CCHA, Study Sessions, 44(1977), 77-95
The Portrayal of the Irish
in Lingard's History of England
by Anne WYATT
Lingard's History was
inevitably steeped in controversy from the moment it appeared. In the England
of 1819, the date of the appearance of the first three volumes, it was a bold
and unprecedented act for a Catholic priest to attempt the rewriting of English
history from the sources, with the object of clearing his Catholic fellow
countrymen of what he felt to be the accumulated calumnies of almost three
hundred years. The hostile spirit in which his work was received in some
quarters found lively expression in, for example, the pages of the Quarterly
Review and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
(1)
His aim was frankly apologetic.
In a letter to a friend on the subject of obtaining sources he explained
"In a word you see what I want - whatsoever may serve to make the catholic
cause appear respectable in the eyes of a British public. I have the reputation
of impartiality - therefore have it more in my power to do so." (2) As this quotation suggests no one knew better
than Lingard, born as he was of English Catholic stock, that the only way in
which he could hope to gain an audience for his work was by moderation,
fairness, impartiality and meticulous scholarship. These became the hallmarks
of his work. As he explained to a correspondent "I have been careful to
defend the catholics, but not so as to hurt the feelings of the protestants." (3) Objectivity, therefore, became the dominant
note of his history. Nor was he unsuccessful in capturing thereby the
respectful attention of at least some critics. One, who began a review of
Lingard's Vindication of his fourth and fifth volumes with the
observation that "A History of England by a Roman Catholic priest was
assuredly destined to be met with coldness and suspicion" felt compelled
to add in the same paragraph "We are disposed to entertain the highest
respect for the industry, fidelity, and acuteness of Dr. Lingard." (4) Shortly after his death his work was referred
to by a Protestant as a standard authority among Protestants.
(5)
Acceptance, however, did not
come easily. Though the History was generally well received by his
fellow Catholics, especially those at Rome, there were those who accused him of
Gallicanism (6) while Bishop Milner condemned it
roundly saying "It's a bad book, Sir only calculated to confirm
Protestants in their errors." (7) Criticism
from outside his own communion was even more plentiful. Macaulay, for example,
complained that "Dr. Lingard is undoubtedly a very able and well informed
writer, but whose great fundamental rule of judging seems to be, that the
popular opinion on a historical question cannot possibly be correct." (8)
The points seized on by
Lingard's critics were extremely varied. Bishop Milner, for example, complained
about his treatment of Becket (9): John Allen, a
regular contributor to the Edinburgh Review, attacked his account of
the massacre of St. Bartholomew, (10) while
Carlyle indirectly challenged his account of Cromwell's massacres in Ireland. (11) Other points debated were Lingard's version
of the relations between King John and the papal legate Pandulf, his account of
the feudal relationship between the kings of England and the kings of Scotland,
his stating that Mary Boleyn had been Henry VIII's mistress before Anne Boleyn
and so on. (12)
For our purposes what is
noticeable in this barrage of criticism is that it contains almost no reference
to Lingard's treatment of Ireland, with the exception of Carlyle's indirect
criticisms of his approach to Cromwell. Ireland is admittedly a peripheral
topic in Lingard's work. He deals with Irish affairs in the traditional way, only
as they impinged upon English affairs. Yet in some respects what he has to say
about Ireland is revolutionary. For example, as we shall see, he offers us a
new version of what happened in 1641, a crucial year for Anglo-Irish relations,
yet his contemporary critics completely ignored what he had to say on this
subject. More recent analysts have shown themselves equally uninterested.
Neither Haile and Bonney writing in 1911, nor Donald Shea writing in 1969,
refer to Lingard's treatment of Ireland even though Shea made a special study
of Lingard's use of documents which would have made it appropriate to refer to
his account of the events of 1641. One would have thought that the alleged
massacre of 1641 was a good deal more central to English history than the
massacre of St. Bartholomew (13) but it was the
latter that excited Lingard's critics. Could there be a better illustration of
Burke's dictum that all the English want of Ireland is to hear of it as little
as possible? Even Lingard himself seems to have taken no particular pride in
this part of his achievement. In the "Preliminary Notice," dated
1849, which prefaces Volume I of his sixth edition, he surveys some of the more
controversial aspects of his work but nowhere does he allude to Ireland. (14)
Lingard deliberately set out to
write a history of England that was different from any that had gone before. He
returned to the sources, to the documents. As Tierney writes in the Memoir that
prefaces the sixth edition of the History "Hitherto, history had,
in a great measure, been taken upon trust. Writer had followed after writer in
the same track, and fiction had almost acquired the substance of reality." (15) Lingard's aim was to begin as it were all
over again. The results were particularly obvious in his treatment of the
Catholics, but were also apparent in his handling of Irish affairs, where he
made several departures from the traditional approach. This is clear if what he
says is compared with the works of two other historians: David Hume and J. R.
Green. Hume and Green are singled out here not because their handling of Irish
affairs is particularly remarkable in itself, for on the contrary their views
are only too representative of the general trend of English historiography in
this respect, but because they both wrote works which in their day held pride
of place. Hume's History of England, published between 1754 and 1762,
was the standard English history before Lingard's appeared, while Green's A
Short History of the English People, published in 1874, in turn partially
displaced Lingard. These three therefore, Hume, Lingard and Green held
successively the centre of the stage (16) and
helped to mould public opinion on historical issues. Lingard himself was well
aware of the necessity of refuting Hume, though with characteristic caution he
wanted to do so without actually appearing to do so. (17)
Let us see therefore what it was that Lingard wanted to refute, at least as far
as Ireland was concerned.
Hume's first mention of the
Irish gives some indication of his whole approach. "The Irish, from the
beginning of time, had been buried in the most profound barbarism and
ignorance; and as they were never conquered or even invaded by the Romans, from
whom all the Western world derived its civility, they continued still in the
most rude state of society, and were distinguished by those vices alone, to
which human nature, not tamed by education or restrained by laws is for ever
subject." (18) He then goes on to fill in
the picture in more detail, explaining that "the usual title of each petty
sovereign was the murder of his predecessor; courage and force, though
exercised in the commission of crimes, were more honoured than any pacific
virtues; and the most simple arts of life, even tillage and agriculture, were
almost wholly unknown among them." (19)
This was Hume's description of
the Irish in the reign of Henry II. Time wrought no improvement. The English,
he says, misgoverned the Irish with the result that "Being treated like
wild beasts, they became such ; and joining the ardour of revenge to their yet
untamed barbarity, they grew every day more intractable and more
dangerous." (20) James I won Hume's praise
for a determined effort to civilize the Irish by the imposition of English law
and the plantation of Ulster. (21) The
introduction into Ireland of the civilized arts of manufacture and agriculture
was, Hume claimed, a reasonable compensation for the seizure of Irish Land. (22)
But how did the Irish respond
to these benefits? With the rebellion of 1641. This for Hume was a crucial
episode in Anglo-Irish relations since for him it provided incontrovertible
proof of both the base nature of the Irish and the perverted character of their
religion. "Without provocation, without opposition," he begins,
"the astonished English, living in profound peace and full security, were
massacred by their nearest neighbours, with whom they had long upheld a
continued intercourse of kindness and good offices."
(23) He goes on to describe in more detail the sufferings of the
English "defenceless, and passively resigned to their inhuman foes," (24) ascribing as he does so a special role to
the influence of Popery. For, he says, "Amidst all these enormities the
sacred name of religion resounded on every side; not to stop the hands of these
murderers, but to enforce their blows and to steel their hearts against every
movement of human or social sympathy." (25)
Again he says, the revolt revealed Popery "in its most horrible
aspect." (26)
Moreover he evidently considers
it a historian's special duty to dwell on this episode, for he not only
describes it at length and in graphic detail but states categorically that it
was "an event memorable in the annals of human kind, and worthy to be held
in perpetual detestation and abhorrence." (27)
When, therefore, he came to consider the Restoration settlement in Ireland he
invoked the "heinous guilt of the Irish nation"
(28) to excuse its injustice, and in the reign of James II he recalls
the memory of "ancient massacres" (29)
to explain the flight of many settlers from Ireland. It is therefore crucial to
Hume's whole interpretation of Anglo-Irish relations.
Such was the overall view of
the Irish set before the English public in the standard history when Lingard's
work appeared. Would he continue in this tradition? Would he write of the Irish
in the same opprobrious terms? It is useful to remember at this point how
thoroughly English Lingard was. He was born in Winchester in 1771 of Catholic
parents. His mother came from a recusant family, her own father having actually
been imprisoned for his religion. From 1782 to 1793 Lingard was educated at
Douay College "Catholic England beyond the seas" which existed solely
for the conversion of England. Patriotism there burned high. As Lingard's
biographers have written "... next after his fidelity to his Church, no
sentiment burned more hotly in the breast of the pre-emancipation Catholic than
devotion to his country." (30) At Douay in
1790 Lingard took the College oath which bound him "to receive Holy Orders
in due time, and to return to England, in order to gain the souls of others as
often and when it shall seem good to the Superior of this college so to
command." (31) Lingard, therefore, was as
firmly committed to his homeland as he was to the Universal Church: he fully
belonged to the party of the English who remained faithful to the old religion
and who were an integral, if inconspicuous, part of the national scene. How
then would he write of the Irish?
His opening references to them
consist partly of his own account of early Irish history and institutions, and
partly of a summary of the evidence of Gerald of Wales which, keeping close to
the original, leaps from topic to topic. Lingard begins by paying tribute to
the civilizing role of Christianity in Ireland, especially in the fifth and
sixth centuries for "When science was almost extinguished on the
continent, it still emitted a faint light from the remote shores of Erin;
strangers from Britain, Gaul and Germany, resorted to the Irish schools; and
Irish missionaries established monasteries and imparted instruction on the
banks of the Danube, and amid the snows of the Apennines."
(32) However this brief tribute to Irish culture is almost lost in
what follows.
Not only are we told that with
the invasion of the Northmen the natives "quickly relapsed into the habits
and vices of barbarism" (33) but we are
also given a lengthy description of the national institutions of tanistry and
gavelkind. These are described by Lingard in entirely negative terms. Tanistry
was the custom whereby the heir to the kingship or other dignity was chosen
from among the eligible males in the family. It led according to him straight
to anarchy. "The elections were often attended with bloodshed: sometimes
the ambition of the tanist refused to await the natural death of his superior:
frequently the son of the deceased chieftan attempted to seize by violence the
dignity to which he was forbidden to aspire by the custom of his country." (34) Gavelkind was the custom whereby lands
descended to all the sons equally without primogeniture; on the death of the
possessor the land was thrown into one common mass and a new division made.
Lingard describes such a system as being inimical to agriculture and therefore
to the progress of civilization. (35)
The passage of time in
Lingard's view brought no improvement. Even after the Danish invasions attempts
to restore tranquillity or to reform what he vaguely calls "the immorality
of the nation" failed owing to "the turbulence of the princes and the
obstinacy of the people." (36)
Lingard then proceeded to fill
out his preliminary remarks on the Irish on the basis of the evidence of Gerald
of Wales, a twelfth century ecclesiastic who made two visits to Ireland. He
begins indeed by warning us against accepting everything that Gerald says for "That
the credulity of the Welshman was often deceived by fables, is evident; nor is
it improbable that his partiality might occasionally betray him into unfriendly
and exaggerated statements." (37) However
having uttered this caveat he proceeds to give two reasons for accepting his
evidence. The second of these reasons reveals Lingard's thoroughness and
familiarity with a variety of sources. He says that Gerald's evidence is
supported by that of St. Malachy and may therefore be trusted, a point that he
elaborates on with additional evidence in a footnote some pages on. (38) It is the first reason that Lingard gives
that should claim our special attention since it reveals the direction of his
thoughts on the Irish. He writes that "the accuracy of his narrative in
the more important points is confirmed by the whole tenor of Irish and English
history." (39) This is certainly an
arresting statement.
It is not clear what Lingard means
by "the more important points." Are these all the points that Lingard
himself mentions in the subsequent summary? Or is the reader himself expected
to exercise his own judgment as to what is important or not important in that
summary? Or is the phrase just a rather confusing rhetorical flourish,
revealing some confusion and doubt in the mind of Lingard himself? All of these
are possibilities. What actually follows in Lingard is a jumble of
miscellaneous information.
We are told that Ireland was divided
into five kingdoms with an overking, that trade conducted by the descendants of
the Danes existed in the seaports and that wine was imported from Languedoc.
But the native Irish, we are told, shunned the towns and preferred pasturage to
agriculture. "Restraint and labour were deemed by them the worst of evils;
liberty and indolence the most desirable of blessings."
(40) Then Lingard, still following Gerald, continues to speak of
their handsome appearance, their "barbarous" clothing, their contempt
for the use of armour and their employment of a steel hatchet called a
"sparthe" which "was frequently made the instrument of
revenge." (41) Then rather
inconsequentially we are told that the Irish displayed great ingenuity in
building their houses of timber and wickerwork: The narrative then switches
abruptly to a second summary of the national character. "In temper the
natives are described as irascible and inconstant, warmly attached to their friends,
faithless and vindictive towards their enemies."
(42) Tribute is then paid to their musical talents.
The summary of Gerald's
evidence concludes with some remarks on the Irish clergy. Gerald, while
praising their "devotion, continency, and personal virtues," (43) complains that they neglected their pastoral
duties in favour of their monastic profession. In this abrupt fashion Lingard
ends his introductory remarks on the Irish scene and turns to the invasion of
Henry II.
The tenor of these observations
seems to be overwhelmingly negative. Lingard's opening remarks minimize Irish
cultural achievements while presenting the national institutions as a modified
form of anarchy. His subsequent summary of Gerald's evidence is ill digested.
While Irish physique, manual skill and musical talent all receive some praise
together with a guarded tribute to the Irish clergy, the national character is
twice summarized in opprobrious terms. Even the characteristic Irish weapon,
the sparthe, is stigmatized as an instrument of "revenge." Couldn't
it equally well be described as an instrument of defence? And all this is
allegedly confirmed by "the whole tenor of Irish and English
history," a sweeping and momentarily impressive phrase of uncertain
meaning.
Probably what Lingard meant by
the "whole tenor of English and Irish history" was "the
generally accepted version of English and Irish history as it has been passed
down to us by earlier historians." To put it another way, when Lingard
came down to discussing the Irish national character, which is what Gerald is
mainly concerned with, Lingard is content to say in effect "On this topic
I will go along with the generally accepted view." We have seen from a
brief look at Hume, what the generally accepted view was. In other words it is
clear from this passage that Lingard shared the general prejudice of his
countrymen against the Irish. He attributes to them precisely those vices -
laziness, violence and inconstancy - which were the stock in trade of the
nineteenth century English historian.
It is true that Lingard says in
a footnote, that refers specifically to his description of the sexual mores of
the Irish, that what he says on this subject should not be construed as a
reflection on a "noble and highly-gifted people"
(44) since it may be assumed that they have long outgrown the
primitive customs of their ancestors. However this cannot be considered to be a
substantial modification of Lingard's view of the Irish as already set out,
partly because it refers only to this one limited topic and partly because
excerpts from his correspondence as quoted in the Life reveal that he
continued to think of them in the traditional fashion. He describes the Irish
bishops of the famine period as "rebels at heart. They constantly remind
the masses that if they are miserable it is owing to the English." He
apparently despised them for this attitude and for their ingratitude for relief
received during the famine though, as we shall see, to blame Irish problems on
English policy was in fact in accordance with his own view of Anglo-Irish
relations. He also wrote in the same letter that the Irish could not live
"but in a tempest," (45) a sweeping
statement that accords admirably with the spirit of Hume's writing.
Lingard's acceptance of the
evidence of Gerald of Wales on the grounds that it accorded in effect with what
everybody else said, is all the more remarkable in that such an approach was
exactly contrary to his whole aim and method. He was after all attempting to
rewrite English history from the sources precisely in order to put the English
Catholics in a more just and favourable light. It would have been nonsense, for
example, for him to accept some incriminating evidence against the English
Catholics partly on the grounds that it was the sort of thing that people
always said and believed about Catholics. Yet this is precisely one line of
reasoning that he follows in accepting the evidence of Gerald of Wales. One is
confronted with a seemingly invincible wall of prejudice against the Irish even
in an historian as essentially fairminded and scholarly as Lingard.
His opening remarks are not
encouraging to one who seeks for a fair treatment of the Irish in the pages of
an English historian, nor does his narrative of events offer at first sight
more hope. It is true he begins by expressing some doubts as to the worthiness
of the motives of Henry II (46) in undertaking
the invasion of Ireland but his narrative still embodies that tone of censure
that superior beings adopt towards inferiors. If the Irish were not more
successful in meeting the English invasion then it was their own fault for
"This was the period when the natives, had they united in the cause of
their country, might, in all probability, have expelled the invaders. But they
wasted their strength in domestic feuds." (47)
Lingard was no doubt correct to draw attention to Irish disunion as a factor
affecting the course of the Anglo-Irish conflict but it seems unreasonable to
blame the Irish for not uniting in the cause of a country which did not exist.
Neither England, nor Ireland, nor France, nor Germany, nor Italy was in the
twelfth century a "country" or "nation" capable of united
resistance. Even in the reign of Richard II, 1377-1399, it was inappropriate to
write of the "dissensions and folly" of the Irish whose "arms
were as often turned against their own countrymen as against their national
enemies." (48) Moreover Lingard's
strictures on Irish disunity read all the more strangely when set against his
own account of English mediæval history which, as told by him, consisted mainly
of rebellion and civil war.
Though it is clear from his
early treatment of the Irish that Lingard harboured a deeply ingrained
prejudice against them, it is also true that for much of his narrative he is
impressively balanced. For example when dealing with the reign of Edward II,
1307-1327, he writes of the English settlers in Ireland as "a multitude of
petty tyrants, who knew no other law than their own interests, and united to
the advantage of partial civilization the ferocity of savages," and of the
natives as "equally lawless, and equally vindictive."
(49) The narrative of events in the reign of Henry VIII is free from
censure of the native Irish and the same is true of his account of the reigns
of Mary (50) and Elizabeth.
(51)
It is with the opening of the
Stuart period that Lingard's treatment of the Irish takes a really new
direction. We have seen him passing from abuse to neutrality: in the latter
half of his work we find him expressing sympathy and understanding. He notes
that under James I, as under Elizabeth, the Irish suffered from the constant
threat of religious persecution and in some instances from legal disabilities,
but what he dwells on is the seizure of Irish land which, beginning under
Elizabeth, was ruthlessly extended under James. He writes that "New
inquiries into defective titles were instituted, and by the most iniquitous
proceedings it was made out that almost every foot of land possessed by the natives
belonged to the Crown ... many were stripped of every acre which they had
inherited from their fathers." (52) Most
important of all Lingard saw in the injustice of these measures the source of
future Irish troubles. The whole paragraph with which he concludes his section
on James I is of great interest since his assessment of the Irish situation
differs radically from Hume's, and to some extent from Green's:
Such
was the state of Ireland at the death of the king. Civil injury had been added
to religious oppression. The natives, whom the new system had despoiled of
their property, or driven from the place of their birth, retained a deep sense
of the wrong which they suffered; and those who had hitherto eluded the grasp
of the servitors and undertakers pitied the fate of their countrymen, and
execrated a government from which they expected in a few years a similar
treatment. There, was indeed a false and treacherous appearance of
tranquillity; and James flattered his vanity with the persuasion that he had
established a new order of things, the necessary prelude to improvement and
civilization. In a short time his error became manifest. He had sown the seeds
of antipathy and distrust, of irritation and revenge; his successor reaped the
harvest, in the feuds, rebellions, and massacres which for years convulsed and
depopulated Ireland.
(53)
Ireland in Lingard's estimation
fared no better in the reign of Charles I, especially under the deputyship of
Strafford who continued the policy of religious persecution and sought further
to deprive the Irish of their land. This policy served "to awaken a
general feeling of discontent, and to alienate the affections of the natives from
a government which treated them with so much deceit and oppression." (54)
These observations of Lingard
prepare us for a very different interpretation of the events of 1641 from that
of Hume. We have seen that the latter attributed the outbreak of the rebellion
to the singular ingratitude and depravity of the Irish, and that he dwelt at
length on the alleged atrocities committed. Lingard, on the other hand, deals
with the same events almost en passant. His account of what happened is so
different that the reader may be momentarily unsure as to whether the same year
and the same events are being dealt with. Lingard mentions the origins of the
rising as being due to an alliance between the natives and the royalist party
and proceeds to say that "the open country was abandoned to the mercy of
the insurgents, who, mindful of their own wrongs and those of their fathers,
burst into the English plantations, seized the arms and property of the
inhabitants, and restored the lands to the former proprietors or to their
descendants. The fugitives with their families sought in crowds an asylum in
the nearest garrisons, where they languished under that accumulation of
miseries which such a state of sudden destitution must invariably
produce." (55) That is all that Lingard
has to say in the main body of his text about the "massacre" of 1641.
True to his promise of refuting Hume without seeming to do so, he relegated all
detailed discussion of this crucial issue to an appendix.
There, where it was likely to
be missed by large numbers of the British public to whom the work was
addressed, Lingard discusses in detail the whole question of the supposed
massacre. He begins with the devastating understatement that "The reader
will perhaps be surprised that I have not alluded to the immense multitude of
English Protestants said to have been massacred at the breaking out of the
rebellion." (56) He continues that he is
aware that Clarendon, Nalson, May and other "writers without number"
had repeated the story of the massacre but he says "such assertions appear
to me rhetorical flourishes, rather than historical statements. They are not
founded on authentic documents. They lead the reader to suppose that the rebels
had formed a plan to surprise and murder all the Protestant inhabitants;
whereas the fact was, that they sought to recover the lands which, in the last
and in the present reign, had been taken from them and given to the English
planters." He admits that in this process lives were lost but "that
no premeditated design of a general massacre existed, and that no such massacre
was made, is evident from the official despatches of the lords justices during
the months of October, November, and December." He then goes on to discuss
the evidence in detail and reiterates the point made earlier in the body of his
text that the blame for the limited violence that did take place should be
shouldered not only by its direct perpetrators but also by those "who
originally sowed the seeds of these calamities by civil oppression and
religious persecution." (57)
Lingard appears to be the first
English historian to critically examine the evidence for the alleged massacre
of 1641, but the conclusions that he reached were inserted into his work in
such a way that they received very little attention. Neither his reviewers nor
his biographers saw fit to comment on the clearing of the good name of a whole
people, though we have seen that they readily lighted on a multitude of other
points. It remained for W. E. H. Lecky, the chief nineteenth century historian
of the Irish, some fifty years later, to bring the whole issue before a wider
audience, when in the opening chapter of the first volume of his History of
Ireland in the Eighteenth Century he brought forward a mass of evidence to
show that there was no massacre. He was seemingly quite unaware of Lingard's
efforts in the same direction. In a letter written in 1878 he mentions that
Clarendon, Hume, Hallam, Goldwin Smith and Green had all lent their support to
the fact of the massacre and implies that he himself was waking a new departure
in re-examining the evidence for it. (58)
Neither here, nor in the main text of his History nor in the footnotes
to his History does he make any reference to the pioneer work of
Lingard.
In the main body of his text
Lingard dealt with the "massacre" of 1641 by almost ignoring it.
However when he came to consider the course of the civil war that followed he
was careful to do justice to both sides in his narrative where it could not be
missed. In a lengthy and moving paragraph he relates how:
One
act of violence was constantly retaliated by another
and how
It has
been usual for writers to present their readers only one half of the picture,
to paint the atrocities of the natives, and to conceal those of their
opponents; but barbarities too revolting to stain these pages are equally
recorded of both; and, if among the one there were monsters who thirsted for
the blood of their victims, there were among the others those who had long been
accustomed to deem the life of a mere Irishman beneath their notice. Nor is it
easy for the impartial historian, in this conflict of passion and prejudice,
amidst exaggerated statements, bold recriminations, and treacherous
authorities, to strike the balance, and to allot to each the due share of
inhumanity and bloodshed.
(59)
Lingard's moderate and reasonable
approach to the events of 1641 set the tone for his subsequent treatment of
Ireland. While he does not dwell at length in the body of his work on the
Cromwellian conquest he describes and by implication condemns the slaughter at
Drogheda and Wexford. (60) He also devotes an
appendix to this subject. His strongest words, however, are reserved for the
settlement of Ireland under the Cromwellian regime - for the expropriation of
the Irish and the persecution of their religion. These are described in detail,
"Seldom" he writes, "has any nation been reduced to a state of
bondage more galling and oppressive ... their feelings were outraged, and their
blood was shed with impunity. They held their property, their liberty, and
their lives, at the will of the petty despots around them, foreign planters,
and the commanders of military posts, who were stimulated by revenge and
interest to depress and exterminate the native population."
(61)
Nor did the Restoration bring
justice for though Charles II lamented the fate of those deprived of their
estates under Cromwell, and though "He sincerely deplored the miserable
state of the Irish natives" (62) the
effect of the legislation passed was to confirm the existing holders of lands
in their estates. He says "A measure of such sweeping and appalling
oppression is perhaps without a parallel in the history of civilized
nations." (63)
Lingard had little reason to
allude to Ireland further in the remainder of his work, for he does not go
beyond 1688, though he noted the pernicious effects of the ban on the export of
Irish cattle to England, (64) and the failure
of the attempt to reopen the land question. (65)
These he relates as relatively minor grievances, but he leaves us with an
overall impression of a burning sense of injustice at the treatment that
Ireland had received from the reign of James I onwards.
How did Lingard arrive at this
position, so different from that of Hume and most other English historians?
Among all the reasons that suggest themselves the most obvious is that Lingard
was a Catholic. A good part of the English detestation of the Irish was
religious in character: we have seen that Hume for example described the
supposed massacre of 1641 as Popery in its most horrible aspect. Clearly this
was not a factor that would affect Lingard's judgment, but he would still be
open to the kind of nationalist prejudice that we find in Gerald of Wales. We
have seen that he was in fact much influenced by this. We find in Lingard
sympathy for the Irish and a lively sense of their grievances but this seems to
have been accompanied by strong reservations about their national character. We
find a similar combination of sympathy and reservation in W. E. H. Lecky. (66)
We have seen in Lingard's
narrative a gradual unfolding of his views. He began with abuse, proceeded to
neutrality and concluded with sympathy. One reason for this is external to
Lingard. English policy in Ireland became steadily harsher as time went on and
therefore any student of history not completely blinded by prejudice might be
led to a sympathetic attitude to Ireland. But the more interesting reason
relates to the mind of Lingard himself.
He begins in 1819 in the
mainstream of English historiography as far as Ireland is concerned: he ends in
1830, the date of the appearance of the last volumes of his first edition, with
attitudes that clearly differentiate him from his predecessors. This may be
attributed to increasing self confidence stemming from the favourable reception
of his first volumes. It may also be attributed to the evolution of his whole philosophy
of history.
Lingard is essentially a
narrative historian. As one of his reviewers wrote disparagingly "The most
important Revolutions glide before us, without any anticipation of their
approach, notice of their arrival, or retrospective of their effects." (67) Analysis is almost totally absent from his
work. He himself despised the whole notion of the "philosophy of
history" describing it as "the philosophy of romance." (68) Consequently, it is not easy to find any
kind of thread or theme in his work. However in his survey of Roman Britain he
did pause to observe that "History is little more than a record of the
miseries inflicted on the many by the passions of a few."
(69) In the original context this remark has little significance.
Lingard simply uses it to explain why for seventy years after the death of
Severus there was no mention of Britain in the annals of the period, but taken
by itself it reveals a singular standpoint. History is not the story of the
triumph of the Anglo-Saxon race, nor of the evolution of the British
constitution, nor of the expansion of the Empire not of any of the other
vainglorious themes beloved by nineteenth century historians. Instead it is in
effect the story of persecution, the record of miseries inflicted by the
powerful few on the masses.
Lingard himself would
indignantly deny that he had any such theme, and would resist the attempt to
seize on a casual observation and erect it into a "philosophy of
history." Nevertheless there are some grounds for doing so. First of all
it is obvious that such a view reflected his own experience of life. He was one
of the persecuted. Unlike his grandfather he had never been imprisoned for his
religion, but he had spent his boyhood and youth in exile on account of it. He
must have been vividly aware of the extent of the possibilities of the abuse of
power. This awareness of government as an agent of oppression rather than as a
beneficient agency, apparent in a casual aside in Volume I, is in fact a major
theme of his work.
For example in treating of the
reign of Elizabeth Lingard reveals his awareness that the enjoyment of power,
influence and success by one group was likely to mean precisely the opposite
for another group. He says
The
historians who celebrate the golden days of Elizabeth, have described with a
glowing pencil the happiness of the people under her sway. To them might be
opposed the dismal picture of national misery drawn by the Catholic writers of
the same period. But both have taken too contracted a view of the subject.
Religious dissension had divided the nation into opposite parties, of almost
equal numbers, the oppressors and the oppressed. Under the operation of the
penal statutes, many ancient and opulent families had been ground to the dust;
new families had sprung up in their place; and these, as they shared the
plunder, naturally eulogised the system to which they owed their wealth and
ascendancy.
He then concludes,
But
their prosperity was not the prosperity of the nation; it was that of one half
obtained at the expense of the other. (70)
Lingard for obvious reasons
identified with the oppressed in England. It was not unnatural, therefore, for
him to identify with the oppressed in Ireland. Awareness of how the English
Catholics had been persecuted from a mixture of motives, religious, political
and economic, naturally fostered in him an awareness of how the Irish had
suffered in the same way. Consciousness of "two nations" within
England produced in him a consciousness of "two nations" within the
British Isles. It is noteworthy that Lingard's sympathy for the Irish only
emerges in the Stuart period, after he had recounted the sufferings of the
English Catholics in the Tudor period.
His view of history was born
from his own experience of life. He was able to present a unique and highly
individual view of English and therefore of Irish history. In spite of the fact
that he confined himself to a strictly political narrative, almost devoid of
flourishes and rhetoric, his personality was impressed upon his pages quite as
firmly as that of any more colourful historian. Perhaps it is even more
apparent in his history than in the case of other historians, for while the
famous Whigs, Macaulay, Froude and Green, for example, wrote to some extent
from a common viewpoint, Lingard expressed no views but his own. He appears to
have had no masters and no followers.
The special contribution that
Lingard made to the study of Irish history may emerge more clearly if his
account is compared with that of Green for the period that they both cover, (71) bearing in mind that Green's account to a
great extent superceded Lingard's, just as Lingard's had superceded Hume's.
Essentially what Green gives us is a modified version of Hume. We have the same
account of Irish anarchy and confusion yielding before the civilizing mission
of the English (72) with the same special
emphasis on the economic benefits of the Ulster plantation.
(73) We have the repetition of the story of the massacre of 1641. (74) This massacre is then taken to justify the invasion
of Cromwell with the slaughter at Drogheda and Wexford being ambiguously
described as "awful" and "terrible."
(75) Are these adjectives meant to evince horror at Cromwell's
actions? Or are they meant to glorify him as the agent of the Lord?
However there are differences
from Hume. Green does show an awareness that the eviction of the Irish from
their land was the underlying cause of subsequent Irish disturbances (76) and he makes the point that ultimately the
process culminated in making the Catholic Irishman a stranger, a foreigner, a
hewer of wood and drawer of water in his own country.
(77)
However the eclipse of
Lingard's history by Green's was nevertheless a loss, from the point of view of
Irish history, for two reasons. Firstly Lingard makes the point about the
injustice of the confiscation of Irish land more emphatically and at greater
length than does Green and secondly he makes a clear connection between this
confiscation and the outbreak of the rebellion of 1641, stressing that one of
the main aims of the rebels was to regain their lost land. Green, on the other
hand, emphasizes not this aspect but the bloodiness of the episode, repeating
in fact the story of the massacre that Lingard had disproved.
How important was this? Did it
really matter what version of English and Irish history was presented to the
public for whom Lingard and Green wrote? Was the massacre of 1641 and the whole
question of Irish grievances of just academic interest? It was obviously much
more than that. The Irish question in one form or another was never totally
absent from the nineteenth century political scene. It mattered greatly what
the public in general and members of parliament in particular understood of
Irish history. A close acquaintance with what Lingard had written on the
subject would certainly produce a better understanding of the nineteenth
century Irish situation than a reading of Green.
Lingard stood apart from the
mainstream of English historiography. But there is one historian to whom he may
be compared, W. E. H. Lecky. Writing in the second half of the nineteenth
century, at a period when the Irish issue divided the English political scene,
Lecky produced a work which aimed at doing justice to Ireland, just as
Lingard's work aimed at doing justice to the Catholics. Both went back to the
sources and produced works of meticulous scholarship. Both prided themselves on
their impartiality and hoped to open the eyes of their readers to new
dimensions of their subject matter.
To couple Lingard's name with
Lecky's is to put him in the first rank of English historians. Unlike Hume or
Green or many others he may be read primarily for his solid achievement as a historian:
his treatment of Irish affairs, especially of the events of 1641, is an
important and neglected aspect of that achievement.
1. Quarterly Review,
Vols. XXXIII (1825), XLVI (1832). LV (1836), "Dr. Lingard," Blackwood's
Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. XIX (1826).
2. Quoted in Donald F. SHEA, The English Ranke: John
Lingard (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), p. 28.
3. Quoted in SHEA, English Ranke, p. 28.
4. "A Vindication," Westminster Review, VII
(1827), p. 187.
5. SHEA, English Ranke, p. 83.
6. SHEA, English Ranke, p. 74.
7. Quoted in SHEA, English Ranke, p. 76.
8. Quoted in SHEA, English Ranke, p. 64.
9. SHEA, English Ranke, p. 76.
10. SHEA, English Ranke, p. 68.
11. Martin HAILE and Edwin BONNEY, Life and Letters of John
Lingard, 1771-1851 (London: 1911), pp. 333-334.
12. Review of LINGARD'S History, Dublin Review, XII
(1842), pp. 295-362.
13. As late as 1872, J. A. Froude for example demanded that the
Irish should do penance for the supposed massacre. J. A. FROUDE, The
English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (3 volumes; New York: AMS
Press, 1969), reprinted from the edition of 1881, Vol. I, p. 106.
14. John LINGARD, The History of England from the First
Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of William and Mary in 1688 (6th
edition 10 volumes, London: Charles Dolman, 1855), Vol. I, p. 6.
15. LINGARD, History, Vol. I, p. 29.
16. G. P. GOOCH, History and Historians in the Nineteenth
Century (2nd. edition; London: Longman's Green and Co., 1952), p. 266.
17. LINGARD, History, Vol. I, pp. 1-10.
18. David HUME, The History of England (8 volumes;
Oxford: Talboys and Wheeler, 1826), Vol. 1, p. 378.
19. HUME, History, Vol. I, pp. 378-379.
20. HUME, History, Vol. V, p. 349.
21. HUME, History, Vol. VI, pp. 50-53.
22. HUME, History, Vol. VI, p. 377.
23. HUME, History, Vol. VI, p. 384.
24. HUME, History, Vol. VI, p. 383.
25. HUME, History, Vol. VI, p. 385.
26. HUME, History, Vol. VI, p. 389.
27. HUME, History, Vol. VI, p. 385.
28. HUME, History, Vol. VII, p. 395.
29. HUME, History, Vol. VIII, p. 221.
30. HAILE and BONNEY, Life, p. 22.
31. HAILE and BONNEY, Life, pp. 31-32.
32. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 85.
33. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 86.
34. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 86.
35. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 86.
36. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 87.
37. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 87.
38. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 94.
39. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 87.
40. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, pp. 87-88.
41. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 88.
42. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 88.
43. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 89.
44. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 94.
45. HAILE and BONNEY, Life, p. 339.
46. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, pp. 89-90.
47. LINGARD, History, Vol. II, p. 96.
48. LINGARD, History, Vol. III, p. 174.
49. LINGARD, History, Vol. III, p. 13.
50. LINGARD, History, Vol. V, p. 263.
51. LINGARD, History, Vol. VI, pp. 155-159, pp.
289-292, pp. 307-309
52. LINGARD, History, Vol. VII, p. 94.
53. LINGARD, History, Vol. VII, p. 95.
54. LINGARD, History, Vol. VII, p. 203.
55. LINGARD, History, Vol. VII, pp. 253-254.
56. LINGARD, History, Vol. VII, p. 282.
57. LINGARD, History, Vol. VII, pp. 282-286, note NNN.
58. A Memoir of the Rt. Hon. William Edward Hartpole Lecky, by his wife (London: Longman's, Green and Co., 1909), p. 121.
59. LINGARD, History, Vol. VII, p. 263.
60. LINGARD, History, Vol. VIII, p. 136.
61. LINGARD, History, Vol. VIII, pp. 177-178.
62. LINGARD, History, Vol. IX, p. 27.
63. LINGARD, History, Vol. IX, pp. 30-31.
64. LINGARD, History,Vol. IX, pp. 67, 145.
65. LINGARD, History, Vol. IX, pp. 145-146.
66. See my article, "Froude, Lecky and The Humblest
Irishman," Irish Historical Studies, Vol. XIX, No. 75 (March,
1975), pp. 261-285.
67. Quoted in SHEA, English Ranke, p. 58.
68. LINGARD, History, Vol. 1, p. 8.
69. LINGARD, History, Vol. 1, p. 34.
70. LINGARD, History, Vol. VI, p. 324.
71. That is down to 1688.
72. J. R. GREEN, A Short History of the English People (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1878), pp. 438-453, pp. 509-510.
73. GREEN, History, p. 452.
74. GREEN, History, p. 527.
75. GREEN, History, pp. 558-559.
76. GREEN, History, pp. 452-453.
77. GREEN, History, pp. 772-773.