9 



But the invaders in endeavouring, during their subjugation of 

 this country, to plant the exclusive privileges of their order in 

 its complete feudal polity, found powerful obstacles in the 

 half- conquered Celtic race, (whose genius was opposed to such 

 institutions, and who remained hostile to the strangers until 

 moulded to Irish manners and usages,) from the dominancy of 

 the hierarchy, drawn mostly from the native ranks, and in the 

 noble stand made by their own class to curb the encroachments 

 of the crown or of individuals. 



The English lords by the great charter confirmed on an island 

 in the principal river of their kingdom interposed to prevent 

 undue powers of monopoly. The prerogative of the Crown was 

 taken away, to appropriate for the future the uses of rivers ; it 

 was also ordained, " henceforth let all weirs be entirely re- 

 moved from the Thames and Medway, and through all England, 

 except along the coasts of the sea ;" while the Forest charter 

 prohibited the emparking of districts for hunting, and restricted 

 the arbitrary and exclusive right to the pursuit of game arro- 

 gated by the Norman race.* 



The extension of these liberties was shortly after conceded 

 to English subjects in Ireland, and confirmed in many subse- 

 quent Acts of her Parliament. 



The sovereigns of Scotland monarchs of a poorer soil, but 

 of more united people than those of Ireland successfully 

 claimed the great river fisheries of that country as inter regalia, 

 and the grant of a barony ' cum piscationibus,' conferred those 

 many private titles which are there maintained to the present 

 day. The power of government in Ireland, always feeble, 

 waned until the reign of Henry VIII., and the rich property of 

 its fisheries was not generally asserted as appertaining to royalty, 

 until the king of Scotland, after ascending the English throne, 

 extended his national viewt of this regal franchise.^ 



* The early charters of Seigniories granted in Ireland appear to convey a 

 right of property in every particular in which it could well be exercised, and 

 especially in the article of game, and of iheferce naturae, a jealous claim to which 

 was a characteristic of the 'haughty Norman.' So exclusively were powers, 

 partly public, exercised by the feudal barons in Ireland, that we find De 

 Courcy, earl of Ulster, granting to the prior of Down, liberty of passage over 

 the water of Strangford, and other principal rivers, and the tithe of all the earl's 

 huntings through his whole territory, in all places where his hunters meet. 



The genius of the Celtic tribes has always been to make certain descriptions 

 of property, as pasturage, and many animals, commonable, and even arable 

 land to be held in ' rundale.' 



t Sir John Davies, the unscrupulous attorney-general for Ireland of James I. 

 (a monarch who was much the cause of bringing civil war on his country, and 

 his son to the block, by his doctrines of absolutism), in a course of special plead- 

 ing to prove that the fishery of the Bann was an ancient inheritance of the 

 crown, argues, that as tidal waters are 'les haults streams le roy,' the right of 

 piscary in them is a royal prerogative. The evident meaning of the phrase is, 

 that they are simply the ' king's highway.' 



$ The exclusive right of fishing in a public river is a royal franchise, and is 



