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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
English kings prostrate at his feet. Such was the magic
which the prestige of an immemorial civilization, typified
in its nobler representatives, worked on a national mind
slowly shedding the barbarism of ages. To this spell
which the Irish will cast over a stolid, superstitious and
undeveloped people, in whom a powerful war hysteria
flowed as a perpetual undercurrent, are we to look for the
root of the surprising results achieved by them, results
which under like conditions could have been achieved by
no other race under Heaven.
The so-called Norman 1
Conquest marked the passing of
Irish authority and influence over the English and the
substitution in an infinitely harsher and more strongly
organized form of French influence and authority. The
guide, cicerone and friend gave way to the military con-
queror and master. The hand that held the cross, the pilgrim's
staff, and the illuminated manuscript was followed
by the hand that wielded the sword and the thonged whip.
The apostles of law and order, humanity and learning,
were followed by the apostles of the thumb screw and
crucet house, of Tenserie and the Sachentege. Human
annals contain little that exceeds in inhumanity the retri-
butions which the French conquerors of the English laid
on the people they thenceforth trod beneath their feet 2
iThe men who, under William the Conqueror, took England from the
English, called themselves and were called not Normans, but Francii or
Frenchmen, which was what they were. They came from every province in
France Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Brittany, Ile-de-France, Aquitaine, Burgundy,
Flanders and even from beyond the Alps and Pyrenees. Among those who
belonged to Normandy, the Northman strain had been merged by intermarriage,
and Northman speech and custom had totally disappeared. The
French conquerors of England repudiated all kinship with any Northern or
German people. They could be called Normans chiefly in the sense that the
expedition set out from Normandy under the Duke of that province.
2 Consult the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the reign of Stephen, Anno 1137.
Maddened by cruelty, the hapless natives sometimes waylaid their French
masters and cut their throats, stripping the corpse and mutilating the
features and members so that it would be impossible to tell whether it was
-French or English, the object being to escape the fines and punishments laid
on all the inhabitants of the neighborhood. It was then enacted that the
corpse should be deemed French unless a jury found it was only an Englishman.
This law, called the presentment of "Emglischerie," with its attendant
cruelties, lasted to the reign of Edward III.
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