Dark Chaos in Dublin
Sir James Keating.—Nor did order and loyalty flourish conspicuously at the very seat of government. Unseemly broils between the chief officials, and faction fights between the followers of different parties were frequent.
The authority of the Crown was more than once defied by its own representatives, and their example was followed by others. When Lord Grey was sent over by the King to supersede the Earl of Kildare as Lord Deputy (1478) he was refused admission to Dublin Castle by its Constable, Sir James Keating, who garrisoned the Castle, and held it for two years. Keating was also Prior of Kilmainham, an important military ” hospital” of the Knights of St. John beside Dublin.
When deprived of this rank in 1482 he imprisoned his successor, and kept possession of the ” hospital.” Although the King excepted Keating from the general pardon to the adherents of Simnel (1488) , yet the intractable Prior held defiant possession of the ” hospital ” for another three years.
Anti-Irish Decrees.—Reduced to this condition of impotence, the Crown officials could only display a futile malevolence by further anti-Irish enactments.
Some of these declarations against the adoption of Irish customs border on the ridiculous. In 1447 it was enacted that ” every man must keep his upper lip shaved or else be treated as an Irish enemy ” In 1465 it was ordered that every Irishman living in the Pale was to dress and shave like an Englishman, and take an English name, such as the name of a town, colour, or calling. Poynings’ Parliament in 1495 repeated the prohibitions of the ” Statute of Kilkenny ” with the conspicuous exception of that against the Irish language.
So general was Irish now, that no attempt could be made to prohibit it. In 1498 further enactments were passed against Irish dress and the Irish custom of riding without saddles. More important than the enactments against the adoption of Irish customs in the Pale were those attempting to cut off all intercourse between the colonists and the Irish. In 1432 it was made felony to trade with the native Irish, and any Irishman trading with the King’s lieges was to be treated as the King’s enemy.
In 1465 it was declared that any Irishman found in the Pale not in the company ” of a faithful man in English apparel ” might be killed and the slayer rewarded. In the same year ships were prohibited from fishing in Irish waters, because the dues thereof enriched the Irish. In 1480 all intercourse between the two peoples was again prohibited.