Above : Painting Of King Henry VII

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 1 ” 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.

These vicious decrees, like similar earlier ones, fell most heavily on the colonists, and, like those, they were ignored or evaded. They were directed, indeed, against the social and economic life of the country. Irish language, dress and customs prevailed everywhere even within the Pale itself. The limits of the Pale were too narrow for its impoverished inhabitants to be able to exist if shut off from trade and intercourse with the country around. When Mac Riocaird Butler wrote in the Saltair of Caiseal, it was in Irish ; when Desmond’s grandson placed the facts of the Great Earl’s death before the Council, it was in Irish ; Kildare’s great library in Maynooth Castle had as many books in Irish as in any other language. Desmond, Ormonde and Kildare all practised fosterage and gossipred, married with Irish families, and fought side by side with them in each other’s quarrels. In the Pale itself we hear the sad complaint in 1498 that the burghers of Kells, Trim, Navan and Dundalk use the Irish dress. The races had become completely fused despite the efforts of the ” new English ” officials.