8 History of the English Landed Interest. 



attempts resulted in an impracticable muddle, in which tribal 

 customs and seignorial laws were irreconcilably jumbled up. 

 Primogeniture was introduced, but the old Brehon legislation 

 %yas not abolished. The feudal law of distress was enforced 

 more strictly than in England. On the other hand, the lord's 

 powers of entail were limited by the tenant's retention of a 

 tribal right to veto the transference of the lordship to any 

 feudal superior whom they might decide to be hostile to their 

 sept.^ The consequence was that there were Norman barons 

 occupying lands under a system of strict feudal tenure, and 

 Irish chieftains occupying lands under a system more akin to 

 strict septal tenure than feudal. The English of the baronies 

 within the pale were always contending with the L'ish tribal 

 communities without it. It is more than probable that, if left 

 to themselves, the Celtic population would have eventually 

 absorbed the Saxon element, just as it had absorbed the Danish, 

 and then worked out some intelligible system of land tenure 

 suitable to the conflicting interests of both parties concerned ; 

 but in Tudor times this process, w^hich had up to then made 

 rapid and peaceful progress, was detected and checked by the 

 sovereign, and, as in most cases where nature is artificially 

 restricted, the result was a disturbance which has not yet 

 ceased to embitter international relationship. The landlord 

 in Ireland was regarded as a usurper. His tenants had never 

 been his military retainers in battle ; on the contrary, all 

 tradition reminded them of a period when they fought, not 

 under his banner, but against it. There is no doubt that the 

 English feudal superior (at any rate in mediaeval times) derived 

 an immense amount of his influence over the manorial popu- 

 lation from the support of the monastic and secular clergy. 

 Unlike their brethren in England, the landless^ priests of Ireland 

 were in religion, education, and nationality, utter!}'- out of 

 touch with the seignorial element. The agricultural popula- 

 tion therefore came to regard their landlords as oppressors, 



' Systems of Land Tenure, Cobden series. Tenure of Land in Ireland, 

 Rt. Hon. M. Longfield. 



2 The Saggart, the original Irish priest, was as an office-bearer, one of 

 the landlords of the tribe. 



