colony, after the conqueſt of it by king Henry the ſecond; and the laws of England were then received and ſworn to by the Iriſh nation, aſſembled at the council of Liſmore[1]. And as Ireland, thus conquered, planted, and governed, ſtill continues in a ſtate of dependence, it muſt neceſſarily conform to, and be obliged by, ſuch laws as the ſuperior ſtate thinks proper to preſcribe.
At the time of this conqueſt the Iriſh were governed by what they called the Brehon law, ſo ſtiled from the Iriſh name of judges, who were denominated Brehons[2]. But king John in the twelfth year of his reign went into Ireland, and carried over with him many able ſages of the law; and there by his letters patent, in right of the dominion of conqueſt, is ſaid to have ordained and eſtabliſhed that Ireland ſhould be governed by the laws of England[3]: which letters patent ſir Edward Coke[4] apprehends to have been there confirmed in parliament. But to this ordinance many of the Iriſh were averſe to conform, and ſtill ſtuck to their Brehon law: ſo that both Henry the third[5] and Edward the firſt[6] were obliged to renew the injunction; and at length in a parliament holden at Kilkenny, 40 Edw. III, under Lionel duke of Clarence, the then lieutenant of Ireland, the Brehon law was formally aboliſhed, it being unanimouſly declared to be indeed no law, but a lewd cuſtom crept in of later times. And yet, even in the reign of queen Elizabeth, the wild natives ſtill kept and preſerved their Brehon law; which is deſcribed[7] to have been “a rule of right unwritten, but delivered by tradition from one to another, in which oftentimes there appeared great ſhew of equity in determining the right between party and party, but in many things repugnant quite both to God’s law and man’s.” The latter part of this character is alone aſcribed
- ↑ Pryn. on 4 Inſt. 249.
- ↑ 4 Inſt. 358. Edm. Spenſer’s ſtate of Ireland. p. 1513. edit. Hughes.
- ↑ Vaugh. 294. 2 Pryn. Rec. 85. 7 Rep. 23.
- ↑ 1 Inſt. 141.
- ↑ A. R. 30. 1 Rym. Foed. 422.
- ↑ A. R. 5.—pro eo quod leges quibus utuntur Hybernici Deo deteſtabiles exiſtunt, et omni juri diſſonant, adeo quod leges cenſeri non debeant—nobis et conſilio noſtro ſatis videtur expediens, eiſdem utendas concedere leges Anglicanas. 3 Pryn. Rec. 1218.
- ↑ Edm. Spenſer. ibid.
