Second paragraph of third document (‘A Letter from Sir John Davies, Knight, Attorney-General of Ireland, to Robert Earl of Salisbury, touching the state of Monaghan Fermanagh and Cavan, wherein is a discourse concerning the corbes and irenahs of Ireland’):
After the end of the last term my Lord Deputy took a resolution to visit three counties in Ulster, namely, Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan, which, being the most unsettled and unreformed pasts of that province, did most of all need his Lordship’s visitation at that time.
This is rather an interesting collection. The foreword gives the reader the following instructions:
- first, read the last chapter
- then read the second chapter as far as page 330
- then read the first chapter
- then read the rest of the book from page 330 to the end of the second last chapter
- and finish with the appendices if you like.
I don’t think I’ve ever before seen a non-fiction book suggesting that you read the chapters out of order. (Of course, it’s standard for Choose Your Own Adventure type books, but they are not usually non-fiction.)
It’s a collection of Irish historical documents from late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, really from 1596 to 1610. The documents themselves are printed in chronological order of composition, but Edward Morley, the editor, was right to suggest that you should start with Fynes Morison’s description of Ireland, then go to John Davies’ potted history of Ireland under British rule (which was what tipped me off to the existence of the Duke of Ireland), then go to Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland with that background fresh in your mind, and then read the remaining 80 pages of material from John Davies (and 15 pages of appendices).
The centrepiece of the book really is Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland, the first chapter in composition order. It’s well written and brutal, and argues that the English just need to destroy Irish possessions and traditions until the Irish become tractable; the beatings will continue until morale improves. He did not live to see this put into practice by Mountjoy at the end of the Nine Years’ War, but he would certainly have approved. One senses Motley, as editor, putting this and the other pieces on the pacification of Ireland forward as a contribution to the Whig theory of Irish history, that enlightened rule from London was the inevitable and desirable end point.
Still, important primary material which I’m glad I have handy. You can get POD copies in various places.
My eye was caught by one of the observations by John Davies, that in the new settlement, the judges “do now every half-year, like good planets in their several spheres or circles, carry the light and influence of justice round about the kingdom”. It’s a really interesting astronomical metaphor. One can speculate about the likelihood (or not) of an Irish administrator in 1612 knowing about the Copernican system; Kepler’s Astronomia Nova was published in 1609, and one can imagine that even if copies were not available, it would have been the talk of educated circles in Dublin, especially around the new university.
This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest on my shelves. Next on that pile is Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922, eds. Edmund Curtis & R.B. McDowell.
