Goldwin Smith

Irish History and Irish Character Goldwin Smith

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861 Excerpt: ...were employed to oust innocent men from their rightful inheritance. A criminal prosecution was commenced against the brothers on fictitious grounds by Sir William Parsons and his accomplice in this infamous transaction; and evidence in support of the prosecution was not only raked up from most tainted sources, but wrung out by the use of atrocious tortures, a reluctant witness being placed naked on a burning gridiron, and put to the strappado. The Byrnes were at last released from prison by a commission sent over by the English Government, which had at first been hood-winked, to inquire into the affair: but their lands were never restored to them. Surely these men and their descendants, even to the tenth generation, might be acquitted of inherent depravity if they required Coercion Acts to make them love Sir William Parsons' law. Security for their lands against the rapacious encroachments carried on in the name of the Crown was the main object of the "graces" which the Catholic nobility and gentry offered to purchase for a large sum of Charles I.; though they sought by the same petition some indulgence for their religion and a redress of the gross abuses which in Ireland as in England disgraced the government, the fiscal system, and the administration of justice. The abolition of the fines exacted for d Life of Ormond, bk. i. p. 74, fol. ed. ploughing with the tails of cattle, which like the fines for recusancy had turned into a mere harvest for officials, figures strangely in a document analogous to the English Petition of Right. Charles was himself in this transaction. He pocketed the money of the petitioners and then took advantage of a technical breach of Poynings' Law, requiring the previous consent of the English Privy Council to Irish Acts...