surrender and regrant was the principal Tudor policy to integrate Gaelic and Gaelicized lordships into a revamped Irish polity. In the Middle Ages Gaelic lords had no security of tenure and were accounted Irish enemies of the crown. In 1520 Henry VIII himself suggested in debate with
Surrey their assimilation by way of land grants. The difficulties caused by the
Geraldine League paved the way for the new conciliatory initiative under
St Leger and his local ally, Sir Thomas
Cusack. The establishment of the
kingdom of Ireland provided the constitutional framework.
St Leger had financial leeway from the proceeds from the
dissolution of the monasteries, but was not averse to using force against the Leinster Irish and against O'Neill to ensure their co‐operation. The reconciliation of the earl of
Desmond, who agreed to the revival of crown government in his territories, and the attendance of Gaelic and Gaelicized lords at parliament promoted an atmosphere of compromise. The process involved three indentures. In the first the lord recognized the king as sovereign and surrendered his lands, while applying for a grant and peerage; in the second he renounced his Gaelic title and promised to assist the establishment of English law and customs, to render military service, and to pay rents to the crown, receiving in return a charter for lands and noble title; in the third the lord arbitrated internally with his vassals and kinsmen over their respective rights and duties. The final enrolment of these documents in chancery copperfastened the legality of the settlement.
By these means MacWilliam Burke became earl of Clanricard and MacGillapatrick became baron of Upper Ossory. The greatest success was O'Neill's creation as earl of Tyrone in London amid much pomp and propaganda in 1542. It used to be argued that this initiative was achieved by bribing the Gaelic lords with freehold grants of the lands of the whole clan. This was never the crown's intention, though lords later used uncompleted agreements to claim absolute ownership. The crown wanted to stabilize all existing tenures by feudalizing them and there were definite plans to do so in the lordships of O'Neill, O'Reilly, O'Toole, and O'Brien when the policy ground to a halt in 1543. Although the establishment of primogeniture was a long‐term goal, the crown was not inflexible, agreeing the succession of the tanist (see
tánaiste) in both Tyrone and Thomond. The Gaelic lords lost their local sovereignties but their new spirit of co‐operation was evident in their military contributions to the
Boulogne expedition.
Sidney revived surrender and regrant to detach
MacCarthy Mór, as earl of Clancare, from Desmond and had similar projects to detach O'Reilly and O'Donnell from Shane
O'Neill. His parliament passed an act to take surrenders and the calendar of
fiants for this period shows that the policy was continuous in the late Elizabethan period. In the 1580s
Perrot supervised another extensive round of surrenders and regrants in Ulster and north Connacht. The policy could entail confiscation for treasonable action and this occurred with the MacMahon lordship resulting in the partition of
Monaghan between the collaterals and freeholders. This use of subinfeudation to break the power of a great lordship provoked the
Nine Years War and in its aftermath legal disputes continued with Hugh
O'Neill claiming that his patent entitled him to freehold ownership. In the 17th century surrender and regrant continued under the auspices of the Commissions for
Defective Titles, though most applications were now
Old English.
Bibliography
Bradshaw, Brendan , The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (1979)
Hiram Morgan
