The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.
IX. Historical and Political Writings.
§ 13. Other works.
| Carew, who seems to have taken a warm interest in Irish history, translated, from the French, with illustrative notes, Morice Regan’s History of Ireland, as well as the story of Richard II’s last visit to Ireland by a French gentleman in his suite. These were included in part I of Hibernica (1770), which contains various documents of interest, including the project for the division and plantation of Ulster. The policy advocated by Spenser was carried out by Sir John Davies, who, in succession, was solicitor-and attorney-general for Ireland during the years 1603–11, became speaker of the (Irish) House of Commons in 1613, and was appointed chief-justice of Ireland just before his death. His rare administrative ability was exercised in the great historical operation of the plantation of Ulster, as well as in the organisation of local government, especially in that province, and in the reform of the parliamentary system, which he established on the lines followed by it for nearly two centuries. His Discovrie of the True Causes why Ireland was not entirely subdued … until the beginning of his Majesty’s happie Raigne (1612, rptd. 1613) marks out the lines on which the system of government consistently pursued by him was conducted; the parliament over whose House of Commons he presided was, consequently, the first in which a majority entirely controlled by the English council was confronted by a nationalist opposition. 17 The historical interest of his book is, therefore, exceptionally great. |
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| The last works on Irish history which call for mention here deal with a later period. Richard Bellings’s contemporary History of the Irish Confederation (to which he was secretary) and the War in Ireland, 1641–3 (edited by J. T. Gilbert) is accompanied by many documents, and necessarily takes a view of Irish affairs directly opposed to that of a better known work, intended as a vindication of the government of the duke of Ormonde and his royal master before the outbreak of the Irish troubles under Charles I. The authorship of the History of the Irish Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland, with the true State and Condition of that Kingdom before the Year 1640, has been disputed; but there seems to be no doubt that it was the work of Clarendon, with whose name it was brought out in 1721, and in whose History, as afterwards published, it was incorporated, as a seventh volume, under the title A Short View of the State and Condition of the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1640 to this time. Clarendon’s authorship of the work was attested by his successor in the earldom, and the internal evidence would almost have sufficed to settle the question. For the narrative is composed in his most forensic style, and throughout displays his indiscreet pertinacity as well as his lucidity in argument. He is said to have written it at Cologne, and to have had the assistance of Ormonde in defending his conduct. The special object of the work is to refute the Roman Catholic point of view, while an appendix 18 shows how the “Rebels of England” retaliated upon “the Papists that rebelled in Ireland.” |
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