183 This term may refer, in this instance, to ‘[a] man of the common people; more particularly a countryman, a husbandman,’ or ‘[a] fellow of low birth or rude manners; a base fellow; a churl.’ ‘Carl | Carle, n.’ OED , definition 1a, 2a. 184 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 201. 185 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 205. 186 Thirsk, ‘Making a Fresh Start,’ p. 24. 45 untilled,’ as untilled ground is both cheaper and ‘can not make a man to have so moche pleasure, and to rejoyce soo moche.’ 187 Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) was one of the earliest English endorsements of colonisation based on the principle of terra nullius . More legitimised conquest of a foreign soil by virtue of man’s right to cultivate unused earth. When faced with overpopulation, Utopian citizens were sent to a neighbouring continent where the soil was under-cultivated. The Utopians welcomed the native population into their new civilisation, but drove them out if they resisted their colonisers, for the Utopians believed it to be ‘a very just cause of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of that soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated,’ for the reason that ‘every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.’ 188 More highlighted the Utopians’ industry and utility in improving the land and reaping its material rewards. In Utopia, ‘one may there see reduced to practice not only all the art that the husbandman employs in manuring and improving an ill soil, but whole woods plucked up by the roots, and in other places new ones planted, where there were none before.’ 189 The agricultural justifications for Tudor claims to Ireland clearly echoed the sentiments of More. In the decades after More’s death, Protestant writers were able to forward similar arguments through recourse to Protestant principles that condoned the aggressive utilisation of the earth’s resources.

3.3.3. Protestant views As the reformed faith gained traction and merged with humanist principles of the common good, interest in cultivation was bolstered by the Protestant creed that upheld the virtue of subduing the earth and bringing it to profit. Reformation theology encompassed a moral mandate for the ascendancy of humans over nature. In the early modern mind, man had been placed on earth to tend to God’s creation. He was hierarchically superior to all other parts of God’s creation such

187 Xenophon, ‘Treatise of Householde,’ in R. Vansittart (ed.), Certain Ancient Tracts Concerning the Management of Landed Property Reprinted (London: C. Bathurst and J. Newbery, 1767), p. 78. 188 Thomas More, Utopia (1516), ed. H. Morley (Project Gutenberg eBook, 2005: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2130/2130-h/2130-h.htm ). 189 More, Utopia . 46 as plants and animals, and had the right to dominate and exploit nature. The exploitation of the natural world, facilitated by investigation into new technologies to harness the earth’s potential, was profoundly influenced by the literal interpretation of the bible forwarded by Protestant theologians. 190 To understand nature was to understand God. Man had the ability to transform the world that God had created, to improve what he has been given. 191 Analysing the content of gardening manuals, Bushnell asserts that these instructive works enabled people to put improving principles into practice within their immediate surroundings. Technological knowledge allowed gardeners to exert control over their environment, to achieve a ‘sense of mastery.’ 192 Illustrations of technique advocated ‘the reader’s and gardener’s taking control of his or her environment.’ 193 Gardening literature advanced the conceit that divine knowledge was to be found in nature, which was ‘the book of God.’ 194 The divine mandate for knowing and using nature was sometimes explicitly illustrated, as in the frontispiece to botanist John Parkinson’s 1629 herbal Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris , which depicts a scene of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The ‘moral character’ of agriculture also had distinctly religious undertones, evoking Adam out of Eden, perfecting the fallen world. 195 It was this cult of improvement that justified colonialism, taking land without the inhabitant’s consent if the land was thought to be unoccupied or underused. Genesis 1:28, the divine mandate given to Adam to fill and subdue the earth, was a popular quotation for writers on the plantations of the New World. Seed has described how the directive to ‘be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth’ was uniquely used by the English to signify agriculture instead of human reproduction. 196 The moral significance of improvement was twofold, with both an earthly and a spiritual dimension. Cultivation represented civility in this life and hinted at salvation in the next.

190 P. Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 107-119. 191 C.J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 464. 192 Bushnell, Green Desire , p. 83. 193 Bushnell, Green Desire , p. 74. 194 Bushnell, Green Desire , p. 101. 195 Drayton, Nature’s Government , p. 51. 196 P. Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 32, 34. 47 Conclusion

In this chapter, I have introduced a number of topics relevant to this thesis, and which pertain to contemporary suppositions about morality, education, society and nature. These topics have been grouped around the primary themes that will guide the format of this thesis: humanism and improvement. This thesis is concerned with locating these themes in the context of early modern Ireland by assessing the source material against the criteria of humanist and Protestant ideology, and will reveal that plantation and reform policy underwent shifts consistent with the progression of cultural and intellectual trends across the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Also under scrutiny is the argument that certain humanist ideas were incompatible with the Protestant principle of the elect. Did the predestinarian ethics of Calvin present an opposing force to reformist humanism, or did Calvinist thought synchronise with humanism as a force for social upheaval? 197 In light of the heavy emphasis that humanist and Protestant reformers placed on social reform in England, the impetus to ‘transform’ Ireland in accordance with English norms assumes a new resonance. This study will thus furnish new insights into the nature and function of reform ideologies in the crucial, formative years of an imperial England. The following is divided into three chronological parts. Each part takes in the reign of a monarch or monarchs, beginning with Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I (part two), Elizabeth I (part three), and concluding with James I (part four). Each part encapsulates a different dimension of the problem at hand. Part two covers the emergence of the commonwealth movement and the Renaissance emphasis on the classical republican tradition that encouraged activity in service of the state. Humanistic ideas about political participation and state-building were carried to Ireland by English-born and educated officials who took up service in the wake of the Kildare rebellion in the 1530s. Part three documents the acceleration of colonial activity in Ireland, with a movement towards involvement of the gentry and nobility, and colonisation by civilians rather than garrisons of soldiers in government pay. It will be argued that humanist values – citizens

197 Brendan Bradshaw maintained the incompatibility of the Protestant doctrine of divine grace with the Humanist belief in human capability (‘Sword, Word and Strategy,’ p. 498). I disagree with this argument and maintain that humanism and Protestantism were compatible in their goals as both movements were characterised by a commitment to reform and renewal. This question will be addressed in more detail in part three. 48 pursuing public activity, the vita activa – were served by various adventurers and politicians who contributed to projects for colonisation, industrialisation and social reform. The new movement, Protestantism, supported commercial activity and the development of the natural environment for human advancement. Part four covers the ascension of James I and the king’s grand monument to the union of the crowns, the Ulster plantation. It will be maintained that the popularity of Ciceronian civic humanism persevered into the seventeenth century, and the values of actively involved citizens and of corporations, modelled on the classical republican tradition, drove plantation and commercial activities. In religious matters, Puritans and preachers spoke of the dignity of labour, and the justification of property through toil. This development coincided with a boom in agricultural productivity, bolstered by economic dynamism, which encouraged industry, thrift and profit. Development of the landscape intensified as planters harnessed the Puritan ideology that emphasised the importance of earthly toil to restore the sovereignty man over nature.

49 Part Two: 1509-1558

1. The English in Ireland, c.1500 - 1558

1.1. The state of the country

Tudor overlordship of Ireland was legitimised by right of conquest. The ancestors of the English, the Anglo-Normans, invaded and colonised the country in the late twelfth century. Large swaths of Ireland were divided into manors, and structures of Anglo-Norman feudalism were imposed on the conquered regions. This period of feudal rule was known as the lordship of Ireland. Settlers were imported from England to clear and cultivate the land. The agricultural surplus they produced facilitated an increase in internal and external trade.1 At the height of English rule, roughly two-thirds of Ireland was occupied by English lords and tenants. The remotest parts, such as North West Ulster, remained beyond the reach of the English government until the sixteenth century.2 Depopulation caused by plague and famine, Gaelic incursions upon English territory, and the replacement of English tenants with Gaelic peasants, resulted in the gradual fragmentation of the colony and the erosion of English power. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Ireland barely resembled the lordship of the Middle Ages.3 In 1500, the region of Ireland under direct English jurisdiction, the Pale, encompassed counties Dublin, Louth, Meath and Kildare. The Pale reached a radius of thirty miles around Dublin and was surrounded by a series of border strongholds. The task of governing, preserving and protecting the Pale was entrusted to local magnates. The most prominent governing dynasty was the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, who held the post of lord deputy for much of the period, except when Kildare was out of crown favour and replaced, at intervals, by the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Ormond and Sir William Skeffington. The ‘degeneration,’ or gaelicisation, of the Anglo-Norman colonists created a distinct class, the Old English, who remained English ‘by blood’ but

1 K. Down, ‘Colonial Society and Economy,’ in A. Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland , Vol. II, Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 442-4, 453, 481. 2 Down, ‘Colonial Society and Economy,’ p. 453; A. Cosgrove, ‘Ireland Beyond the Pale, 1399– 1460,’ in Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland , Vol. II, p. 569. 3 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , pp. 21-2. 50 who had absorbed Gaelic norms through long coexistence with the indigenous population. The earls of Kildare were among a class of powerful Old English lords descended from Anglo-Norman aristocracy, including the Butlers of Ormond in Kilkenny and Tipperary, and the Fitzgeralds of Desmond in the greater part of Munster. These lords enjoyed extensive land holdings and, with little interference from the Dublin government, virtually autonomous control over their territories. Although the lords maintained contact with the government, they took to Gaelic customs such as ‘coign and livery,’ a levy with which they maintained personal armies. The Old English, who were known as the ‘Englishry,’ proudly boasted their English pedigree and accepted the sovereignty of the English crown. In turn, the crown accepted them as legitimate subjects with attendant rights and responsibilities, and acknowledged their status as the ruling class of the lordship. The government exercised little control in the Gaelic or gaelicised parts of the country. The Gaelic community, known as the ‘Irishry,’ did not accept the English as overlords and, therefore, were not bound to recognise the English constitution. Irish clans who refused to swear allegiance were branded as ‘rebels’ and ‘enemies,’ which reaffirmed their status as outsiders and malefactors who threatened the stability of legitimate political order. Social and political segregation was confirmed by the 1366 Statutes of Kilkenny, which recognised a political partition between English Ireland and Gaelic Ireland. The statutes were designed to preserve the English character of the lordship by preventing intermarriage with the Irish or use of any Irish law, language or customs. 4 Differences in the physical environment reflected the divide between anglicised Ireland and Gaelic society outside the Pale. In the English districts of Ireland, mainly in parts of the east and south, there existed an extensive system of arable farming. There agrarian economy of the lordship harnessed the Norman open field system of three-crop rotation. These areas were marked by land clearances, higher concentrations of settlers, and nucleated villages situated around a church, castle or manor house.5 Towns were peripheral, confined mostly to the Pale, the coast, or the valleys of the Barrow, Nore and Suir that converged on Waterford harbour. There were also some fortified garrison towns in the north

4 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , p. 23. 5 Down, ‘Colonial Society and Economy,’ p. 467; Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , p. 32. 51 and west such as Athlone, Roscommon, Athenry and Carrickfergus. 6 In the less populated areas closer to Gaelic influence, pastoralism was more prevalent than mixed farming. Settlement in these regions was seasonal, as itinerant herdsmen moved their livestock across the wastes to new pastures. Large areas of the country were covered by forests and undrained bogs. 7 Under the Gaelic laws known as brehon, tribal succession was decided by partible inheritance. A deceased member’s land was redivided among members of the sept, and heirs held their lands for their lives only. Death was not the only occasion upon which lands could be re-divided, and methods of partition varied between regions and groups. In some places, new divisions were made annually, while in others the chief could redistribute lands at will. Permanent divisions could be made (to resolve dissention within a group, for example), but the practices of transitory ownership provided powerful ammunition for English opponents who believed the decay of farmlands to be symptomatic of temporary habitation. As Nicholls relates, the ‘shifting of shares’ meant that Irish people were often reluctant to build upon their lands and improve them.8 Commerce was limited outside the Pale. The Gaelic social system encompassed bonds of obligation whereby surplus was passed to the lord in return for his judicial services, rather than being redistributed through merchants. At the turn of the seventeenth century, labourers in Gaelic lordships were still being paid in kind. 9 The borders of the Pale, or the marches under a partial degree of subjection to the crown, were home to a ‘mixed people,’ a blended society that practised aspects of both Gaelic and English culture.10 Historians have described Henrician Ireland in terms of ‘growing violence’ and of ‘spreading anarchy’ in the politically divided country beyond the

6 R.A. Butlin, ‘Urban Genesis in Ireland, 1556-1641,’ in R.W. Steel and R. Lawton (eds.), Liverpool Essays in Geography (London: Longmans, 1967), p. 212; K. Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1972), pp. 59-61. 7 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , p. 40. 8 H.F. Hore and J. Graves (eds.), The Social State of the Southern and Eastern Counties of Ireland in the Sixteenth Century (Dublin: The University Press, 1870), pp. 12-13. 9 R. Gillespie, ‘Small Towns in Early Modern Ireland,’ in P. Clark (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 148-9; A. Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy: 1600-1660,’ in Moody, Martin and Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland , Vol. III, p. 171. 10 Hore and Graves, Social State of the Southern and Eastern Counties , p. 2. 52 Pale. 11 The lordship inherited by Henry VIII was fractured and dysfunctional: the loyal population had dwindled, subjects on the marches suffered due to endemic localised conflict and the absenteeism of English landowners. As a consequence, agriculture was abandoned and the lands fell to waste or were converted to pasture.12 The lamentable state of the lordship was brought to Henry’s attention by correspondents who witnessed the suffering of his Irish subjects at the hands of corrupt lords. The king read descriptions of a country fallen to decay and license through the misdealings of the lords. The Englishman, John Kite, who took up his position as archbishop of Armagh in 1514, was repulsed by a country that he found to be plagued by disorder and decay. Gerald FitzGerald, the ninth earl of Kildare, was accused of failing to meet his duties as lord deputy. It was also alleged that he was more focused on self-aggrandisement and favoured the Gaelic lords at the expense of the Old English lords, allowing Gaelic practices such as coign and livery to infiltrate the Pale. Raids on the cattle and property of Pale inhabitants were reported to be more frequent than before. 13 The king was urged to take decisive action to reassert royal authority in Ireland and reduce the country to good order, obedience and government. Kite claimed that Henry VIII was bound ‘by just right & tytle’ to reform the land, and was ‘as moche bounde to reforme the land as to mayntayne the goode ordre & justice off England, more bound to subdew them than jues or sarycens.’ Foreshadowing later writers who would expound on the natural commodities and potential for exploiting them if Ireland were properly ordered, Kite urged the king to fix ‘this most plenteusse cuntrye, most profitable to the possessor, beyng ones in ordre.’ 14 The king had a moral obligation to preserve his inheritance of Ireland and to give equal consideration to its maintenance as England. It was therefore a reasonable and just purpose to embark on a programme of reform there. Kildare was removed from government and Henry sent a lieutenant, Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, with an armed retinue to win back control of the lordship. He also obtained pledges of allegiance from the Gaelic lords and attempted to reconcile

11 D.B. Quinn and K.W. Nicholls, ‘Ireland in 1534,’ in Moody, Martin and Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland , Vol. III, p. 4. 12 Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland , pp. 33-4; Down, ‘Colonial Society and Economy,’ p. 477; Quinn and Nicholls, ‘Ireland in 1534,’ p. 4. 13 D.B. Quinn, ‘The Hegemony of the Earls of Kildare, 1494–1520,’ in Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland , Vol. II, pp. 657-8. 14 NASPI 60/1/3. 53 the Old English and Gaelic leaders. 15 Surrey’s governorship between 1520 and 1521 (Kildare was reappointed in 1524) produced no lasting social effects, but by warning that the land ‘will never be brought to due obeisaunce, but only with compulsion and conquest,’ Surrey foreshadowed the direction of policy following the final fall of the Kildare deputyship in 1534. 16

1.2. Reforming the lordship in the aftermath of the Kildare rebellion

The pretensions of Henry VIII to absolute, imperial kingship determined the character of the government’s Irish policies. Henry was not content with the tactic of his forbears, which had been to limit Irish policy to peace-keeping in the Pale and to tolerate the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by Gaelic and Old English lords. While his reluctance to finance the subjugation of the entire lordship made a truly systematic reform programme untenable, the king considered Ireland to be a member of the greater body politic that owed allegiance to the crown, and acknowledged a need to assert his kingship over Ireland. Henry’s broader policies asserting uniform and direct power across his realms were consistent with this frame of thinking. His declaration of empire, which was backed up by the unification with Wales and dynastic wars with Scotland, emanated from his belief in supreme monarchical power. In the king’s eyes, the lordship comprised all of Ireland, and not just the loyal counties of the Pale. In practice, the projected ongoing costs of expanding into and retaining control of Gaelic areas forced the government to keep its practical focus on securing the Pale and its surrounds. Hence, the projects to create new settlements of English and Old English on the frontiers of the Irish Pale were driven by the English government’s position that prioritised the defence and strengthening of the existing frontier, securing those parts of Ireland between the river Shannon and St George’s Channel. Policy papers focused on reform of the traditional English colony as a political entity over the consolidation of the

15 D.B. Quinn, ‘The Reemergence of English Policy as a Major Factor in Irish Affairs, 1520–34,’ in Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland , Vol. II, p. 663. 16 D.G. White, ‘Tudor Plantations in Ireland to 1571,’ unpublished PhD thesis, University of Dublin, 1967, part I, p. 34. 54 whole island. 17 In these proposals, the Gaelic gentry would live side-by-side with the English gentry, 18 although more radical reformers pushed for a programme colonisation over the simple reformation of existing English territory. 19 In these proposals, colonisation was envisaged as an extension of the Pale beyond its existing limits rather than a vehicle for full reformation of the country. A community of subjects would coexist in a state of truce with the communities beyond the crown’s jurisdiction. 20 The chief engineer behind reform measures to strengthen the crown’s position in the 1530s was Henry’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell focused on the subordination of the lords to the government as Ireland was integrated into an expanding English bureaucratic state. His plans aimed at an integrated political entity, and involved drawing the outlying areas of Ireland into a unitary bureaucratic machine under direct English rule, similar to the regional councils in England, Wales and Calais. Cromwell reinvented the Irish Pale as a regional extension of England, and the Dublin executive was transformed from a central government to a regional council, the country governed directly from the English court. 21 Under Cromwell, the dissolution of the Irish monasteries opened up new lands available for the taking. Further confiscations occurred when the Act of Absentees was passed in 1537, which stripped lands from the English noblemen who had been negligent in providing for the defence of their possessions and allowed them to fall into Irish hands. 22 By the time of Cromwell’s fall from power, Ireland was governed by an English lord deputy, and the deputy and his council were more directly accountable to the English court as an outlying province of a unitary realm. The end of hereditary governorship occurred in 1534 when Lord Offaly, son of the ninth earl of Kildare, tried to compel Henry to restore his father, imprisoned in England, to office. Offaly led his supporters into open rebellion, and two thousand English troops were needed to subdue the rebels after more than

17 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , p. 44. 18 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , p. 47. 19 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , pp. 107-111. 20 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , pp. 45-6. 21 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , p. 143. 22 J.G. Butler (ed.), The Statutes at Large, Passed in the Parliaments Held in Ireland , Vol. I. (Dublin: George Grierson, 1786), p. 84. 55 a year in rebellion.23 The collapse of the Kildare regime marked the end of Old English control over the Dublin government. Plots based on sending English settlers to Ireland to protect and strengthen the Pale borders bombarded Cromwell after Kildare’s defeat. For observers realised that government through local magnates was unreliable, that effective centralised authority led by civil servants labouring in the English interest, was required for bringing the Old English and Gaelic communities of the lordship to English allegiance.24 A wave of English officials (henceforth, this group will be referred to as the New English to differentiate them from their Irish-born counterparts), trained in civil service at the universities, inns and the royal court, made their way to Dublin to take up positions in the new administration. Despite Cromwell’s downfall in 1540, the reform movement proceeded apace. The Old English largely favoured reform by a policy of conciliation with the Irish lords. The New English, who possessed no familiarity with the Irish, were less sympathetic and believed that military conquest and the plantation of English settlers was needed to bring the Irish to heel, as reform would be a lost cause if they were not pacified. In 1541, the parliament of Ireland passed the Kingship Act, which transformed Ireland’s status from lordship to kingdom. This event inspired little reaction in England, but possessed potent symbolic and argumentative force, particularly for those bent on reform. All subjects in Ireland were, theoretically, united as a single polity under the monarch. Henry proposed the inhabitants of the island be bound under the authority of the king, with the government of the island under unilateral crown jurisdiction. 25 Henry also urged his administrators to follow the Old English lead in taking a conciliatory policy where the Irish were concerned. 26 The Irish should be able to keep their lands as long as they recognised Henry’s sovereignty, promising that ‘we will in no wise take any thing from them that righteously appertaineth to them.’ 27 The surrender and regrant programme aimed at binding Irish subjects to the king. Irish chiefs ‘surrendered’ their lands and titles to the crown, which were then ‘regranted’ to them under legal English title and on condition of continued

23 For an account of the Kildare rebellion, see L. McCorristine, The Revolt of Silken Thomas: A Challenge to Henry VIII (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1987). 24 CSPI 1509-73 , p. 27. 25 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , p. 61. 26 D.G. White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 27. 27 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , p. 63. 56 duty, allegiance and loyalty. As part of the integrationist programme, the crown attempted to assimilate Irish lords by giving them the status and title of English peers. Some, such as Barnaby MacGillapatrick (created baron of Upper Ossory in 1541) and Conn O’Neill (created earl of Tyrone in 1542), accepted the conditions of elevation to the peerage. 28 The hoped-for cultural assimilation of Gaelic Ireland never manifested itself as only a handful of titles were bestowed. Experiments in building an English socio-economic structure in the Gaelic lordships indicated that the scope of reformist ambitions had shifted from the exclusionist medieval lordship to the whole country. In the following chapters, I will advance the argument that the programme to create a cohesive centralised polity was informed by commonwealth principles, in which reformers strove, through political participation, to advance the public welfare and to achieve a true commonwealth by addressing the root causes of social decline. Set within this context, the principles and policy governing the distribution of confiscated and ex-monastic land are found to be consistent with humanist principles of social amelioration.

1.3. Planting Ireland anew

An important aspect of the programme of rebuilding the commonwealth was to plant new English colonists to reverse the cultural erosion caused by depopulation on the borders. The goal was to effect social engineering by redistributing property to the fittest English and Old English subjects. Thomas Cromwell’s policy of confiscation and redistribution of property was aimed at securing the existing Pale to the crown, and so beneficiaries of the redistribution were to be men experienced in military service and of assured loyalty. These had to be loyal servants, from politics and the military, who were enticed with rewards of land to encourage their continued service. They were entrusted to develop their lands and act as peacekeepers. Upon his first appointment as lord deputy, Anthony St. Leger was ordered to survey and redistribute lands ‘into many honest handes,’ and appoint parcels of lands to good subjects. 29 The crown’s properties on the marches were to be divided into portions for allotment into new hands. The king wanted a list of the names of men ‘as have doon unto Us there good service, and be

28 C. Maginn, ‘The Gaelic Peers, the Tudor Sovereigns, and English Multiple Monarchy,’ The Journal of British Studies 50, 3 (2011), p. 567. 29 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 229. 57 knowen, for their honesties and qualities, mete and desirous to inhabite there,’ who would be given preference in the distribution. Regarding the sale of monastic land, the king’s pleasure was, again, to prioritise good character. Men of honest nature ‘and good disposition to civilitie’ were to be preferred.30 The regranting of land followed upon a suggestion by Patrick Finglas to grant monastic property to laymen. Finglas, a judge of Irish birth, wrote A Breviat of the Getting of Ireland, and of the Decaie of the Same , an assessment of the decline of Ireland and a proposal for reform. To take strategic control of Leinster, Finglas proposed ‘to plant young lords and gents out of England to dwell on the same.’ 31 Ex-religious properties were granted to trustworthy Old and New English to bolster loyalty on the borders, 32 although the largest grants of monastic lands went to the New English. 33 The large number of crown servants in need of reward meant that much of the land in this period went to officers, soldiers and government employees in Ireland rather than settlers who had travelled from England for the purpose of taking up leases. 34 The retinue of English officials recently arrived were granted lands with the premise that their permanent presence was necessary for the reform of the kingdom. For the first time since the Norman conquest, a policy of land allocation turned English officials and military personnel into permanent settlers. 35 Powerful officials obtained the more desirable lands within the Pale, while lesser officials and military servitors were given lands on the desolate marches where, it was hoped, ‘well-defended settlements would develop into springboards for advance into Gaelic areas and nuclei of revived English communities.’ 36 As Loeber writes, the Henrician distributions ‘produced spearheads into the Gaelic march lands, and were occupied virtually everywhere by the New English.’ 37 Officials anticipated that the new settlers would improve their estates in line with English models, and that their habits and lifestyle would

30 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 295. 31 Quoted in B. Bradshaw, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 192. 32 Bradshaw, Dissolution of the Religious Orders , p. 193. 33 R. Loeber, The Geography and Practice of English Colonisation in Ireland from 1534-1609 (Athlone: Group for the Study of Irish Historic Settlement, 1991), p. 14. 34 D.G. White, ‘The Reign of Edward VI in Ireland: Some Political, Social, and Economic Aspects,’ Irish Historical Studies 14, 55 (1965), p. 209. 35 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , p. 126. 36 Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland , p. 162. 37 Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 22. 58 be emulated by their Irish neighbours. This transfer of land to establish existing officials and army personnel as landowning gentry in Ireland was aimed at ‘infiltrating’ Irish areas with the intent of fostering political cohesion. In Bradshaw’s estimation, this establishment ‘was a stabilising factor rather than a social catalyst,’ and he points to the absence of city merchants following the gentry to the borders, and to the fact that most grants went to those of established political influence rather than newly arrived fortune-makers.38 Although he approved of the redistribution of property to men who could be trusted to safeguard English interests in Ireland, Henry VIII did not appear inclined to favour large scale settlement in the country. 39 Following the death of Henry and superseding of Lord Deputy Anthony St. Leger, who was the leading voice for the peaceful and gradual absorption of the Irish into the English polity, a militaristic and interventionist policy dominated Irish government in the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I. The impetus for strengthening the fortified frontier around the Pale was tumult in the midlands, which escalated into a war against the recalcitrant lords O’More and O’Connor and their followers in Laois and Offaly. 40 Sir Edward Bellingham, who replaced St. Leger as lord deputy, was responsible for constructing forts Protector and Governor to house garrisons at Laois and Offaly. 41 Bellingham was ‘the first of [a] new school of martial men’ put in charge of the crown’s affairs in Ireland. 42 The forts Protector and Governor were incorporated into a defensive ring around the Pale as they were linked with forts at Nenagh and Athlone, and the garrisons there were to become self-financing through the provision of the nearby lands as farms for the soldiers. 43 By spring 1549, both clans had submitted and Bellingham commenced with the organisation of the midlands region, although he died soon after. St. Leger, reinstated for a second term as lord deputy, was instructed to confiscate and lease the territories of O’More and O’Connor. He began to make arrangements for the planting of Laois and Offaly, but political scheming against him began immediately and he was again recalled and replaced with Sir James Croft, under whom the leasing of

38 Bradshaw, Dissolution of the Religious Orders , pp. 199, 201-2. 39 White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 154. 40 Contemporaries used the spelling ‘Leix’ for Laois. In this thesis I use the modern spelling of Laois but maintain original spelling in quotes. 41 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , p. 266. 42 Brady, Chief Governors , p. 46. 43 Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland , p. 167. 59 territories in Laois and Offaly was finally initiated.44 The O’More and O’Connor countries were surveyed, and schemes for the plantation were put forward soon after.

1.4. The plantation of Laois and Offaly

The dangerous climate of the Irish borders and the crown’s reluctance to finance a clearance of the hostile Gaelic population meant that the first plantations materialised as restrictive and defensive settlements close to the safety of the forts. The plantation of the O’More and O’Connor lands in Laois and Offaly, initiated under Edward VI and expedited by his sister and successor, Mary I, was conceived as a solution to the problem of ownership and control over Irish land in the strategically vital border regions of the Pale, and would serve as a base for extending control to the greater reaches of the country. Officers, soldiers and civil servants in Ireland were the main beneficiaries of the lands on offer. A central condition of the leases was that the grantees were to remain on their property and be equipped to rise to the country’s defence when called forth by a local captain. The terms of leases underwent multiple drafts and revisions as officials sought the right conditions to encourage an ordered, cultivated and permanent urban settlement. Edward VI wrote to St. Leger that Laois and Offaly were ‘presently in good towardness to be wholly in our handes & possession and yet not in perfection.’ The deputy was to take order to survey and prepare the countries ‘for the full and ample possession to be had to our use of the same Countreys,’ with lands to be leased for twenty-one years, with one or two years rent-free to encourage planters to dwell on their holdings. 45 A similar set of instructions was given to Croft and the council in May 1551. To this was added instructions that planters ‘shall demurre and remain upon their said farms, and be in their degrees furnished to the war, so as they may both surely keep those countries, and also do us further service in that realm,’ as commanded by the lord deputy. 46 The plantation was stalled by the inability of the lord deputy and English

44 White, ‘Reign of Edward VI,’ pp. 204-7. 45 Ellesmere MS 1700, ff. 5v-6. These instructions also appear in Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 226- 30; NASPI 61/2/57. 46 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 232. 60 government to agree on the terms of leases and the haphazard attempts to make the transition from military operation to a general plantation. When Anthony St. Leger returned as lord deputy under Mary, the queen ordered him to implement a robust plantation policy in the midlands. Mary understood that Laois and Offaly had been left badly wasted by the wars, and expressed her desire to see the land put to order by the plough. The queen was ‘desirous to have the same brought to some good ordre so as it might be well inhabited and tillage used as is within our Englishe pale.’ The lord deputy was to grant land to those he thought deserving. The planters were bound to build houses for husbandmen, and appoint a portion of ground to each tenant that was to be put to tillage. In this manner the country would be replenished with houses and inhabitants ‘for the manuring and defence of the same.’ 47 Progress on the grants was once more interrupted as the country was again in a state of revolt, and St. Leger postulated that the Irish were forming a united front against the English. The plantation was again halted in its tracks and the government could do little more than preserve forts Governor and Protector from deterioration. Only a small handful of the planters who had already taken up residence had the resources and fortitude to weather the crisis. Many had already been forced out by the Irish, or had given up their lands.48 In 1556, St. Leger was replaced by Sir Thomas Radcliffe, who became the third earl of Sussex soon after. The queen was eager for Sussex to push forward with the much delayed plantation.49 The ‘Act for the disposition of Leix and Offaly’ specified that the original planters had allowed their lands to be possessed by rebels, and so the area was void and could be disposed of by the crown as it pleased. 50 Mary instructed Sussex to proceed with the creation of shires in Laois and Offaly, declaring that ‘our special desire, and entent is, that the same and the rest of our hole realme shuld by aucthoritie of parliament, bee made shire ground, and devided into sufficient and reasonable Counties, as our Realme of England is,’ and furthermore, that the counties should be divided into townships, manors, baronies or parishes. The parliament of 1557 passed legislation for the creation of the new

47 NASPI 62/1/2. 48 White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, pp. 335, 341-4. 49 The instructions for Laois and Offaly can be found in a series of documents written up in 1556 and 1557: BL Cotton MS, Titus B XI/241, ff. 394v-397; NASPI 62/1/19-21; NASPI 63/7/62. 50 White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 386. 61 shires of Queen’s County (Laois) and King’s County (Offaly). The garrison towns of Maryborough and Philipstown would serve as the administrative centres. Twelve points suitable for large defensive villages were divided among army officers whose men would establish the foundations of self-sufficient communities. 51 Mary’s instructions concerning Laois and Offaly were even handed where the English and Irish were concerned. The plans, drawn up in 1556 and 1557, for the remaining Gaelic population involved their absorption into the new society rather than their extirpation. The Irish who agreed to renounce savageness and demonstrate duty to the queen were subject to the same laws and regulations as the English settlers. The end result of this attempt at social engineering would be the destruction of Gaelic society as the Irish assimilated with their English neighbours. The area covering Laois, Offaly and Irry was to be divided into three parts, two of which were reserved for English settlers while the westernmost third part would be given to the O’Mores, O’Connors, and their vassals the O’Dempseys. The clans were to choose amongst themselves who would become freeholders, and it was to be the responsibility of the freeholders to obey the laws of the realm and to serve the deputy as needed, and at their own expense, ‘as good Subjectes ought to doo.’ All were expected to swear oaths to be true and obedient subjects, serving only their English deputy and constable. A limit was set on the number of men who could be kept on the lands of Irish freeholders, and they were to keep only labourers, and not ‘idle’ kern. They were to facilitate the taming of their immediate environments by removing themselves from the woods and erecting houses of stone or timber after the English fashion. They were to keep fords open, destroy fastnesses (places of refuge), cut passes through the woods and repair bridges to facilitate ease of access by English captains when required to pass into Irish territory. Breaking of the passes into English country was made punishable by forfeiture or death. Limits were also placed on the amount and type of defensive equipment and weapons kept. Of the two parts of the country to be given to the English, a certain portion was to be given to supply the forts and the rest apportioned to ‘men of honestie, and good service, and such as have most nede, and bee likeliest to doo good

51 NASPI 62/1/ 21; NASPI 63/7/ 62; White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 379. 62 theron’ as planters. They were to perform service at the deputy’s commandment with horse and harness, which he was to keep for himself and his tenants, and stipulations were made to keep men who could use a longbow. No estate was to be larger than three ploughlands, or approximately three hundred and sixty acres. Freeholders were to answer to a constable for the defence of the country, and be answerable to the lord deputy for all hosting and journeys. A pledge system was initiated as every freeholder was to be accountable for all men who lived under him, and once a year the names of all men in the plantation between the ages of twelve and sixty were to be logged and their landlords bound to answer for them for the following year. Sussex was at pains to prevent the depopulation of the late medieval colonists and more recent disappointments in Laois and Offaly. Freeholders were, therefore, bound to dwell personally upon their lands, and rules were enacted to prevent freeholders from alienating their portions without license from the deputy. Sussex worked to implement the new plans, and took formal submissions from the O’Mores and O’Connors. Sussex was at pains to emphasise the gracious hand that had been extended to the Irish by allowing them to remain on lands that they ‘usurped,’ and therefore could claim, merely, ‘pretended ownership.’ He reported that the Irish had admitted to him the wrongful usurpation of her majesty’s lands and that, having been taken as true subjects, they were to be gifted an allocated portion for themselves. Hopes for a peaceful settlement were soon dispelled when the leader of the O’Connors, Donough O’Connor, broke his pledge, and was followed by Connell O’More into open rebellion. Sussex launched an expeditionary force, which captured and executed O’More, and pursued the remaining assailants who harassed the English forces, raided the English territories and laid siege to Fort Protector. One planter claimed that he had lost seventeen men defending his property in Laois.52 The chaos that overran the midlands showed that the counties that had been shired by parliament were under English control in a nominal sense only, and in reality remained sparsely inhabited and poorly cultivated. The burdensome costs of maintaining law and order and difficulties in convincing potential settlers to move to a volatile region, with the dangers accompanying a hostile native

52 APCI , pp. 23-4, 27-29; R. Dunlop, ‘The Plantation of Leix and Offaly,’ English Historical Review 6 (1891), pp. 68-9. 63 population, meant that the original plans for self-sustaining townships were wholly unsustainable. The forts that were the cornerstone of the settlement eventually fell into disrepair: a memorandum by Elizabeth’s government described the forts at Laois and Offaly as ‘greatly decayed.’53 Despite the instructions for planters to build dwellings for their tenants, little was ever built (certainly not the imagined townships), and much of what the settlers had achieved was destroyed in raids by the outlawed wood-kern.54 The setbacks suffered by Sussex in implementing the plantation made it quite clear to the government that until the country was in a more settled state, the Irish would not be assimilated readily. As White explains, ‘[t]wenty years of experience had disillusioned those who held that all that was needed to reform Ireland was a new influx of English.’ 55 Establishing some sort of permanent order there would require a thorough dismantling of the Gaelic order, necessitating extraordinary military force to lay the foundations of permanent English administration in the Gaelic reaches. Policy such as this would need money and resources and the Tudor sovereigns were eternally reluctant to throw money at the problem. Hence, at Mary’s death, the Laois and Offaly plantation remained little more than a cluster of isolated military outposts. The plantation limped along forlornly but did not completely disappear, and a handful of planters showed remarkable resilience upon the frontier. There is evidence, for example, that Francis Cosby developed his lands in the barony of Stradbally in Laois, which included a water mill, cottages and gardens. The Cosby family remained prominent landowners in Stradbally in the eighteenth century.56 The fundamental goals of the plantation were to establish order in what Tudor observers considered to be a profoundly disordered region in the marches of Ireland, and from thence order would eventually be extended to the greater reaches of the kingdom. The conditions governing the land grants were aimed at social engineering, designed to produce a radically different type of society to the one that presently existed there: a settled agricultural community anchored by the townships of Maryborough and Philipstown. The counties would be built by

53 Cal. Carew, 1575-88 , p. 371. 54 Loeber, Geography and Practice , p.17. 55 White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 420. 56 M. Quinn, ‘Francis Cosby (1510-80), Stradbally, Queen’s County and the Tudor Conquest of Leinster,’ History Ireland 14, 5 (2006), pp. 23-4. 64 pioneers selected on the basis of their loyalty and virtue in service, providing for its own defence as subjects who recognised their duty to preserve the interest of the greater good. The plantation would eventually sustain itself as agriculture flourished in the rich and arable pastures. Economic productivity would be encouraged by the security of the English leasehold system. Plans to extend English settlement were characteristic of reform projects that aimed at ordering the country from the top down, and should therefore be assessed within the emerging reform movement in this period that drew from humanist theories and operated in pursuit of commonwealth ideals. In the following pages, I will advance and test the hypothesis that Renaissance principles of the commonwealth provided the conceptual and rhetorical tools for assessing and addressing of what was, in English eyes, ‘the Irish problem.’

2. Humanism

The Henrician intervention in Ireland transformed the nature of Ireland in the eyes of the crown and government. Having been drawn into the fold of English sovereignty by the declaration of kingship, toleration of coexisting Gaelic and English polities was officially swept away. The Kingship Act provided a judicial basis for the application of humanist ideology. The formal declaration of sole authority legitimised and encouraged aspirations of a united political body. The influence of humanist culture seeped into policy papers as reformers looked at the present state of affairs, and they applied a commonwealth framework to the country that had traditionally been dismissed by the English as an unruly colonial backwater. The ideal commonwealth envisaged for Ireland was grounded in hegemonous political and social organisation. The jumble of autonomous territories governed by hereditary chiefs and lords was to be dissolved. The dismantling of autonomous power bases would force lords and their followers to redirect their allegiance to the English crown. All inhabitants were expected to be subjects, and it was subjecthood, rather than the modern invention of national identity, that was the standard against which loyalty and obligations to a state were measured. 57

57 Prof. David Armitage, personal communication, 26 July 2012. 65 As one anonymous Old English writer recounted, the dividing principles of the Statutes of Kilkenny had caused chronic instability by ‘dividing us asunder as we, inhabiting one realm, should take ourselves to be, as it were, strangers of several nations.’ The restitution of justice in Ireland could not occur until the division of the Irish nation from the English nation was dissolved. 58 The surrender and regrant initiative indicates that the English believed the Irish lords were co- optable, and that they could be assimilated into a ‘unified elite caste’ encompassing English and Irish aristocracy. The assimilation of Ireland’s elite, along with their followers, would therefore forge bonds in a clearly defined relationship between the king and subject. 59 This bond assumed a new standard of loyalty to the sovereign and service on behalf of the commonwealth. In light of constitutional changes, Ireland might now be viewed by Englishmen as an extension of the Tudor kingdom. It was, as Palmer states, ‘a domestic rather than a foreign affair, a border province in revolt from central government rather than a separate polity resisting annexation.’ Difference was interpreted as deviance. ‘In a context where the legitimacy of separatist claims was inconceivable,’ writes Palmer, ‘the rebel’s tongue would be heard as a dissident patois rather than as an autonomous foreign tongue.’ 60 Retribution and punishment were meted out to rebels, such as in the land forfeitures and martial retaliation against the O’Mores and O’Connors who had committed a foul crime against honour by breaking an oath. Recalcitrants who seemed hopelessly lost to the cause of incorporation into the polity were uprooted. Intractable members who stirred up rebellion hindered the progress of political consolidation, and, therefore had to be removed to preserve the greater good. In 1551, the Irish-based solicitor Walter Cowley wrote that English energies should be focused on nourishing good subjects. Those ‘in whom no hope is of amendment, must be wedd out, as suche inclyned to goodnes may the better without lett growe in welthe and quiete,’ wrote Cowley, ‘so must suche as yeldethe them to goode obedience and forsakethe the contrary, be favored and cherished in that sort, as they may rejoise in their conformatie and also that by

58 B. Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland 1554-5,’ Irish Jurist 16 (1981), p. 309. 59 B. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541-1641 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 22, 27-8. 60 P. Palmer, Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 46. 66 insample therof othirs may fall to the semblables.’ 61 By weeding out the worst offenders, the ties binding them to their followers and kin would be broken. The Irish could potentially become good subjects, but only if their leaders were ‘subdued.’ 62 In other words, wilful Irish tendencies had to be stamped out before ‘ignorance’ could be cured. As the greater part of the Irish became absorbed into English society, the outlawed dwelling on the fringes would eventually become extinct. As Brady explains, planting English settlers would help to deliver social change to outlying regions, aiding the process of reform by ‘punishing the rebellious, by restraining the uncommitted and by encouraging all of the rest to share in the great social and economic benefits heralded by the introduction of the laws and customs of English culture.’ 63 The Old English author of the Treatise of the Reformation of Ireland believed that Henry VIII had not been forceful enough in his treatment of the Irish lords. If only Henry had ‘added the plane of severe justice in cutting off the perverse and unprofitable members, the realm had been now thoroughly reformed and much treasure saved thereby to this realm of England.’ Henry’s mistake had been ‘to accept a man as a subject and permit him to live as a rebel’ by abiding the continuation of the Gaelic order instead of forcing them to assimilate. 64 The author recommended that a small peace-keeping force should be sent to the lord deputy, provincial presidents and provost marshals until ‘the sword knit to severe justice hath brought the realm to that pass that every subject shall be both a possessor and defender of his own through justice.’ 65 The commonwealth would be truly reformed by political organisation that drew the disparate elements of English and Irish society into a single body politic, governed by magistrates committed to ideals of public service. Legislation aimed at strengthening government by dismantling Gaelic hierarchies, outrooting corruption in the lordships and government, and enforcing public order. All such policy was framed in terms of a commitment to systemic change in the interest of the public good. The author of the Treatise addressed Ireland directly, urging his native country to ‘remember that England is best able and most worthy to possess thee,’ and

61 NASPI 61/3/12. 62 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 374. 63 Brady, Chief Governors , pp. 253-4. 64 Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland,’ p. 308. 65 Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland,’ p. 312. 67 emphasised the selfless and noble intentions of the English crown, which were directed towards the common good. England ‘seeketh nothing else but first thine own wealth, and after that obedience for thine own sake, to continue thee therein. It hath bestowed infinite treasure of good meaning to reform thee.’ 66 The keyword that best encapsulates arguments for the common good is the omnipresent Tudor adage, ‘commonwealth.’ The commonwealth ideal had taken on a strongly reformist ethos in the reign of Henry VIII. 67 As in England, where a developing civic awareness stirred social complaint and counsel, language strongly redolent of humanism penetrated the Irish bureaucracy. Literature pertaining to social criticism and bold statements for a new order were coloured by appeals to the commonwealth. Commonwealth was a signifier laden with strong moral connotations in humanist circles, and its use in the ideological struggle against the perceived anarchic conditions of Gaelic society suggests that the humanist value system played a vital role in the dynamics of pre-Elizabethan colonial thought.

2.1. The commonwealth movement

In order to engage with the themes of reform in Irish policy papers, it is necessary to review the major movements in political ideology, and none are more pertinent to Ireland than civic humanism and its concomitant focus on commonwealth. ‘Commonwealth’ took on many nuances over the sixteenth century, and could be adapted to support the designs of the writer. The term could be used to invoke the public good or ‘common weal,’ while simultaneously functioning as the contemporary English translation of Res Publica . In 1536, the scholar and diplomat Richard Morison rationalised the commonwealth to be ‘nothing else but a certain number of cities, towns, shires that all agree upon one law and one head, united and knitted together by the observation of those laws.’ 68 The development of the centralised English state relied on ‘purposeful and voluntary associations –

66 Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland,’ pp. 311-2. 67 D. MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (London: Penguin, 2001), p. 125. 68 Morison was a government propagandist railing against the popular rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. This passage, from Morison’s A Remedy for Sedition (1536) is quoted in E.H. Shagan, ‘The Two Republics: Conflicting Views of Participatory Local Government in Early Tudor England,’ in J.F. McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England , p. 24. 68 companies, societies and ‘body politics’ imbued with a sense of ‘commonwealth,’ 69 and united in their common allegiance to the English crown. Membership of the commonwealth entailed common interests and allegiances, and images of the community being tied or ‘knit’ together, or forming a single entity such as a tree or body represented the commonwealth in perfect, harmonious operation. The assumption that all members of society should function harmoniously was related to the overarching commitment to ‘order’ that permeated Tudor politics.70 The reformist ethic of northern humanists was that social problems could be cured by ‘a properly structured social and political order,’ which would ‘encourage the development of godly citizens.’71 As a new contingent of English officials arrived in Dublin in the decades following Kildare’s downfall, they, with their Pale counterparts, maintained correspondence with the English court that outlined the causes of resistance and offered opinions on matters of policy. The defects of the kingdom were assessed against the criteria of the commonwealth, an influence conveyed from humanist ideas transmitted from the continent. Humanism awakened interest in the classical republican legacy of civic consciousness, and the ideology of state from which it derived established the abstract notion of the commonwealth as the yardstick of policy. Cromwell and his associates oversaw a suite of reforms that reorganised the church, overhauled the machinery of government, and expanded the reach of royal government into the northern borderlands, Wales and Ireland. They also considered a range of social issues, giving sharper focus to the concept of social reform. A mood of genuine idealism infused ‘a movement of hope and moral fervour,’ favourable to thoughts of radical reform.72 Humanists emphasised a concern for the affairs of the world, extolling the duty of the educated individual to channel their qualities into a life of worldly activity. As Todd states, they heeded the lesson of Erasmus, ‘that all is not well with the world, and that change for the better is possible.’ 73 The reform movement gathered impetus in a flurry of intellectual activity, which was to be seen in ‘[a] good many people busily

69 Withington, Society in Early Modern England , p. 217. 70 S.L. Collins, From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: An Intellectual History of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 16. 71 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 37. 72 MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant , pp. 125-6. 73 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 18. 69 ferreting out the causes of distress and devising remedies’ for correcting them. 74 Consequently, the crown servants concerned with Irish government looked upon the dysfunction of previous governments, bastard feudalism and lawlessness on the borders and Gaelic territories as evidence of a disordered commonwealth.

2.2. Reforming the body politic

2.2.1. Advancing the common weal: the State of Ireland (1515) and changing approaches to government Imbued with classical wisdom, humanists contested a ‘right and a duty to offer counsel and participate in government,’ for quasi-republican political involvement was thought to legitimise the power of the monarch. 75 One of the earliest texts to assess the effects of the disintegration of English influence in the lordship and propose solutions to restore it to the crown is an anonymous treatise entitled State of Ireland and Plan for Its Reformation , much of which was based on an earlier work, the Salus Populi , or ‘health of the people.’76 The author portrayed a country rife with extortion by the earl of Kildare and the lords who had turned to living by the sword in the manner of their Irish enemies. The author gave a blunt assessment of the moral standards of the ruling classes, bemoaning that ‘ther is no lande in all this worlde, that have more lybertye in vyceis, then Ireland, and lesse lybertye in vertue.’ 77 He described the prevailing practice of agriculture in the English territories and the security provided by the peace-keeping of English captains. So too did the Irish captains keep their countries in peace and defend their subjects. The fundamental immorality that sustained this equilibrium was the protection of the settlers by their lords at the expense of their freedom, and that they were kept in miserable poverty by the oppressive exactions of coign and livery taken to pay for armies. The entire social order balanced on corrupt foundations that kept the poor ‘trodde under fote, and frade so evyll, with so great

74 G.R. Elton, Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 158. 75 Shagan, ‘The Two Republics,’ p. 22. 76 White attributes authorship to the English-born chancellor of Ireland, William Rokeby: ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 27. 77 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 16. 70 myserye, and with so wrecheid lyff.’ 78 Greed and lucre infected the country like a disease, and reform could not be achieved as long as the covetousness of the powerful triumphed over considerations of the common good. The disregard for common interest was underscored as one of the fundamental causes of social decay. The author advanced the principle that ‘the moste welthe and prosperytie of every lande is the comen welthe of the same, and not the private welthe; and the most hurte of every lande is the comyn hurte,’ and fulminated that such values had been so brazenly disregarded in Ireland, for ‘all the Englyshe noble folke of this lande payseyth allwaye ther private wele, and, in regarde therof, settyth lytill or nought by the comen wele, in asmuche as ther is no comyn folke in all this worlde soo lytyll settbye’ than that of Ireland. 79 He presented a programme of solutions that included building a citizen militia, encouraging further English settlement, and rebuilding the machinery of local government. Henry VIII heeded talk of social decline and corruption, as evident in his instructions to Surrey to remind the Irish assemblies of ‘the great decay of that fertile land for lack of politic governance and good justice, in consequence of which the weaker is subdued and oppressed by the stronger.’ He ordered that the crown’s hereditary lands be restored to him, after which time the lands ‘might be brought to their former state. This is the best and most speedy way to bring that land to good order, and to cause it to be inhabited and ‘manured’ – for every Lord, having his own, would be able to live there honourably, subdue tyranny, and cultivate his lands.’ 80 Organised analysis of social problems and formulation of proposals for solutions, ostensibly transpiring from moral concerns about the state of the commonwealth, followed close upon the growth of humanism in England. The primary significance of the State of Ireland is that it was a begetter (intended or not) of Irish commonwealth thinkers. This is apparent in the qualities of the document: firstly, the author promoted the duty of the government to address a conjunction of social and economic problems. They based their analysis on moral precepts to maintain the health of its body politic (complete with medical analogies 81 ), and set down the programme on paper as an offer of political

78 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 10. 79 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 17. 80 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 13-14. 81 ‘Now ye have herde a greate parte of all the dyssease and infyrmate of all this lande; what leche, or fysyk, can fynde a medysyn, that mought delyver all the lande of all the sayde infyrmytyes, so 71 counsel. The following pages explore various aspects of reform, beginning with matters pertaining to militarising the realm and the inculcation of virtue through education and vocation, and social conditioning by the maintenance of order and smothering crime and deviance.

2.2.2. Martial valour: reform and the promotion of citizen militia Reform of Ireland meant engineering the conditions from which to bond a civil society. To this end, reformist labours in Ireland resulted in programmes aimed at reviving martial valour among the populace. In part one, it was found that the soldier-citizen ‘was an endemic feature of English society’ in the early modern period. 82 Machiavelli, the most well known proponent of martial valour as a condition of virtue, had argued for the propagation of virtue through military qualities. Citizen-soldiers were the only effective means of defending the state. If the citizen was not prepared to bear arms to defend his state, ‘he must be so seriously lacking in civic virtue as barely to deserve the title of citizen at all.’ 83 Historians have identified a ‘somewhat contradictory marriage between chivalry and humanism’ in the Renaissance. The just war doctrine of the Middle Ages was replaced by the humanist concern for the commonwealth as the basis on which war could be justified. There was also an important ethical distinction between foreign wars and internal sedition. Men could condemn war, but approve of using the sword on rebels as sedition was a more dangerous threat to the commonwealth. War was an ‘ugly expedient’ that was needed to enforce peace. 84 Following the Kingship Act, the Irish were constitutionally akin to internal rebels, and, therefore, conflict could be readily justified in the interest of restoring peace. The doctrine of obedience enforced a commitment to protect the commonwealth against malefactors. The stress on the importance of implementing a system of counties and shires in which the inhabitants were equipped and prepared to protect that by the same suche remedy mought be founde, that wolde cesse all the warre, and all the sayde extortions, aswell of the Iryshe, as of thEnglyshe folke, for ever, by any medycyn? Therfor, withoute the poison and thentoxycation were fyrste known, the tryaclle, that is callyd the veray antotodum[sic], that wolde purge and expulse the same, coulde never be layde therto.’ SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 17. 82 Withington, ‘Citizens and Soldiers,’ p. 22. 83 D. Heater, Citizenship: The Civic Ideal in World History, Politics and Education (3 rd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 26. 84 B. Lowe, ‘War and the Commonwealth in Mid-Tudor England,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 21, 2 (1990), pp. 172n5, 179, 189. 72 the community signifies the relationship between martial obligations, subjecthood, and duty to the commonwealth. Tudor governments stressed the importance of order. It was assumed that order required each estate in society to keep to their respective places, just as God had ordained the natural and social order in the universe to exist in perfect balance. The sixteenth century humanists ‘saw government […] as capable of legislation, and legislation as capable of bringing about a more just and more prosperous distribution of the common weal than actually existed,’ argued Pocock, and humanists ‘dedicated themselves to an understanding of the economic forces at work in society. This thrust, however, […] was turned back in favor of the static and medieval idea of maintaining the realm as a hierarchy of degree, a frame of order which must not be shaken; there was only one order and chaos lay outside it.’ 85 The obligation of service to the state and obedience to its head, the monarch, took the place of the weakened feudal obligations and discarded authority of the Pope. 86 The desirable immediate solution in the wake of the Kildare rebellion was a permanent garrison, but many looked to long term solutions that would require a smaller outlay and that could be seamlessly integrated into routine lives of Irish society. Subjects in the lordship had long been required to provide for defence and to attend hostings. 87 The reinforcement of traditional militia duties was predicated upon the increased concern with the decline of order and the urgency with which social decay needed to be reversed. One solution involved the formation of a military order in the spirit of the Order of St. John in London, involving a great master who would be responsible for the overall administration of justice in the lordship. 88 This is surely one of the more curious proposals in the pre-Elizabethan reform movement. A more typical solution for protecting the lordship was based on the maintenance of local militia and increasingly, after 1550, the planting of settlers whose new livelihoods were founded on the premise of their serviceability in war. The author of a device of 1521 recognised the need for personal accountability in the defence of the lordship, exhorting that all landowners,

85 Pocock, Machiavellian Moment , pp. 339-40. 86 Simon, Education and Society, p. 153. 87 Ellis, ‘The Tudors and the Origins of the Modern Irish States,’ pp. 119-20. 88 Bradshaw, Dissolution of the Religious Orders , p. 192. 73 spiritual and temporal, ought to reside in Ireland to defend their land. 89 The confirmation of militia obligations of subjects and the structure of the first plantation, centred on garrisons and with the key aspect of investing soldiers with the duty of becoming planters, was a tactic to express English sovereignty in Ireland. In the context of the wider reform programme directed towards binding Ireland together as a unitary loyal kingdom, the stress upon martial subjecthood was consistent with humanist values and aimed at cultivating a commonwealth sustained by the virtue of its subjects. Humanists drew on ancient Rome to idealise the citizen as soldier. In the plantation of Laois and Offaly, soldiers were farmers and vice versa. Organised militarism played a critical role in the cultivation of a revived commonwealth that was defined by the virtue of its subjects whose lives were governed by the language of service and obligation. In proposals and decrees, an emphasis was placed on discipline and order to cultivate an obedient and upright populace. The Palesman Thomas Bathe wanted to enact a rule ‘that eny of the kinges subijectes crye only saynt George’ in battle, ‘which shall repell there […] affecion to’ the Geraldine or Butler factions (loose alliances of Gaelic and Old English lords).90 In 1545, the Waterford official Edward Walshe published The Office and Duety in Fightyng for our Countrey , which was written with the English-speaking inhabitants of Ireland in mind. Walshe argued for the morality of military duty on behalf of the fatherland and the king. 91 Civilisation of a uniquely frontier character had emerged among the Old English prior to the sixteenth century, as was made apparent by the construction of tower houses to protect against the native Irish in the late medieval period. These were built as regional defence of lordships became crucial.92 The precarious conditions on the marches meant that inhabitants in all but a few districts were subject to responsibilities of defence. 93 The institution of the border knight defending the Pale continued to exist on the borders, as suggested by the stone

89 NASPI 60/1/28. 90 BL Lansdowne MS 159/2, f. 10. This document is unsigned, but I have accepted White’s opinion that the author was Bathe: ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 49. 91 H. Morgan, ‘Faith and Fatherland in Sixteenth Century Ireland,’ History Ireland 3, 2 (1995), p. 13. 92 T. Barry, ‘The Last Frontier: Defence and Settlement in Late Medieval Ireland,’ in T. Barry, R. Frame and K. Simms (eds.), Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland (London: Hambledon Press, 1995), p. 217. 93 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , p. 36. 74 effigies still in existence at places such as Kildare and Meath. 94 Much of the Pale was militarised by proximity to the marches. Inhabitants were given military responsibilities and existence there was characterised by instability: settlers were liable to raids (particularly cattle raids) and destruction of harvests, ‘while the cultural infiltration from the Irish side was considerable.’ 95 Inhabitants of corporations were held to defensive duties, as evident in an act of 1470-1 requiring all citizens and freemen of the Corporation of Waterford to keep armour and hand weapons. 96 According to Ellis, ‘the English lordship was a society organised for war,’ and local communities took pride in their military traditions. 97 Prior to Tudor reforms, the lordship was, therefore, already a frontier society in which subjects were expected to engage in military service. It lacked a standing army and, consequently, until 1534, most of the armies assembled in Ireland were ‘scratch levies’ assembled for rising out.98 In the lordship, subjects were required to keep weapons and able-bodied men were obliged to perform military service. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Dublin government issued subsidies for building castles in border areas.99 The extension of gun use in Ireland in the first half of the sixteenth century saw greater reliance placed on guns in conflicts by both the English as well as the Irish. 100 In the centuries after the Norman conquest, greater Ireland devolved into a series of despotic lordships sustained by personal armies of kern and galloglass (Scottish mercenaries). The proposal to promote military responsibilities among the general population had currency among the Pale elite. The author of the State of Ireland lamented that the Old English had taken to living ‘by the swerde’ 101 out of a need for self-preservation within a frontier environment in close contact with the Irish. The process of gaelicisation was linked to the decline of archery practice in favour of Gaelic norms. The rejection of archery, the basis of the English

94 Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 9. 95 Quinn and Nicholls, ‘Ireland in 1534,’ p. 33. 96 Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of the Marquis of Ormonde, the Earl of Fingall, the Corporations of Waterford, Galway, etc. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1885), p. 308. 97 Ellis, ‘The Tudors and the Origins of the Modern Irish States,’ p. 117. 98 Ellis, ‘The Tudors and the Origins of the Modern Irish States,’ p. 119; Quinn and Nicholls, ‘Ireland in 1534,’ p. 31. 99 Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 15. 100 G.A. Hayes-McCoy, ‘The Early History of Guns in Ireland,’ Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 18 (1938), p. 47. 101 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 8. 75 militia, was emblematic of the decline of Englishness and the martial valour on which the English nation prided itself. The author lamented that English weaponry, ‘wherby the lande muche the better was defendeid,’ had been abandoned in favour of the Irish sword.102 The medieval colonists had taken to using Irish style weapons and armour, but had merely disadvantaged themselves in battle because the Irish were more accomplished in their indigenous style of warfare. The proposed solution was to create a trained and armed community of subjects in a military training curriculum that was to be piloted in Meath before being implemented in other countries.103 Arming the populations of the shires and counties would force the dismantling of private armies and encourage lords and their followers to redirect their allegiance to the king. The plan would require permits to ship supplies of armour and weapons to cities and port towns. The traditional sport of archery was to be revived, but this was to be supplemented with the newer handgun, of which the Irish were said to be more fearful. Regular musters were to be enforced, along with a system of hue and cry in the towns.104 A number of smiths and craftsmen were to be relocated from England to the Irish cities and port towns to furnish a local supply of war provisions such as helmets, pole arms and gunpowder.105 Once the shires and counties were strong enough to defend themselves, the country would be ‘put ones in ordre,’ and the task of repopulating the lordship with new settlers could begin. Planting with Englishmen would facilitate a revival of archery, ‘wherby,’ the author lamented, ‘the lande was conquered, and in defaulte of archery, unto lytyll, the lande is loste.’ 106 In 1533, the Irish council sent a letter to Henry VIII describing ‘the grete decaie of this lande, which is so farre fallen into myserie, and brought into soche ruyne, that neither the Inglishe order, tonge, ne habite been used, neither the Kingis lawes obeyed’ more than twenty miles about the Pale. 107 Coign and livery and the resulting loss of martial vigour were singled out as causes of the ruin. The council wrote that English inhabitants ‘in tymes past, were archers, and had feates of warre,’ and kept servants in their houses for defence in times of necessity. The English tenants had since been driven away by the lords’ oppressions, to be

102 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 12. 103 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, pp. 21-2. 104 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, pp. 18, 20. 105 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 23. 106 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, pp. 24-25. 107 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 162. 76 replaced by Irish tenants who were more willing to pay higher rents to remain on their lands. Gaelicisation, as would so frequently be alleged in the following century, was the root cause of decay. The whole country was ‘in effecte, made Irish, and withought trust and securitie of defence, good order, or hospitalitie.’ Where the medieval colonists had kept English yeomen in their houses to ‘the great strenght and socour of ther neybours, the Kingis subjectis,’ their descendents were in the habit of harbouring ‘horseman and knaves,’ whose maintenance fell upon the poor. The council presented Henry with articles for reformation that included a plan to bolster the martial abilities of the loyal subjects by installing captains in the marches and requiring all dwellers to contribute to risings out.108 The inclusion of this requirement in the articles presented to the king demonstrates that the revival of the Irish militia was considered to be a necessary factor in the reformation of Ireland. This conviction was reinforced in a number of other works pertaining to issues of reform. Calls to militarise the English subjects of Ireland were accompanied by patriotic reminders that the Anglo-Normans had conquered Ireland by a singular martial prowess, followed by expressions of regret that knowledge and commitment to English weaponry and tactics had diminished as Gaelic influence gained hold over the colonists. The Old English believed that the English of Ireland remained a superior race in feats of war and that the current inhabitants needed only to be encouraged by discipline and practice to rediscover a lost valour. Having heard a suggestion that Ireland was difficult to reform because the Irish had more hardiness and strategy in war, and more arms and artillery now than in the first conquest, Patrick Finglas proudly retorted that the skills of the English military far surpassed that of the Irish troops. The natives ‘have not souche Wisdome ne Pollicie in Warr’ than the English who, ‘when they sett themselves thereunto, exceed [The Irish] far; and touchinge Harneyes and Artillery exceed theme too far.’ 109 Finglas recommended hostings in all shires in the province of Leinster, and which would assemble together with their standards. 110 Order would be controlled by setting justices of the peace in the

108 SP Hen.VIII, vol. II, p. 164. 109 Patrick Finglas, ‘A Breviate of the Getting of Ireland and of the Decaie of the Same,’ in W. Harris (ed.), Hibernica: Some Ancient Pieces Relating to Ireland (Dublin: Edward Bate, 1747), p. 88. 110 Finglas, ‘Breviate,’ p. 96. 77 shires, wardens of the peace in the baronies, and constables in the parishes. Musters would be held in each barony four times a year. 111 Civic action was urged in the enforcement of hue and cry. Upon the cry being reared in any place, all those adjoining were to arrive to answer the cry ‘in ther moost defensible array,’ upon pain of a fine.112 Finglas’ ties to the Dublin government and the court may account for the fact that this and other of his proposals were printed almost verbatim in the Ordinances for the Government of Ireland (1534), a blueprint for full-scale reform printed for wide circulation. 113 The Pale lawyer Thomas Lutterel believed that the English population would provide better defence of the towns than untrustworthy Irish troops. The Irish were ‘but enymyse, and do but fayned service.’ The English inhabitants ‘shulde provide of themselfes,’ and the lordship would be better protected by replacing kern and gallowglass with bowmen, billmen and horsemen ‘to do that service when nede shall require.’ When not serving, men would attend to husbandry or another occupation. This militia arrangement would guarantee greater safety as the soldiers were also inhabitants, which would give them impetus to defend their own: ‘they wolde more faythfull and ernyst be for ther owne defence, then the oders.’ Furthermore, exactions taken from households by Irish soldiers would remain within the lordship instead, which ‘wolde be greatly to ther comyn weale.’ 114 Lutterel’s proposition included the implementation of necessary training from youth. Bowyers and fletchers were to be sent over to make bows and shafts for children to use in archery practice after school. Men and boys were to be required to participate in the sport, which was to be mandatory on holidays and enforced by constables and justices of the peace. 115 John Alen, the Norfolk-born master of the rolls in Ireland, submitted a detailed agenda of recommended reforms to commissioners tasked with restoring order in the aftermath of the Kildare rebellion. To safeguard the marches, Alen wanted to see two captains installed in each barony ‘to ordre and have the leading of all the Kinges subjectes within the same.’ In addition, two constables were to be appointed for each parish, tasked with calling out all able men to receive their

111 Finglas, ‘Breviate,’ p. 96. 112 Finglas, ‘Breviate,’ p. 97. 113 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 214; M.A. Lyons, ‘Finglas, Patrick,’ ODNB (Online ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 114 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 506. 115 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 508. 78 orders from the captains for defence of the country. The captains should conduct musters to ensure that every man possessed armour and weapons according to their rank. A commission would be formed to muster every barony every quarter to ensure that the constables and captains were meeting their responsibilities.116 Alen then addressed the state of preparedness among the inhabitants. Alleging that ‘the strengyth of this countrey is muche decayed in defaulte of archers,’ provision was to be made for three or four thousand wych elm bows to be shipped and sold amongst the commons. Butts were to be erected in every parish, and practice was to be enforced by the rule that no other game was to be tolerated except for shooting. 117 John and his brother Thomas later busied themselves with counselling Sussex on the state of Ireland. The lord deputy was informed that the queen’s subjects had long forgotten the noble skill of archery. They advised that the sport was ‘to be renewed theron the delight and exercise of noble men and gentes,’ whose rank and influence would entice others to ‘exercise and imbrace the same,’ archery ‘being ther chief guard’ against enemies. Compelled to polish their skills with the bow, the queen’s subjects would be moulded into a serviceable force.118 The crown heeded the warnings of officials and confirmed its commitment to abolishing private armies. In the cities, which boasted a tradition of martial obligation, commitments were reinforced by statutes in the Tudor period. In Galway, it was ordered that all dwelling in the city, freemen and others, shall ‘from tyme to tyme have such reaysonable weapon accordinge to ther vocation and callinge,’ and another that any man who ‘answerith not the crye or skirmishe at every of the town gattes’ with his weapon, was to be fined. In 1528, frivolous games such as stones, quoits, hand ball and hurling with ‘hockie stickes or staves’ were prohibited. Men were to play only ‘the great foote balle’ and ‘to shute in longe bowes, shorte crosboues and [hurling] of dartes or speres.’ 119 Similar orders were passed in 1536, requiring the men of Galway to shoot the long bow and to abandon unlawful games. 120 The leading gentry and nobles were to make regular musters as keepers of the peace and commissioners of array, and landlords were required by statute to maintain at least one mounted archer with an English

116 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, pp. 482-3. 117 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 483. 118 BL Lansdowne MS 159/16, f. 63. 119 Manuscripts of the Marquis of Ormonde , pp. 386, 391, 402. 120 CSPI 1509-73 , p. 17. 79 longbow for every £20 worth of land. 121 The printed Ordinances stipulated that the private armies of the great lords were to be abolished and local landowners were to be charged with the defence of their estates by providing men of war and keeping a supply of harness and artillery. 122 However, as the ineffectiveness of surrender and regrant confirmed, the lords would not be easily compelled to give up their major sources of power. Despite the acceleration of English military incursions in Edward’s reign, few real inroads were made against self-determining Gaelic and Old English lords. The commitment to abolishing illegitimate power bases by implementing a citizen militia was given fullest expression in the plans for the plantation of Laois and Offaly. The orders for the settlement established the military obligations of settlers. Leaseholders were to house one soldier for every one hundred acres. One of every five of these men was to be a horseman and the rest were to be competent archers. Every man was to keep sufficient armour and weapons in his house for at least one man, and every footman was to be supplied with one good bow and sheaf of arrows or one handgun. To avoid depopulation and exposure of the infant colony to raids, leaseholders were bound to reside personally on their lands and were not permitted to alienate it without prior license. The settlers were to rise out at their full power and at their own charge at any time the lord deputy or constable of the fort commanded. They were to answer to the deputy for the defence of the country at hostings as all other subjects in English counties ‘ought to do.’ The design for the plantation conveyed in these instructions was that the inhabitants would form the basis of a permanent militia in the midlands. 123 As to the choice of the men who would be given leases, Mary asked the lord deputy ‘to consider every man, speciallie our good souldiors, and such as serve well,’ and to distribute the lands by virtue of individual merit. The conditions of the plantation required men who were trustworthy and competent soldiers, but to guarantee the compliance of the planters and the longevity of the plantation, it was emphasised that the same men possessed virtue, for they stood to encourage others to attain virtue for the sake of duty as much as material reward. By adhering to a merit- based system, it was hoped ‘that the good maie take couraige, to contynue their

121 Ellis, ‘The Tudors and the Origins of the Modern Irish States,’ p. 117. 122 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II , pp. 208-9. 123 NASPI 62/1/20. 80 well doing, and bee example to evill, to amend their faultes, and to doo bettre hereafter, aswell for dueties sake as preferrement.’ 124 By reminding the lord deputy to favour upstanding soldiers, Mary may have been mindful of complaints over the behaviour of English soldiers in Ireland and was attempting to abate further controversy. Upon his appointment as lord deputy in 1550, St. Leger criticised the state of the forts, expressing his alarm at the moral depravity he observed there. St. Leger had never seen the country so out of order, for the forts housed ‘asmeny harlattes as sowldyors,’ and the soldiers had heard just one sermon in the last three years. Members of the Old English saw the English military as a bullying and corrupt presence that hindered the progress of reform. The author of a treatise that heaped praise upon St. Leger’s even-handed policies also criticised the presence of ‘bare, greedy soldiers’ in Ireland, accusing them of seeking ‘nothing else but spoil and continuance of service, advancing themselves in the court of England with painted garments and massy chains of the ill-gotten gains of Ireland,’ deliberately exaggerating the barbarity of Ireland to justify their pilfering. ‘Alas,’ the author asked, ‘what kind of regiment is this to send a multitude of rash needy soldiers to reform a people that (for the more parts) coveted nothing so much as the knowledge of a law? Or how can that realm prosper wherein only men of war supply the function of good justice?’ 125 A proclamation issued during Sussex’s wars against the O’Connors in Offaly referred to soldiers’ reports that ‘they [the soldiers] can not have meate and drinke for their money as they were wonte to have, but that the people in many places rather flee the townes when they see them cumyng, and raise the crye then mynister any reasonable ayde to them for their money,’ while complaint had been made by townspeople of soldiers taking meat and drink without paying. It was ordered that a sergeant, constable or ‘two best of the town’ were to act as mediators during any such transactions, and any man fleeing or raising the cry at the arrival of soldiers was to be punished. These orders regulating the behaviour of military men were passed for the ‘benefite of the cuntrey and the well ordering of the souldiours.’ 126

124 BL Cotton MS, Titus B XI/241, f. 397. 125 Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland,’ p. 308. 126 APCI , pp. 33-4. 81 Prescriptions for reform governing the existing communities and new plantations emphasised a frontier ‘public spirit’ through the language of subjecthood and duty. Appeals to the martial duties of inhabitants and new settlers reflected conditions of local law enforcement in Tudor England, where the maintenance of public order rested on community participation. The provision of community-driven order recalls what Braddick relates about the ‘importance of […] local initiative in the preservation of order’ in early modern England. 127 Tudor officials knew that to preserve order, everyone ought to be serviceable to the commonwealth. This can be seen in one example of an act passed by Sussex and the council in 1557. In light of a grain shortage affecting the garrisons, it was declared that no grain was to be conveyed into Irish territory or purchased by foreigners, and that it was legal for any man to seize illicit stockpiles. All subjects were required to aid and assist in enforcing the act, and were reminded of their duties to the commonwealth, by ‘not faylinge herof as your and every of you tender your dueties, the service of their majesties and the furtherance of the publyque weale,’ disobeying such orders at their ‘uttermost perill.’128 The conditions facing settlers on the Irish marches were closest to those in the north of England, another of England’s frontier zones where duty was expressed by service. In the north, farmers were required to contribute an armed horseman or footman to a military levy for defence against Scottish border raids. M.E. James has described such a community as ‘a “service” community, that is one whose raison d’etre was military,’ and relates that this community was bound in values of ‘neighbourhood, duty, common wealth and order,’ but these values were only viable ‘as long as effective defence guaranteed survival.’ 129 In Ireland, a similar conflict-heavy climate determined the martial nature of the solutions to maintaining order. The similarities were noted by Robert Cowley, who looked to the example of the north, where (he had heard) men were required by their leases to keep a gelding and weapon for defence. The Irish practice of paying others to defend them was ‘lesse hardy,’ for ‘no man woll stik so well to prosecute his

127 Braddick, State Formation , p. 136. 128 APCI , p. 44. 129 M.E. James, ‘The Concept of Order and the Northern Rising 1569,’ Past & Present 60 (1973), p. 67. 82 owne cause, hurtes and distruction, as hym self will do; ne any other will daungier hym self in saving another, as the very partie hym self wold.’ 130 As Lennon states, ‘extreme political disaffection in inhospitable terrain was a recurring problem for the central administration [throughout history] […] the continuities fostered by polity and place…’ 131 The ‘polity and place’ of the kingdom of Ireland ensured that civilisation there was inherently militaristic. Despite its faltering success, the significance of the plantation of Laois and Offaly lies in the introduction of the militarised settlement as a means to build a commonwealth on the savage fringes of civilisation, a precedent for future plantations in Ireland and other seventeenth century British colonial settlements, which have been described as ‘model[s] of early modern colonial subject-hood and citizenship’ in the Atlantic and Asia.132

2.2.3. Virtue Discipline and the moderation of behaviour were key components in the social vision of Erasmian humanists. The regulation of excess and unruly pastimes was based on the premise that such activities were contrary to moral standards, and prevented subjects from employing themselves in the service of the commonwealth. Non-productive pastimes ‘were increasingly held to be suspect as a new critique of frivolity emerged from the Northern Renaissance,’ and rendered a commonwealth moribund. Humanists rejected the medieval sanctification of voluntary poverty, promoting a ‘new profile of virtue in which hard work, discipline, and productivity for the common weal were prominent features.’ 133 It was in this period that social welfare made its appearance in Ireland, with an emphasis on education and vocation, 134 reflecting the trend across western Europe for public welfare reform embodied by legislative efforts to ‘cleanse the physical and moral environment’ in English localities. 135 Humanists reasoned that the presence of virtue in citizens rendered a commonwealth good. As Todd relates,

130 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 329. 131 Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland , p. 179. 132 P.J. Stern, ‘Soldier and Citizen in the Seventeenth-Century English East India Company,’ Journal of Early Modern History 15, 1 (2011), pp. 103-4. 133 Todd, Christian Humanism , pp. 125-7. 134 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , pp. 53-4. 135 Slack, From Reformation to Improvement , pp. 16-17. 83 their goal ‘was a godly society, not just without disorder, but even without tension – a state in which order was guaranteed by the government of rightly-informed individual conscience.’ 136 To this end, colonisation was touted as a solution to correct the behaviour of the Irish for the presence of English settlers was expected to have transformative value. Idleness was to be stamped out, and Irish occupations such as the wood-kern who served Irish lords were considered to be subversive, and therefore declared illegitimate. The following sub-sections explore the notion of virtue in Irish reform schemes, through the lens of colonisation, education, and a commonwealth-minded governing class.

2.2.3.1. Colonisation and transformation The opinion touted by many early Tudor reformers was that the barbarity of the Gaelic inhabitants could be cured through exposure to English influence. The basic conflict between proponents of peaceful persuasion and martial conquest was not whether Ireland needed reform, but rather the most effective means to achieve reform. As one Old English writer assured Cromwell, with the application of English justice, the incivility of the Irish could be cured: ‘no doubte, if ther were justice used amongest them, they wold be founde as civile, wise, politike, and as active, as any other nation.’ 137 The earl of Surrey was an early campaigner for the thorough dismantling of Gaelic custom by conquest and plantation. Surrey believed that the Irish were hopelessly fixed in their customs. Unless the country were planted with English, ‘undoutedly [The Irish] wold retourne to their olde ill roted customes, when so ever they myght see any tyme to take their advantage, accordynglie as they have ever yet done, and dayle do.’ 138 The ‘ill-rooted’ customs included an itinerant lifestyle that was unsuited to settled habitation and honest labour. Falling to labour was something ‘wich they woll never do, as long as they may fynd any countree in the l[a]nd to go unto.’ 139 The means to remove the threat of hostilities was to encourage the Irish to adopt a settled agricultural existence in which their livelihoods were sustained by peace, and not war. Many early proponents of colonisation saw the remedial value of transplanting the

136 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 178. 137 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 173. 138 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 74. 139 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 74. 84 English shire to the Irish marches. Reform proposals for the repurposing of escheated territories provide compelling evidence that colonisation as a political strategy had begun to coalesce with the ideals of the commonwealth. The conflation of colonisation with commonwealth ideas was symptomatic of an incipient humanist ideology in Ireland. A number of submissions to achieve the pacification of Leinster were forwarded to Henry VIII, which detailed plans to colonise the lands of the exiled Irish. A plan for reform, submitted by Lord Deputy Leonard Grey and the council in 1537, involved three or four thousand men ‘of honeste substaunce’ who would be sent to inhabit the waste lands in Wicklow, Arklow, and Ferns. Walled towns were to be built at Ennescorthy, Ross, Leighlin, Caragh and Castledermot. It was hoped that younger sons of English gentry would be the figureheads of the enterprise, entrusted with bringing their own followers with them to inhabit, including a certain number of horsemen and footmen who would be given freeholds. 140 The council acknowledged that these men alone would not be enough to secure Leinster, and envisaged a mixed settlement with the local Irish allowed to continue on their lands, ‘for their be no better earth tillers, ne more obedience, than thei be, soo as thei be never suffred to use feates of warres, as commonlye thei use nott.’ Irish horsemen and kern would be tasked with searching bogs, woods and marches, ‘wherunto Inglishmen be not so mete as thei.’ This plan represented a rather equitable approach to the Irish problem, by including the Irish in the settlement and employing Irish soldiers. The council believed ‘by this meane, as we thynke, with most spede and securitie togethers, the saide parties may be wonne, inhabited, and subdued for ever; wich were the most noble and beneficiall acte, that was don theis 300 yeres.’ The country thus put to order, the king would have ‘[the obedience], inhabitacion, and subjeccion of […] one intire porcion of this lande next adjoining to Inglande,’ which would be defended by his subjects, eliminating the need for English treasure. They maintained that if the king ‘knew this thing as we do, he wolde, befor all interprises in the worlde, studie the perfeccion of the same.’ 141 The proposal was met with an irate response from the king, who lectured the council on their ‘vayn

140 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, pp. 412-4. 141 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, pp. 415-6. 85 consumption’ of revenues.142 The council responded by urging that the lands left waste by the Kildare rebellion could not be reduced to order without permanent habitation anchored by farming, and that farmers needed to be encouraged by promises of continued security: ‘no man in this countrie woll manure and enhabite your, ne any other mans, landes, especiallie to any frewtefull purpose, onles he may have a securitie of continuance therin, so as, when he hath edified the same, he shalnot be expelled from it.’ 143 The council’s memoranda articulated the premise that planting English settlers would safeguard the borders and serve a simultaneous commonwealth-building purpose by constructing and farming, and esteemed such activity as noble. Pro-colonial sentiment was a product of the atmosphere of reform that simmered in the aftermath of Kildare’s fall. Of the officials who campaigned the crown for plantation policy, few were more vociferous than Robert Cowley, a Dublin-based merchant who became a bailiff before being appointed commissioner for settling the lands of dissolved religious houses. 144 Cowley’s letters to Cromwell contained comprehensive proposals to consolidate the king’s Irish territories by establishing urban networks on the borders with a view to territorial expansion. In 1536, Cowley produced a treatise that concerned ‘the readopting of the Kinges dominion in Irland, and to attain the further possessions hitherto never had […] aswele how to retayne the same, as also to enhabite.’ The plan involved establishing ‘obedience and good ordre’ in the lordship, after which time the English would be well organised to conquer and occupy Irish territory. 145 Coign and livery were to be stamped out, and English law and order cultivated by dividing the lordship into shire units administered by seneschals and justices of the peace. Restructuring the administrative and judicial organisation of the lordship would result in more efficient defence. Cowley imagined that the Englishry would be brought together into a functioning order not dissimilar to the Renaissance concept of the united body or commonwealth. In order to ‘joyne and lynke togithers all the same subjectes in one trayne, ordre, and conformitie, so that every of them shall ayde and assiste the other,’ subjects would be accountable for

142 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 422. 143 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 429. 144 F. Elrington Ball, The Judges in Ireland, 1221-1921 , Vol. I (1926, repr. Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2005), p. 203; Bradshaw, Dissolution of the Religious Orders , p. 201. 145 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 325. 86 assuming the duties and bearing the charges of defence. 146 Cowley’s plan was to subdue the Irish, beginning with O’Byrnes in Leinster, by building or repairing walled towns and planting them with English subjects. Strongholds built on the passes and straits were to be given to gentlemen in return for their service. Winning, inhabiting and securing the Irish countries would ensure that ‘the hert of the countrey to be set to profite, and enhabited with a convenient nombre,’ until the Irish were worn out in exile. 147 If an Irish leader submitted, he was to be given lands in the Pale, ‘to live therupon in good order accordingly; but in any wise the King to enhabite their countreys.’ 148 Cowley’s proposal is similar to one by John Alen in the same year. Alen, whose comments on the organisation of the militia have been discussed, was closely involved in plantation proposals throughout a career that spanned the 1530s, 40s and 50s. 149 Although his admission that he ‘wente not of myne awne sute’ to Ireland suggests an initial reluctance to go to Dublin, the longevity of his career as master of the rolls and subsequently chancellor of Ireland, and the depth of his involvement in schemes for plantation and reform, suggest that Alen was nonetheless committed to ideals of public service. 150 In 1536, Alen wrote to the king addressing the need to introduce settlers on the marches to consolidate the king’s military gains. He warned that the lands in Henry’s possession ‘shall decay more and more, except ye followe this divise,’ 151 which contained a plan to divide the country into freeholds to accommodate two or three hundred horsemen. The king would benefit from the profits of settlers’ rents and reduced military expenditure, as well as an inbuilt defence system in the form of colonists who would ‘live and die for the defence of the same.’ 152 In another memorandum addressed to Cromwell, Robert Cowley returned to the image of an Englishry ‘linked together’ to illustrate good order. To secure the lordship, the castles and garrisons on the marchlands would be given to those who could be trusted to build upon and inhabit them at their own expense. If the

146 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, pp. 323-4. 147 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, pp. 326-8. 148 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 329. 149 White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 361; H.L.L. Denny, ‘An Account of the Family of Alen of St. Wolstan’s, Co. Kildare,’ Journal of the Co. Kildare Archaeological Society , Vol. IV (Dublin: Edward Ponsonby, 1905), p. 98. 150 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 574. 151 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 376. 152 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 377. 87 marches were ‘inhabited strongely,’ the benefits accrued to the crown would be the security of the Englishry, the increase of revenues, the means to curtail rebellion and foster obedience. By heeding his advice, Cromwell’s commissioners in Ireland would be ‘taking good ordre nowe throughe the English pale, putting in a right trayne, lynkid togidther the hole Englishrie,’ who would be enabled ‘daily of theme selffes bothe to resist and invade thIrishrie; for thIrishmen were never in suche feare to be clerely exiled, as at this day.’153 After fortifying and inhabiting the lands surrounding the Pale and subduing or exiling the Irish east of the Shannon, only a small permanent military presence would be needed, as the inhabitants of the marches would be required to serve: ‘Like as the Kingis Highnes woll depart with possessions to have theme inhabitid and buyldid for the defence of his subjectes,’ wrote Cowley, ‘it appertayneth that every of His Gracis subjectis, having landes in like places of daungier, bee orderid to departe therwith to marche capitayns upon convenient reservacions, wherof shall ensue a great comenwelth universally.’ 154 Schemes to plant or ‘people’ the country as a means to order and enrich the commonwealth, emphasis on the importance of all subjects to be serviceable to the country, and denunciations of greed and lucre, were expressions of reformist principles that held the commonwealth to be the ultimate goal of all policy. Campaigning once again for a plantation of settlers ‘as wol remayne to inhabite here, beeing honest men, and not ravenoures,’ 155 Cowley called English landowners into question over blatant self-enrichment that was destabilising the reform mission. Cowley lamented the greed of those who had accumulated vast Irish estates but who were contributing nothing of value to the commonwealth. Of his fellow Englishmen, Cowley lamented that ‘we bee so covetous insaciably to have so many fermes, every of us, for our singuler proffittes, that we have extirpid and put awaye the men of warre that shuld defend the cuntrey.’ He proposed, too, that those landowners be made to provide for a certain number of soldiers, and anyone found, through surveys, to have too much to himself should be forced to relinquish a portion to men of war. Enforcing the covetous to submit to the greater good would ‘replenyssh the cuntrey with men, for it is depopulated by gredy

153 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 446. 154 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 452. 155 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 148. 88 covetousness emonges our silvis.’ Cowley expressed concern for the commonwealth by singling out wealthy landowners for criticism. ‘Let every of us beare his burden of sowernes with swetnes,’ he urged, ‘and not to cast all the burden in the Kinges charge, to enryche our silvis.’ 156 To humanists, who believed in the public utility of colonisation, land grabbing was an especially unattractive aspect of colonialism. The dangers of individualism were particularly acute in Ireland, where the memory of the Anglo- Normans sliding into a morass of gaelicisation incited profound fear of degeneration in the English. Hence, the goal of Tudor governments was to attract only hardy, industrious and sufficiently equipped settlers who were least likely to abandon and weaken the settlement, exposing the remainder to decimation or worse, gaelicisation. As preparations for the plantation of Laois and Offaly were underway, Edward Walshe submitted a treatise that conveyed the social and economic benefits for Ireland if Leinster and Munster were planted. Walshe, a member of the Old English gentry and sheriff of Waterford,157 considered plantation to be a rational policy, stating that good subjects who knew the state of Ireland ‘shulde desyre not onely the plantinge of ynglishe men there but also the com minge of more thither.’ In the earliest known reference to classical precedent in English writing on Ireland, Walshe pointed to the ‘polliticke romaynes’ who had planted colonies in conquered territories. 158 Walshe wrote of the need to plant justice in Ireland, for ‘without justice evin englishe blood es wax wylde yrishe,’ a reference to the degeneration of English settlers from exposure to Irish culture. 159 Walshe compared a commonwealth to the branches of a tree, with all people and policy connected to a greater purpose. Walshe selected a textile metaphor to advance colonisation as a social adhesive reinforcing the commonwealth against corrosion and corruption of Irish rule. The knot of society was plantation or ‘empeoplinge’ and the persecution of justice, or the socio- judicial structures that would bring coherence to visions of national reform. Plantations and justice would ‘bring forth eche branche and membre p er tayni nge to reformac ion and as one lynk draweth an other so shall eche good purpose of his

156 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 149. 157 D.B. Quinn (ed.), ‘Edward Walshe’s “Conjectures” Concerning the State of Ireland [1552],’ Irish Historical Studies 5, 20 (1947), p. 314. 158 Quinn (ed.), ‘“Conjectures,”’ p. 315. 159 Quinn (ed.), ‘“Conjectures,”’ p. 316. 89 owne accorde come in his due place.’ Walshe returned to the concept of the social knot when he proposed a president and council to oversee justice in Munster, and esteemed the ‘wonderfull commodities’ that would flourish if the people there were ‘so lynked and knitt in obedience.’ 160 In pursuit of a tightly knit society, Walshe envisioned a plantation consisting of a large number of smallholders on long leases to facilitate a robust and intensively cultivated settlement. The ideal form of plantation was one ‘[w]herby great nombres shalbe planted thicke togeth er and so the lande stro nge and well manured without enny chardge but rath er with advavntage to the kinge.’ 161 Walshe endorsed planting the English in close proximity to each other, which entailed dividing the land into small portions and granting them to gentlemen and soldiers for reasonable rents. In order to remain and improve their lands, the planters needed ‘a love to dwell in it and bestowe chardg es on it.’ Favourable terms of habitation would safeguard English control, and the land would be thus ‘establisshed as englishe for evir.’ The small holding plan would have the added benefit of weeding out planters not attuned to the needs of the commonwealth, as it would deter selfish investors who ‘coveteth against [their] awne welth […] to be without neighbo urs and to enjoy all alone.’ 162 The argument that a plantation landscape would be more successfully cultivated under a small holding scheme was shared by other officials, such as Lord Justice William Brabazon, whose proposals for the reform of Leinster included ‘many English inhabitants to be set in one town,’ possessing their lands in freehold. 163 The government appeared to take notice of this idea, for Edward VI’s Privy Council ordered that ‘ther may be rather sought a multitude of tenantes in regard of the fermes then to have many fermes heaped in to one man’s handes wherby both the landes shalbe woorse used and the countrey weaker of people.’ 164 Dense settlement was endorsed by John Alen, who seized the opportunity of the Marian escheatment of Laois and Offaly to offer a comprehensive programme for social reorganisation in Leinster. Alen asked rhetorically, ‘if few townes well

160 Quinn (ed.), ‘“Conjectures,”’ pp. 320-1. 161 Quinn (ed.), ‘“Conjectures,”’ p. 315. This is a reference to a law passed by the Roman politician Caius Gracchus to redistribute public land in Italy. Gracchus also revived the practice of founding colonies: Quinn (ed.), ‘“Conjectures,”’ p. 312n20. 162 Quinn (ed.), ‘“Conjectures,”’ pp. 320-1. 163 Quoted in White, ‘Reign of Edward VI,’ p. 200. 164 NASPI 61/4/48. 90 placed, manlie inhabited, industriously occupied (the more manlie inhabitantes the better), justly by lawes governed, severally moved and appointed to advoide dissencon,’ would not be best. Alen advised against small settlements, which were more likely to be robbed and spoiled. Therefore, the government would be advised ‘to plant many in a towne is the best and likest to continew.’ The success of the settlement would rest on the thickness of English settlement, stating that it would be better to plant twenty-two townships in Laois than eighty scattered elsewhere. 165 Descriptions of dense settlement as the glue with which to bind the ‘knots’ of English justice and society is reminiscent of Morison’s definition of a commonwealth as a group of cities, towns and shires ‘united and knitted together’ by the observation of shared laws. 166 The concept of the political knot was readily grasped by others. Henry VIII appreciated the significance of an organically coherent polity, for during his address to the English parliament he observed that ‘we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together in one body politic.’ 167 Concerns about civic unity and participation expressed by writers such as Cowley and Walshe suggest that the principal motivations for colonisation coincided with humanistic concepts of the state. By transplanting the civic communities of England to Ireland, the duties of English subjecthood would also be carried over. Visions of civic obligation encompassed mutual interdependence and aid among the polity, and adherence to hierarchy, order and community over individual ambition. Proposals to reverse centuries of deterioration by means of colonisation articulated a new focus on reform and renewal in Irish policy, assessing the defects of the lordship against the criteria of the commonwealth.168 Schemes to create new settlements were aimed at the creation of civic communities on the fringes of the Pale which would function as administrative and urban centres organised around fortified towns or garrisons. English controlled towns would enable the passage of English justice and outlawing of Irish practices that fed social corrosion, most notably the practice of coign and livery, by which lords

165 BL Lansdowne MS 159/4, ff. 27-27v. 166 Quoted in Shagan, ‘The Two Republics,’ p. 24. 167 Quoted in M. Hayward, Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 43. 168 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , pp. 52-3. 91 imprisoned their vassals in poverty and kept them out of the crown’s benevolent reach. Focusing on the troubled marches, English settlement would provide a base from which policy could be administered, and alleviate the social diseases that had inflicted Ireland since the middle ages. The principle that society and man could be nurtured and improved was embodied in the programmes of social alleviation driven by the Tudor Commonwealthmen. The surge of reforming activity rippling across England and Ireland in the mid-sixteenth century was a chief characteristic of northern humanism. Humanist intellectuals taught that human beings could reason and improve themselves, and the value of education was seen in terms of the public good, for men could direct their learning to achieve improvements in church and society. The following section explores the theme of education, taken here to denote the inculcation of virtuous qualities, and which was promoted by reforming circles within Ireland in the early to mid- sixteenth century.

2.2.3.2. Education A chief concern of reformers was that rebellion was advanced by the neglect of preaching and education, and that both were necessary to consolidate the social order. 169 Renaissance humanists held that the basic knowledge of moral and religious truths, or virtue, was a seed planted in every person at birth, and that this innate virtue was discovered through education. Education was esteemed by humanists as to the path to self improvement and civility, and was a positive force for social cohesion. The optimistic atmosphere of the Renaissance permitted thinkers on Irish reform to place their faith in education to temper the crisis of moral decay. There was a tacit understanding among reformers of this period that their visions of a harmonious commonwealth would entail the capturing of Irish hearts and minds by encouraging a virtuous upbringing. The chapter on Ireland in Andrew Borde’s 1552 Introduction of Knowledge depicts the Gaelic Irish as lacking in virtue, unlike the ‘well disposed’ Old English who were ‘vertuous creatures whan grace worketh above nature.’ The Irish were believed to be uncivil by their inherited nature. They were slothful, lacked ‘maners & honesti,’ and were

169 Simon, Education and Society , p. 220. 92 ‘untaught & rude, the which rudenes with theyr meloncoli complexion causeth them to be angry and testy without a cause.’170 Calls to correct the immoral propensities of the Irish were based on the assumption that the Irish could be fashioned into good subjects by abandoning their slothful, hot headed and contemptuous manners and giving themselves over to the interest of the state. Good subjects could be fostered by instilling English customs, and moral correction could be nurtured by using civil speech, appearance and behaviour, for ‘lyke langage and lyke habyt by great occasions to induce lyke obedyence.’ 171 The author of the State of Ireland suggested that Irish lords send their oldest sons to school in an ‘English’ town such as Dublin or Drogheda, ‘to lerne also the draught and maners of Englyshe men.’ 172 In 1520, Conn Bacach O’Neill was urged by John Kite, the archbishop of Armagh, to ‘cultivate a mind worthy of your abilities and character, and no longer take delight in the wild and barbarous manners, and be unacquainted with the comforts of life.’ Kite added that ‘[i]t is much better to live in a civilized fashion, than to seek a living by arms and rapine, and to have no thought beyond pleasure and the belly.’ The ‘cultivation’ of a virtuous mind was an expression of allegiance to the king.173 Thomas Bathe wanted to see that ‘every gentleman put there sonnes to lerne englyshe and good manners to the cyties and porte townes or to suche gentlemen as use contynuallye ordynary englyshe conducte,’ 174 and Walter Cowley suggested to Cromwell that the ‘gentilmen, freholders, and inhabitauntes […] as are of habilitie’ send their heirs to borough towns ‘to lerne Englishe, and to scole.’ 175 Education among the Gaelic Irish involved instilling them with the proper understanding of their duties to the crown and the commonwealth, a purpose that required crown-sponsored preachers who could minister to communities. Thomas Cusack, an Old English statesman, described his rounds through the Irish territories in 1553 and his interactions with various Irish leaders. Cusack praised the Irish leaders who exhibited ‘honest conformity’ to English rule, such as the

170 Quoted in J. Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fíor-ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986), p. 42. 171 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 483. 172 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 29. 173 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 15. 174 BL Lansdowne MS 159/2, f. 10. 175 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 170; White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 57. 93 Byrnes, and those who had been induced to obedience, such as O’Kelly, who provided contributions of soldiers and provisions to the English garrison.176 Addressing the widespread ignorance among the Gaelic population, Cusack prescribed education in the form of preachers, to be ‘appointed among them to tell their duties towards God and their King, that they may know what they ought to do.’ Cusack lamented the lack of preaching of obedience among the Irish: ‘as for preaching we have none, which is our most lack, without which the ignorant can have no knowledge, which were very needful to be redressed.’ 177 Describing an incident in which the leader of the O’Reillys agreed to give back stolen goods, Cusack expressed optimism at the potential to draw the Irish into the English fold by setting preachers among them to remind them of their duties. Cusack reported that ‘[t]he like hath not been that a man of such power as [O’Reilly] is of, would redeliver without greater circumstance do the same,’ and esteemed this event as a sign that the Irish were conformable, ‘whereby it appeareth that the poor and simple people be as soon brought to good as evil, if they were taught accordingly.’ Lack of proper instruction was blamed for the paucity of good morals among the Irish, ‘for hard it is for such men to know their duties to God and to the King when they shall not hear preaching or teaching throughout all the year to edify the poor ignorant to know his duty.’ 178 The humanist provenance of social remediation as a cure for disobedience and rebellion was the classical doctrine that the unity of the state rested on virtuous citizens wed to the love and duty of their commonwealth. 179 Widespread social change in Ireland required the effective oversight of governors and administrators. It was widely held by Tudor observers that royal neglect and misgovernment were key factors in the division and decay of the medieval lordship. With the centralising policies introduced by Cromwell, the Dublin administration became the grand instrument of English government in Ireland. The composition of the Dublin government reflected trends at the English court, where government by aristocratic delegation was gradually replaced by professional administrators selected on the basis of merit and ability. The fall of

176 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 236, 238-9. 177 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 246. 178 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 240-1. 179 L. Baldwin Smith, Treason in Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia (London: Pimlico, 2006), p. 73. 94 Kildare heralded the end of aristocratic rule in Ireland and the beginning of a more ‘modern’ Irish administration under the charge of an English governor at the head of a government and courts staffed by groups of English and Old English officials trained at the universities and Inns of Court.180 In the burgeoning meritocracy of Renaissance England, education was advanced as requisite for gentlemen who were expected to pursue a life of service for the state. A classical humanist education was designed to produce new generations of citizens who channelled their learning into virtuous action in affairs of the commonwealth. In this pursuit they heeded the wisdom of Cicero, who wrote that the noblest use of virtue is in the government of the commonwealth. 181 Considering the growing national bureaucracy and the need for men of ability to fill its ranks (and ability, in the ‘enlightened’ Renaissance, no longer entailed nobility), a classical humanist education was an important credential for all men who hoped to serve their prince and commonwealth. Exemplary of the new class of governors in Ireland was Lord Deputy Anthony St. Leger, a product of an educational outlook focused on developing literate, eloquent, prudent and rational citizens with the qualities of body and mind to serve the prince and commonwealth. St. Leger was the eldest son of a squire and was educated at Cambridge and Gray’s Inn. A somewhat hackneyed quote from Lloyd’s State Worthies establishes St. Leger’s credentials as a model of the complete gentleman. He was ‘born in Kent, and bred in Christendome: for when twelve years of age, he was sent for his grammar-learning with his tutor into France, for his carriage into Italy, for his philosophy to Cambridge, for his law to Gray’s-inne; and for that which completed all, the government of himself, to court.’ 182 This example is pertinent as it highlights the qualities expected of educated men and the use to which they were to be put (that is, to the court and government). Sons of Pale gentry typically sought careers in government administration in Dublin or as lawyers in the crown courts. Statutes required those wishing to practise law in Ireland to attend one of the English inns, a requirement designed to maintain the continuity of English law in sovereign territories.

180 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , p. 35. 181 Cicero, De Re Publica , p. 15. 182 David Lloyd, State Worthies , Vol. I (London: printed for J. Robson, 1670), p. 99; A. Bryson, ‘St Leger, Sir Anthony,’ ODNB . 95 The Inns of Court drew increasing numbers of Irish students from the beginning of the sixteenth century, exceeding the universities in popularity among the sons of the Pale gentry. 183 Some examples of Old English reformers encountered in this chapter and trained at the inns include Patrick Finglas (the author of the Breviate ), who trained at Lincoln’s Inn. 184 Patrick Barnewall, who pushed for the foundation of an inn at Dublin, attended Gray’s Inn, 185 and Thomas Cusack, a long serving crown servant who was centrally involved in surrender and regrant, was a member of the Inner Temple between 1522 and 1530. 186 Residence at the inns in preparation to join the ranks of the nascent Tudor civil service exposed students to reformed ideas transmitted around London’s social and institutional circles. 187 Engagement with humanist ideas can be seen in the proposals of members of the Pale elite to establish an institution for legal education in Dublin. The provision of education for the professional ranks of Ireland was brought to the table when Sergeant-at-Law Patrick Barnewall requested Cromwell’s support to build an inn of chancery at the suppressed house of Blackfriars. 188 Pressing for permission to turn the site into a place of civic use,189 Barnewall and his fellow petitioners framed their proposal around the needs of the commonwealth. The inn was to be a centre for legal practitioners to meet and engage in the business of ‘setting forthe of our said Soveraine Lordes causes’ in Ireland, for the lack of central lodging meant that lawyers lost time attending to cases.190 The project had intrinsic civic and moral worth, as it was ‘to be bothe to

183 Bradshaw, Constitutional Revolution , p. 35. 184 M.A. Lyons, ‘Finglas, Patrick,’ ODNB. 185 C. Kenny, King’s Inns and the Kingdom of Ireland: The Irish “Inn of Court,” 1541-1800 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992), p. 24. 186 C. Brady, ‘Cusack, Sir Thomas,’ ODNB . 187 Kenny, King’s Inns , p. 42. The staff at the London inns reacted badly to the king’s order to admit Irish students. At Lincoln’s Inn, leaders tried to limit the number of Irishmen admitted, and they saw that Irish students were lodged separately. Irishmen also lodged together at Gray’s Inn, while Middle Temple leaders implemented restrictive regulations concerning the admission of Irishmen. Restrictions eased towards the end of the century as Irish were readily admitted in greater numbers: Kenny, King’s Inns , pp. 49-50; G.T. O’Brien, ‘The Old Irish Inns of Court,’ Studies 3 (1914), p. 593. 188 A house or inn of chancery provided preparatory training for those who aspired to attend the Inns of Court. 189 Another proposal to repurpose monastic land was submitted by Archbishop George Browne in 1547. Browne intended to found a university from the resources of the dissolved cathedral of St. Patrick’s in Dublin: B. Bradshaw, ‘George Browne, First Reformation Archbishop of Dublin, 1536-1554’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 21, 4 (1970), p. 317. 190 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, pp. 321, 374. 96 the honor and proffit of our said Soveraine Lord, the comen welthe of this realme, and [the increase] of vertue.’ 191 As Kenny states, the planners intended to bestow Ireland with its own institution ‘for the education of an English governing class in civil and Christian renaissance principles.’ 192 The lord deputy and council assured the Privy Council that the inn would allow for more effective delivery of justice in the realm and facilitate the training of gentlemen’s sons in ‘the Englishe habite, tonge, and good manors’ to prepare them to enter the Inns of Court, ‘whiche thing, in our judgementes (yf yt may be contynued) wilbe asmoche for the common weale of this His Graces Realme, and introduction of cyvile order in the same.’ 193 A series of notes for Ireland two decades later referred to the motion ‘that the lawiers howse (sumtyme the black friers) is necessarie to be erected into an ynne of chauncerey (or court) for the keping of the judges (in terme tyme and otherwhiles togeder) and lernid men togeder […] for the education of genilmens childerne by havyng oon ther contynually to reade to them.’ Reforming the legal profession and permitting the application of common law in Ireland would contribute to national enrichment, ‘wherby cyvyl order may the rather incresce,’ and ‘the quenes causes better attended to.’ 194 Supporters of the inn appealed to humanist values by aligning their aims with the restoration of the commonwealth. Reformist optimism was an abiding feature of humanism, and evinced the possibility of reforming corrupted society. Early modern humanists strove to preserve the health of the polity through selfless citizenship, and believed that the health of the body politic rested on the virtues of magistrates and subjects. Corruption, or the advancement of personal or sectional interests over the common good, undermined virtue and drove states into decay and ruin. 195 The correspondence of the Dublin government reveals characteristically humanist axioms about the role of virtue in government. Affirmations of personal virtue and paranoia about the intrusion of private interests convey the inseparability of virtue from the aims of the reforming government in Tudor Ireland.

191 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 322. 192 Kenny, King’s Inns , p. 39. 193 Kenny, King’s Inns , p. 23; SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 375. 194 BL Lansdowne MS 159/24, f. 92. 195 B. Buchan and L. Hill, An Intellectual History of Political Corruption (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 99-101. 97 2.2.3.3. Faction, corruption and the governing classes Corruption of the early modern commonwealth was caused by ‘pride, avarice, or any other of the vicious drives inherent in [a person’s] corrupted nature,’ states Ferguson, from which a person is driven to pursue private interests and neglect the common good. 196 Attributes such as selfishness, ambition and wilfulness were defining features of bad government. Bad governors lacked virtue, which was the essential attribute of good government. Good governors were expected to acquire princely qualities such as honesty, civility, sobriety, diligence and discretion.197 A good governor was acutely aware that his supreme purpose was to preserve the commonwealth, a message that was transmitted through humanist pedagogical literature such as Elyot’s The Book Named the Governor. Precepts arising from humanist theories of government readily found a place in Ireland, a ‘fallen’ commonwealth cast adrift by bad government. To Tudor reformers, it naturally followed that repairing the destruction wrought by corrupt, incompetent and (in the case of Kildare,) rebellious leadership would require the solvent of good government. Political papers generated by the Henrician reforms approached questions of political office in ways that evoked classical humanist conceptions of magistracy. A chief concern of Renaissance thinkers was that princes and magistrates ought to be guided by ideals of service. The paucity of government influence in the areas outside the Irish Pale was addressed by the anonymous author of the Marian Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland , who proposed the installation of presidents to oversee administration in the Irish provinces. Although the author did not articulate the responsibilities these presidents would share, a point was made of their personal qualities: ‘they shall be men of learning whose duties [are] to know what appertaineth to a common wealth.’ 198 Professing one’s own zeal for service was a common means of seeking courtly favour. Robert Cowley articulated a fervent desire to serve the king and his fellow subjects. The knowledge that Cromwell valued merit in men (Cromwell himself was of low birth) ‘putteth me,’ wrote Cowley, ‘emongest divers others, in a lust and epitite to strayne my self, by all weyes and meanes to me possible, to open suche thinges,’

196 Ferguson, ‘The Tudor Commonweal,’ p. 12. 197 Early Modern Research Group, ‘Commonwealth: The Social, Cultural and Conceptual Contexts of an Early Modern Keyword,’ The Historical Journal 54, 3 (2011), pp. 669-70. 198 Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland,’ p. 312. 98 he professed, ‘as shalbe honorable to the Kinges Highnes, the weale, commoditie, and suretie of all His Graces true subgettes, and most profitable for His Magestye.’ 199 The convention of ‘forgetting oneself’ for the sake of commonwealth can also be found in a letter to Edward Bellingham by William Brabazon, which concluded with Brabazon ‘praying God to send his majesty an earnest painful executor of the premises which shall forget himself for the glory of God, the king’s honour and profit, also for the commonweal of the realm.’ To this was added some personal flattery, ‘that like as this thing [the reform of Leinster] cannot be done without other men’s pains and services, so shall the fame and renown thereof, next the king’s majesty, be his.’ 200 Seeking due reward after being revoked as chancellor in 1550, John Alen told the Privy Council he had never, in his long career, given counsel that benefited his own interest, but only ‘that whiche I thoght was best and moste for the Kinges honor or profyte of the comon weale where I mynistred.’ 201 As he lent his support of Sir Henry Sidney’s bid to develop lands in the north east, Sussex assured Mary that Sidney’s intentions were noble, stemming from ‘an ernest desire he hathe to serve your Majesties, and refourme this Realme then of any gayne [to himself],’ and added that the endeavour would bring benefit to many, as ‘a man of [Sidney’s] livyng and credite’ would, by his good example, draw more men to settle alongside him.202 It was believed that the health of the commonwealth was undermined by the actions of magistrates who were less interested in service than their own promotion and profit. The controversial lord deputyship of Leonard Grey provides an excellent case study in the perceived connection between corruption and degenerate commonwealths. Indignant that Grey’s government had resisted the king’s wishes to improve the Irish revenues after the considerable treasure spent to suppress Kildare’s rebellion, Henry VIII blamed the council for failing to meet the duties incumbent on royal counsellors. The king declared that good counsellors should, ‘before their oune private gaynes, have respect to their princes honor, and to the publique weale of the cuntrey whereof they have charge.’ Henry

199 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 323. 200 Quoted in White, ‘Reign of Edward VI,’ p. 200. 201 NASPI 61/2/59. 202 NASPI 62/1/37. 99 believed that the council had failed its duties by ‘desir[ing] nothing ells, but to reign in estimacion, and to flece, from tyme to time, all that you may catche from Us.’ He also expressed his desire that they ‘wold have an eye to joyne our honor, our profitt, and the commen weall of that cuntrey.’ 203 The king’s suspicions about dishonesty in public offices were outlined in the instructions written up for the commissioners tasked with reporting on the state of the country. The crown was concerned about disorder caused by rebels and internal factors, namely ‘negligence, usurpacion, and incrochement of suche persons, officers, and ministers, as His Grace hathe heretofore put in trust ther, and taken for his goode subjectes.’ Instead of serving the king, such subjects ‘have rather dyrecteid ther eyen to ther owne pryvate and singuler advantages, then to the publyque wealle of the lande, or the avauncement of those thinges that might tende to the pleasour, contentacion, and commodytie of His Highenes.’ 204 The commissioners were instructed to conduct a thorough inquiry into the state of the administration, law and order in Ireland. They were to probe ‘the offyces and demeanors of all men,’ including the lord deputy and council, and all other ministers and officers, to determine ‘howe every man dothe dis dutye in his degre, place, and office.’ 205 Grey deflected allegations against his government by presenting commissioners with a memorandum in which disorder was attributed to the abuses of the lords of the marches. Among other charges, it was alleged that the lords turned a blind eye on Irish crimes against English inhabitants, promoted Irish habits, and elected to live within the Pale, thereby leaving their countries open to plunder. Grey concluded that the local aristocracy ‘rather covet ther owne promotions, lucre, and profit, then they doo exteme ther duetyes to Godde and to the Kinges Magestye, or yet regarde his gracious honour and profit, or the comyn welthe of his subjectes.’ He accused them of colluding with Irishmen to undermine the king ‘and all suche other, as wolde His Graceis honor or comyn welthe here.’ 206 As a key opponent of Grey, John Alen bolstered his attacks by invoking the commonwealth, the keyword with the most profound and versatile moral currency. Alen wrote that the lord deputy was entrusted to possess ‘those

203 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 423. 204 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 453. 205 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 454. 206 SP Hen.VIII, vol. II, pp. 477-480. 100 qualyties that his [position] requyreyth,’ and that the prosperity of the commonwealth was contingent upon the virtues of its governor. Unscrupulous and negligent lord deputies had set a bad example to the people, and were much to blame for the lack of justice in the country. In civil countries, wrote Alen, the people mimicked the behaviour of their social superiors. In Ireland, ‘the greate mysordre’ had flowed from the head down, as leaders set evil examples and had been negligent in suppressing evil behaviour in the people. Corrupt governors had turned a blind eye to coign and livery, lawlessness, rebellion and oppression. 207 The articles of accusation against Grey listed his alleged abuses, which included alliances with the king’s Geraldine enemies, broken treaties, the use of coign and livery, and failure to impart justice. Criticised throughout his deputyship for chasing personal wealth and abusing his authority, Grey was eventually found guilty of high treason and executed in London.208 Grey’s dismissal was preceded by fears that the disunity of the Dublin administration threatened the objectives of reform government. A key theme in northern humanism was the preeminent place occupied by virtue in matters of the commonwealth. The achievement of a well-ordered commonwealth rested on the attainment of virtue and the elimination of faction and corruption.209 Concerns about the impact of corruption on the governed were raised by the chief baron of the exchequer, James Bathe, who considered that the public emnity between Grey and Alen as what ‘myght be partly the cause of the decay of the comen welthe ther.’210 Similarly, Walter Cowley stated that dissention had derailed the reform effort by hindering the delivery of ‘higher enterprises.’211 Political tensions in the Dublin administration continued after Grey’s removal. His successor, St. Leger, was handed ‘a series of all too familiar charges’ of collusion and conspiracy, relates Brady. His chief rival was John Alen, who would also raise objections against the next lord deputy, Edward Bellingham. 212 Alen’s propensity for connivance was noted by the author of the Treatise , who attributed his country’s chronic disorder to the failure of justice

207 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 488. 208 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, pp. 36-43; M.A. Lyons, ‘Grey, Leonard,’ ODNB . 209 Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought I , pp. 233-4. 210 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 157. 211 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 180. 212 Brady, Chief Governors , pp. 41, 50. 101 caused by governmental negligence and greed. 213 The author alleged that Alen’s malicious meddling obstructed matters of the realm by entangling governors in scandal, ‘that for saving of their necks they could never yet apply themselves to proceed with any good purpose begun for the commonwealth of that realm.’ 214 Here I have demonstrated that by the mid-sixteenth century, humanist concepts were informing the practice of government in Ireland. Points of contact with the doctrines of the Renaissance were made in the application of the humanist categories of corruption and virtue and the assumption of an intimate connection between individual virtue and the maintenance of the commonwealth.

3. Improvement

3.1. The spread of Protestant ideas to 1558

Under Henry VIII, a new phase in the political reformation of Ireland was inaugurated. This phase was characterised by the consolidation of English rule and the conceptualisation of Ireland as a unitary political entity. Policy papers aimed at regional and national reform reveal that members of the Dublin administration were embracing civic ideals popularised by northern humanists. Having established the humanist provenance of reform, it remains to consider the other wellspring of great cultural and intellectual upheaval, the Protestant Reformation. The doctrinal and liturgical aspects of the Reformation were not effectively enforced in Ireland. The failure of the Henrician Reformation to penetrate Ireland has been attributed to the unwillingness of the local elite to force the clergy to enact religious programmes and the reluctance of lord deputies to rouse religious controversy. Under Edward VI, officials were too preoccupied with maintaining order through military operations to focus on religious policy. Clergy sworn to English allegiance were required to follow laws and ordinances as set forth in England, and lord deputies were expected to attend to religious matters. However, as Heal asserts, ‘[t]he attention that the rulers of England gave to Irish affairs was frankly intermittent, and the majority of that attention was directed to law and order, military management and financial affairs.’ Despite the

213 Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland,’ p. 305. 214 Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland,’ p. 309. 102 official return to Catholicism under Mary, little intervention was made in religious matters in Ireland. 215 While the impact of the Reformation on the Irish church was minimal, reformed ideas gained impetus in England where many with reforming sympathies moved within courtly and scholarly circles prior to their Irish careers. Outside of matters of the church and clergy, the Protestant influence in pre-Elizabethan thinking about reform in Ireland is difficult to ascertain. The Henrician period has been described by Cremeans as ‘an age when intellectual crosscurrents made impossible the dominance of any one dogma or system, an age without clear-cut divisions,’ in religious or political doctrines. 216 Elton’s assertion that the English people were won over to Protestantism under Edward VI has been thrown into question by revisionist scholarship that found popular conversion to be a more protracted process than hitherto accepted.217 Protestantism was undoubtedly strengthened and developed during Edward’s reign and by exiles on the continent in Mary’s reign, but, as Collinson has argued, the Reformation truly ‘happened’ in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, when England’s Protestants reached a ‘Calvinist consensus.’ 218 Protestants were a minority in England prior to 1558, but exposure to reformed ideas enabled what Heal describes as ‘a capacity to engage in a new rhetoric’ among the educated classes, and humanist ideas predisposed many to lean towards Protestant ideas. 219 In England, reformed ideas formed the intellectual environment of the institutions in which the governing elite of Ireland were educated, and such ideas were linked with proposals for reform and renewal. Universities and Inns of Court were environments which fostered traditions of reform and nurtured reformation thought from the 1520s, as did the royal court, urban centres and the ‘institution’ of the printing press. By contrast, the Irish lacked institutions to circulate theories and texts from which the learned might

215 F. Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 169; H.A. Jefferies, ‘The Early Tudor Reformations in the Irish Pale,’ The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 1 (2001), p. 54. 216 C.D. Cremeans, The Reception of Calvinistic Thought in England (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949), p. 27. 217 G.R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England, 1509-1558 (London: Arnold, 1977); P. Marshall, ‘(Re)defining the English Reformation,’ The Journal of British Studies 48, 3 (2009), p. 568. 218 P. Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), p. ix. 219 Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland , pp. 250, 253. 103 absorb new religious ideas. 220 The Irish lords largely adhered to the old religion and Old English officials were more ambiguous in their allegiance. Relying on the crown for their livelihood, they nominally (if not inwardly) accepted the reformed church.221 Regardless of their doctrinal leanings, the Old English were willing instruments of the crown and demonstrated a commitment to commonwealth ideals, which were driven by what Bradshaw describes as a ‘dogged Erastianism and theological flexibility’ pertaining to matters of national reform.222 From this brief survey, it can be reasonably assumed that an atmosphere of social reform pervaded English institutions during and after the Henrician reformations. While humanism was establishing itself as the key intellectual movement in the time of Henry VIII, the penetration of Protestant ideas was a more protracted process. However, this does not imply that theological beliefs should be discarded as a contributing factor in arguments for reform. Theology – traditional or reformed – profoundly influenced the ways in which medieval and early modern communities interpreted the world. The following section explores some key concepts in late medieval Christian thought with the aim of identifying ideas that fed English imperial ambitions in the first half of the sixteenth century. The themes with which it will be concerned all pertain to the concept of ‘improvement’ of the natural world, and include popular conceptions of nature, labour, industry and agriculture.

3.2. Ordering the landscape: contexts and ideals

A key concept shared by all reformers was that the promotion of cultivation was integral to the reform process, for it was believed that settled agriculture would be a civilising influence on the Gaelic Irish. 223 The concept that land reorganisation was central to bringing the Irish to heel was not unique to Protestantism. Thomas More, for example, had championed the right of civil people to possess and cultivate neglected soil in the Christian humanist Utopia . More followed a

220 Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland , pp. 231, 233; R.M. Fisher states that evangelical ideas ‘infiltrated the legal societies well before the royal reformation.’ R.M. Fisher, ‘Reform, Repression and Unrest at the Inns of Court, 1518-1558,’ The Historical Journal 20, 4 (1977), pp. 786, 790. 221 R.D. Edwards, Church and State in Tudor Ireland: A History of Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, 1534-1603 (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1935), p. 25. 222 Bradshaw, ‘Sword, Word and Strategy,’ pp. 475-6. 223 Montaño, Roots of English Colonialism , pp. 124-5. 104 tradition, prevalent in the classical age, regarding the moral value of agriculture. The church fathers, such as Saint Jerome and Augustine, believed in the human capacity to master the environment. 224 A profound shift in attitudes towards the physical landscape occurred in medieval Europe. The breakdown of feudalism and a movement towards an entrepreneurial, mercantilist and capitalist economy stimulated an escalating cycle of consumption and production, requiring ever greater harnessing of the earth’s resources. 225 The medieval Christian imagination and concomitant ideas about the relationship between God, humankind and nature provided a rationale for the transformation and use of the natural environment. Evidence of accelerated deforestation suggests that intensive exploitation of the landscape occurred in medieval Western Europe. Western society had evolved from its pagan roots to detach itself from the natural world and become its dominator. Humans, as Williams writes, ‘shifted from being a part of nature to being her exploiter; man and nature were now two things, and man was master.’ 226 The modification of the medieval environment was accompanied by Christian ideas about God’s creation. God had created the universe for humanity, and had bestowed humans with the right to subdue creation. Man acted as God’s humble steward on earth, placed on earth to rule over plants and animals and be the master of the divine creation. Untamed land was held to be ‘uncivilised,’ persisting in a state of sin which could only be undone by bringing it to cultivation and productive use.227 The newfound impulse to understand and exploit nature for man’s use was accompanied by a concept likening nature to a ‘book’ that revealed the magnificence of God. As Williams asserts, theological and economic concepts had become entwined, as ‘[t]he spread of Christianity and the cultivation of the land went hand in hand.’ 228 Piety worked in tandem with economic progress as greater parts of the earth were transformed to serve the needs of human society. The Christian anthropocentric view of creation was reinforced and reaffirmed by the Protestant emphasis on direct reading of scripture. The wonders of the earth were manifest evidence of divine presence, meaning that the physical world could be ‘read’ as a supplement to scripture in bearing testimony to the

224 Williams, Deforesting the Earth , p. 96. 225 Williams, Deforesting the Earth , p. 137. 226 Williams, Deforesting the Earth , p. 89. 227 Williams, Deforesting the Earth , p. 96. 228 Williams, Deforesting the Earth , p. 89. 105 glory of God. 229 The natural world, argues Walsham, ‘stood as a constant reminder of His merciful dispensations to the species He had made viceregent over all His creation.’ The Protestant theory of predestination was woven into the mythology of stewardship as the natural world became evidence of the care that God showed held for those destined to eternal salvation. 230 To work the land was godly. ‘Good works’ performed to guarantee an afterlife in heaven, were replaced by a focus on living a Christian life on earth testifying to one’s faith. Toiling on the land became a legitimate way to glorify God, and earthly labour attested to membership in the ranks of God’s elect. Literature of the mid-sixteenth century underpinned the dignity of toil by revering ‘the ploughman’s honest labours at the base of the post-feudal hierarchy,’ states McRae. 231 The movement towards domination and transformation of the earth converged with the humanist movement which revived interest in ancient texts. Works on estate management and agriculture were widely read, including Cato, Varro, Columella, Virgil and Xenophon. Husbandry manuals celebrated estate management, encouraging landlords to take an active role in creating and ordering his estate. 232 This type of literature found a ready audience after the monastic dissolutions as landowners sought ways to make their new possessions profitable. The pursuit of ordered environments in the late medieval and early modern period was propelled by economic forces and championed by Christian and Renaissance imaginations. The drive to impose order on the earth was, therefore, ennobled by moral and divine sanction, and the image of the cultivated landscape obtained an extraordinary power in the sixteenth century. In its attempts to impose order on the country, the English government of Ireland prescribed the enforcement of husbandry and cultivation by making such conditions part of treaties with the Gaelic chiefs, or by transferring lands into the hands of Englishmen who could be trusted to turn the soil to productive use with English agricultural methods. The myth that the Gaelic Irish hated agriculture, and indeed any sort of gainful employment, was widely believed to be connected to social and economic stagnation. To the Tudor mind, the cultivated and fruitful

229 A. Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 331, 334. 230 Walsham, Reformation of the Landscape , p. 330. 231 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 167. 232 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 140. 106 landscape was the product of constant and diligent labour. The sanctification of labour in Tudor England was intimately tied to ideas about cultivation, civility and order. The following section explores Tudor responses to Irish wastelands in the context of the scriptural and humanistic assumptions that governed economic productivity in Tudor England.

3.3. Economic decline, idleness and the merits of labour

In order to understand English attitudes to the uncultivated state of Ireland, it is necessary to understand the economic upheavals of sixteenth century England, the resulting social changes and the responses to these changes. Agriculture was the mainstay of the English economy. With fluctuating harvests, enclosures, inflation and economic volatility, large numbers of agricultural workers were driven from their livelihoods, feeding the growing ranks of poor, itinerant and unemployed, or ‘masterless men.’ The phenomenon of social dislocation was addressed by social reformers who blasted landowners and petitioned the government to stem the tide of enclosure and depopulation. Protestant preachers focused on agrarian and social reform in their denunciations, 233 while the greed and private lucre of grasping landowners was targeted by early and mid-century social reformers. Grassroots movements against enclosure, such as Kett’s rebellion in Norfolk, and against the reformation, such as the Pilgrimage of Grace in Yorkshire, contributed to a sense of moral crisis. Inspired by the Christian humanist movement with its focus on achieving true stability through social reform, intellectuals were stirred to submit their own suggestions to mend the cracks in the commonwealth. Ireland presented its own set of social problems that stemmed from unique geographic, political and historical circumstances. Enclosures, for example, while a major phenomenon that gave rise to considerable social commentary in late medieval England, were rather uncommon in Ireland at the beginning of the sixteenth century, except in parts of the Pale. 234 Despite circumstantial differences, the social manifestations of misrule in Ireland mirrored those encountered in England, such as depopulation in the countryside, the decay of tillage, poverty and idleness among the populace, greed and moral irresponsibility

233 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 28. 234 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , p. 35; Down, ‘Colonial Society and Economy,’ p. 477. 107 among the landed elite. These problems were read by the English as symptomatic of a broken commonwealth, and the political and rhetorical strategies thrown at them mirrored those applied in English situations. Efforts to redress the causes of decline were buoyed by moral philosophy based on Christian and humanist ideals. The officials who were tasked with consolidating government in sixteenth century Ireland were recipients of ideologies that citizens could partake in meaningful contributions to social change. One of the key manifestations of social decay in Ireland was the large swaths of ‘waste’ or uncultivated land, thought to be a direct symptom of ‘idleness,’ or the propensity of the Irish to eschew agriculture in favour of wandering, thieving and fighting. The Gaelic brehon system, with its laws of partible land inheritance and transitory possession, was seen to be a contributing factor for idleness and instability within Irish society. The Tudor attitude to idleness was derived from the medieval Christian tradition that condemned sloth as sinful, but imbued with a Christian humanist understanding of labour. Industry was held to be a deterrent from sin on an individual level, and valuable to the collective good by being conducive to the commonwealth. To be idle was, therefore, an offence to the commonwealth. Erasmus himself compared idleness with an infectious disease that spreads and infects society.235 The Tudor attitude to labour was codified in the Primer of 1553. The Primer, which was intended to provide a spiritual framework for daily life, included a prayer for labourers that acknowledged the divine mandate to work. ‘As the bird is born to fly, so is man born to labour,’ it began, ‘for thou, O Lord, hast commanded in thy holy word, that man shall eat his bread in the labour of his hands, and in the sweat of his face: yea, thou hast given commandment, that if any man will not labour, the same should not eat.’ Men were encouraged to distance themselves from idle neighbours, and to ‘labour according to his vocation and calling.’ The lord was implored to bestow the people with ‘a willing disposition to travail for their living according to thy word.’ 236 The assumption that idleness was a chief source of trouble can be found from the earliest Tudor treatises on Ireland. The author of the State of Ireland

235 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 123. 236 The Religious Tract Society, Writings of Edward the Sixth, William Hugh, Queen Catherine Parr, Anne Askew, Lady Jane Grey, Hamilton, and Balnaves (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1836), pp. 89-90. 108 conveyed a deep distrust of idle or wandering Irishmen, and suggested that idleness and vagabondage should be forbidden on pain of death. 237 To promote the adoption of productive occupations, younger sons were to enter the church or else learn ‘some craft, wherby they maye lyve honestly, withoute [vices],’ so that no men in the country were to be without ‘some crafte, or withoute a master.’ Justices of the peace would monitor the public for evidence of occupation and punish the unemployed.238 A series of proposals for the Irish parliament of 1541 were aimed at curtailing the numbers of itinerant Irish soldiers, and included the requirement for lords to provide a log of the names of all servants, and that any soldier found without a master was to be treated as a vagabond.239 To combat antisocial behaviour, John Alen recommended the building of gaols in every shire, as the lack of gaols in Ireland ‘causeith many malefactours to escape ponyshement, which is oone of the chyef causeis that ther be so many theves.’ 240 Alen’s later proposals for the reform of Leinster included the condition that no idle men or vagabonds should be suffered to enter the Pale without a placard, and those who were caught were to be sent to ward or executed. 241 Among the acts proposed by the Irish council under Sussex was the requirement that idle men, vagabonds, and any travelling at night without the company of an ‘honeste man in Englishe apparell’ were to be subject to martial law. 242 Humanists shared a genuine concern for finding practical solutions to social problems such as the rising phenomenon of displacement, poverty and vagrancy. In his Discourse of the Common Weal , Thomas Smith proposed a policy of job creation in England by setting up industries for the local manufacturing of goods formerly imported from abroad. Setting the people to work would arrest the spread of vagrants and be of great economic benefit to the commonwealth. Similar plans to provide the Irish people with gainful employment appeared in reform papers at this time. Walter Cowley’s proposal ‘for plantinge of civilite and obedience’ included a requirement to ‘putt the people from idelnes,’ by compelling them to take up husbandry, turning their delight in

237 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 28. 238 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 30. 239 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 180-1. 240 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 501. 241 BL Lansdowne MS 159/4, f. 28v. 242 APCI , pp. 18-23, 26. 109 war and raiding into a love of ‘welth and quiete.’ 243 If they could be persuaded that the king meant only to embrace them as subjects, Robert Cowley believed that the Irish would willingly abandon their swords and turn to manual occupations better suited to enriching the commonwealth such as agriculture, mining and fishing. If peace was guaranteed, the galloglass and kern, who ‘now lieve ydill in maner of souldeours,’ would be moved to ‘forsake their ydilnes, and apply to labour; summe tilling the wast landes, sume labouring the mynes in the erth, wherof wold grow infenyt riches; and others occupy fishing of salmondes, herynges, hake, and lynge.’ 244 The Irish council under St. Leger determined that the decay of Ireland rested principally in ‘the ydle people unyversally inhabyting the same,’ and traced the problem to the export of commodities out of Ireland. It was deemed that restrictions be applied to exported goods so that the local population ‘shulde studye and practise thuse of those commodyties amonges themselves.’ The provision of jobs was the key to reviving the local economy and instilling a work ethic in its people. For the surety of ‘this poore lande,’ the people should be set to labour and work ‘as they doo in other countries, whoose common weales by mayntenance of artificers doo floorishe and prosper.’ The council supported the suit of alderman, Richard Fyan, who had requested the fee farm of Hogges nunnery near Dublin to set up looms of linen and yarn, which would employ a great number of idle people. 245 Mary’s instructions upon St. Leger’s reinstatement in 1553 reinforced the position on improving industry and combating the ill effects of unemployment. The state of the realm and wealth of the people rested, in part, on keeping ‘sufficient [wool] and other commodities’ within the country, and employing the people in various handicrafts, ‘wherby all thinges may be the more plentie and better chepe within this Realme and for increase of their commen welth.’ 246 Drawing the Irish population away from idleness and towards a love of honest labour would prove exceedingly difficult in the Irish marches and countryside. There the Irish preference for seasonal settlement and pastoralism was unfavourable to the English style of ‘settled’ habitation characterised by

243 NASPI 61/2/12. 244 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 347. 245 NASPI 61/2/62. 246 NASPI 62/1/2. 110 townships, industry and agriculture. Reforming the work ethic of the Irish would, therefore, require a reformation of the landscape that they occupied.

3.4. Transforming the landscape: programmes and proposals

The author of the State of Ireland maintained that the reorganisation of the environment was a key factor in permanent reform. By teaching the Irish inhabitants to practise farming, the fertile lands of Ireland could yield great profit within a few years, the soil becoming ‘of as greate value, as ever it was.’ 247 The material conditions for a settled agricultural community were to be created as the people of the towns would be ordered to ditch and hedge their enclosures and gardens, and to plant trees as a source of the timber needed to build houses and agricultural tools. The author envisaged a great need for timber as the chief material needed to build the commonwealth, and a lack of timber ‘hurteyth the comen welth subget to the Kyng.’ 248 The plan to put Ireland in order rested upon tillage and English material culture as the economic and civilising backbone of the commonwealth. The monastic dispossessions opened opportunities to undertake the improvement of many estates, which included the promotion of tillage and husbandry, building and manufacture. 249 As soldiers and farmers, the role of incoming planters was to be both defensive and ameliorative. The conditions governing new and imagined plantations reveal the importance placed on agriculture as a precondition of a well-ordered commonwealth. In 1536, Lord Deputy Grey and the council wrote to Henry VIII regarding the escheated lands of the Kildare and his supporters. The best way to avoid great military charges was by providing ‘for the inhabitacion, sureguarde, and keping’ of the lands, which ‘remayne voide, nat occupied ne manured [cultivated].’ The government recognised the decay of tillage as a side effect of the erosion of English influence, and that political division had wrecked havoc on the economy of the borderlands. It was lamented that farmers ‘cannot be had to manure landes under your obedience here,’ as in the more stable environment of England which was ‘of one conformitie, and under the obedience of one Monarchy.’ Peopling the land with new English tenants would facilitate the ‘manurance’ or cultivation of

247 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 25. 248 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, pp. 28-9. 249 Bradshaw, Dissolution of the Religious Orders , p. 229. 111 decayed territory. 250 The lack of cultivated land was a common theme in government papers and reform treatises. The decline of agriculture was addressed as one of causes of ‘thy dismembered state’ by the author of the Marian Treatise . Gaelicisation and depopulation over the previous centuries had prevented the productive exploitation of ‘the innumerable good commodities of that their own most fruitful, healthy and fertile native country,’ and he expressed a hope that the crown would see through reforms to create conditions for a flourishing commonwealth. To the English, the plough represented stability and civility. The paucity of ploughs in Ireland was the grim reminder of a poor and dying commonwealth. ‘How can [Ireland] live that hath not one plough against every hundred dwelling in the realm,’ he asked, ‘or how can it be rich that hath 10 persons ready to pluck up against everyone that soweth?’ 251 The decline of agriculture came to be deeply symbolic of the decline of English government, civil order, and the commonwealth generally. Schemes for reform included provisions to revive agriculture by enforcing English administrative organisation, systems of inheritance and estate organisation that were believed to be conducive to productive agriculture. The reformers’ belief that the revival of the commonwealth required a revival of agriculture was embodied in the plans for Laois and Offaly, which were replete with schemes for the material reorganisation of the territory. Advising Sussex on the best form of plantation in Laois and Offaly, John Alen acknowledged the defensive purpose of the settlement by suggesting that every freeholder should enclose his land with double ditches and bulwarks within seven years. 252 Despite the distinctive challenges of the border environment, Alen was optimistic that people would desire to come from England to till Irish soil, believing that there were ‘plentie of people’ who ‘woll gladlie cum to labor [the earth] and to have places to stick to and in the meane season let the ment[?] purpoos goe forward.’ Alen hoped that the settled agricultural community would have a civilising influence on the surrounding territories, which would enrich the commonwealth and crown. Good subjects being planted, ‘obedience woll insue

250 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 338. 251 Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland,’ pp. 304-5, 310. 252 BL Lansdowne MS 159/4, f. 27. 112 and therby revennew woll aureiv daylie.’ 253 Organising the country into shires, requiring settlers to live in houses of stone or timber after the English fashion, establishing a secure inheritance system, and establishing market towns to be the hubs of the new urban economy would promote civil government, encourage immigration and ensure the continuity of the settlement.254 If the land was planted, the connection between agriculture, civility and wealth would set an example to the local population, thereby creating the peaceful conditions for further ordering and development of the environment. In a letter to Sussex about the planting of Leinster, Thomas Alen signed off with an ode to the intimate connections between peace, improvement and wealth. Alen wrote that that civility and industry were complementary, each necessary for the other and both necessary for the complete revitalisation of the Irish commonwealth:

Obedience causethe quiet, and quiet causethe welthe, welthe serchethe the riches underground, welthe causethe ryvers to be amended, welthe wynnethe the ground surrounded, welthe eradicated the trees, and maketh that errable ground or otherwise to improve, welthe by industrie alterethe the [marches], forcethe them to [profit], By welthe the baren soyles be improved. 255

The incorporation of the Irish polity into the commonwealth required the extension of English farming to the Gaelic regions. Assumptions about the relationship between cultivation and the ordered commonwealth were made in the policy of ‘ordering’ the population by enforcing the practice of agriculture in place of a traditionally pastoral culture. The policy of surrender and regrant was a key strategy in the instigation of the socio-economic reorganisation of Gaelic Ireland as it encouraged the cooperation of the Irish themselves. When a lord surrendered to the king, he was to agree to replace the pastoral system with agriculture. Upon his submission to the king, Mac Gilpatrick promised to observe a number of conditions, one of

253 BL Lansdowne MS 159/4, f. 28. 254 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 241; BL Cotton MS, Titus B XI/241, f. 395v. 255 BL Lansdowne MS 159/16, f. 70v. 113 which was the practice of agriculture and the building of houses for farmers. Mac Gilpatrick and his heirs were to ‘kepe and put suche of the said landes, as shalbe mete for tillage, in manurance and tillage of howsbandry, and cause howses to be made and buylt for suche persons, as shalbe necessarye for the manurance therof.’ 256 Thomas Cusack endorsed the surrender and regrant policy, for by securing the lords’ titles in law, they would be able to move their focus from war to cultivation. The kern would be transformed into farmers, ‘by the which ther men of warre will decaie, and ther substance incresce.’ Wealth and livelihood would transform the Irish into a peaceful people, as a desire to preserve the fruits of labour would make them reluctant to engage in war.257 Cusack boasted of his successes in introducing tillage in his rounds of the Gaelic territories. Describing Clanricarde as ‘a plain champai[g]n country’ wasted through wars of succession, Cusack boasted that he ‘placed the [earl of Clanricarde] quietly, and made every one of the country willing to answer and obey him.’ Cusack left two ploughs to till the land, which he considered a successful development for ‘at my going thither, there were not past forty ploughs in all the country, but all waste through war; which ploughing increaseth daily, thanks be to God!’ The growth of agriculture in the region had created a semblance of order where none had existed before. The region was ‘universally inhabited and so brought to quiet that now the people leaveth their plough, irons, and cattle in the fields without fear of stealing.’ Cusack saw the improvements in this part of Ireland to be evidence that the people were open to reform if the conditions of settled existence were brought to them. It demonstrated that ‘there can be nothing so good to be used with such savage people as good order to be observed and kept amongt them,’ observed Cusack. 258 Meanwhile, the opposite conditions were reported in Tyrone, where war between the earl of Tyrone and his sons was believed to have caused decay and waste. The earl was held in Dublin while a band of soldiers was sent to Armagh to restore order. Cusack reported that when the other Irish lords heard that O’Neill was under arrest they refused to come to Dublin for fear of being arrested themselves. Cusack personally assured O’Reilly that O’Neill had been arrested

256 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, pp. 291-2. 257 SP Hen.VIII , vol. III, p. 327. 258 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 238. 114 ‘for the wasting and destroying of his country, [and] for the amendment of the same.’ At this reasoning, Cusack reported, O’Reilly agreed that Tyrone deserved to be kept in custody, and that he himself should be too if he had done the same. 259 Cusack’s positive reports regarding Clanricarde attested to the peaceful and ordering influence of agriculture, and the example of O’Neill wasting his country through war served as caution about the devastating environmental consequences of insecure title and of esteeming war over peace. In Cusack’s estimation, the bestowing of titles to the Irish lords was a positive social force as it steered the Irish away from war and towards the settled conditions necessary for economic stability: ‘the having of their lands by Dublin is such a gage upon them, as they will not forfeit the same through wilful folly.’ 260 The material component of political reform involved the transplantation of the English shire system and the accompanying administrative, material and economic features of English society. It was believed that imposing order on a disordered Irish frontier would cause the population to fall into patterns of subjecthood and obedience, permitting the full consolidation of English government throughout the kingdom. Improvement of the land, therefore, lay at the heart of English colonial policy. The English obsession with the demarcation, bordering and ordering of the natural world was expressed in Ireland by English governors. These confronted the wild Irish with ‘onslaughts on the physical environment,’ such as cutting passes, depriving rebels of sanctuary by clearing forests, building forts and giving territory to known supporters in order to entrench an English presence and reaffirm the crown’s constitutional right to rule Ireland. 261 The English objective to order the commonwealth required the exploitation of natural resources to power the military effort. In a symbolic sense, harnessing the country’s natural resources that the slothful Irish were not using was a powerful expression of English cultural and moral superiority. Natural resources were not suffered to be wasted, but rather put to a noble use, namely the manufacture of weaponry needed to consolidate Tudor rule. Lord Deputy Croft was instructed to forbid the woods and timbers being wasted, and to ensure that

259 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 243-4. 260 Cal. Carew, 1515-74, p. 245. 261 C. Litton Falkiner, Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, Mainly of the Seventeenth Century (London: Longmans, 1904), p. 148; Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland , p. 179. 115 the king’s woods were to be put to productive use in supplying the ordinance. Bow staves, shafts, chasing staves, pikes and planks were to be manufactured from yew and elm trees growing in Ireland.262 The instructions for Laois and Offaly stipulated that great woods and timber were to be reserved for the crown’s use, 263 and Mary’s instructions to St. Leger included a clause on timber. ‘[B]icause we are informed that there is wood ynough for bowes and pikes there,’ St. Leger was ordered to survey and report upon the local supply. The great woods were to be reserved for the queen and utilised for timber. The under wood was to be sold among the tenants and their neighbours, the revenues of which were to be accounted for each year. 264 Industrial activities were pursued, although on a limited scale. Projects were launched at the silver mines at Clonmines in Wexford. Despite being lured to Ireland by the reported riches of the Irish mines, returns proved disappointing. Although early Tudor endeavours in Irish projecting were lacklustre, observers clearly took notice of the potential for profits to be gained in Ireland, as enterprises aimed at exploiting Irish minerals intensified and accelerated in the reign of Mary’s successor, Elizabeth. 265 Permanent dwellings were another material manifestation of order upon the landscape. Stone or timber houses were a means of creating a settled landscape conducive to agriculture. Settled living arrangements were permanent, quantifiable and denoted an English way of life. Plantation schemes required the building of permanent dwellings, and a clause for Irish lords to build houses in the English style was a condition of surrender and regrant. 266 It was commonly understood that inhabitants had to be encouraged to develop their lands, construct buildings, and commit to preserving the interests of the commonwealth by dwelling on their land. Long leases were encouraged so that tenants would be motivated to build. 267 The instructions to the Henrician commissioners required them to lease lands to faithful subjects ‘as wyll binde them selffes to inhabyte them, dymiseing them in suche ordre as in the said commission is appointed,

262 NASPI 61/3/72. 263 NASPI 61/4/48. 264 NASPI 62/1/2. 265 M.D. O’Sullivan, ‘The Exploitation of the Mines of Ireland in the Sixteenth Century,’ An Irish Quarterly Review 24, 95 (1935), pp. 445-8. 266 Montaño, Roots of English Colonialism , pp. 234-5. 267 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 484. 116 incoraging the tenauntes therof to inhabyte and manure the same.’ 268 Clauses such as this were designed to combat the absenteeism that had caused the decay of the medieval lordship by establishing permanent structures and reviving the practice of agriculture. The English interpretation of a settled society was one that depended on a system of law enforcement observed by tightly knit communities of inhabitants engaged in agriculture and industry. The distinction between order and chaos was situated in towns, tillage and the economy. The physically absent crown relied on loyal subjects, rather than expensive armies, to keep its interests from crumbling under the threat of oppressive Irish lords. To preserve and order the commonwealth in the absence of large scale military conquest, the crown’s subjects in Ireland were plied with reminders of their duty to contribute to the ordering of the commonwealth by hewing the forests, building up the earth, manuring the soil, and preserving themselves from the processes of spoil, degeneration and decay that had inflicted medieval Ireland.

Conclusion

The aim of this study has been to identify the major ideologies that informed English approaches to policy within Ireland in the first half of the sixteenth century. English policy towards reform and colonisation was inconsistent and haphazard, particularly when compared to the more comprehensive schemes engineered under Elizabeth I and James I. However, to bypass the pre-Elizabethan period as if an intellectual backwater to the golden era of Spenserian humanist, Protestant colonial theory, would be to relegate the names in this chapter to an ideological vacuum. 269 In the early to mid-sixteenth century, the movements stimulated by the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Reformation reached English institutions and thereby, the English educated circles that supplied the government of Tudor Ireland. By reading the sources with an eye to an ideological apparatus beyond the tired trope of the civilised Englishman bringing enlightenment to the savage Irish ‘other,’ common themes emerge that strongly

268 SP Hen.VIII , vol. II, p. 457. 269 ‘It is easy to evoke the glamour through the persons of Sidney, Drake, Shakespeare, Raleigh and Bacon,’ states Simon, but there were few remarkable figures in her early reign ‘whose beginnings cannot be traced back to that of her brother.’ Simon, Education and Society , p. 268. 117 suggest that policymakers were buoyed by the ideals of, and responsive to, the perceived needs of the commonwealth: a characteristically humanist concept. Reformers attempted to redress ‘the long disorder of the miserable realm of Ireland’ 270 through the bold application of commonwealth ideals, the pivot of a Renaissance ideology that advanced social and economic improvement. The new interest in commonwealth reform coincided with a shift of political focus from the Pale to the kingdom as a whole and the dismantling of political divisions between the Gaelic and English polities. The deployment of commonwealth rhetoric in relation to Irish affairs indicated that the aims of reformers were not to destroy the Irish nation but to correct, redress and reform. This chapter has also explored the development of theological ideas to 1558 and has suggested that English pretensions to dominate and order the Irish landscape and encourage industry were derived from late medieval Christian concepts. Irish policy in the mid-sixteenth century established a precedent of husbandry and cultivation from which Elizabethan and Jacobean writers would draw in their pursuit of a more aggressively Protestant policy towards the rational organisation of the environment. The plantation of Laois and Offaly provided a template for future ‘improvers’ to draw upon and created a precedent for social engineering that would be attempted on a much larger scale as part of an increasingly draconian colonial policy.271 Parts three and four will trace the development of the themes of humanism and improvement in relation to Ireland in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In part two, the parameters of the discussion will be widened as the impact of the Protestant reformation in England was consolidated in state institutions and government.

270 Bradshaw (ed.), ‘A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland,’ p. 304. 271 The leases in the Munster plantation were framed after the manner ‘of the conquered lands of Leix and Offaly.’ Cal. Carew 1575-88 , p. 395. 118 Part Three: 1558-1603

1. The Irish inheritance of Elizabeth I

The foundations of Tudor policy with regard to Ireland can be found in the numerous reform proposals and treatises forwarded to Henry VIII and his secretary, Thomas Cromwell. Recognising that the medieval partitioning of the king’s Irish lordship was politically untenable and that reform was imperative, Cromwell instituted a series of centralising reforms aimed at establishing English dominion in Ireland. The central consideration of the Dublin administration under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I was to consolidate English rule in Ireland by eliminating constitutional and cultural divisions between the Irish and English inhabitants. The intent was to transform Ireland from a fragmented frontier into a united commonwealth. The surrender and regrant initiative was designed to support this general policy by drawing Gaelic lords and their followers into an extended English administration. Another strategy to buttress the centralising aims of government was colonisation. The restive borders of the Pale were targeted in the great redistribution of crown land into the hands of English and Old English proprietors. The plantation of O’More and O’Connor territories in Laois and Offaly initiated the strategy of systematic plantation to expand English administration and extend urban networks in Ireland. The poor outcomes of these initiatives and the survival of independent Gaelic polities extinguished hopes for the peaceful transition of the Irish into the English fold. As the political influence of the Old English waned, the nature of government in Ireland became increasingly aggressive, militaristic, and dependent upon confiscation, plantation and subjugation. The perennial disorder of Ireland constituted an ‘unwelcome inheritance’ for Mary’s successor, Elizabeth I. The government was faced with numerous barriers that made lasting government penetration of the outer reaches a virtually impossible prospect. Gaelic-dominated regions, primarily in the west and north, were thinly populated with scattered and impermanent settlements. Travel over the land was hampered by swaths of undrained bogs and forests. The historic power structures of the Gaelic chieftaincies remained sovereign over large areas 119 of the country. The population on the borders of the Pale continued to be harassed by raiders. The government was woefully ineffective in enforcing its will over stalwart lords whose fealty to the English crown was nominal or non-existent. As the religious question grew in significance, the conflict gained an added ideological dimension. Gaelic and Old English rebels sought help from Catholic powers and justified their actions on religious grounds. To English officials, Ireland was a land of war, a sparse and remote borderland dominated by degenerate feudal lords and a menacing indigenous population who dwelled in the bogs and mountains. Ireland’s reputation as a chronically violent and widely mismanaged realm was affirmed by the weary confessions of veterans such as Sir Henry Sidney, who would remember Ireland as ‘the place I protest, before God, which I cursed, hated, and detested.’ 1 An equally morose assessment of the country was offered by Lord Deputy Sir William Fitzwilliam, who compared Ireland to ‘a disease which greviously eateth inwardly […] to the […] waste of all the stuff applied unto the same.’ 2

1.1. Directions of Irish policy, 1558-1603

The English state inherited by Elizabeth was in poor financial health and occupied with wars with France and Scotland. In Ireland, the administrative costs of protecting the English population exceeded the crown’s income. In such circumstances, a complete conquest requiring enormous effort and a sizeable army was out of the question, and Elizabeth’s approach was to delay decisive action and reduce costs without compromising security. The crown needed to secure Ireland against the encroachment of French and, later, Spanish and Papal forces. Elizabeth’s parsimony was reflected in her preference for mild dealings with the Irish, whom Elizabeth chose to treat as her subjects. The divide between theory and practice was no better demonstrated than in the actions of the military. English military captains in Ireland were convinced that gentleness would not be enough to keep the Irish obedient, and instead opted to use terrorising tactics and martial law to enforce English control. Instead of planting peace, the oppressive

1 C. Brady (ed.), A Viceroy’s Vindication?: Sir Henry Sidney’s Memoir of Service in Ireland, 1556-1578 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002), p. 81. 2 M.A. Lyons, ‘Fitzwilliam, Sir William,’ ODNB . 120 behaviour of English captains such as Walter Raleigh and Humphrey Gilbert antagonised the local population and stirred unrest and rebellion. In Dublin, the Elizabethan lord deputies spearheaded programmes to extend crown government and English social, political and legal institutions to the Irish lordships. A number of initiatives were launched, including the establishment of provincial presidencies, or regional councils, in Munster and Connacht. The councils became self-financing through the implementation of ‘composition,’ or the abolishment of private armies by converting cess (supplying soldiers with goods at fixed prices) into a fixed tax. These bold policies antagonised local magnates who resented the intrusion of English governors and the burden of supporting the English army. The intrusions of government vexed the local lords, whose determined resistance collided with royal captains who were empowered by martial law to enforce obedience by any means necessary. The escalation of violence boiled over into rebellion in 1579 when the exiled James FitzGerald landed in Munster with a papal force. Fighting raged until Gerald FitzGerald, the earl of Desmond, was killed in 1583. The greatest crisis of Elizabethan Irish government emerged from the north, where the Gaelic confederacy led by Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, drew the English into a devastating military campaign known as the Nine Years War (1594-1603). O’Neill’s rising set off a wave of Irish rebellion throughout the country. Shaken to the core, Elizabeth’s Irish government was forced, by mounting crisis, into the war of conquest it had long been avoiding. 3 A major point of continuity in Irish policy was the promotion of plantation projects. Beginning in the 1560s, the government received a number of petitions by private companies to set up colonies in former Irish territories in Ulster and Munster. The major schemes that received enough support to justify any serious attempt were Warham St. Leger’s corporate town in Munster, and the proposed colonies of Thomas Smith and the earl of Essex in Ulster. Despite the adventurers’ ambitious and detailed plans, determined Irish resistance and tentative crown support doomed the schemes to failure. The largest plantation scheme of Elizabeth’s reign occurred in Munster, where spoliation during the Desmond rebellion resulted in a devastating famine that decimated the population.

3 For an overview of Elizabethan government in Ireland, see Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , chapters 11 and 12. 121 The escheatment of Desmond’s territory led to the establishment of a plantation on a much greater scale than the Laois and Offaly experiment. Comprehensive central planning and the involvement of members of the English gentry meant that the scheme progressed further than the private ventures of the previous decades. Still, difficulties arose. English landlords (known as undertakers) struggled to fulfil the terms of their leases. The government vacillated on the recognition of native claims to parts of the territory, and eventually granted some lands back to Irish petitioners. The Irish, scattered among the English newcomers, compromised the ability of the planters to unite in the event of rebellion. When the plantation was overrun by O’Neill’s forces in the Nine Years War, the English inhabitants fled without resistance. The dynamics of Elizabethan plantation activity will be considered in the following sections. Beginning with a review of developments in Laois and Offaly, focus will shift towards the plantation schemes in Ulster and Munster. It will be shown that the multitude of projects to plant and develop Irish territory in the later sixteenth century reflected a burgeoning interest in the opportunities of colonial enterprise among English citizens.

1.2. Laois and Offaly

The plantation of Laois and Offaly was intended to become the focus of urban development in the midlands region. Plans for a major colonisation effort were largely thwarted by native resistance and ill-planning. At Elizabeth’s accession, the ‘towns’ of Philipstown and Maryborough remained little more than a series of military outposts guarding against continuing onslaughts of unreconciled natives. The few settlers who remained were overwhelmed by threats of spoil, raids and destruction, and many simply gave up and left.4 In 1560 Elizabeth wrote to Sussex, concerned that the countries ‘do yet remain unstablished or unhabited, being planted only with our men of war.’ Sussex was instructed to ‘build such castles and houses of strength […] for the better possessing of the same countries’ and to distribute the rest to ‘convenient persons to take and inhabit the same, and to use the same grounds in manner of husbandry for increase of tillage for corn.’ 5

4 Dunlop, ‘Plantation of Leix and Offaly,’ p. 85; Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 28. 5 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 291-2. 122 A number of grants were made early in Elizabeth’s reign. Maryborough and Philipstown were made market towns in 1567 and boroughs in 1569. 6 Agriculture was the mainstay of the plantation, which was centred on the forts and the small villages that arose in their immediate vicinity. Industrial development was limited to a few isolated examples, such as a late sixteenth century ironworks at Dysart in Laois.7 Upon his appointment as lord deputy in 1565, Sidney found the country in a ruined and distempered condition. Touring the country in 1575, Sidney noted that the plantation was ‘much spoiled and wasted by the race and offspring of the old native inhabiters.’ Englishmen were clearly unwilling to settle in a frontier zone with uncertain lease terms, and it had become necessary to accept Irish as tenants.8 Many landlords failed to fulfil the terms of their grants and the settlers were tormented by the unsuppressed Irish. Sidney hoped that the meagre gains of the plantation would instruct future plantation schemes, noting the small achievements of ‘honour and profit’ in comparison to the treasure that had been spent.9 The lessons of Laois and Offaly contributed to evolving colonial strategy in Ireland. By the end of the sixteenth century, the English recognised that successful plantation would require the complete eradication of Gaelic social infrastructure before the foundations of English society could be solidly established. Transplanting the English shire to the Irish wastelands would require sufficient capital, a steady flow of settlers encouraged by favourable long term leases, systems of local government and law enforcement, towns and villages, and the encouragement of agriculture, industry and trade. The setbacks of the midlands plantation reminded officials that the social transformation of Ireland was unattainable without considerable charges. Tentatively, the government began to entertain and sanction the rigorous schemes of private investors for colonial finance and organisation. The adventurers who targeted Irish territory for colonial development saw the country as an outlet for enterprise and ambition. Schemes of

6 R.A. Butlin, ‘Irish Towns in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ in R.A. Butlin (ed.), The Development of the Irish Town (London: Croom Helm, 1977), p. 79. 7 Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 28. 8 Dunlop, ‘Plantation of Leix and Offaly,’ p. 78. 9 Cal. Carew, 1575-88 , p. 33. 123 this type were concurrent with the growth of corporate enterprise and projecting in Elizabethan England.

1.3. Ulster

Elizabeth claimed title to the earldom of Ulster through inheritance, and could exercise her legal rights to remove ‘interlopers.’ Ulster presented a major obstacle to Tudor reform because of its remoteness, prevalent Gaelic culture, and the native lords’ determined resistance against English interference. The chief concern in the north was the continuous warfare stirred up by the head of the O’Neills, Shane O’Neill. The presence of Gaelic Scots from the western isles and highlands compounded the challenges to civil English government. Controlled settlement was suggested for the north by Sussex, who recommended that walled towns should be built at Carrickfergus, Lough Foyle and Newry, ‘to draw the people of those parts to a more civility,’ and port towns given special privileges to encourage trade. 10 In 1565 the constable of Carrickfergus castle, William Piers, petitioned the queen to set up a garrison and colony in North East Ulster. The proposal involved planting four thousand ‘naturall subjectes’ within three or four years. The details of the request suggest that it was intended to be a joint stock venture. Piers requested letters patent ‘to incorporate certein persones of us to the nombre of twelve as a bodie politique under her majestie.’ 11 This corporation was to carry out the colony’s affairs, have control over customs, trade and fishing rights, to have the authority to make grants of land, and the power to conduct military operations. A number of merchants expressed interest in participating in the venture. 12 The proposal enjoyed the support of the lord deputy. Sidney’s plan was to draw investors from among the nobility and gentry in England. The investors would be expected to equip settlers with supplies to build the colony. He informed William Cecil that settlers should be prepared to develop the land from scratch, ‘as if they should imagine to finde nothinge here but earthe,’13 Ex-soldiers would be permitted to settle in the colony, but those who possessed useful skills

10 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 333. 11 NASPI 63/9/83. 12 White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ II, p. 170; Canny, Elizabethan Conquest , p. 73. 13 NASPI 63/26/18. 124 such as husbandry or a trade would be preferred.14 Humphrey Gilbert, then serving in Ireland as a military captain, found ‘sundry gentlemen of good accompt’ who agreed to raise companies of followers to repair to Ireland and ‘therby to plant theim selfs and their company’ in the north, ‘to contnew yn habitation there.’ 15 Affirming her support, Elizabeth ordered Sidney to organise a survey before writing up grants, expecting that the plantation of her English subjects would ‘have perpetuitee.’ 16 The gentlemen investors were to bring their own tenants with them to Ireland to occupy the north and establish English government there.17 Fortifications on the sea coast would be necessary to protect the plantation. Garrisons would operate until the country was secured, at which time the castles and forts would be given over to English gentlemen.18 Planning reached a halt when the crown expressed reluctance to finance any aspect of the scheme apart from a contribution towards the fortifications. 19 The project never moved ahead, but Piers continued to submit proposals for plantations in the north. His plans were threatened by the schemes of Thomas Smith and the earl of Essex in the north east. Not long after the demise of Essex’s adventure, Piers submitted his own plans for the plantation of the Ards peninsula, to be run by an incorporated company (a ‘bodye pollytyque’), which would build a town, control trade, stem Scottish migration, and plant English settlers. 20 The campaign against O’Neill ended when he was assassinated by the rival MacDonnell clan in 1567. The posthumous attainder of O’Neill and the confiscation of his estates presented a major opportunity to colonise the province. The occasion of O’Neill’s downfall enabled the scheme known as the ‘enterprise of Ulster.’ The scheme, whose principal leaders were Thomas Smith and the earl of Essex, was intended to introduce the civil regeneration of the region through plantation by private colonists.21 One of the prime movers behind the planting of Ulster was Smith, who in 1571 was awarded a grant in the Ards. Ireland was a source of preoccupation for Smith. He strongly believed in the civilising potential of colonisation as practised by the ancient Romans. Convinced that the solution to

14 Canny, Elizabethan Conquest , p. 75. 15 Sidney SP , p. 66. 16 Sidney SP , p. 69. 17 Sidney SP , pp. 71-2. 18 Sidney SP , p. 73. 19 Sidney SP , p. 108. 20 Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 34; M. O’Dowd, ‘Piers, William,’ ODNB . 21 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , pp. 291, 295. 125 civilising Ireland was to set up colonies in imitation of the Romans, Smith turned to the idea of peopling his colony through wealthy landowners who would supply colonists from their tenants. He harnessed printing technology to appeal for investors. Smith advertised the fertility of the soil and encouraged younger sons to seize the opportunity to increase their wealth and fame. He pitched the project to the gentleman investor who would become renowned for improving the country at his own charge. 22 The adventurers’ voyage to the Ards would be led by Smith’s son, Thomas Smith Jr. By the spring of 1572, Smith Jr. accumulated eight hundred men who were to sail with him from Liverpool. Caught up in delays, many of the men drifted away before setting sail. Smith Jr. eventually reached the Ards with a force of just one hundred men. The enterprise was further hindered by the opposition of the lord deputy, William Fitzwilliam. Fitzwilliam was upset that the Smiths had failed to consult with him on the venture, regarding the slight to be an insult to his authority. Fitzwilliam weakened Smith’s forces by transferring half of Captain Nicholas Malby’s soldiers, lately joined with Smith’s, to Newry.23 Hampered by insufficient funds, support and supplies, Smith Jr.’s expedition was cut short in October 1573 when he was killed by his own Irish servants.24 Following his son’s death, Smith drew up new, more detailed plans for the plantation. The documents containing Smith’s instructions exhibit an elaborate system of administration, plans for a walled city, strict codes of conduct and discipline, and mandates to build, occupy and farm. Smith’s municipal plans closely resembled incorporated boroughs and cities in England. 25 The new plantation was to assume a quasi-military character. It was to be overseen by a deputy colonel (or ‘chieftain’) and a common council, and would be inhabited by soldier-planters who would assume duties of defence, building and farming. Soldiers were to be adequately furnished with weapons and be ready to receive instructions from the colonel. 26 Gentlemen who provided a certain number of footmen and horsemen were to become lords with the authority to hold

22 Thomas Smith, A Letter Sent by I. B. Gentleman unto his Very Frende Mayster R. C. Esquire (1571), in G. Hill (ed.), An Historical Account of the MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast: Archer and Sons, 1873), p. 408. 23 Morgan, ‘Colonial Venture of Sir Thomas Smith,’ p. 266. 24 Morgan, ‘Colonial Venture of Sir Thomas Smith,’ p. 264. 25 Withington, Society in Early Modern England , p. 208. 26 ERO MS D/DSH/O1/2. 126 manorial courts. The principal city was to be called Elizabetha, which would be adjoined by parishes. Farmers and labourers would be required to live within these parishes. Smith’s justification was that living in close proximity encouraged civility among men. ‘[F]or the manner of man is,’ he wrote, ‘the more they resort together, and have common profit or peril, the more civil and obedient they be; else they will be and grow beastly and savage, which hath been hitherto one cause of the ruin of Ireland.’ 27 Upon their arrival, settlers were to contribute to building fortifications, trenches and buildings. Each man was to build a house within entrenched land, and was to dwell there with his family for at least two years unless called out for important causes or given special licence to leave. Any man who did not adhere to the two-year residency clause would lose his land ‘by cause of his rebellyon & weakning of the Colony.’ A highway was to be built to link the town to the surrounding ploughlands. Smith’s designs for Roman-inspired military conquest and centralised settlement were based on the assumption that the colony would be besieged in a state of war unless the settlers fulfilled their duties towards accomplishment of the civilising mission. Until ‘the Colony be settled, that you have quietnes for the artificers to worke in the towne, husbandmen in the fielde, and the marchauntes to travell into faires, and markettes within the territorie of the Colony,’ Smith warned, ‘yt must be understanded, that you are either wholly in the warre, or half in warre and half in peace.’ 28 Despite Smith’s careful plans and demonstrations of enlightened humanist principles, the colony could not be revived. Ill-funded, opposed by the lord deputy and besieged by the native population, the Smith family enterprise crumbled before any part of it was accomplished.29 The failure did not deter other adventurers from attempting to colonise the north east. In 1573, Walter Devereux, earl of Essex, offered to lead a company of adventurers to conquer and plant territories in Antrim. As a well-connected aristocrat, the earl of Essex was more successful in convincing younger sons of gentry to accompany him to Ireland. Essex reported the presence of ‘divers younge gentlemen of noble howses and of good calling’ in

27 A.J. Butler and S. Crawford Lomas (eds.), Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, January-June 1583 and Addenda (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1913), p. 490. 28 ERO MS D/DSH/O1/2. 29 Morgan, ‘Colonial Venture of Sir Thomas Smith,’ p. 267. 127 his company. 30 Essex approached his enterprise with a characteristically Tudor arrogance, expecting to rule the region as a virtually autonomous governor. In his ‘offer’ regarding the inhabiting of Clandeboye , the Glens and the Route in Antrim (a territory referred to as the ‘circuit’), Essex requested power of martial law to treat Irish and Scottish enemies with ‘fire and sword.’ He wanted authority to fortify and build upon the havens, to incorporate towns, cut passes, build fortifications, create shires and pass laws and ordinances together with his council.31 The Irish lords would be persuaded to accept terms of surrender and regrant. Towns were to be established, fortified and bridged in strategic places such as Belfast, Coleraine and Massereene. He offered his adventurers land along the coast between Carrickfergus and the river Bann. These locations were chosen to guard against Scottish invasion and to encourage each adventurer to ‘relieve and help the other.’ 32 Essex’s adventure was troubled from the outset by bad weather, conflict with the O’Neills and the Scots, outbreaks of disease, mutinies and desertions. The vacillations of the government and the refusal of Fitzwilliam to support the scheme compounded the misery of the remaining adventurers. By the spring of 1574, Essex declared that his adventurers had failed and offered to surrender the governorship of Ulster. 33 Essex had put himself in debt to finance the scheme and absorbed much of the cost himself. He believed that enemies on all sides were plotting his failure and downfall. Despite significant hardship, Essex continued to shore up the Ulster project, believing that it could not be abandoned only half- won. Essex blamed malicious voices and the ill-reports of the departed adventurers who sought to discredit him and his enterprise.34 The government found Essex’s adventurers to be accountable for the disaster, having failed to follow through on their duties.35 Essex threw accusations of cowardice at investors who had backed out of the enterprise. These men ‘never put their feete where their eyees mighte see the fertillytie of the soile.’ Instead, Essex resolved that men of ‘good mynd’ should be encouraged to come forth, buoyed by the

30 NASPI 63/42/19. 31 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 439-441. 32 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 448-9. 33 CSPI 1571-75 , p. 529. 34 ‘With what boldness could I show my face in England to return thither without my purpose or apparent good desert of the queen or the realm, being the original ground of my coming thither?’ A selection of Essex’s letters to Cecil can be found in CSPI 1571-75 , pp. 556, 566, 758. 35 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 462. 128 accounts of the rich and fertile soil. Once the towns had been walled, Essex believed that even greater numbers would surely come to settle in the plantation.36 A ‘device’ to save the enterprise, orchestrated by Cecil (now Lord Burghley), stipulated that the Queen’s soldiers in Clandeboy were ‘to be masters of the soyle therof,’ enabling future English inhabitants ‘with more safety to plante and to manure the grounde there.’ The soldiers were to be ‘a buckler [shield] to the said inhabitantes and manurers of the grounde.’ New adventurers were to be sent over to supply the gap opened by the desertion of the original adventurers. The following spring, the adventurers would send farmers to receive allotments. The farmers supplied by the adventurers would be responsible for husbandry and military duties when required.37 Yet, for all Burghley’s efforts to support the enterprise, the queen was losing confidence in Essex and his disastrous expedition. The adventurers never made any serious headway beyond Carrickfergus. After the queen called off the venture, Essex grieved for his reputation, believed that he had been disgraced. He was, however, unwavering in his conviction that his enterprise would have succeeded had Fitzwilliam not fought so passionately to discredit him. Essex succumbed to illness in Dublin in 1576. 38 For his pains, Essex had only been successful in the planting of Lecale, another territory which he had been granted.39

1.4. Munster

As plantation projects were being forwarded in Ulster, the south was also being targeted for plantation by private companies. Sir Warham St. Leger, son of the former lord deputy, Anthony St. Leger, arrived in Ireland to ‘improve his fortune.’ In 1566, he applied for the Munster presidency, although his candidacy was rejected by the queen. Following the imprisonment of the earl of Desmond, St. Leger returned to Ireland with a view to establish a colony in Munster. 40 St. Leger forwarded a proposal to Sir Richard Grenville to plant lands that he had leased from Desmond. Grenville accumulated over one hundred followers to join him in

36 BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/109, f. 448. 37 NASPI 63/46/18; Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 468. 38 Canny, Elizabethan Conquest , pp. 89-90. 39 Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 33. 40 D. Edwards, ‘St Leger, Sir Warham,’ ODNB . 129 the plantation. 41 St. Leger and Grenville formed a company with a number of other adventurers, and together they petitioned the government with a scheme to create a corporate settlement in Baltimore, southwest of the colony St. Leger and Grenville had established at Kerrycurrihy.42 The petitioners requested the rights to all escheated and forfeited lands and havens in Munster, together with fishing prerogatives. The adventurers planned to build a corporate town at Baltimore, Berehaven or another haven. They agreed to undertake the building of fortifications, for which they would transport artificers and labourers from England. Seeking letters patent, the petitioners attempted to sell their project by listing the ways that the benefits of private plantation would extend to the commonwealth. By claiming the havens for themselves, they could cut off the supply of weapons to rebels from French and Spanish vessels. By exploiting the fishing off the coast, subjects would become enriched and the crown honourably advanced. The traffic of ‘forbydden wares’ by strangers and trade with England’s rivals could be controlled. The government would save on costs as the corporation would assume responsibility for the confiscation of territory ‘unlawfully’ occupied by the Irish and for the subsequent English plantation.43 The plantation would act as a safeguard against war with Spain, a serious risk if Munster was left unguarded. The group sought merchant involvement in their enterprise, which suggests that they intended to exploit all possible economic channels. Finally, the commercial revival of the region would produce great profits and commodities.44 The group never received letters patent for the plantation. The queen was not inclined to lend her support to the audacious proposal, and the government leaned towards the safer tactic of diplomacy with the Irish chiefs.45 St. Leger failed to raise the necessary capital to cover his costs, 46 and the government was unwilling to lend financial support to a group who expected so much autonomy in the province, including the power to confiscate land, control trade, pass laws and

41 Canny, Elizabethan Conquest , p. 78. 42 Piveronus Jr., ‘Sir Warham St. Leger,’ pp. 19-20. 43 Piveronus Jr., ‘Sir Warham St. Leger,’ p. 21. 44 Correspondence between the petitioners and the government can be found in NASPI 63/26/52, 53, 81; 63/27/22; 63/28/2; 63/28/61. 45 Canny, Elizabethan Conquest , pp. 77-80. 46 St. Leger loaned £10 000 from the government in order to lease Desmond’s lands, offering his English lands as security: NASPI 63/28/19. 130 execute martial law. 47 St. Leger’s fortunes in Munster crumbled when James FitzMaurice, cousin of the incarcerated earl of Desmond, responded to threats of English occupation by leading a rising of local chiefs. The rebels targeted St. Leger and Grenville’s infant colony in Kerrycurrihy before moving on to besiege Cork. 48 It would take an even greater rebellion to convince the government that plantation was a worthwhile strategy to control the south. The full account of the 1586 Munster plantation has been meticulously recorded in the superb book by MacCarthy-Morrogh.49 Therefore, and for the sake of brevity, a basic summary of the development of the plantation follows. At the end of the second Desmond Rebellion in 1583, the population of Munster had been decimated by fighting, plague, and famine. The country was empty, or ‘waste,’ and schemes to repopulate it were quickly set in motion. The government settled on a plantation scheme on a larger scale than had yet been attempted, and which would be controlled and orchestrated by the government. Unlike the common stock basis of earlier schemes, the base of the Munster plantation was social prestige and wealth. The planned plantation was less robustly militarised than previous schemes. Those given lands were to be gentlemen and courtiers out of England, who would be beacons of civility in a disordered landscape. The 1586 articles of plantation were written for the English country gentleman, who was to oversee the transplantation of a complete stratum of settlers from freeholders to cottagers.50 Only honourable men of sufficient capital were suitable to become an undertaker, a position which was advertised as ‘a thing fit for gentlemen of good behaviour and credit, and not for any man of inferior calling.’ The Privy Council promoted the scheme to some Somerset gentlemen as having benefits for younger sons and brethren of good families, but also ‘to those of inferior callings and degrees,’ which was perhaps an appeal to labourers and tenants. 51 The ‘directions’ written up for the plantation referred to the formation of groups or ‘societies’ who would settle together. The clause

47 NASPI 63/28/3. 48 Piveronus Jr., ‘Sir Warham St. Leger,’ pp. 28-9. 49 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation . 50 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation , pp. 55, 112. 51 J. Lodge (ed.), Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica: or, a Select Collection of State Papers; Consisting of Royal Instructions, Directions, Dispatches, and Letters , Vol. I (Dublin: David Hay, 1772), p. 57; Cal. Carew, 1575-88 , p. 419. 131 stipulated ‘that such as joyne in any societie of undertaking & the peopling of Mounter accordinge to this our good intencon shalbe permitted to be planted one by the other as neare as […] may be laid together without interruption or intermicture of others,’ and that any lands left to the crown should also ‘lye together and not dispersed.’ 52 It was deemed that the tenants on each seigniory (estate) should hail from the same country or have some prior affiliation, ‘whereby they maye become the more sociable together,’ and derive more enjoyment from their new country. By this means planters would be more willing to stay permanently and even encourage their neighbours to join them in Munster.53 The lands were divided into estates of twelve, eight, six and four thousand acres. Undertakers of full seigniories were expected to plant ninety-one families. The settlement was to be completed within seven years. 54 Various penalties were applied for undertakers who failed to meet their obligations for building and leasing of houses on their seigniories. In the absence of purpose-built forts, each seigniory was to contribute to the protection of the plantation by providing fifteen horsemen and forty-eight infantrymen. 55 A total of thirty-five undertakers received estates in Limerick, Cork, Kerry, Waterford and Tipperary. Overall, the plantation drew a higher class of investor than Laois and Offaly, and many of the interested undertakers were connected to one another through family or other interests. However, the group with the largest representation in the plantation was military officers. The rest of the undertakers were comprised of gentlemen, officials, courtiers and merchants. 56 Many servitors, or retired soldiers, also received land as compensation for arrears. The articles of Plantation omitted the stipulation of residency that was ubiquitous in the plans for Laois and Offaly. This was a tacit acknowledgement of the gentrification of plantation schemes, for some of the undertakers were courtiers with important duties in England. Nevertheless, absenteeism was strongly criticised and residency was encouraged. Another omission was the provision for defensive buildings. Advance strongholds were not established for the protection

52 TCD MS 672, f 5v. 53 NASPI 63/122/56. 54 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation , pp. 30-1; J.P. Hennessy, Sir Walter Ralegh in Ireland (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1883), p. 237. 55 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation , p. 32. 56 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation , pp. 66, 69. 132 of incoming settlers. 57 Although there is some evidence that defensive necessities were taken seriously by undertakers who transported stocks of armour and munitions, undertakers would later be accused of failing to fulfil requirements for militia forces on their seigniories.58 When the territories were being surveyed and allotted, some of the escheated lands were granted back to native claimants who argued that they had been wrongfully dispossessed. As a result, the confiscated lands were piecemeal, and the English were settled in scattered segments rather than a single stretch of territory. Furthermore, many Irish labourers made their way into English seigniories despite a proscription against Irish tenants. The mixed social composition was cited by contemporaries as a contributing factor in the plantation’s demise. The presence of the Irish among the English was believed to have diluted the strength of the English and compromised the ‘transforming’ aims of the plantation. 59 This survey of the major plantation schemes in Elizabethan Ireland provides an essential context for the following exploration of the intellectual justification of colonial activity. In these pages, Tudor policy and plantation will be considered with respect to major themes in humanist and Protestant thought. I will demonstrate that English attitudes towards Ireland were grounded in the classical lessons of humanism and the tenets of Protestantism. The moral philosophies of humanism and Protestantism were guiding structures that possessed transforming assumptions about the Irish commonwealth and gave moral sanction to ‘pedestrian’ interests such as the acquisition of land, wealth and status. The principles of humanism (in chapter two) and Protestantism (in chapter three) were articulated by officials and self-styled consultants who assumed responsibility for eradicating the conditions of disorder and who aspired to construct a well-ordered commonwealth.

57 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation , pp. 36, 38; Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 49. 58 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation , pp. 125, 134. 59 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation , p. 140. 133 2. Humanism

2.1. Introduction: humanism and reform in Elizabethan Ireland

In part two, it was demonstrated that the commonwealth ideal that dominated Tudor political discourse was transported to Ireland as leverage for national reform. Advocates of reform reached for the greater goal of a united Ireland, but the government shied from the costs of conquest and focused instead on securing the Pale and the marches. Elizabethan administrators inherited many intractable problems in Ireland. The escalating cycle of violence demanded a revision of government strategy. The establishment of provincial presidencies and controlled colonisation made inroads towards bringing crown rule to areas where English influence had lapsed or had never existed. The humanist categorisation of order and disorder informed Elizabethan reaction to Ireland. The policy to extend English rule into Gaelic Ireland was supported by the humanist conceit that the purpose of government was the preservation of order. Intimately connected to this idea was the humanist belief that the foundation and maintenance of commonwealths were noble expressions of civic duty. 60 Munster official and planter Ludowick Bryskett articulated the desires of his contemporaries that Ireland could be fashioned into an ordered commonwealth, hoping ‘that this poore countrey may by a wel-ordered and setled forme of gouernement, and by due and equall administration of justice beginne to flourish as other Common-weales do.’ 61 Another, anonymous reform author explained that concern for commonwealth had motivated him to compose his tract: ‘the desire wee have to see the state of the comon welthe once to florishe, is the only spurr that hath pricked us forward to this presumtious, but officious and dewtifull attempte.’ 62 The fundamental aim of reformers in Ireland was to improve the commonwealth by creating the social conditions by which they could achieve universal order. Approaching the sources within this context, imprints of humanism are found to branch across reform discourse in more varied ways than hitherto acknowledged by scholars.

60 Fitzmaurice, ‘The Ideology of Early Modern Colonisation,’ p. 2. 61 Lodowick Bryskett, A Discourse of Civill Life (London: printed for William Aspley, 1606), p. 158. 62 W. Maley (ed.), ‘The Supplication of the Blood of the English Most Lamentably Murdered in Ireland, Cryeng out of the Yearth for Revenge (1598),’ Analecta Hibernica 36 (1995), p. 74. 134 Leading northern humanists argued that the purpose of all laws was to ensure the harmonious survival of the commonwealth and the happiest life for its people.63 True civil order could only be attained in a commonwealth governed with wisdom and virtue and that induced its members to virtuous living. Order and stability were the foundations of a good commonwealth, and the noblest form of a commonwealth was defined by universal order and social unity. In his wide- ranging treatment of the English polity, De Republica Anglorum (1583), Thomas Smith defined a commonwealth as ‘a society or common doing of a multitude of free men collected together and united by common accord and covenauntes among themselves, for the conservation of themselves aswell in peace as in warre.’ 64 Discord, rebellion and corruption were the symptoms of an ill commonwealth. A common strategy for assessing of the ‘health’ of the commonwealth was to liken the state to a living, functioning organism. In Holinshed’s Irish Chronicles (1586), dedicated to Sidney, the author praised Sidney’s commitment to ‘repairing of that broken commonweale and ruinous state,’ and quantified the nation’s health in terms of a living being, ‘being as it were a man altogither infected with sores and biles, and in whose bodie from the crowne of the head to the sole of the foot there is no health.’ 65 In 1588 the master of the ordnance, Sir George Carew, compared weak governorship to ‘a bad physician qualifying, not curing, the disease.’ He blamed previous governors for not doing more to enforce obedience through preaching, education and law enforcement. Carew complained that governors had failed to induce obedience, nor addressed justice with any proper diligence. To accustom the people to sincere allegiance, governors ought to ‘reform with sharpness and cherish with reward.’ 66 In order to restore the commonwealth to health, the Irish had to be made to understand that their duties to the state included a submissive obedience. The reigning chaos in Ireland was addressed with prescriptions for the robust application of English common law. In 1567, the queen wrote to Sidney that ‘our ordinary writs’ were ‘the best degree of obedyence in that realm,’ and that removing the tyranny of the Irish lords would allow the people at last to ‘feele

63 Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought I , p. 235. 64 Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum: A Discourse on the Commonwealth of England (1583), ed. L. Alston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906), p. 20. 65 Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland , Vol. VI (1586, repr. London: J. Johnson et. al. , 1808), p. 328. 66 Cal. Carew, 1575-88 , p. 469. 135 and tast of the swetres of civile ordre and justice.’ 67 Progress towards addressing public disorder was made with the foundation of the Court of Castle Chamber in 1571. This court, modelled on the Star Chamber in England, was designed to enforce the peace by hearing cases that dealt with public order, such as riot. Its purpose, as Crawford explains, was to bring ‘disorder more clearly within the purview of the council,’ and it was hoped that the court would ‘encourage greater stability and to stimulate recourse to English justice.’ 68 An official under James I would call the court ‘the school house to abate the pride of the great men and to teach them obedience and subjection.’ 69 The establishment of the court institutionalised the drive for order in Ireland. Understanding that the fractures in a commonwealth were exacerbated by a lack of public order and social cohesion, it was resolved that Irish subjects had to be taught their duties and allegiances. It was hoped that the policy of plantation would aid the core government strategy by providing an extended urban network through which English law could expand into the Gaelic provinces. The determining factor in the success of the scheme would be the triumph of an English order over an Irish one. In order to preserve a measure of civic virtue in the Irish wilderness, the duties and behaviour of incoming inhabitants were made conditions of their leases. Planters were usually instructed to settle within or near English townships, build permanent structures such as houses and fortifications, be proficient in husbandry or a trade, retain the English language and dress, and provide mutual aid in times of war or when a crime was committed against a neighbour. As well as providing an administrative base for provincial government, it was hoped that the conduct of the colonists would illustrate good order for their Gaelic neighbours. Yet in the creation of social cohesion, the manner by which Gaelic inhabitants were to be absorbed into the anglicised Irish commonwealth required some amount of moral negotiation. The goal of all policy was the eradication of Gaelic culture and, therefore, the complete cultural absorption of the Irish into an English commonwealth. The perceived utter degeneracy of the most insolent rebels caused many to consider whether the salvation of the majority justified weeding out those who could not be

67 Sidney SP , p. 76. 68 J.G. Crawford, Anglicizing the Government of Ireland: The Irish Privy Council and the Expansion of Tudor Rule, 1556-1578 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), pp. 238-41. 69 R. Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland, c. 1613,’ Analecta Hibernica 38 (2004), p. 17. 136 educated or reasoned with. Elizabeth herself wavered in her humanity towards Irish rebels. In 1565 she showed some lenience towards Shane O’Neill, and was willing to acknowledge that his rebellion was the product of a lack of proper instruction, for ‘he hath not been either borne or brought up to understand his duty as other subjects.’ 70 Some months later, the queen had evidently given up hope that O’Neill would submit, describing him as ‘a cankrid dangerous rebell’ who should be ‘clearly rooted out’ and ‘utterly extirpid.’ 71 Elizabeth elected to punish rebels ‘for examples sake’ and give lands to ‘better subjects.’ The queen’s instructions to prefer good subjects mirrored the prevalent humanist belief in the duties of the citizen to serve the public good. In Ireland, magistrates called forth discipline, obedience and communal conscience by rewarding good subjects with praise and favour.72 Elizabeth’s chief advisor Lord Burghley, presiding over the matter of Ireland’s reform until his death, approached the situation with a characteristically humanist idealism. Burghley, who was reputed to always carry about his copy of Cicero’s De Officiis ,73 retained a belief that Elizabeth’s Irish subjects could be reformed, ‘little by little,’ through a conciliatory strategy combined with ‘selective use’ of coercion and plantation.74 Burghley’s identification with the reforming ideals of the Tudor Commonwealthmen was exhibited in his Irish dealings. Elizabeth’s chief counsellor was closely involved in plantation schemes and was a major investor in industrial projects.75 Burghley’s belief in the worthiness of the reform effort was a product of a humanist education that conditioned men to see society as capable of improvement and perfection. By ‘ennobling’ government policy through the moral axioms of humanism, Elizabethan officials, adventurers and entrepreneurs justified imperialism and colonialism as works of beneficence towards improving the commonwealth. Isolating the core themes among the political tracts and reform treatises of Elizabethan Ireland, streams of humanistic influence can be identified and explored with regards to the overall ‘ordering’ aims of reform government. The themes discussed here have been chosen for being representative of key aspects of humanist reform. The unifying concept was the realisation of a

70 Sidney SP , p. 6. 71 Sidney SP , p. 18 72 Sidney SP , p. 74. 73 Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman (London: Francis Constable, 1634), p. 45. 74 Maginn, William Cecil , p. 226. 75 Thirsk, Economic Policy , p. 33. 137 well-ordered commonwealth. The themes are martial conquest and the justification of violence, the character and reputation of military service, plantations and projects, adventuring and political participation, and the extension of education.

2.2. Justifications for martial conquest and violence

The poor progress of political reform dissolved expectations that the Irish would be persuaded by diplomatic means to recognise English suzerainty. As a result, policy relied increasingly on the imposition of martial law and brutal repression. Struggling to suppress Gaelic insubordination, officials saw few alternatives to complete the half-finished conquest. If the Irish would not be willingly reconciled to the English crown, they would have to be coerced. In a culture infused with the values of Renaissance humanism, the challenge that confronted Elizabethan reformers was the need to accommodate the intemperance of martial law and massacre within a humanist value system. The character of Elizabethan reform was a seemingly irreconcilable combination of martial conquest doctrine and civic humanist devices proclaiming the virtue of reform. As this section will show, the English were able to find ways to justify the violence of conquest and accommodate their actions within the conventions of humanism. The first step towards reform was the diagnosis of a diseased commonwealth and the isolation of causes of social decay. The Irish commonwealth was defective. The Irish magnates were oppressive, seditious, and corrupt, while the Gaelic population appeared to persist in a cultural backwater with little desire to improve themselves. Some decided that the improvement of Ireland depended on carrying out reform through military action, rooting out the unredeemable members of the population before re-establishing the commonwealth on cleansed foundations. In 1573, Vice-treasurer Sir Edward Fitton, having observed the violence and dissension endemic in Connacht, declared it ‘not worthie to be called a Comon Wealth.’ 76 Fitton believed in the power of fire and sword to assist due processes of justice, for symbols and oaths alone would not bridle the insolent. The English upheld stability, attacking the

76 NASPI 63/42/74. 138 Irish as an ‘unconstant people, naturally delighting in change.’ 77 Irish injustice was typified by exactions such as coign and livery, which maintained the idle kern that crown servant Edmund Tremayne referred to as ‘the devourers of that comonwelth.’ 78 To the Old English members of parliament, Sidney proclaimed that they ‘must not thinke [the English] love you so evill, nay rather thinke truely wee tender your quietnesse and preservation, as a nation derived from our auncestours, ingraffed and incorporate into one body with us,’ but who were disturbed by the Irish who were ‘a sort of barbarous people, odious to God and man,’ and ‘lappe your bloud as greedily as ours.’ The rebellious Irish represented an illegitimate social and political order: they were ‘the sicke and wounded’ parts of the commonwealth and ought be isolated from the healthy civic body represented by the anglicised regions. 79 In the midst of the Nine Years War, one author argued that tactics of generosity and mercy were not enough to tie the Irish race to the English. They possessed ‘neither dutie to god; thought of a comon welthe; alleageaunce to prince; or Christian love amonge themselves.’ If Elizabeth were to eliminate them, she would be cutting off ‘no subjectes […] but the destroyers of yo[re] subjectes.’ 80 In early modern England, order was sought as the basis of a perfect and harmonious society, and decay was the antithesis of order. 81 The metaphor of political Ireland as an organic body was ardently championed by theorists peddling their devices for its wholesale restitution to the crown. Sidney’s reference to the Gaelic Irish as the ‘sicke and wounded’ parts of the political body represented a typical form of rhetoric used by writers on Ireland. Diagnostic, medicinal metaphor was a common trope used by civic humanists.82 When applied to the problems of Ireland, the English government assumed a remedial role, ‘curing’ the social ills, or the ‘decay,’ affecting the commonwealth. Medical analogies were used to condemn the sources of decay and segue into discussion of reform. All policy was intended to bring the commonwealth to a perfect obedience. Law was both a pruning

77 CSPI 1586-88 , p. 17. 78 NASPI 63/32/64. 79 Edmund Campion, A Historie of Ireland, Written in the Yeare 1571 (1633, repr. Dublin: Hibernia Press, 1809), pp. 200, 203. 80 Maley (ed.), ‘Supplication,’ pp. 60, 62. 81 Slack, From Reformation to Improvement , p. 8. 82 For wider discussion, see Hale, The Body Politic . 139 mechanism for cutting away the rotten organs and the binding glue for drawing the rest together under a single constitution and sovereign. The prohibition of Irish laws, language and manners were designs to inoculate against Irish ‘spottes and bleamishes’ from spreading in the community. 83 In 1574, Henry Ackworth fashioned a grisly image in the ‘cankered stomachs of protected or pardoned traitors which upon every occasion break out festering and rotting all parts of the commonwealth.’ His purpose was to highlight the desperate need for adequate systems of legal redress. 84 In his contribution to Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle , Richard Stanyhurst lamented the degeneration of the Old English caused by the intermixing of the English language with the Irish language. From the time of the earliest English settlement, ‘rudenes was day by day in the countrey supplanted, civilitie engrafted, good lawes established, loyaltie observed, rebellion suppressed, and in fine the [scion] of a yong England was lyke to shoote in Ireland.’ Gradually, however, the English became too accustomed to Irish manners, setting off the process of decay: ‘this canker tooke such deepe roote, as the body that before was whole and sounde, was by little and little festered, and in maner wholy putrified.’85 Lord Deputy Sir John Perrot compared Ireland to ‘a body havinge many wowndes’ whose surgeon removed the plaster before the wounds had healed. 86 The frequency with which authors turned to a medical vocabulary suggests that dread of disorder and decay was a very real and potent force behind the impulse for reform. It also conveys the Englishman’s belief in his capacity to heal Ireland by tackling the pressing problems affecting the country. Focusing on the desirability of the final objective, authors hoped to allay concerns about the methods they had chosen to adopt. As Perrot saw it, the existing state was ‘neither godly, nor honourable,’ and a utilitarian reform programme would ‘breed competent wealth, and competent wealth containeth men in a liking obedience where desperate beggary runneth headlong into rebellion.’ Canny has argued that, like Perrot, New English authors grappling with the ‘more gruesome aspects of the Elizabethan conquest’ rationalised their arguments with reference to their noble goals. Violence was, of necessity, bestowed with ‘a sense of moral

83 BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/81, f. 347. 84 CSPI 1571-75 , p. 601. 85 Richard Stanyhurst, Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (1577), ed. L. Miller and E. Power (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1979), p. 14. 86 BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/81, f. 356. 140 purpose.’ 87 The commonwealth would not be brought to order unless they had weeded those who were determined to destabilise English efforts. The very notion of a legitimate Gaelic society was repressed through the discourse of social unity. Until the ties of kinship binding the Irish lords to their followers were broken, the entire Irish population would persist in a state of barbarism and warfare, unable to be drawn from their existing allegiance into a singular government and jurisdiction. Overthrowing unjust rulers and tyrants was framed by humanists as a civic duty, and tyrannicide was propounded by Cicero in De Officiis as a positive act on behalf of the Res Publica , and also by Plato and Aristotle. 88 Shane O’Neill was reviled by the government as he was tyrannous, an ‘archtraitor,’ laying claim to the kingship of Ulster and ruling the province as a tyrant, ‘being feared and not beloved.’ 89 The violent removal of Irish rebels could be vindicated by humanists if it advanced objectives of reform. Tudor reformers conceptualised an ordered and idealised society. By tearing down the obstacles that hindered their capacity to achieve a well-ordered commonwealth, officials and military captains were partaking in a programme that was destructive and ameliorist in equal measure. Violence was a permissible means to suppress disorder, and violence against internal rebels and traitors was free from the law of arms governing the conduct of warfare between states. In a society without a police force, challenges to peace and security were resolved with violence. In the second part of his Image of Irelande (1581), John Derricke showcased the submission of Turlough Luineach O’Neill to Sidney as an opportunity to champion the virtue of obedience and to caution against rebellion, in which ‘none but fools […] do take delight.’90 Written to glorify Sidney’s governorship in Ireland, Derricke set the work against the backdrop of Sidney’s pacification of Gaelic rebels in the midlands, where he had been given license to engage in excessive brutality. 91 An imaginary speech by O’Neill lauds those who submit as good and obedient subjects: ‘Blest shall he be which hath his whole delight/In good attempts and furthering prince’s cause/Contracting him by tenor of her laws.’ O’Neill professes loyalty to the

87 Canny, ‘Anglo-Irish Identity,’ pp. 10, 15. 88 M. Schneider, Cicero Haruspex: Political Prognostication and the Viscera of a Deceased Body Politic (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2004), p. 27. 89 Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, pp. 331, 333. 90 Derricke, Image of Irelande , p. 209. 91 V. Carey, ‘John Derricke's “Image of Irelande”, Sir Henry Sidney, and the Massacre at Mullaghmast, 1578,’ Irish Historical Studies 31, 123 (1999), p. 31. 141 crown by vowing to ‘pluck down’ rebels who stood against the queen, ‘Dismissing them from honour, life, and place,’ vowing to defend the innocent with ‘noble chivalry.’ 92 Derricke also constructed an imaginary confession by the chief rebel Rory Oge O’More, whose family and inner circle were murdered by Sidney’s forces. O’More urges that his sad existence as hunted man waiting for death should be a warning to those who disregard the good example set by O’Neill and instead persist in a traitorous life. Derricke relied heavily on the ancient concept of Fortuna, or the variableness of fortune. Renaissance humanists believed that the surest way to combat the uncertainties of fortune was to exercise virtue. By drawing attention to O’More’s refusal to submit and his wretched fate, Derricke reaffirmed the conceit that evildoers would be punished by fortune, while those who possessed a rational moral code and paid heed to the lessons of history would be rewarded. By abusing the wheel of fortune, the rebel may enjoy victory for a time, but fortune plans to augment his misery when she lures him to his fate: ‘The plague of vengeance that after ensue/A stipend justly to traitors being due.’ His refusal to be obedient doomed O’More to his final downfall and miserable end.93 A key message in the Image of Irelande is the triumph of order over diabolical forces of disorder. Order is represented in the figure of Sidney whose actions, which included the slaughter of hundreds of O’More’s followers and a massacre of Gaelic chiefs, 94 are celebrated as evidence of providential vindication. William Herbert, a planter in Munster who wrote a lengthy treatise on Ireland’s reform, expressed similar assumptions about the appropriate rewards of virtue and vice. In devising the best form of government for Ireland, Herbert, who had a reputation for fair dealings with the Irish, nevertheless advocated the wisdom of Plato that those who displayed virtue would be ‘adorned with honour,’ while those who turned to vice and crime should be punished accordingly.95 If pursued towards the maintenance of a commonwealth, aggressive militarism against an ‘uncivil’ people lay within the acceptable limits of morality. In Utopia , Thomas More had sanctioned violence against natives who rejected the offer of peaceful absorption into Utopian society, for ‘where they do that of their

92 Derricke, Image of Irelande , pp. 210-11. 93 Derricke, Image of Irelande , pp. 215-6. 94 Carey, ‘Massacre at Mullaghmast,’ pp. 317, 319. 95 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 107. 142 own accord, they quickly enter into their method of life and conform to their rules, and this proves a happiness to both nations.’ If the native people resisted the Utopians and their improving pretensions in regards to the neglected soil, the colonisers considered such opposition to be ‘a very just cause of war,’ necessitating the use of force against the colonised people. 96 English actions in the New World can also support the supposition that acts of violence were reconciled with humanist, commonwealth-forming aims. Schmidt has examined an incident in which Richard Grenville’s men burnt an entire Algonquian village in retaliation for a stolen cup. Schmidt argues that extreme retaliation was typical of nobles and gentry who desired to be the preservers of order. Grenville’s actions were born of ‘the desire to maintain the customary deference and obedience necessary for the creation of a humanistic, yet hierarchically ordered, commonwealth.’ 97 In Ireland, ferocious retaliation, contrary to the rules of war, was held to be within socially acceptable limits because Irish rebels were not regarded as soldiers fighting for a legitimate cause. As Falls relates, the Irish in rebellion were ‘nearly always treated as traitors to their sovereign and, if they fell into the hands of the royal troops, whole or wounded, killed on the spot.’ 98 Vowing to set his sword on malefactors who opposed his governorship in Ulster, the earl of Essex resolved that ‘severitie is the way to reforme this stubborne nacion that can not judge of clemencie and favor.’ 99 Elizabeth instructed Essex to treat the Irish with discretion as they were, after all, her subjects. 100 Essex explained that he intended to allow those who would till the ground and be obedient to remain where they were. They were, however, to live under martial law until the conquest was complete. Idle kern and galloglass would not be permitted to live within the bounds of his plantation unless they abandoned their weapons and worked as labourers. Essex believed that the remainder of the local population should be ‘utterly expelled.’ 101 When Brian MacPhelim O’Neill revoked his submission to Essex, the offended earl vowed to govern the

96 More, Utopia . 97 E.A. Schmidt, ‘The Well-Ordered Commonwealth: Humanism, Utopian Perfectionism, and the English Colonization of the Americas,’ Atlantic Studies 7, 3 (2010), p. 317. 98 C. Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars (London: Methuen, 1950), p. 345. 99 NASPI 63/48/66. 100 BL Harley MS 6991/23, f. 47. 101 BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/109, f. 454v. 143 inhabitants with even greater severity. 102 Another English commentator, Edmund Tremayne, held the sword to be a chief instrument in the advance of reform. His plans for the reform of Ireland consisted of a tripartite of God, law and the sword. The government should plant ministers of faith and ministers of law to advance the civil and moral reformation. They would be accompanied by a third ‘minister’ in the form of a military captain whose role was to preserve the authority of preachers and judges with the monarch’s sword, without which ‘no state can stand.’ 103 The examples of Essex and Tremayne are demonstrative of typical Elizabethan reactions to the anarchy they perceived to be rampant in much of the country. The Irish were too far removed from rationality to be receptive to diplomacy, and would only be brought to order with the liberal use of the sword. By far the most widely studied and scrutinised text on martial conquest in Ireland is Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland . A great deal has already been written on Spenser’s Irish experience and works. Spenser is often depicted as the ‘spokesperson’ of a group of late Elizabethan planters who espoused subjugation of the Irish through military conquest.104 Arriving in Dublin in the retinue of Lord Deputy Arthur Grey, Spenser held a number of administrative positions and came to possess Kilcolman, Co. Cork in the distribution of Munster lands. He continued to acquire positions and titles, a social climber who was, as Herron states, ‘a very active worm in a rich and rotten spoil-heap.’ 105 Spenser wrote the View as a contribution towards government policy, although it was not published until the mid-seventeenth century. Written after the destruction of the Munster plantation, the View assumed the form of a dialogue between Eudoxus, an Englishman, and Irenius, an English resident in Ireland. The View is both an uncompromising attack on a degenerate Irish polity and a humanist programme for the creation of a new commonwealth. Through his interlocutors, Spenser argued that Irish society had so thoroughly degenerated that the establishment of a reformed commonwealth required the complete dismantlement of the existing social order. Spenser advocated reformation through martial conquest. The sword had to be used like a

102 CSPI 1571-75 , p. 411. 103 NASPI 63/32/66. Tremayne endorsed the sword as the protector of law several times: NASPI 63/40/78; 63/41/69. 104 Canny, ‘Anglo-Irish Identity,’ p. 6. 105 Herron, Spenser’s Irish Work , p. 34; A. Hadfield, ‘Spenser, Edmund,’ ODNB . 144 scythe stripping the weeds for new growth, ‘for all those evilles must first be cutt awaye with a stronge hande, before any good cann bee planted,’ adding that the government needed to prune ‘corrupt branches and unwholsome lawes,’ and scrape away ‘the fowle mosse’ before ‘the tree cann bringe forth any good fruicte.’ Spenser argued that English law was ineffective in policing Irish society as the common law was unsuited to the deeply embedded Irish culture. If the Irish did not respect English law, they would continue to exploit it, allowing corruption and injustice to prevail. Spenser’s programme was one of social cleansing that involved a large scale military operation to incapacitate the rebels. Rebels and their followers would be given the opportunity to surrender and submit. Those who refused were to be considered unamenable to reform, and were therefore disposable. Spenser advocated a scorched earth policy, where those who refused to accept the queen’s grace would be executed or simply ‘lefte to their fortune and miserable end,’ or death by famine. Once the way had been cleared for plantation, New English colonists would arrive and the remaining Irish would be absorbed into the new commonwealth through social osmosis. They would be forced to abandon weapons and take on the civilising occupations of industry and agriculture. The moral necessity of conquest was articulated in Spenser’s descriptions of the new anglicised order. By tearing down the very fabric of Irish society to advance reform, the English could embark on a programme of national renewal that would result in a ‘perfect establishment and new commonwealth.’ 106 As the cycle of rebellion and retaliation escalated, it became inevitable that the reformed commonwealth would have to be planted upon the ashes of a scorched earth. Violence and coercion were readily situated within the scope of a humanist project for Ireland because the longer-term benefits outweighed the short-term methods. The complete pacification of Ireland would permit the application of law and order, justice and administration, and uninterrupted growth of agriculture, industry and trade.

2.3. Soldiers

The English Pale was governed in the traditions of a highly militarised frontier outpost. Inhabitants were subject to regular musters, watches and obligations to

106 Spenser, View . 145 answer hue and cry. The general hosting, the Irish equivalent of the militia, became a near-annual event after 1556. The territory subject to these hostings was extended to encompass the south and western reaches of the Pale, and the duration of service rose from thirty days to six weeks. Citizens in the towns and cities were encouraged to act together in self-defence. For example, a decree of 1567 by the Corporation of Irishtown, Kilkenny required all men between the ages of eighteen and fifty to possess a long bow and quiver of arrows and to attend musters when required.107 Inhabitants were expected to play an active role in policing the country. According to the ordinances for Munster issued by Perrot (as lord president) in 1571, the medieval Statute of Winchester was to be revived. Hue and cry was to be raised by the inhabitants of the town, and by the people in the adjoining towns, ‘and so from town to town.’ Furthermore, landlords and tenants were required to pursue cattle raiders transiting their or neighbouring lands. 108 As lord deputy, Perrot ordered butts to be erected in all parishes so that the public could practise archery. A cache of munitions and preparedness to defend the queen’s honour and the realm was part and parcel of life in Ireland. 109 The established English polity in Ireland was accustomed to the necessity of self-preservation and the everyday reality of border warfare, so it is unsurprising that the New English planter communities were organised around military service. The exceptional circumstances of the restive frontier zone shaped the character of English plantations, most of which manifested as quasi-military outposts defended by citizen-soldiers in the tradition of Roman colonii . After the destruction of the Munster plantation, Chief Justice William Saxey complained that the English planters had failed in their defensive duties by living scattered, and ‘without abilitye of mutuall defence or succor to be ministered by the one to the other.’ To prevent the same occurring again, Saxey wanted to see planters organised in neighbourhoods of at least twenty households, which were to be gated and enclosed with a trench and quickset, defensive structures that signalled the martial character of the colony. 110 The role of English planters in Tudor

107 J. Ainsworth (ed.), ‘Corporation Book of the Irishtown of Kilkenny, 1537-1628,’ Analecta Hibernica , 28 (1978), pp. 30-1. 108 Cal. Carew 1515-74 , p. 411. 109 Cal. Carew, 1575-88 , p. 392; Crawford, Anglicizing the Government of Ireland , pp. 302-5. 110 BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/21, f. 93v. 146 Ireland was to farm and fight, laying the foundations of a civil society while drawing the wayward population into line. Renaissance humanists formed their attitudes to the armed citizen from classical precedent. Prominence was given to the Roman tradition of martial valour and civic greatness. The good Roman citizen expressed virtue through service to the state, and such service could be militaristic as well as juridical and political. 111 The military character of Roman colonies exemplified military virtue and service for the commonwealth: in Rome, it was the ‘obligation’ of a good citizen to settle in a bad region.112 In the Italian Renaissance, the idea of the citizen militia gained precedence over professional soldiers and mercenaries as that best befitting a free polity. 113 By performing military service, citizens were able to demonstrate their virtue and exercise their civic duty. The citizen militia was considered a more noble fighting force because its members fought for prince and country rather than spoils and riches. In his A Discourse of Civill Life (1606), Ludowick Bryskett wrote that every man had a civic obligation to defend his country. Bryskett remarked that man was born ‘for the behoofe of his country, his Prince, his kinred and friends,’ and also ‘for the defence of religion, publike honesty and of vertue.’ It was, therefore, ‘the dutie of every man of vertue and honor, to oppose himself against the fury of the enemy’ to protect their prince and the commonwealth. 114 As the commonwealth ideal and concomitant notions of public welfare gained momentum, the gallantry of war lost support among humanists. Christian humanists questioned the morality of war in light of Christ’s teachings. 115 The Ciceronian creed of true nobility held that nobility was determined by one’s virtue, rather than one’s birth. Virtue was best expressed by serving one’s commonwealth in a more sober, civilised fashion; chiefly by applying oneself to government of the state. Although martial exercises were an acknowledged part of a humanist upbringing, they were typically promoted in the context of national defence and peace-keeping, and as useful distractions from dishonest or ‘idle’ pastimes such as gambling and games. While the English retained a strong

111 Heater, Citizenship , p. 18. 112 Dr. Geoffrey Nathan, personal communication, 22 September 2011. 113 Rapple, Martial Power , p. 27. 114 Bryskett, A Discourse of Civill Life , p. 72. 115 Rapple, Martial Power , p. 29. 147 attachment to the idea of the citizen-soldier defending the motherland, humanists prioritised service through political participation over the art of war. The humanist’s trappings of wisdom and gravitas , rhetoric and philosophy had greater utility for improving the constitution of the commonwealth than vainglorious feats of war. The ruling classes distanced themselves from their chivalric past as England developed an aristocracy of courtiers, statesmen and administrators. 116 The growth of statecraft among the aristocracy affected the dignity and status of the military profession. Those seeking lucre and fame through a martial career could only look nostalgically to Henry VIII’s days, when the court was emblematic of chivalric largesse and glorious martial careers promising upward mobility. 117 The English, who were traditionally renowned for their military prowess, were slow to adapt to modern warfare. Many English commanders continued to favour outmoded frontal assaults that would bring instant glory while new technologies of warfare were designed for prolonged, methodical siege tactics.118 The traditionally patriotic sport of archery, so cherished by Henry VIII, was in decline. Elizabethan armies continued to showcase longbows for some years even as the weapon faded into obsolescence. Approximately equal numbers of harquebusiers and archers were recorded in companies sent to Ireland in Elizabeth’s early reign. Eventually, the government was forced to acknowledge that the bow was no longer useful in the battlefield. When discussions were opened to revive an Edwardian statute for transporting bows into Ireland, Lord Deputy Perrot was counselled that the bows of the original statute should be changed to handguns, ‘because [bows] are not used here, nor had in estimation.’ 119 By the end of the century, the English military in Ireland had abolished bows in preference for more popular, lighter arquebuses.120 In the programmes for national improvement inspired by humanist reform literature, improving the constitution of society often involved the removal of figures who transgressed the boundaries of order and chaos. Popular targets included the able-bodied unemployed, vagrants and criminals. Rapple has shown that in this environment of social cleansing, gentlemen who turned to military

116 Rapple, Martial Power , pp. 26-7; Withington, ‘Citizens and Soldiers,’ p. 6. 117 Rapple, Martial Power , p. 20. 118 R.B. Manning, An Apprenticeship in Arms: The Origins of the British Army, 1585-1702 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 6-7. 119 Cal. Carew, 1575-88 , pp. 401, 417. 120 Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars , pp. 38-9. 148 careers were increasingly targeted as ‘untidy elements in a pristine commonwealth.’ 121 Service in Ireland was a dreaded prospect for the common soldier, and many risked their lives to avoid being sent there. Most of the infantry who served in Ireland were conscripts, and often these were petty criminals, vagabonds and other ‘loose’ men pressed to fill the numbers. This practice continued, much to the chagrin of the Privy Council, who complained about the quality of the men sent to the commanders. A number of Irish soldiers and Scottish galloglass were hired to supplement the English troops. The Irish and Scots were seen as menaces to civilised society when unemployed and left to criminal, vagrant lives, so it was in the interest of the realm to keep them occupied in the government’s employ. 122 Machiavelli cautioned against sending soldiers rather than a colony into conquered lands, for the presence of soldiers would only disrupt and anger the inhabitants.123 In Tudor Ireland, a country where the civil population was disturbed by continuous internal warfare and the threat of invasion by continental forces, mutinous and unscrupulous soldiers only exacerbated unrest. Undisciplined English soldiers were a serious concern for the English government, which was bogged down in accusations of fraud, bribery and extortion towards captains and their bands. 124 Complaints by Pale residents against crown soldiers were registered, and allegations of negligence, corruption and cruelty were investigated. 125 Tremayne confirmed the negative opinion of the soldiers stationed there when he wrote about ‘the grete disordres of our armye there mayntayned,’ for although its purpose was defence of the good, the army had ‘become the devourer of those that yeldeth our nutriment.’ 126 Disorderly soldiers compromised the stability of the population they were sent to protect.

121 Rapple, Martial Power , p. 43. 122 Manning, An Apprenticeship in Arms , pp. 7, 20; Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars , pp. 41, 50-2. 123 Machiavelli, The Prince , trans. L. Ricci (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), p . 8. This argument was applied to Ireland by Beacon: Solon His Follie , p. 137. 124 See, for example, a paper that addressed the need for greater order among the soldiers. The author recommended strict discipline and punishment. Furthermore, no soldier was to leave his garrison and wander the Pale without a passport from his captain: BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/15, f. 65v. Another document, a lengthy petition by a group of Palesmen to the queen, was a scathing indictment of the soldiers’ abuses. The soldiers were accused of neglecting their duties during rebellion and of being cruel, greedy, violent, vengeful and extortionate in taking of cess. The petitioners argued that the soldiers sent to protect the Pale were no better than the rebels themselves: BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/23. 125 Brady, Chief Governors , pp. 103-4; Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars , p. 46. 126 NASPI 63/32/65. 149 Lack of pay could turn a soldier mutinous, violent or in search of an opportunity to desert. A mutiny by Sir Thomas Norris’ company at Dublin Castle, petitioning the lord deputy for their full pay, indicates the desperate plight of troops whose wages were constantly in arrears. 127 Within the crown’s purview, ill-disciplined Englishmen were almost as disruptive to the overall reform effort as the Gaelic menace beyond the Pale. In his plan for Irish reform in the View , Spenser considered the potential for social dislocation among the soldiers once military operations were completed and the rebels subdued. Spenser addressed ‘the loose leaving’ of thousands of soldiers who would be ‘unfit for any labor or other trade,’ but could not be trusted to seek service abroad ‘which may be dangerous,’ and their return to England was unwelcome as it ‘may bee discomodious.’ The problem of ex-servicemen being unable or unwilling to work, or turning to crime, is ‘a thing much misliked in this our common-wealth.’ To ensure the soldiers kept within the bounds of civilised existence, soldiers who were elderly, maimed or willing to ‘fall to thrifte,’ would be given lands to farm. 128 Negative perceptions of the soldiers sent to Ireland are supported by the impressions of captains such as Thomas Wilsford, who served as sergeant major in Ulster during Essex’s enterprise. Wilsford confessed to Burghley that the English forces were unprepared for the task of subduing the wild country and Irishmen in the north. He found ‘suche imperfections in our contrimen, that throughe longe pece had in ingland, thei have lost the mindes of soldiers & are become weke in body to endure the travaile & miserable in mind to susteine the force of the enemie,’ which ‘doothe growe of the fatte delicat soile & longe pece had in ingland.’ 129 Essex joined in the criticism of the quality of men serving under him. He reported to the Privy Council that ‘in their doinges,’ the men brought over with Captain Burrows ‘were the worste that ever I sawe, for eyther they were mutinouse in the towne, or cowardlie in the field.’ The men sent from Devon and Somerset were, in Essex’s estimation, ‘suche as I am suer they were gladd to ridde their countrey of.’ Dismayed that the Privy Council had instructed the countries to send men who would go of their own will and those who were

127 Cal. Carew, 1589-1600 , pp. 31-3. 128 Spenser, View . 129 NASPI 63/43/1. 150 easily dispensable, Essex was ‘almost ashamed’ that his country ‘should breed so weake harted men as came hether.’ 130 Although the reputation of English soldiers drew the ire of the government and general public, there was still room for moral justification and adulation of soldiering in popular culture. Exhibitions of martial enthusiasm are known to have appeared in Elizabethan drama, which often heaped praise upon the soldier who wins glory or dies nobly in an honourable war. 131 Against the prevalent criticisms, a genus of martial literature surfaced, bemoaning the miserable status of soldiers and defending the worth of the military profession as an honourable form of public service. The authors, as veterans of war, saw themselves as upholders of her majesty’s honour. They acted, whether with gentleness or brutality, as appointed representatives of the queen’s imperial authority. 132 In A Scourge for Rebels (1584), Thomas Churchyard, who had seen service in Ireland, heaped praise on Roman armies and reaffirmed the worthiness of soldiers. Soldiers who fought foreign enemies should be honoured, argued Churchyard, and soldiers who fought against rebels were to be regarded ‘proppes and pillers of the publike pillers of the publike weale.’ By praising the dutiful service of the earl of Ormond, Churchyard hoped ‘to encourage other noble personages in doing their countrey good.’ 133 Barnaby Rich, another veteran of Irish campaigns, upheld war as an ancient and noble art. War ‘stirs up the bloud, it cals courage to the field, and it is the Theatre where on Nobilitie was borne to shew himselfe,’ wrote Rich. ‘Peace breedes Cowards, it effeminates our mindes, it pampers our wanton wils, and it runs headlong into all sorts of sinne.’134 Despite Rich’s assertion that perpetual peace feminised man and removed barriers to sin, the Tudor government’s goals of a well-ordered commonwealth required a complete end to rebellion and war in Ireland. The invariable reality of rebellion meant that the maintenance of a standing army was a permanent and necessary feature of government policy throughout the period. The increased reliance on martial conquest was paralleled by the average size of the garrison, which increased from two thousand to six thousand between the 1560s and the

130 NASPI 63/43/11. 131 R.V. Lindabury, A Study of Patriotism in the Elizabethan Drama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1931), pp. 46-9. 132 Rapple, Martial Power , p. 209. 133 Thomas Churchyard, A Scourge for Rebels (London: Thomas Cadman, 1584), sigs. B2-B2v. 134 W. Maley, ‘Rich, Barnaby,’ ODNB . 151 early 1580s. 135 The presence of the soldiers and the pressures of victualling and housing them did, however, incite resentment in the civil population. The government explored the possibility of increasing the role of the militia. Hopeful that Shane O’Neill would soon be pacified, the crown inquired whether the garrison could be reduced and a militia (‘some convenient force of our good subjects in our English pale’) assembled in times of need. 136 The emergence of plantation as policy opened opportunities to save on military costs by emphasising the role of the planters as citizen-soldiers guarding of strategic sites. An integral part of the Elizabethan plantation schemes was the promotion of aggressive civic virtue within the English population. Humanism was used to ennoble the role of soldiers who participated in the plantation of Ireland. In the humanist tradition, all manner of activities pursued in the public interest had to be couched in terms of moral necessity and the commonwealth over profit and expedience. For those who worked to ennoble projects that involved the planting of soldiers, they had to ennoble the role of the soldier himself. The plantation of Laois and Offaly was designed to offset the costs of the garrison by turning soldiers into colonists by giving them land to farm and to guard in arms. As we have seen, however, the midlands experiment was proving to be little more than an expensive disappointment. Plantation through private enterprise promised to pursue the same civilising ends while easing the burden on the crown’s purse. 137 In these schemes, the soldier was to play a key role in pioneering the new society, and his dual role as protector and husbandman was enforced. One of the earliest proposals for colonies of soldiers was presented by Thomas Chatterton, who planned a colony in Armagh on the former lands of Shane O’Neill. After expelling the Irish and Scots, the soldiers would be allowed to remain as planters. This project did not garner the necessary government support, but the neo-Roman model it proposed was adopted in future schemes. 138 Martial colonisation after the tradition of the ancient Romans was best exemplified in Thomas Smith’s planned colony in the Ards. For this he bestowed

135 W. Palmer, The Problem of Ireland in Tudor Foreign Policy, 1485-1603 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1994), p. 3. 136 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 360. 137 G.A. Hayes-McCoy, ‘The Completion of the Tudor Conquest and the Advance of the Counter- Reformation, 1571–1603,’ in Moody, Martin and Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland , Vol. III, p. 95. 138 Dunlop, ‘Sixteenth Century Schemes,’ part II, pp. 117-8. 152 himself with the title of colonel. Smith was well-versed in Roman history (he had written an unpublished work on the wages of Roman money and coinage), and was familiar with the classical precedents for using soldiers as colonists on foreign soil. Smith’s soldiers were to serve both martial and civil purposes. They were to protect the colony, but also to perform labour, farm, and make their own living. Despite the irregular reputation of the garrison in Ireland, Smith was confident that to make the soldier a master of his own land would keep him industrious and dutiful, for he had more to lose if the colony were to be ruined. Ancient writers had commended soldiers as making excellent farmers. Smith was familiar with Cato (the work listed in Smith’s library was presumably De Agri Cultura , inventoried with Varro and Columella 139 ), who had written that farmers made the best citizens and the staunchest soldiers, and were ‘least of all men given to evil counsels.’ 140 Smith laid strict rules of decorum for his soldiers. He wanted, in particular, to avoid ‘Superfluity of fare or delicatnes, and excesse of apparrell. For yow be com to laye the foundacion of a good and (as it is hoped) an eternall Colony for your posteritie, not a may game or a stage playe.’ Captains and soldiers should behave with gravity and modesty. Effeminate displays of wealth were resolutely forbidden. ‘A Captaine is honored for his valyante courage, and stowte artes, not for his gaye apparrell, which the best warriors did most dyspise,’ declared Smith. ‘And a souldier is praysed rather for his good harnes on a valyante back. A good warpon in his hande, then for his painted and well colored coate or clooke.’ 141 Richard Beacon wrote that the form of a commonwealth depended upon its aims, and that a militarised commonwealth that ‘aymeth at virtue, honour, and glorie’ was preferred over one which strove for peace. Educated at Cambridge and Gray’s Inn, Beacon was the queen’s attorney in Munster from 1586 to 1591. 142 In 1594 he published the political pamphlet Solon his Follie, or, a Politique Discourse Touching the Reformation of Common Weales Conquered, Declined, or Corrupted . Intended as a means to rehabilitate his reputation after being removed from his post in Ireland, Solon was Beacon’s contribution to reforming a

139 J. Strype, The Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1820), Appendix VI, p. 278. 140 Cato, Cato’s Farm Management , trans. A Virginia Farmer (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1910), p. 18 141 ERO MS D/DSH/O1/7. 142 S. Kelsey, ‘Becon, Richard,’ ODNB . 153 corrupted commonwealth. Assuming the form of a dialogue between three Athenians in the sixth century BC, Epimenides, Pisistratus and Solon, the work is an extended allegory regarding the policy of Athens (England) towards its colony of Salamina (Ireland). Beacon’s purpose was to disentangle the causes of the decline of commonwealths and to discover the best policy by which they may be restored. Beacon admired the militarism of the Romans and, in considering the ideal form of reformation, he looked to the Roman exemplar of martial citizenship. While all types of commonwealth inevitably decayed, the ones that pursued empire would be eternally remembered. The primary duty of the people in this form of commonwealth was to act as soldiers, with training in military exercises and discipline. However, Beacon made a clear distinction between the glory and virtue represented by the English commonwealth, and the servile commonwealth of Ireland. The best course for Ireland was to prevent revolts by disarming the people and retaining them in obedience and subjection. The people would be set to planting, sowing and ploughing: ‘let us there from henceforth honor the Godesse Pallas , and not Mars or Neptune , as heretofore,’ with the hope that Pallas’ influence would draw the people to obedience and humility. The Englishman would be trained to perform his public duty in warlike discipline to help his country attain glory. Beacon drew from the story of the Spartan Lycurgus, placing the English in the role of the Spartans and the Irish as the helots (serfs who laboured the land, allowing the Spartan citizens to focus on warfare): ‘Put that great number of Heilotes to laboure, and plough the grounde, and let no man be trained but the free Citizen.’ The Irish ‘helots’ would bring ‘ magna vactigalia ,’ great profit, and the English, the ‘free citizens,’ would give them ‘magnum & egregium exercitum ,’ a great and noble army. 143 The Irish would, therefore, join with the English in the reformed commonwealth in a servile capacity only, being protected and guarded by the ruling English military class. Smith’s rigorous attention to the behaviour of his colonists according to principles of martial citizenship and the insight of Beacon into the neo-Roman role of English colonists reveal assumptions about the centrality of civic duty. All colonists were held responsible for building and maintaining the settlement. Stern’s study of the East India Company, while not strictly contemporary, is worth

143 Peltonen, Classical Humanism , pp. 99-102; Beacon, Solon , p. 131. 154 quoting here. In his designs for disciplined and public-minded colonists, Smith anticipated the central role that would be played by humanist notions of civic duty in militarised corporate settlements. The East India Company was concerned to govern the behaviour of its soldiers, who were expected to uphold order and to assume the roles of citizens. According to Stern, a ‘disorderly garrison was a potential threat to a settlement,’ and therefore, ‘the chief prophylaxis’ for disobedience, as directed by civic humanism, was ‘a well trained and disciplined body of soldiers’ who served the ‘polity’ of the colony. 144

2.4. Virtue

2.4.1. Humanist justifications for plantations and projects English migration to Ireland was readily fashioned into a positive duty on behalf of the nation. The country lacked good labourers who could farm the fertile soil and bring profits for themselves and the nation. The English investor would also be doing a great service by advancing English interests in a country whose native population was sorely lacking in guidance and instruction in civility and the ancillary concepts of obedience to the state, civic duty and economic productivity. Investment in a colonial scheme was a legitimate service on behalf of the commonwealth. This was, in its broadest outlines, the moral argument for plantation in the Elizabethan period. Ireland presented a desirable opportunity for acts of virtue by genteel adventurers, men from respectable or noble lineage invigorated by an atmosphere of enterprise and opportunity that fed the gathering interest in overseas exploration and colonisation. Virtue, the central quality of Renaissance humanists, governed the lives and actions of English citizens. The planners and participants of Irish plantation schemes articulated virtue through the language of national enrichment. Plantation schemes were accompanied by civilising projects in the form of entrepreneurial ventures, environmental transformation and agricultural improvement, economic development, administration of justice, urban networks, trade and employment opportunities. Projectors did not acknowledge a distinction between private and public profit. The long term aim of exploitation was to improve the country they were

144 Stern, ‘Soldier and Citizen,’ p. 93. 155 exploiting, a purpose which ennobled any type of venture claimed to be in the public interest. By stimulating the economy and providing employment for the idle population, projecting and colonisation amounted to service on behalf of the commonwealth. In the eyes of the English involved, colonisation was a very public expression of personal morality.145 The principle of improvement through economic recovery was characterised by the multitude of ‘projects’ forwarded in this period. The joint stock companies formed in the sixteenth century were associated with the maritime expansion of England and the growth of international trade.146 The first major joint stock company, the Muscovy Company, was chartered in 1555. Withington has outlined the significance of companies and corporations as expressions of civic activity, and has revealed that the growing number of corporate towns in early modern England facilitated the expression of civic citizenship. 147 Corporations ‘provided a framework, or structure, for continuous and systematic public activity by their citizens.’ 148 In early modern England, polities were believed to have been established by ‘companies’ of men united by agreement. John Ponet, in the Shorte Treatise of Politike Power (1556), wrote ‘that men furst assembled together in companies, that common wealthes were made.’ 149 Corporations were products of the early modern commonwealth, and, as Withington relates, ‘the story of early modern state formation is as much about the creation of citizens defined by their capacity for public activity as it is about the centralization of functions conventionally associated with modern polities: war, taxation, and bureaucracy.’ Membership in a corporation ‘was infused and enthused by Renaissance notions of public service, participation, and activity: citizenship in a more general, civic-humanist sense of the term.’ 150 The corporation was becoming increasingly popular as a form of business organisation in England. Under Elizabeth, the company was introduced to Ireland as a

145 R. Gillespie, (ed.), ‘Plantation and Profit: Richard Spert’s Tract on Ireland, 1608,’ Irish Economic and Social History 20 (1993), p. 65. 146 W.R. Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720 , Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), p. 15. 147 Withington, Society in Early Modern England , p. 219. 148 Withington, ‘Public Discourse,’ p. 1017. 149 Quoted in J.F. McDiarmid, ‘Common Consent, Latinitas , and the “Monarchical Republic” in Mid-Tudor Humanism,’ in McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England , p. 58. 150 Withington, ‘Public Discourse,’ p. 1017. 156 commercial expression of civic enterprise. One of the earliest projects of this sort was conceived by William Piers and Sidney, although Smith’s detailed plans for the Ards plantation represent the earliest major application of the joint stock principle to colonisation. By forming corporations to run colonisation projects, Elizabethan entrepreneurs were adopting a strategy of corporate cooperation that would be used later in Ireland and North America. 151 Smith appealed to private subscribers willing to participate in the foundation of a new and perfectly ordered commonwealth. Smith designed his colony as a corporate venture, which was to be comprised of ‘a companie of Gentlemen and others that will live frendly in felowship togither rejoysing in the frute and commoditie of their former travaile.’ 152 The corporate dynamics of the colonisation of Ireland closely resembled incorporation in England. That companies settled societies overseas ‘makes it easy to see how assumptions and practices of citizenship could be exported beyond the seas,’ writes Withington, ‘not as functions of ‘nation’ or ‘empire’ but as an attribute of corporate life itself.’ The concept of ‘private’ was antithetical to humanist conceptions of commonwealth and society. 153 One of the major investors in Smith’s enterprise was Lord Burghley. Burghley showed a keen interest in the potential of plantation projects throughout his career. Burghley clearly saw the reforming potential of economic projects in Ireland. He was also involved in mining ventures in Ulster, together with a number of merchants who had experience in the formation of companies. These mining groups were incorporated as the Mineral and Battery Works and the Mines Royal. The companies were particularly interested in the timber that could be obtained from Ireland to supply their mining works. 154 The humanist movement was characterised by a desire to find practical solutions to improve society, and the growth of economic projects was characteristic of this new spirit of commonwealth-minded enterprise. Warham St. Leger and his fellow petitioners anticipated the civilising effects of their proposed plantation in Munster. Although St. Leger would later be

151 Canny, Elizabethan Conquest , pp. 75-6. 152 Smith, A Letter Sent by I. B. Gentleman , p. 413. 153 Withington, Society in Early Modern England , pp. 205-6, 209. 154 White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ II, pp. 280-83. 157 described as possessing an ‘appetite of glory and vain reputation,’155 he planned to reform the country to ‘to civility and obedience,’ as ‘hit standeth with the dewtie of good subjectes to offer theire assistance in furderaunce of the same.’ 156 The fruits of obedience, fidelity and civility would give ‘the wildest and idelest’ a standard to imitate and follow, ‘or els throughe idelnes offende to dye.’ 157 St. Leger also had plans to operate the local mines, and planned to use the profits from mining to erect free schools, hospitals and ‘like houses for relief of povertye,’ works of charity that would bear witness to the queen’s ‘noble fame forever to be hadd in memorie.’ 158 St. Leger’s plans for economic development through colonial enterprise were mirrored in a 1583 proposal by Richard Speart for planting Munster. The project was to be under the auspices of a company or ‘societie.’ Speart and his companions requested one hundred and sixty ploughlands and a number of conscripted husbandmen and artificers who were to be transported to Munster with their families. The land would be worked for the production of hemp, woad and madder, and the waters would be used for fishing. Other projects planned by Speart included setting up looms to weave yarn for export, and establishing an ironworks. 159 Sir Henry Wallop believed that the key to reducing the country to obedience was to build, inhabit and develop industry. Vice-treasurer of Ireland since 1579, Wallop had already discovered the economic promise of Ireland, having developed a grain farming and export business. He also tried to secure a patent for the planting of woad. It was to be a charitable deed for improving ‘the great and universall waste of land within this Realme,’ and for setting to work ‘a nomber of poore miserable people that this country is verie full of.’160 Wallop pressed his request upon Sir Francis Walsingham, who was also interested in the economic potential in Ireland, financing a project for growing woad and madder.161 Wallop failed to secure a patent for growing woad, but continued to prove himself a keen projector, seeking a partnership with Walsingham to

155 CSPI 1574-85 , p. 328. 156 Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 37. 157 NASPI 63/26/52. 158 NASPI 63/26/53. 159 NASPI 63/106/15; 63/106/24. 160 NASPI 63/71/48; 63/115/28; 63/116/18. 161 CSPI 1574-85 , p. 543; CSPI 1586-88 , pp. 32, 35. 158 purchase and exploit an alum mine in Co. Kerry. 162 He also established a settlement on ex-monastic lands at Enniscorthy in Wexford. In Enniscorthy, Wallop planted English and some Irish ‘of the honestest sorte’ to reinvigorate a march region that had been waste but was rich in timber, and also to ‘exercyse diverce arts,’ which would draw the rest of the people to industry and redeem them from their ‘idle cowrse of lyef.’ Wallop saw himself ‘lyke to do good to the commen wealthe,’ to the poor people who would be put to work, and the state generally. He suspected that others might ‘worke againste even the best endevors,’ including Wallop’s own ‘publique good deede,’ which he hoped would ‘leave some monumente behinde mee, wherebie yt may heereafter appeere that there hath bene some man there, that in thee broken tymes, and in so uncouthe a peace, hath taken uppon him to goe thoroughe with so good a purpose.’ 163 Wallop developed the timber industry at Enniscorthy, providing timber for the navy and obtaining a license to transport wooden staves.164 Wallop’s enterprise is an example of a self-directed scheme designed to stimulate commercial activity and social improvement that would thrive as an enduring monument to his active service, his ‘good deed,’ for the civilising of his adopted country and honour of his native one. Wallop’s fellow Munster planter, Walter Raleigh, was a vigorous proponent of deforestation and commercial speculation. He transported labourers to fell trees from which to build pipe staves for export, and he owned a number of iron works in Waterford. 165 In his promotional tract for the Munster plantation, A Briefe Description of Ireland (1590), the entrepreneur Robert Payne waxed lyrical about the profits to be gained by investing in Ireland. Payne urged Englishmen to ignore malicious reports about the country. The soil was filled with more types of commodity ‘then eyther the people can well vse or I recite.’ Payne promoted investment in crops such as madder, woad, rape and hops. Such projects would replenish the country with people, provide employment, and boost the flagging economy.166 Payne singled out Phane Beecher for his achievements as an undertaker in Kinalmeaky,

162 CSPI 1586-88 , p. 136. 163 NASPI 63/122/15. 164 NASPI 63/191/40; 63/201/125. 165 Hennessy, Ralegh in Ireland , p. 76; E. McCracken, ‘Charcoal-Burning Ironworks in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Ireland,’ Ulster Journal of Archaeology , third series, 20 (1957), p. 134. 166 Robert Payne, A bri[e]fe Description of Ireland: Made in this Yeere 1589 (London: Thomas Dawson, 1590), pp. 6, 10. 159 Co. Cork. Beecher’s project of civil improvement had included the hiring of a preacher, establishing a free school, and providing stipends for maimed soldiers, the poor, elderly and disabled. With civil development of this speed and sort, Payne predicted that in a few years time, ‘those partes will be more like a civell citie in England, then a rude countrie (as late it was) in Ireland.’ 167 Payne’s interest in Ireland was a natural extension of his inclination for projecting. In Nottinghamshire, Payne was involved in the cultivation of woad, and had developed a project to spin wool for stockings. He published a pamphlet on woad growing, where he expounded the merits of economic productivity. In a passage replete with language of the commonwealth, Payne presented his views on the value of providing work to the population and the dangers of idleness: ‘If we were generally inclined to profit the commonweal as each man is to increase his own private gain, we might well keep continually winter and summer all our poor people on work to their great relief and comfort,’ he wrote, ‘whereby not only they might be sustained but also their poor young children trained up in some good and honest exercise, and not still to continue to idleness,’ which was ‘the nurse of all vices, leading not only into many mishaps but also to the utter ruin and destruction of themselves and many others.’ 168 In their idealised form, plantation communities would be tied together through civic participation, the observation of laws and justice, and communal aid. In 1559, an advisor (possibly Edward Walshe) offered counsel on the situation in Laois and Offaly.169 In addition to walling a town at Fort Protector and enclosing and inhabiting a number of borough towns, the author pushed for the establishment of a free school and a number of churches. He imagined that by planting more settlers, the burden of the Pale subjects would be alleviated, Returning to the favourite trope of the unified body, he anticipated that urban development in the midlands would foster social cohesion, the countries enjoined ‘as members of oon bodie.’ 170 In the post-conquest settlement depicted in the View , Spenser engineered strict rules for the new colonists and the remaining Irish population so that the society would be self-sustaining with a measure of civil

167 Payne, A bri[e]fe Description , pp. 12-13. 168 Quoted in Thirsk, Economic Policy , p. 19. 169 White, ‘Tudor Plantations,’ I, p. 439. White suggests that the author was Walshe, although the document is grouped under a collection of documents designated Thomas Allen’s ‘notes for Ireland’ in BL Lansdowne MS 159. 170 BL Lansdowne MS 159/24, f. 97. 160 obedience and mutual aid. Spenser was mindful that only virtuous English people should be selected to populate the empty lands. In order to prevent ‘the worst and most decayed men’ from coming over, the new settlers would have to be carefully selected. The Irish were to be resettled on seigniories, or in corporate towns near fortifications where they could be closely guarded. Spenser compared contemporary Ireland with Saxon England, which was understood by Spenser and his contemporaries to have been overrun with outlaws and thieves who lurked in woods and preyed on highways and villages. The period of lawlessness in English history ended with the creation of a mutual pledge system based on the organisation of communities into hierarchies. Every ten families were organised into tithings, whose members assumed mutual responsibility for the actions of their neighbours. Ten tithings were grouped into hundreds headed by constables. Groups of hundreds formed shires, headed by shire-reeves (sheriffs). This system of peace-keeping ensured that the community, headed by local law enforcement officials, were committed to a conscientious effort to maintain the peace within its boundaries. Neighbours were expected to raise hue and cry, at which time the community assembled to pursue the assailant. If these principles were applied rigorously at the local level in Elizabeth’s Ireland, a similar system would work as it had in Saxon England, to ‘keep all men within the compass of duty and obedience,’ and ‘bring them all into one.’ 171 The Irish were to be kept in order through a pledge system, as each Irishman would vouch for his neighbours’ loyalty. They were to attend annual surveys before justices of the peace who would survey the men: ‘the defectes to suply of those yonge plantes late growne uppe, which are diligently to be overloked and vewed of what condicon and demeanor they be.’ The establishment of schools and a reformed ministry would implant virtue and godliness. Removed from their indigenous cultural practices and fully immersed in a state apparatus designed to indoctrinate civil conversation and virtuous living, Spenser demonstrated how a programme of plantation might eliminate cultural differences and absorb the Irish as legitimate members of an anglicised Irish commonwealth. 172

171 Spenser acknowledged Alfred the Great as the creator of this practice, as did the twelfth century historian William of Malmesbury. While tithings were a feature of late Anglo-Saxon society, it is not known if Alfred was the innovator: J. Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England , Vol. II, 871-1216 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 170. 172 Spenser, View . 161 The humanist concept of the body politic is a recurring image in Croftus Sive De Hibernia Liber , a treatise by William Herbert. Herbert was a member of the Welsh gentry who had served in English parliament and in local administration. He continued to seek opportunities for public service when he became an undertaker in Munster, serving on the council of Munster and as a sheriff and justice of the peace. 173 In Croftus Sive , he provided an elaborate humanist scheme for the complete reformation of Ireland. Spurred on by the examples of great men in history, Herbert’s goal was to ‘consider those matters which best serve for the public advantage and safety of the greatest number.’ 174 Bringing Ireland to a perfect state was ‘a patriotic and truly regal task.’ He sought to assign remedies for the evils afflicting Ireland, ‘and not only remedies but precautions and antidotes’ for the state, such that the commonwealth ‘being restored to health, cannot fall back or relapse into its old ways and illnesses.’ 175 Herbert was aghast at the suggestion that Ireland was better used as a dump for England’s undesirable surplus population. He rejected the idea of Ireland as ‘a manure heap’ before England’s door. 176 Rather, Ireland should become incorporated within the realm of England, similarly to Wales. The English and Irish people living ‘under one king, one law, one fair, wise and moderate administration but different sceptres,’ would together be ‘citizens of one happy and flourishing state.’ 177 Herbert adhered to the humanist ideal of the well-ordered state, drawn from Cicero’s De Re Publica . In Ireland, the English should endeavour to create a commonwealth ‘so sweet that all men would be content with the present state of affairs.’ Herbert’s comprehensive reform program involved the application of good laws overseen by virtuous magistrates, the encouragement of concord among citizens, security of private property, ‘irreproachable private conduct and upright morals’ among citizens, social welfare, social stratification, and checks on individual power.178 Herbert devoted considerable space to the benefits and strategy of colonisation, drawing from the wisdom of Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, Sallust and Machiavelli in support of colonisation.

173 Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors , p. 330. 174 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 23. 175 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 31. 176 Herbert, Croftus Sive , pp. 33, 37. 177 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 39. 178 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 67. 162 After a troubled experience in the Munster plantation plagued by ‘continual vexation and disquietness,’ Herbert developed a plan to foster social cohesion amongst planters. For this he tailored a passage from Tacitus that promoted the settlement of veterans together in colonies to promote the preservation of public spirit among civilians in plantations. 179 Herbert also drew from Plato and Herodotus to stress that prudence rather than haste was necessary when planning plantations. The delineation of laws, location and land allotments should be thoughtfully organised. 180 Herbert followed this with the standard criticisms of unjust government, powerful natives, and ruination by taxes and impositions. Assimilation of the Irish by imposing English standards of civility would draw them into the English fold, for having removed those divisive customs that alienated their hearts and minds, ‘they will both become united, first in habits, then in mind.’ 181 Richard Beacon believed Ireland to be corrupt at its very foundations, which meant that an absolute reformation was needed, a ‘reformation universall of the whole state and body of the commonwealth’ including both people and government. 182 His stipulations for colonies closely followed ancient precedent, which taught that colonies were necessary for enforcing obedience. Colonies should be ‘strongly and faithfully deducted’ to deter destruction by the displaced natives, as had occurred in Laois and Offaly. Beacon was critical of the prevalence of fortifications in the midlands plantation, ‘for that insteede of planting of colonies, we placed garrisons.’ This course had proved expensive and had simply antagonised the Irish who reacted by attacking the planters.183 Unlike Herbert, Beacon endorsed the use of Ireland as a repository for England’s wayward population. Seeing the benefits of putting idle people to some proper use as soldier colonists, Beacon cited the example of Pericles, who rid Athens of idle and restless people by sending them to colonies in the Thracian Chersonese and elsewhere, ‘which being naturall Citizens of Athens served as garrisons, to keepe under those which had a desire to rebell, or to attempt any alteration or change.’184

179 C. Maginn, ‘Herbert, Sir William,’ ODNB . 180 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 79. 181 Herbert, Croftus Sive , pp. 79, 81. 182 Beacon, Solon , pp. 21, 39. 183 Beacon, Solon , pp. 137-8 184 Beacon, Solon , p. 139. The cleruchy was a type of colony favoured by the Athenians. Settlers retained their Athenian citizenship (the colony, therefore, remained a dependent polis) and 163 Beacon addressed the best form of a colony. Following the example of the pre-Elizabethan reform tracts, Beacon specified that large numbers of people should be settled close together, ‘that the lands be so devided, as strengths by great numbers may be deducted,’ but unlike the majority of the earlier texts, Beacon unambiguously copied this formation from ancient precedent. The Romans ‘laboured to deduct colonies by great numbers, especially out of the confines of Italy , to the ende that by the proper strength and forces of colonies, they might easily defende the confines of their dominions,’ and would suppress any who were ‘desirous of innovation.’ Acknowledging the need for productive agriculture in colonies, Beacon specified that people should be planted ‘in the most rich and fruitfull landes.’ The next stipulation was designed to prevent degeneration and moral decay. Colonists should be granted proprietorship during life only, after which time the lands revert back to the prince, who could grant the lands to those whom he pleased, with binding provisions of proprietorship and loyalty. This course was necessary to preserve degeneration through intermarriage, and the alienation of lands to people whose loyalty to the crown was unproven. Finally, fortifications were necessary for preserving and defending the settlement. Colonists were required to ‘unite and gather themselves together into places of strength,’ to preserve themselves against incursion and to keep sufficient provisions for defence.185 The programmes of the St. Leger and Speart corporations, the projects of men such as Wallop and Payne, and the treatises of the Munster planters were consistent with the aspects of humanist education that focused on developing publically-minded citizens. Designs to colonise and industrialise Ireland radiated from a key component of Renaissance humanism, which was the relentless pursuit of the vita activa , the active life, in service of the commonwealth and advancement of the public good. 186 Responding to failings of government and prevalent social issues in Ireland, commentators prescribed new colonial

received grants of land. Cleruchies also functioned as informal garrisons: P.J. Rhodes, ‘The Delian League to 449 B.C.,’ in D.M. Lewis, J. Boardman, J. K. Davies and M. Ostwald (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History , Vol. V, The Fifth Century BC (2 nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 59-60. 185 Beacon, Solon , pp. 140-2. 186 On the concept of vita activa in the context of colonial thought, see Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America , passim. 164 enterprises that engineered civility and required the active involvement of English citizens.

2.4.2. The vita activa : adventurers and counsellors As the sixteenth century progressed, more sons were receiving a grammar school education, while the Inns of Court and foreign travel were figuring increasingly in the upbringing of the upper classes. A growing population of younger sons needed to be accommodated in English society. 187 Sons from provincial families were flocking to the flourishing commercial hub of London for their education at schools and the Inns of Court. 188 Here they were exposed to learning, ideas and a new enthusiasm among opportunistic landed classes for investment in overseas trade. Members of the gentry began to join with a rising merchant class through investment in overseas commercial activities. 189 This was a period of company formation and joint stock enterprise, in which the individual could apply their virtue to the vita activa , whose advocates stressed that men were born to serve the commonwealth. 190 Ireland was an underpopulated and resource-rich country, and recent rebellions had resulted in forfeit land newly open for the taking. For the gentleman with an impulse to employ his talents in pursuit of the active life, Ireland was an enticing arena for virtuous activity in the interest of acquiring honour, profit and glory for his commonwealth. Many of those who became officeholders in the Irish government were ambitious sons of prominent English families gone to Ireland to further their careers in the service of the queen. The opportunities for enrichment through royal recognition, grants and rewards were incentives for crown servants to flaunt their commitment and dedication to public service in her majesty’s honour. 191

187 Simon, Education and Society , pp. 293, 296. 188 F.J. Fisher, ‘The Development of London as a Centre of Conspicuous Consumption in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , fourth series, 30 (1948), pp. 40-1. 189 For analysis of the social composition of investors in overseas commercial exploits, see T.K. Rabb, Enterprise and Empire: Merchant and Gentry Investment in the Expansion of England, 1575-1630 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967). 190 ‘But since, as Plato has admirably expressed it, we are not born for ourselves alone, but our country claims a share of our being, and our friends a share:’ Cicero, De Officiis , trans. W. Miller (London: Heinemann, 1928), p. 23. 191 Crawford, Anglicizing the Government of Ireland , pp. 108, 115. 165 Under the Tudors, the tenets of the commonwealth movement found expression in Old and New English politics. Early modern England was a participatory state, and that participation was understood through the language of civic humanism. 192 The vernacular of humanism was used to valorise an active life in public service. The inner quality of virtue was proven by the pursuit of the active life, or vita activa . In De Officiis , Cicero declared that ‘the whole glory of virtue is in activity.’ 193 Humanism was a creed that promoted negotium (a life of useful activity) over otium (withdrawal from political life). Man was expected to direct his energies to commendable acts. To be truly noble was to cultivate and demonstrate virtue. The participatory culture of Renaissance humanism encouraged self-improvement and the application of human reason to the reform of society and government in accordance with ancient models. The humanist reverence for negotium was encapsulated through the pursuit of active political service. Thomas Smith, the ‘flower of Cambridge,’ rose to political prominence from a sheep farming family in Essex. Smith’s biographer Dewar states that services in foreign embassies under Elizabeth ‘brought no lasting prestige or power,’ although as a keen scholar and projector, Smith involved himself in numerous schemes including a new pronunciation of Greek, attempts to revolutionise the English language, and to reorganise the structure of legal education. 194 The Ulster plantation project represented the last chance for Smith to win renown in a great Renaissance enterprise. When Elizabeth reprimanded him for publishing his promotional tract without her consent,195 Smith maintained that he had acted in the best interests of the enterprise. Smith wrote to Burghley that although the ‘the little book which my son sent out was evil done,’ it was necessary to advertise for investors for ‘neither he nor I had tenants or great countries of our own, to gather such a number together as was necessary.’ He claimed that his publication ‘was not amiss,’ for he was merely offering the chance for ‘participation of profit and honour to allure to him whom he could, and

192 Peltonen, Classical Humanism , passim. 193 Cicero, De Officiis , p. 21. 194 This was how Richard Eden described Smith in his preface to Martin Cortez’s The Art of Navigation (1561). Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith , pp. 3-4. 195 Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith , pp. 7, 159. 166 whose hearts had some fire of life to be kindled there with them, to set to this enterprise and desire of glory.’ 196 Smith insisted that his project was driven only by noble intentions. The lord deputy would be at no charge, for ‘[t]he country, from being waste, shall be peopled with right English and obedient Irish subjects,’ and, moreover, the enterprise would be the first to inspire other men to undertake similar ventures, ‘to people some other parts of Ireland and bring them from a rude, uncivil and barbarous to a civil people,’ who ‘shall acknowledge the benefits of God and the commodity that it is to live in order and under so Christian a queen as her Majesty.’ 197 Urging Burghley to be a good lord to his son, Smith vouched for Thomas Jnr.’s public spirit as his good qualities were evident through his noble actions. ‘[A]lthough I have but him in all this world,’ Smith declared that he ‘could be content to lose him in this service, so that he die therein manfully, and leave some good assurance behind him of courage and virtue.’ 198 Smith’s venture represents the Renaissance ideal of public activity, and Smith idealised participants in terms of their inner virtue for giving themselves to higher purpose in the civilisation and enrichment of Ireland. His successor in Ulster, the singularly conceited earl of Essex, was depicted in terms of the qualities of the vita activa in his travails in Ireland. Essex was the quintessential gentleman adventurer. Elizabeth praised him for his active spirit, having ‘rather chosen to suffer any intolerable toil in Ireland, than idly to enjoy the delicacy of England.’ 199 Essex believed that he was acting in the service of God and the queen. Essex claimed that he was guided by a higher authority in God. Remembering his commitment to a divine purpose, ‘so in the profession wherein I lyve, I acknowledge that the chaunces and perrills of warre oughte to remembre me of my dutie contynuallye to hym.’ Essex depicted himself as an ‘instrument with this small companye’ sent to further God’s glory, the Queen’s honour, and his country’s wealth. 200 When ill-planning and financing turned the enterprise into an unqualified disaster, Elizabeth attempted to salvage the earl’s reputation by appealing to humanist values. She assured him that his

196 Withington, Society in Early Modern England , p. 208. 197 Butler and Crawford Lomas (eds.), State Papers Foreign, Jan-June 1583 and Addenda , p. 468. 198 Butler and Crawford Lomas (eds.), State Papers Foreign, Jan-June 1583 and Addenda , p. 468. 199 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , p. 460. 200 NASPI 63/51/9. 167 travails were ‘bold and courageous, full of virtue and manliness,’ and that she hoped his enterprise found the success that ‘you propound as your butt and mark to bring it unto.’ The queen offset Essex’s objective failures through affirmation of the virtuous qualities that had drawn him into action. By his deeds in Ulster, Essex had ‘invested [him]self with immortal renown.’ Elizabeth perceived in her cousin ‘a desire to live in action, to make proof of your virtue, and not unprofitabl[y], or rather reproachfully, (being made of that metal you are), to fester in the delights of English Egypt, where the most part of those that are bred in that soil take greatest delight in holding their noses over the beef-pots.’ 201 His epitaph glorified his exploits as having won him immortal renown:

The brightest jewell of the Crowne, The noblest of the noble peeres, Who livde and dyed in high renowne, Whose fame shall last beyond all yeares. 202

In 1591, Herbert recalled the Ulster enterprise and its leader, ‘the illustrious and heroic earl of Essex who shone with exceptional ornaments of true nobility and virtue.’ 203 The emphasis on valour and virtue accompanying Essex in his doomed enterprise foreshadowed the appeals by promotional authors that participation in the colonisation of America was an act of civic virtue. 204 Essex was not the only Englishman whose activities in Ireland were immortalised in literature as examples of true nobility and virtue. In the Image of Irelande , John Derricke praised Sidney for his travails against the rebels in the midlands. For defeating Rory Oge O’More, Sidney had secured everlasting glory. The lord deputy ‘shall crowned sit with fame,’ and ‘possess an everlasting name.’ 205 The possession of virtue was also emphasised by Herbert, who wrote that chief magistrates should possess good morals and outstanding mental strength and vigour, come from a distinguished family, have ‘extraordinary piety and

201 Cal. Carew, 1575-88 , pp. 7-8, 24. 202 J.P. Collier (ed.), Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers’ Company, of Works Entered for Publication between the Years 1570 and 1587 , Vol. II (London: The Shakespeare Society, 1849), p. 35. 203 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 77. 204 For full treatment, see Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America , passim. 205 Derricke, Image of Irelande , p. 206. 168 virtue,’ and look to the public over the private good when passing justice.206 Personal virtue was wed to the wealth of the nation, and the establishment of well- ordered commonwealths and the extension of English imperium in Ireland were framed as genuine forms of public service. Engagement in the government of the state could also be achieved by offering counsel on the reform of the commonwealth.207 Literature demanding a commitment to the correction of evils in Ireland was characteristic of the general concern for reform, and appeared in various guises such as treatises, discourses and devices. As demonstrated above, counsel was often couched in biological rhetoric, the author offering ‘remedies’ for the ‘ailments’ of the state. In Croftus Sive , Herbert claimed to have ‘enumerated the diseases, ailments and sicknesses which cling to the very entrails of Ireland and have so often affected and afflicted her to such a degree that sometimes she has almost given up the breath of life.’ In offering counsel on the reform of government, Herbert applied ‘the healing hand and prescribed remedies both wholesome, soothing and timely for the individual ills,’ 208 and ‘prescribe[d] some precautions so that they may not sprout again and grow up because of a relapse in the patient.’ 209 Rowland White, an Old English resident of the Dufferin, was involved in Irish reform as a potential supplier to the mining groups in Ulster and as a self- appointed counsellor to the crown. White, a merchant and member of the Mercers’ Company, composed several reform tracts before his death in 1572. White was a supporter of the idea that the ills plaguing the commonwealth could be redressed by instilling virtue in the inhabitants through work and education, lest the idleness of the population continue to retard the country’s development. White’s advice to Elizabeth, who would take action where previous monarchs had neglected ‘this little Lande of their owne,’ was composed in the conviction that the ‘dutie of everie true christen subject’ was to advance of God’s glory, the honour and wealth of his prince and ‘the comon proffet’ of the people. 210 White represented the view that an ordered commonwealth required towns, industry and trade: ‘when the bodie of the Lande is once fulfilled, with inhabitoures forreyn

206 Herbert, Croftus Sive , pp. 91, 93. 207 Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought I , p. 218. 208 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 93. 209 Herbert, Croftus Sive , pp. 97-105. 210 N. Canny (ed.), ‘Rowland White’s “Discors Touching Ireland,” c. 1569,’ Irish Historical Studies 20, 80 (1977), pp. 446, 450. 169 merchandise shalbe as usuallie traded thether.’ In his ideal commonwealth, law and justice would compel the able-bodied to give themselves voluntarily to ‘some service or honest exercise,’ and offenders punished so that ‘the rote of unrule can then growe no longer.’ 211 White treated all inhabitants as Elizabeth’s subjects, and clung to the established Old English creed that the Irish were intrinsically reasonable and would be successfully reconciled with the commonwealth. Their hedonistic and lawless lifestyle was explainable as ‘where hitherto lackinge the lawe they colde not lawfullie lyve.’ Reformation required a humanist emphasis on the value of education, for ‘the maner of the man rather to his educacion then to his naturall disposicion.’ 212 White’s recommendations included an oath of allegiance to be sworn by all Irishmen, after which time representatives from all parts of the island would be invited to sit in parliament. White assured Elizabeth that her subjects, being won over by a loving and merciful queen, would embrace their newfound civic conscience through active participation in the affairs of the realm. 213 Twelve free schools should be established to nurture the young, whereby the civil ‘frute’ and ‘vertuous discipline’ planted in the children would be passed to their families. Ireland’s long-awaited university should also be established for sons destined for a role in Dublin’s future political elite, the intellectual vanguard of the commonwealth and exemplary citizens for all subjects to follow. Preachers would also play a crucial role by preaching humble obedience, and social welfare was to be introduced in the appearance of hospitals for the infirm. 214 Renaissance humanism was defined by the pursuit of virtue. The need to possess virtue preoccupied many who sought their living in Ireland. Herbert defined virtue as ‘the perfection of nature, the very best of all the qualities which they [the ancient philosophers] locate in the soul.’ Shunning idleness and pleasure, the ancients undertook ‘many great labours and pains both for the sake of what was right and noble,’ preferring upright morals to pleasures and conveniences. Herbert criticised those who used wisdom only for their own glory when it should be used to advance God and the commonwealth.215 Herbert, who

211 Canny (ed.), ‘Rowland White’s “Discors,”’ p. 448. 212 Canny (ed.), ‘Rowland White’s “Discors,”’ p. 449. 213 Canny (ed.), ‘Rowland White’s “Discors,”’ pp. 452-3. 214 Canny (ed.), ‘Rowland White’s “Discors,”’ pp. 460-2. 215 Herbert, Croftus Sive , pp. 11-15. 170 claimed that he ‘ever more esteemed of the nobility of virtue,’ was a promoter of the qualities of a virtuous and noble calling as best befitting those in the role of undertakers as leaders and arbiters of the new society. 216 Herbert was keen to emphasise his own virtuous intentions in Ireland and was swift in his derision when he perceived dishonesty in others. Upon his arrival in Munster, disputes had quickly arisen between rival planters, particularly between Herbert and nearly all the major Kerry settlers. Herbert expected to be granted two entire seigniories, and conflict arose when he attempted to increase the size of his allotment. Herbert and another undertaker, Edward Denny, also clashed over their Irish tenants. Denny accused Herbert of luring some of his tenants away to Herbert’s lands at Castleisland. 217 Herbert claimed that his tactics were in the queen’s and common interest, and presented himself as a champion of good causes who was being martyred by the ‘immeasurable malice’ and ‘wicked ways’ of his fellow planters. To Sir James Croft, the lord deputy to whom he would later dedicate Croftus Sive , Herbert wrote that his doings in Munster ‘give me no cause of repentance. I find these parts to reap some commodity and contentment by my poor travel and endeavor, whereof the fruits and effect will be according to the countenance that shall be given me,’ he wrote, ‘for virtue is never without envy.’ Greed and covetousness imperilled the virtuous struggle to attain good order and national prosperity: ‘If there be [men] that seek God's Glory, Her Majesty's service and commodity, the country’s quiet and prosperity, and the establishment of good government and civility,’ he wrote, ‘there are also [men] that seek their own greatness and tyranny, Her Highness’ continual charge and expense, the country’s disquiet and turbulency, their own profit and commodity, and to that end the continuance of disorder and disloyalty.’218 Herbert compared Denny and another undertaker, Valentine Browne, with the conspirators against the righteous in the Wisdom of Solomon, highlighting the points that treat the suffering of Christ at the hands of his oppressors: ‘Let our strength be the law of justice: for that which is feeble is found to be nothing worth,’ and, ‘let us lie in wait for the righteous: because he is not for our turn, and he is clean contrary to our doings: he upbraideth us with our

216 CSPI 1586-88 , p. 569. 217 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation , p. 93. 218 CSPI 1586-88 , pp. 574-5; CSPI 1588-92 , p. 90. 171 offending the law, and objecteth to our infamy the transgressings of our education.’ 219 Herbert accused his fellow planters of dishonest traits that would apply under the humanist concept of corruption. Corruption was a broad term for self-serving behaviour and the prioritisation of private good above the public good, and, in humanist terms, was antagonistic to the creation of perfect commonwealths. 220 Beacon identified corruption as the cause of fallen commonwealths such as Ireland. In Solon His Follie , Epimenides describes a fallen commonwealth as ‘a departure from the feare and reverence of God,’ and further departures ‘from the honour and obedience due unto Princes governours and Magistrates, from the love which wee owe unto our Country, and generally a declining from a just care and regarde of publike affaires, and all heroicall vertues, unto pleasures, wantonnesse, vices, and other such private respectes and regardes.’ Commonwealths declined when their people failed to pursue the common good. 221 The loss of virtue was caused by adversities, idleness and faction, and particularly, the accumulation of wealth. The corruption of manners occurred with conditions of ‘wealth, rest, and securitie.’ 222 To the early modern mind, luxury and wealth threatened to draw men away from the masculine and martial virtues and towards an effeminate and Asiatic extravagance that triggered the decay of the commonwealth. 223 Beacon argued that the government should pass laws that addressed corruption. Coign and livery was singled out as ‘the very nurse, and teate, that gave sucke and nutriment to all disobedience, rebellions, enormities, vices, and iniquities of that realme.’ 224 By ending Irish corruption and breaking the tyrannical hold of captains over the people, the people would transfer their allegiance to the English magistrate. Having been delivered from oppression, ‘as unto a large palme tree, to bee defended from the stormes and violence of the mighty,’ the people would willingly yield their obedience to the English government. 225 Widespread

219 NASPI 63/139/17; D. Dalrymple (ed.), The Wisdom of Solomon (Edinburgh: Hamilton, Balfour and Neill, 1755), p. 7. 220 A. Fitzmaurice, ‘American Corruption,’ in McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England , pp. 225-6. 221 Beacon, Solon , p. 72. 222 Beacon, Solon , p. 75. 223 Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America , p. 20. 224 Beacon, Solon , p. 102. 225 Beacon, Solon , p. 105. 172 corruption could only be annihilated by the rigorous enforcement of laws by governors who possessed exceptional virtue.

2.4.3. Education Humanist philosophers believed that education was the means by which a person realised their virtue, and was therefore the first essential provision to cure the diseases of the body politic. The humanist movement in England promoted the capacity for humans to shape and improve themselves, yet they also upheld conservative concepts of order and submission to authority. Bouwsma has identified a ‘growing need for order and certainty’ among the writings of classical humanists in the later Renaissance. A yearning for order and hierarchy was asserted through the concept of a ‘great chain of being,’ which was characterised by discrete boundaries between classes. 226 The Protestant position on obedience was that every subject was urged to acknowledge their personal duty to obey their prince, for a private person to disobey the temporal sovereign was to disobey God. 227 The Elizabethan subject was expected to observe the established order and exhibit obedience and loyalty to the queen and her government. The definitive stance against disobedience is exhibited in the Elizabethan homily against disobedience and rebellion. A passage directly referencing the 1569 rising of Catholic nobles warned that no good subject should ‘follow the flag or banner displayed to rebellion, and borne by rebels, though it have the image of the plough painted therein, with God speed the plough , written under in great letters,’ for ‘none hinder the plough more than rebels, who will neither go to the plough themselves, nor suffer other that would go unto it.’ 228 The reference to the plough, the great symbol of English economic prosperity, lying dormant amid insurrection symbolises the importance placed on observing and maintaining order. Rebels suffered from ambition to ‘be of higher estate than God hath given or appointed unto them,’ seeking ‘the aid and help of the ignorant multitude, abusing them to

226 W.J. Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance: 1550 – 1640 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 143-6. 227 R.L. Greaves, ‘Concepts of Political Obedience in Late Tudor England: Conflicting Perspectives,’ Journal of British Studies 22, 1 (1982), p. 29. 228 A Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (London: Gilbert and Rivington, 1837), p. 41; K. J. Kesselring, ‘“A Cold Pye for the Papistes”: Constructing and Containing the Northern Rising of 1569,’ Journal of British Studies 43, 4 (2004), p. 426. 173 their wicked purpose.’ Ignorance was regarded as a primary cause of rebellious desires. Ignorance was considered to be ‘the lack of knowledge of God’s blessed will,’ which taught ‘both extremely to abhor all rebellion, as the root of all mischief, and specially to delight in obedience, as the beginning and foundation of all goodness.’229 As Simon remarks, the official Elizabethan policy on education aimed at deference, with a focus on moulding ‘dutiful servants of God and the state.’ 230 To reduce Ireland to a governable order, the ignorance fuelling Irish insubordinates in their refusal to recognise the crown’s sovereignty had to be eliminated. Reformers accounted education to be a necessary investment in the transition from divided realm to unified commonwealth. If English sources are to be believed, the Irish were among the most ignorant, morally bankrupt and unenlightened races in the known world. Bryskett described his book A Discourse of Civil Life , written while resident in Ireland, as an unusual thing to emerge ‘out of this barbarous countrie’ as it is ‘such a place, where almost no trace of learning is to be seene, and where the documents of Philosophie are the more needfull, because they are so geason [scarce].’ 231 The lack of printed works in Ireland was noted by other observers. For example, Barnaby Rich commenced his Allarme to England (1578) with a disclaimer that ‘I have used the helpe of sundrie writers, but not of so many as I would have done, if I had bene in place where I might have come by them: for what I have written, was onely done in Ireland, where there is no great choice of bookes to be had.’ 232 Commentators informed the government that Irish subjects were given to duplicity because they lacked the correct moral reflexes to discern right from wrong, a deficit that could be corrected by the provision of an education system that would instil youth with the qualities of good citizens. Richard Stanyhurst, a member of the Old English elite, believed that it was the responsibility of the English to nurture virtue in the Irish by providing them with corrective institutions

229 A Homily against Disobedience , p. 45. 230 Simon, Education and Society , p. 368. 231 Bryskett, A Discourse of Civill Life , p. 3. 232 Barnaby Rich, Allarme to England: Foreshewing what Perilles are Procured, where the People Live Without Regarde of Martiall Lawe (London: Henry Middleton, 1578), sig. *3v. These claims have some accuracy, as the printing press was introduced comparatively late in Dublin. The Irish printing industry was underdeveloped in comparison to England, and produced little of significance in the sixteenth century. Irish readers had to reply on books imported from England or the continent: R. Gillespie, Reading Ireland: Print, Reading and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 63. 174 such as universities, schools and churches. Stanyhurst bemoaned that Ireland’s population lacked universities, teachers, instructors and preachers. He explained that the country was simply ‘devoid of all such necessaries as apperteine to the training up of youth,’ and dismissed as ridiculous the expectation that the Irish would fall to virtue without these provisions, which was equivalent to forcing ‘a creeple that lacketh both legs to run, or one to pipe or whistle a galiard that wanteth his upper lip.’ 233 Tudor theorists responded to the social and political necessities of the emerging nation state by enforcing obedience through appeals to moral duty rather than fear. As Baldwin Smith explains, Tudor educators, driven by Protestant zeal and humanist enthusiasm, possessed a ‘sublime optimism that the security of the state lay in the virtuous upbringing of its citizens.’ Political unity was found in a unity of hearts and minds, and schools were the instruments for instilling natural affection in youth, to revere and defend the established order. To force obedience through terror and punishment resulted only in artificial affectations of allegiance. These ‘bad seeds,’ possessing merely a thin façade of loyalty and no true regard for duty, were apt to live a wanton and Godless life, the natural progression of which led ultimately to treason and a traitor’s death. The readings and exercises in the school room were intended to expose students to ‘vast reservoirs of morality, carefully selected and constructed to expose the young to examples of virtuous living and thinking.’ 234 Schooling was also seen as a solution to social diseases such as vagrancy and crime. In England, as Halpern states, ‘the problem of vagrancy informed pedagogical intentions and anxieties,’ and children were seen as potential idlers whose energies must be channelled into the ‘disciplinary and sedentarizing regime’ of the classroom.235 A parliamentary act for the erection of free schools in all Irish dioceses was justified by reason of widespread ignorance, and was intended to instruct the nation’s youth in their duties as English subjects. The statute was based upon the premise that the people lived in ignorance of God’s commandment to observe ‘due and humble obedience from the people to their princes and rulers,’ and it continued that such ignorance ‘proceedeth only of lack of good bringing up of the

233 Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland , p. 14. 234 Baldwin Smith, Treason in Tudor England , pp. 73-4, 79. 235 R. Halpern, The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy of Capital (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 78. 175 youth of this realm either in publique or private schooles, where through good discipline they might be taught to avoide these lothsome and horrible errours.’ 236 Schools were vital instruments for instructing Irish youth in their civic responsibilities. Sir Henry Bagenal’s personal project to develop Newry in Ulster included the construction of a schoolhouse. Bagenal planned to provide a base for the youth of the province to be ‘educated in civilletye and learninge whereby they maye be taught their dutyes to theire prynce and countrye.’ 237 In Elizabethan Ireland, moral instruction through formal education became a standard and necessary stipulation in reforming projects and treatises. Energised by ideals of civic and social reform, commentators grounded their insights on the humanist axiom that education was foundational to a virtuous commonwealth. In his writings, Herbert expounded the centrality of education in drawing the Irish to conformity, and his schemes for reform included arrangements for moral instruction. In his letters and tracts, Herbert routinely returned to the idea of virtue as the glue that preserves society. The humanist emphasis on instruction formed part of his ‘hearts and minds’ strategy, which involved treating the Irish with respect and goodwill. His plans included an Orphean-like scheme to silence Irish rhymers and replace their poems with virtuous songs translated into Irish. The presence of virtue in all aspects of Ireland’s reform was, to Herbert, unequivocal. 238 By claiming that ‘polite letters repress ferocity,’ Herbert supported the cultivation of virtue through study of bonae litterae , or good letters. Instruction was to be godly as well as moral, as Herbert upheld the teaching of the gospel in addition to a network of diocesan schools and universities at Dublin and Limerick offering a comprehensive humanist curriculum. 239 Religious observation and polite letters would be augmented by ‘exhortations and urgings to virtue’ delivered in public. Herbert was confident that inducements to virtue, if given ‘continuously and regularly,’ would ‘lead particularly to the enticement of the souls of men to probity.’ 240 As Herbert’s plans indicate, a state education system was a key to populating the country with moral subjects and expediting its elevation to a civil commonwealth.

236 Butler (ed.), Statutes Passed in the Parliaments in Ireland I , p. 361. 237 BL Harley MS 35/25, f. 313. 238 Herbert, Croftus Sive , pp. 107, 115. 239 Herbert, Croftus Sive , pp. 97-105. 240 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 109. 176 The early modern university was a crucial instrument used by governments for reforming and ordering wider societies. As Boran and Robinson- Hammerstein have shown, early modern universities were seen as ‘essential transmitters and transformers of order and the restitution of a civilised society,’ were machines for centralising power through the ‘systematic preservation of knowledge,’ and the ‘ideal instrument of orderly integration’ obedient and serviceable to church and state. 241 Before Trinity College was established, younger sons of the Irish aristocracy were directed to England for a gentleman’s education. In 1570 for example, the baron of Dunboyne, the queen’s ward, was ordered ‘to be trained up in some knowledge and learning both in Cambridge and in one of the Inns of Courte.’ 242 Energised by the reform movement, Dublin patricians long desired their own institution to spread civil learning within the realm and serve the needs of the commonwealth. The establishment of a university in Ireland would advance the ideological conquest of Ireland by providing a schematic education in civic and Protestant values to the governing class. The establishment of a university in association with St. Patrick’s cathedral had been promoted by Archbishop Browne of Dublin in the reign of Edward VI. Under Elizabeth, Bishop Hugh Brady of Meath gave support to the cause. As he saw it, the university would ‘extirp ignorance, the only mother of murther, robberi, adulteries with vices infinite,’ and would ‘bring civil obedience with commodities more too many now to reherse.’ 243 The establishment of a university would also boost the numbers of competent reformed clergy who could minister in the Irish parishes. A petition to found a university at St. Patrick’s was forwarded to the Privy Council on the basis of reforming the barbarous people, and as ‘a well of all vertue from whence all goodness shall flowe,’ 244 while Archbishop Adam Loftus’s speech to the mayor and aldermen of Dublin urged them to consider the ‘common benefit intended to the Nation’ by granting a place to found the college, ‘whereby your memories will shine to posterity, in the long

241 E. Boran and H. Robinson-Hammerstein, ‘The Promotion of “Civility” and the Quest for the Creation of a “City of Peace”: The Beginnings of Trinity College, Dublin and of Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.,’ Paedagogica Historica 34, 2 (1998), pp. 486-8. 242 Sidney SP , pp. 132-3. 243 H. Coburn Walshe, ‘Enforcing the Elizabethan Settlement: The Vicissitudes of Hugh Brady, Bishop of Meath, 1563-84,’ Irish Historical Studies 26, 104 (1989), pp. 357-8, 364. 244 Cited in J.W. Stubbs, The History of the University of Dublin from its Foundation to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis and Co., 1889), Appendix I, p. 349. 177 lasting good Word you will thereby leave behind you.’ Loftus assured them that the project to advance the church and commonwealth was acceptable to a Christian conscience. The plan was ‘consonant with Religion,’ and further justification was found in the guise of the common good, for ‘reasons of public good stand with private emoluments [profits] in the matter proposed.’ 245 The humanist adage of the common good accompanied the appeal of James Stanyhurst, speaker of the Irish House of Commons. Stanyhurst claimed that free schools and a university were the means to create good citizens. Educational opportunities would foster ‘a young frye likely to prove themselves good members of the Commonwealth,’ and who would instil the same values in future generations. 246 In 1591, the mayor and Corporation of Dublin petitioned the crown to incorporate a college on the site of the dissolved All Hallows priory. They claimed to be ‘desirous of the advancement of learning and virtue,’ and claimed that the university would advance the commonwealth by allowing ‘good wittes’ to ‘be made humble to doe their Prince and Countrey more acceptable service then now, for want of learning and education, we see they doe.’ The lord deputy and council forwarded their recommendation to the Privy Council, adding that the university would be ‘a blessing unto the whole realme, and in our opinions so good a meane to plant religion, civilitie, and true obedience in the hearts of this people.’ 247 Trinity College was finally incorporated in 1592. Modelled after Oxford and Cambridge, it was to be an institution ‘whereby knowledge and civility might be increased by the instruction of our people’ in Dublin. 248 Students were given training in science, rhetoric and logic, but the main focus of studies at Trinity was theology. By training local Anglican clergy, the government hoped to advance the Protestant cause in a country that clung determinedly to Catholicism,

245 Stubbs, The History of the University of Dublin , Appendix II, pp. 350-1. 246 Cited in W. Urwick, The Early History of Trinity College Dublin, 1591-1660 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892), p. 2. 247 Urwick, The Early History of Trinity College , pp. 5-6. 248 Á. Hyland and K. Milne, (eds.), Irish Educational Documents: A Selection of Extracts from Documents Relating to the History of Irish Education from the Earliest Times to 1922 , Vol. I (Dublin: CICE, 1987), p. 303. 178 for although part of the general reform programme, the Reformation was never accepted by the majority of Irish people.249 This chapter has surveyed the humanist influences on English reform thought in Elizabethan Ireland. In the next chapter, the second major influence on reform thought will be considered. As explained in part two, the reformed faith was stirring, but not yet universally accepted in English society in the period prior to 1558. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Protestantism had coagulated, the theology of Calvin shaping the character of reformed ideas and practices. The establishment of Trinity College as a Protestant university symbolised the institutionalisation of Protestantism in English church and government. Although the Irish overwhelmingly rejected the Elizabethan supremacy, the following chapter will demonstrate that, by the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Protestant thought had infiltrated English government and policy in Ireland. The following chapter explores the subject of agricultural and economic improvement, using the base of Protestant theology as a force informing English views on society, economy and the environment. Beginning with a brief survey of the Protestant Reformation in Ireland, the contentious question of the supposed incompatibility of humanist and Protestant concepts of reform will be examined and assessed. This will be followed by discussion about Elizabethan attitudes towards the Irish environment, work, idleness and economic development, and the ways that these attitudes drove English reorganisation of the Irish landscape. Finally, a survey of agricultural metaphors in reform discourse will demonstrate how the English appropriated the sanctified practices of husbandry and agriculture to lend dignity to the conquest of Ireland.

3. Improvement

3.1. The Protestant Reformation and Ireland

English lay and ecclesiastical leaders believed that they could win Irish loyalty by converting the population to Protestantism. It was thought that unity in religion would bring unity in hearts and minds. (‘lest diversitie of religions might make

249 R.B. McDowell and D.A. Webb, Trinity College, Dublin, 1592-1952: An Academic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 5, 8; N. Canny, ‘Protestants, Planters and Apartheid in Early Modern Ireland,’ Irish Historical Studies 25, 98 (1986), p. 109. 179 difference in miends…’ 250 ), and preachers were sorely needed to spread the message of obedience, temporal and divine. In England, the Northern Rising of 1569, Elizabeth’s excommunication by Pope Pius V, and the Ridolfi plot of 1571 251 fuelled the government’s concern about the potential for civic discord. 252 Popery, idleness and other ‘lewd’ vices were seen as symptomatic of failings in proper religious instruction and education. The author of a fiery tract entitled The Supplication of the Blood of the English Most Lamentably Murdered in Ireland, Cryeng out of the Yearth for Revenge , argued that rebellion was the natural fruit of Catholicism. Composed in the midst of the Nine Years War, the author argued that the restitution of the commonwealth entailed a unity in religion, which he considered ‘the most sure and stedfast knotte to lincke men in Societye and fellowship togeather,’ and ‘the greatest bonde of all estates that can be.’ A ‘diversitie’ in religion destabilised the commonwealth and prevented unity. The only ‘true subject’ was of the Protestant faith. 253 The socio-religious situation in Elizabethan Ireland was similar to the north of England, where Catholicism, incivility and rebellion were believed to be the products of widespread ignorance attributable to the absence of preachers. As Hill explains, the government’s solution to enlighten the ‘dark corners’ of the kingdom was to foster preaching. Clergy were to be sent to the churches on the borders ‘to inform the lawless people of their duty.’ In Wales, too, it was observed that the people were, for want of sermons, ‘wonderfully given over to vicious life.’254 Preaching was an essential part of Protestantism, and the church was one of the main sources for information for many in English parishes. With the power to censor and inform, preachers were ‘a source of guidance on moral and economic conduct.’ The clergy in England were to be the vessels to ‘teach a social doctrine that will restrain even a suffering and indignant people from resorting to rebellion.’ 255 In Ireland, the clergy struggled to reach the greater population as

250 NASPI 63/40/77. 251 The plot was hatched to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and replace her with her Catholic rival, Mary Queen of Scots. 252 R. Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture, c. 1540- 1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 314. 253 Maley (ed.), ‘Supplication,’ pp. 40-1, 52, 65. 254 Hill, ‘Puritans and “The Dark Corners of the Land,”’ pp. 81-2, 86. 255 Hill, Society and Puritanism , pp. 33, 51; H.C. White, Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1944), p. 131. 180 they lacked an Irish prayer book and were unable to find competent reformed ministers who could preach in the native tongue. 256 While the Irish remained fixed in their allegiance to the Pope, many in England now considered themselves to be Protestant. By 1603, the influence of the Protestant worldview on reform thought and discourse in Ireland was deeply rooted. From the mid-sixteenth century, Calvinism emerged as the popular mode of reformed religion in England. Calvinism flourished in the universities, and Cambridge in particular fed the ‘rank and file’ of Puritan reformers, sustained by the influence of their Puritan tutors. 257 Calvinism was readily adaptable to secular problems, and served the overarching need for order espoused by theorists and politicians in the sixteenth century. 258 From Calvin, the English inherited a model for measuring godliness and predicting salvation through observation of human effort and moral discipline. Armed with a belief that English industriousness was a sign of divine favour, reformers accepted as inherently moral the conquest and acquisition of Irish territory for purposes of agricultural and industrial development.

3.2. Protestantism and humanism: irreconcilable concepts?

In his assessment of Old and New English approaches to the Reformation in Ireland, Bradshaw argued that policies of ‘sword’ and ‘word,’ or coercion and conciliation, were irreconcilable. Bradshaw bases this contention on the Lutheran argument for the depravity of mankind after the fall, which resulted in a pessimistic attitude towards human nature, for it was believed that man could have no influence upon his salvation. The doctrine of faith-based salvation preached fallen man’s inability to attain salvation through good works. He contrasts this with Erasmian humanism, which upheld the idea of free will and the human capacity for atonement by appealing to individual conscience. According to Bradshaw, the increasingly violent solutions applied to Ireland were products of predestinarian Protestantism, which guided the English to the assumption that the

256 R.D. Edwards, Church and State in Tudor Ireland , p. 196; Coburn Walshe, ‘Enforcing the Elizabethan Settlement,’ pp. 359-62. 257 C.R. Thompson, Universities in Tudor England (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1959), p. 18; P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967), pp. 122-130. 258 Cremeans, Reception of Calvinistic Thought , p. 5. 181 Irish were unredeemable and that conciliation was therefore ineffective in advancing reform. He rejects humanism as a legitimate guiding force because coercive tactics contravened the humanist emphasis on a free will amenable to enlightenment. The pedagogical contradiction between Protestantism and humanism appears, at first, to be a conundrum that throws the credibility of the ‘Protestant humanist’ into doubt. However, the findings of scholars since Bradshaw have placed considerable strain on his thesis regarding polemical ideologies. Coburn Walshe poses a challenge to Bradshaw’s thesis, pointing to the paradox that many supporters of moderation in Ireland were also Protestants. Furthermore, Walshe contends that humanism did not always or necessarily lead to moderation, and that severity in words and deeds can realistically be interpreted as expressions of ‘sheer frustration’ as by a conscious affiliation with a particular ideology. 259 Walshe’s contention that Protestantism did not strictly entail pessimism is supported by the work of Green, who has found that the core Protestant doctrine on salvation through faith was approached with pragmatism by the educated laity, who often promoted good deeds above private introspection. In his account of the relationship between classical and Christian moral education in England, Green argues that the educated laity negotiated the ‘constructive tension’ between humanist calls to virtue and the negation of meritorious actions through original sin by gravitating towards a belief in the moral worth of good deeds. The staunchest Calvinists reaffirmed their uncompromising stance on the incapacity of fallen man, but many Protestants took a moderate approach that combined grace and free will, stressing the connection between faith and good works. Good deeds were a product of saving faith, the visible fruit of justification, or ‘the fruit by which the health of the tree of faith could be judged.’ 260 As Todd explains, despite the obvious contradiction between humanist optimism and the Calvinist doctrine of depravity, Protestant social theorists inherited many of their ideas from Renaissance humanists. Their mutual interests were strongly reformist, focusing on the alleviation of social problems and the obligation of all citizens to an active life in the service of the commonwealth.261

259 Coburn Walshe, ‘Enforcing the Elizabethan Settlement,’ p. 368. 260 Green, Humanism and Protestantism , pp. 112-3, 294, 308. 261 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 18. 182 Although there is no consensus on the precise relationship between Protestantism and Renaissance humanism, we can safely situate both movements within the environment of reform and regeneration that characterised the Northern European Renaissance.

3.3. Governing land and people in Elizabethan Ireland

The rise of industries and the demands of a growing market in early modern England resulted in extensive deforestation. As Thomas explains, subjection of the English forests symbolised ‘the triumph of civilisation.’262 In contrast, the large regions of waste lands in Ireland eluded the same systems of control and ordering. Before the English could govern Ireland effectively, they saw it necessary to remodel the largely pastoral economy and Gaelic patterns of landholding after the example of England. 263 To govern effectively the whole country, the English needed to open access to outlying territory and assert control over resources which it needed to supply the garrisons. This meant eradicating the transient nature of Irish society in favour of a sedentary and controllable agricultural system. As president of Connacht, Edward Fitton oversaw the division of the country into plough lands. He hoped that agriculture would have a civilising effect on the native inhabitants, and expressed a desire that ‘God move the queen to take that way as may turn this good earth to good use and reform this ill people to some goodness.’ 264 Unless the land was improved and profits drawn from the idle soil by planting crops and felling timber, Ireland would forever exist in economic stagnation, an unprofitable and restive thorn in England’s side. The untouched wealth of the Irish soil and the failure of the Irish to effectively exploit it was one of the most common arguments for colonisation. Thomas Smith appealed to potential investors by showcasing the greatness of the soil and abundance of natural commodities. Ireland was ‘a lande that floweth with milke and hony,’ and only wanted for ‘inhabitants, manurance, and pollicie.’265 Lord Chancellor William Gerrard reported to the earl of Leicester that, even though none in Ireland could agree on a strategy of reform, one thing everyone

262 Thomas, Man and the Natural World , p. 194. 263 Hayes-McCoy, ‘The Completion of the Tudor Conquest,’ pp. 94-5. 264 CSPI 1571-75 , pp. 25, 120. 265 Smith, A Letter Sent by I. B. Gentleman, pp. 406, 409. 183 could agree on was that ‘the soyle is fertill, pleasaunt and plentifull, yealdeth all thinges necessarye for mans sustentacion, that is and hathe bene noe small reproche to the Princes of this lande to be in name and chardge and noe profitt.’ 266 In Croftus Sive , Herbert began with a glowing endorsement of the natural wealth and pleasant climate of Ireland. Ireland was ‘a fertile and pleasant place,’ was ‘laden with several veins of metals and minerals,’ offered excellent fishing and ‘a mild climate which is most healthy and fair.’ 267 The romanticisation of Ireland was often accompanied by condemnation of its abject state of neglect. John Derricke espoused the fruits of the Irish soil, which he described as possessing ‘thousand sundry pleasant things.’ Ireland was compared to a ‘fragrant flower/in pleasant May that springs,’ Derricke marvelled that ‘bride of heavenly hue’ was ‘wed’ to the loathsome woodkern who were incapable of civility.268 The absence of cultivation in Ireland led observers to conclude that the Irish were idle, a deeply immoral condition so disturbing to the early modern English that it was considered to be the mother of all vices.269 As Richard Stanyhurst explained, the Irish were infected with ‘drousie lithernesse to withdraw them from the insearching of [Ireland’s] hourded and hidden jewels,’ and described them as ‘luskish loiterer[s] […] settled in a fertill ground,’ unwilling to work for the fruits and commodities of the soil. 270 The drive to possess and plant Ireland was supported by Protestant theology, which provided a mandate for the domination of nature by humankind. In Protestant discourse, regenerating the earth was a godly sort of labour that benefitted the individual the nation. 271 The English response to the apparent Irish averseness to cultivation was informed by traditions that equated economic productivity with godliness and moral discipline.

3.4. Labour and economy

Humanist reformers of the Renaissance esteemed the active life as having the greatest value to the commonwealth. The active ethic was inherited by Protestant

266 C. McNeill (ed.), ‘Lord Chancellor Gerrard’s Notes of His Report on Ireland,’ Analecta Hibernica 2 (Jan., 1931), pp. 93-4. 267 Herbert, Croftus Sive , p. 25. 268 Derricke, Image of Irelande , p. 191. 269 J. Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws of England , Vol. VI, 1483-1558 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 97. 270 Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland , pp. 41-2. 271 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 205. 184 reformers who argued in favour of altruistic economic activity as a positive and Godly contribution to the national community. Protestantism was fundamentally individualist in its promotion of internal conviction and a person’s direct relation to God, and it has been argued that the individualistic pursuit of salvation led to the equally individualistic pursuit of wealth. 272 Although the ‘Weber thesis’ on the Protestant foundations of capitalism has been subjected to intense debate and scrutiny, this study sustains the idea, in simple terms, that the Calvinist emphasis on relentless labour and the regard for industriousness and material success as signs of predestination countenanced the pursuit of profit. Prosperity came to be seen as a gift of God. Economic productivity and the accumulation of wealth were considered to be charitable and virtuous if carried out for the profit of the community, and so long as one’s money was not attained through greed or used indulgently. The wealthy were expected to deploy their riches in ways that advanced God’s glory. Riches were no good unless they were accompanied by virtue and used in ways that benefited the greater good. Bryskett articulated the view that the unbridled use of wealth was wasteful and extravagant: ‘ Pythagoras said, that as a horse cannot be ruled without a bit,’ wrote Bryskett, ‘so riches are hardly wel used without prudence, which wil in no wise dwell with them, who abandon themselves wholy to vaine delights.’ 273 The social repercussions of Elizabethan Protestantism echoed aspects of Christian humanism. Humanist theory taught that idleness was a threat to the enactment of civic duties and antagonistic to the intrinsic moral value of public life. The Christian humanist emphasis on self-discipline was inherited by Protestant thinkers. Calvinism, the dominant branch of Protestantism in Elizabethan England, commanded obedience and discipline. As Todd relates, ‘[t]he civic responsibility of the humanist citizen corresponded to the religious accountability of the protestant saint,’ and the well-ordered commonwealth of the humanists equated to the harmonious ‘elect nation’ of English Protestants. These utopian ideals could be fulfilled by the reformation of the individual. 274 A practical and social movement anchored in worldly endeavour, Calvin vowed to ‘“take” the earthly kingdom and to transform it.’ The active life was esteemed as a

272 For the ‘Weber thesis’ on capitalism and Protestantism, see M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2 nd ed. London: Allen and Unwin, 1976). 273 Bryskett, A Discourse of Civill Life , p. 205. 274 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 178. 185 higher calling than a contemplative one, for those who chose to pursue an activist Christian life were more Godly than monks who withdrew themselves from society and who offered no practical benefits to it. Calvin wrote that man’s prime motive should be zeal for the glory of God rather than seclusion in his own thoughts of personal salvation. It was ‘the duty of a Christian man to ascend higher than merely to seek and secure the salvation of his own soul.’ 275 To the Calvinist, therefore, labour was a social duty.276 In Protestant social thought, work was curative, enabling the moral reform of the individual. In Calvinist thought, each person was to follow their divine calling, which was based on the principle that God had appointed an earthly role for every person. The duty of every individual was to labour in their calling for God’s glory and the common good. Labouring for one’s bread was the best expression of a holy life. The Calvinist shaming of the able-bodied unemployed was inspired by the biblical aphorism, ‘if any would not work, neither should he eat.’277 The Protestant principle of predestination denied man’s ability to attain salvation after death through good works. While it was impossible to know whether one was predestined for salvation, a life spent in active service for the glory of God, expressed through one’s calling, could be interpreted as verification that one was a member of God’s elect. Glorification of God must come through a life of action as well as prayer, for in a world where individuals could do absolutely nothing to contribute to their salvation, good works were the sign that the individual was one of God’s elect. Unemployment, or voluntary idleness, was a sign of moral depravity, for to be indolent was to disobey God’s command to toil diligently for one’s daily bread. It was within this context that schemes were designed to force the able-bodied unemployed to work. The growing prevalence of unemployment frequently preoccupied the government and social reformers in Elizabeth’s England. 278 The demise of the old feudal order, the destruction of the Catholic Church together with the poor relief it provided, rapid economic and population growth, and agrarian dislocation contributed to the appearance of a race of uprooted

275 M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (New York: Atheneum, 1968), pp. 26, 54; D.C. Steinmetz, Calvin in Context (2 nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 191. 276 Hill, Society and Puritanism , p. 129. 277 This passage is from 2 Thessalonians 3:10; Fideler, ‘Poverty, Policy and Providence,’ p. 210. 278 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 166. 186 ‘masterless men’ in England. Protestant social critics railed against idleness as a moral affliction consuming society. The able-bodied poor were targeted by reformers who responded to the chaos and sinfulness of social decay by prescribing continuous, organised activity. As Walzer explains, diligent labour in one’s calling was ‘the primary and elemental form of social discipline, the key to order, and the foundation of all further morality.’ The new creed of religious duty was that every man, commoner and nobleman alike, must work. 279 In an age of social reform, the ‘disreputable’ poor were exempt from rehabilitation programmes. The ‘wilfully’ unemployed, such as vagrants and other ‘sturdy beggars,’ relinquished their claim to compassionate treatment as victims of society. Rather, they became agents of public disturbance, a reputation that persisted in popular culture. Intense awareness of mutability and rebellion prompted by these processes of social transformation were the conditions in which the government passed enactments to preserve law and order. Fears about the potential of miscreants to subvert civil order led to legislation such as the Elizabethan poor laws, which distinguished between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor and prescribed harsh penalties for those in the latter category. 280 The authorised Tudor position on work was articulated in the homily against idleness. Man had been placed in Eden ‘that he might dress and keep it,’ but having sinned was cast ‘into this woeful vale of misery, enjoining him to labour the ground that he was taken out of.’ Work was a requirement ‘by the ordinance of God,’ who ‘set in the nature of man, every one ought, in his lawful vocation and calling, to give himself to labour,’ deeming that idleness was ‘repugnant to the same ordinance,’ was ‘a grievous sin,’ and ‘an intolerable evil.’ 281 Idleness was the first step towards all other sins. It was ‘the mother of all evils,’ preparing sinners to ‘tread the way to hellfire.’ Those who turned to idleness were prone to temptation and sin. When a man had no work with which to occupy himself, ‘he learneth to do evil.’ Congregations were called to ‘always be doing of some honest work, that the devil may find us occupied.’ As idleness

279 Walzer, Revolution of the Saints , pp. 206-9, 211. 280 L. Woodridge, Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), p. 109. 281 An Homily against Idleness (London: Gilbert and Rivington, 1835), pp. 1-2. 187 was considered a social and not an individual evil, it was incumbent upon the community to condemn and punish the idle among them.282 The growing vagrant poor population was a persistent social problem in Elizabethan England, and attitudes towards vagrancy at home influenced the indignant reactions to the prevalence of idleness in Ireland. Writers and administrators pressed for measures to combat the chief social evils in Ireland. Idleness was a principle concern, and the term was often used to refer to Irish occupations considered incendiary (and therefore illegitimate) such as kern and rhymers. The ecclesiastical commission sent to Ireland in 1564 was given substantial power to enforce public order. The commissioners were ordered ‘to enquire and search out all masterless men, quarrellers, vagrants and suspected persons, and all assaults and affrays perpetrated in the Kingdom,’ to summon offenders to trial and ‘commit to ward all obstinate and disobedient persons not conforming to these rules, orders, and commandments.’ 283 A number of the ordinances passed by Perrot in Munster were designed to police idle occupations. They included a ruling that sons of husbandmen and ploughmen were to follow the same occupation as their fathers. Anyone who became a kern, galloglass, ‘horse boy’ or some other ‘idle’ occupation was to be fined and imprisoned for a year. Further orders included a register of the armed retainers of each lord, and the execution of unregistered men as felons. It was also to be made lawful for ‘every good subject’ to kill a thief caught in the act of robbing, spoiling or ‘breaking of houses by night or day.’ It was deemed that any ‘carroughes, bards, rhymers, and common idle men and women within this province making rhymes, bringing of messages, and common players at cards,’ were stripped of their goods and put in stocks, where they were to remain ‘till they shall find sufficient surety to leave that wicked thrade of life, and to fall to other occupation.’ 284 Mandates against idleness reflected assumptions held by the English elite about the importance of vocation in an ordered society. By shaming the idle Irish and valorising productivity and labour, reformers gave sanctity to colonial ambition. Among his assessments of ‘the principall matters of a well governed comon welth, being seen thus out of good

282 An Homily against Idleness , pp. 7-8, 12. 283 J. Morrin (ed.), Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland in the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth , Vol. I (Dublin: Alex. Thom and Sons, 1861), p. 489. 284 Cal. Carew, 1515-74 , pp. 409-10. 188 ordre, and so long tyme suffred,’ Tremayne observed that the Irish made inadequate use of their ports and fertile soils. Workmen were ‘the good furnitures of well ordered Citties and townes,’ but cities and towns were destitute because of the idleness of the people who would rather steal than work, and because the Irish had no use for trades applicable to civil society such as tailors, carpenters, saddlers or cutlers. Tremayne suggested that religious reform in the country would benefit the process of civil regeneration by implanting Protestant values. ‘Religion reformed and entered into men’s hartes bringeth with it all charitable good workes,’ such as building schools and repairing bridges and roads, ‘whereof this realme hath nede.’ Tremayne’s notes for national reform included the application of laws to remove ‘idle loyterors that are the caterpillors of the comon welth,’ and the promotion of husbandry. 285 Thomas Smith was willing to accept native Irish within his colony if they would live quietly and productively as labourers: ‘He that is contented with his own and will live quiet, and much more he that will labour for his living, shall be defended, cherished, yea, and enriched if he will.’ Smith’s pretensions to moral superiority were sustained by his plans to bring the land to productive use: ‘What hurt is offered [the Irish] if the desolate and desert grounds be made inhabited and plentiful.’ 286 In Smith’s colony, labour was to be a measure of virtue. His orders included a rule that ‘all men must & shoulde worke,’ and that no man was to be exempt from trenching and fortification except the colonel and other officers, whose duties included overseeing works, to ‘reprove the loyterers, & prayse the good doers.’ Those who would not work simply relinquished their claim. Should any colonist refuse to contribute his fair share of labour, then it would be assumed by the governors that ‘they shew them self to refuse the benefitt which they clayme, & not worthie to have it.’ 287 Industry was a vital component in restoring the commonwealth. Master of the ordnance, George Carew, complained that programmes to ‘foster arts, liberal or mechanical; and all kinds of traffic, as marts, fairs, and the like, which enrich a commonwealth by making men industrious, are little followed.’ 288 Industrial development was seen by reformers as an opportunity to improve the moral

285 NASPI 63/32/66. 286 Butler and Crawford Lomas (eds.), State Papers Foreign, Jan-June 1583 and Addenda , p. 468. 287 ERO MS D/DSH/O1/2. 288 Cal. Carew, 1575-88 , p. 469. 189 condition of the Irish. By introducing the Irish to gainful employment through which they could contribute to their country’s economic prosperity, they would be moved to see the virtue of work as opposed to their former wicked and idle lives. The ambitious could make their petitions for office and land all the more enticing if they included plans to set the Irish to work. In 1587, orator John Kernan petitioned Burghley for the position of seneschal in Co. Cavan as a reward for his good service. He planned to bring the local population to order. By ‘dutiful exhortation, and examples of husbandry and other civil trades,’ the Irish would be enticed away ‘from their disorders and disobedience to the due regard of loyalty and obedience.’ 289 In Spenser’s plans for Irish reform, idleness was to be rigorously weeded out. Idleness was a chief source of mischief, and steps were to be taken to ensure that the Irish remained occupied in manual labour. Each Irishman was to be assigned and committed to a trade. Most would be put to work as husbandmen, as husbandry had a wholesome reputation as ‘the nurse of thrifte, and the daughter of industrye and labor.’ The newly employed Irish, having ‘drawen and mad[e] to imploye that ablenesse of bodye,’ would forget theft and villainy in the pursuit of honest labour. Soon enough they would forget their ‘Irishness,’ and their new productive lives would bring ‘swetenes and happy contentment.’ 290 Rejection of society was punishable by law. Provost marshals would scour the country for vagrants, who were to be subject to stocks and whips for first and second offences, and for a third offence they would taste the ‘bitterness’ of martial law. This is reminiscent of the ‘three strikes’ legislation of the English Vagrancy Act of 1572, in which offenders were to be hanged on their third offence. 291 Spenser justified his solution by condemning those who repeatedly refused work as ‘unfitt to live in a commonwealthe.’ 292 The conviction that the Ireland could only realise its full potential under active hands was articulated in an anonymous treatise, ‘touching the estate & replanting of Ireland,’ written around 1599. The author described the soil as suitable for both tillage and pasture, the abundant woods as ripe for industries

289 CSPI 1586-88 , p. 430. 290 Spenser, View . 291 E.M. Leonard, The Early History of English Poor Relief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), p. 70. 292 Spenser, View . 190 such as shipbuilding and ironworks, declaring that ‘noe parte [of the country] will be unprofitable to inhabitants of industrye.’293 The author envisioned Ireland as a great commercial hub between northern and southern Europe, ‘planted with civill and industrious people, the groundes well manured, the ports and havenes frequented with shipes from all nations.’294 Warning against the ‘intermixing’ of English and Irish on Irish soil, where ‘degeneration’ could occur, he offered the rather surprising solution of transporting the Irish to England. The Irish immigrants would be turned into a servant underclass, living new and honest working lives in the service of English families. Landed Irish who had not rebelled would be induced to accept land in England in exchange for their Irish estates. In return, a certain number of families from each English parish would migrate to Ireland. The assumption that lay behind this scheme was that the English, engaged in active citizenship, had better reason than the Irish to live in Ireland. Under English stewardship, Ireland would become a peaceful and prosperous commercial centre, while the Irish, uprooted from their native soil, would ‘happelie alter their disposition when they shall be planted in an other soile.’ 295 Another remarkable element of this treatise is a plan to invite Flemish colonists to supplement the English in Ireland. The author chose the Dutch because they were thought to be much like the English and ‘of greate industreye.’ 296 The author intended to apply the vigorous Protestant values of the English and Dutch to recreate utopia in Ireland. Ireland would be profitable only if ‘cleane riddance be made of the Irish bloud and stirpe ther so neere as shall be possible,’ as Ireland was transformed into ‘a weste England.’ 297 The assumption that Dutch industriousness would be a welcome addition to Ireland is consistent with the Puritan values of Elizabethan England, 298 where the Calvinist Dutch were

293 BL Harley MS 35/29, f. 328. A translation of another copy of this document can be found in D.B. Quinn (ed.), ‘“A Discourse of Ireland” (circa 1599): A Sidelight on English Colonial Policy,’ Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 47C (1941-2), pp. 151-66. As there is no date on the manuscript, I have adhered to Quinn’s estimate. 294 BL Harley MS 35/29, f. 331. 295 BL Harley MS 35/29, ff. 332r-v. 296 BL Harley MS 35/29, f. 332. 297 BL Harley MS 35/29, f. 333. 298 The amorphous term ‘Puritan’ has led to semantic confusion among historians. Christopher Hill argues that Puritans were a dissenting minority in Elizabethan England, while a revisionist movement has shown that Puritans, far from a minority, were the heart of the Calvinist establishment: the ‘hotter sort’ of Protestant who held the same beliefs as moderate Protestants, 191 held up as a model for vigorous and unrelenting activity. Walzer explains that English writers praised the Dutch as examples of industry and godliness, a people who lived in a ‘utopia of men without leisure.’ The radical Protestant preacher and pamphleteer Thomas Scott would later urge the English to imitate the Dutch as the model of a godly commonwealth, where ‘every man workes, and depends upon himselfe (with Gods blessing) for his sustenance; thinking it a shame, that two hands should not feede one mouth, and clothe one backe.’ 299 In 1603, Hugh Cuffe, a planter in Munster, wrote to the Dutch Church in London seeking members willing to settle on his land in Co. Cork. Cuffe targeted the Dutch Calvinists ‘as beinge a kind of people, that I have allwaise loved, as well for yo ur Integritty of lyfe, as alsoe for yo ur Industrye.’ 300 The Dutch proposal appeared in another tract on the colonisation of Ulster written around this time. The author recommended that the Dutch be used to ‘break the ice of that enterprise’ by giving Flemish gentlemen whole shires to subdivide and settle. It was hoped that the Flemish, by ‘their example of husbandry, handicrafts, traffic, and observing good orders (whereto that nation are much inclined), will draw other men to their imitation.’ In this instance, the restoration of the commonwealth’s health rested on the migration of a foreign people renowned for their skills in industry and commerce. Irish laziness was contrasted with the commercial exploits of the English and Dutch. The Irish regarded husbandry and ‘handicrafts’ as ‘so base, as they curse those that acquainted them first with such wild ways of living, so misled are they in idleness, and inured to the hatred of all good.’ 301 Early in the reign of James I, a Dutchman named Maxmilian Van der Lever, who ‘like the rest of his nation, is diligent and industrious to improve the commodities of this kingdom’ offered to plant a colony on the islands on Lough Erne. The proposed plantation of Dutch workers was endorsed as ‘a great

only more intensely. For a summary of this debate in history, see P. Lake, ‘The Historiography of Puritanism,’ in J. Coffey and P.C.H. Lim (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 346-71. 299 Peltonen, Classical Humanism , pp. 266-270; Walzer, Revolution of the Saints , p. 210; Thomas Scott, The Belgicke Pismire: Stinging the Slothfull Sleeper, and Awaking the Diligent to Fast, Watch, Pray, and Worke Out Their Owne Temporall and Eternall Salvation with Feare and Trembling (London: s.n., 1622), p. 75. 300 There is no evidence of Dutch migration to Cork as a result of Cuffe’s appeal. J.H. Hessels (ed.), Epistulae Et Tractatus Cum Reformationis Tum Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Historiam Illustrantes , Vol. II (Cambridge, 1889), p. 927; D.B. Quinn, ‘The Munster Plantation: Problems and Opportunities,’ Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 71 (1966), p. 35. 301 CSPI 1598-99 , pp. 438-42. 192 encouragement and benefit […] for by their industry all the commodities will be wrought and vented, and the lake will be so full of boats and barks, that they will be a great strength to all the civil inhabitants round about.’ 302 The idle lifestyle of the Irish and apparent penchant for rebellion and destruction sustained English arguments for plantation. As a society that revered the plough as a symbol of order and prosperity, the English interpreted the lack of arable farming in Ireland as a symbol of a commonwealth in poor health. The reliance on cultivation as a measure of civilisation was rooted in the emerging zeal for agricultural improvement in Tudor England and was sustained, in equal measure, by the classical legacy of humanism and economic attitudes of Protestantism.

3.5. Reorganising the environment: cultivation and civility

The complaints over enclosures that preoccupied the social reformers of the early sixteenth century transitioned, by the end of the century, to a positive view of economic individualism. Authors of Tudor husbandry manuals espoused the economic and moral value of efficient and productive agriculture for everyone from wealthy landlords to small farmers. 303 The ideology of improvement was transmitted through instructional literature from classical and contemporary sources. The new spirit of individualism propagated the virtue of labour as a contribution to the commonwealth and which, relates Herron, ‘inspired the thrifty individual to control his own passions and work for the national welfare.’ 304 Through the celebration of virtuous labour and industriousness, writers were able to reconcile individualism with national improvement. Rowland White, an Old English convert to Protestantism, 305 believed that the Irish could be encouraged to accept an English order if English farmers were sent to live among them. In White’s scheme, four thousand ‘plowmen’ would be recruited from England to ‘come hither and take wast landes to inhabyte and tyll,’ where they could enrich themselves and persuade the native inhabitants to follow suit. Not only would the farmers earn a respectable living, they would set an

302 Hill, Plantation in Ulster , p. 182. 303 Clay, Economic Expansion , p. 79; McRae, God Speed the Plough , pp. 144-5. 304 Herron, Spenser’s Irish Work , p. 52. 305 Canny (ed.), ‘Rowland White’s “Discors,”’ p. 441. 193 example for the Irish who would take up husbandry and in join with the newcomers in rejuvenating the commonwealth White endorsed the application of good husbandry as a device to outroot idle Irish customs. He anticipated that ‘the provision of plowmen (as good sedes)’ would overgrow ‘the weedes of incyvilitie’ by stimulating a love of wealth and plenty among people who knew only desolation and poverty. White suggested that possession and cultivation would diminish the Irish impulse to make war. If men of war were given land to cultivate, they would develop an unwillingness to lose the fruits of their labours. They would therefore learn to covet peace and appreciate the laws that protected their possessions. 306 Contemporary perspectives on the social benefits of agricultural labour were harnessed by promoters of plantation schemes. Thomas Smith depended on the suggestive relationship between cultivation and virtue, maintaining that his son’s benevolent conquest, to be accomplished by the plough rather than the sword, was consonant with ancient virtues. Husbandry was a civilising force. The plough ‘settleth the occupier and what with tending his fallowe, reaptyde, seede time, and thrashing, it bindeth always the occupier to the Lande, and is a continuall occupation of a great number of persons, a helper and a mainteyner of civilitie in my opinion.’ 307 Smith maintained that, as commander of the enterprise, his son would be ‘a defender no invader, a maintener of plowes and tillage, not a chaser away of them, a peopler of howses and townes not a desolater […] a leader forthe of men to enhabite, and till wast and desolate places.’ Colonists were to focus their energies on labour rather than provoking unnecessary hostility: ‘yf the yrish wilbe quiet with us, we will not troble them, but fall to entrenchyng dichyng plowyng sowyng & enclosyng.’ Smith predicted that the Irish would soon feel the benefits of English civilisation. He wrote to Fitzwilliam that ‘within few yeres, the people of the contrey shall see that the manner of the governement of Englishmen adorned with justice to their neighboures, and industrie within them selves ys so far better then their customes,’ and that the natives ‘will by example follow of their owen selves such orders as this colony shall bringe in.’ Smith assured the lord deputy that as the ancient Romans had civilised their English ancestors, Smith and his contemporaries would convey the institutions of civilisation to Ireland. ‘[T]his

306 Canny (ed.), ‘Rowland White’s “Discors,”’ pp. 457-8. 307 Smith, A Letter Sent by I. B. Gentleman , p. 410. 194 thing, your lordshippe maie se,’ he explained, ‘is neither sought to expel, nor to destroy the yrish race, but to kepe them in quiet, in order, in virtuous labor, and in justice, and to teache them our English lawes & civilitie, and leave robbing & stealing & killing one of an other.’ 308 Agriculture was to be a major axis around which Smith’s planter community would turn. When not at war with hostile Irish and Scots, the soldiers in Smith’s colony were to be put to work in the fields. According to Smith, ‘[n]ottinge doth more people the contrey with men, maketh men more cyvill, nor bringeth more comodyties to the sustenance of man then the plowgh.’ The soldiers were required to have at least half of their allotted lands under tillage within two years. The commitment to farm was enforceable by a perpetual law in which farmers were fined for untilled acres. Smith linked agricultural activity with the civic virtue of the individual, their worthiness as members of the commonwealth. If the soldier were to turn ‘more of the ground allotted for his porcion to that tyllage he is worthie to be reconid the better member of the comon wealthe,’ wrote Smith, ‘& the more tennentes especially Englishmen he hath to do it, & so to people the ground, he deserveth the more prayse.’ Production to turn a profit was to be celebrated and encouraged as an activity in the national interest.309 Opportunities to make agricultural improvements were further diminished by the absence of English tenurial rights in Ireland. It was understood that many of the crown’s Irish subjects were effectively tenants-at-will, the lords able to terminate leases as they pleased. Tremayne remarked that the tyranny of the lords was so terrible that English tenants refused to inhabit among the Irish. The lords offered no security of residence, so that ‘no man bettereth his grounde, maketh nor meddow, inclosuer, nor orched, nor buyldeth his house or planteth any comoditie, because of his incertentie to enjoye it.’ Instead they were forced to toil as churls (peasants), a miserable people. 310 Chief Justice William Saxey complained that the Irish peasants, holding their land year-to-year, ‘have not any care to make any strong or defensible houses or buildinges, to plant or to enclose,’ which meant that territory was vulnerable to spoil and the people more readily

308 Bodl. Carte MS 56, f. 462; Bodl. Carte MS 57, ff. 380, 436. 309 ERO MS D/DSH/O1/2. 310 NASPI 63/32/66. 195 stirred to rebellion. 311 The widespread practice of tenancy-at-will was listed by Spenser as one of the ills afflicting Ireland. The refusal of landlords to make long leases for their tenants was equivalent to wilful neglect of the commonwealth. In the View , the character Eudoxus, who describes the thatched and wattled dwellings of rural Ireland 312 as ‘rather swyne-steades then howses,’ explains that people in precarious circumstances have little reason to develop and improve their surroundings. He asks Irenius ‘what reasonable man will not thinke that the tenement shalbe made much the better for the lords behoofe, yf the tennante may by such meanes be drawen to buylde himselfe some handsome habitacon thereof, to dytch and enclose his grounde, to manure and husband yt as good farmers use?’ In 1600, English witness John Dymmok observed that in Ireland, the tenant ‘never buildeth, repaireth, or incloseth the grownde.’ Dymmok explained that the insecurity of the Irish system caused ‘a generall weaknes for want of inhabitinge and plantinge the people in places certaine,’ and that the Irish were ‘given to a wandringe and idle life.’ 313 To reverse the decay of agriculture, the English sought to inhibit the lords’ autonomy over lease terms and to create conditions that would encourage the people to improve their environment after the English fashion. Tremayne remarked that security and guaranteed inheritance were necessary to stimulate improvement. When men know what is theirs, and have it in inheritance, ‘they will builde, they will plante, make medowes and orcheardes and all other thinges that may better yt.’ 314 Saxey believed that the solution lay in enforcing long leases of at least twenty-one years. The tenants would thereby be encouraged to build, enclose and plant, and to persist on the land in ‘a good enduringe state.’315 Spenser regarded security of possession as a crucial condition to motivate the tenant to improve his land by building and enclosing. In the View , Eudoxus explains that by being able to make improvements to his estate, the tenant would be moved to embrace a civil existence, for ‘by the handsomenes of his howse, he shall take greate comforte of his lief, more saife dwellinge, and a delight to keepe his saide howse neate and cleanely.’ Irenius agrees with his companion that

311 BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/21, ff. 92v-93. 312 R.A. Butlin, ‘Land and People, c. 1600,’ in Moody, Martin and Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland , Vol. III, p. 157. 313 NLI MS 669, f. 1. 314 NASPI 63/55/6. 315 BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/21, ff. 92v-93. 196 securing tenants on their estates, enclosing and fencing to protect cattle and property from thieves and outlaws, ‘chiefly redoundeth to the good of the commonwealth.’316 Some Catholic lords in Ireland cooperated with the government by adopting, or being seen to adopt, English customs. However, the extent to which they internally absorbed English ideas of civilisation and improvement is uncertain. In the Elizabethan period, we can locate examples of Irish lords collaborating with the government and acting as implementers of English policy in their lordships. It appears, however, that cooperation was often a means to placate the English so that lords could continue, for the most part, to lead their traditional lifestyles without government harassment. In Connacht, the earl of Clanricard and other Irish nobles assisted with the implementation of composition, which involved the introduction of English tenure and a fixed tax in place of multiple exactions, effectively transforming feudal Irish warlords into landlords. According to Cunningham, the earls of Clanricard and Thomond enthusiastically adopted composition as the English alternative to coign and livery, but she also notes that they were only willing to accept social and economic changes in their territory as long as they could consolidate their own power within the new order. 317 In Leinster, the MacGiollapadraigs (Fitzpatricks) of Upper Ossory were known for their demonstrations of loyalty to the crown, offering military support and professing to support reform policy. But while they purported to act in the interests of the crown, the MacGiollapadraigs were vehemently protecting their own interests and their lordship, the population of which remained uniformly Irish, managed to preserve its Gaelic character throughout the sixteenth century. The economy was pastoral and farming was performed by a peasantry of tenants-at-will who worked the land on behalf of their lords.318 Another form of tyranny that may have inhibited agricultural development was the government exaction of cess. Cess was a major a grievance for the Pale subjects who bore the brunt of the burden of supporting the garrisons. One writer

316 Spenser, View . 317 B. Cunningham, ‘The Composition of Connacht in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1577-1641,’ Irish Historical Studies 24, 93 (1984), p. 7. 318 D. Edwards, ‘Collaboration without Anglicisation: The MacGiollapadraig Lordship and Tudor Reform,’ in P.J. Duffy, D. Edwards and E. FitzPatrick (eds.), Gaelic Ireland c. 1250-1650: Land, Lordship and Settlement (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 81, 85. 197 observed that ‘the cess and vexation of the soldiers make the labouring man careless of his tillage and husbandry, holding as good to play for nothing as to work for nothing (the soldier consuming the fruit of his labour).’ He recommended the abolition of cess in exchange for an annual tax. His goods no longer subject to the pillaging of soldiers, the farmer would once more have regard for cultivation: ‘that tyranny taken away he and his will duly labour and manure the ground to sustain and benefit themselves thereby, whereof plenty of all things necessary would ensue.’ 319 Undeveloped and unbound wilderness was an affront to the Protestant assumption that agriculture was a godly activity that served the national interest. The uncultivated landscape symbolised a nonchalant attitude towards worldly activity and ignorance of what was due a properly ordered commonwealth. The divine charter to Adam and his progeny to fill and subdue the earth was taken to be a scriptural mandate to plant and improve the soil. Smith reasoned that his enterprise enjoyed divine sanction, for ‘God did make apte and prepare this nation for such a purpose.’ the Queen had gained the land as her rightful inheritance, that land happened to be ‘empty,’ and the dissolution of abbeys in the Henrician Reformation had resulted in surplus population in England. Providence established, all that was left was to persuade the ‘multitude alreadie destined therto, with will and desire to take the matter in hande.’ 320 Prescriptions for turning the physical environment to profit were tied to beliefs about the sanctity of the ordered, cultivated landscape. Material culture was another means of imposing order on the wild environment. Permanent dwellings were a means to create a settled landscape from which the English could facilitate control of the frontier. Ordered living arrangements were permanent, quantifiable and represented an English way of life. Agreements to build houses in the English style had been part of Henry VIII’s surrender and regrant initiative,321 and stipulations to build houses also formed part of the English planters’ agreements. To the English, building was an act that legitimised and legalised colonial possession. As Seed explains, in the English colonisation of the New World, ordinary acts, such as building a house or

319 CSPI 1586-88 , p. 545. 320 Smith, A Letter Sent by I. B. Gentleman , p. 409. 321 Montaño, Roots of English Colonialism , pp. 234-5. 198 planting a garden, were powerful cultural symbols of ownership. Houses represented ‘cultural significance as registers of stability, historically carrying a significance of permanence,’ and were the building blocks of the villages that characterised English society. Under English law, building a permanent dwelling and permanent residence within that dwelling created the legal right to own the territory on which the dwelling existed. Other physical features that might legitimise claims to ownership were gardens, hedges or other types of boundaries, and evidence of land use such as the presence of agriculture.322 The assumption that ownership was articulated through material culture led the English to deem the Irish landscape to be ‘empty.’ This was a pivotal concept that had precedent in the Roman doctrine of Res Nullius , or ‘without ownership.’323 The orders for the Munster plantation began by emphasising the emptiness of the land: ‘agreate parte of the province of Mounster in the Realme of Ireland hath been […] utterlie wasted unpeopled and made desolate,’ and declared that the region was to be ‘repeopled’ by ‘loyall and dutifull subiects.’ 324 The English in Ireland associated permanent dwellings with ownership and order. The earl of Essex wrote that the building of towns in Ulster was necessary for the Queen’s sovereignty to have any hold there, for ‘as desolacion hathe bredd lybertie & all fruetes of rebellion, so inhabitacion and buyldinges muste bread profitt & obedyence.’ 325 The author of the Supplication stated that the medieval conquest of Ireland had established suzerainty because the English conquerors had ‘buylte Citties to curbe the Contrie: to establish their Possession; they planted them w[th] their owne people.’326 In Munster, building and enclosing formed part of a tenant’s responsibilities. The articles for the plantation directed that ‘boggs barraine heathes or wast mountains’ were to be considered ‘waste’ and would be given over to undertakers to be ‘manured inclosed [and] improved.’ 327 The lease given to John Clever stipulated that the planter was to build one mansion ‘or dwelling house’ on his grounds, and to ‘enclose with hedge, ditche and quicke sett, one hundred acres, and keep the same in good and sufficient reparation and

322 Seed, Ceremonies of Possession , pp. 18-19, 29, 32. 323 Pagden, Lords of All the World , p. 76. 324 TCD MS 672, f. 1. 325 NASPI 63/50/5. 326 Maley (ed.), ‘Supplication,’ p. 41. 327 TCD MS 672, f. 4. 199 fencinge.’ 328 According to a map of the plantation, the possessors of twelve- thousand acre seigniories were expected to develop a square settlement with a church and mill, houses for artificers and labourers, and farms. 329 The landscape of Ireland was to be comprehensively measured, divided, enclosed and improved. The English obsession with the demarcation, bordering, and ordering of the natural world suggests that improvement of the land was used to justify imperial aspirations in Ireland.

3.6. Ireland is a garden: agricultural metaphors and the nobility of reform

In a humanist and Protestant milieu in which people were receiving and circulating ideas, cultivation, civility and godliness were entwined concepts. Commonwealth concepts often found expression through the popular trope of the organic body. One of the most common symbolic images applied to Ireland was the agricultural metaphor. This choice of language is pertinent to this study as the fervent plantation activity taking place in this period meant that minds were already occupied with matters of the land. The recurring use of biological language in reference to ‘weeding’ and ‘planting’ in Ireland suggests a mutual relationship between improving nature and improving the state. Reformers and officials frequently expressed impulses to order and dominate the environment and to extirpate or acculturate idle and ‘loose’ people into the commonwealth. Anxieties over pruning, moulding and shaping the land and people into order suggest that the ideological impulses in Ireland flowed from the need to accomplish and inhabit a well-ordered social body knit together, a flourishing civitas . The act of gardening possessed a special currency in early modern England. Dewar reveals that Smith had ‘some reputation as a ‘planter,’’ and that gardening ‘was one of his most cherished and absorbing interests.’ 330 His interest in gardening may be behind his fondness for plant metaphors, for on several occasions he compared his colony to a fledgling plant that needed the nurturing

328 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation , p. 189. 329 Loeber, Geography and Practice , p. 49, plate 6. 330 Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith , p. 109. 200 attention of governors. Smith urged Fitzwilliam to bestow his patronage on his son’s enterprise by likening the plantation to a fragile sapling needing nourishment: ‘These weake & new plantid thinges my Lord, do most require your cherishing.’ Smith returned to the garden metaphor after his brother George Smith and Jerome Brett assumed leadership of the enterprise. Smith asked that Fitzwilliam ‘wold be as a father to this pore colonye, which as a yong trea that hath bene oft cut of when it began to grow. So I trust with experience & felyng of the […] evills will take suerer root now at the last.’ 331 In another letter, Smith stated that the calamitous Ulster project was ‘like a yong tree often troden downe & cutt almost to the rootes, and yet puts up agayn & wold fayn thrive if it had help & good wether.’ 332 Other writers compared the state of the Irish colonies to the life cycles of plants. Herbert praised Walsingham for his support of the Munster plantation by appealing to the nurturing role of the gardener. Herbert declared that ‘by your honourable favour it hath taken root, by the same it must be sustained and nourished, else will it wither and decay, for such is the nature of it as neither the greatest countenance without virtue, nor the greatest virtue without countenance, can accomplish it.’ 333 Organic metaphor could be utilised by those seeking peaceful reform by emphasising the benevolence of the cultivator. Richard Stanyhurst, a proponent of reform and persuasion, maintained that the Irish were barbarous because of a lack of ‘learned men’ to direct the inhabitants to virtue. Stanyhurst’s extended garden metaphor highlighted the failure of the English to enforce policies of preaching and education to make the inhabitants pliant to government: ‘Let the soile be as fertile and betle as anie would wish, yet if the husbandman will not manure it, sometime plow and eare it, sometime harrow it, sometime till it, sometime marle it, sometime delve it, sometime dig it, and sow it,’ he wrote, ‘with good and sound corne, it will bring foorth weeds, bindcorne, cockle, darnell, brambles, briers, and sundrie wild shoots.’334 In a letter to Walsingham in 1585, John Long, the archbishop of Armagh, advanced the cause of persuasion and education over force by comparing the administration that had failed to educate the people to a

331 Bodl. Carte MS 56, ff. 109, 462. 332 Bodl. Carte MS 56, f. 494. 333 CSPI 1586-88 , p. 473. Herbert also made this comment about virtue in a letter to Burghley: NASPI 63/137/31. 334 Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland , p. 14. 201 neglectful gardener. ‘Pitiful it is and will be answered before the Highest to suffer his garden to wax wild for lack of trimming, and then to pull up his plants that might fructify by the root,’ he wrote. Ludicrously, the government had created traitors ‘by palpable ignorance’ yet turned the sword on those ‘who for lack of teaching could never do better.’ 335 In contrast, many other New English writers favoured the more severe aspects of the agricultural cycle, adopting the trope of violence begetting regeneration to justify their conquest. The honourable reputation of husbandry provided the English with a rhetorical strategy to legitimise and glorify martial conquest and political reformation. In a letter from Elizabeth to Sidney, the queen wrote that the lord deputy was to be God’s husbandman in Ireland, ‘entrid into that realme as a large feeld or world overrun with brambles and replennished with ravening beasts, and knowing certenly your earnest desyre both for God’s honour and ours, to labor thouroughly in reformation heerof.’336 The Irish kern were regarded as agents of tumult and subversion, ‘imps that do detest to walk/the high and pleasant way.’ 337 Ireland’s reputation was bona terra, mala gens : good country, bad people. In the Image of Irelande , Derricke depicted the wood-kern as a malicious growth that usurped peace and order:

And those that would be true to God and to the Crown, With fire and sword and deep despite they pluck such subjects down. Thus they be mortal foes unto the commonwealth 338

In contrast, Sidney was portrayed as the agent of God’s fury, sent to cut away mortal foes and rescue the midlands plantation. Here, the scythe symbolises the sword:

Lo, lo, I see in mower’s cruel hand,

335 Quoted in Bradshaw, ‘Sword, Word and Strategy,’ p. 488. 336 Sidney SP , p. 19. 337 Derricke, Image of Irelande , p. 188. 338 Derricke, Image of Irelande , pp. 191-2. 202 A fearful scythe which doth prognosticate, Both here and there throughout this Irish land, That growth of things are at their ripened state, Which must be cropped by scythe of dismal fate. For God and time hath sworn by sacred oath, That reed and husk shall suffer penance both. 339

Bryskett praised the actions of Arthur Grey against the rebels in the second Desmond rebellion. Bryskett, who referred to himself in the piece as ‘but a poore Farmer,’ 340 presented an apocalyptic vision in which destruction would forge a new Eden. Bryskett honoured Grey by comparing him to a husbandman preparing the soil for harvest. ‘My Lord Grey hath plowed and harrowed the rough ground to his hand,’ wrote Bryskett, ‘but you know that he that soweth the seede, whereby we hope for harvest according to the goodnesse of that which is cast into the earth, and the seasonablenesse of times, deserveth no lesse praise then he that manureth the land.’ 341 Bryskett’s fellow planter, Richard Beacon, set the monarch and magistrate in the role of labourer and husbandman. The corrupted commonwealth was compared to a neglected vineyard that would be revived through prudence and wisdom, the execution of good laws, and severe magistrates: ‘for no doubt like as the wilde olive and figge tree, by the continuall addressing of a skilfull husbandman, is made at the last kindely, profitable, and fruitfull, and not inferiour to the naturall braunches,’ and that a commonwealth that has declined into corruption, ‘like unto the wilde olive and figge tree may by the continuall pruning and addressing of a skilfull magistrate be made obedient, civill, and profitable unto that prince, whom God hath constituted to be the labourer in that vineyarde.’ 342 The author of the Supplication also chose a gardener analogy, explaining that the degenerate Old English were beyond all hope of reform. The misrule of English governors caused God to suffer ‘dissention and discord, the lively seede of distruction, the Comon canker of Comonwealthes.’ 343 The author advised

339 Derricke, Image of Irelande , p. 205. 340 Bryskett, A Discourse of Civill Life , p. 157. 341 Bryskett, A Discourse of Civill Life , p. 158. 342 Beacon, Solon , p. 75. 343 Maley (ed.), ‘Supplication,’ pp. 22-3, 33, 37. 203 Elizabeth, the gardener of Ireland, that malice and treason abounded in the country and the cities. She would find no true subjects in the dissembling Irish; ‘all that are lefte are weedes.’ Elizabeth’s only option was the scythe, the fierce application of justice until ‘yo[re] ma:[tie] [has] weeded them.’ The author was steadfast in his view that extermination was the only cure for those who were ‘crooked’ and could not be bent to compulsion:

Weedes they are O Queene, the naturall plants of theire owne soyle; the earth of Irland is their naturall mother, a stepdame to us: yo[u] can never soe cherishe us, what care soe ever yo[u] take about our plaintinge, unlesse yo[u] seeke to supplant them, or at the least to keepe them downe from theire full growth, but that they will overshadowe us, but y[t] they will keepe the warmethe of the sonne from us. What wise gardiner would have suffered them soe to have growne? 344

The author urged Elizabeth to send an army to Ireland to crush rebellion severely and decisively: ‘God hath geven yo[u] now a fitt opportunitie to make a perfect reformed Comon Welthe of that kingdome.’ 345 He urged her to ‘Lett the feete of yo[re] forces treade and trample downe these bryars, that will not suffer yo[re] plantes to prosper: Lett them weare w[th] their heeles the very rootes out of the earth that they springe no more.’ Once pacified, Ireland would then become a valuable nursery of resources to supplement England’s economy. When Ireland is weeded, ‘soe shall yo[u] make Ireland a florishinge nursery for England, able to yeald yo[u] if neede should requier, graftes to supply gappes in England, if ever there should be any made.’ Afterward, the author revisited the trope of destruction begetting renewal. ‘If [Ireland] be weeded it wilbe a florishinge cuntry.’ If it were reformed, ‘it will no doubte be a blessed comon welthe.’ At the end of the war, the idle would be ‘sifted out,’ the rest of those who submitted would be permanently disarmed and put to work the land as indentured servants. 346 The improvement of

344 Maley (ed.), ‘Supplication,’ pp. 38, 71. 345 Maley (ed.), ‘Supplication,’ p. 51. 346 Maley (ed.), ‘Supplication,’ pp. 72-3. 204 Irish society could only be achieved with a purge of its restive elements. This author, like his fellow English writers Derricke, Bryskett and Beacon, chose to bequeath a ruthless solution with a special dignity by adopting the actions associated with the gardener, felling and reaping and sowing, to give moral sanction to atrocity.

Conclusion

This chapter has explored the ideological justifications available to adventurers, reformers and politicians in their proposals for extending English Imperium across Ireland. The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland was brought about through the restructure of administration and governance through provincial presidencies and composition, breaking down traditional ties of kinship, the confiscation and reallocation of land for colonisation by loyal subjects, and the promotion of industry and agriculture. The conquest was ultimately pushed to its conclusion when Hugh O’Neill provoked a nation-wide rebellion that raged from 1594 to 1603. The rebellion was seen not as a legitimate political act, but as further proof of the wonted barbarism of the Irish and their inability to understand or acknowledge their civic responsibilities as subjects, which had resulted in the ruinous state of the country. Pains were taken by the English, educated in the civic and moral principles of classicism and Protestant theology, to satisfy themselves that their role in Ireland was an ameliorative one. The commonwealth was corrupt and broken, and departures from conciliatory policies were justified as works of necessity in a grander scheme of civic upheaval. The purpose of the well-ordered commonwealth was, as Ferguson explains, ‘to provide the conditions necessary for a life of virtue, led by the individual in diligent, contented, unambitious devotion to his temporal calling and […] hope of salvation hereafter.’ 347 The Elizabethans sought to perfect a well- ordered commonwealth in Ireland by providing the framework for individual and environmental transformation: towns and shires with their accompanying judicial and administrative machinery, agriculture, trade and industry, schools and universities were encompassed in projects for reform. The Irish, drawn gradually by the example of English settlers, would be moulded into loyal subjects.

347 Ferguson, ‘The Tudor Commonweal,’ p. 12. 205 Humanism and Protestantism were movements possessed of optimism about national stability achieved through change. Reformers targeted the causes of disorder in the commonwealth, especially sin, moral ignorance and irresponsible government. 348 Renaissance humanists were emboldened by classical literature, while English Protestants were further fortified by Calvinist doctrine. The humanist impetus to reform and colonise could be pursued through opportunities for public activity in the service of the commonwealth, by involving oneself in a colonial or commercial scheme. The openness of Protestantism to commercial activity allowed individuals to participate in Irish schemes for profit by justifying them as being in the national interest. The vigorous calls to introduce English systems of agriculture are signposts to the significance attributed to improvement. Enclosing, fencing, ploughing and sowing were robustly moral activities that benefited the commonwealth. In plantation projects, planters were required to improve their piece of land by building, farming and planting tenants, which suggests that conversion of the land to agricultural use correlated with national improvement. The significance attached to farming and agriculture can also be found in the liberal use of gardening metaphors to convey the regenerative purpose of reform. Humanist and Protestant thinkers bestowed an active life with a special dignity. Labouring the land was a sign of moral wellbeing, a means to serve and dignify God, and contributed to a prosperous commonwealth. The early years of the seventeenth century witnessed an expansion of corporate activity, the acceleration of economic individualism, and the intensification of British colonial activity. The dynamics of Jacobean Irish reform schemes, and the implications of contemporary intellectual culture on colonial justification, will be explored in part four.

348 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 192. 206 Part Four: 1603-1625

1. A Stuart kingdom: Ireland under James I

Between 1558 and 1603, colonial activity accelerated in Ireland as English reformers reconciled humanist mandates for reform with principles of Protestantism. The confiscations of O’Neill lands in Ulster and Desmond territory in Munster were seized upon as opportunities to procure and develop parcels of Irish land. Trained up in grammar schools, universities, and Inns of Court, the English gentry asserted their ideas of public service in Ireland by investing in plantation schemes, developing industrial projects, or by acting as official or unofficial counsellors on various concerns of government policy. The diversification of colonial pursuits in this period is consonant with humanist principles of active citizenship. Plantation projects by Thomas Smith and the earl of Essex in Ulster were characteristic of Elizabethan civic activism, driven by private adventurers who claimed to be pursuing virtuous works in the interest of the commonwealth. The emergence of the Elizabethan adventurer in Ireland, equipped with a humanist education and vigorous civic ideals, indicates the prevalence of humanism as a driving force for the conquest and plantation of Ireland. Proponents of plantation in the Elizabethan period were also bolstered by the doctrine of John Calvin, the theologian who exercised a profound influence on the character of English Protestantism. In Calvinist thought, the active life was esteemed as a greater calling than a contemplative one. In recognition of God’s command to work, a life of unrelenting activity was regarded to be a religious duty. In this framework, commerce and business could be pursued without spiritual condemnation, and profitability (if not used for idle luxuries) was held up as a sign of salvation. The Protestant acceptance of individualism and profit enabled English reformers to justify colonial ambitions. The ubiquitous poverty and misery attributable to Irish idleness was contrasted with utopian expectations of peace and plenty if the country was turned over to English agriculture. The individualist economics of agricultural improvement, combined with the biblical mandate of

207 stewardship, amounted to a theological charter for colonialism. From the later sixteenth century, the reformation of Ireland was therefore justifiable through the interrelated elements of humanist and Protestant thought. In 1603 Elizabeth’s relative, James VI of Scotland, inherited the English crown as James I. After his succession, James set about the task of completing the reform of Ireland with the aid of his assiduous administrators in Dublin. James was determined to consolidate the Tudor military conquest by implementing comprehensive constitutional and religious reform. After the Nine Years War, the country entered a period of relative peace, although the ferocious warfare and disempowerment of the local nobility during Elizabeth’s reign merely reinforced the 1 antagonism of the Irish and the Catholic Old English towards the government. Accounts of plunder and raids in Jacobean Ireland reveal manifestations of deep resentment of English rule amid irreconcilable cultural and ideological differences. In a manuscript book presented to the king, ‘The Anatomy of Ireland,’ the soldier Barnaby Rich wrote of the imbedded nature of Irish incivility and the almost insurmountable dysfunctions of the country: ‘the dysceases of Irelande are many. & 2 the sycknes is growne to that contagyon, that it is allmost past cure.’ The popular Tudor conceit that Ireland was the diseased appendage of the English body politic continued to hold currency, for a Stuart commentator described Ireland as ‘a miserable longe afflicted kingdome,’ which abided ‘as a sore Arme to the body of this 3 kingdome.’ Security remained a constant concern for English planters. As an English overseer remarked, the plantation of Ulster was built ‘with the Sworde in one hande 4 and the Axe in thother.’ Although groups of wood-kern and dispossessed Irish continued to terrorise settlements, Hugh O’Neill’s defeat had effectively quashed the ability of the Irish to put up organised resistance. The legacy of Elizabethan militarism enabled the Jacobean government to revert to tactics of conciliation and policy in Irish business.

1 Hayes-McCoy, ‘The Completion of the Tudor Conquest,’ pp. 140-1. 2 E.M. Hinton (ed.), ‘Rych’s Anothomy of Ireland , with an Account of the Author,’ Publications of the Modern Language Association 55, 1 (1940), p. 83. 3 BL Cotton MS, Titus B XII/144, f. 629v. 4 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 329. 208 The king exhibited a more enthusiastic and personal interest in Irish reform and colonisation than his Tudor predecessors. James preferred to deal fairly with the Irish as he was confident that they could be reclaimed from barbarism through the application of thorough judicial reform. The government of Jacobean Ireland operated under the assumption that cultural and religious divisions could be overcome through a policy of acculturation.

1.1. Directions of Irish policy

Advocates of reform in the sixteenth century attempted to impose order on Ireland by extending crown rule throughout the country, a policy that was reinforced by the plantation of English subjects in confiscated Irish territory. As a proponent of centralised government, James pursued policies that restricted the power of individual lords. By dismantling concentrations of local power, such as the palatinate of Tipperary and the presidency courts of Munster and Connacht, the government reinforced a centralised bureaucracy through which English law could be 5 administered throughout the country. James’ zeal for consolidating his kingdoms into a British union was extended to Ireland, where he set out to complete the task of uniting the kingdom, completing the project that had been set in motion with the Kingship Act of 1541. James I was an enthusiastic advocate of Irish acculturation. He considered the Irish to be his rightful subjects, and he therefore held them to the same 6 standard of obedience and loyalty in return for rights and protections of English law. Once absorbed into a homogenous, Protestant British polity Irish subjects would enjoy the same protection and privileges as other British nations. A key step in this process was the abolition of restrictions against Irish and Scots. The preamble to an act to repeal statutes concerning the Irish declared that ‘in former times […] the natives of this realme of Irish bloud […] were held and accompted, and in divers statutes and records were termed and called Irish enemies,’ but now all inhabitants ‘without difference and distinction, are taken into his Majestie’s gratious protection,

5 Gillespie, Colonial Ulster , p. 206. 6 A. Clarke, ‘Pacification, Plantation, and the Catholic Question, 1603–23,’ in Moody, Martin and Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland , Vol. III, p. 187. 209 and doe now live under one law as dutiful subjects of our Soveraigne Lord and Monarch, by means whereof, a perfect agreement is and ought to be setled betwixt all his Majestie’s subjects in this realm.’7 The extension of English law into the reaches of the kingdom was one means by which the Irish would be drawn into the commonwealth. The prelude to this 8 strategy was the packing of the Irish judiciary with New English lawyers and ensuring a Protestant parliamentary majority with newly created boroughs in the 9 Munster and Ulster plantations. Attorney-General Sir John Davies borrowed from Roman civil law to assert England’s legal title to Ireland by conquest, which included the right to confer ownership of estates within the realm. The consolidation of this conquest rested on invalidating independent systems of law and land tenure. They would be incorporated into a new state system, while rival claims to dominion represented internally by local chieftains and externally by the papacy were to be 10 eliminated. The strengthening of the commonwealth required filling it as far as possible with hardy and industrious Protestant subjects. James was wedded to the idea that plantations were instruments of civilisation and socio-political consolidation. His enthusiasm for plantation in Ulster was preceded by similar programmes he pursued as king of Scotland. In an attempt to reform his Gaelic subjects, James ordered a plantation of ‘civil’ lowland Scots in the Isle of Lewis. An act was passed in 1597 to establish civility and policy in the isles and highlands by establishing towns and 11 developing the area’s resources for ‘the public good and the King’s profit.’ Establishing James’ claim to the territory, the Scottish parliament extolled the extension of civility to the Gaelic fringes. Those that dwelt in the outlying regions had ‘throuch their barbarous in-humanitie, maid, and presentlie makis, the saidis Hie- landes and Iles […] altogidder un-profitable, baith to themselves, and to all utheris his Hienesse Lieges within this Realme.’ The Gaelic Scots were accused of ‘neither

7 Butler (ed.), Statutes at Large , pp. 441-2. 8 H.S. Pawlisch, Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland: A Study in Legal Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 42. 9 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 165. 10 Pawlisch, Sir John Davies , pp. 9-10, 45. 11 Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration , p. 12. 210 interteyning ony civill or honest societie amangst themselves,’ and that the plantation of civil subjects would enable the inhabitants of the highlands and isles to ‘bee reduced to ane godlie, honest, and civill maner of living,’ and that the establishment 12 of borough towns would tie the region to a lowland social order. The confiscations in Ulster presented an unparalleled opportunity for civic enterprise on a grand scale. In Ulster and elsewhere, the government, its advisors and entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of the new opportunities, were busied with a host of projects for public works such as the planting of corporations and the development of industry through exploitation of natural resources, which, if all of these projects succeeded, would have provided employment and a settled existence for thousands of people. The Ulster plantation was exalted as ‘the greatest and most glorious work for the time that has been known in man’s memory, and perhaps of history’s (all difficulties considered).…’13 Although this accolade must be read within its context as a petition for title in the plantation, the sentiment is consonant with James’ personal enthusiasm for the plantation, as he considered Ireland’s reform to be one of his greatest undertakings. The king esteemed his Irish policy, which entailed ‘settling of religion, the introducing of civility, order, and government, among a barbarous and unsubjected people,’ as being ‘acts of piety and glory, and 14 worthy also a Christian Prince to endeavour.’ As a major supporter of the plantation, Davies praised the nobility and greatness of the enterprise. Once the plantation ‘hath taken root,’ it would secure the peace of Ireland, ‘assure it to the crown of England for ever; and finally make it a civil, and a rich, a mighty, and a 15 flourishing kingdom.’ As a civic enterprise, the Ulster plantation was intended to be the centrepiece of James’ enlightened form of kingship, one in which he imagined ‘Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English, divers in nation, yet all walking as subjects and

12 T. Murray (ed.), The Laws and Acts of Parliament [temp. James I of Scotland to Charles II] Collected and Extracted, from the Publick Records of the Said Kingdom (Edinburgh: David Lindsay, 1681), p. 355. 13 CSPI 1615-25 , p. 519. 14 J. Betts, The Story of the Irish Society: Being a Brief Historical Account of the Foundation and Work of the Honourable the Irish Society of London (2 nd ed. London: Irish Chamber, 1921), p. 49. 15 G. Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies, Attorney General, and Speaker of the House of Commons in Ireland (Dublin: William Porter, 1787), p. 209. 211 16 servants’ attending court, all of them being ‘British’ subjects. Plantations would also facilitate a ‘community of God’ by filling the country with Protestant British planters, preachers and churches. In the atmosphere of intense anti-Catholic paranoia following the gunpowder plot, the reformation of religion became an urgent priority and key to securing the country, countering the threat of papal conspiracy by redirecting allegiances to a sole politico-religious authority. Despite administrative centralisation and a major settlement of British planters in Ulster, the government in Ireland was plagued with all-too-familiar financial, political and religious grievances. By the end of James’ reign, the government was struggling to pay the outstanding arrears owed to the army, the lord deputy and council were at odds with each other, the planters in Ulster had failed to meet the conditions of their grants, and few gains had been made in the new midlands plantations. Favouritism towards Protestants in government angered the Old English elite as Protestant clergy struggled against the tide of the Counter-Reformation, while accusations of corruption and inefficient procedures were levelled against the 17 administration. Notwithstanding the tests facing government, the development of a centralised state laid the foundations for the full assimilation of Ireland into a British imperial polity. Because of the Elizabethan military conquest, James was now in a position to accomplish the Tudor ambition to assert control over Ireland, bringing the whole country under English jurisdiction for the first time. The Ulster plantation, the master project central to the politics of Jacobean Ireland, anchored a wave of British 18 settlement in Ireland and planted the seeds of British society in the north. Many of the English and Scottish settlers found financial success in Ireland as they hurried to exploit marketable resources in a prospering peacetime economy, capitalising on a period of relative stability that lasted until the precarious peace was shattered by a major Irish rebellion in 1641. Jacobean policy was dominated by the settlement of the Ulster territories appropriated from the exiled northern lords. The plantation of Ulster was the largest

16 Quoted in Canny, Making Ireland British , p. 183. 17 Clarke, ‘Pacification,’ p. 231. 18 Prior to 1641, British migration to Ireland greatly outnumbered migration to America: J. Ohlmeyer, ‘“Civilizinge of those Rude Partes”: Colonization within Britain and Ireland, 1580s-1640s,’ in Canny (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire , Vol. I, p. 139; Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ p. 184. 212 and most ambitious of the Irish colonial projects, and matters of the settlement occupied the pens of officials and opportunists hoping to benefit from the distribution. Before we can apply the theories of humanism to the Stuart presence in Ireland, therefore, it remains to delineate the major characteristics of the plantation as visions of an ideal colony were translated into practice. Subsequent to this, Jacobean colonial and reform thought will located in relation to paradigms of Renaissance humanism.

1.2. The plantations

The final decade of the sixteenth century resulted in the widespread destruction of settlements, but English victory in the Nine Years War and the widespread confiscations afterwards paved the way for revival and expansion. Following his surrender in 1603, Hugh O’Neill and other insurgent Ulster chiefs received a royal pardon from the new monarch. Their generous treatment disappointed servitors who had hoped that after their travails in Ireland they would benefit from the confiscation of substantial properties in Ulster. Sir Arthur Chichester, appointed lord deputy in 1605, and his cohort of officials including Attorney-General Davies, engineered the volte-face of the post-war settlement protecting the Irish lords. The result was a policy driven by the establishment of crown title, dismemberment of the lords’ estates, the imposition of officially sponsored plantation, and enforcement of 19 conformity to the established Church. In 1607, the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell and their followers fled to the continent, an episode that became known as the Flight of the Earls. Sir Cahir O’Doherty of Inishowen rose in rebellion the following year. O’Doherty was killed and his suspected accomplices imprisoned in the Tower of London. O’Doherty’s revolt was the final blow for the government’s confidence in the Irish lords. The lands of these exiled, dead or imprisoned lords became confiscate to the crown. 20 At first, the government relied on private initiative. A number of private settlements appeared around forts in Ulster between 1603 and 1609. Chichester

19 Canny, Making Ireland British , pp. 169, 172. 20 Canny, Making Ireland British , pp. 184-5. 213 received vast estates in Ulster and introduced a number of settlements, including ones at Belfast and Carrickfergus where Chichester settled his fellow servitors who began revitalising the region.21 After the Flight of the Earls and the death of O’Doherty, the government’s focus became the thorough colonisation of Ulster by Englishmen and lowland Scots. In 1608, an official survey of the six counties involved (Donegal, Coleraine, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan and Armagh) was conducted, and the king’s legal title to the escheated land was established. The prime mover behind the plantation was the lord deputy, who also happened to be a major beneficiary of the redistribution. Chichester was keen to avoid the precedent of the generous-sized seigniories that were distributed in Munster, which had resulted in a scattering of settlers that weakened the plantation’s defences. He warned that no freeholder should be given too much land or too much power. To encourage tenants to farm and improve their grants, Chichester reasoned that smaller plot sizes would make it easier for tenants to afford and keep up improvements. Dividing the land into smaller portions to grant to more people would ‘encourage the particular undertakers to lay their fortunes upon the plantation and 22 improvement thereof.’ Leases were to be no shorter than twenty-one years or three lives, and alienation was forbidden without a license. Strict prohibitions against marriage and fostering with the Irish were designed to prevent degeneration. These rules anticipated the fostering of a commonwealth among the planters, as being linked together in ‘marriage and affection,’ the community would ‘strengthen one another 23 against the common enemy.’ Six counties west of the Bann were opened up for plantation. English and Scottish undertakers were to be the primary beneficiaries. Invitations for applications attracted over one hundred English applicants, many of whom had formed companies for the purpose. The largest company consisted of forty men who offered to plant all of the lands available in Co. Fermanagh. They promised to erect a market town, a ‘strong corporation,’ and plant one thousand of their followers. Almost eighty Scots submitted applications to receive portions, more than the amount of land set aside for

21 Loeber, Geography and Practice , pp. 60-4. 22 Hill, Plantation in Ulster , p. 69. 23 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 357. 214 Scottish undertakers. Only those who could demonstrate that they had sufficient capital to cover the necessary costs were successful. In total, fifty-one English and fifty-nine Scottish undertakers received grants. 24 English and Scottish planters were granted portions in three sizes: two thousand acres, fifteen hundred acres, or one thousand acres. Waste territory, such as bog and woodlands, was not subject to rent. Native inhabitants were only permitted to reside on the lands of Irishmen, the church, 25 or servitors. Separate precincts were assigned for English grantees, Scottish grantees and for servitors and ‘deserving’ natives who would be planted together. The involvement of soldiers in the allocation was promoted by Chichester, a veteran of the Nine Years War. Chichester represented the interests of the servitor class and saw their value as bulwarks to secure the British foothold in Ulster. Next to high ranking officials, the expertise of servitors made them ‘most fit’ to be undertakers. He expected that when the plantation was well established, soldiers could retire as civilian undertakers. This aspect of Chichester’s plan was reminiscent of Smith’s Ulster soldier-colony in the 1570s.26 In the official plantation scheme, English and Scottish undertakers were bound to reside on their lands for five years, and were required to bring a certain number of English or lowland Scottish colonists to reside on their portions. They were to build defences and keep a supply of arms, and were forbidden from accepting Irish tenants. Servitors were allowed to keep Irish tenants, but were required to pay a surcharge if they did. Native grantees were to be charged higher rent than English and Scottish undertakers, and were required to uphold British standards by building houses and bawns (defensive walls) and practising agriculture. The institutions of a civil society were to be transported to Ulster as land was set aside in each county for a church and school. In January 1611, Davies reported that the new settlers were arriving to begin work on building, and he expected that they would make excellent

24 Hill, Plantation in Ulster , pp. 137-144; Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration , p. 95; Canny, Making Ireland British , p. 208. 25 Clarke, ‘Pacification,’ p. 197. 26 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 63. 215 progress, such ‘that by the end of summer the wilderness of Ulster will have a more 27 civil form.’ A major colonial project required extraordinary financial outlay, and it was for this reason that the crown looked to London’s merchant community as a possible partner in the enterprise. The city companies were approached by Ulster planners with a proposal for a corporate plantation in Co. Coleraine, encompassing the towns 28 of Derry and Coleraine. Eager to have the merchant companies involved with the project, the king commended the city’s ability to undertake ‘so famous and pious a 29 work.’ When the companies agreed to sponsor the ‘noble and worthy work’ in Ulster, a company was established to oversee the affairs of the plantation on behalf of the city. Established by the City of London’s Court of Common Council in 1609, the Irish Society was formally incorporated in 1613 as the Society of the Governor and Assistants, London, of the New Plantation in Ulster, within the Realm of Ireland. 30 The elected officials were able to hold courts and determine all matters pertaining to the plantation. 31 The constitution and responsibilities of the Irish Society were similar to the governing bodies of other colonial joint stock companies such as the East India, 32 Virginia, Newfoundland and Bermuda companies. While the other companies were headed by private individuals for profit, the Irish Society was the result of crown initiative to recruit the city as an agent in plantation. Rather than relying on voluntary subscriptions, the city raised capital through a tax on the member companies. 33 The fifty-five companies involved were divided into twelve groups, each managed by a principal guild. Each of the twelve groups was given an Irish estate, 34 which was assigned by lot. With their grants, the companies received the right to erect manors and were empowered to hold courts and enforce rules of frankpledge (a system of collective responsibility). They were required to build a substantial house, divide and enclose the land, and nominate freeholders who were to live there for

27 CSPI 1611-14 , p. 5. 28 Clarke, ‘Pacification,’ p. 200. 29 Phillips Papers , p. 16. 30 Betts, Irish Society , p. 38; Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 132. 31 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 81. 32 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 83. 33 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 97. 34 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , pp. 154-5. 216 seven years. A store of weapons and armour was to be supplied for the planters, who were required to attend half-yearly musters. No fewer than five freeholders were to be planted in each manor, and all were bound to observe the conditions of the 35 plantation. The Irish Society assumed ownership of the corporate towns of Derry (renamed Londonderry) and Coleraine. The city was slow to meet its commitments in Ulster. An official survey conducted in 1614 found that the city had made poor progress in the two towns and had not sent any planters. No walls had been completed in Derry to provide protection for the houses that had been built. The surveyors reported that the walls of Coleraine were weak and the houses poorly and cheaply built. Little progress had 36 been made in the estates managed by the companies. The king expressed his displeasure at the city’s lack of progress and failure to adhere to the articles of plantation. 37 In 1616, the Irish Society addressed the matter of the empty plantation with a directive for the transport of colonists. Each company was to provide one or two craftsmen and their families (although there is evidence for only one company complying with this). The Society also banned the use of Irish apprentices as they transported twelve boys from Christ’s Hospital to become apprentices in Derry and 38 Coleraine. A new survey was carried out by the Irish Society that year, which revealed that some progress had been made, such as improvement of the fortifications. Over one hundred houses had been built at Coleraine and two hundred at Derry, although this number was far larger than reported in a later survey, as there 39 was disagreement over what constituted one ‘house.’ The crown still determined, however, that the city had failed to meet its obligations. The Society was ordered 40 before the Privy Council and charged with breaching the articles of plantation. A survey in 1618 reported that the English settlers were breaking the rules of plantation by keeping Irish tenants and that little husbandry – a cornerstone of the civilising mission – was being undertaken. The Scottish fared somewhat better in

35 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , pp. 179-181, 297. 36 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , pp. 160-1. 37 CSPI 1615-25 , pp. 25-6. 38 Betts, Irish Society , pp. 67-8; Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 168. 39 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , pp. 170, 172, 175, 189. 40 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 178. 217 41 their farming efforts than their English counterparts. The London companies again fell short in their responsibilities for building, inhabiting and protecting the new British polity in the north, as both Derry and Coleraine were reported to be too thinly 42 populated for adequate defence. In 1622, another major survey found that the articles of plantation had been ignored or neglected. Many undertakers were absent and a number of Irish people were living in the plantation as tenants of British undertakers. Other items called to notice included defective construction and dangerously scattered houses situated at great distances from the protection of the 43 main castles. As the government measured progress in Ulster, several more plantation schemes were planned, including ones in Longford, Leitrim and Ely O’Carroll in the midlands. The plantation of Co. Longford was a project overseen by Chichester’s successor, Oliver St. John, who anticipated the urbanisation of the region by means of 44 a corporate town. The conditions of the Longford plantation followed those of Ulster, but on a smaller scale, with the intermixture of natives and newcomers and a preference for servitors as planters. British and native undertakers were to be granted small portions, preferably between two hundred and one thousand acres. St. John reasoned that a higher density of settlers would give the plantation a better chance of survival, for ‘the buildings will be more, the bodies of men in greater quantities, and consequently they and their posterity, by their continual residence, will be a surer countenance to the plantation,’ becoming ‘a stronger instrument for the settling of peace and civility in those parts,’ and ‘more profitable for the commonwealth.’ St. John recalled that ‘making of lesser undertakers’ was followed in Laois and Offaly, where ‘[the planters’] posterity continue freeholders still, and are very useful, as well in time of war as in time of peace,’ and explained that previous settlements in the 45 region were easily overrun by the Irish because of the thin scattering of settlers. The commissioners’ recommendations echoed St. John’s, as they pressed for smaller

41 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 185, Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration , p. 183; CSPI 1615- 25 , p. 387. 42 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , pp. 186-7. 43 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 193. 44 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 370. 45 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 368. 218 portions and for mixing the undertakers among natives to better civilise them through 46 example and imitation. The same policy of intermixture was followed in Leitrim and Ely O’Carroll. The mixture of newcomers with Irish tenants diverged from the policy of segregation in Ulster, where the Irish were allocated peripheral territory outside the British settlements. In other schemes, the Irish would be absorbed into the new social order through direct contact with British settlers. The removal of Gaelic authority, such as the O’Rourke lordship in Leitrim, was a key component in the anglicisation process. Native proprietors in Leitrim were ‘regranted’ half or three quarters of their original lands under conditions of English tenure. A further measure to stabilise native society and overturn the Gaelic social and landholding structures was to turn 47 lesser native undertakers into fixed tenants. The midlands plantations virtually discarded the provision for undertakers to bring in British tenants, reflecting a more optimistic approach to Irish reform. The planners hoped that breaking the influence of native lords and committing the Irish to permanent living arrangements was enough to anglicise them. As a result, the permanent occupation of settlers was all the more imperative, and a residence covenant was introduced that required undertakers to 48 obtain a license to leave. The success of the midlands plantations was mixed, and few undertakers remained in the long term. The relative poverty of many of the undertakers and unease towards the idea of settling in a remote region probably 49 caused many to question the worth of their investment. In the early seventeenth century, Ireland was dominated by the plantation of Ulster and, to a smaller extent, new plantations in the midlands. Plantation also occupied the minds of individuals with the means and initiative to undertake the exploitation and export of Irish material. Devisors of private settlements sought to capitalise on the defeat and destabilisation of the Gaelic order by introducing arable agriculture and developing pockets of industry. Informal settlement occurred in the east Ulster counties of Antrim and Down, which had not been part of the official

46 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 378. 47 Mac Cuarta, ‘The Plantation of Leitrim,’ pp. 301-2. 48 Mac Cuarta, ‘The Plantation of Leitrim,’ p. 305. 49 Mac Cuarta, ‘The Plantation of Leitrim,’ p. 307. 219 plantation. The economy of this region was principally based on agriculture and fishing, while some diversification of industry was attempted in textiles, tanning and iron works. As a result of the plantation, East Ulster experienced rapid urban expansion in the seventeenth century as a network of country market centres developed.50 Other colonial ventures were based around exploitation of natural 51 resources as entrepreneurs set up iron works and other industries on their estates. The plantation of Ireland in the seventeenth century was engineered to consolidate political reformation by introducing civic culture, settled agriculture and urban centres for administration and commerce. The following chapters encompass the continuation of the themes that anchor this thesis, humanism and improvement. In chapter two, I will delineate the guiding principles of humanism and illustrate the manifestations of these principles in political and colonial discourse. In chapter three, the economic and agricultural exploitation of Ireland will be assessed against the commercial and scientific attitudes of Puritanism in the early Stuart period. The main topic of focus will be the Ulster plantation, although the scope of the study will include projects for colonisation and economic development external to the principal plantation.

2. Humanism

2.1. Humanism and reform in early seventeenth century Ireland

This section addresses the civic aims of Stuart government in Ireland and suggests that these aims were consonant with conventional humanist principles. The overriding concern of early modern government was the preservation of order, 52 and the pursuit of order had guided Tudor reform policy in Ireland by creating civic conditions for obedience and calling attention to the public duties of subjects. Appeals to civic values were couched in terms of the commonwealth, the ubiquitous

50 Gillespie, Colonial Ulster , pp. 65-6, 131, 171, 193. 51 Richard Boyle, the first earl of Cork, accumulated large estates in Munster and set up various industrial ventures. See N. Canny, The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566-1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 52 Wrightson, English Society , p. 155. 220 English rendering of the Latin Res Publica that constituted neo-classical devotion to the public interest. The civic ideals of government radiated around the pivot of the commonwealth. Assigned to consolidate the Tudor conquest, early Stuart officeholders approached the task of governing Ireland with a reform agenda that was buttressed by foundations of humanist thought. Inscriptions of humanism upon the government of early Stuart Ireland are found in the civic language employed by writers. A central motif was the use of commonwealth principles to define the national agenda. Political literature was enveloped in rhetoric of the commonwealth. The tendency to assess government against the measure of the commonwealth is manifest in the writing of Davies, who envisioned the creation of a unitary hierarchical society by replacing Irish customs with English law. As a champion of the civilising effect of common law, Davies employed the architecture of the commonwealth to elaborate the civic aims of judicial reform in Ireland. Davies arrived in Ireland as solicitor-general after the defeat of O’Neill in 1603. Tirelessly committed to reform, Davies spearheaded the wholesale 53 reorganisation of the Irish justice system. Davies believed that the convalescence of the commonwealth should be hastened by the extension of law and the establishment of civil government throughout the realm. He envisioned the complete absorption of the Irish into an English state system, forging a commonwealth tied together by English order rather than English blood. The country inherited by James was plagued by political divisions that were attributable to the existence of a separate Gaelic social system alongside the English community of the Pale. The survival of Irish culture weakened English ability to exert influence, and the prolonged toleration of Gaelic autonomy hindered the achievement of political unity. According to Davies, Irish tyranny in the regions outside of English control had prevented English inhabitants from forging ‘such a form of commonwealth amongst themselves as was capable of good laws and their execution.’ By dividing Irish counties into shires, the English in Dublin were equipped with a legal basis for implanting civil government across the 54 country.

53 For full treatment, see Pawlisch, Sir John Davies . 54 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 165. 221 Davies praised the king’s decision to draw all of his subjects to him, for casting them out merely forced them to continue in outlawry and barbarism: ‘If the King would not admit them to the condition of subjects, how could they learn to acknowledge and obey him as their Sovereign?’ As subjects they could participate in civic life, for as long as they were kept outside the commonwealth, ‘they might not converse or commerce with any civil man, nor enter into any town or city, without peril of their lives; whither should they fly, but into the woods and mountains, and 55 there live in a wild and barbarous manner?’ By abolishing restrictive statutes, ‘and by giving them free libertie to commerce and match together,’ the intention was that ‘they may grow into one nation, whereby they may be an utter oblivion and 56 extinguishment of all former differences and discorde betwixt them.’ In Davies’ view, the civic aims of law and government in Ireland were to sweep away corrupt forms of socio-political organisation and cultivate a unitary English commonwealth. The idea that the commonwealth rested on common interests and allegiance informed English condemnations of the Irish as destructive to the commonwealth. Davies articulated assumptions about allegiance and civility in his 1612 publication, A Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was Never Entirely Subdued, and Brought under Obedience of the Crown of England, until His Majesty’s Happy Reign . Davies maintained that the Irish people would not be amenable to political and social reform unless they were subjected to conquest. He compared this process to a farmer turning up the land before planting seeds: ‘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.’ Therefore, wrote Davies, ‘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 57 will often return to the former barbarism.’

55 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 90. 56 Butler (ed.), Statutes at Large , pp. 441-2; V. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, 1616-1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998), p. 38. 57 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , pp. 3-4. 222 According to Davies, the goal of a unitary government in Ireland was to bring Britain and Ireland together, ‘incorporated and united,’ and seeing Ireland ‘entirely conquered, planted, and improved,’ providing ‘a rich revenue to the crown of 58 England.’ In order to achieve the ‘perfect conquest,’ the government should reduce all inhabitants to the status of subjects, binding them to the laws of the sovereign and 59 extending English jurisdiction to all corners of the country. The Irish would be absorbed into the political body and bound to English laws and customs. Nonconformity would be discouraged by the application of law. Any who used Irish customs ‘must of necessity be rebels to all good government, destroy the commonwealth wherein they live, and bring barbarism and desolation upon the 60 richest and most fruitful land of the world.’ He maintained that assimilation was not possible while the Irish existed outside the bounds of English law, and that applying the mechanisms of English justice would beget obedience. After subduing the natives through martial conquest, brehon law could be eradicated and the people drawn under the protection of English common law. 61 By enfranchising the people of Ireland, the inward transformation of minds and hearts would follow. Davies commended the reform measures initiated under James. Extended assize circuits had ‘reclaimed the Irish from their wildness,’ which entailed the adoption of English styles of appearance and behaviour and use of the English language. Davies declared that, ‘heretofore the neglect of the law made the English degenerate, and became Irish,’ but that now ‘the execution of the law doth 62 make the Irish grow civil, and become English.’ Under the enlightened sceptre of James, commerce and trade were encouraged, and the mechanics of civil government were set in motion. Under the king, the commonwealth was reduced to good order. Davies declared that ‘the clock of the civil government is now well set, and all the wheels thereof do move in order;’ and moreover, that ‘the strings of this Irish harp, which the civil magistrate doth finger, are all in tune […] and make a good harmony in this commonwealth,’ which should inspire people to ‘conceive a hope, that Ireland

58 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 102. 59 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , pp. 3-4. 60 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 126. 61 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 93. 62 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 202. 223 63 […] will, from henceforth, prove a land of peace and concord.’ By measuring the success of political reform against the criteria of the well-ordered state, Davies’ statements reveal that the avowed pursuit of political reform in Ireland was grafted to the central, humanist conception of the state or political entity as a commonwealth. The exercise of sovereign power in the commonwealth was aimed at removing corruption and implementing good policy conducive to public welfare. This view was professed by the king himself, who informed Chichester that he had given away the crown’s newly won Ulster lands for reasons of public benefit, stating that he prioritised the ‘reformation of that disordered country by a civil plantation to be made therein, before the private profit which we might have reaped by it.’ Concerned about the slow progress of the London companies, the king reminded the lord deputy of the civic aims of the enterprise. The king was ‘not ignorant how much the real accomplishment of that Plantation concerns the future peace and safety of that kingdom,’ and maintained that he would pursue the work even if ‘reason of state’ were not a factor, but ‘merely for the goodness and morality of it.’ 64 James’ contention that plantation was a public act that advanced the commonwealth is ascribable to deeply embedded civic humanist values in early modern political culture. In the following pages, several major themes will be isolated and considered in relationship to humanist thought and according to their manifestations in early Stuart Ireland. Although thematic connections necessitate some amount of overlap, each section will draw out an angle of civic thought that was applied by the English to Irish politics. These themes are the vita activa and the commonwealth ideal as incentives for reform, the ‘public work’ of private projects, the articulation of civic humanist values through corporate participation, and programmes for moral health such as social welfare and education. Prior to engaging with these themes, I will address the nature of humanism in the seventeenth century by spotlighting the status of Ciceronian humanism, evaluating claims that the Ciceronian zest for political activity fell from favour in the educated circles of Stuart England.

63 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 211. 64 Betts, Irish Society , p. 49. 224

2.1.1. Cicero in the seventeenth century: persona non grata ? Some historians have identified a shift in the nature of the English humanist vocabulary, which is discernable from the late sixteenth century. This ‘new’ humanism was based on the writings of Tacitus and adopted a critical view of Cicero, who had been a principal classical authority for Tudor humanists. It has been suggested that the works of Tacitus had a radical impact on political thought in the seventeenth century, and that interest in Tacitus nurtured an emerging cynicism about human nature. Recurring themes of Tacitean thought were the decay of virtue and the necessity of conceit, and emphasis on scepticism, prudence and withdrawal from political activity.65 Obedience to the monarch was a chief virtue, and it was believed that a subject should retire or apply himself to a passive, complacent life in the ‘art of service’ rather than to seek out opportunities for active virtue. The popular engagement with Taciteanism and its corollaries of moral scepticism and self- preservation, has led historians such as Tuck to argue that the vita activa was superseded by the vita contemplativa by the seventeenth century. 66 Some scholars of Stuart political thought have contested claims of Cicero’s lost influence, maintaining that Ciceronian humanism was just as robust in the seventeenth century as the sixteenth. In his assessment of neo-classical republican discourse in Tudor and Stuart England, Peltonen concludes that Tacitean pessimism was unable to ‘completely outweigh traditional Ciceronian humanism and its urging of the merits of the active life.’ He states that historians ought to view Tacitus as ‘part 67 of the humanist political vocabulary’ rather than as an antithesis of Cicero. Similarly, Goldie argues that the Stuart government was a participatory one, with opportunities for political participation at all levels of government. According to

65 Peltonen, Classical Humanism , p. 127; J.H.M. Salmon, ‘Seneca and Tacitus in Jacobean England,’ in L. Levy Peck (ed.), The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 169. 66 The move from Ciceronian morality to scepticism and stoicism in political thought is charted in R. Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572-1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 67 Peltonen, Classical Humanism , p. 134; M. Peltonen, ‘Ciceronian Humanism and Tacitean Neostoicism – Replacement or Transformation: The Case of Francis Bacon’s Moral and Civil Philosophy,’ The European Legacy 1, 1 (1996), pp. 220-26. 225 Goldie, political participation in English society closely resembled the ancient 68 republican tradition that emphasised the active involvement of the citizen. Citizens could, and did, involve themselves in local matters of law and order, and the educated classes were able to exercise the vita activa through participation in government and administration. Fletcher’s study of gentry involvement in local government reveals that ‘[a] new vision of social duty’ was shared ‘by a very broad spectrum of 69 propertied men’ in the English provinces. Popular involvement in domestic politics indicates that the vita activa was a defining characteristic of civic life in the early seventeenth century. In the Irish provinces, British settlers were expected to assist in the processes of law, order and government. Reporting upon the problem of absenteeism in the plantations of Leitrim, Longford and Ely, the council in Dublin complained that the scarcity of British planters resulted in ‘a want of necessary persons to supply the place of justices of the peace, constables, jurors, and others,’ who were needed ‘to serve His Majesty for the better civilizing and governing of those barbarous countries...’ 70 As colonial expansion opened new opportunities for involvement in colonial government and trade, the active life was esteemed as a positive contribution to British expansion and glory. Research on seventeenth century colonial corporations has revealed that members embraced their role as defenders of public virtue in their colonies. The ideal of the vita activa pervaded literature produced by the Virginia Company, and as Fitzmaurice explains, the promoters of the Virginian colony 71 emphasised ‘the primacy of virtue as the motive and guide for political life.’ The East India Company likewise situated their involvement in trade and commerce as activity in the interest of the state. As Stern states, ‘the Company in this sense figured itself, like other merchants across the Anglo-Atlantic world, as a sort of corporate 72 Ciceronian merchant-citizen.’ Although a remarkably small body of promotional material was published for the Irish plantations, authors of political literature

68 Goldie, ‘The Unacknowledged Republic,’ p. 154. 69 Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces , p. 116. 70 CSPI 1615-25 , p. 325. 71 Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America , p. 58. 72 P. Stern, ‘Corporate Virtue: The Languages of Empire in Early Modern British Asia,’ Renaissance Studies 26, 4 (2012), p. 514. 226 approved of the active, personal involvement of public-minded individuals. Involvement in government or colonial schemes was regarded as a service to the commonwealth. Participation in Ireland was conceived as ‘commonwealth work,’ as building and maintaining a well-ordered commonwealth was one of the primary aims of humanism and a noble expression of the active life. Stern has revealed that members of the East India Company viewed participation in public service as central to the incorporation of European settlers and Asian inhabitants as ‘colonial citizens,’ and that the ‘cultivation of wealthy and vibrant inhabitants’ in the body politic was 73 part of their ‘humanist’ programme of good government. In Ireland, as in other colonial governments, civic thought was a ‘tool’ to solve political problems and 74 ‘provided the terms in which the actions of colonization were understood.’ The emphasis on public spirit in matters of Irish reform enabled officials to qualify their actions as commonwealth-minded. The humanist ideal of the vita activa and its relative, the ‘commonwealth,’ provided the barometer against which Jacobean writers could measure the moral integrity of colonial activity.

2.2. Commonwealth work

Humanist politicians sought to channel their civic conscience into the foundation and maintenance of commonwealths. As seen above, Attorney-General Davies employed commonwealth principles to articulate the British mission in Ireland. The intention of the renewed plantation programme was to restore the commonwealth to health by populating it, as far as possible, with British blood. In 1609, Davies reported to Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, that those in Ireland who ‘expect and long for the settling of the peace of this kingdom, assure themselves that, if the empty veins of Ulster were once filled with good British blood, the whole body of this 75 commonwealth would quickly recover perfection of health.’ In 1611, Davies informed Salisbury that Lord Chief Justice Sir Humphrey Winch was readying the acts for the upcoming parliament, ‘for the establishing of their new commonwealth

73 Stern, ‘Corporate Virtue,’ p. 524. 74 A. Fitzmaurice, ‘The Civic Solution to the Crisis of English Colonization, 1609-1625,’ The Historical Journal 42, 1 (1999), p. 29. 75 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 214. 227 here; which he terms new, because before the beginning of His Majesty’s reign there was ever, for divers hundreds of years past, rather a common misery than a commonwealth in this kingdom.’ 76 The legal writings of Davies enveloped the reform effort in the language of the reinvigorated body politic, the standard analytical paradigm that showcased his humanist credentials (Davies, who was also a poet, had matriculated at Oxford and attended Middle Temple). His Irish career reflects, in many ways, the experience of the members of educated professional class who looked to Ireland for opportunities for public service, seeking recognition and prestige by 77 serving the commonwealth. As Curtis explains, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries produced a surfeit of ‘alienated intellectuals’ in England. Universities were producing greater numbers of graduates, many of whom joined younger sons in the ranks of the over- educated and under-employed. They grew restless and frustrated by their inability to 78 fulfil their sense of duty and ambition in England. Some looked to the opportunities afforded by the expansion of crown authority in Ireland. Sir John Harington petitioned to become lord chancellor in Ireland by articulating a reform philosophy and expressing a zeal to devote himself to service, ennobling his personal ambition by appealing to the concept of the vita activa . Harington was a Cambridge graduate, author and courtier of Elizabeth I who had first visited Ireland with a view to participate in the Munster plantation. 79 Seeking to ingratiate himself with his new king and to win promotion in Ireland, he delivered a treatise to sell himself as a replacement to the ailing Adam Loftus as lord chancellor and archbishop of Dublin. Harington had found the people of Ireland to be agreeable but driven to vengeful behaviour by the abuses of soldiers and officers. He claimed that his experiences ‘animated mee the rather to offer myselfe to this place of servyce in that Cowntry, in which I have a great hope and a moch greater desyre to deserve well of my most

76 CSPI 1611-14 , p. 5. 77 S. Kelsey, ‘Davies, Sir John,’ ODNB . 78 M.H. Curtis, ‘The Alienated Intellectuals of Early Stuart England,’ Past & Present 23 (1962), pp. 25-43. 79 J. Scott-Warren, ‘Harington, Sir John,’ ODNB . 228 graciows Soveraygn,’ and that he would consider his grand ‘calling’ confirmed if the 80 king approved his appointment. Harington professed a ‘zeal to that Cowntry,’ out of which he was compelled to warn his lords that ‘that the quyet yt now enjoyeth ys not a perfect recovery of helth,’ but was rather ‘lyke to a man that having had a pestilent and furyows fever, and all his blood and strength spent thearwith, lyes quyet, not becawse hee wold not, but becawse hee cannot stir,’ and would, again, rage in rebellion when it recovered its strength. Harington outlined a plan for reformation based on the passage of justice and authority of parliament. By settling claims in parliament, ‘the very seeds of wrongs and opressyons wowld bee consumed, marciall law […] myght bee layd 81 asyde.’ If ‘the Poor man know his meum [mine] and the Peer his non meum [not mine], which now ys strawngly confownded,’ then lords, sheriffs and officers would be unable to oppress, extort and bribe. If corruption was rooted out and grievances peacefully resolved, then the forts would be turned into profitable farms and ‘noble men myght build palaces and sollace themselvs with parks and ponds.’82 As for his petition for the bishopric, Harington believed that the bishops in Ireland would be very willing ‘to have mee a fellow laborer in the desolate vyneyard of the Churche of Ierland[sic]. Which bringeth yet sowr grapes soch as set not teeth but swoords on edge.’ He vowed to reform the misgovernment of the church and appoint competent ministers. Religious conversion would be achieved by understanding, mildness and 83 toleration rather than violent coercion. Harington was never awarded the office, but his application provides a demonstration of the self-assured counsel of an educated civil servant seeking opportunities to exercise his reforming zeal in Ireland. One Elizabethan-bred adventurer who succeeded in Ireland was Arthur Chichester. As the younger son of an aristocratic family, Chichester, like many of his peers, was drawn to Ireland by the prospect of improving his situation. There, he dedicated himself to a life of service, first as a captain in and then in government. Chichester saw the plantation of Ireland as an honourable civic activity, even more

80 Sir John Harington, A Short View of the State of Ireland (1605), ed. W.D. Macray (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1879), pp. 9, 11, 21. 81 Harington, A Short View , pp. 4-5. 82 Harington, A Short View , pp. 5-6. 83 Harington, A Short View , pp. 15, 19. 229 honourable than the planting of the New World. As a kingdom ‘of his owne longe united to that Crowne,’ Chichester stated that it would be more worthwhile for James to focus his efforts on civilising and strengthening his kingdom of Ireland than colonising distant lands. Ireland ‘is much wast and unpeopled,’ he wrote, and ‘the repleneshinge therof with cyvell men wylbe a great stren[g]th everie waye to his majestie in all his warres and defences.’ Men who looked to Virginia, Guinea and other remote countries left ‘this of our owne wast and desolate,’ and demonstrated either ‘an absurd folly or wylfull ignorance.’ He declared that ‘ther can not be a greater or more commendable worke of a Christian prince then to plant cyvilytie with the trewe knowledge and service of God in the harts of his subjects’ 84 The reformation of Ulster was to be ‘so glorious and worthy a design,’ that Chichester declared that he would ‘rather labour with my hands in the plantation of Ulster, than dance or play in that of Virginia.’ 85 After his death, Chichester was immortalised by his nephew as ‘a greate Statesman, and good Common-wealths man.’86 Chichester defined the commonwealth as a society defined and united by mutual obligation. It was ‘nothing more then a commercement [dealings] or continual suppeditac’on [assistance] of 87 benefits mutually receiv’d and done between Men. To Chichester, the Ulster plantation was commonwealth work, and as a work of public necessity, it should be supported by the state. He proposed that ‘such an act must be the work of a commonwealth and upon the common charge, towards which a subsidy or two were will given.’ If that suggestion ‘be not liked of’ by the government, then each parish in England would ‘contribute towards the planting of a man, two or three, according to their circuit and abilities,’ although those who had served in Ireland should be given priority. If this plan were followed, ‘towns will be fortified, houses will be built, men of valour and understanding enabled to plant there, who will defend their own and make good what they have undertaken,’ becoming so strong as to dash Irish hopes for

84 NASPI 63/217/545. 85 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 520. 86 Sir Faithful Fortescue, An Account of the Rt. Honourable Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Belfast, Lord Deputy of Ireland , ed. Lord Clermont (London: Printed for Private Circulation, 1858), p. 19. 87 R.D. Edwards (ed.), ‘Letter-Book of Sir Arthur Chichester,’ Analecta Hibernica 8 (1938), p. 56. 230 reprisal. Chichester expected that ‘towards so good a work […] every well-affected 88 subject will contribute willingly.’ Another political figure who endorsed the plantation of Ireland as an act of virtue was Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon had proffered advice to Elizabeth on her Irish policies, and he would later counsel King James on the Ulster plantation.89 Bacon appealed to James’ imperial ambitions by framing his Irish policy as the creation of ‘another Britain,’ which was to be ‘constructed in an active enterprise.’ As Maley asserts, Bacon depicted the Ulster plantation as ‘a decisive act of social and political 90 engineering, part of the vita activa.…’ Bacon emphasised the honour and virtue of planting Ireland, claiming that the plantation would be ‘the King’s work in chief. It is his garland of heroical virtue and felicity, denied to his progenitors, and reserved to 91 his times.’ Bacon produced several essays on plantations, which commented on the virtues of planting kingdoms as well as the surest policy and strategy. According to Bacon, the king’s two preeminent works were the union of Britain and the plantation of kingdoms. To be the founder of the first plantation was ‘of more noble dignity and 92 merit than all that followeth.’ Bacon advised the king that the plantation should be ‘an adventure for such as are full,’ as men who had existing means to fund their undertaking would be more 93 resilient than fortune seekers. Bacon eschewed quick profit as a motive for plantation, stating that plantations should not be populated with the ‘scum of people,’ because ‘they will ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy, and do mischief, and spend victuals, and be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country to the discredit of the plantation.’ Instead, plantations needed to be filled with people who could contribute to the new society, such as labourers, tradesmen,

88 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 270. 89 Francis Bacon, Sir Francis Bacon's MSS Relating to Ireland (Corpus of Electronic Texts edition, 2011: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E600001-015/ ). 90 W. Maley, ‘The British Problem in Three Tracts on Ireland by Spenser, Bacon and Milton,’ in B. Bradshaw and P. Roberts (eds.), British Consciousness and Identity: The Making of Britain, 1533- 1707 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 178. 91 J. Spedding (ed.), The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon , Vol. VI (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1872), pp. 205-6. 92 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. II, p. 183 . 93 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. II, p. 185 . 231 94 surgeons and apothecaries. In his address to Sir William Jones on his appointment as chief justice of Ireland, Bacon stressed that planters should be bound to honour their public responsibilities and repress their desire for profit. He advised Jones that ‘the bane of a plantation is, when the undertakers or planters make such haste to a little mechanical present profit, as disturbeth the whole frame and nobleness of the work for times to come. Therefore hold them to their covenants, and the strict 95 ordinances of plantation.’ The dire consequences of broken covenants were within recent memory, as the destruction of the Munster plantation had prompted post-mortem assessments that blamed the English planters for neglecting the public good. It was accepted that the Munster undertakers failed to meet their targets, and that the scattered English population, as a result, was quickly despatched by the Irish rebels. Fynes Moryson, a travel writer who had seen Ireland as secretary to Lord Deputy Mountjoy, recorded in his Itinerary that the self interest of the undertakers had weakened the plantation. They had failed to defend the interests of the planter community by observing their covenants to fortify their holdings and keep English tenants. Moryson recalled that the undertakers did not ‘people’ their seigniories ‘with well affected English,’ but either sold the land to Catholics or ‘disposed them to their best profit.’ They did not build castles or fulfil other parts of their conditions ‘for the publike good, but onely sought their private ends, and so this her Majesties bounty to them, turned not to the strengthening, but rather to the weakening of the English Governement in the 96 Province of Mounster.’ The significance of this passage in relation to the current discussion lies in Moryson’s assumption that a public work had been undone by private regard. Moryson alleged that the destruction of the plantation was enabled by serious moral shortcomings in the undertakers, and their disregard for the greater good. The Orders and Conditions for the Ulster plantation, printed in London in 1608, informed potential investors that their involvement ought to be guided by the

94 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. I, p. 41. 95 Spedding (ed.), Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon , Vol. VI, pp. 205-6. 96 Fynes Moryson, The Itinerary of Fynes Moryson, 4 vols. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1907-8), II, p. 173. 232 ideals of service to the commonwealth. The orders highlighted the king’s selfless commitment to reform. The document declared that the six escheated counties belonging to the crown were to be given away to good subjects:

[The king,] not respecting his own profit, but the publick Peace and Welfare of that Kingdom, by the civil Plantation of those unreformed and waste countries, is graciously pleased to distribute the said Lands to such of his Subjects, as well of Great Britain as of Ireland, as being of Merit and Ability shall seek the same, with a mind not only to benefit themselves but to do service to the crown and 97 commonwealth.

Chichester treated the Ulster plantation as an honourable work, and stressed the need for virtue as an illuminating force, for selfish men lacked the moral qualities to build a permanent and profitable commonwealth. He anticipated a ‘great work of deducing inhabitants and making a plantation in such a barbarous and remote country,’ and stressed the need for men of good rank and quality to lead the enterprise. Virtuous individuals need only apply, ‘for that it is a matter more of honour and example than for any hope of gain for which this plantation must be undertaken,’ and men were unlikely to involve themselves in such risk without assurance that they would be joined by trustworthy company: ‘associated with such followers, friends, and neighbours, as can give them comfort and bring them strength and assistance.’ He hoped that the lord treasurer, lord privy seal and others of ‘honour and power’ would accept baronies in the plantation and ‘draw unto them fit men for the plantation,’ as, without the guidance of experienced gentlemen, new planters were likely to ‘consume their substance and undo themselves than to effect the 98 plantation….’ Chichester’s hopes for a settlement anchored by virtuous and capable hands were to be dashed. As the first British planters arrived in Ulster, Chichester

97 Hill, Plantation in Ulster , p. 78. 98 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 355. 233 expressed concern about the character and ability of the men he saw. His impressions of the new planters were highly discouraging. The planters were incompetent, greedy or apathetic, and were unequipped and unmotivated to undertake the work of civilising a barren and remote region: ‘these are not the men who must perform the business; for to displant the natives, who are a warlike people, out of the greatest part 99 of six whole counties, is not a work for private men who seek a present profit.’ Planters, petitioners and their supporters were at pains to emphasise a commitment to public utility. Davies’ endorsement of Sir Oliver Lambert, a servitor seeking lands in Ulster, highlighted his efforts in planting Westmeath as illustration of his moral character. Davies wrote that that Lambert was ‘like to prove a good planter in the county of Cavan,’ for he ‘hath made better proof than any man of our nation, having, at his own charge, voluntarily made a singular good plantation in the wild and most dangerous places in Leinster, more for the commonwealth than his 100 own profit. Another servitor, Sir Thomas Phillips, favoured humanist tropes to illuminate the Ulster project as commonwealth work. As an agent for the London companies, Phillips was intimately involved with the plantation of Derry and Coleraine. His negotiations and disputes with the city over the terms of their agreement accentuate public spirit as a constituent factor in colonial civic projects. Through his military service, Phillips had acquired substantial property in Ulster. Phillips demonstrated an interest in developing the region by founding a colony at Coleraine where he built fortifications, houses and a mill, and oversaw the 101 growth of the weekly market. Phillips assisted in the negotiations between the crown and the city, helping to convince the Londoners to commit to the plantation of 102 Derry and Coleraine (which Phillips agreed to give up in the redistribution). Phillips provided Salisbury, a principal architect of the plantation, with an estimate of the costs and gains of the plantation. Phillips celebrated the venture as ‘one of the most famous enterprizes that hath of long time been […] a perpetual strength to that

99 Hill, Plantation in Ulster , p. 446. 100 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 286. 101 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , pp. 60-1. 102 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 65; T.W. Moody, ‘Sir Thomas Phillips of Limavady, Servitor,’ Irish Historical Studies 1, 3 (1939), p. 255. 234 103 kingdom, and as an everlasting memory to the city of London.’ Phillips foresaw the regeneration of the region’s economy by means of industrial development and commercialisation. The cities would become centres for trades such as tanning, shipbuilding and fishing, and the production of commodities such as meat, hide and tallow, hops, oats, butter and cheese, timber, and yarn to make linen cloth and other wares, which would be ‘beneficial to the commonwealth as likewise to this new 104 plantation.’ The Irish would be allowed to remain for one year to assist with necessary labour, after which time ‘the work will be in great forwardness, and our countrymen flock over, that we shall not so much need the Irish,’ and it would be appropriate to rid the plantation of ‘idle persons and doubtful subjects’ by relocating 105 them elsewhere. The exploitation of the region’s resources would benefit the city, the undertakers and workers, and would be advantageous to both kingdoms. ‘Besides the great benefit and profit that the undertakers shall reap by this plantation, it will be a general good for the commonwealth’ on both sides of the channel, he wrote, as London would be furnished with provisions out of Ulster, the booming trade would provide work for mariners, and industrial development would provide a living for 106 tradesmen such as smiths who would prosper in the iron-rich region, as well as 107 carpenters, shipwrights and turners. The city was to be responsible for building the towns and infrastructure that would support this labour force. As the overseer of their agreement, Phillips was sharply critical of the city’s handling of the plantation. In the disputes between Phillips and the city, Phillips attempted to discredit the Irish Society by accusing the corporation of prioritising its own purse to the neglect of the principal enterprise. Responsible for the survey of Donegal and Londonderry in 1622, Phillips’ hostility towards the city, ostensibly for breaching the articles of plantation, was strongly pronounced in his reports. In 1623, the companies were forced to answer to the Privy Council on reports of inadequate supplies of arms. A set of articles was

103 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 149. 104 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , pp. 150-1. 105 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 152. 106 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 290. 107 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , pp. 152-3. 235 108 written up in 1624, with answers provided by the city. Apart from sending over workmen to build, there had been no systematic scheme to encourage immigration undertaken by the city or companies. 109 They were neglectful in ensuring that their public works were properly executed (for example, the failure to build a church at Derry and a bridge at Coleraine 110 ), failed to send over British planters and continued 111 to turn a blind eye to Irish tenants. The project was meant to bring great honour to the city, but had been corrupted by patent disregard for the public good. The country was out of order because the representatives entrusted with its care were more interested in gain for themselves. In contrast, Phillips himself laboured zealously in his own capacity as Ulster planter and agent, for the good of the commonwealth. 112 Chichester, writing in support of a proposed gaol and sessions house at Phillips’ settlement at Limavady half-way between Derry and Coleraine (a proposal the city opposed), warned the Privy Council that the city’s agents in Ireland were ‘not always 113 guided to make their reports with due consideration of the public.’ Few planters were more devoted to the idea of ‘commonwealth work’ than Richard Boyle, the first earl of Cork. The life of Boyle has been treated by several 114 historians. The earl was, as Canny relates, ‘a typical member of the New English elite in Ireland,’ only ‘more disciplined, more persevering, more dedicated to duty as 115 he understood it, and hence more successful.’ The Puritan-leaning Boyle, a younger son from a landed Herefordshire family, 116 immigrated to Ireland in 1588. He eventually became the leading land magnate in the Munster plantation (his purchases included the enormous estates originally granted to Walter Raleigh), where he built a large settlement that became what his biographer has called ‘a model of

108 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 225. 109 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 322. 110 Phillips Papers , pp. 7-8. 111 Phillips Papers , pp. 17-18. 112 Phillips Papers , p. 65. 113 Phillips Papers , p. 33. 114 Canny, Upstart Earl ; D. Townshend, The Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London: Duckworth and Company, 1904); T.O. Ranger, ‘Richard Boyle and the Making of an Irish Fortune, 1588-1614,’ Irish Historical Studies 10, 39 (1957), pp. 257-297; P. O’Sullivan, ‘The Ascent of Richard Boyle the Great Earl of Cork, 1566-1643,’ parts I-II, Bandon Historical Journal 21/22 (2005- 06), pp. 3-13, 14-23. 115 Canny, Upstart Earl , p. 40. 116 Canny, Upstart Earl , p. 27; Ranger, ‘Richard Boyle,’ p. 262. 236 117 what the resident and vigilant proprietor could achieve in Ireland.’ Boyle set out to recreate a Protestant English lowland society and successfully attracted new settlers to the region. In the 1622 survey, Boyle’s settlement at Bandon Bridge, Kynalmeaky was described as ‘a large and beautiful town,’ with a church, a town wall, and almost six hundred male settlers armed for defence. At Tallow, Boyle built ‘a fair and handsome market town,’ inhabited with well-equipped English households ‘of several trades,’ and two iron mills ‘by which many people are set awork and are many other 118 ways beneficial to the Commonwealth.’ Boyle carefully cultivated his image as an industrious and charitable builder of commonwealths. Boyle committed himself to ‘good works’ such as settling his estates with tenants, building fortified towns, constructing churches, bridges and castles, founding schools, almshouses and houses of correction, and supporting clergy.119 Boyle described his activities as ‘public works’ and also as ‘commonwealth work.’ He claimed that he endeavoured ‘to give advancement to the affairs of the crown and to the good of this commonwealth,’ having ‘bestowed good shares of my 120 substance acquired here by God’s blessings, for the public works thereof.…’ Boyle’s writings demonstrate how the secular values of virtue and the commonwealth dovetailed with providentialist ideas in the seventeenth century. The association between profit and godliness was encapsulated in his chosen motto, ‘God’s providence is mine inheritance.’ He believed that his social ascent was part of God’s 121 plan and proof of his righteousness. Canny suggests that the providential explanations deployed to explain Boyle’s success were derivative of the humanist concept of virtue. As a tireless architect of commonwealth works, Boyle could justify 122 his wealth as providential reward for his virtuous labours. This section has demonstrated that some within educated Jacobean circles pursued Irish careers as a channel for public service. It has also been found that colonial works were considered to be equal to public works, and were assessed in

117 T. Barnard, ‘Boyle, Richard,’ ODNB . 118 R. Dunlop, ‘An Unpublished Survey of the Plantation of Munster in 1622,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland , sixth series, 14, 2 (1924), pp. 141-2. 119 Canny, Upstart Earl , pp. 22, 29. 120 Canny, Upstart Earl , p. 22. 121 Canny, Upstart Earl , p. 19. 122 Canny, Upstart Earl , p. 28. 237 terms of their benefit and profit to the commonwealth. Selfless participation in colonial ventures was seen to be consistent with virtue, a finding that supports arguments for the continued vitality of the Ciceronian vita activa among the Stuart gentry. By promoting their pursuits as ‘commonwealth work,’ the New English aimed to achieve material success while preserving their sense of honour and virtue.

2.3. Private profit and public duty: civic arguments for colonial projects

The abstract ‘commonweal’ of the mid-sixteenth century underwent a transformation in the seventeenth century. According to Thirsk, the ‘commonwealth’ became more directly associated with materialism and wealth, specifically in the production and consumption of goods. Practical economic schemes or ‘projects’ were promoted and appraised in terms of their contribution to the commonwealth. ‘It was not an unattainable dream like the commonweal,’ writes Thirsk. ‘Yet in effect it did much to promote the commonweal, by creating employment, and dispersing more cash through all classes of society.’ The Tudor Commonwealthmen who railed against social upheaval and decay in the sixteenth century were succeeded by the capitalist projectors providing employment for the jobless in the seventeenth. Population growth and expanding European markets offered opportunities for profitable enterprise to those with access to the necessary resources. The close of the sixteenth century heralded an energised period of diversification. In the relative peace of the first two decades of the seventeenth century, nobility and gentry turned to joint stock ventures and commercial enterprise affiliated with England’s overseas expansion. The enterprising energy of the period is encapsulated in the rush for projects. According to Thirsk, ‘two of the key words that characterized the new era were ‘project’ and ‘projector.’ Everyone with a scheme, whether to make money, to 123 employ the poor, or to explore the far corners of the earth had a ‘project.’’ Even the

123 Thirsk, Economic Policy , p. 1. 238 Ulster plantation was conceived as the ‘Project for the division and plantation of the 124 escheated lands in six several counties of Ulster.’ The intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism can help to explain the fervour for projects. The reform agenda of enriching the kingdom through industry and trade was consistent with the arguments made by certain political theorists that a commonwealth could not attain greatness, or grandezza , without economic vitality. In the early sixteenth century, Machiavelli declared that the greatness of a state relied upon soldierly qualities in citizens. By the seventeenth century, humanist thinkers were rejecting the Machiavellian standard of greatness, arguing that greatness was built on a robust economy rather than martial valour. 125 This view was promulgated by the Italian theorist Giovanni Botero, whose work, The Greatness of Cities , was translated into English in 1606. Botero argued that commerce and trade were the means by which cities attained wealth and power, and therefore greatness: ‘Nothing is of greater importance for increasing the power of a state and gaining for it more inhabitants and wealth of every kind than the industry of its people and the number of crafts they exercise.’ Botero argued that the governments of states should focus on attracting workers as ‘it is the numerical strength of a people which makes a land fertile and by labour and art gives a thousand different forms to the produce of nature, 126 and hence power and wealth to their king.’ To be rich and prosperous, states should also encourage manufacturing industries, as finished products were of greater value than crude material. Botero’s ideas were channelled into promotional literature for the 127 Virginia Company, such as Robert Johnson’s Nova Britannia . It is possible to discern some aspects of Botero’s thought in the writings of reformers and politicians who were interested in Ireland. The country needed an injection of wealth to revive and prosper, to become economically self-sustaining and augment crown revenue. Calls for regulations against exporting raw materials out of Ireland and the establishment of a mint in Dublin were intended to modernise and commercialise the

124 Cal. Carew, Misc. , p. 13. 125 A. Fitzmaurice, ‘The Commercial Ideology of Colonization in Jacobean England: Robert Johnson, Giovanni Botero, and the Pursuit of Greatness,’ The William and Mary Quarterly 64, 4 (2007), pp. 791-820. 126 Giovanni Botero, The Greatness of Cities , trans. R. Pearson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), pp. 150-3. 127 Fitzmaurice, ‘Commercial Ideology,’ p. 792. 239 128 Irish economy. As Clarke relates, ‘plantation implied improvement,’ as new communities were to be constructed around a concept of civility that encompassed religious, legal and social norms, but also, and importantly, commerce. Trade would introduce the people to wealth and foster civility among them. As Lord Deputy St. John stated, ‘the love of [money] will sooner effect civility than any other persuasion 129 whatsoever.’ Civic humanist arguments for wealth as a measure of greatness in commonwealths were embraced by British projectors who harnessed the post-war peace to launch independent ventures in Ireland. In the period of recovery after the wars of the sixteenth century, Ireland experienced a drive towards commercialisation as planters competed to control and 130 exploit marketable resources. The significant costs involved in building Derry and Coleraine made the Irish Society hesitant to invest more money in developing industries. As a result, economic developments in this period were mostly the 131 initiatives of individual planters. In 1609, the Yorkshire solicitor John Carvyle forwarded a project to Salisbury for a plantation of eight thousand acres and sought a grant of land for the purpose. Carvyle intended to transport two hundred artificers, husbandmen and labourers, and their families, from England. He also planned to bring two soldiers to oversee the building of fortifications, a surveyor to plot and measure out the plantation, carpenters, millwrights, wheelwrights, masons, wallers, slaters or tilers, millers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, cutlers, cloth workers, linen workers, husbandmen, labourers and ministers. He promised to build two manor houses with adjoining villages, and four hamlets (‘for exercisinge of husbandry’), and 132 to build corn mills and fulling mills for working cloth. Carvyle, an investor in the Virginia Company, did not receive a grant, but was just one of many who were occupying themselves with projects to transform the Irish countryside with towns, 133 workforces and machinery.

128 See section 3.4 below. 129 Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ p. 174. 130 Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ p. 184. 131 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 353. 132 NASPI 63/227/530. 133 A. Brown, The Genesis of the United States , Vol. II (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1890), p. 846. 240 Richard Speart, the author of an unsuccessful plan to colonise Munster in 134 1583, reappeared after the Flight of the Earls to offer counsel on the new settlement. Speart forwarded a number of potential projects to stimulate the local economy and alleviate unemployment. Speart parroted the claim, by now timeworn, that a root cause of social ills of Ireland was idleness, which was partly caused by a shortage of employment opportunities. Speart wrote that ‘idleness procureth poverty so poverty breedeth discontent, especially to such who remain corrupt in manners,’ endangering the status quo as the people sought ‘alteration and mutation of the State under which they live.’ Speart isolated poverty and the resulting political disaffection as ‘pestilent diseases, being very grevious to be touched (yet necessary to be cured),’ which could be remedied ‘by applying their contraries, which will be instead of poverty to give them wealth that may be gotten by labour,’ for men would be civilised when they begin to earn their own living. Given wealth, men become ‘so careful and laboursome for increasing and preservation thereof,’ for wealth would bring improved living conditions, the eradication of idleness, and would imbue the people with a permanent attachment to wealth and plenty, giving them ‘such desire of 135 peace and quietness as none of what sort so ever can draw them from the same.’ Speart elaborated his plan to increase revenues and enrich the king’s Irish subjects. A survey of all newly acquired lands should be taken, the lands conveyed to undertakers and divided into parishes of forty undertakers apiece, each divided into four tithings containing a church. Provision would be made for a minister, schoolmaster and artificers. Undertakers would be committed to planting corn and sowing hemp, flax, madder and hops. The abundant woods would be felled for ship building and manufacturing goods for export such as pipe staves, rafters, planks and oars. Speart’s proposal also included plans for the foundation of iron works, glass 136 works, production of linen and woollen cloth, commercial fishing and mining. Speart emphasised the need to provide good preachers and schoolmasters to drive the message of conformity, drawing ‘the inhabitants thereof to the true knowledge of God and the country to civility whereby all sorts of people in that commonwealth in place

134 See part 3, section 2.4.1. 135 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Spert’s Tract on Ireland,’ p. 66. 136 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Spert’s Tract on Ireland,’ pp. 70-1. 241 137 of poverty may attain to great wealth,’ and ‘by which they will all from a miserable 138 and poor people become blessed and wise subjects.’ By emphasising the public commodity of industrial development, projects 139 such as Speart’s ‘remov[ed] the distinction between private profit and public duty.’ By mixing the private with the public interest, authors of schemes to develop Irish land aligned their aims with the values of an increasingly diversified consumer society in England. The project to absorb the Irish into a commercial economy was, therefore, seamlessly integrated into a civic humanist agenda. The servitor Sir Thomas Roper was endorsed by the 1622 commissioners as ‘an industrious instrument of good’ because he had employed English families in fishing in the west of Ireland and in Co. Cork. Roper had also established cloth works near Dublin, in which ‘many poor people are daily set on work to the increase of His Majesty’s Customs and the wealth of this kingdom.’ 140 Works such as Roper’s were part of a widespread mobilisation of resources in Stuart Ireland, and were welcomed for their positive contributions to social order and national prestige by setting the idle to work and augmenting trade, commerce and wealth.

2.4. Corporate plantation and humanism

In early modern England, ‘corporation,’ as well as ‘company,’ ‘fellowship’ and ‘society,’ were terms that denoted formally incorporated groups and informal 141 associations with a shared purpose. Under Elizabeth, several colonial societies, such as the Smith and St. Leger companies, were formed with the aim of establishing new plantations in Ireland. Under James, corporations assumed a central role in the organisation and administration of overseas colonies. The Virginia Company, chartered in 1606, is a prominent example. All fifty-five companies involved in the Ulster plantation were also subscribers in the Virginia Company, and were listed in

137 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Spert’s Tract on Ireland,’ p. 68. 138 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Spert’s Tract on Ireland,’ p. 69. 139 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Spert’s Tract on Ireland,’ p. 64. 140 CSPI 1615-25 , pp. 348, 361, 390. 141 H.S. Turner, ‘Corporations: Humanism and Elizabethan Political Economy,’ in P.J. Stern and C. Wennerlind (eds.), Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 160. 242 142 its second charter in May 1609. As Withington states, corporate bodies such as guilds, companies and incorporated cities, ‘provided a framework, or structure, for continuous and systematic public activity by their citizens.’143 Corporations provided a basis for civic participation, and involvement in a trading or colonial corporation was one way that citizens could contribute to the commonwealth. Although such structures were rooted in medieval traditions, corporate involvement was, in the early 144 modern period, ‘infused with – and indeed enthused by’ Ciceronian humanism. The plans for the Ulster plantation comprised ‘a systematic urbanisation policy,’ which included the incorporation of several towns. In Ulster, it was planned to entrust certain ‘principal gentlemen’ with the sites intended for corporate towns. They would serve as superintendants to oversee general order, building works and 145 procuring of settlers until the towns were large enough to be incorporated. A total of sixteen towns were incorporated in the six counties by 1641, slightly fewer than 146 the original number proposed. Incorporation of Irish towns had several advantages. Corporations buttressed the political dominance of the New English by returning Protestant members to the Irish parliament. In addition, it was hoped that corporate towns would facilitate British migration by providing an urban base for skilled 147 workers. Incorporation also carried a symbolic function as a structural divide between order and chaos. The promotional author Thomas Blenerhasset endorsed the formation of corporate towns to construct an urban framework and facilitate the conditions of civil society. Blenerhasset’s A Direction for the Plantation in Ulster (1610) was a statement in support of the incorporation and plantation of Irish towns and a call for subscriptions in a joint stock company that would oversee the plantation of Ulster. The Cambridge-educated Blennerhasset was a planter in Ireland prior to the Nine Years War, and was a member of the company that submitted a petition to plant

142 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 97. 143 Withington, ‘Public Discourse,’ p. 1017. 144 P. Withington, ‘Putting the City into Shakespeare’s City Comedy,’ in D. Armitage, C. Condren and A. Fitzmaurice (eds.), Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 202. 145 Hunter, ‘Towns in the Ulster Plantation,’ p. 43. 146 Hunter, ‘Towns in the Ulster Plantation,’ p. 54 147 Hunter, ‘Towns in the Ulster Plantation,’ pp. 41-2. 243 148 Fermanagh with one thousand men. In the Direction , Blenerhasset painted an alarming picture of the present conditions in Ireland. He explained that the English in Ireland lived in fear of cattle raiders and violence, and described how the existing English plantations were scattered, with just a few tenants situated around each castle. Irish terror made it impossible for the English to make improvements to, or profit 149 from, their estates in the sparse and isolated settlements. Blenerhasset proposed to build fortified towns and open the urban network by cutting passes and making the bogs passable. Any remaining kern would be rounded up in regular searches conducted by the townsmen. Under these conditions, the settlers would be able to tend to their stocks and crops: ‘with the generall improvement and chief profit, for the feeding of al kind of Cattle: then may they 150 sowe, mowe, plant, thrive & be merry.’ The garrisons would be dismantled and corporations erected in their place. These corporations of undertakers and ex-soldiers would be less expensive for the government, more secure, and ‘the societye [would] farre excell.’ 151 Blenerhasset believed that corporations were necessary in order to achieve any measure of commonwealth in Ireland. Scattered and disparate settlements were compared to ‘the unbound sticks of a brush fagot, easie to be gathered, hewen and had to the fire,’ and unless corporations were built, ‘neither shall there be true 152 Religion, sweete society, nor any comfortable security amongst them…’ The proposed joint stock company would introduce undertakers and build a 153 city in Ulster. Blenerhasset framed investment as a work of public service, duty and honour. No room would be given to poor or disreputable people, and Blenerhasset warned that ‘[l]oyterers and lewd persons in this our new worlde, they will not be indured.’ Only those who possessed wealth or skills would be beneficial to the new society. 154 As the king’s subjects, they had been called upon to complete the task of civilising Ulster by planting corporations. Blenerhasset explained that

148 Hill, Plantation in Ulster , p. 145; A. Hadfield, ‘Blenerhasset, Thomas,’ ODNB . 149 Thomas Blenerhasset, A Direction for the Plantation in Ulster (London: Edward Allde, 1610), sig. A4.B. 150 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sig. B2v. 151 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sig. B3. 152 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sig. B4v. 153 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sig. C. 154 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sig. C4v. 244 ‘there remayneth nothing but how to cover her [Ireland’s] nakednes, & to furnish her coastes with corporations and other such meanes’ to guarantee security, peace and plenty. Blenerhasset explained that those who had already committed, ‘to their great glory and everlasting renowne,’ had ‘[thought] it no small honor for them to adventure their lives, their livings, and all their indeavours therein.’ He called for other worthy gentlemen to devote themselves to ‘so honourable an action,’ and compared the enterprise with the rebuilding of London (as New Troy) by King Lud. As the successors of Lud, the corporation ‘will there reedifie a new Troy’ in Coleraine,’ performing what would be ‘the most honourable action that ever they attempted.’ 155 From a desolate and dangerous wasteland, Ulster would be transformed 156 into ‘a christian and comfortable society of neighbourhood.’ Twelve men were already prepared to invest in the company, but he anticipated that most would be discouraged by the costs involved. Blenerhasset explained that ‘the happy Elizian 157 fields’ would not be reached before hard work and tribulation. Blenerhasset’s proposal situated the corporation as the backbone of a well-ordered society and as an apparatus for honourable activity. The city of London’s investment in the Ulster plantation entailed the confluence of commercial and commonwealth values. The government persuaded the city to undertake the plantation by listing the public benefits that would accrue over time. The city would augment its wealth through privileges for customs, fishing, 158 transportation of prohibited wares, and the admiralty. The city was also exhorted to consider the welfare of its citizens. Ulster, which ‘yieldeth store of all necessary for man’s sustenance,’ would provide a surplus that could be exported to feed London’s 159 poor. The need for tradesmen in Ulster would open employment opportunities for those who struggled to make a living in the overcrowded streets of London. ‘If multitudes of men were employed, proportionably to these commodities, which might

155 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sigs. D2v-D4. 156 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sig. D. 157 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sigs. C2-C2v. 158 ‘Motives and Reasons to Induce the City of London to Undertake the Plantation in the North of Ireland,’ printed in Irish Society, The Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of the Honorable Society of the Governor and Assistants of London of the New Plantation in Ulster: Within the Realm of Ireland, Commonly Called the Irish Society (London: G. Bleaden, 1822), pp. 17-18. 159 ‘Motives and Reasons,’ p. 18. 245 be there by industry attained, many thousands would be set on work,’ which would entail ‘the great service of the King, strength of his realm, advancement of several trades, and benefit of particular persons,’ who could be easily spared by the city in its ‘infinite increasing greatness,’ and would ‘reap a singular commodity’ by easing the strain of unemployment and overcrowding. 160 The crown’s appeal was framed by the principles of the commonwealth, targeting the city’s responsibility to act on behalf of the public interest and underscoring the socio-economic benefits to the realm at large. The crown utilised patriotic sentiments to appeal to the Londoners’ sense of duty and to inject enthusiasm for the king’s grand plantation scheme. The charter of the town of Coleraine, presented in 1613, reaffirmed the corporation’s royal mandate to build and protect a commonwealth of virtuous citizens in Ulster. The document included overtures ‘to improve and cultivate, by art and industry, countries and lands uncultivated and almost desert,’ to stock them with ‘honest citizens and inhabitants,’ and to implement laws to defend the said inhabitants from ‘the corruption of their morals,’ as from internal conspiracies and external enemies. The king acknowledged the central role of the corporation in the mission to plant and civilise Ireland. He addressed ‘our beloved and faithful subjects, the mayor, and commonalty, and citizens of our City of London,’ who ‘burn[ed] with a flagrant zeal to promote such our pious intention in this behalf,’ and having ‘undertaken a considerable part of the said plantation in Ulster, are making progress therein.’ 161 As the largest investor, the city was expected to assume the role of vanguard and exemplar for Irish plantation. Seeing the poorly paid and equipped workmen who were initially sent over by the city, St. John expressed the hope that the city would devote itself more liberally to the building effort so that it might produce ‘imitable examples’ and encouragement for other planters.162 Despite the proclamations of ‘flagrant zeal’ trumpeted in the city charter, the crown was displeased by the lacklustre efforts of the Irish Society, and accused the Society of breaching its agreement and poorly executing its plantation works. The Society failed to replicate

160 ‘Motives and Reasons,’ p. 20. 161 Worshipful Company of Skinners. The Skinners’ Company Versus the Honourable the Irish Society and Others (London: Richard Clay, 1836), p. 226. 162 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 438. 246 the same civic zeal for colonisation exhibited by the Virginia Company in its 163 propaganda campaigns. This is, very possibly, a reflection of the circumstances of its formation: the Irish Society was not an independent initiative, for the companies had to be persuaded by the government to participate in the plantation. Despite the high costs involved and heavy government criticism, the Irish Society ultimately fulfilled its charter to build and wall two colonial cities and plant Protestant settlers in Ulster. A 1616 survey that recorded improvements in Derry and Coleraine demonstrates that the city of London was, as Moody states, ‘willing to consider schemes for the development of the civic and commercial life of the two towns’ for which it had assumed responsibility. 164

2.5. A reformation of manners

The socio-economic situation between 1580 and 1630 has been described in terms of a ‘gathering crisis,’ with periods of ‘acute distress.’ Population expansion was at its peak, and inflation and harvest failures exacerbated the impoverishment of urban and 165 rural workers and small farmers. Economic fluctuations produced rising numbers of paupers and vagrants across England. In response to widespread social dislocation, the machinery of social welfare was expanded and centralised. New notions of civic reformation, embellished by humanism and Protestantism, were reflected in the classification and treatment of the poor. As Slack notes, the perception and treatment of the poor underwent transition in this period. From objects of charity, the poor became ‘a threat to be controlled, or as an opportunity for social and economic engineering,’ to be supervised and rehabilitated through institutions such as hospitals 166 and workhouses. Official schemes for social relief were less developed in Ireland. The city corporations were constrained in their ability to organise poor relief, and 167 much of the charity was provided by individual bequests and donations.

163 Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America , passim. 164 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 175. 165 Wrightson, English Society , p. 142. 166 P. Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Longman, 1988), p. 205. 167 Gillespie, Colonial Ulster , p. 187. 247 Calls to provide Ireland with a social infrastructure on a par with England’s speak to contemporary concerns about social control and moral correction. Chichester, for example, promoted the establishment of public institutions such as hospitals, free schools and colleges in Ireland. He touted such things as ‘considerations of Charity and convenience in a State, like to induce a habit of 168 Vertue.’ In addition to humanitarian considerations of relief and welfare, the creation of a moral community required strict justice and correction. Social policy in early modern England was designed to eradicate vagrants, idle people and other miscreants who tarnished the fabric of the commonwealth. As part of this process, reformers attempted to police cultural practices and institutions that promoted vice and immoral behaviour. The regulation of alehouses in England and Ireland is an illuminating case study of the parallels between the reformation of manners in England and the campaign to arrest the long process of moral and social decay in Ireland. Moralistic complaints over alehouses reached new heights in the early seventeenth century. As Braddick explains, alehouses were regarded by the English gentry and local authorities ‘with acute suspicion, as centres of a counter-culture’ in England, and as ‘nurser[ies] of vice.’ Alehouses drew commoners away from their 169 occupations and churches and into springs of riot, excess and idleness. The profusion of alehouses in Ireland in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century reflected changes in drinking practices in England after the reformation. Alcohol consumption, traditionally an activity associated with religious festivals, became secularised. The number of alehouses grew, and so too did the complaints of 170 insobriety afflicting English society. In response, statutes passed under James I placed restrictions on opening hours and access.171 The proliferation of alehouses caused great public concern in England and Ireland, but as Treadwell asserts, ‘the image of the unregulated alehouse as a nursery of sedition was even more compelling

168 Edwards (ed.), ‘Letter-Book of Sir Arthur Chichester,’ p. 72. 169 Braddick, State Formation , p. 140; Wrightson, English Society , pp. 169-70. 170 A. Horning, ‘“The Root of all Vice and Bestiality”: Exploring the Cultural Role of the Alehouse in the Ulster Plantation,’ in Lyttleton, and Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture , p. 118. 171 C.W. Brooks, Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 411. 248 in Ireland,’ where they provided havens for outlaws and pirates and meeting places 172 for plotting and intrigue. A 1615 plot by Rory Oge O’Cahan and Alexander MacDonnell to burn and sack Coleraine was hatched in an Ulster alehouse run by an 173 English merchant. Unscrupulous alehouse owners were implicated in these manifestations of anti-social behaviour. A bylaw passed by the Corporation of Youghal in 1610 underscored the connection between drinking houses and idleness:

Wheras divers loose and idle people, though having trades and mechanical mysteries to maintain themselves, yet not willing to follow any good trade, etc., do only address themselves to the keeping of lewd and incontinent tippling, alehouses and taphouses, to the great increase of idleness, as is daily manifested. 174

Alehouses were ubiquitous in towns and remote districts of Ireland. The government attempted to regulate Irish alehouses through a system of licensing transmitted ‘to such persons and places as may be most for the good of the 175 commonwealth.’ In 1611, a bill was prepared for the Irish parliament for restricting the excessive number of alehouses. This bill was a copy of the English statute of Edward VI, which gave justices of the peace power to license or suppress alehouses, and required licensed alehouse keepers to take out recognisances for good 176 behaviour. Injunctions against the perceived sources of social disorder in Ireland emanated from the humanist (and increasingly, Protestant) impulse to legislate on behalf of the public good. The fulfilment of the well-ordered society was to be accomplished by the enactment of policies and buttressed by educational institutions that would instil the principles of civic responsibility in individual consciences.

172 Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland , pp. 83-4; CSPI 1615-25 , pp. 148, 282. 173 Horning, ‘Role of the Alehouse,’ p. 127. 174 R. Caulfield (ed.), The Council Book of the Corporation of Youghal (Guildford: J. Billing and Sons 1878), p. 7. 175 Caulfield (ed.), Corporation of Youghal , p. 76. 176 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 161. 249 Institutions for education were to form part of the bedrock of the moral reformation in Ireland. Moral correction was a corollary of obedience and good order, and order in society was to be achieved through a reformation of manners and morals. In seventeenth century humanist and Protestant thought, social ills such as poverty and idleness were the result of ignorance. Reformers targeted ignorance and its 177 symptoms through the provision of education and vocational training. Education could cure society’s ills, encourage duty and obedience to authority, implant godliness and virtue in the young, and promote the prosperity of the commonwealth. Enthusiasm for the benefits of education was conspicuous in seventeenth century England. In The Advancement of Learning (1605), Bacon wrote that education made men easier to govern: ‘learning doth make the minds of men gentle, generous, maniable, and pliant to government,’ while ignorance made men ‘churlish, thwarting, and mutinous.’ Bacon supported his assertion with the lesson taught by history that ‘the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.’ 178 Learning also repressed man’s bestial nature and sustained the bonds of society. Men were naturally savage and pursued bestial desires. When men were exposed to ‘precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion of books, of sermons, of harangues,’ peace and society was maintained. If ‘these instruments be silent,’ or are stifled by social disturbances, ‘all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion.’ 179 The relationship between education and the early modern social order is evinced by Fletcher and Stevenson, who state that the benefactors of Tudor and Stuart schools were ‘just as much concerned to 180 inculcate religion, civility, good behaviour and obedience as academic learning.’ In the early modern state, education was an instrument for inculcating good behaviour in the community, creating subjects who were equally governable and serviceable to the commonwealth. Elizabeth I ordered the establishment of mandatory free schools in all Irish parishes. Although well meaning, the Tudor legislation depended on local initiative

177 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 169. 178 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. I, p. 166. 179 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. I, p. 177. 180 A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson, ‘Introduction,’ in A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 35. 250 and was not widely fulfilled, and royal schools established by James in Ulster were 181 intended for the sons of prominent Protestants. Authorised education in Ireland was apparently limited, and where Protestant schools existed they were, in some cases, 182 poorly attended because of rival, clandestine Catholic schools. ‘Ignorance,’ or the lack of a Protestant, English speaking education, was thought to be a root cause of Irish disorders. The assumed connection between ignorance and degeneration is evident in the case of the Derry free school. Mathias Springham, a commissioner for 183 the London companies, promised to build a school at Derry as a gift to the city. By 1622, no school had been built, and the mayor and citizens of the city expressed concern that their children would join the ranks of Irish miscreants. As the endowment had not been made, ‘the poor inhabitants not being able to give their children education of school do suffer them to grow up in an idle and vagrant manner, which hath been the bane of this Kingdom.’ 184 Fynes Moryson addressed the question of Irish wilful ignorance when he wrote that even though the Irish were ‘most slothful’ and ‘naturally given to a monkish life of ease ,’ they could become good subjects if they were given opportunities to apply themselves to learning. Moryson commended the sons of local gentry who were sent to receive a higher education at Trinity College, ‘many of whom have therein attained to good reputation of learning 185 […] as no doubt they want not wit to attain learning when they will be industrious.’ The German-born planter Mathew De Renzy endorsed education as an instrument of social control in Ireland, but his innate distrust of the Irish entailed a tightly controlled pedagogical strategy. A cloth merchant, De Renzy lived in London before bankruptcy forced him to flee to Ireland, and he settled in King’s County in 1606. He struggled to advance himself against the autonomy of the local lord, Sir John Mac Coghlan. 186 De Renzy’s letters to St. John and his observations of Gaelic culture were coloured by his antagonism towards Mac Coghlan and desire to advance

181 K. Milne, ‘The Royal Schools of Ulster,’ History Ireland 17, 6 (2009), p. 33. 182 Dowling, History of Irish Education , p. 65. 183 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 172. 184 Phillips Papers , p. 55. 185 Fynes Moryson, The Manners and Customs of Ireland (Corpus of Electronic Texts edition, 2010: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100073/index.html ). 186 B. Mac Cuarta (ed.), ‘Mathew de Renzy’s Letters on Irish Affairs 1613-1620,’ Analecta Hibernica 34 (1987), pp. 109-110. 251 his own standing. De Renzy was convinced that idleness and treachery was rooted in the Irish nature, and warned that unpoliced education by Catholic instructors resulted in further social dislocation. De Renzy’s proposals included the appointment of schoolmasters, sheriffs, justices and assize courts, and the provision of employment to discourage rebellion and to ‘make them sure to England.’ 187 De Renzy expressed the opinion that the government’s focus should be on the younger, more malleable generation, and that the ties binding Irish leaders to their followers had to be broken before the majority could be re-educated. ‘To make them love us and breede amitie and freendship,’ the Irish needed to be indoctrinated in the state religion and language. Aside from the younger sons of gentlemen who would be educated in England, De Renzy wanted to limit the educational curriculum for the ‘vulgar sort,’ prioritising obedience and complacence over wisdom. English schoolmasters recruited to teach in Ireland should have ‘good carriadge’ but did not need to be highly learned, as the Irish should not be able to ‘grow too wise nor too profound.’ 188 His reasoning for banishing ‘logick’ from Irish schools was that the Irish could not be trusted to harness their critical faculties in virtuous ways. He claimed that ‘so soone as they have red some part of Ovid and Vergill presently they run to that and apply themselfs most to it,’ but used their knowledge to question and subvert the established order. Filled with knowledge, the Irish ‘make suttill and craftie questions and thereby to lerne to defend the black cro[w] to be white, whereof their owne language teaches them ynough.’ To De Renzy, education was a necessary component of reform, but the purpose of the classroom was to secure the commonwealth to England by producing ‘upright, plaine and honest dealing men 189 whereof will grow faithfull and quiet subjects.’ Attempts to assert social control in Ireland, such as the regulation of alehouses and improvement of education, can be seen as part of the broader political consolidation of Ireland as they addressed the greatest internal threats to the newly absolute British government: nonconformity, insubordination, and their progenitor, idleness. Implicitly connected to economic and social decay, idleness was targeted by

187 Mac Cuarta (ed.), ‘De Renzy’s letters,’ pp. 141-7. 188 Mac Cuarta (ed.), ‘De Renzy’s letters,’ pp. 142, 153. 189 Mac Cuarta (ed.), ‘De Renzy’s letters,’ p. 147. 252 humanists, and later Protestants, in programmes to reform the commonwealth. The drive to open Ireland to industry and commerce, for which job creation was a major moral justification, will be explored in greater detail in chapter three. In chapter three, I will address contemporary concerns about Catholicism as an ideological barrier to Jacobean reform, before examining connections between Protestantism and the zeal for agricultural improvement that characterised the seventeenth century. This chapter will also explore contemporary notions of idleness and economic activity, as well as the intellectual associations between environmental transformation and moral improvement. It will be found that Protestant theories of stewardship underlay English rhetoric about land utilisation and ownership, and that the cultivated environment was associated with civil qualities in men and women.

3. Improvement

3.1. Divided allegiances: recusancy and disunity in Jacobean Ireland

Before aspects of material improvement can be explored, it is necessary to ascertain the ideological function of religion in early Stuart Ireland. As Calvinism grew in popularity in Elizabethan England, Catholic obstinacy became the new crux around which the English reforming mission crystallised. Although James preferred to encourage conversion by reforming church institutions, many in the Irish government preferred to rigorously enforce conformity, pointing to the stubborn attachment of the Irish to superstitious traditions as evidence that they would not be persuaded by 190 gentle means. In this period, the commitment to Anglicisation in Ireland was intimately linked with Protestantism, and the Protestant faith provided a platform for religious as well as political conformity. In a letter to Salisbury, Chichester venerated King James as the sower of the true faith in Ireland, stating that ‘there cannot be a greater or more commendable work of a Christian Prince than to plant civility, with the true knowledge and service

190 A. Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590-1641 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1987), pp. 44-6. 253 191 of God, in the hearts of his subjects.’ As Ford explains, the Protestant church developed ‘a clear self-image’ in the seventeenth century, and conversion entailed full acceptance of crown supremacy and full acculturation to British norms (some Irish converts verified their new identities by shedding their Gaelic surnames and adopting English ones). 192 The missionary effort in Ireland entailed more than a salvation of souls: it was a political matter, couched in rhetoric of national security and unity within the political body. The question was one of allegiance, for Catholicism was synonymous with conspiracy. Irish Catholics were viewed with extreme suspicion as subverters of the common weal. This paranoia reflected attitudes in England, where provincial magistrates were preoccupied with religious matters in their sessions. As Fletcher states, ‘religion was seen to have a critical police function,’ and religious conformity was ‘the rock on which both obedience to the monarch and social order rested.’ 193 In 1614, James made a speech to Irish recusant lords and gentlemen in which he berated them for the miscarriage of the recent parliament in Dublin. James scolded the Catholic gentlemen for dividing their allegiance between their king and Rome: ‘You that are but half subjects should have but half privileges; you that have an eye to me one way and to the Pope another way.’ James would not accept them as complete subjects while the Pope was ‘your father in spiritualibus and I in temporalibus only, and so have your bodies turn one way, and your souls drawn another way.’ The 194 condition of being a full subject was cor unum et via una (one heart and one way). Chichester accused the recusant faction of ‘working in a contrary Spirit, against all 195 that was well intended for the publick good and welfare of the Realm...’ As De Renzy warned the lord deputy, ‘true subjects to us [Irish Catholics] will never be, although they weare joind with us in one religion.’ 196 Irish priests were targeted as figureheads of disloyalty. As James told the recusants, their priests preached ‘such grounds of doctrine as you cannot follow them

191 CSPI 1603-06 , p. 326. 192 Ford, Protestant Reformation , p. 247. 193 Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces , p. 172. 194 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , pp. 290-1. 195 Edwards (ed.), ‘Letter-Book of Sir Arthur Chichester,’ p. 104. 196 Mac Cuarta (ed.), ‘De Renzy’s letters,’ p. 151. 254 197 with a safe conscience, but you must cast off your loyalty to your King.’ Chichester reported that priests and Jesuits had exerted their influence over magistrates who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy. It was a matter of urgency to eliminate priests from the country, for ‘we can neither expect peace or quietnes in this Governm[en]t, nor obedience either to the Laws of this Realm or to his Ma[jesty’s] Royal Authoritie, untill these pernitious Intrum[en]ts of discord, sedition, contempt 198 and Rebellious Tumults be removed and taken away.’ Disobedience in religious matters was, therefore, equivalent to civil disobedience. A broadsheet printed in 1623 declared that Jesuits and priests were outlawed on the basis that they stirred up insubordination in the king’s subjects. They conspired to usurp the king’s prerogative by performing sacerdotal rites, and ‘seeking to prevent the hearts of his subjects, and to draw them from the true religion here established to blindness and superstition, alienate their affections from their Sovereign,’ turning them towards the worship of a 199 foreign authority. In opposition to their Catholic counterparts, Protestants in Ireland could claim undivided loyalty. For this they enjoyed the favour of the king, who was known to solicit the faithful cooperation of the aristocracy to enforce crown policy in the three kingdoms. Nominated by the king to safeguard his interests in Ireland, the Protestant New English maintained political pre-eminence as Old English 200 authority diminished. As Protestantism became inseparable from the British imperial agenda, Catholicism was enmeshed with Gaelicisation as a register of backwardness, entailing profound ignorance, superstition, idleness and duplicity. The religious question in Ireland was intimately connected to the goals of colonisation as the Protestant faith became a byword for cultural superiority, and a mandate for planting and renewal. In a Protestant world divided between the elect and the incorrigible, apologists for British supremacy offered reflections on Irish society that construed the practices and beliefs of the native population as profoundly immoral, vis-à-vis the British who nurtured qualities of the Protestant saint. Thrifty, disciplined and industrious, the

197 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , pp. 290-1. 198 Edwards (ed.), ‘Letter-Book of Sir Arthur Chichester,’ p. 81. 199 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , pp. 432-3. 200 A. Nicholls, The Jacobean Union: A Reconsideration of British Civil Policies under the Early Stuarts (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 55. 255 British colonialist impulse was shaped by progressively more sophisticated technologies and ideologies of environmental improvement.

3.2. Protestantism, agricultural improvement and theories of possession

As demonstrated in part three, the Calvinist world view held labour to be the social duty of the individual. In Catholicism, Protestants saw the discouragement of business and a medieval sanctification of idleness and poverty. According to Hill, Protestantism endorsed ‘a competitive society in which God helps those who help themselves, in which thrift, accumulation and industry are the cardinal virtues, and 201 poverty very nearly a crime.’ Protestantism was a strongly teleological religion that understood the world to have been created for the use of man, and that to labour in the earthly ‘garden’ was to glorify God. Nothing happened on earth that was without purpose, as failing to explain the purpose of something ‘was tantamount to ignoring 202 the Creator.’ The accumulation of knowledge was a means to understand God and his creation. In the seventeenth century, the publication of English language works on topics such as botany, anatomy, arithmetic and geometry fed the growing demand for scientific knowledge. Bacon promoted the advancement of empirical learning to expand human knowledge, to drive national enrichment through scientific endeavour and economic development. To ‘discover’ the works of nature was to exalt and glorify God. ‘[I]f we should rest only in the contemplation of the exterior of [works of God] as they first offer themselves to our senses,’ wrote Bacon, ‘we should do a like injury unto the majesty of God, as if we should judge or construe of the store of 203 some excellent jeweller, by that only which is set out toward the street in his shop.’ The popularisation of science accompanied the transformation of man’s earthly role from God’s steward to nature’s tyrant. Bacon endorsed this anthropocentric view 204 when he stated that ‘the whole world works together in the service of man.’

201 Hill, Society and Puritanism , pp. 130-2. 202 Dillenberger, Protestant Thought and Natural Science , p. 69. 203 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. I, p. 176. 204 Williams, Deforesting the Earth , p. 144. 256 The concept of a world subservient to humankind occupied an important place in the development of early modern colonial ideology. Seventeenth century preachers and writers embellished the notion that labour justified the ownership of property.205 In the late seventeenth century, John Locke presented his labour theory of ownership, which held that land in its natural state was not owned by anyone, and could be claimed through labour: ‘Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that 206 is his own, and thereby makes it his property .’ Ownership of land was asserted by industry, for the man who improved the soil was the rightful owner of the land. Locke’s theory that the industrious were the rightful owners of God’s endowment to man echoed the language of Jacobean reformers half a century earlier. The author of ‘Certeyn notes & observations touching the deducing & planting of colonies,’ a missive on plantation in Ulster, argued that the Irish were unfit to be custodians as they were unequipped to cultivate and build upon the land. The author, purported to be Davies, 207 claimed that the Irish were ‘soe poore, and withal soe rude and unskillfull in hudbandry[sic], as they are very unfit tenants […] being altogether unable to build castles or good houses, or to stock and improve that 208 wast land as that ought.’ In a letter to Salisbury in 1610, Davies asserted that some of the natives would have to be moved elsewhere in order to make way for the British settlers. Their removal was necessary and justified as the Irish made no productive use of the land: ‘for if themselves were suffered to possess the whole country, as their septs have done for many hundred of years past, they would never (to the end of the world) build houses, make townships, or villages, or manure, or improve the land as it ought to be,’ Davies wrote. It accorded with neither ‘Christian policy nor conscience, to suffer so good and fruitful a country to lie waste like a wilderness, when his Majesty may lawfully dispose it to such persons as will make a civil plantation 209 thereupon.’ Statements such as these harnessed principles of terra nullius and

205 Hill, Society and Puritanism , p. 142. 206 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1690, repr. London: Whitmore and Fenn, 1821), p. 209. 207 R. Loeber (ed.), ‘“Certeyn Notes”: Biblical and Foreign Signposts to the Ulster plantation,’ in Lyttleton and Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture , p. 32. 208 Loeber (ed.), ‘“Certeyn Notes,”’ p. 34. 209 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , pp. 281-2. 257 justification by industry, which were closely entwined with Calvinist, Puritan theology. By declaring their intention to utilise the land, the British asserted a right to harness Ireland’s potential, superseding the native inhabitants whose inactivity amounted to a rejection of Christian social codes. Acts of environmental transformation legitimised possession, and environmental transformation, or ‘improvement,’ was in turn legitimised by Puritanism. As Webster explains, the Puritans looked to fulfil scriptural prophesies that ‘waste places would be reclaimed 210 and become as fruitful as the Garden of Eden.’ Puritans drew from biblical inspiration to account for man’s dominion over nature. Man asserted sovereignty by mastering his environment. Through mastery of 211 the world, nature and mankind would be returned to a ‘primitive purity.’ The divine purpose of man’s dominion over nature accorded with the story of the fall of man. Following the fall, Webster explains, ‘Adam’s garden became choked with noxious weeds. Thenceforth, man’s burden increased and he was obliged to till the ground,’ and, as a result, ‘tending the soil remained one of man’s most rewarding 212 tasks, even though it demanded unremitting effort.’ Puritans found a biblical mandate for agriculture as well as other sciences. Adam was often described as a gardener or naturalist, but was also credited with mining, metalworking and chemistry. Puritans also promoted the exploitation of mineral resources. As Webster states, ‘it was regarded as a discredit to the English nation that its mineral resources had been poorly exploited.’ Puritans found inspiration in the agricultural and technological ingenuity of Old Testament figures, especially King Solomon, who 213 inspired Bacon’s utopian New Atlantis . The sanctification of land use was reflected in the tenor of agricultural works, which promoted the ‘Godly individualist’ whose industry and ingenuity was celebrated as a positive force for national renewal. 214 In his writings on Ireland, Bacon endorsed the exploitation of natural resources. In Certain Considerations Touching the Plantation in Ireland , he advised the king that

210 C. Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626-1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975), p. 466. 211 Webster, The Great Instauration , p. 325. 212 Webster, The Great Instauration , p. 466. 213 Webster, The Great Instauration , pp. 326-7. 214 McRae, God Speed the Plough , pp. 214-6. 258 ‘by the working upon this unpolished part thereof,’ he would be tapping into ‘a growing and springing vein of riches and power,’ realising the material possibilities ‘if the hand of man did join with the hand of nature’. 215 In his essay Of Plantations , Bacon gave recommendations for agricultural improvement and economic exploitation. Crops should be planted, and natural commodities exploited, such as timber and iron ore, although he advised against too great a focus on mining, ‘for the hope of mines is very uncertain, and useth to make the planters lazy in other 216 things.’ A burgeoning enthusiasm for agrarian reorganisation and improvement was propelled by classical and continental texts on husbandry, and innovations in farming techniques were driven by enterprising gentry in response to market trends and 217 opportunities. Eager to advance themselves in a competitive market economy, wealthier farmers sought land to enclose and improve, investing greater capital in productive agriculture. As more land was consolidated into fewer hands, the fortunes of smaller farmers diminished and the ranks of poor labourers increased.218 Commentators in the sixteenth century considered enclosure, and the social dislocation that ensued, to be driven by covetousness and profoundly detrimental to the commonwealth. As new economic ideas, consonant with Puritan ethics, gained traction in the seventeenth century, improvement assumed godly qualities that enabled private profit to be reconciled to the public good. 219 The new ethics of individualist agriculture were reflected in the evolving etymology of the expression, ‘to improve.’ The term ‘improvement’ was first associated with agriculture, and referred to the enclosure and cultivation of land for profit. In the seventeenth century, popular usage of ‘improvement’ conflated agricultural improvement with national improvement. Agricultural productivity for financial gain was no longer considered to be contrary to the national interest. Popular literature promoted individualism,

215 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. II, p. 184. 216 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. I, p. 41. 217 Wrightson, English Society , p. 132. 218 Wrightson, English Society , p. 138. 219 L. Brace, The Idea of Property in Seventeenth-Century England: Tithes and the Individual (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 63. 259 commercial initiatives, thrift and profit, and the ability to contribute to national prosperity. Improvement was, therefore, refashioned as a moral duty, and endorsed the economic aspirations of the English gentry.220 Amid the zeal for improvement, the post-feudal manorial order was pushed aside by economic dynamism, and the Tudor Commonwealthmen were succeeded by landlords or freeholders driven by values of thrift and profit, making the most of their own. As McRae explains, the English countryside was revitalised by improvement as the ‘restless ingenuity’ of the landed 221 classes transformed the seventeenth century landscape. 222 As England entered the formative stages of an ‘Age of Improvement,’ a sparsely populated and newly conquered Ireland offered lucrative opportunities for developers of commercial agriculture and industry. The Protestant ethos, which saw nature as a thing to be understood, moulded and dominated, endorsed improvement as the tangible verification of Godliness. The British newcomers worked to fulfil their redemptive role in Ireland and meet the demands of a competitive individualist economy by mastering the wild soil. The spiritual and material ambitions of the British planters were contrasted with the lethargy of the Irish, who neglected agriculture to pursue lives of wandering, thieving and fighting. British commentaries on transience and idleness, and policies to sever the Irish attachment to idleness, were coloured by the Calvinist-Puritan conception of economic activity as a primary Christian duty.

3.3. The campaign against idleness: new solutions

In the seventeenth century, both Anglicans and their ‘hotter’ Protestant counterparts, the Puritans, countenanced the concept of the calling and commitment to a vocation 223 as the means to glorify God. The need for Christians to be disciplined and serviceable was answered by the Puritan concept of the covenant, which promoted

220 McRae, God Speed the Plough , pp. 136-7, 158. 221 McRae, God Speed the Plough , p. 161. 222 For the uses of science and ‘improvement’ to legitimise British imperial prerogatives, see Drayton, Nature’s Government . 223 T.H. Breen, ‘The Non-Existent Controversy: Puritan and Anglican Attitudes on Work and Wealth, 1600-1640,’ Church History 35, 3 (1966), p. 276. 260 activity in service of the Lord. Under the covenant, men volunteered to become God’s instruments on earth. The voluntary contract between man and God offset passive responses to predestination by promoting, states Walzer, ‘a disciplined and 224 methodical response to grace, a new, active and willing obedience to command.’ The Puritan emphasis on work had adverse effects on the unsettled population as the wandering poor, rogues and vagrants were targeted by parliament and Puritan 225 reformers in a ‘reformation of manners.’ As explored in chapter two, those outside the moral community were the focus of policies for reform and rehabilitation. As Puritanism assumed a hold in English municipal administrations, and as ideas of poor relief, social control and moral discipline coalesced, the correction of manners 226 became a civic concern. Tudor vagrancy statutes were re-enacted under James, who prescribed more severe punishments for offenders. The able-bodied poor were set to work in houses of correction, where it was hoped that disciplined labour would 227 promote the inmates’ moral recovery. The policing of vagrants extended to traditionally ‘lawless’ corners of the kingdom. In his campaign to pacify the Anglo- Scottish borders, James ordered the establishment of a commission to maintain order, and surveys of the borders were intended to weed out idle people who did not practise 228 a calling. Idleness, it was claimed, was the ‘national disease’ of Ireland. Richard Boyle expressed concern that the great numbers of unsettled people in the country were ‘as a cloud of terror, ready to break into any wicked action if opportunity were 229 offered.’ Numerous commentators fixated on idleness as the major social crisis in Ireland, and attacks on social deviance constituted a mixture of expulsion, prosecution and re-education. Sir Charles Cornwallis, a commissioner sent to report on alleged abuses in the Irish parliament, recommended that houses of correction be set up in cities and towns for ‘idle, lewd and incorrigible vagrants or persons disobedient to their parents, masters or your Majesty’s officers in executing those

224 Walzer, Revolution of the Saints , p. 167. 225 Slack, Poverty and Policy , p. 103. 226 Slack, Poverty and Policy , pp. 149-55. 227 E. Trotter, Seventeenth Century Life in the Country Parish: With Special Reference to Local Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919), p. 165. 228 Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration , pp. 23-7. 229 Canny, Upstart Earl , p. 129. 261 profitable orders.’ The behaviour of subjects would be monitored by justices of the peace who would report on the good behaviour of subjects within their jurisdiction, such that ‘they may receive commendation and encouragement,’ while disturbers of 230 the peace would be punished. In the ‘Memorials for the better Reformation of the Kingdom of Ireland,’ a list of recommended policies and reforms, greater social control was to be enabled by building a sessions house, gaol, a bridewell and a free school in every county. A custos rotulorum and clerk of the peace were to be assigned in each county, as was a provost marshal for ‘the better clearing the country of all vagrant and loose people,’ while justices of the peace were to ‘duly keep their quarter sessions.’231 In 1611, parliament ruled against ‘gentlemen, horsemen, or kerne’ who ‘live loosely and freely, without any certain means or trade of life,’ as well as ‘rhymers, gamesters, stokeaghes, vagabonds, and beggars,’ and ordered the provision of poor relief.232 In the same year, an act was proposed ‘for punishing 233 vagabonds calling themselves Egyptians [gypsies].’ City authorities also took their own measures. In 1606 the Corporation of Irishtown, Kilkenny ordered the building of a pillory ‘whereby all rogues, vagabonds and masterless people shall be there 234 committed for correction’ in the town street. Some acknowledged that idleness was exacerbated by the shortage of work opportunities in an underdeveloped economy. Chichester told the king that a want of commerce ‘doth assuredly encrease the multitude of Idle Men and Vagabonds,’ and advised that provost marshals and sheriffs would be required to disarm and execute 235 people who threatened to stir trouble. In 1618, the earl of Thomond, as lord president of Munster, reported to the Privy Council that ‘the natives of that province, as also of the whole kingdom, are for the most part given to idleness, the true ground of vanity and consequently of all mischiefs and disorders,’ and asked the government to consider allocating recuscancy fines to ‘houses of correction and some stocks to set them to work,’ adding that legislation against unwrought wares would assist

230 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ p. 32. 231 CSPI 1603-6, p. 137. 232 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 157. 233 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 159. 234 Ainsworth (ed.), ‘Irishtown of Kilkenny,’ p. 59. 235 Edwards (ed.), ‘Letter-Book of Sir Arthur Chichester,’ p. 161. 262 236 authorities to provide such work. Thomas Wilson, who established a cloth works in Munster, described the Irish as ‘sloathfull & loath to fall to worke,’ and expressed the opinion that ‘there must be some course taken for establishinge of howses of correcion to punishe & inforce such to worke, as will not be drawne unto it by fayre means nor desyre of gaine.’ 237 Masterless men caused trouble for the authorities overseeing the Ulster plantation. Complaints were made about the unchecked migration of criminals to Ulster, ‘idle, leiwd and disloyall persons whoe decline the Justice of the kingdome where they lived & trouble the plantation in those partes,’ and who were protected by landlords desperate to hold on to tenants. In response, Scottish authorities attempted to police traffic from Scotland to Ulster by issuing certificates to those intending to 238 travel to Ireland. The displaced Irish were even more detrimental to the plantation, and incidents of violence towards planters prompted measures to remove the 239 menace. After surveying the plantation in 1622, Thomas Phillips wrote up a list of orders to regulate the Ulster plantation – many of these orders being aimed at eradicating idleness. Bands of men were to seek out and apprehend idle people, a watch was to be established to guard the plantation, and a system of hue and cry was to be observed. Undertakers were to be answerable for their tenants, and to keep their names in a book. Any person who was not booked was to be persecuted for being masterless. The Irish were to be forced to dwell in towns, and ‘creaghting’ (the practice of moving herds of cattle between pastures) was to be abolished as ‘the 240 nursery of all idleness and rebellion.’ Phillips was entrusted to write up new regulations for ‘the good settlement of those parts, and to reduce them to good order of life and obedience to civil government,’ and special regard was had for his plans to build ‘a network of mutual responsibility’ including a register of Irish names and 241 bonds to guarantee loyalty. Phillips and St. John’s successor, Lord Deputy

236 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 377. 237 NASPI 63/234/322. 238 Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration , pp. 246, 282; Gillespie, Colonial Ulster , p. 31. 239 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 212. 240 Phillips Papers , pp. 58-60. 241 Phillips Papers , pp. 62-3. 263 Falkland, also agreed that a house of correction was needed, although it was never 242 243 built. The first such institution was opened in Dublin in 1630. A treatise written around 1613, most probably by Solicitor-General Sir Robert Jacob, addressed the causes of disorder in Ireland. Point seven concerned idleness, for Jacob considered it ‘most certain that the idleness of the mere Irish in general and their scorn to apply themselves to mechanical sciences hath ever been the bane of this 244 kingdom.’ He blamed previous governments for not compelling the Irish to set their children to work, and instead ‘suffered them evermore to live idly […] and never gave themselves to learning or any sciences nor so much as to till the ground but only did live and grow up like a plant (or to speak more truly) lead the life of a beast.’ Without work, many Irish men became kern or tied themselves to serve Irish lords, nurturing conspiracy and endangering the kingdom’s tenuous peace. Jacob warned that these sorts of idle men ‘are the one great bellows that continually blow the coals of sedition, these are the contrivers and procurers of all insurrections and these are the actors without whom none of their treasonable plots could be put in execution.’ As long as the people were able to live ‘loosely and idly and are not compelled to labour and betake themselves to some honest occupation, this land will 245 never want fire or fuel to set the whole kingdom in combustion.’ The proposed solution was to draw the Irish away from the forests and immerse them in urban environments, forcing them into cities and towns to ‘live together in societies and companies,’ where ‘they might learn civility of manners and have use of trades and 246 occupations.’ Jacob also proposed to ban the use of Irish soldiers in English armies because of the potential for defection. Instead, they would be turned into labourers, ‘to make them all become ploughmen and shepherds still and to take away all their weapons and let them never know hereafter what a sword means.’ 247 Davies, the probable author of ‘Certeyn notes & observations,’ endorsed the transplantation of idle Irish to other parts, finding a suitable precedent for this

242 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 215. 243 Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland , p. 40. 244 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ pp. 13-14. 245 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ p. 14. 246 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ p. 16. 247 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ p. 20. 264 measure in ancient Rome. The manner in which the Romans dealt with natives was to remove troublemakers elsewhere, for the conquerors would ‘often times transplant the natives of some provinces whome they found inpatient of their government […] to prevent and take away all occassion and possibility of a rebellion […] for barbarous people have no strength or power to rebel when they are removed from that 248 earth or land wherein they are bredd.’ It would, therefore, be necessary to remove the natives most likely to cause trouble in the plantation. Chiefs who were not given special permission to remain were to be removed, along with their horsemen, kern and idle followers. Irish husbandmen who would agree live in peace were to be retained as tenants to English undertakers, to be kept in diligent and obedient occupation. Irish gentlemen permitted to remain were to be assigned special portions, 249 at a great distance from each other, to prevent colluding and conspiring. In 1604, Richard Hadsor, a lawyer and member of the Old English elite, wrote a tract containing his advice on the government of Ireland. His final piece of advice was to turn out the ‘bad seeds.’ He recommended that ‘turbulent, loose, unprofitable men of your kingdoms maye bee weeded out (especially of Ireland)’ and employed in the king’s service abroad, so that ‘they may not be instruments of rebellion & 250 mischieffes as they be commonly in Ireland.’ The strategy to remove kern by deploying them in foreign countries gained traction in government circles. The pressing of masterless men was a strategy used in England to rid the country of disturbers of the peace, such as the Grahams, who were targeted for relocation from 251 the Anglo-Scottish border where they were known for stirring up trouble. As preparations for the Ulster plantation were underway, Chichester rounded up one thousand Irish swordsmen from their forest environs and duly shipped them off to service in Sweden. Chichester remarked that the men levied were ‘all but an unprofitable burden of the earth, cruel, wild, malefactors, thieves,’ and that the act was akin to ‘cutting off many bad members and disloyall offenders within this

248 Loeber (ed.), ‘“Certeyn Notes,”’ p. 38. 249 Loeber (ed.), ‘“Certeyn Notes,”’ pp. 40-1. 250 BL Cotton MS, Titus B X/3, f. 184v. 251 The programme for removing the Grahams involved resettling families in Ireland, there to become farmers on the waste lands: R.T. Spence, ‘The Pacification of the Cumberland Borders, 1593-1628,’ Northern History 13, 1 (1977), pp. 110-13. 265 252 lande….’ St. John praised Chichester for overseeing the dispatch, and anticipated that a policy of exile would be a strong inducement for the Irish to work. He remarked that the act would ‘give a better passage to the plantation in general,’ and that Chichester had ‘discovered a possibility to compel those that live idly and unprofitably here to be transported into foreign countries,’ encouraging ‘those who remain behind to learn to labour, in order to free themselves from such a just 253 punishment.’ Chichester’s first attempt failed, as the levied men were returned to Ireland. He tried again the following year. Just two hundred men were rounded up for deployment, as the rest had fled into the woods. 254 Chichester later supported a scheme to transport idle men to serve under the king of Denmark, fighting the 255 Swedes in the Kalmar War. The transportation solution was also considered by St. John, who reported that fastnesses near the plantations of Ulster and Wexford were infested by younger sons of Irish gentlemen who had no wealth and refused to work. 256 In his letters to St. John, De Renzy recommended that younger sons and other types of ‘galants and plotting braines’ should be levied abroad. By removing those who ‘plott your overthrow whilst you leave them in peace,’ it would enable the government to ‘maintaine your trade, your commonwealth, exercise your men,’ as well as to ‘bring in riches and purge the kingdome of a number of idle people that would be apt to fostar a civill warr.’ 257 Although they had little impact in practice, transportation schemes were intended to discourage deliberate idleness by forcing masterless men to occupy themselves in legitimate wars rather than suffer them to drift and upset the peace in Ireland.

252 CSPI 1608-10 , pp. 304-5; W.C. Trevelyan and C.E. Trevelyan (eds.), Trevelyan Papers, Part III (Westminster: J.B. Nichols and Sons, 1872), p. 120. 253 CSPI 1608-10 , pp. 303-4. 254 CSPI 1608-10 , pp. 458-60, 496-7. 255 Edwards (ed.), ‘Letter-Book of Sir Arthur Chichester,’ p. 40. 256 CSPI 1615-25 , pp. 262-3. 257 Mac Cuarta (ed.), ‘De Renzy’s letters,’ pp. 141, 164. 266 3.4. Industrial innovation as a social catalyst

The manner in which Ireland’s resources were exploited in the seventeenth century did not change much from the sixteenth. Arable production, for example, was already practised in the Irish system. The weaving of linen yarn had traditionally been practised by the Irish, and it continued to be exported to England in large 258 quantities. There was also an established cloth industry. Bandon and Mallow were prominent outposts of the English woollen industry, ‘veritable industrial colonies, producing cloth for the English market.’ There was also a well-established cloth 259 industry operating out of Munster. The timber trade, particularly for ship building and staves, continued to supply demand in England, Scotland and the continent. The 260 main activity was centred in North East Ulster, Munster, and Wicklow. The key difference between the sixteenth and seventeenth century was that resources were exploited more intensively in the latter as the British assumed greater control over the 261 economy. Existing industries were developed and expanded. Cloth, fishing, 262 tanning and (illicit) timber industries were developed in the Ulster plantation. Mineral exploitation, practised on a small scale in the Middle Ages, was advanced by the introduction of the blast furnace in the 1590s, leading to a surge in industrial mining and iron making in Ireland.263 Richard Boyle was largely responsible for the exploitation of the Munster region, investing in timber, cloth, iron works and pilchard fishing. Boyle’s vast commercial exploits are attributable to what Clarke describes as an ‘unconventional readiness to venture his immense landed wealth in productive 264 enterprise.’ Boyle set up a major iron works operation in the Blackwater Valley, and built one hundred and fifty houses for English workers for his operation at 265 Tallow. The industrial exploitation of Ireland accelerated so much that the 1622

258 Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ p. 176. 259 Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ pp. 178-9. 260 Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ p. 180; Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland , p. 73. 261 Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ p. 177. 262 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 343. 263 C. Rynne, ‘The Social Archaeology of Plantation-Period Ironworks in Ireland,’ in Lyttleton and Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture , p. 251. 264 Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ p. 182. 265 McCracken, ‘Charcoal-Burning Ironworks;’ H.F. Kearney, ‘Richard Boyle, Ironmaster. A Footnote to Irish Economic History,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 83, 2 (1953), pp. 267 commissioners were alarmed at the depletion of the Irish woods, reporting that ‘some of the Undertakers [in Munster] have committed great waste of woods and timber by iron-works, making of pipe-staves and other means.’ 266 The obdurate idleness of the population was criticised by British commentators as the cause of the country’s economic stagnation. Moryson admonished the Irish for neglecting the potential profits of industries such as mining. Moryson claimed to be ‘of their opinion, who dare venture all they are worth, that the Mountaines would yeeld abundance of Mettals, if this publike good were not hindred by the inhabitants barbarousnes,’ which caused them to be ‘apt to seditions, and so unwilling to inrich their Prince & Country,’ as well as ‘their slothfulnesse, which is so singular, as they hold it basenesse to labour, and by their poverty….’ According to Moryson, the ‘natural’ Irish trait of idleness meant that the fishing of the Irish waters was often undertaken by Scots. He speculated that the Irish could be profiting from the abundance of good sea and freshwater fish, if only ‘the fisher men were not so possessed with the naturall fault of slothfulnesse, as no hope of gaine, scarsely the feare of authoritie can in many places make them come out of their houses, and put to 267 sea.’ Moryson believed that under industrious hands, Ireland’s resources would be more competently harvested and commercialised. ‘I freely professe,’ he wrote, ‘that Ireland in generall would yeeld abundance of all things to civill and industrious inhabitants.’ 268 The shortage of skilled local labour compelled many entrepreneurs to import workers for their economic projects. As Clarke observes, ‘there was a constant tendency’ among planters ‘to visualise industrial undertakings as a form of plantation, 269 imposed upon the local environment rather than emerging from it,’ and explains that the use of imported labour for iron works contributed to ‘the essentially 270 plantation character of the industry.’ In 1610, a man named Tokefield promoted a

156-162; J.H. Andrews, ‘Notes on the Historical Geography of the Irish Iron Industry,’ Irish Geography 3, 3 (1956), p. 144. 266 R. Dunlop, ‘An Unpublished Survey of the Plantation of Munster in 1622,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland , sixth series, 14, 2 (1924), p. 145. 267 Moryson, Itinerary , IV, pp. 194-5 268 Moryson, Itinerary , IV, p. 196. 269 Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ p. 182. 270 Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy,’ p. 184. 268 project to establish an iron works in Munster, which would involve the plantation of English ironworkers. Tokefield requested a grant of land on which to set up his operation, which would involve demolishing the great woods (thus depriving rebels of refuge, an added ‘public work’), and setting up forges. The workers were to be mustered four times a year, and the money for arms was to be deducted from the workers’ wages. Tokefield reckoned that the settlers would be willing to pay the tax 271 ‘for his owne private defense & the publick good of the country.’ It was not until some years later that the project was seen through, when Richard Moryson, president of Munster, oversaw the establishment of iron works. Moryson endorsed the project as a great commonwealth work that promised ‘great gain,’ for ‘planting this idle country with industrious people’ was ‘the only way both to enrich it and secure the 272 people to His Majesty’s obedience in time.’ Plans to set up iron works in the area in Glenconkeyne and Killetragh in Ulster where ‘sufficient and able men be induced to undertake them,’ were endorsed as ‘a means to people and civilize those waste and obscure countries, without which or the building of townreeds and peopling of them we see not how those parts will be 273 reformed.’ The East India Company developed an iron works at Dundaniel, Co. Cork, at the site of another failed settlement by a Cornish syndicate. The company established three towns – Thomas, Hope and Bantam – with a population of three hundred English workers. The company cut the local timber for fuel, and the better quality timber was used for ship building and the export of timber and barrel staves. They established themselves in the castle of Dundaniel with a cache of munitions and 274 a small group of soldiers to defend the settlement. A project to exploit fishing in Co. Mayo was endorsed by the lord deputy as a means to eclipse the domination enjoyed by the Dutch. The projectors made the ambitious estimate that twenty thousand people would be employed within four years. Royal permission was

271 NASPI 63/228/686. 272 CSPI 1615-25 , p. 302. 273 Phillips Papers , p. 69. 274 CSPI 1611-14 , pp. 369, 381; P. O’Sullivan, ‘The English East India Company at Dundaniel,’ Bandon Historical Journal 4 (1988), pp. 3-14. 269 obtained, and approval was also given for an accompanying shipbuilding project in 275 Mayo. Many schemes for economic development involved elements of philanthropic thought, mainly through allusion to the ‘public benefits’ of commerce and industry. Among the justifications for the Ulster plantation, as presented in ‘Certeyn notes,’ was the creation of jobs for British workers. The project would ‘take up and maintain ma[n]y artisans, husbandmen and others which may be well spared in Great-Britain, 276 and encourage many more to come over into other wast lands of that kingdom.’ Although the Irish predilection for idleness was widely reported, some projectors included plans to employ Irish workers. Thomas Wilson, who proposed the 277 establishment of workhouses for incorrigible Irish, also hoped to employ ‘an infinite number’ of them in his Munster cloth works. In 1608, Wilson and two colleagues purchased lands and woods near Bantry Bay ‘for the use and improvement 278 of the same.’ Wilson had trouble recruiting financers for his project, which was to supply timber for the royal navy. He changed his scheme after being informed that the part of Munster where he had purchased land was ‘an excellent place to establish the makeinge of cloth in, there beinge very great stoare of wooll’ for the making of cloth and draperies. Although the region was home to many English families with experience in the English cloth trade, Wilson intended to employ Irish people and teach them the value of work. He remarked that the local Irish were ‘very idle for that they have nothinge to sett them selves on worke,’ and he hoped that ‘an infinite 279 number of Irish which wold willingly sett themselves on worke if they knew how.’ Some reformers acknowledged the need to equip the Irish with manual skills to enable their integration into a commercial economy. Among the recommendations in the ‘Memorials for the better Reformation of the Kingdom of Ireland’ were the revival of statutes for setting people to labour and banning of all ‘idle holidays’ except the Sabbath. It was also suggested that shipwrights, mariners and fishermen be sent over to the maritime towns to teach people the skill of fishing, and that artificers

275 CSPI 1615-25 , pp. 404, 579-581. 276 Loeber (ed.), ‘“Certeyn Notes,”’ p. 42. 277 See section 3.3 above. 278 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 101. 279 NASPI 63/234/322. 270 be sent to the corporate towns ‘whereby the people may be the better instructed in their arts.’ Furthermore, an order was to be made to sow flax that would be spun and woven in Ireland, which would be a measure to guarantee work for the people. 280 One proposal for transplantation of England’s poor was intended to provide an outlet for the problem of idleness in England by sending workers to Ireland (‘to extract a remedie for the diseases which infect the boddie polliticke of the Realme of Ireland’). In this plan, families would be chosen from English parishes to migrate to the plantations. The new settlers were to be given work in various types of manufacture. The author emphasised the good for both countries as the English poor would be given opportunities to improve themselves, and the Irish would be exposed to the 281 benefits of honest and gainful employment. The commissioner Charles Cornwallis endorsed schemes to train and employ the Irish as part of the broader economic strategy for Ireland. Cornwallis wrote two letters on the advancement of trade and employment in Ireland. In the first, Cornwallis pointed to the ‘want of breeding and employing the meaner sort in good arts and manual trades that might keep them from idleness and give them a taste of thrift and profit.’ He recommended that in the cities and towns, ‘all such be enforced to some art or trade or occupation whereby to get their own living and become profitable to the commonwealth,’ and that people in villages should be set to work ‘to the end that none may live idly to their own perdition, the detriment and 282 impoverishment of the commonwealth.’ In order to provide enough jobs for people, a programme funded by recusancy fines would enable cities and towns to set 283 up initiatives for vocations and trades. Cornwallis believed that prohibiting the export of unwrought commodities out of Ireland would be a great boon to the population as manufacturing would enable more people to find work, which he described as ‘the greatest and most necessary assured means to bring them to order

280 CSPI 1603-6, p. 135. 281 BL Cotton MS, Titus B X/33, ff. 267-70. 282 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ pp. 31-2. 283 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ p. 32. 271 and take away idleness which hath ever been the occasion of all evil and 284 unsettledness among them.’ In the second letter entitled ‘Motives for employment of people, advancement of trades and increase of treasure in the kingdom of Ireland,’ Cornwallis wrote that reclaiming the people from idleness was a ‘work of grace’ granted to the king by divine providence. In this letter, the employment of the people was situated within a grand strategy for economic stimulation that involved the expansion of foreign trade and the coining of Irish money. Economic recovery should be prioritised if the king 285 hoped to achieve ‘any form of a well governed commonwealth.’ The first step in Cornwallis’ plan was to provide for the employment of the people, followed by trade to procure bullion into the country, and the establishment of a mint and an exchange. In particular it was hoped to promote trade with Spain and to capture the fishing trade between Spain and Newfoundland. To encourage local manufacture, Cornwallis repeated his assertion that laws should be passed to prevent the export of unwrought wares, such as yarn, flax, hemp, wool, skins and fells.286 To encourage the development of the agricultural sector, the government ought to encourage ‘worthy commonwealthsmen’ to plant in Ireland by granting them liberties for enclosing and 287 sowing waste land with crops such as hemp, flax, rape, grains, corn and pulses. Cornwallis’ plan to curb the export of raw commodities was echoed in other writings. In particular, concerns were raised about the export of wool. If the wool were worked domestically, the industry would provide work for many idle people and invigorate the flagging economy. The recommendations made by the commissioners for Irish manufacture in 1623 acknowledged the detrimental effects of raw export on the local economy. They advised that the corporate cities and towns should not be permitted to impede manufacture, and that wool should be manufactured in the country to provide work for the ‘idler sort.’ Only domestically produced apparel (except linen) and tapestry should be permitted in the country, so ‘that the inhabitants may be enforced to be more industrious in manufacture’ as well as providing a living

284 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ p. 33. 285 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ p. 34. 286 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ p. 35. 287 Gillespie (ed.), ‘Three Tracts on Ireland,’ p. 37. 272 for ‘superfluous’ English workers. To revive exports, and therefore promote the injection of coin and bullion, the commissioners recommended that all subjects be required to till a certain proportion of their land, and that each plough was to sow a certain amount of hemp for rope. Other recommendations included the exploitation of newly discovered mines to supply a domestic metal goods industry, and the banning 288 of foreigners from fishing in Irish waters. The stimulation of manufacture, commerce and trade was understood to be of benefit to the whole realm. Economic development was seen as a means to encourage the idle population to work and therefore make meaningful contributions to the greatness of the commonwealth. Work was considered to be ameliorative as it provided a cure for Irish idleness and instilled necessary social values. The processes of the British ‘improvement’ of Ireland were, therefore, conceptualised in terms of both economic and social catalysts. The multitudes of economic projects in the seventeenth century were resonant of Protestant ethics of labour, which required all men, of whatsoever calling, to actively contribute to the economic sphere. Writers celebrated the employment of Ireland’s idle population – and in some cases, England’s surplus – as it transformed social burdens into economic assets. Sir James Craig, a Scottish undertaker, told the 1622 commissioners that ‘the British did increase his Majesty’s profit more by their industry and virtue than by their yearly rents […] whereby the people are put to work and kept from idleness: the one being a means to make the common-wealth to 289 flourish and the other a consuming moath [a moth or pest].’

3.5. By art and industry: arguments for the improvement of Ireland

Through the medium of chorography, writers were able to idealise the Irish landscape and invite the British to turn it to good use. In a tract on Ireland written around 1620, Luke Gernon described the sights of the country on his travels. The destructiveness of the Nine Years War was palpable across the countryside. Gernon confessed that ‘when I look about I cannot but bewayle the desolation which cyvill rebellion hath

288 CSPI 1615-25 , pp. 424-6. 289 Quoted in Canny, Making Ireland British , p. 231. 273 procured,’ comparing the scenery to ‘the later end of a feast. Here lyeth an old ruyned castle like the remaynder of a venyson pasty, there a broken forte like a minced py half subjected, and in another place an old abbey with some turrets standing like the 290 carcase of a goose broken up.’ Gernon, probably of English birth, served as second justice of Munster and was a member of King’s Inn in Dublin. 291 In his ‘Discourse,’ Gernon described the places, people and culture of Ireland for an imaginary visitor. Gernon’s observations of widespread decay and ruin in Ireland led him to liken the country to a young maiden who needed a ‘husband’ to dominate and ‘occupy’ her. ‘This Nymph of Ireland, is at all poynts like a yong wenche that hath the greene sicknes for want of occupying,’ he wrote. Ireland was mild and pleasant, but had not yet enjoyed the civilising effects of cultivation. Sixteen years had passed since the end of the war, ‘and yet she wants a husband, she is not embraced, she is not hedged and diched, there is noo quicksett putt into her.’ The British could not stand idly by while Ireland’s fruits were left to spoil and decay. Gernon exhorted the British to ‘claim’ Ireland and improve it through plantation and agriculture. 292 The propagandist Thomas Blenerhasset appealed to the British to civilise Ulster by personifying Ireland as a wretched and tormented waif, impatient to realise her potential. Blenerhasset expected that by planting Ulster with corporations, ‘she’ would be redeemed ‘from a long & a most lamentable captivitie.’ Under Irish tyranny, the country was ruined and desolate: ‘Dispoyled, she presents her-selfe (as it were) in a ragged sad sabled Robe, ragged (indeed) there remayneth nothing but ruynes & desolation, with a very little showe of any humanitie.’ Blenerhasset venerated the country’s natural wealth, abounding ‘with many the very best blessings of God: amongst the other Provinces belonging to great Brittaines Imperial Crowne, not much inferiour to any.’ 293 As England grappled with overpopulation, ‘goodly Ulster ’ was, ‘for want of people unmanured, her pleasant fieldes and rich groundes, they remaine if not desolate, worsse.’ Plantation would secure, transform and enrich the country. Planted, fortified and ‘replenished with such and so many goodly strong

290 Luke Gernon, A Discourse of Ireland, anno 1620 (Corpus of Electronic Texts edition, 2007: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E620001/ ). 291 Gernon, Discourse of Ireland . 292 Gernon, Discourse of Ireland . 293 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sig. A2. 274 294 Corporations, as it would be a wonder to beholde.’ For his concluding appeal, Blenerhasset addressed England directly. England’s ‘flourishing Sister, brave Hibernia,’ and her youngest ‘daughter,’ Ulster, had been defaced by wars. He explained that ‘there remaineth but onely the Majesty of her naked personage, which even in that plite is such, as whosoever shall seeke and search all Europes best Bowers, shal not finde many that may make with her comparison.’ If England helped Ireland to re-establish her vitality, she would be rewarded and nourished with the 295 commodities of the kingdom, and her surplus people would be ‘embraced’ and fed. Blenerhasset hoped to convince the English to act accordingly, ‘having laid before thy amiable eyes, how naked Ulster may be relieved, deckt, and richly adorned…’296 A portrait of abundance, beauty and limitless economic potential was conveyed in the section on Ireland in John Speed’s atlas, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611). Speed depicted Leinster as ‘generally fruitfull, plentifull both in fish and flesh, and in other victuals, as butter, cheese and milke,’ and ‘fertile in Corne, Cattle, and pasture grounds….’297 Parts of Connacht were ‘severally profitable by inbred commodities,’ and ‘commended for the soile, according to the seasonable times of the yeare.’ Co. Clare was so conveniently situated ‘that either from the sea or soile there can be nothing wisht for more, then what it doth naturally afford of it selfe, were but the industry of the Inhabitants answerable to the rest.’ Galway was ‘very thankfull to the painful husbandman, & no lesse commodious and profitable to the shepheard.’ Mayo was ‘replenished both with pleasure & fertility,’ and Sligo was ‘a plenteous country for feeding and raising of cattle,’ while Leitrim was ‘so ful of ranke grasse and forrage, that […] if cattle were not kept sometimes from grasing, their fulnes would endanger them.’ Roscommon was ‘for the most part plan and fruitful, feeding many heards of Cattle, and with meane husbandry and 298 tillage, yeelding plenty of corne.’ In Ulster, one would find ‘great store of severall Trees, both fit for building, and bearing of fruite,’ plenty of grass for cattle grazing,

294 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sig. A2v. 295 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sigs. Dv-D2. 296 Blenerhasset, A Direction , sigs. D2v-D4. 297 John Speed, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (London: William Hall and John Beale, 1611), p. 141. 298 Speed, Theatre , p. 143. 275 and horses, sheep and oxen. The rivers ‘pay dubble tribute, deepe enough to carrie vessels either for pleasure or profit, and fish great store, both for their owne uses, and commodity of others....’299 As he relayed the features and qualities of each region, Speed took pains to remind the reader of the negligence of the native Irish. Though the country might be ‘fresh and full of cattle, and forrage, ready at all times to answer the husbandmans paines,’ it was ‘so little beholding to Art or Industrie,’ that ‘the shady groves, the greene meadows, hanging hills, and fields fit for corne, (if they were manured) doe seeme to be angry with their inhabitants for suffering all to grow wild and barbarous, through their owne negligence.’ 300 Speed’s account depicted a country lacking in what Englishmen would recognise as enclosures and improvements, as large swaths 301 of Ireland encompassed unenclosed (or ‘champion’) ground. The country would be vastly improved and enriched with systematic agriculture under the stewardship of industrious farmers. As Speed remarked, the fruits of Leinster ‘would bee much more if the husbandman did but apply his industry to which hee is invited by the 302 commodiousnes of the Country.’ The seventeenth century ‘improving farmer,’ propelled by Protestant mandates of discovery and enterprise, considered the exploitation of uncultivated land to be a moral duty. Contemporary principles of improvement were harnessed in the new phase of post-war settlement in Ireland. Among the ‘Principal Motives’ behind the city of London’s plantation was the incentive that the region, ‘untilled and almost desert should be by art and industry manured, tilled, and husbanded,’ and ‘planted 303 and peopled with Honest Citizens and Inhabitants…’ Agricultural improvements were written into the articles governing plantations. The conditions of the leases in the Longford plantation, for example, included the rule that each lessee ‘shall make a 304 convenient garden and plott an orcharde,’ and plant a certain amount of hemp seed. According to Chichester’s plans for Ulster, undertakers would be required, within

299 Speed, Theatre , p. 145. 300 Speed, Theatre , p. 145. 301 Butlin, ‘Land and People, c. 1600,’ p. 149. 302 Speed, Theatre , p. 141. 303 Phillips Papers , p. 16. 304 TCD MS 672, f. 134. 276 four years, to build a castle, storehouse or bawn and enclose their land with ditches 305 and hedges. Independent planters also pursued their own programmes of improvement. Richard Boyle reorganised his estates in Munster to resemble the lowlands of England, fashioning the countryside at Lismore to imitate a splendid English estate, including a deer park, fish ponds, eyries, rabbit warrens, and English 306 cattle and sheep. Despite descriptions of a bucolic paradise ripened by the toil of British hands, and the real achievements exhibited by Boyle, not all newcomers were convinced that the rewards would justify their efforts. As Perceval-Maxwell relates, the conditions of the outlying areas in the province of Ulster were so inhospitable that a number of planters arrived, looked at their assigned portions, and made a hasty 307 retreat. The image of the hardworking, ‘improving’ British planter was rendered in stark contrast to the nomadic, undisciplined and bestial Irish. The condemnation of Irish poverty and idleness, and by extension their moral inferiority, was strengthened by Calvinist theology. The Calvinist principle of the elect was interpreted, by some of its followers as enabling a separation of the elect from the damned by virtue of unrelenting toil and prosperity. Through diligent toil, man transformed the earth and adapted it to his use. Waste land was associated with wilderness and disorder, while enclosed and improved land, as the product of diligent labour, was ‘cleansed’ of impurities. Bacon associated plantation with the ‘reclamation’ of Ireland from savage conditions. He declared that Ireland was ‘the last ex filiis Europae [child of Europe] which hath been reclaimed from desolation and a desert (in many parts) to population 308 and plantation; and from savage and barbarous customs to humanity and civility.’ In the ‘civil’ regions of Ireland where controlled agricultural practices were evident, such places were associated with virtues of civility and industriousness. Kilkenny, for example, was praised by Moryson as ‘a pleasant Towne, the chiefe of the Townes, within Land, memorable for the civility of the Inhabitants, for the Husbandmens

305 CSPI 1608-10, p. 356. 306 Canny, Upstart Earl , p. 72. 307 Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration , p. 151. 308 Spedding (ed.), Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon , Vol. VI, pp. 205-6. 277 309 labour, and the pleasant Orchards.’ Chichester’s notes in preparation for the Ulster plantation included an account of the O’Reillys of Cavan. As the Irish were not cultivators, they were unfit to be stewards, and would therefore be supplanted by new British undertakers. Chichester assumed that British agrarian organisation was more conducive to wealth and prosperity, and that the natives would see, and be civilised by, the British example. Chichester dismissed the O’Reillys as ‘not able in worth nor people to inhabit and manure the half thereof.’ He advised that the king should ‘reserve some portion […] to plant civil and well-chosen men besides the natives themselves, by whose life, care, and good husbandry it is to be hoped the neighbours will be allured to allow and imitate that course which brings profit to themselves, 310 their prosperity, and the commonwealth.’ In his works on plantations, Bacon conveyed the association between environmental and social transformation. In Considerations , Bacon compared King James to Orpheus, who called the savage and wild creatures about him and caused them to ‘forget’ their ferocity. He then called the stones and woods to ‘stand in order about him.’ Plantations were predicated on similar concepts equating control over nature with civil reformation. Through good policies, the king cast out barbarism and introduced civility and allegiance in Ireland, ‘whereupon immediately followed the calling of stones for building and habitation; and of trees for the seats of houses, orchards, enclosures, and the like.’ 311 In Of Plantations , Bacon advised that the natives should be treated ‘justly and graciously,’ and should be exposed to the plantation, so ‘that they may see a better condition than their own, and commend it 312 when they return.’ According to this interpretation, the cultivated landscape was the ‘ideal’ civil condition, represented the physical manifestation of acquired social values, and was consonant with order and discipline. In order to be redeemed from their itinerant lifestyle, the Irish needed to be encouraged to plant and cultivate in the manner of the British. The cornerstone of the mission to tie the natives to the land was inspired by English concepts of possession

309 Moryson, Itinerary , IV, pp. 187-8. 310 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 55. 311 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. II, p 184. 312 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. I, p. 41. 278 and improvement. The importance of ‘improving one’s own’ in Ireland was articulated by Bacon, who objected to the plans to allow Ulster undertakers to let a third of their lands in fee farm and lease another third for forty years. He contended that the undertaker should be forced to keep all of his land in his own hand, as that way he would be completely reliant on the commodities of his land for profit. Bacon justified this by explaining that ‘the more his profit dependeth upon the annual and springing commodity, the more sweetness he will find in putting forward manurance 313 and husbanding of the grounds, and therefore is like to take more care of it.’ Although Bacon was referring to British settlers rather than the Irish, this argument accords with contemporary principles of improvement that gave sanction to individualist agriculture for the sake of profit. The writings of Davies about Irish inheritance and landholding systems suggest that legal ownership was a foremost strategy to encourage the Irish to adopt British, and, therefore Protestant, attitudes towards land use. As part of the assimilation process, certain Irish customs were prohibited in order to encourage English agricultural methods. Where ploughing was used in Ireland, the Irish method was to attach light ploughs to the tails of the horse. The Irish 314 defended the practice by claiming it more suited to stony and mountainous terrain. Despite this, ‘ploughing by the tail’ came under the category of barbarous Irish ‘abuses.’ Moreover, it was considered to be less effective than the English method. In a speech given to recusant Irish lords and gentlemen at Whitehall, the king scolded them that their political grievances had been aired in a manner ‘untowardly like your 315 Irish ploughs.’ Ever the commonwealth man, Chichester wanted the fines from this barbarous custom not to line the pockets of collectors, but to be converted for the infrastructure of a civilised commonwealth, such as building and mending churches, bridges and highways, ‘and other such good works and Ser[v]ices meet for the 316 present State of the Country.’ Another prohibited agricultural custom was the burning of corn in the straw to avoid threshing. This method destroyed the straw and

313 Montagu (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon , Vol. II, p. 187. 314 CSPI 1611-14 , p. 449. 315 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 290; Butlin, ‘Land and People, c. 1600,’ p. 151; W. Pinkerton, ‘Ploughing by the Horse’s Tail,’ Ulster Journal of Archaeology , first series, 6 (1858), pp. 212-221. 316 Edwards (ed.), ‘Letter-Book of Sir Arthur Chichester,’ p. 87. 279 damaged the grain, and was considered by the British to be further evidence of Irish 317 laziness and wandering inclinations. Land reform formed part of Davies’ legal programme for consolidating the king’s authority in the kingdom. As Davies listed the reasons why Irish customs were antagonistic to an ordered commonwealth, he reached the question of inheritance. 318 As Pawlisch explains, in the Gaelic tenurial system, ‘possessory rights were […] only as permanent as the political authority from which they devolved.’ Finite tenure was ‘associated with a life trust emanating from the corporation of the extended kin group,’ and this custom ‘struck English spokesmen as a liability that prevented the absorption of autonomous Gaelic areas into the state system. 319 As Davies wrote, Gaelic systems of inheritance made their possessions uncertain, while ‘in England, and all well ordered commonwealths, men have certain estates in their lands and possessions, and their inheritances descend from father to son,’ which encouraged them ‘to build and to plant, and to improve their lands, and to make them better for their posterities.’ 320 As a result of transitory inheritance, the Irish did not build houses of brick or stone, nor ‘did any of them in all this time plant any gardens or orchards, inclose or improve their lands, live together in settled villages or towns, nor made any provision for posterity,’ which was ‘against all common sense and reason,’ and was a 321 cause of their incivility. The Gaelic law of gavelkind held that all men were ‘born to land,’ and considered themselves to be gentlemen. Therefore, ‘they scorned to descend to husbandry or merchandize, or to learn any mechanical art or science.’ Davies presented this as the reason why ‘the natives of Ireland never performed so 322 good a work as to build a city.’ Uncertainty of possession was, therefore, a 323 precondition of ‘looseness and barbarism.’ Davies followed his Tudor forbears in criticising the compulsory exactions known as coign and livery, which supposedly

317 Moody, Londonderry Plantation , p. 343. 318 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 166. 319 Pawlisch, Sir John Davies , p. 61; Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 91. 320 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 127. 321 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 129. 322 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 130. 323 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 167. 280 caused the land to be wasted and the people won over to idleness, for the husbandmen 324 would not care to farm his land if his produce was always taken from him. Davies explained that it would be ‘impossible to make a commonweal in Ireland’ without settling estates and possessions of all the English and Irish within the kingdom. 325 Where previously, the laws had only extended to English subjects and a small number of excepted Irish, the king had ‘received all the Irish into his royal protection,’ but it was deemed necessary that ‘all the subjects, their lands and possessions, should be made alike subject to and governed by the laws of 326 England.’ Davies recommended that all natives be naturalised and made denizens, that brehon law be abolished, and the Irish brought under the common laws of England. Davies paid special attention to laws of inheritance, as ‘until this be done the estates, both of the lords and tenants will be uncertain, so as they will never build houses, improve their lands, nor take any care of their posterities.’ 327 Davies praised the king for his progress in Irish reform, which included the creation of shires across the entire country and the extension of circuits of assize. The king had accepted surrenders, re-granted estates and established titles, with a special 328 care to secure under-tenants so that all subjects had security of estate. By these means, Leinster, Connacht and Munster were more settled and secured, and a great benefit to the progress of agriculture and civility. Being protected by law, ‘the hearts of the people are also settled, not only to live in peace, but raised and encouraged to build, to plant, to give better education to their children, and to improve the 329 commodities of their lands.’ As Davies’ notes about Irish land tenure suggest, it was hoped that spatial conditions would encourage moral alteration. James complained about the ‘barbarous manners’ that kept his Irish subjects from ‘the knowledge of literature and of manual trades, to the lamentable impoverishment and, indeed, destruction of that people,’ and agreed that the solution lay in removing Gaelic inheritance systems and setting the

324 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 132. 325 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 203. 326 Cal. Carew, 1603-23 , p. 166. 327 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 127. 328 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , pp. 199-205. 329 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 207. 281 people in secure estates. He also considered ‘intermixing amongst them some of the British to serve for examples and teach them order,’ and ordered that his titles in Ireland be investigated so that ‘pretended chiefries’ may be readied for territorial 330 reorganisation. A treatise entitled ‘A Survey of the Present Estate of Ireland,’ written in 1615 by an author under the pseudonym E.S (quite probably a tribute to Spenser, many of whose views about the Irish were echoed), articulated similar ideas in regards to tenure and civility. ‘E.S.’ claimed that he had composed the piece after being ‘led thereunto by the obligation of a subject to a soveraigne in soe materiall 331 points, to tell the truth according to my conscience and experience,’ which suggests the writer was (or had previously been,) a planter. The author believed that the wickedness of the Irish people was a result of their lifestyles that involved constant moving. Tenants lived on leases year-to-year, which encouraged them to pick up and move frequently, ‘soe he that is in this towne this yeere, for 4 yeres after doth live (perhappes) in so many severall townes, amongt soe many severall strange neighbours.’ Securing tenants in their places of habitation would encourage ‘society,’ and moral improvement, amongst them: ‘Neighbourhood and society is the begetter of love, and friendship, and this often removeringe makes them knowe so little 332 charity, that the profit of [twelve pence] will make them cutt one anothers throate.’ Security of tenure would encourage them to build and plant, and discourage rebellion. Leases of twenty years were proposed, ‘whereby he may be incouradged to build, fence, and bound his grounds, which wilbe a curbe unto him for runninge into 333 rebellion.’ In early modern English culture, an ordered commonwealth required conditions of permanent settlement in a cultivated landscape. Davies esteemed the importance of environmental circumstances in the cultivation of civility. If the Irish were moved from the woods and mountains to the plains and open countries, Davies wrote, ‘bring removed (like wild fruit-trees), they might grow the milder, and bear the

330 CSPI 1615-25 , p. 35. 331 Ellesmere MS 1746, f. 9. 332 Ellesmere MS 1746, f. 20v. 333 Ellesmere MS 1746, f. 23v. 282 334 better and sweeter fruit.’ In his report on the assignation of land to the Irish of Cavan, Davies compared the king to a gentle cultivator: ‘so as his Majesty doth in this imitate the skilful husbandman, who doth remove his fruit trees, not with a purpose to extirpate and destroy them, but that they may bring better and sweeter fruit after the transplantation.’ 335 In these examples, Davies compared the Irish to plants, amenable to improvement through the industry and skill of the gardener. By removing the Irish from their wild environs and placing them among the English, they would be moved by their cultivated surroundings to adopt the same manner of living. Davies anticipated that anglicisation would occur by subduing the Irish to a peaceable state through exposure to English society, the result being the conditions ripe for a unified commonwealth. Davies’ romantic notion of the commonwealth achieved by a sort of social evolution, as well as the use of plant metaphors, hint at Protestant ethics pertaining to man’s dominion over nature by tending, manipulating, and therefore improving it. Reformers sought to implement structures of plantation and forms of territorial organisation that would be most conducive to agriculture and civility, and fear of degeneration meant that immediate solutions were often based on Irish separation rather than integration. Airing his opinions on the Ulster plantation, Chichester asserted that undertakers should build their dwelling in a commanding location in their country, so that they could ensure their tenants build their houses closely together rather than to ‘straggle or disperse into glins or the edges of mountains and woods, as they did in Munster,’ as dense settlement meant security from rebels. It was also expected, by this arrangement, that ‘they will, by their cohabitation, breed unity and civility, and yield strength and comfort to one another, and secure the highways and passages for travellers.’ 336 Chichester feared the consequences of a mixed settlement. In Munster, the Irish were scattered amongst the English, and it was hoped that they would learn civility and husbandry through observation. Instead, he maintained, they had connived to overtake possession,

334 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 209. 335 Chalmers (ed.), Historical Tracts by Sir John Davies , p. 284. 336 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 356. 283 337 forging titles, stealing and plotting against their neighbours. The solution to prevent degeneration was to transplant the Irish to a reservation in the province or to settle them in townships under the protection of strongholds and powerful Englishmen to oversee them, and to bind them to English conditions of tenure. It was hoped that these conditions would be enough to keep the Irish settled and set them to 338 work, without endangering the British planters. In ‘A Survey of the Present Estate of Ireland,’ the author expressed the view that the spatial reorganisation of the Gaelic and Old English lordships was necessary for government control. The Irish were said to be a malicious and destructive presence, studying ‘to disgrace and dishable’ the Englishman through abuse of the justice system, and grazing their cattle on his grass and corn by night. As the Irish presented a threat to the British order, he advised against planting Irish and English together, and suggested that English towns be established in locations where ‘mere 339 English’ were present for ten miles around. He also advised that Irish lords should be subject to English manorial organisation, as the lords were presently afforded too much authority over their followers. In order to limit the autonomy of individual lords, the entire country would be divided into manors, which would enable neighbouring lords to account for each other’s behaviour. He looked to the system in England, where lords had ‘divers lordshipps in sundry counties where the next neighboure is,’ and that neighbours were ‘able to saie and informe that the mightye landlord doth wrong and the lawe is bothe able and willing to punish, and not to be 340 staied with favour, opinion & of greatnes, corrupcon or prerogative…’ The accommodation of British spatial organisation, such as manors, shires, and the accompanying administrative machinery encompassed the creation of what Noonkester has described as ‘images of practice’ that the English ‘sought to impose on a dread wilderness or, with more difficulty, a dreading and dreaded native 341 population’ in Ireland.

337 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 357. 338 CSPI 1608-10 , p. 358. 339 Ellesmere MS 1746, f. 12v. 340 Ellesmere MS 1746, ff. 16v-17. 341 M.C. Noonkester, ‘The Third British Empire: Transplanting the English Shire to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and America,’ The Journal of British Studies 36, 3 (1997), p. 261. 284 British concerns about enforcing and regulating ‘legitimate’ ways of ‘using’ the natural world, and their denial of Irish claims of ownership – and indeed, of civility – based on the absence of legitimate use, reveals that the improvement of the land was central to the justification of British imperial ambition in the early seventeenth century.

3.6. The Catholic aristocracy as improvers

Desirous to assert and preserve their social status in a British Ireland, Catholic Irish nobles were drawn into the frenzy of improvement that animated their Protestant counterparts. As the work of Ohlmeyer has shown, the Irish nobility became conspicuous consumers in the seventeenth century, and Catholic peers engaged with the rhetoric and activities of the improving landlord. In their pursuit of wealth, lords became entrepreneurs, involved themselves in commercial ventures, or developed industries on their estates. Ohlmeyer asserts that the spirit of agriculture and commerce became widespread among the Irish peerage, and maintains that most lords ‘quickly realized that in order to survive and prosper they had little alternative but to become improving landlords, diversify their income streams and embrace the new commercial ideologies that spread across Ireland on the coat tails of the 342 plantations.’ Catholic noble families who prospered under Protestant rule in the early seventeenth century included the Roches of Fermoy and the MacCarthys of Muskerry in Munster, who embodied the roles of improving landlords and attracted English 343 settlers to their vast estates. In Ulster, Randal MacDonnell, first earl of Antrim, owned 150,000 acres and was one of the greatest landowners in early Stuart Ireland. The Scottish Antrim was a prolific improver. He built and refurbished castles, brought Scottish settlers to people his thriving colony in Dunluce and Glenarm, and he also developed the town of Ballycastle. 344 At Dunluce, he built workshops, a

342 J. Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 388. 343 Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English , pp. 107-8. 344 Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English , p. 118. 285 345 church, and an elaborate formal garden with an orchard and bowling green. As landlords, the earls of Antrim sought only well-equipped tenants – gentlemen or yeoman farmers – who could be trusted to farm the land. Tenants were given instructions to make improvements by fencing or digging ditches and planting trees. The king acknowledged the work of Antrim in civilising Ulster, praising ‘his services in improving those barren and uncultivated parts of the country, and planting a colony there.’ In 1637, the second earl evoked English improvement rhetoric when he declared, ‘I have compounded my affairs here with my tenants wherein I was not so inward to my [own] profit as to the general good and settlement by binding them to plant [trees] and husband their holdings so near as may be to the manner of 346 England.’ Ambitious Catholic landlords who pursued improvement were influenced by commercial and economic forces that accompanied British settlers. Their activities encompassed the renovation of their estates, the promotion of tillage, urban development and improvement of internal communications (such as building bridges), and setting up industries such as iron and glass works, textiles, mining, 347 manufacture and shipbuilding. The rigour with which they approached these activities suggests that the ethics of improvement were harnessed by Irish Catholics who were required to embrace emerging economic values if they wanted to vouchsafe their dynasties in a modern English state. It would, therefore, be false to claim that economic individualism was strictly the domain of Protestants. The adoption of commercial attitudes by Catholic peers in the seventeenth century demonstrates that improvement was a cultural force that swept through the landholding classes in British, and Anglicised Irish, society.

Conclusion

This study of Jacobean Irish policy has revealed that contemporary intellectual culture enabled the Stuart government to articulate its reforming aims with appeal to

345 Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English , p. 119. 346 Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English , pp. 120-1. 347 Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English , pp. 374-5. 286 the public ethics and economic theories of civic humanism and Protestantism. Unlike his Tudor predecessors, who were largely guided by their advisors and officials, James’ personal views coloured the British mission in Ireland. The charter of Coleraine encapsulated the king’s zeal for improving Ireland. It declared that James ‘commiserat[ed] the wretched state of the said province,’ and ‘esteemed it to be a work worthy of a Christian prince, and of our royal office, to stir up and recall the same province from superstition, rebellion, calamity and poverty, which heretofore 348 have horribly raged therein, to religion, obedience, strength, and prosperity.’ By James’ reign, the ideological justifications for British imperial rule had become more pronounced as the amalgamation of humanism with Calvinism extended the improving impulse beyond concerns of order to the perfection and improvement of society to accentuate the glory of the imperial crown and polity. As articulated by figures such as Davies, the reform of Ireland was ‘commonwealth work,’ and entailed breaking down religious, cultural and social barriers to political cohesion. The humanist valorisation of civic activity was intrinsic to the transformation of Ulster, and the persistence of the vita activa allowed officials to regard plantation as a public work. Economic projects were justified as reform-minded, and could also be construed as commonwealth work. The promotion of corporate enterprise in Ireland represented the extension of the corporate network in England, where a prolific rate of incorporation had provided institutional, political and commercial structures through which citizens could share in the responsibilities of civic activity. Attention to the social solutions to crime and unemployment were intended to imbed a sense of civic duty among the Irish populace. Plans for education and social welfare, such as the provision of employment, were important conduits to individual and national reform. The emphasis on projects, or industrial or commercial ventures, was consistent with humanist valorisation of activity. From the later sixteenth century, it became almost impossible to disentangle the humanist ethos from the Protestant one in New English initiatives, as both movements dignified commercial pursuits in the interest of a greater good. In the seventeenth century, Protestant arguments for the

348 The Skinners’ Company , p. 226. 287 dignity of labour and improved scientific knowledge accompanied the transition of man’s earthly role from humble steward to one exercising dominion and charged with taking and subduing the earth. Exploiting the land had become a moral duty, and the ‘unoccupied’ land in Ireland presented an affront to God and the commonwealth. The emergence of the godly individualist, the landlord who possessed values of thrift and profit and who harnessed new science and technologies to enhance efficiency and productivity, encouraged the intensification of material exploitation in Ireland. It was believed that by altering the environment inhabited by the Irish, by transforming their habitat and way of life, improvement of the natural world would also facilitate a moral reformation.

288 Conclusion

The primary aim of this thesis has been to identify the ideological foundations that buttressed the practical policies of early modern English (and after 1603, British) plantation and reform, in Ireland, from the early sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. It has surveyed a period of conquest and plantation in Ireland through the lens of intellectual history, drawing on developments in the dominant ideas of the wider culture to shed light on the justifications for English colonialism. In light of the attention paid to colonial North America as a focus of intellectual history, it has addressed a need for an equivalent ideological study of the English in early modern Ireland, and in particular, one that incorporates the overlooked period of the early and mid-sixteenth century. This thesis followed upon the revision of the practices and methodology of intellectual history by Skinner and Pocock, who reoriented the focus of intellectual history from canonical great texts to the languages and vocabularies, the discourse paradigms, in which the beliefs of an age are encoded. This approach to history acknowledges that in order to document fundamental shifts in values across time, we must move past the focus on classic texts and come to understand the prevalent thought of an age through a broad range of texts.1 Using the techniques of a contextualising intellectual history, I have engaged with some of chief currents of the Renaissance and Reformation to provide the overarching context of early modern European reform movements before conducting a qualitative survey of government correspondence, policy papers and published tracts ranging from the early sixteenth century until the year 1625. By such a method, I have analysed the impact of the Reformation and the Renaissance primarily in relation to two major themes: humanism and improvement. As a result, this thesis has brought together the studia humanitatis and Protestant ethics under a single study of English reform dynamics in early modern Ireland. Compartmentalising the thesis into three chronological periods has allowed comparison and contrast of central developments in Irish policy with fundamental

1 See J.G.A. Pocock, ‘The Reconstruction of Discourse: Towards the Historiography of Political Thought,’ Modern Language Notes 96, 5 (1981), p. 974; Q. Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,’ History and Theory 8, 1 (1969), pp. 49-50. 289 movements in English intellectual culture. The last remaining task is to recapitulate and reflect upon what the study has yielded. Having explored the ideological justifications of reformers who aimed to expand English authority in Ireland, this study has demonstrated that the thrust of policy characterising each ‘era’ was shaped by the cultural and religious movements in Northern Europe. The evolution of English involvement in Ireland was broadly synchronous with the progression of humanist and Reformation ideas. To summarise, the Henrician reform of Ireland coincided with the spread of humanist education and the rise of the social reformers known as the Commonwealthmen. The humanist ethos was carried to Ireland as the Pale was absorbed into the apparatus of English government. As the government set about correcting centuries of social decay, considerations of policy adopted a humanist tenor as officials discoursed in terms of the ‘commonwealth.’ Under Elizabeth, the ideas of Calvinist Protestantism merged with justifications drawn from humanism as martial brutality and aggressive colonial policy supported the quest to extend the reach of English government and build a virtuous and well-ordered commonwealth. In the seventeenth century, humanist and Protestant-Calvinist values were driven by British planters who dragged Ireland from what was considered its grievously backward condition towards agricultural improvement and proto-industrialisation. By examining the trajectory of reform thought through a cross-section of material spanning an ample portion of the early modern period, I have extracted answers to several key questions that were not sufficiently addressed by the existing literature: How were Renaissance humanist principles applied to the English government of Ireland in the first half of the sixteenth century (as opposed to the academically saturated Elizabethan era)? How did contemporary approaches to social problems in England inform equivalent policies in Ireland, and what does this reveal about the theological and humanistic bases of English government in Ireland? To what extent did humanism and Protestantism intersect in English reform thought? Where can we locate these intersections? The answers to these questions are outlined in this conclusion, which will encapsulate a synthesis of the key findings and the contribution of this thesis to historiography. This thesis has revealed that the influence of humanist theory extended across political, social and environmental issues – society, self and soil – in early

290 modern Ireland. Was there, as some historians suggest, a greater degree of intellectualisation from the Elizabethan period, embodied in the evolution of plantation policy from a pragmatic security solution to a utopian experiment of ‘social engineering’?2 To a limited degree, this assertion has been validated by the findings of this thesis. In the early and mid-Tudor period, political reform was concentrated on the preservation of the Pale community. Consequently, considerations of defence were paramount, and were represented by the prevalence of the garrison and soldiers in plantation schemes. By the seventeenth century, visions of civic upheaval guided policy, and there was a greater tendency among Elizabethan writers towards more explicit humanist devices by infusing their works with references to classical sources and Latin quotations. The intellectual influences were, perhaps, more overt in the latter period. However, this study has shown that humanist influences were more prevalent in the formation of early Tudor policy than formerly acknowledged. The illusion of an ideological black spot is perpetuated by the comparative lack of source material for the pre-Elizabethan period. The prevalence of commonwealth discourse among Henrician, Edwardian and Marian officials demonstrates that Renaissance socio-political ideology was strongly asserted in the processes of reform. This study has demonstrated that Renaissance humanist principles informed English policy in Ireland from, at least, the early sixteenth century. Humanism, characterised by the study and attainment of humanitas , was concerned with the transformation of society into a utopian new order that nourished virtue and conditioned citizens to work towards the common good. The values of the Christian humanists and Tudor Commonwealthmen included the assumption of civic duties, the pursuit of the public good, and the emphasis on personal virtue in citizenship and government. Multifarious schemes and projects to raise Ireland to order and virtue projected a value system that was intimately tied to humanism. The host of ideas and aspirations about Irish reform circled around a number of concepts common to Renaissance humanism. The declared agendas of reformers fed upon humanist discourses ranging from the Machiavellian veneration of martial valour, which emphasised civic republican ideals of service and duties of active participation, to arguments for

2 Canny, Making Ireland British , p. 206; R. Gillespie, ‘After the Flight: The Plantation of Ulster,’ History Ireland 15, 4 (2007), p. 44. 291 civic greatness based upon a vibrant urban and commercial polity. Because many of the practices of corporate life and public participation described in this study were already embedded in English society in the medieval period, some may contend that because these practices were not ‘products’ of classical humanist learning, presenting them as evidence of a humanist reform programme amounts to teleological distortion. While it is true that many civic practices were inherited from the medieval period, the existing formulae were reconceptualised by early modern thinkers through the new language of Renaissance humanism. Humanism provided a vocabulary for analysing the individual and society, and the foundation of the humanist’s civic imagination was the motif of the commonwealth.3 The classical notion of the body politic, translated into the English vernacular as ‘commonwealth,’ was brought into service by Old English reformers in the early sixteenth century, and assumed prominence among the New English officials tasked with implementing Cromwellian political reform and enforcing the Kingship Act of 1541. Under the new government, the kingdom of Ireland assumed the guise of a body politic, or a commonwealth, enabling reformers to conceptualise Ireland as an extension of the English Res Publica . The symbolism of a unitary political body was a powerful one for reformers who had been influenced by a humanist education that encouraged the channelling of the citizen’s energies into the defence of the commonwealth. Policymakers articulated the principle of the public good as they drove campaigns against tyrannous Irish lords and the exaction of coign and livery, to dismantle political divisions and foster a new social order through institutions of law, government, worship and learning. As arguments for policies on behalf of the ‘common weal’ gained traction, appeals for social reform responded to the perceived needs of the commonwealth. Provisions for social and moral transformation in Ireland reflected concepts of the ideal political body, which encompassed a community knit together through bonds of mutual aid, civic duties and obedience to a central authority. Notions of social reform germinated in sixteenth century England, and were accompanied by schemes to abolish factors that undermined virtue such as poverty and idleness, to reform manners and extend educational opportunities

3 Goldie, ‘The Unacknowledged Republic,’ p. 193n180; Peltonen, Classical Humanism , p. 7. 292 across the classes. 4 These values found ready expression in Ireland, which was thought to be impoverished due to widespread idleness and routine violence perpetrated by Gaelic malcontents. Seen through English eyes, the Irish were unaware of their duties to the commonwealth and required correction in order to become good subjects of the crown. Instead of categorically lumping the Irish as a barbarian ‘other,’ the sources reveal that the Irish were often treated by English reformers as ignorant or degenerate subjects who needed justice, example and instruction to be drawn into the commonwealth. The reformation of the people, by setting them to gainful employment and providing moral instruction through education, would enable the passage of law and order and facilitate the unification of the political body. Laws were intended to enforce obedience by establishing codes of civil behaviour encompassing dress, language, laws, housing, occupations and religious worship. Communities were expected to perform civic duties by practising hue and cry, performing militia service and answering to common law courts. Commonwealth ideologues promoted social harmony by knitting together the social fabric of Ireland, encouraged duty and obedience, and promoted a deferential relationship between governors and governed. The act of colonisation, or plantation, by English subjects was a key mechanism of social control, or in other words, ‘making the ungovernable governable.’ 5 The application of commonwealth ideology to Ireland, accompanied by schemes for constitutional and social reform, was buttressed by standard humanist axioms. Humanist values thus enable us to account for the acute English reaction to disorder in Ireland and illuminate the guiding principles behind proposals for political reform and social modification. By cross-referencing social disturbances in England with the challenges thrown up by a discordant, often openly rebellious polity in Ireland, it is found that the responses of the English government in both kingdoms were analogous. As we have seen, some parliamentary acts in Ireland, such as the regulation of alehouses, were direct copies of acts passed in the English parliament. Legislation and commentary on the social causes and manifestations of disorder in England articulated ethics of humanism and Protestantism, and these ethics were

4 Todd, Christian Humanism , p. 18. 5 A. Hadfield and J. McVeagh (eds.), Strangers to that Land: British Perceptions of Ireland from the Reformation to the Famine (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1994), p. 108. 293 consequently applied in the programmes to enforce social control in Ireland. The traditions that were drawn upon to enact these programmes were strongly reformist and activist, filtered through the institutions of government, worship and learning, and within the circles of the educated elite. Throughout this thesis, it has been maintained that perceptions of Ireland, as well as the policies applied to reform it, were informed by the English observers’ social climate, and that these ideas fell within the boundaries of culturally approved paradigms. As the sixteenth century wore on, Calvinist Protestantism took deep root in the mainstream English church. As a result, these social paradigms underwent shifts, reorienting temporal values as reformed theologians urged people to consider their actions in this life as signs of salvation in the hereafter. The reader will have noted that (in parts three and four, especially) there has been a great deal of conceptual overlap between, and within, the themes of humanism and improvement. The rise of martial government in Ireland has been linked to Protestant arguments for depravity, 6 but it would be misleading completely to divorce acts of violence from humanistic concerns. As we have seen, Elizabethan reformers justified the use of martial law as necessary to meet the humanistic ends of a well-ordered commonwealth. From the later sixteenth century, Protestant influences are discernable alongside the reformist ethics of humanism as the English pressed for the eradication of social vices and, in what became a corollary of that programme, the extension of agriculture and husbandry in Ireland. Agriculture and economic productivity accorded with humanist and Calvinist ethics that valued toil and responsible wealth accumulation as merits of the active life. At the core of the theme of improvement lies land use and agriculture. These were the aspects of Irish reform upon which the reforming ethic, drawn from both Protestantism and humanism, exerted the most palpable and determinative influence. The ‘ordering’ of the environment as a strategy to introduce civility should not be misleadingly attributed solely to Protestantism: medieval Christianity endorsed man’s role as God’s steward on earth, and encouraged cultivation and productive use of the land. With the advance of Calvinist reinforcements for the ideal of disciplined labour, the development of

6 Bradshaw, ‘Sword, Word and Strategy,’ p. 487. 294 agricultural methods and publication of literature on gardening and husbandry, new moral sanction was given to improvement and acquisition. The growing interest in profitable agriculture overflowed to Ireland, where lamentations about the neglected soil became louder as interest in plantation ventures grew stronger towards the end of the sixteenth century. The drive to improve the soil represents the most conspicuous manifestation of the Calvinist-Protestant value system in Ireland. The argument for improvement was applied in the early modern period with a patently Protestant flavour, for diligent toil and ensuing material rewards were deemed to be attributes of personal salvation. As the industrious English planter compounded his moral authority over the sinfully indolent Irish, it became an imperative and a duty to claim the Irish land, improve and reap profits through enclosure, farming and tillage, and to glorify God and the commonwealth by fulfilling his duty as the master of nature. The propensity of English writers to compare the Irish people to noxious weeds and English governors to gardeners or farmers speaks to the cultural significance of cultivation. Cultivation signified man’s ability to impose order on chaos, to reign over, shape and improve nature. By using such tropes in relation to Irish society, English writers attempted to lend credibility to the argument that the wild Irish might finally be pacified and controlled with the application of resolute governance. This study has augmented the study of the ideologies which underlay early modern colonisation by demonstrating that classical and biblical imperatives were being used as moral leverage for colonialism and imperial rule from the early sixteenth century. This, then, was a phenomenon that predated the colonisation of America and the apex of the colonial ‘improving’ movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Historians studying British colonialism on both sides of the Atlantic have found that the guiding philosophies to claim title in Ireland were applied to other native populations. 7 In the New World, humanist values were brought forth to sustain the new commonwealth.8 What was perceived as idleness on the part of the colonists was considered to be one of the greatest threats to the English enterprise in America. 9 On the other side of the cultural divide, the unsettled nature of the indigenous people led commentators to conclude that they

7 Canny, ‘Ideology of English Colonization,’ p. 579. 8 For the application of studia humanitatis on the British colonisation of the New World, see Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America , passim. 9 Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America , pp. 72-4, 83. 295 were not making adequate use of their land and therefore, ‘could be justly deprived of it by the more enterprising English.’10 Similar notions about improvement would later be venerated with the support of the successes of the Scientific Revolution. In the eighteenth century, British territorial claims in Australia were underscored by a similar concern for improvement, as the lack of agriculture led the British to declare the continent a waste land that needed to be brought into productive use.11 Civic humanist values and Protestant assumptions about man’s role in nature were crucial to the conquest and colonisation of Tudor and Stuart Ireland: a legacy that they unknowingly conveyed to their imperial British successors. Finally, I will provide a brief a comment on limitations and future research. The temporal and thematic scope of this study is very wide, encompassing multiple facets of government and policy in the context of two major pan-European movements, across the sweep of a century. Of necessity, I have had to bypass other probable influences on English colonial thought. In their ventures in America, for example, the English drew examples from rival colonial powers such as the Spanish, who produced prolific literature on colonies and empire as they ascended in the New World.12 In addition, the activities and literature of British colonial companies may have provided models for action closer to home. There is great scope for further study in this area, as adjusting or widening the ideological ‘net’ could supply valuable comparisons and insights into the colonial impulse in early modern Ireland.

10 Canny, ‘Ideology of English Colonization,’ p. 596. 11 J. Gascoigne, The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 70. 12 M. Hume, Spanish Influence on English Literature (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1905), pp. 184- 205; J.H. Elliot, Spain, Europe and the Wider World, 1500-1800 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 149-172. 296 Bibliography

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