The English Pale

CHAPTER XL

The English Pale

After the first waves of Anglo-Norman invasion had subsided, and the new settlers had securely established themselves in Dublin, their next care was to set about clearing the natives from the country immediately outside it, with a view to carrying on, without molestation, the arts of agriculture and husbandry upon which the colony depended for its food supplies, as in any emergency the colonists could not count upon speedy succour from their kinsfolk across the sea; for England was, in those days, to all intents and purposes, as remote from Ireland as is America at the present day.

Towards the close of the reign of Edward I., there seems to have been a general tendency on the part of English settlers throughout the country to congregate in the district around Dublin, which thence became known as “The English Land,” while those English who resided outside it were said to be “inter Hibernicos,” *i.e., *among the Irish. This district was limited, roughly speaking, by the great mountain tract of Wicklow on the south, by the Carlingford and Mourne Mountains on the north, and by the Westmeath shore of the Shannon on the West, whence the border ran by Edenderry, Rathangan, and Kildare to the Barrow, following the course of that river to the sea. It was not until a full century after this, that the English land became known as “The Pale,” from which period it showed a general tendency to shrinkage on account of the encroachment of the natives, until by 1515 it included only portions of the four counties, Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Uriel (Louth).

About the year 1364 the power of the Kavanaghs and other native chieftains had grown to such an extent that the outlying portions of the Pale had to be abandoned, and the settlers generally had to fall back from the border extending southward by Kildare and Carlow to the sea. These chieftains exacted a tribute called “Black Rent,” from the English settlers along the borders, guaranteeing in return, immunity from molestation by the Irish; and this tax became at last so intolerable an impost that an Act was passed in the 24th year of Henry VIII. (1533) forbidding any further payments of this description. That this enactment, however, failed in its object is shown by the complaint of the Irish Council in 1599 that the English subjects still paid most oppressive “black rents.”

With the view of anglicising such Irish as lived within the Pale, it was enacted in 1465 that every Irishman dwelling among Englishmen, in the Counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth and Kildare, “shall go like to one Englishman in apparel, and shaving off his beard above the mouth, and shall be within one year sworn the liege man of the King, and shall take to him an English surname of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trim, Scrine, Cork, Kinsale; or colour, as white, black,* *brown; or art or science, as smith or carpenter; or office as cook, butler, &c., and he and his issue shall use this name under pain of forfeiting his goods yearly.”

By an Act of a Parliament held at Drogheda in 1488, the boundary of the Counties (Dublin, Meath, Kildare, and Uriel or Louth), constituting the Pale, is defined as extending “from Merrion inclusive to the waters of the Dodder, by the new ditch to Saggard, Rathcoole, Kilheel [Kilteel], Rathmore, and Ballymore [Eustace]; thence to the County of Kildare, into Ballycutlan, Harristown, and Naas, and so, thence to Clane, Kilboyne, and Kilcock, in such manner that the towns of Dalkey, Carrickbrennan [Monkstown], Newtown [Blackrock], Rochestown, Clonken, Smethistown, Ballyboteer [Booterstown], with Thorncastle [between Booterstown and Blackrock] and Bullock, were in Dublin Shire.” This last proviso meant that the coast from Dublin to Bullock was included in the Pale, although detached from the main portion of it. From Kilcock the boundary ran by the Rye Water and Ballyfeghin to the parish of Laracor, thence to Bellewstown by the Boyne “and so far as the Blackwater runneth from Athboy, and so, to Blackcawsey by Rathmore to the Hill of Lyde, and then to Muldahege and the parish of Tallen and Donaghpatrick, Clongell, and so, to Syddan, and so, down to Maundevillestown, by West Ardee, and so, to the water of Dundugan, and so, as that water goeth to the sea.”

(The Pale according to the Statute of 1488.)

So far, there appears to have been no fence or boundary to mark the limits of the Pale, but in 1494, at a Parliament convened at Drogheda by Sir Edward Poynings, the author of the famous “Poynings’ Law,” an act was passed for the construction and maintenance of a great double ditch or rampart, around the whole district. This Act ran as follows: - “As the marches of four shires lie open and not fensible in fastness of ditches and castles, by which Irishmen do great hurt in preying the same; it is enacted that every inhabitant, earth tiller, and occupier in said marches

• *i.e., *in the County of Dublin, from the water of Anliffey to the mountain in Kildare, from the water Anliffey to Trim, and so, forth to Meath and Uriell, as said marches are made and limited by the Act of Parliament held by William Bishop of Meath, do build and make a double ditch of six feet high above ground at one side or part which mireth next unto Irishmen, betwixt this and the next Lammas, and the said ditches to be kept up and repaired so long as they shall Occupy said land, under pain of 40s.; the lord of said lands to allow the old rent of said lands to the builder for one year, under said penalty.”

In 1537, Justice Luttrell refers to the Pale as extending “from Dublin to Tallaght, and so, by the mountain foot into Oughterard, and thence into St. Wolstan’s [near Celbridgej and to Leixlip, and thence to the Barony of Dunboyne, Rathangan, and so, as the highway extendeth thence to Trim unto Athboy, and from Athboy to Ardbraccan, and from Ardbraccan to Slane, and from Slane to Mellifont and to Drogheda, and so, as the sea extendeth to Dublin.” This shows a considerable shrinkage as compared with the limits defined by the Act of 1488.

In the 34th year of Henry VIII. (1543) the vexed question of the boundaries of the Pale was again the subject of an enactment, by which k was laid down that “The English Pale

doth stretche and extend from the town of Dundalk to the town of Derver [Darver] to the town of Ardee, always on the left side, leaving the march on the right side, and so, to the town of Sydan, to the town of Kenlis [Kells] to the town of Dengle [Dangan] to Kilcocke, to the town of Clane, to the town of Naas, to the bridge of Kilcullen, to the town of Balimore [Eustace], and so, backward to the town of Ramore [Rathmore], and so, to the town of Rathcoule, to the town of Tallaght, and to the town of Dalkey, leaving always the marche on the right hand from the saide Dundalk, following the saide course to the saide town of Dalkey.”

This enactment seems to have been a mere assertion of authority on the part of the Government, as at the time large portions of the district on the south, adjoining the mountains, were practically in possession of the Irish.

The lands immediately outside the Pale constituted a sort of neutral ground, such as we nowadays call a “hinterland,” and were known as the March lands or the Marches. These districts were occupied sometimes by English and sometimes by Anglo-Irish, but almost invariably by old soldiers and men accustomed to the use of arms, and being the scene of unceasing raids and guerilla warfare, were generally in a waste and desert condition. The Marches are sometimes referred to in old records as “the land of war,” and the conditions of life there closely resembled those in former times existing on the Scottish border.

The favourite ambition of Richard II. was to drive the Irish out of Leinster, and in this he would probably have succeeded but for two great natural obstacles. One of these was the dangerous and impenetrable district now known as the Bog of Allen, at that time partly covered by primeval forest, and held by the O’Connors, Princes of Offaly. The other was the wild mountainous tract extending for over forty miles south and south-west of Dublin, and over twenty miles in width, which remained unsubjugated and even unexplored by the English up to comparatively recent times. Into neither of these districts durst the armoured and mail-clad Anglo-Norman troops venture, as their elaborate and cumbersome equipment would only prove their undoing, and facilitate their destruction by the agile and light-footed Irish kerne, who were as much at home in these trackless forests and treacherous swamps as the snipe and the woodcock that inhabited them. For centuries afterwards, these two districts defied all efforts at conquest, and in the case of Wicklow, it may indeed be said that the long struggle ended only 100 years ago, after the construction of the Military roads, and the erection of barracks at Glencree, Drumgoff, and Aughavanagh.

How the English colonists, looking forth from the battlements of their wall-girt city at the neighbouring mountains, must have fumed and fretted at these natural obstacles to their dominion, is indicated by the querulous letter of Sir George Carew in 1590, in which he states that “those that dwell even in the sight of the smoke of Dublin are not subject to the laws.”

Campion thus speaks of the Pale in his *History of Ireland *(1571):- “An old distinction there is of Ireland into Irish and English Pales; for when the Irish had raised continual tumults against the English planted heere with the Conquest, at last they coursed them into a narrow circuite of certain shires in Leinster, which the English did choose as the fattest soyle, most defensible their proper right, and most open to receive helpe from England. Hereupon it was termed ‘their Pale’ as whereout they durst not peepe. But now both within this Pale, uncivill Irish and some rebells do dwell, and without it countreyes and cities English are well governed.”

Gerard Boate in his *Natural History of Ireland *(1652) makes the following interesting allusion to the Pale, entirely, of course, from the colonist’s point of view:- “There is yet another division of Ireland whereby the whole land is divided into two parts, the English Pale and the land of the mere Irish. The English Pale comprehendeth only four counties, one whereof is in Ulster - viz., Louth, and the other three in Leinster, to wit, Meath, Dublin, and Kildare; the original of which division is this. The English at the first conquest, under the reign of Henry II., having within a little time conquered great part of Ireland, did afterwards, in the space of not very many years make themselves masters of almost all the rest, having expelled the natives (called the wild Irish, because that in all manner of wildness they may be compared with the most barbarous nations of the earth) into the desert woods and mountains. But afterwards being fallen at odds amongst themselves, and making several great wars, the one upon the other, the Irish thereby got the opportunity to recover now this, and then that part of the land, whereby, and through the degenerating of a great many from time to time, who, joining themselves with the Irish, took upon them their wild fashions and their language, the English in length of time, came to be so much weakened, that at last nothing remained to them of the whole kingdom worth the speaking of, but the great cities and the forenamed four counties, to whom the name of the Pale was given, because that the authority and government of the kings of England, and the English colonies or plantations, which before had been spread over the whole land, now were reduced to so small a compass; and as it were, impaled within the same. And although since the beginning of this present age, and since King James’s coming to the Crown of England, the whole island was reduced under the obedience and government of the English laws, and replenished with English and Scotch colonies; nevertheless, the name of the English Pale, which in the old signification was now out of season, remained in use, and is so still, even since this last bloody rebellion [1641] wherein the inhabitants of almost all the Pale, although all of them of English descent, have conspired with the native Irish, for to shake off the government of the Crown of England, and utterly to extinguish the reformed religion, with all the professors thereot and quite to root them out of Ireland.” (A typical example of an English writer of the period on Irish matters.)

Of the double-ditch constructed in pursuance of the Act of Poynings’ Parliament in 1494, some portions still remain or remained till recently, that “from Merrion inclusive to the water of the Dodder,” having been doubtless the old double-ditch and pathway running through the fields south of Aylesbury road, from old Merrion Churchyard to Seaview Terrace near Anglesea Bridge over the Dodder. This was the route taken by the Corporation in ancient times, when riding the franchises or boundaries of their municipal jurisdiction, which, naturally enough, were, in the neighbourhood of the city, coincident with the limits of the Pale. Although this ancient passage has now been closed for many years past, and its original mearing is nearly all levelled, its course can still be traced from Seaview Terrace down to Nutley Lane. Indications of it are again discernible in the grounds of Nutley, behind the boundary wall of St. Mary’s Asylum until it joins the lane leading by Old Merrion Churchyard, out on the Rock Road. At this point stood Merrion Castle, the ancient stronghold of the Fitzwilliams, who, as territorial proprietors, were relied upon to keep inviolate this portion of the English settlement against the incursions of the mountain tribes, for which reason probably this place was selected as suitable for the commencement of the rampart of the Pale.

From where Anglesea Bridge now stands, “the water of the Dodder,” probably formed the boundary as far as Firhouse or Oldbawn, above which it would have been perilously close to the mountains. Of “the new ditch” which ran to Saggart, Rathcoole, and on to Ballymore Eustace, and which may have been an earthwork constructed at an earlier period for the same purpose, I am not aware of any portion now surviving, nor of any trace of the rampart of 1494, until we come to Clane, where a portion commences about half a mile north-east of the village, running northward for half a mile until it is lost in the lawn of Clongowes Wood College. It re-appears just beside the College farmhouse, immediately north of the main buildings, and continues for about a quarter of a mile northward, almost reaching the by-road that leads to Rathcoffey House. A further portion may be seen about three miles north of the College, to the right of the road to Kilcock, continuing for over a quarter of a mile, and forming portion of the boundary dividing the parishes of Clane and Kilcock. All these portions retain their original dimensions, and although the rampart must have presented but a trifling obstacle to the Irish, who were described as being “so swift of foot, that like unto stags they ran over mountains and valleys,” yet it must have afforded a valuable protection to the settlers against cattle raids, which formed the principal motive of most of the Irish incursions into the Pale.

The responsibility for the maintenance and repairing of this great earthwork devolved upon the Wardens of the Marches, the stern realities of whose life are vividly depicted in the spirited reply of Garret, Earl of Kildare, Lord Deputy, to charges preferred against him in 1524 by Cardinal Wolsey: - “As touching my kingdom (my lord); I would you and I had exchange kingdomes but for one moneth, I would trust to gather up more crummes in that space than twice the revenues of my poor earldome; but you are well and warme, and so hold you, and urbraide me not with such an odious storme. I sleepe in a cabbin when you lye soft in your bed of downe; I serve under the cope of heaven, when you are served under a canopy; I drinke water out of a skull [helmet) when you drink [wine] out of golden cuppes; my courser is trained to the field, when your jennet is taught to amble; when you are begraced and belorded, and drowched, and kneeled unto, then I finde small grace with our Irish borderers, except I cut them off by the knees.”

It is possible that along the line of border defined by the Statute of 1488, there may still remain many other portions of the Rampart besides those described herein, and it is to be hoped that the matter will be further investigated by persons living in the several localities.

In the preparation of this chapter valuable information has been derived from the following articles in *The Journals of the County Kildare Archaeological Society- *viz., “The Rampart of the Pale,” by the Rev. M. Devitt, S.J., in Vol.111.; “The Pale,” by the late Rev. Denis Murphy, S.J., in Vol.11.

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