Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/71

 grant was to be void if a title for the Crown could be established by any other means. And although the Act 12th of Elizabeth, empowering the Lord Deputy to accept the surrenders of the Irish chiefs and to regrant to them the lands thus surrendered, appears to have been framed so as to enable the Crown to give a valid grant to the de facto holders of the chieftainship, yet the decision of the judges in the "Case of Tanistry" was in effect that these surrenders and the consequent validity of the Elizabethan grants might be successfully challenged.

Furthermore, there was frequently a pretext for challenging the legitimacy of the chiefs.

The Canon Law had multiplied impediments to marriage. The Irish chiefs had often taken advantage of this to obtain from the Papal authorities a dissolution of their marriages and liberty to contract new ones. The government by