Page 161 - Demo

Chapter Five 161
The Statutes, of which there were about thirty-six in all and which relegated everything Irish to second-class status, were deemed necessary by the Normans, because the proscribed activities were so widespread, and as one writer of the time said
“.many of the English of the said land (Ireland), forsaking the English language, fashion, mode of riding, laws and usages, live and govern themselves according to the manners, fashion, and language of the Irish enemies and have also made divers mar- riages and alliances between themselves and the Irish enemies aforesaid whereby the English language and the English laws there are put in subjection and decayed.”
To give the reader a brief outline of some of the prohibitions contained in the Statutes, whose preamble referred to the Irish as enemies- they forbade, for example, under pain of high treason, inter-marriage with the Irish and fosterage with the Irish. They forbade, under pain of forfeiture and imprisonment, any Englishman to take an Irish name, to use the Irish language, or wear the Irish dress, nor to ride without a saddle in Irish fashion, and forbade him to have an Irish poet or harper or story-teller in his household.
In other words, the purpose of the Statutes was the unabashed construction of a hostile barrier between the two races, a barrier intended to prevent the races from being fused into one powerful nation. In this case, the acts came too late and were of little avail in turning back the tide of Gaelicism, as both the Gaedhil and the Gaill generally ignored them. Despite remaining for the most part a dead letter, nonetheless ,the partially and spasmodically en- forced Statutes of Kilkenny favoured the growth in Ireland of a new class of English who strove to maintain a strong relationship with England and who were destined, in time, to rule the land.
Now it is said that no Irish chieftain of this period was so feared or loathed by the English colonists as Art Oge MacMurrough Kavanagh, King of Leinster. A descendant of the rec- reant Dermot MacMurrough, who had irst brought in the Normans, Art was elected King of Leinster in 1375 when he was just eighteen years old. An astute leader and louter, Art married Elizabeth de Veel, daughter of Maurice Fitzgerald, fourth Earl of Kildare and heir- ess to the barony of Norragh in Kilkenny, and as this marriage constituted a breach of the Statutes of Kilkenny, her estates were seized by the Government. Simultaneously with this seizure the payment of MacMurrough’s “Black Rent”of 80 marks annually was also stopped.
Black Rent was a tribute paid by the settlers to an Irish chieftain for protection. The