[Illustration: HOLY ISLAND LOUGH DERG. (_From a painting by Watkins. _)]

The Story of the Nations

THE

STORY OF IRELAND

BY

THE HON. EMILY LAWLESS

AUTHOR OF "HURRISH: A STUDY, " ETC

WITH SOME ADDITIONS BY

MRS. ARTHUR BRONSON

NEW YORK

LONDON

1896

To

THE EARL OF DUFFERIN, K. P. , G. C. B. , F. R. S. , &c. , VICEROY OF INDIA. 

 * * * * *

SGEUL NA H-ÉIREANN

DON ÉIREANNACH AS FIÚ. 

PREFACE. 

Irish history is a long, dark road, with many blind alleys, many suddenturnings, many unaccountably crooked portions; a road which, if it has afew sign-posts to guide us, bristles with threatening notices, now uponthe one side and now upon the other, the very ground underfoot beingoften full of unsuspected perils threatening to hurt the unwary. 

To the genuine explorer, flushed with justified self-confidence, wellequipped for the journey, and indifferent to scratches or bruises, onemay suppose this to be rather an allurement than otherwise, as he spursalong, lance at rest, and sword on side. To the less well-equippedtraveller, who has no pretensions to the name of explorer at all, noparticular courage to boast of, and whose only ambition is to make theway a little plainer for some one travelling along it for the firsttime, it is decidedly a serious impediment, so much so as almost toscare such a one from attempting the _rôle_ of guide even in theslightest and least responsible capacity. 

Another and perhaps even more formidable objection occurs. A historybeset with such distracting problems, bristling with such thornycontroversies, a history, above all, which has so much bearing upon thatportion of history which has still to be born, ought, it may be said, tobe approached in the gravest and most authoritative fashion possible, orelse not approached at all. This is too true, and that so slight asummary as this can put forward no claim to authority of any sort isevident enough. National "stories, " however, no less than histories, gain a gravity, it must be remembered, and even at times a solemnityfrom their subject apart altogether from their treatment. A good readerwill read a great deal more into them than the mere bald words convey. The lights and shadows of a great or a tragic past play over their easysurface, giving it a depth and solidity to which it could otherwise layno claim. If the present attempt disposes any one to study at first handone of the strangest and most perplexing chapters of human history andnational destiny, its author for one will be more than content. 

CONTENTS. 

I. 

PRIMEVAL IRELAND

Early migrations--The great ice age--Northern character of the fauna andflora of Ireland--First inhabitants--Formorian, Firbolgs, Tuatha-da-Dannans--Battle of Moytura Cong--The Scoto-Celticinvasion--Annals and annalists, how far credible?

II. 

THE LEGENDS AND LEGEND-MAKERS

The legends--Their archaic character--The pursuit of Gilla Backer andhis horse--The ollamhs--Positions of the bards or ollamhs inPrimitive Ireland. 

III. 

PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND

Early Celtic law--The Senchus Mor and Book of Aicill--Laws ofinheritance--Narrow conception of patriotism. 

IV. 

ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY

St. Patrick's birth--Capture, slavery, and escape--His return toIreland--Arrives at Tara--Visits Connaught and Ulster--Early Irishmissionaries and their enthusiasm for the work. 

V. 

THE FIRST IRISH MONASTERIES

"The Tribes of the Saints"--Small oratories in the West--Plan ofmonastic life--Ready acceptance of Christianity. 

VI. 

COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH

Birth of Columba--His journey to Iona--His character andhumanity--Conversion of Saxon England--Schism between Western Church andPapacy--Synod of Whitby--The Irish Church at home. 

VII. 

THE NORTHERN SCOURGE

Ireland divided into five kingdoms--The Ard-Reagh--Arrival ofVikings--Thorgist or Turgesius?--Later Viking invaders--The roundtowers--Dublin founded--Hatred between the two races. 

VIII. 

BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE

Two deliverers--Defeat of the Vikings at Sulcost--Brian becomes king ofMunster--Seizes Cashel--Overcomes Malachy--Becomes king ofIreland--Celtic theory of loyalty--Fresh Viking invasion--Battle ofClontarf--Death of Brian Boru. 

IX. 

FROM BRIAN TO STRONGBOW

Result of Brian Boru's death--Chaos returns--Struggle for thesuccession--Roderick O'Connor, last native king of Ireland. 

X. 

THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION

First group of knightly invaders--Their relationship--Giraldus

Cambrensis--Motives for invasion--Papal sanction--Dermot McMurrough--Heenlists recruits--Arrival of Robert FitzStephen--Wexford, Ossory, andKilkenny captured--Arrival of Strongbow--Struggle with Hasculph the Daneand John the Mad--Danes defeated--Dublin besieged--Strongbow defeatsRoderick O'Connor, goes to Wexford, and embarks at Waterford--Meets theking--Arrival of Henry II. 

XI. 

HENRY II. IN IRELAND

Large military forces of Henry--The chiefs submit and do homage--Irishtheory of Ard-Reagh or Over-Lord--Henry in Dublin--Synod atCashel--Henry recalled to England. 

XII. 

EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION

Effect of Henry's stay in Ireland--His large schemes--Their practicalfailure--Rapacity of adventurers--Contrast between Irish and theirconquerors--Civil war from the outset. 

XIII. 

JOHN IN IRELAND

John's first visit--His insolence and misconduct--Recalled indisgrace--Second visit as king--His energy--Overruns Meath andUlster--Returns to England--Effect of his visit. 

XIV. 

THE LORDS PALATINE

The Geraldines--Their possessions in Ireland--The five palatinates--Theheirs of Strongbow--The De Burghs--The Butlers--Importance of the greatterritorial owners in Ireland. 

XV. 

EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND

Want of landmarks in Irish history--Edward the I. 's reign--Battle ofBannockburn--Its effect on Ireland--Scotch invasion under EdwardBruce--Ravages and famine caused by him--The colonists regain courage:Battle of Dundalk--Edward Bruce killed--Result of the Scotch invasion. 

XVI. 

THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY

Reign of Edward III. --A lost opportunity--Duke of Clarence sent toIreland--Parliament at Kilkenny--Statute of Kilkenny--Its objects--TwoIrelands--Weakness resorts to cruelty--Effects of the statute. 

XVII. 

RICHARD II. IN IRELAND

Richard the II. 's two visits to Ireland--Utter disorganization of thecountry--The chieftains submit and come in--"Sir Art"McMurrough--Richard leaves, and Art McMurrough breaks out again--Earl ofMarch killed--Richard returns--Attacks Art McMurrough--Failure ofattack--Recalled to England--His defeat and death--Confusion redoubles. 

XVIII. 

THE DEEPEST DEPTHS

Monotony of Irish history--State of Ireland during the Wars of theRoses--Pillage, carnage, and rapine--The seaport towns--Richard Duke ofYork in Ireland--His conciliatory policy--Battle of Towton--The Kildaresgrow in power--Geroit Mor--His character. 

XIX. 

THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT

Effect of the battle of Bosworth--Kildare still in power--Lambert Simnelin Ireland--Crowned in Dublin--Battle of Stoke--Henry VII. Pardons therebels--Irish peers summoned to Court--Perkin Warbeck inIreland--Quarrels between the Kildares and Ormonds--Sir EdwardPoynings--Kildare's trial and acquital--Restored to power--Battleof Knocktow. 

XX. 

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE

Rise of Wolsey to power--Resolves to destroy the Geraldines--Geroit Morsucceeded by his son--Earl of Surrey sent as viceroy--Kildare restoredto power--Summoned to London and imprisoned--Again restored and againimprisoned--Situation changed--Revolt of Silken Thomas--SeizesDublin--Archbishop Allen murdered--Sir William Skeffington toIreland--Kildare dies in prison--"The Pardon of Maynooth"--Silken Thomassurrenders, and is executed. 

XXI. 

THE ACT OF SUPREMACY

Lord Leonard Grey deputy--Accused of treason, recalled and executed--Actof Supremacy proposed--Opposition of clergy--Suppression of theabbeys--Great Parliament summoned in Dublin--- Meeting of hereditaryenemies--Conciliatory measures--Henry VIII. Proclaimed king of Irelandand head of the Church. 

XXII. 

THE NEW DEPARTURE

A halcyon period--O'Neill, O'Brien, and Macwilliam of Clanricarde atGreenwich--Receive their peerages, --Attempt at establishingProtestantism in Ireland--Vehemently resisted--The destruction of therelics--Archbishop Dowdal--The effect of the new departure--The Irishproblem receives fresh complications. 

XXIII. 

THE FIRST PLANTATIONS

Mary becomes queen--Religious struggle postponed--Fercal Leix and Offalycolonized--Sense of insecurity awakened--No Irish Protestantmartyrs--Commission of Dean Cole--Its failure--Death of Mary. 

XXIV. 

WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL

Elizabeth becomes queen, --Effect of change on Ireland--ShaneO'Neill--His description, habits, qualities--His campaign againstSussex--Defeats Sussex--His visit to Court--Returns to Ireland--Supremein the North--His attack on the Scots--Sir Henry Sidney marches intoUlster--The disaster at Derry--Shane encounters the O'Donnells--Isdefeated--Applies to the Scots--Is slain. 

XXV. 

BETWEEN TWO STORMS

Sir Henry Sidney Lord-deputy--A lull--Sidney's policy andproceedings--Provincial presidents appointed--Arrest of Desmond--SirPeter Carew--His violence--Rebellion in the South--Sir JamesFitzmaurice--Relations between him and Sir John Perrot--He surrenders, and sails for France. 

XXVI. 

THE DESMOND REBELLION

An abortive tragedy--State of the Desmond Palatinate--Sir JamesFitzmaurice in France and Spain--Nicholas Saunders appointedlegate--Stukeley's expedition--Fitzmaurice lands in Kerry--Desmondvacillates--Death of Sir James Fitzmaurice--Concerted attack of Ormondand Pelham--Horrible destruction of life--Arrival of Spaniards atSmerwick--Lord Grey de Wilton--Defeat of English troops atGlenmalure--Attack of and slaughter of Spaniards at Smerwick--Wholesaleexecutions--Death of the Earl of Desmond and extinction of his house. 

XXVII. 

BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS

State of Munster--The new plantations--Perrot's administration--TyrloughLuinagh, --Sir William Fitzwilliam--Executions without trial--Alarm ofnorthern proprietors--Earl of Tyrone--Character of early loyalty--Causesof dissatisfaction--Quarrel with Bagnall--Preparations for a rising. 

XXVIII. 

BATTLE OF THE YELLOW FORD

The Northern Blackwater--Attack of Blackwater Fort by Tyrone--Death ofthe deputy, Lord Borough--Bagnall advances from Dublin--Battle of theYellow Ford--Defeat and death of Bagnall--Retreat of the Englishtroops--The rising becomes general. 

XXIX. 

THE ESSEX FAILURE

Essex appointed Lord-Lieutenant--Arrival in Ireland--Mistakes anddisasters--Death of Sir Conyers Clifford in the Curlews--Essex advancesnorth--Holds a conference with Tyrone--Agrees to an armistice--Anger ofthe Queen--Essex suddenly leaves Ireland. 

XXX. 

END OF THE TYRONE WAR

Mountjoy appointed deputy--Contrast between him and Essex--Reasons forMountjoy's greater success--Conquest by starvation--Success ofmethod--Arrival of Spanish forces at Kinsale: Mountjoy and Carew marchedsouth and invests Kinsale--Attack of Mountjoy by Tyrone--Failure ofattack--Surrender of Spaniards--Surrender of Tyrone. 

XXXI. 

THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS

The last chieftain rising against England--Condition of affairs at closeof war--Tyrone's position impossible--Reported plot--Tyrone andTyrconnel take flight--Confiscation of their territory--Sir JohnDavis--The Ulster Settlement. 

XXXII. 

THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION

Parliament summoned--Anxiety of government to secure a Protestantmajority--Contested election--Narrow Protestant majority--Furiousquarrel over election of Speaker--Parliament dissolved--The kingappealed to--Attainder of Tyrone and Tyrconnel--Reversal of statuteof Kilkenny. 

XXXIII. 

OLD AND NEW OWNERS

Further plantations--The Connaught landowners--Their positions--CharlesI. 's accession and how it affected Ireland--Lord Falkland appointedviceroy--Succeeded by Wentworth. 

XXXIV. 

STRAFFORD

Arrival of Wentworth in Ireland--His methods and theory--Dissolvesparliament--Goes to Connaught--Galway jury fined and imprisoned--Hisecclesiastical policy--His Irish army--Return to England--Attainder, trial, and death. 

XXXV. 

'FORTY-ONE

Confusion and disorder--Strafford's army disbanded, but still in thecountry--Plot to seize Dublin Castle--Plot transpires--Sir PhelimO'Neill seizes Charlemont--Attack upon the Protestantsettlers--Barbarities and counter barbarities. 

XXXVI. 

THE WATERS SPREAD

The rising at first local--Attitude of the Pale gentry--They resolve tojoin the rising--Disorganization of the northern insurgents--Incapacityof Sir Phelim O'Neill--Arrival of Owen Roe O'Neill and Preston--Meetingof delegates at Kilkenny--Charles decides upon a _coup de main_. 

XXXVII. 

CIVIL WAR

Effect of the Ulster massacres on England--An agrarian rather thanreligious rising--The Confederates' terms Glamorgan sent to Ireland, Thesecret treaty transpires, Arrival of Rinucini, Battle of Benturb, Ormondsurrenders Dublin to the Parliament. 

XXXVIII. 

THE CONFUSION DEEPENS

Total confusion of aims and parties, The "poor Panther" Inchiquin, Alliance between Jones and Owen Roe O'Neill, Ormond advances uponDublin, Battle of Baggotrath and defeat of the Royalists, Arrivalof Cromwell. 

XXXIX. 

CROMWELL IN IRELAND

Cromwell's mission, Assault of Drogheda, and slaughter of its garrison, Wexford garrison slaughtered, Cromwell's discipline, The "countrysickness, " Confusion in the Royalist camp, Signature of the Scotchcovenant by the king, Final surrender of O'Neill and the Irish army. 

XL. 

CROMWELL'S METHODS

Loss of life during the eight years of war, Punishment of thevanquished, Executions, Wholesale scheme of eviction, The New Owners, "The Burren, " Sale of women to the West Indian plantations, Dissatisfaction amongst the soldiers and debenture holders, IrishCromwellians. 

XLI. 

THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT

The Restoration, Henry Cromwell, Coote and Broghill, Court of claimsestablished in Dublin, Prolonged dispute, Final settlement, Condition ofIrish Roman Catholics at close of the struggle. 

XLII. 

OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION

Effects of the Restoration upon the Ulster Presbyterians--A new Act ofUniformity--Exodus of Presbyterians from Ireland--The Popishplot--Insane panic--Execution of Archbishop Plunkett--Sudden reversal ofthe tide--Tyrconnel sent as viceroy--Terror of Protestantsettlers--William of Orange in England--James II. Arrives in Ireland. 

XLIII. 

WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND

Popular enthusiasm for James--Struggle between his English and Irishadherents--James advances to Londonderry--Siege of Londonderry--Itsgarrison relieved--Debasing the coinage--Reversal of the Act ofSettlement--Bill of Attainder--Arrival of William III. --Battle of theBoyne--Flight of James--First siege of Limerick--Athlone captured byGinkel--Battle of Aughrim. 

XLIV. 

THE TREATY OF LIMERICK

Sarsfield refuses to surrender--Second siege of Limerick--The Limericktreaty--Its exact purport--The military treaty--Departure of the exiles. 

XLV. 

THE PENAL CODE

A new century and new fortunes--Mr. Lecky's "EighteenthCentury"--Reversal of all the recent Acts--The Penal Code--Burke'sdescription of it--How evaded--Its effects upon Protestants andCatholics. 

XLVI. 

THE COMMERCIAL CODE

The "Protestant Ascendency"--England's jealousy of her Colonists, Actpassed prohibiting export of Irish woollen goods, Effects of the Actupon Ireland, Smuggling on an immense scale, Collapse of industry, Strained relations. 

XLVII. 

MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT

The "Ingenious Molyneux, " Irish naturalists, Molyneux's "Case ofIreland, " Effect of its publication, Death of Molyneux, Dean Swift, Hisposition in Irish politics, The "Drapier Letters, " Their line of attack, Effect on popular opinion, Wood's halfpence suspended. 

XLVIII. 

HENRY FLOOD

Forty dull years, Parliamentary abuses, Charles Lucas, Flood entersParliament, His struggle with the Government, Lord Townsend recalled, Flood accepts office, Effect of that acceptance, Rejoins the Liberalside, Tries to outbid Grattan, Failure and end. 

XLIX. 

HENRY GRATTAN

Unanimity of opinion about Grattan, His character, Enters Parliament, The "Declaration of Rights, " Carried by the Irish Parliament, Declaratory Act of George I. Repealed, A spell of prosperity, Rocksahead, Disaster following disaster, Grattan and the Union, Grattan's death. 

L. 

THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS

Revolt of the American Colonies, Its effect on Ireland, Disastrouscondition of the country, Volunteer movement begun in Belfast, Rapidpopularity, Its effect upon politics, Free Trade, Declaratory Actrepealed, The Volunteers disband. 

LI. 

DANGER SIGNALS

Reform the crying necessity of the hour--Corruption steadilyincreasing--Attempt to obtain free importation of goods to England--Itsfailure--Disturbed state of the country--Its causes--"White boys, " "Oakboys, " and "Steel boys"--Faction war in the North--Orangelodges--"Society of United Irishmen"--The one hope for the future. 

LII. 

THE FITZWILLIAM DISAPPOINTMENT

General desire for Catholic Emancipation--Lord Sheffield's evidence--TheCatholic delegates received by the king--Lord Fitzwilliam sent asLord-Lieutenant--Popular enthusiasm--Recalled--Result of his recall. 

LIII. 

'NINETY-EIGHT

Wolfe Tone, his character and autobiography--The other leaders of therebellion--England and France at war--Hoche's descent--Panic--HabeasCorpus Act suspended--Misconduct of soldiers--Arrest of Lord EdwardFitzgerald--Outbreak of the rebellion--The rising in Wexford--BagenalHarvey--Arklow, New Ross, and Vinegar Hill--Suppression of therebellion--Final incidents--Death of Wolfe Tone. 

LIV. 

THE UNION

State of Ireland after the rebellion--Pitt resolved to pass theUnion--Inducements offered--Discrepancy of statements upon thesubject--Bribery or not bribery?--Lord Cornwallis and LordCastlereagh--The Union carried. 

LV. 

O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION

The Union not followed by union--The Emmett outbreak, --Young DanielO'Connell--The new Catholic Association--The Clare election--CatholicRelief Bill carried--The "Incarnation of a people"--Repeal--TheO'Connell gatherings--The meeting proclaimed at Clontarf--Prosecutionand condemnation of O'Connell--Released on appeal--Never regained hispower--Despondency and death. 

LVI. 

"YOUNG IRELAND"

"The Nation"--Sir C. Gavan Duffy--Thomas Davis--Smith O'Brien--Effect ofO'Connell's death on the "Young Ireland" party--James Lalor--Hisinfluence on Mitchell--The "United Irishmen" newspaper started--Arrestand transportation of Mitchell--The end of the "Young Ireland" movement. 

LVII. 

THE FAMINE

First symptoms of the potato disease--The fatal night--Beginning ofFamine--Rapid mortality--Mr. Forster's reports--Relief works--Soupkitchens--Failure of preventive measures--Famine followed byruin--Clearances and Emigration--Emigrant ships--Permanent effects ofthe Famine on Ireland. 

LVIII. 

THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT

Encumbered Estates Act--Tenant League of North and South--The "BrassBand"--A lull--The Phoenix organization--The Fenian "scare"--Rescue ofFenian prisoners at Manchester--The Clerkenwell explosion--The IrishChurch Act--The Irish Land Act of 1870--Failure of Irish Education Act, and retirement of the Liberals--Mr. Butt and Mr. Parnell--The LandLeague established--Return of the Liberals to power--The Irish Land Actof 1881--Arrest and release of Land League Leaders--Murders in thePhoenix Park--James Carey--- His death--The agrarian struggle--HomeRule--Its eventual destiny--The untravelled Future. 

LIX. 

CONCLUSION

Irish heroes--Causes of their want of popularity--Irish _versus_ Scotchheroes--"Prince Posterity". 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

[Nearly all the archaeological illustrations in this volume are from"The Early Christian Architecture of Ireland, " by Miss M. Stokes, whohas kindly allowed them to be reproduced. The portraits are chiefly fromengravings, &c. , kept in the Prints Room of the British Museum. ]

HOLY ISLAND, LOUGH DERG. MAP OF IRELAND IN REIGN OF HENRY VII. CROSS IN CEMETERY OF TEMPUL BRECCAN. WEST CROSS, MONASTERBOICE. DOORWAY OF MAGHERA CHURCH. KILBANNON TOWER. KELLS ROUND TOWER. BASE OF TUAM CROSS. DOORWAY OF KILLESHIN CHURCH. INTERIOR OF CORMAC'S CHAPEL (CASHEL). WEST FRONT OF ST. CRONAN'S CHURCH. WEST DOORWAY OF FRESHFORD CHURCH. SIR HENRY SIDNEY (PORTRAIT OF). ASKEATON CASTLE. CATHERINE, THE "OLD" COUNTESS OF DESMOND. SIR JOHN PERROT (PORTRAIT OF). CAHIR CASTLE (IN 1599). CAPTURE OF THE EARL OF ORMOND BY THE O'MORES. IRELAND IN THE REIGN OF JAMES I. THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD, 1641. ARCHBISHOP USSHER (PORTRAIT OF). JAMES, DUKE OF ORMOND (PORTRAIT OF). HENRY CROMWELL (PORTRAIT OF). "TIGER" ROCHE. DEAN SWIFT (PORTRAIT OF). PHILIP, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD (PORTRAIT OF). RIGHT HON. HENRY FLOOD (PORTRAIT OF). RIGHT HON. HENRY GRATTAN, M. P. (PORTRAIT OF). JAMES CAULFIELD, EARL OF CHARLEMONT (PORTRAIT OF). RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE (PORTRAIT OF). THE EARL OF MOIRA ("A MAN OF IMPORTANCE"). RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE (SKETCH FROM LIFE). THEOBALD WOLFE TONE (PORTRAIT OF). LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD (PORTRAIT OF). THE FOUR COURTS, DUBLIN. MARQUIS CORNWALLIS (PORTRAIT OF). ROBERT EMMETT (PORTRAIT OF). DANIEL O'CONNELL, M. P. (SKETCH OF). LESSER ILLUSTRATIONS (AT ENDS OF CHAPTERS). CROMLECH ON HOWTH. MOUTH OF SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER AT DOWTH. ST. KEVIN'S CHURCH. CORMAC'S CHAPEL AND ROUND TOWER. ROUND TOWER AT DEVENISH. SOUTH WINDOW OF ST. CAEMIN'S CHURCH. FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT. TRIM CASTLE. FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT. INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS). ST. PATRICK'S BELL. INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS). CINERARY URN. TARA BROOCH. DOORWAY OF ST. CAEMIN'S CHURCH. SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK'S BELL. ST. COLUMBA'S ORATORY. INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS). CRYPT OF CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL. 

THE STORY OF IRELAND. 

I. 

PRIMEVAL IRELAND. 

"It seems to be certain, " says the Abbé McGeoghehan, "that Irelandcontinued uninhabited from the Creation to the Deluge. " With thisassurance to help us on our onward way I may venture to supplement it bysaying that little is known about the first, or even about the second, third, and fourth succession of settlers in Ireland. At what preciseperiod what is known as the Scoto-Celtic branch of the great Aryan stockbroke away from its parent tree, by what route its migrants travelled, in what degree of consanguinity it stood to the equally Celtic race orraces of Britain, what sort of people inhabited Ireland previous to thefirst Aryan invasion--all this is in the last degree uncertain, thoughthat it was inhabited by some race or races outside the limits of thatgreatest of human groups seems from ethnological evidence to beperfectly clear. 

When first it dawns upon us through that thick darkness which hangsabout the birth of all countries--whatever their destiny--it was adensely wooded and scantily peopled island "lying a-loose, " as oldCampion, the Elizabethan historian, tells us, "upon the West Ocean, "though his further assertion that "in shape it resembleth an egg, plainon the sides, and not reaching forth to the sea in nooks and elbows ofLand as Brittaine doeth"--cannot be said to be quite geographicallyaccurate--the last part of the description referring evidently to theeast coast, the only one with which, like most of his countrymen, he wasat that time familiar. 

Geographically, then, and topographically it was no doubt in much thesame state as the greater part of it remained up to the middle or end ofthe sixteenth century, a wild, tangled, roadless land, that is to say, shaggy with forests, abounding in streams, abounding, too, in lakes--farmore, doubtless, than at present, drainage and other causes havinggreatly reduced their number--with rivers bearing the never-failingtribute of the skies to the sea, yet not so thoroughly as to hinderenormous districts from remaining in a swamped and saturated condition, given up to the bogs, which even at the present time are said to covernearly one-sixth of its surface. 

This superfluity of bogs seems always in earlier times to have beenexpeditiously set down by all historians and agriculturists as part ofthe general depravity of the Irish native, who had allowed his goodlands, --doubtless for his own mischievous pleasure--to run to waste;bogs being then supposed to differ from other lands only so far as theywere made "waste and barren by superfluous moisture. " About the middleof last century it began to be perceived that this view of the matterwas somewhat inadequate; the theory then prevailing being that bogs owedtheir origin not to water alone, but to the destruction of woods, whoseremains are found imbedded in them--a view which held good for anotherfifty or sixty years, until it was in its turn effectually disposed ofby the report of the Bogs Commission in 1810, when it was proved oncefor all that it was to the growth of sphagnums and other peat-producingmosses they were in the main due--a view which has never since beencalled in question. 

A great deal, however, had happened to Ireland before the bogs began togrow on it at all. It had--to speak only of some of its latervicissitudes--been twice at least united to England, and through it withwhat we now know as the continent of Europe, and twice severed from itagain. It had been exposed to a cold so intense as to bleach off alllife from its surface, utterly depriving it of vegetation, and grindingthe mountains down to that scraped bun-like outline which so many ofthem still retain; had covered the whole country, highlands and lowlandsalike, with a dense overtoppling cap of snow, towering often thousandsof feet above the present height of the mountains, from which "centralsilence" the glaciers crept sleepily down the ravines and valleys, eating their way steadily seaward, and leaving behind them moraines tomark their passage, leaving also longitudinal scratches, cut, as adiamond cuts glass, upon the rocks, as may be seen by any one who takesthe trouble of looking for them; finally reaching the sea in a vastsloping plateau which pushed its course steadily onward until itsfurther advance was overborne by the buoyancy of the salt water, theends breaking off, as the Greenland glaciers do to-day, into hugefloating icebergs, which butted against one another, jammed up all thesmaller bays and fiords; were carried in again and again on the risingtide; rolled hither and thither like so many colossal ninepins; played, in short, all the old rough-and-tumble Arctic games through many a coldand dismal century, finally melting away as the milder weather beganslowly to return, leaving Ireland a very lamentable-looking islandindeed, not unlike one of those deplorable islands scattered along theshores of Greenland and upon the edges of Baffin's Bay--treeless, grassless, brown and scalded, wearing everywhere over its surface themarks of that great ice-plough which had lacerated its sides so long. 

There seems to be good geological evidence that the land connectionbetween Ireland and Scotland continued to a considerably later periodthan between it and England, to which, and as far as can be seen to noother possible cause is to be attributed two very strikingcharacteristics of its fauna, namely, its excessive meagreness and itsstrikingly northern character. Not only does it come far short of thealready meagre English fauna, but all the distinctively southern speciesare the ones missing, though there is nothing in the climate to accountfor the fact. The Irish hare, for instance, is not the ordinary brownhare of England, but the "blue" or Arctic hare of Scotch mountains, thesame which still further to the north becomes white in winter, a habitwhich, owing to the milder Irish winters, it has apparently shaken off. 

It would be pleasant to linger here a little over this point ofdistribution--so fruitful of suggestion as to the early history of theplanet we occupy. To speculate as to the curious contradictions, orapparent contradictions, to be found even within so narrow an area asthat of Ireland. What, for instance, has brought a group of SouthEuropean plants to the shores of Kerry and Connemara, which plants arenot to be found in England, even in Cornwall, which one would havethought must surely have arrested them first? Why, when neither thecommon toad or frog are indigenous in Ireland (for the latter, thoughcommon enough now, was only introduced at the beginning of last century)a comparatively rare little toad, the Natterjack, should be found in onecorner of Kerry to all appearances indigenously? All these questions, however, belong to quite another sort of book, and to a much largersurvey of the field than there is time here to embark upon, so there isnothing for it but to turn one's back resolutely upon the tempting sinof discursiveness, or we shall find ourselves belated before our realjourney is even begun. 

The first people, then, of whose existence in Ireland we can be said toknow anything are commonly asserted to have been of Turanian origin, andare known as "Formorians. " As far as we can gather, they were a dark, low-browed, stunted race, although, oddly enough, the word Formorian inearly Irish legend is always used as synonymous with the word giant. They were, at any rate, a race of utterly savage hunters and fishermen, ignorant of metal, of pottery, possibly even of the use of fire; usingthe stone hammers or hatchets of which vast numbers remain in Ireland tothis day, and specimens of which may be seen in every museum. How longthey held possession no one can tell, although Irish philologistsbelieve several local Irish names to date from this almost inconceivablyremote epoch. Perhaps if we think of the Lapps of the present day, andpicture them wandering about the country, catching the hares and rabbitsin nooses, burrowing in the earth or amongst rocks, and being, notimpossibly, looked down on with scorn by the great Irish elk which stillstalked majestically over the hills; rearing ugly little altars to dim, formless gods; trembling at every sudden gust, and seeing demon faces inevery bush and brake, it will give us a fairly good notion of what thesevery earliest inhabitants of Ireland were probably like. 

Next followed a Belgic colony, known as the Firbolgs, who overran thecountry, and appear to have been of a somewhat higher ethnologicalgrade, although, like the Formorians, short, dark, and swarthy. Doubtless the latter were not entirely exterminated to make way for theFirbolgs, any more than the Firbolgs to make way for the Danaans, Milesians, and other successive races; such wholesale exterminationsbeing, in fact, very rare, especially in a country which like Irelandseems specially laid out by kindly nature for the protection of a weakerrace struggling in the grip of a stronger one. 

After the Firbolgs, though I should be sorry to be obliged to say howlong after, fresh and more important tribes of invaders began to appear. The first of these were the Tuatha-da-Danaans, who arrived under theleadership of their king Nuad, and took possession of the east of thecountry. These Tuatha-da-Danaans are believed to have been large, blue-eyed people of Scandinavian origin, kinsmen and possibly ancestorsof those Norsemen or "Danes" who in years to come were destined to worksuch woe and havoc upon the island. 

Many battles took place between these Danaans and the earlier Firbolgicsettlers--the native owners as no doubt they felt themselves of thecountry. One of the best substantiated of these, not, indeed, by historyor even tradition, but by a more solid testimony, that of the stoneremains left on the spot, prove, at any rate, that _some_ long-sustainedbattle was at some remote period fought on the spot. 

This is the famous pre-historic battle of Moytura, rather the SouthernMoytura, for there were two; the other, situated not far from thepresent town of Sligo, retaining "the largest collection of pre-historicremains, " says Dr. Petrie, "in any region in the world with theexception of Carnac. " This second battle of Moytura was fought upon theplain of Cong, which is washed by the waters of Lough Mask and LoughCorrib, close to where the long monotonous midland plain of Irelandbecomes broken, changes into that region of high mountains and low-lyingvalleys, now called Connemara, but which in earlier days was alwaysknown as Iar Connaught. 

It is a wild scene even now, not very much less so than it must havebeen when this old and half-mythical Battle of the West was fought andwon. A grey plain, "stone-roughened like the graveyard of dead hosts, "broken into grassy ridges, and starred at intervals with pools, repeating the larger glitter of the lake hard by. Over the whole surfaceof this tumbled plain rise, at intervals, great masses of rock, somenatural, but others artificially up-tilted cromlechs and dolmens, menhirs and cairns--whitened by lichen scrawls, giving them often inuncertain light the effect of so many undecipherable inscriptions, written in a long-forgotten tongue. 

From the position of the battle-field it has been made out to their ownsatisfaction by those who have studied it on the spot, that the Firbolgsmust have taken up a fortified position upon the hill called Ben-levi; agood strategic position unquestionably, having behind it the whole ofthe Mayo mountains into which to retreat in case of defeat. The Danaans, on the other hand, advancing from the plains of Meath, took up theirstation upon the hill known as Knockmaa[1], standing by itself aboutfive miles from the present town of Tuam, on the top of which stands agreat cairn, believed to have been in existence even then--a legacy ofsome yet earlier and more primitive race which inhabited the country, and, therefore, possibly the oldest record of humanity to-day extantin Ireland. 

[1] Now Castle Hacket Hill. 

Three days the battle is said to have raged with varying fortunes, inthe course of which the Danaan king Nuad lost his arm, a loss which wasrepaired, we are told, by the famous artificer Credue or Cerd, who madehim a silver one, and as "Nuad of the Silver Hand" he figuresconspicuously in early Irish history. In spite of this, and of the deathof a number of their fighting-men, the stars fought for theTuatha-da-Danaans, who were strong men and cunning, workers in metal, and great fighters, so that at last they utterly made an end of theirantagonists, occupying the whole country, and holding it, say theannalists for a hundred and ninety and six years--building earth andstone forts, many of which exist to this day, but what their end was noman can tell you, save that they, too, were, in their turn, conquered bythe Milesians or "Scoti, " who next overran the country, giving to ittheir own name of Scotia, by which name it was known down to the end ofthe twelfth century, and driving the earlier settlers before them, whothereupon fled to the hills, and took refuge in the forests, whence theyemerged, doubtless, with unpleasant effect upon their conquerors, asanother defeated race did upon _their_ conquerors in later days. 

As regards the early doings of these Scoti, although nearer to us inpoint of time, their history is, if anything, rather more vague thanthat of their predecessors. The source for the greater part of it is ina work known as the "Annals of the Four Masters, " a compilation puttogether in the sixteenth century, from documents now no longerexisting, and which must unfortunately, be regarded as largelyfictitious. Were names, indeed, all that were wanting to givesubstantiality there are enough and to spare, the beginning of everyIrish history positively bristling with them. Leland, for instance, whopublished his three sturdy tomes in the year 1773, and who is still oneof our chief authorities on the subject, speaks of Ireland as having"engendered one hundred and seventy one monarchs, all of the same houseand lineage; with sixty-eight kings, and two queens of Great Brittainand Ireland all sprung equally from her loins. " We read in his pages ofthe famous brethren Heber and Heremon, sons of Milesius, who divided theisland between them; of Allamh Fodla, celebrated as a healer of feudsand protector of learning, who drew the priests and bards together intoa triennial assembly at Tara, in Meath; of Kimbaoth, who is praised bythe annalists for having advanced learning and kept the peace. The timesof peace had not absolutely arrived however, for he was not long aftermurdered, and wild confusion and wholesale slaughter ensued. AnotherMilesian prince, Thuathal, shortly afterwards returned from NorthBritain, and, assisted by a body of Pictish soldiers, defeated therebels, restored order, and re-established the seat of his monarchyin Meath. 

As a specimen of the sort of stories current in history of this kind, Leland relates at considerable length the account of the insult offeredto this Thuathal by the provincial king of Leinster. "The king, " hetells us, "had married the daughter of Thuathal, but conceiving aviolent passion for her sister, pretended that his wife had died, anddemanded and obtained her sister in marriage. The two ladies met in theroyal house of Leinster. Astonishment and sorrow put an end to theirlives!" The offender not long afterwards was invaded by his justlyindignant father-in-law, and his province only preserved from desolationon condition of paying a heavy tribute, "as a perpetual memorial of theresentment of Thuathal and of the offence committed by the king ofLeinster. "

Another special favourite of the annalists is Cormac O'Conn, whose reignthey place about the year 250, and over whose doings they wax eloquent, dwelling upon the splendour of his court, the heroism of his warlikesons, the beauty of his ten fair daughters, the doings of his famousmilitia, the Fenni or Fenians, and especially of his illustrious generalFinn, or Fingal, the hero of the legends, and father of the poetOssian--a warrior whom we shall meet with again in the next chapter. 

And now, it will perhaps be asked, what is one in sober seriousness tosay to all this? All that one can say is that these tales are not to betaken as history in any rigid sense of the word, but must for the mostpart be regarded as mere hints, caught from chaos, and coming downthrough a hundred broken mediums; scraps of adventures told around campfires; oral traditions; rude songs handed from father to son, andaltering more or less with each new teller. The early history of Irelandis in this respect much like the early history of all other countries. We have the same semi-mythical aggregations, grown up around some smallkernel of reality, but so changed, swollen, distorted, that it isdifficult to distinguish the true from the false; becoming vaguer andvaguer too as the mists of time and sentiment gather more and morethickly around them, until at last we seem to be swimming dimly in a"moony vapour, " which allows no dull peaks of reality to pierce throughit at all. "There were giants in those days, " is a continually recurringassertion, characteristic of all ancient annals, and of these withthe rest. 

[Illustration: CROMLECH ON HOWTH. ]

II. 

THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS. 

Better far than such historic shams--cardboard castles with little or nosubstance behind them--are the real legends. These put forward noobtrusive pretensions to accuracy, and for that very reason are fartruer in that larger sense in which all the genuine and spontaneousoutgrowth of a country form part and parcel of its history. Some of thebest of these have been excellently translated by Mr. Joyce, whose"Celtic Romances" ought to be in the hands of every one, from the boy oftwelve upwards, who aspires to know anything of the inner history ofIreland; to understand, that is to say, that curiously recurrent note ofpoetry and pathos which breaks continually through all the dull hardprose of the surface. A note often lost in unmitigated din and discord, yet none the less re-emerging, age after age, and century after century, and always when it does so lending its own charm to a record, which, without some such alleviations, would be almost too grim anddisheartening in its unrelieved and unresulting misery to be voluntarilyapproached at all. 

Although as they now stand none appear to be of earlier date than theninth or tenth century, these stories all breathe the very breath of aprimitive world. An air of remote pagan antiquity hangs over them, andas we read we seem gradually to realize an Ireland as unlike the one weknow now as if, like the magic island of Buz, it had sunk under thewaves and been lost. Take, for instance--for space will not allow ofmore than a sample--the story of "The Pursuit of Gilla Backer and hisHorse, " not by any means one of the best, yet characteristic enough. Init we learn that from Beltane, the 1st of May--the great Celtic festivalof the sun--to Sanim, the 1st of November, the chiefs and Fenni huntedeach day with their hounds through the forests and over the plains, while from Sanim to Beltane they lived in the "Betas, " or houses ofhospitality, or feasted high with Finn McCumal, son of Cumal, grandsonof Trenmore O'Baskin, whose palace stood upon the summit of the hill ofAllen, a hill now crowned with a meaningless modern obelisk, coveringthe site of the old historic rath, a familiar object to thousands whohave looked up at it from the Curragh of Kildare, certainly with nothought in their minds of Finn McCumal or his vanished warriors. 

The tale tells how one day, after hunting on the Plains of Cliach, theFenni sat down to rest upon the hill of Colkilla, their hunting tentsbeing pitched upon a level spot near the summit. How presently, afar offover the plain at their feet, they saw one of the conquered race ofearlier inhabitants, a "Formorian" of huge size and repulsive uglinesscoming towards them, leading his horse by the halter, an animal larger, it seems, than six ordinary horses, but broken down and knock-kneed, with jaws that stuck out far in advance of its head. How the heroes, idling pleasantly about in the sunshine, laughed aloud at the uncouth"foreigner" and his ugly raw-boned beast, "covered with tangled scraggyhair of a sooty black. " How he came before the king and, having madeobeisance, told him that his name was the Gilla Backer, and then andthere took service with him for a year, desiring at the same time thatspecial care should be paid to his horse, and the best food given it, and care taken that it did not stray, whereat the heroes laughed again, the horse standing like a thing carved in wood and unable apparently tomove a leg. 

No sooner, however, was it loosed, and the halter cast off, than itrushed amongst the other horses, kicking and lashing, and seizing themwith its teeth till not one escaped. Seeing which, the Fenni rose up inhigh wrath, and one of them seized the Gilla Backer's horse by thehalter and tried to draw it away, but again it became like a rock, andrefused to stir. Then he mounted its back and flogged it, but still itremained like a stone. Then, one after the other, thirteen more of theheroes mounted, but still it stirred not. The very instant, however, that its master, the Gilla Backer rose up angrily to depart, the oldhorse went too, with the fourteen heroes still upon his back, whereatthe Fenni raised fresh shouts of laughter. But the Gilla Backer, afterhe had walked a little way, looked back, and seeing that his horse wasfollowing, stood for a moment to tuck up his skirts. "Then, all at oncechanging his pace, he set out with long strides; and if you know whatthe speed of a swallow is, flying across a mountain-side, or the fairywind of a March day sweeping over the plains, then you can understandGilla Dacker, as he ran down the hillside towards the south-west. Neither was the horse behindhand in the race, for, though he carried aheavy load, he galloped like the wind after his master, plunging andbounding forward with as much freedom as if he had nothing at all onhis back. "

Finn and his warriors left behind on the hill stared awhile, and thenresolved to go to Ben Edar, now Howth, there to seek for a ship tofollow after Gilla Dacker and his horse, and the fourteen heroes. And ontheir way they met two bright-faced youths wearing mantles of scarletsilk, fastened by brooches of gold, who, saluting the king, told himtheir names were Foltlebar and Feradach, and that they were the sons ofthe king of Innia, and each possessed an art, and that as they walkedthey had disputed whose art was the greater. "And my art, " saidFeradach, "is this. If at any time a company of warriors need a ship, give me only my joiner's axe and my crann-tavall[2], and I am able toprovide a ship without delay. The only thing I ask them to do isthis--to cover their heads close and keep them covered, while I give thecrann-tavall three blows of my axe. Then I tell them to uncover theirheads, and lo, there lies the ship in harbour, ready to sail!"

[2] A sling for projecting stones, strung rather like a cross-bow. 

The Foltlebar spoke and said, "This, O king, is the art I profess: Onland I can track the wild duck over nine ridges and nine glens, andfollow her without being once thrown out, till I drop upon her in hernest. And I can follow up a track on sea quite as well as on land, if Ihave a good ship and crew. "

And Finn replied, "You are the very men I want; and now I take you bothinto my service. Though our own trackmen, the Clan Naim, are good, yetwe now need some one still more skilful to follow the Gilla Dackerthrough unknown seas. "

To these unknown seas they went, starting from Ben Edar, and sailed awaywest for many days over the Atlantic, seeing many strange sights andpassing many unknown islands. But at last the ship stopped short infront of an island with vast rocky cliffs towering high above theirheads as steep as a sheet of glass, at which the heroes gazed amazed andbaffled, not knowing what to do next. But Dermot O'Dynor--called alsoDermot of the Bright-face--undertook to climb it, for of all the Fermihe was the most learned in Druidical enchantments, having been earlytaught the secret of fairy lore by Mananan Mac Lir, who ruled over theInis Manan or Land of Promise. 

Dermot accordingly took leave of his friends and climbed the greatcliff, and when he reached the top he found that it was flat and coveredwith tall green grass, as is often the case in these desolate wind-blownAtlantic islets. And in the very centre he found a well with a tallpillar stone beside it, and beside the pillar stone a drinking-hornchased with gold. And he took up the drinking-horn to drink, beingthirsty, but the instant he touched the brim with his lips, lo! a greatWizard Champion armed to the teeth, sprang up out of the earth, whereupon he and Dermot O'Dynor fought together beside the well thelivelong day until the dusk fell. But the moment the dusk fell, thewizard champion sprang with a great bound into the middle of the well, and so disappeared, leaving Dermot standing there much astonished atwhat had befallen him. 

And the next day the same thing happened, and the next, and the next. But on the fourth day, Dermot watched his foe narrowly, and when thedusk came on, and he saw that he was about to spring into the well, heflung his arms tightly about him, and the wizard champion struggled toget free, but Dermot held him, and at length they both fell togetherinto the well, deeper and deeper to the very bottom of the earth, andthere was nothing to be seen but dim shadows, and nothing to be heardbut vague confused sounds like the roaring of waves. At length therecame a glimmering of light, and all at once bright day broke suddenlyaround them, and they came out at the other side of the earth, and foundthemselves in Tir-fa-ton, the land under the sea, where the flowersbloom all the year round, and no man has ever so much as heard theword Death. 

What happened there; how Dermot O'Dynor met the other heroes, and howthe fourteen Fenni who had been carried off were at last recaptured, would be too long to tell. Unlike most of these legends all comes rightin the end; Gilla Dacker and his ugly horse disappear suddenly intospace, and neither Finn himself nor any of his warriors ever seethem again. 

It is impossible, I think, to read this, and to an even greater degreesome of the other stories, which have been translated by Mr. Joyce andothers, without perceiving how thoroughly impregnated with old-world andmythological sentiment they are. An air of all but fabulous antiquitypervades them, greater perhaps than pervades the legends of any othernorth European people. We seem transplanted to a world of the mostprimitive type conceivable; a world of myth and of fable, of directNature interpretations, of mythology, in short, pure and simple. Eventhose stories which are known to be of later origin exhibit to a greateror less degree the same character; one which has come down to themdoubtless from earlier half-forgotten tales, of which they are merelythe final and most modern outcome. 

When, too, we turn from the legends themselves to the legend-makers, everything that we know of the position of the bards _(Ollamhs_ or_Sennachies)_ carries out the same idea. In the earliest times they werenot merely the singers and story-tellers of their race, but to a greatdegree they bore a religious or semi-religious character. Like theBrehons or judges they were the directors and guides of the others, butthey possessed in addition a peculiarly Druidical character of sanctity, as the inheritors and interpreters of a revelation confided to themalone. A power the more formidable because no one, probably, had everventured to define its exact character. 

The Head bard or Ollamh, in the estimation of his tribesmen, stood nextin importance to the chieftain or king--higher, indeed, in somerespects; for whereas to slay a king might, or might not be criminal, toslay an Ollamh entailed both outlawing in this life and a vaguer, butnot the less terrible, supernatural penalty in another. Occasionally, asin the case of the Ollamh Fodla, by whom the halls of Tara are reputedto have been built, the king was himself the bard, and so combined bothoffices, but this appears to have been rare. Even as late as thesixteenth century, refusal of praise from a bard was held to confer afar deeper and more abiding stigma upon a man than blame from any otherlips. If they, "the bards, " says an Elizabethan writer, "say ought indispraise, the gentleman, especially the meere Irish, stand ingreat awe. "

It is easy, I think, to see this is merely the survival of some far morepotent power wielded in earlier times. In pre-Christian days especially, the penalty attaching to the curse of a Bard was understood to carrywith it a sort of natural anathema, not unlike the priestly anathema oflater times. Indeed there was one singular, and, as far as I am aware, unique power possessed by the Irish Bards, which goes beyond anypriestly or papal anathema, and which was known as the _Clann Dichin_, atruly awful malediction, by means of which the Ollamh, if offended orinjured, could pronounce a spell against the very land of his injurer;which spell once pronounced that land would produce no crop of any kind, neither could living creature graze upon it, neither was it possibleeven to walk over it without peril, and so it continued until the wrong, whatever it was, had been repented, and the curse of the Ollamh waslifted off from the land again. 

Is it to be wondered at that men, endowed with such powers of blessingor banning, possessed of such mystic communion with the then utterlyunknown powers of nature, should have exercised an all but unlimitedinfluence over the minds of their countrymen, especially at a time whenthe powers of evil were still supposed to stalk the earth in all theirnative malignity, and no light of any revelation had broken through thethick dim roof overhead?

Few races of which the world has ever heard are as imaginative as thatof the Celt, and at this time the imagination of every Celt must havebeen largely exercised in the direction of the malevolent and theterrible. Even now, after fourteen hundred years of Christianity, theConnaught or Kerry peasant still hears the shriek of his early gods inthe sob of the waves or the howling of the autumn storms. Fish demonsgleam out of the sides of the mountains, and the black bog-holes are thehaunts of slimy monsters of inconceivable horror. Even the less directlybaneful spirits such as Finvarragh, king of the fairies, who haunts thestony slopes of Knockmaa, and all the endless variety of _dii minores_, the cluricans, banshees, fetches who peopled the primitive forests, andstill hop and mow about their ruined homes, were far more likely toinjure than to benefit unless approached in exactly the right manner, and with the properly littered conjurations. The Unknown is always theTerrible; and the more vivid an untaught imagination is, the morecertain it is to conjure up exactly the things which alarm it most, andwhich it least likes to have to believe in. 

III

PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND. 

Getting out of this earliest and foggiest period, whose only memorialsare the stones which still cumber the ground, or those subtler traces ofoccupation of which philology keeps the key, and pushing aside a longand uncounted crowd of kings, with names as uncertain as their deeds, pushing aside, too, the legends and coming to hard fact, we must pictureIreland still covered for the most part with pathless forests, but hereand there cleared and settled after a rude fashion by roughcattle-owning tribes, who herded their own cattle and "lifted" theirneighbour's quite in the approved fashion of the Scotch Highlanders upto a century and a half ago. 

Upon the whole, we may fairly conclude that matters were amelioratingmore or less; that the wolves were being killed, the woods cleared--notas yet in the ferocious wholesale fashion of later days--that a littlerudimentary agriculture showed perhaps here and there in shelteredplaces. Sheep and goats grazed then as now over the hills, and herds ofcattle began to cover the Lowlands. The men, too, were possiblybeginning to grow a trifle less like two-legged beasts of prey, thoughstill rough as the very wolves they hunted; bare-legged, wild-eyedhunter-herdsmen with--who can doubt it?--flocks of children troopingvociferously at their heels. 

Of the daily life, habits, dress, religion of these people--the directancestors of four-fifths of the present inhabitants of Ireland--we knowunfortunately exceedingly little. It is not even certain, whether humansacrifices did or did not form--as they certainly did in CelticBritain--part of that religion, though there is some evidence that itdid, in which case prisoners taken in battle, or slaves, were probablythe victims. 

That a considerable amount of slavery existed in early Celtic Ireland iscertain, though as to the rules by which it was regulated, as of almostevery other detail of the life, we know little or nothing. At the timeof the Anglo-Norman conquest Ireland was said to be full of Englishslaves carried off in raids along the coast, and these filibusteringexpeditions undoubtedly began in very early times. St. Patrick himselfwas thus carried off, and the annalists tell us that in the thirdcentury Cormac Mac Art ravaged the whole western coast of Britain, andbrought away "great stores of slaves and treasures. " To how late aperiod, too, the earlier conquered races of Ireland, such as theFormorians, continued as a distinct race from their Milesian conquerors, and whether they existed as a slave class, or, as seems more probable, as mere outcasts and vagabonds out of the pale of humanity, liable likethe "Tory" of many centuries later, to be killed whenever caught; allthese are matters on which we have unfortunately only the vaguest hintsto guide us. 

The whole texture of society must have been loose and irregular to adegree that it is difficult for us now to conceive, without centralorganization or social cement of any kind. In one respect--that of thetreatment of his women--the Irish Celt seems to have always stood infavourable contrast to most of the other rude races which then coveredthe north of Europe, but as regards the rest there was probably littledifference. Fighting was the one aim of life. Not to have washed hisspear in an adversary's gore, was a reproach which would have been feltby a full-grown tribesman to have carried with it the deepest and mostlasting ignominy. The very women were not in early times exempt from warservice, nay, probably would have scorned to be so. They fought besidetheir husbands, and slew or got slain with as reckless a courage as themen, and it was not until the time of St. Columba, late in the sixthcentury, that a law was passed ordering them to remain in their homes--afact which alone speaks volumes both for the vigour and the undyingpugnacity of the race. 

While, on the one hand, we can hardly thus exaggerate the rudeness ofthis life, we must be careful, on the other, of concluding that thesepeople were simple barbarians, incapable of discriminating right fromwrong. Men, even the wildest, rarely indeed live entirely without somelaw to guide them, and certainly it was so in Ireland. A rule wasgrowing up and becoming theoretically at any rate, established, many ofthe provisions of which startle us by the curious modernness of theirtone, so oddly do they contrast with what we know of the condition ofcivilization or non-civilization then existing. 

Although this ancient Irish law was not drawn up until long after theintroduction of Christianity, it seems best to speak of it here, as, though modified by the stricter Christian rule, it in the main dependedfor such authority as it possessed upon traditions existing long before;traditions regarded indeed by Celtic scholars as tracing their originbeyond the arrival of the first Celt in Ireland, outcomes and survivals, that is to say, of yet earlier Aryan rule, showing points of resemblancewith the equally Aryan laws of India, a matter of great interest, carrying our thoughts back along the history of humanity to a time whenthose differences which seem now the most inherent and vital were as yetundreamt of, and not one of the great nations of the modern world wereas much as born. 

The two chief books in which this law is contained, the "Book of Aicill"and the "Senchus-Mor, " have only comparatively recently been translatedand made available for English readers. The law as there laid down wasdrawn up and administered by the Brehons, who were the judges and thelaw-makers of the people, and whose decision was appealed to in allmatters of dispute. The most serious flaw of the system--a very seriousone it will be seen--was that, owing to the scattered and tribalexistence prevailing, there was no strong central rule _behind_ theBrehon, as there is behind the modern judge, ready and able to enforcehis decrees. At bottom, force, it must not be forgotten, is the sanctionof all law, and there was no available force of any kind then, nor formany a long day afterwards, in Ireland. 

It was, no doubt, owing chiefly to this defective weakness that a systemof fines rather than punishments grew up, one which in later timescaused much scandal to English legal writers. In such a society crime infact was hardly recognizable except in the form of an injury inflictedupon some person or persons. An offence against the State there couldnot be, simply because there was no State to be offended. Everything, from murder down to the smallest and most accidental injury, wascompensated for by "erics" or fines. The amount of these fines wasdecided upon by the Brehon, who kept an extraordinary number ofimaginary rulings, descending into the most minute particulars, such aswhat fine was to be paid in the case of one person's cat stealing milkfrom another person's house, what fine in the case of one woman's beesstinging another woman, a careful distinction being preserved in thiscase between the case in which the sting did or did not draw blood! Evenin the matter of fines it does not seem clear how the penalty was to beenforced where the person on whom it was inflicted refused to submit andwhere there was no one at hand to coerce him successfully. 

As regards ownership of land early Irish law is very peculiar, andrequires to be carefully studied. Primogeniture, regarded by all Englishlawyers trained under the feudal system as the very basis ofinheritance, was simply unknown. Even in the case of the chieftain hisrights belonged only to himself, and before his death a re-election tookplace, when some other of the same blood, not necessarily his eldestson, or even his son at all, but a brother, first cousin, uncle, orwhoever stood highest in the estimation of the clan, was nominated as"Tanist" or successor, and received promises of support from the rest. 

Elizabethan writers mention a stone which was placed upon a hill ormound having the shape of a foot cut on it, supposed to be that of thefirst chief or ancestor of the race, "upon which stone the Tanistplacing his foot, took oath to maintain all ancient customs inviolably, and to give up the succession peaceably to his Tanist in due time. "

The object of securing a Tanist during the lifetime of the chief was tohinder its falling to a minor, or some one unfit to take up thechieftainship, and this continued to prevail for centuries after theAnglo-Norman invasion, and was even adopted by many owners of Englishdescent who had become "meere Irish, " as the phrase ran, or"degenerate English. "

"The childe being oftentimes left in nonage, " says Campion, "could neverdefend his patrimony, but by the time he grow to a competent age andhave buried an uncle or two, he also taketh his turn, " a custom which, as he adds, "breedeth among them continual warres. "

The entire land belonged to the clan, and was held theoretically incommon, and a redistribution made on the death of each owner, though itseems doubtful whether so very inconvenient an arrangement couldpractically have been adhered to. All sons, illegitimate as well aslegitimate, shared and shared alike, holding the property between themin undivided ownership. It was less the actual land than the amount ofgrazing it afforded which constituted its value. Even to this day a man, especially in the West of Ireland, will tell you that he has "the grassof three cows, " or "the grass of six cows, " as the case may be. 

It is curious that the most distinct ancient rules concerning theexcessive extortion of rent are, as has been shown by Sir Henry Maine, to be found in the "Senchus Mor. " Under its regulations three rents areenumerated--namely, the _rack rent_ to be extorted from one of a strangetribe; the _fair_ rent from one of the same tribe; and the _stipulated_rent to be paid equally to either. The Irish clan or sept was a veryloose, and in many cases irregular, structure, embracing even those whowere practically undistinguishable from slaves, yet from none of thesecould any but _fair_ or customary rent be demanded. It was only whenthose who by no fiction could be supposed to belong to the clan soughtfor land that the best price attainable might be extorted andinsisted upon. 

In so primitive a state of society such persons were almost sure to beoutcasts, thrown upon the world either by the breaking up of other clansor by their own misdoings. A man of this class was generally what wasknown as a "Fuidhar" or "broken man, " and answered in some respects tothe slave or the serf of the early English village community. Like himhe seems to have been his lord's or chief's chattel, and if killed orinjured the fine or "eric" was paid not to his own family, but to hismaster. Such men were usually settled by the chief upon theunappropriated tribal lands over which his own authority tended toincrease. This Fuidhar class from the first seem to have been verynumerous, and depending as they did absolutely upon the chief, theregrew up by degrees that class of armed retainers--kerns andgalloglasses, they were called in later times--who surrounded everyimportant chief, whether of English or Irish descent, and were by themquartered forcibly in war time upon others, and so there grew up thatsystem of "coyne and livery, " or forced entertainment for horse and men, which is to be met with again and again throughout Irish history, andwhich undoubtedly was one of the greatest curses of the country, tendingmore perhaps than any other single cause to keep its people at thelowest possible condition of starvation and misery. 

No system of representation seems ever to have prevailed in Ireland. That idea is, in fact, almost purely Teutonic, and seems never to havesprung up spontaneously amongst any Celtic people. The family was thereal root. Every head of a family ruled his own household, and submittedin his turn to the rule of his chief. Blood-relationship, includingfosterage, was the only real and binding union; that larger connectionknown as the clan or sept, having the smaller one of the family for itsbasis, as was the case also amongst the clans of the Scotch highlands. Theoretically, all members of a clan, high and low alike, were held tobe the descendants of a common ancestor, and in this way to have a realand direct claim upon one another. If a man was not in some degree akinto another he was no better than a beast, and might be killed like onewithout compunction whenever occasion arose. 

Everything thus began and centred around the tribe or sept. The wholetheory of life was purely local. The bare right of existence extendedonly a few miles from your own door, to the men who bore the same nameas yourself. Beyond that nothing was sacred; neither age nor sex, neither life nor goods, not even in later times the churches themselves. Like his cousin of the Scotch Highlands, the Irish tribesman's life wasone perpetual carnival of fighting, burning, raiding, plundering, and hewho plundered oftenest was the finest hero. 

All this must be steadily borne in mind as it enables us to understand, as nothing else will, that almost insane joy in and lust for fighting, that marked inability to settle down to orderly life which runs throughall Irish history from the beginning almost to the very end. 

Patriotism, too, it must be remembered, is in the first instance only anidea, and the narrowest of local jealousies may be, and often are, formsmerely of the same impulse. To men living in one of these small isolatedcommunities, each under the rule of its own petty chieftain, it wasnatural and perhaps inevitable that the sense of connection with thoseoutside their own community should have been remarkably slight, and ofnationality, as we understand the word, quite non-existent. Their ownlittle circle of hills and valleys, their own forests and pasturage wastheir world, the only one practically of which they had any cognizance. To its scattered inhabitants of that day little Ireland must have seemeda region of incalculable extent, filled with enemies to kill or to bekilled by; a region in which a man might wander from sunrise to sunsetyet never reach the end, nay, for days together without coming to asecond sea. As Greece to a Greek of one of its smaller states it seemedvast simply because he had never in his own person explored its limits. 

[Illustration: MOUTH OF SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER AT DOWTH, NEW GRANGE. ]

IV. 

ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY. 

But a new element was about to appear upon the troubled stage, and a newfigure, one whose doings, however liberally we may discount the morepurely supernatural part of them, strikes us even now as little short ofmiraculous. There are plenty of heathen countries still; plenty ofmissionaries too; but a missionary at whose word an entire island--aheathen country given up, it must be remembered, to exceedingly heathenpractices--resigns its own creed, and that missionary, too, no king, nowarrior, but a mere unarmed stranger, without power to enforce one ofthe decrees he proclaimed so authoritatively, is a phenomenon which weshould find some little difficulty now, or, indeed, at any time, inparalleling. 

In one respect St. Patrick was less fortunate than his equallyillustrious successor, Columba, since he found no contemporary, ornearly contemporary chronicler, to write his story; the consequencebeing that it has become so overgrown with pious myths, so tangled andmatted with portents and miracles, that it is often difficult for us tosee any real substance or outline below them at all. 

What little direct knowledge we have is derived from a famous Irishmanuscript known as "The Book of Armagh, " which contains, amongst otherthings, a Confession and an Epistle, believed by some authorities tohave been actually written by St. Patrick himself, which was copied asit now stands by a monkish scribe early in the eighth century. It alsocontains a life of the saint from which the accounts of his laterhistorians have been chiefly drawn. 

According to the account now generally accepted he was born about theyear 390, though as this would make him well over a hundred at the timeof his death, perhaps 400 would be the safest date; was a native, not asformerly believed of Gaul, but of Dumbarton upon the Clyde, whence hegot carried off to Ireland in a filibustering raid, became the slave ofone Milcho, an inferior chieftain, and herded his master's sheep uponthe Slemish mountains in Antrim. 

Seven or eight years later he escaped, got back to Britain, wasordained, afterwards went to Gaul, and, according to one account, toItaly. But the thought of the country of his captivity seems to haveremained upon his mind and to have haunted his sleeping and wakingthoughts. The unborn children of the pagan island seemed to stretch ourtheir hands for help to him. At last the inward impulse grew too strongto be resisted, and accompanied by a few followers, he set foot first onthe coast of Wicklow where another missionary, Paladius, had beforeattempted vainly to land, and being badly received there, took boatagain, and landed finally at the entrance of Strangford Lough. 

From this point he made his way on foot to Meath, where the kingLaoghaire was holding a pagan festival, and stopped to keep Easter onthe hill of Slane where he lit a fire. This fire being seen from thehill of Tara aroused great anger, as no lights were by law allowed to beshown before the king's beacon was lit. Laoghaire accordingly sent toknow the meaning of this insolence and to have St. Patrick broughtbefore him. St. Patrick's chronicler, Maccumacthenius (one could wishthat he had been contented with a shorter name!), tells that as thesaint drew nigh to Tara, many prodigies took place. The earth shook, darkness fell, and certain of the magicians who opposed him were seizedand tossed into the air. One prodigy certainly took place, for he seemsto have won converts from the first. A large number appear to have beengained upon the spot, and before long the greater part of Meath hadaccepted the new creed, although its king, Laoghaire himself remained asturdy pagan until his death. 

From Tara St. Patrick went to Connaught, a province to which he seems tohave been drawn from the first, and there spent eight years, foundingmany churches and monasteries. There also he ascended Croagh Patrick, the tall sugar-loaf mountain which stands over the waters of Clew Bay, and up to the summit of which hundreds of pilgrims still annually climbin his honour. 

From Connaught he next turned his steps to Ulster, visited Antrim andArmagh, and laid the foundations of the future cathedral and bishopricin the latter place. Wherever he went converts seem to have come in tohim in crowds. Even the Bards, who had most to lose by the innovation, appear to have been in many cases drawn over. They and the chiefsgained, the rest followed unhesitatingly; whole clans were baptized at atime. Never was spiritual conquest so astonishingly complete!

The tale of St. Patrick's doings; of his many triumphs; his fewfailures; of the boy Benignus his first Irish disciple; of his wrestlingupon Mount Cruachan; of King Eochaidh; of the Bard Ossian, and hisdialogues with the apostle, all this has been excellently rendered intoverse by Mr. Aubrey de Vere, whose "Legends of St. Patrick" seem to thepresent writer by no means so well known as they ought to be. The secondpoem in the series, "The Disbelief of Milcho, " especially is one ofgreat beauty, full of wild poetic gleams, and touches which breathe thevery breath of an Irish landscape. Poetry is indeed the medium bestsuited for the Patrician history. The whole tale of the saint'sachievements in Ireland is one of those in which history seems to loseits own sober colouring, to become luminous and half magical, to take onall the rosy hues of a myth. 

The best proof of the effect of the new revelation is to be found inthat extraordinary burst of enthusiasm which marked the next fewcenturies. The passion for conversion, for missionary labour of allsorts, seems to have swept like a torrent over the island, arousing toits best and highest point that Celtic enthusiasm and which has never, unhappily, found such noble exercise since. Irish missionaries flungthemselves upon the dogged might of heathenism, and grappled with it ina death struggle. Amongst the Picts of the Highlands, amongst the fierceFriscians of the Northern seas, beside the Lake of Constance, where thechurch of St. Gall still preserves the name of another Irish saint, inthe Black Forest, at Schaffhausen, at Würtzburg, throughout, in fact, all Germany and North Italy, they were ubiquitous. Wherever they wenttheir own red-hot fervour seems to have melted every obstacle; whereverthey went victory seems to have crowned their zeal[3]. 

[3] For an account of Irish missionaries in Germany, see Mr. Baring-Gould's "Germany, " in this series, p. 46. 

Discounting as much as you choose everything that seems to partake ofpious exaggeration, there can be no doubt that the period which followedthe Christianizing of Ireland was one of those shining epochs ofspiritual and also to a great degree intellectual enthusiasm rare indeedin the history of the world. Men's hearts, lull of newly--won fervour, burned to hand on the torch in their turn to others. They went out bythousands, and they beckoned in their converts by tens of thousands. Irish hospitality--a quality which has happily escaped the tooth ofcriticism--broke out then with a vengeance, and extended its hands tohalf a continent. From Gaul, from Britain, from Germany, from dozens ofscattered places throughout the wide dominions of Charlemagne, thestudents came; were kept, as Bede expressly tells us, free of cost inthe Irish monasteries, and drew their first inspirations in the Irishschools. Even now, after the lapse of all these centuries, many of theplaces whence they came still reverberate faintly with the memory ofthat time. 

Before plunging into that weltering tangle of confusion which makes upwhat we call Irish history, one may be forgiven for lingering a littleat this point, even at the risk of some slight over-balance ofproportion. With so dark a road before us, it seems good to rememberthat the energies of Irishmen were not, as seems sometimes to beconcluded, always and of necessity directed to injuring themselves ortormenting their rulers! Neither was this period by any means a shortone. It was no mere "flash in the pan;" no "small pot soon hot"enthusiasm, but a steady flame which burned undimmed for centuries. "During the seventh and eighth centuries, and part of the ninth, " saysMr. Goldwin Smith, not certainly a prejudiced writer, "Ireland played areally great part in European history. " "The new religious houses, " saysMr. Green in his Short History, "looked for their ecclesiasticaltraditions, not to Rome, but to Ireland, and quoted for their guidancethe instructions not of Gregory, but of Columba. " "For a time, " he adds, "it seemed as if the course of the world's history was to be changed, asif that older Celtic race which the Roman and German had swept beforethem, had turned to the moral conquest of their conquerors, as if Celticand not Latin Christianity was to mould the destinies of the Church ofthe West. "

V. 

THE FIRST IRISH MONASTERIES. 

At home during the same period the chief events were the founding ofmonasteries, and the settling down of monastic communities, every suchmonastery becoming the protector and teacher of the little Christiancommunity in its vicinity, educating its own sons, and sending them outas a bee sends its swarms, to settle upon new ground, and to fertilizethe flowers of distant harvest fields. 

At one time, "The Tribes of the Saints" seem to have increased to suchan extent that they threatened to absorb all others. In West Irelandespecially, little hermitages sprung up in companies of dozens andhundreds, all over the rock-strewn wastes, and along the sad shores ofthe Atlantic, dotting themselves like sea gulls upon barren points ofrock, or upon sandy wastes which would barely have sufficed, one mightthink, to feed a goat. We see their remains still--so tiny, yet soenduring--in the Isles of Arran; upon a dozen rocky points all round thebleak edges of Connemara; in the wild mountain glens of the Burren--setoften with an admirable selection of site, in some sloping dell with, perhaps, a stream slipping lightly by and hurrying to lose itself in theground, always with a well or spring brimming freshly over--an objectstill of reverence to the neighbouring peasants. Thanks to the innatestability of their material, thanks, too, to the super-abundance ofstone in these regions, which makes them no temptation to the despoiler, they remain, roofless but otherwise pretty much as they were. We canlook back across a dozen centuries with hardly the change of a detail. 

[Illustration: CROSS IN CEMETERY OF TEMPUL BRECCAIN, ARANMOR. _From adrawing by M. Stokes (after Sir F. W. Burton_). ]

In these little western monasteries each cell stood as a rule by itself, containing--one would say very tightly containing--a single inmate. Inother places, large buildings, however, were erected, and great numbersof monks lived together. Some of these larger communities are stated tohave actually contained several thousand brethren, and though thissounds like an exaggeration, there can be no doubt that they wereenormously populous. The native mode of existence lent itself, in fact, very readily to the arrangement. It was merely the clan or septre-organized upon a religious footing. "Les premières grands monastèresde l'Irelande, " says M. De Montalembert in his "Moines d'Occident, " "nefurent done autre chose à vrai dire qui des _clans_, reorganisés sousune forme religieuse. " New clans, that is to say, cut out of the oldones, their fealty simply transferred from a chief to an abbot, who wasalmost invariably in the first instance of chieftain blood. "Le prince, en se faisant moine, devenait naturellement abbé, et restait ainsi dansla vie monastique, ce qu'il avait èté dans la vie sèculière le chef desa race et de son clan. "

There was thus nothing to jar with that sense of continuity, that inbornlove of the past, of old ways, old habits, old modes of thought whichmade and still makes an Irishman--be he never so pronounced arepublican--the deepest at heart of Conservatives. Whereas every laterchange of faith which has been endeavoured to be forced upon the countryhas met with a steady and undeviating resistance, Christianity, thegreatest change of all, seems to have brought with it from the first nosense of dislocation. It assimilated itself quietly, and as it werenaturally, with what it found. Under the prudent guidance of its firstpropagators, it simply gathered to itself all the earlier objects ofbelief, and with merely the change of a name, sanctified and turned themto its own uses. 

[Illustration: ST. KEVIN'S CHURCH, GLENDALOUGH. ]

VI. 

ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH. 

About fifty years after the death of St. Patrick a new missionary arose, one who was destined to carry the work which he had begun yet further, to become indeed the founder of what for centuries was the realmetropolis and centre of Western Christendom. 

In 521 A. D. , St. Columba was born in Donegal, of the royal race, say theannalists, of Hy-Nial--of the royal race, at any rate, of the greatworkers, doers, and thinkers all the world over. In 565, forty-fouryears later, he left Ireland with twelve companions (the apostolicnumber), and started on his memorable journey to Scotland, a date ofimmeasurable importance in the history of Western Christianity. 

In that dense fog which hangs over these early times--thick enough totry even the most penetrating eyesight--there is a curious andindescribable pleasure in coming upon so definite, so living, sobreathing a figure as that of St. Columba, In writing the early historyof Ireland, one of the greatest difficulties which the historian--greator small--has to encounter is to be found in that curious unreality, that tantalizing sense of illusiveness and indefiniteness which seems toenvelope every figure whose name crops up on his pages. Even fourhundred years later the name of a really great prince and warrior likeBrian Boru, or Boruma, awakens no particular sense of reality, nay asoften as not is met by a smile of incredulity. The existence of St. Columba no one, however, has been found rash enough to dispute! His, infact, is one of those essentially self-lit figures which seem to shedsome of their own light upon every other they come in contact with, evenaccidentally. Across the waste of centuries we see him almost as heappeared to his contemporaries. There is something friendly--as it were, next-door-neighbourly--about the man. If we land to-day on Iona, orstand in any of the little chapels in Donegal which bear his name, hispresence seems as real and tangible to us as that of Tasso at Ferrara orPetrarch at Avignon. In spite of that thick--one is inclined to sayrank--growth of miracles which at times confuse Adamnan's fine portraitof his hero--cover it thick as lichens some monumental slab ofmarble--we can still recognize his real lineaments underneath. His greatnatural gifts; his abounding energy; his characteristically Irish lovefor his native soil; for the beloved "oaks of Derry. " We see him in hisgoings out and his comings in; we know his faults; his fiery Celtictemper, swift to wrath, swift to forgive when the moment of anger isover. Above all, we feel the charm of his abounding humanity. LikeSterne's Uncle Toby there seems to have been something about St. Columbawhich "eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelterunder him, " and no one apparently ever refused to respond tothat appeal. 

One thing it is important hereto have clearly before the mind, as it isvery apt to be overlooked. At the time of St. Columba's ministry, England, which during the lifetime of St. Patrick had been Roman andChristian, had now under the iron flail of its Saxon conquerors lapsedback into Paganism. Ireland, therefore, which for a while had made apart of Christendom, had been broken short off by the heathen conquestof Britain. It was now a small, isolated fragment of Christendom, with agreat mass of heathenism between. We can easily imagine what a stimulusto all the eager enthusiasts of the Faith the consciousness of thisneighbourhood must have been; how keen the desire to rush to the assaultand to replace the Cross where it had been before. 

That assault was not, however, begun by Ireland; it was begun, as everyone knows, by St. Augustine, a Roman priest, sent by Pope Gregory, wholanded at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, in the year 597--thirty-twoyears after St. Columba left Ireland. If the South of England owes itsconversion to Rome, Northern England owes its conversion to Ireland, through the Irish colony at Iona. Oswald, the king of Northumbria, hadhimself taken refuge in Iona in his youth, and when summoned to reign heat once called in the Irish missionaries, acting himself, we are told, as their interpreter. His whole reign was one continuous struggle withheathenism, and although at his death it triumphed for a time, in theend the faith and energies of the missionaries carried all before them. After the final defeat of the Mercians, under their king Penda, atWinwoed, in 655, the struggle was practically over. Northern andSouthern England were alike once more Christian. 

One of the chief agents in this result was the Irish monk Aidan, who hadfixed his seat in the little peninsula of Lindisfarne, and from whosemonastery, as from another Iona, missionaries poured over the North ofEngland. At Lichfield, Whitby, and many other places religious housessprang up, all owing their allegiance to Lindisfarne, and through it toIona and Ireland. 

In this very fervour there lay the seeds of a new trouble. A seriousschism arose between Western Christendom and the Papacy. Rome, whetherspiritually or temporally, was a name which reverberated with lessawe-inspiring sound in the ears of Irishmen (even Irish Churchmen) than, probably, in those of any other people at that time on the globe. Theyhad never come under the tremendous sway of its material power, anduntil centuries after this period--when political and, so to speak, accidental causes drove them into its arms--its spiritual power remainedto them a thing apart, a foreign element to which they gave at most areluctant half adhesion. 

From this it came about that early in the history of the Western Churchserious divisions sprang up between it and the other churches, alreadybeing fast welded together into a coherent body under the yoke anddiscipline of Rome. The points in dispute do not strike us now of anyvery vital importance. They were not matters of creed at all, merely ofexternal rule and discipline. A vehement controversy as to the properform of the tonsure, another as to the correct day for Easter, raged formore than a century with much heat on either side; those churches whichowed their allegiance to Iona clinging to the Irish methods, those whoadhered to Rome vindicating its supreme and paramount authority. 

At the Synod of Whitby, held in 664, these points of dispute came to acrisis, and were adjudicated upon by Oswin, king of Northumbria; BishopColman, Aidan's successor at Holy Island, maintaining the authority ofColumba; Wilfrid, a Saxon priest who had been to Rome, that of St. Peter. Oswin's own leaning seems at first to have been towards theformer, but when he heard of the great pretensions of the Roman saint hewas staggered. "St. Peter, you say, holds the keys of heaven and hell?"he inquired thoughtfully, "have they also been given then to St. Columba?" It was owned with some reluctance that the Irish saint hadbeen less favoured. "Then I give my verdict for St. Peter, " said Oswin, "lest when I reach the gate of heaven I find it shut, and the porterrefuse to open to me. " This sounds prudent, but scarcely serious; itseems, however, to have been regarded as serious enough by the Irishmonks. The Synod broke up. Colman, with his Irish brethren, and a fewEnglish ones who threw in their lot with them, forsook Lindisfarne, andsailed away for Ireland. From that moment the rift between them andtheir English brethren grew steadily wider, and was never afterwardsthoroughly healed. 

It does not, however, seem to have affected the position of the IrishChurch at home, nor yet to have diminished the number of its foreignconverts. Safe in its isolation, it continued to go on in its own waywith little regard to the rest of Christendom, although in respect tothe points chiefly in dispute it after a while submitted to the Romandecision. Armagh was the principal spiritual centre, but there wereother places, now tiny villages, barely known by name to the tourist, which were then centres of learning, and recognized as such, not alonein Ireland itself, but throughout Europe. Clonard, Tallaght Clonmacnois;Slane in Meath, where Dagobert II. One of the kings of France, waseducated; Kildare, where the sacred fire--not lamp--of St. Bridget waskept burning for centuries, all are places whose names fill aconsiderable space in the fierce dialectical controversy of that fierytheological age[4]. 

[4] For an excellent account of early Irish monastic life see "Ireland, and the Celtic Church, " by Professor G. Stokes. 

This period of growth slipped all too quickly away, but it has neverbeen forgotten. It was the golden time to which men looked wistfullyback when growing trouble and discord, attack from without, anddissension from within, had torn in pieces the unhappy island which hadshone like a beacon through Europe only to become its byword. TheNorsemen had not yet struck prow on Irish strand, and the period betweenthe Synod of Whitby and their appearance seems to have been really oneof steady moral and intellectual growth. Heathenism no doubt stilllurked in obscure places; indeed traces of it may with no greatdifficulty still be discovered in Ireland, but it did not hinder thelight from spreading fast under the stimulus which it had received fromits first founders. The love of letters, too, sprang up with thereligion of a book, and the copying of manuscripts became a passion. 

[Illustration: WEST CROSS OF MONASTERBOICE, CO. LOUTH. ]

As in Italy and elsewhere, so too in Ireland, the monks were thepainters, the illuminators, the architects, carvers, gilders, andbook-binders of their time. While outside the monastery walls thefighters were making their neighbours' lives a burden to them, andbeyond the Irish Sea the whole world as then known was being shaken topieces and reconstructed, the monk sat placidly inside at his work, producing chalices, crosiers, gold and silver vessels for the churches, carving crosses, inditing manuscripts filled with the most marvellouslydexterous ornament; works, which, in spite of the havoc wrought by analmost unbroken series of devastations which have poured over the doomedisland, still survive to form the treasure of its people. We can havevery little human sympathy, very little love for what is noble andadmirable, if--whatever our creeds or our politics--we fail, as we lookback across that weary waste which separates us from them, to extend oursympathy and admiration to these early workers--pioneers in a trulynational undertaking which has found only too few imitators since. 

[Illustion]

VII. 

THE NORTHERN SCOURGE. 

While from the fifth to the eighth century the work of the Irish Churchwas thus yearly increasing, spreading its net wider and wider, andnumbering its converts by thousands, not much good can be reported ofthe secular history of Ireland during the same period. It is for themost part a confused chronicle of small feuds, jealousies, raids, skirmishes, retaliations, hardly amounting to the dignity of war, butcertainly as distinctly the antipodes of peace. 

The tribal system, which in its earlier stages has been alreadyexplained, had to some degree begun to change its character. Thestruggles between the different septs or clans had grown into a strugglebetween a number of great chieftains, under whose rule the lesser oneshad come to range themselves upon all important occasions. 

As early as the introduction of Christianity Ireland was already dividedinto four such aggregations of tribes--kingdoms they are commonlycalled--answering pretty nearly to the present four provinces, with theaddition of Meath, which was the appanage of the house of Ulster, andincluded West Meath, Longford, and a fragment of the King's County. Ofthe other four provinces, Connaught acknowledged the rule of theO'Connors, Munster that of the O'Briens, Leinster of the McMurroughs, and Ulster of the O'Neills, who were also in theory over-kings, or, asthe native word was, Ard-Reaghs of the entire island. 

[Illustration: DOORWAY OF MAGHERA CHURCH, LONDONDERRY. ]

Considering what a stout fighting race they proved in laterages--fighting often when submission would have been the wiserpolicy--it is curious that in early days these O'Neills or Hy-Nials seemto have been but a supine race. For centuries they were titular kings ofIreland, yet during all that time they seem never to have tried totransform their faint, shadowy sceptre into a real and active one. Malachy or Melachlin, the rival of Brian Boru, seems to have been themost energetic of the race, yet he allowed the sceptre to be pluckedfrom his hands with an ease which, judging by the imperfect light shedby the chroniclers over the transaction, seems to be almostunaccountable. 

It is difficult to say how far that light, for which the Irishmonasteries were then celebrated, extended to the people of the islandat large. With one exception, little that can be called cultivation is, it must be owned, discoverable, indeed long centuries after this Irishchieftains we know were innocent of the power of signing their ownnames. That exception was in the case of music, which seems to have beenloved and studied from the first. As far back as we can see him theIrish Celt was celebrated for his love of music. In one of the earliestextant annals a _Cruit_, or stringed harp, is described as belonging tothe Dashda, or Druid chieftain. It was square in form, and possessedpowers wholly or partly miraculous. One of its strings, we are told, moved people to tears, another to laughter. A harp in Trinity College, known as the harp of Brian Boru, is said to be the oldest in Europe, andhas thirty strings. This instrument has been the subject of manycontroversies. O'Curry doubts it having belonged to Brian Boru, andgives his reasons for believing that it was among the treasures ofWestminster when Henry VIII. Came to the throne in 1509, and that itsuggested the placing of the harp in the arms of Ireland, and on the"harp grotes, " a coinage of the period. However this may be we cannotdoubt that music had early wrought itself into the very texture andfabric of Irish life; airs and words, wedded closely together, travelling down from mouth to mouth for countless generations. Everylittle valley and district may be said to have had its own traditionalmelodies, and the tunes with which Moore sixty years ago was delightingcritical audiences had been floating unheeded and disregarded about thecountry for centuries. 

The last ten years of the eighth century were very bad ones for Ireland. Then for the first time the black Viking ships were to be seen sweepingshore-wards over the low grey waves of the Irish Channel, laden withPicts, Danes, and Norsemen, "people, " says an old historian, "from theirvery cradles dissentious, Land Leapers, merciless, soure, and hardie. "They descended upon Ireland like locusts, and where-ever they came ruin, misery, and disaster followed. 

[Illustration: KILBANNON TOWER. _(From a drawing by George. Petrie, LL. D. )_]

Their first descent appears to have been upon an island, probably thatof Lambay, near the mouth of what is now Dublin harbour. Returning a fewyears later, sixty of their ships, according to the Irish annalists, entered the Boyne, and sixty more the Liffy. These last were under thecommand of a leader who figures in the annals as Turgesius, whoseidentity has never been made very clear, but who appears to be the sameperson known to Norwegian historians as Thorkels or Thorgist. 

Whatever his name he was undoubtedly a bad scourge to Ireland. Landingin Ulster, he burned the cathedral of Armagh, drove out St. Patrick'ssuccessors, slaughtered the monks, took possession of the whole eastcoast, and marching into the centre of the island, established himselfin a strong position near Athlone. 

Beyond all other Land Leapers, this Thorgist, or Turgesius, seems tohave hated the churches. Not content with burning them, and killing allpriests and monks he could find, his wife, we are told, took possessionof the High Altar at Clonmacnois, and used it as a throne from which togive audience, or to utter prophecies and incantations. He also exacteda tribute of "nose money, " which if not paid entailed the forfeit of thefeature it was called after. At last three or four of the tribes unitedby despair rose against him, and he was seized and slain; an event aboutwhich several versions are given, but the most authentic seems to bethat he was taken by stratagem and drowned in Lough Owel, nearMullingar, in or about the year 845. 

He was not, unfortunately, the last of the Land Leapers! More and morethey came, sweeping in from the north, and all seem to have made directfor the plunder of the monasteries, into which the piety of centurieshad gathered most of the valuables of the country. The famous roundtowers, or "Clocthech" of Ireland, have been credited with a hundredfantastic origins, but are now known not to date from earlier than aboutthe eighth or ninth century, are always found in connection withchurches or monasteries, and were unquestionably used as defencesagainst these northern invaders. At the first sight of their unholyprows, rising like water snakes above the waves, all the defencelessinmates and refugees, all the church plate and valuables, and all sicklyor aged brothers were hurried into these monastic keeps; the doors--setat a height of from ten to twenty feet above the ground--securelyclosed, the ladders drawn up, food supplies having been no doubt alreadylaid in, and a state of siege began. 

It is a pity that the annalists, who tell us so many things we neithercare to hear nor much believe in, should have left us no record of anyassault of the Northmen against one of these redoubtable towers. Even atthe present day they would, without ammunition, be remarkably difficultnuts to crack; indeed, it is hard to see how their assault could havebeen successfully attempted, save by the slow process of starvation, orpossibly by fires kindled immediately below the entrance, and so bydegrees smoking out their inmates. 

[Illustration: KELLS ROUND TOWER. _(From a drawing by George Petrie, LL. D. )_]

If any one ever succeeded in getting into them, we may be sure the LandLeapers did! Before long they appear to have gathered nearly the wholespoil of the country into the towns, which they built and fortified forthemselves at intervals along the coast. Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Wexford, and Dublin, all owe their origin in the first instance to theNorthmen; indeed it is a curious fact that Dublin can never be said, save for very short periods to have belonged to the Irish at all. It wasfirst the capital of their northern invaders, and afterwards that, ofcourse, of the English Government. 

Three whole centuries the Danish power lasted, and internecine warraged, a war during which almost every trace of earlier civilizinginfluences, all those milder habits and ways of thought, whichChristianity had brought in and fostered, perished well-nigh utterly. The ferocity of the invaders communicated itself to the invaded, and thewhole history is one confused and continual chronicle of horrors andbarbarities. 

An important distinction must be made at this point between the effectsof the Northern invasion in England and in Ireland. In the former theinvaders and natives became after a while more or less assimilated, and, under Canute, an orderly government, composed of both nationalities, was, we know, established. In Ireland this was never the case. Thereason, doubtless, is to be found in the far closer similarity of racein the former case than the latter. In Ireland the "Danes, " as they arepopularly called, were always strangers, heathen tyrants, hated anddespised oppressors, who retorted this scorn and hatred in the fullestpossible measure upon their antagonists. From the moment of theirappearance down to the last we hear of them--as long, in fact, as theDanes of the seaport towns retained any traces of their northernorigin--so long they continued to be the deadly foes of the rest ofthe island. 

Even where the Northmen accepted Christianity, it does not appear tohave had any strikingly ameliorating effect Thus we read that Godfrid, son of Sitric, embraced Christianity in 948, and in the very next yearwe discover that he plundered and burnt all the churches in East Meath, killing over a hundred people who had taken refuge in them, and carryingoff a quantity of captives. Land-leaping, too, continued in full force. "The godless hosts of pagans swarming o'er the Northern Sea, " continuedto arrive in fresh and fresh numbers from their inexhaustibleScandinavian breeding grounds--from Norway, from Sweden, from Denmark, even, it is said, from Iceland. The eighth, ninth, and tenth centuriesare, in fact, the great period all over Europe for the incursions of theNorthmen--high noon, so to speak, for those fierce and roving sons ofplunder, --"People, " says an old historian quaintly, "desperate inattempting the conquest of other Realmes, being very sure to findewarmer dwellings anywhere than in their own homes. "

VIII. 

BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE. 

At last a time came for their oppression to be cut short in Ireland. Twovaliant defenders sprang almost simultaneously into note. One of thesewas Malachy, or Melachlin, the Ard-Reagh and head of the O'Neills, thesame Malachy celebrated by Moore as having "worn the collar of goldwhich he won from the proud invader. " The other, Brian Boroimhe, commonly known to English writers as Brian Boru, a chieftain of theroyal Dalcassian race of O'Brien, and the most important figure by farin Irish native history, but one which, like all others, has got sofogged and dimmed by prejudice and misstatement, that to many people hisname seems hardly to convey any sense of reality at all. 

Poor Brian Boru! If he could have guessed that he would have come to beregarded, even by some who ought to know better, as a sort of giantCormoran or Eat-'em-alive-oh! a being out of a fairy tale, whom nobodyis expected to take seriously; nay, as a symbol, as often as not, forridiculous and inflated pretension. No one in his own day doubted hisexistence; no one thought of laughing at his name. Had they done so, their laughter would have come to a remarkably summary conclusion!

Brian Boroimhe, Boruma, or Boru--his name is written in all threeways--was not only a real man, but he was, what was more important, areal king, and not a mere simulacrum or walking shadow of one, like mostof those who bore the name in Ireland. For once, for the only time asfar as its native history is concerned, there was some one at the helmwho knew how to rule, and who, moreover, did rule. His proceedings werenot, it must be owned, invariably regulated upon any very strict rule ofequity. He meant to be supreme, and to do so it was necessary to wrestthe power from the O'Neills upon the one hand, and from the Danes on theother, and this he proceeded with the shortest possible delay to do. 

He had a hard struggle at first. Munster had been overrun by the Danesof Limerick, who had defeated his brother, Mahon, king of Munster, andforced him to pay tribute. Brian himself, scorning to submit to thetyrants, had taken to the mountains with a small band of followers. Issuing from this retreat, he with some difficulty induced his brotheronce more to confront the aggressors. An important battle was fought atSulcost, near Limerick, in the year 968, in which the Danes weredefeated, and fled back in confusion to their walls, the Munster men, under Brian, following fast at their heels, and entering at the sametime. The Danish town was seized, the fighting men were put to thesword, the remainder fled or were enslaved. 

[Illustration: BASE OF TCAM CROSS. ]

Mahon being some years afterwards slain, not by the Danes, but bycertain treacherous Molloys and O'Donovans, who had joined themselveswith him, Brian succeeded to the sovereignty of Munster, and shortlyafterwards seized upon the throne of Cashel, which, upon the alternatesystem then prevailing, was at that time reigned over by one of theEuganian house of Desmond. Having avenged his brother's murder upon theO'Donovans, he next proceeded to overrun Leinster, rapidly subduedOssory, and began to stretch out his hands towards the sovereignty ofthe island. 

In the meantime the over-king, Malachy, had defeated the Danes at thebattle of Tara, and was consequently in high honour, stronger apparentlythen any of his predecessors had been. In spite of this Brian by degreesprevailed. With doubtful patriotism he left the Danes for a whileunpursued, attacked Meath, overran and wasted Connaught, and returningsuddenly burnt the royal stronghold of Tara. After a long and wearisomestruggle, Malachy yielded, and allowed Brian to become Ard-Reagh in hisplace, retaining only his own ancestral dominions of Meath. He seems tohave been a placable, easy-going many "loving, " say the annalists, "toride a horse that had never been handled or ridden, " and caring more forthis than for the cares of the State. 

After this, Brian made what may be called a royal progress through thecountry, receiving the submission of the chiefs and inferior kings, andforcing them to acknowledge his authority. In speaking of him as king ofIreland, which in a sense he undoubtedly was, we must be careful ofletting our imaginations carry us into any exaggerated idea of what ismeant by that word. His name, "Brian of the Tribute, " is our safestguide, and enables us to understand what was the position of even thegreatest and most successful king under the Celtic system. It was theexact opposite of the feudal one, and this difference proved the sourcein years to come of an enormous amount of misconception, and of fierceaccusations of falsehood and treachery flung profusely from both sides. The position of the over-king or Ard-Reagh was more nearly allied tothat of the early French suzerain or the German emperor. He could callupon his vassal or tributary kings to aid him in war times or in anysudden emergency, but, as regards their internal arrangements--thegovernment, misgovernment, or non-government of their severalsub-kingdoms--they were free to act as they pleased, and he was notunderstood to have any formal jurisdiction. 

For all that Brian was an unmistakable king, and proved himself to beone. He defeated the Danes again and again, reducing even thoseinveterate disturbers of the peace to a forced quiescence; enteredDublin, and remained there some time, taking, say the annalists, "hostages and treasure. " By the year 1002 Ireland had a master, onewhose influence made itself felt over its whole surface. For twelveyears at least out of its distracted history the country knew theblessings of peace. Broken by defeat the Danish dwellers of the seaporttowns began to turn their energies to the milder and more pacificactivities of trade. The ruined monasteries were getting rebuilt;prosperity was beginning to glimmer faintly upon the island; the chiefs, cowed into submission, abstained from raiding, or confined their raidsto discreeter limits. Fortresses were being built, roads made, andbridges repaired in three at least of the provinces. Another twentyyears of Brian's rule and the whole future history of Ireland might havebeen a different one. 

[Illustration: Doorway of Killeshin Church, Co. Carlow. (_From aPhotograph_. )]

It was not to be however. The king was now old, and the work that he hadbegun, and which, had he been followed by a successor like himself, might have been accomplished, was destined to crumble like a half-builthouse. The Danes began to stir again. A rebellion had sprung up inLeinster, the coast-line of which was strong-holded at several pointswith Danish towns. This rebellion they not only aided with their ownstrength, but further appealed for assistance to their kinsmen inNorthumbria, Man, the Orkneys, and elsewhere, who responded by sending alarge force under Brodar, a Viking, and Sigurd Earl of Orkney totheir aid. 

This force Brian gathered all his energies to oppose. With his ownMunster clansmen, aided by all the fighting men of Meath and Connaught, with his five sons and with his old rival, King Malachy of Meath, fighting under his banner, he marched down to the strand of Clontarf, which stretches from the north of Dublin to the out-jutting promontoryof Howth, and there, upon Good Friday, 1014, he encountered his Leinsterrebels and the Viking host of invaders, ten thousand strong it is said, and a great battle was fought, a battle which, beginning before thedawn, lasted till the sun was beginning to sink. 

To understand the real importance of this battle, we must first fullyrealize to ourselves what a very old quarrel this was. For three longweary centuries Ireland had been lying bound and broken under the heelof her pagan oppressors, and only with great difficulty and partiallyhad escaped within the last fifteen or sixteen years. Every wrong, outrage, and ignominy that could be inflicted by one people upon anotherhad been inflicted and would most assuredly be inflicted again were thisbattle, now about to be fought, lost. 

Nor upon the other side were the motives much less strong. The Danes ofDublin under Sitric stood fiercely at bay. Although their town was stilltheir own, all the rest of the island had escaped from the grasp oftheir race. Whatever Christianity they may occasionally have assumed wasall thrown to the winds upon this great occasion. The far-famed paganbattle flag, the Raven Standard, was unfurled, and floated freely overthe host. The War-arrow had been industriously sent round to all theneighbouring shores, peopled largely at that time with men of Norseblood. As the fleet swept south it had gathered in contingents fromevery island along the Scotch coast, upon which Viking settlements hadbeen established. Manx men, too, and men from the Scandinaviansettlements of Angelsea, Danes under Carle Canuteson, representatives, in fact, of all the old fighting pagan blood were there, and allgathered together to a battle at once of races and of creeds. 

On the Irish side the command had been given by Brian to Morrogh, hiseldest son, who fifteen years before had aided his father in gaining agreat victory over these same Dublin Danes at a place called Glenmama, not far from Dunlaven. The old king himself abstained from taking anypart in the battle. Perhaps because he wished his son--who already hadbeen appointed his successor--to have all the glory and so to fixhimself yet more deeply in the hearts of his future subjects; perhapsbecause he felt that his strength might not have carried him through theday; perhaps--the annalists say this is the reason--because the daybeing Good Friday he preferred praying for his cause rather thanfighting for it. Whatever the reason it is certain that he remained inhis tent, which was pitched on this occasion not far from the edge ofthe great woods which then covered all the rising ground to thenorth-west of Dublin, beginning at the bank of the river Liffy. 

The onset was not long delayed. The Vikings under Sigurd and Brodarfought as only Vikings could fight. Like all battles of that period itresolved itself chiefly into a succession of single combats, which ragedall over the field, extending, it is said, for over two miles along thestrand. The Danish women, and the men left to guard the town, crowdedthe roofs, remaining all day to watch the fight. Sigurd of Orkney waskilled in single combat by Thorlogh, the son of Morrogh, and grandson ofBrian; Armud and several of the other Vikings fell by the hand ofMorrogh, but in the end the father and son were both slain, although thelatter survived long enough to witness the triumph of his own side. 

Late in the afternoon the Northmen broke and fled; some to their ships, some into the town, some into the open country beyond. Amongst thelatter Brodar, the Viking, made for the great woods, and in so doingpassed close to where the tent of the king had been fixed. Theattendants left to guard Brian had by this time one by one slipped awayto join the fight, and the old man was almost alone, and kneeling, it issaid, at the moment on a rug in the front of his tent. The sun was low, but the slanting beams fell upon his bent head and long white beard. Oneof Brodar's followers perceived him and pointed him out to his leader, saying that it was the king. "King, that is no king, that is a monk, ashaveling!" retorted the Viking. "It is not, it is Brian himself, " wasthe answer. 

Then Brodar caught his axe and rushed upon Brian. Taken unawares theking nevertheless rallied his strength which in his day had been greaterthan that of any man of his time, and still only half risen from hisknees he smote the Viking a blow across the legs with his sword. Theother thereupon lifted his battle-axe, and smote the king upon his head, cleaving it down to the chin, then fled to the woods, but was caught thenext day and hacked into pieces by some of the infuriated Irish. 

So fell Brian in the very moment of victory, and when the combinedleague of all his foes had fallen before him. When the news reachedArmagh, the bishop and his clergy came south as far as Swords, in Meath, where they met the corpse of the king and carried it back to Armagh, where he was buried, say the annalists, "in a new tomb" with muchweeping and lamentation. 

[Illustration: CORMAC'S CHAPEL AND ROUND TOWER, ROCK OF CASHEL. ]

IX. 

FROM BRIAN TO STRONGBOW. 

Whatever lamentations were uttered on this occasion were certainly notuncalled for, for a greater disaster has rarely befallen any country orpeople. Were proof wanted--which it hardly is--of that notoriousill-luck which has dogged the history of Ireland from the verybeginning, it would be difficult to find a better one than the result ofthis same famous battle of Clontarf. Here was a really great victory, avictory the reverberation of which rang through the whole Scandinavianworld, rejoicing Malcolm of Scotland, who without himself striking ablow, saw his enemies lying scotched at his feet, so scotched in fact, that after the defeat of Clontarf they never again became a seriousperil. Yet as regards Ireland itself what was the result? The result wasthat all those ligaments of order which were beginning slowly to windthemselves round it, were violently snapped and scattered to the fourwinds. As long as Brian's grasp was over it Ireland was a real kingdom, with limitations it is true, but still with a recognized centre, andsteadily growing power of combined and concerted action. At his deaththe whole body politic was once more broken up, and resolved itself intoits old anarchic elements again. 

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF CORMAC'S CHAPEL, CASHEL. (_From a Drawing byMiss M. Stokes_. )]

It would have been better far for the country had Brian been defeated, so that he, his son Morrogh, or any capable heir had survived, betterfor it indeed had he never ruled at all if this was to be end. By hissuccessful usurpation the hereditary principle--always a weak one inIreland--was broken down. The one chance of a settled central governmentwas thus at an end. Every petty chief and princeling all over the islandfelt himself capable of emulating the achievements of Brian. It was oneof those cases which success and only success justifies. Ireland waspining, as it had always pined, as it continued ever afterwards to pine, for a settled government; for a strong central rule of some sort. Therace of Hy-Nial had been titular kings for centuries, but they had neverheld the sovereignty in anything but name. Pushing their claims aside, and gathering all power into his own hands Brian had acted upon a smallstage the part of Charlemagne centuries earlier upon a large one. He hadsucceeded, and in his success lay his justification. With his death, however, the whole edifice which he had raised crumbled away, andanarchy poured in after it like a torrent. A struggle set in at once forthe sovereignty, which ended by not one of Brian's sons but the deposedKing Malachy being set upon the throne. Like his greater rival he washowever by this time a very old man. His spirit had been broken, andthough the Danes had been too thoroughly beaten to stir, other elementsof disorder abounded. Risings broke out in two of the provinces at once, and at his death the confusion became confounded. As a nativerhyme runs:

 "After Malachy, son of Donald, Each man ruled his own tribe, But no man ruled Erin. "

Henceforward throughout the rather more than a century and a half whichintervened between the battle of Clontarf and the Norman invasion, Ireland remained a helpless waterlogged vessel, with an unruly crew, without rudder or compass, above all, without a captain. The house ofO'Brien again pushed its way to the front, but none of Brian'sdescendants who survived the day of Clontarf seem to have shown a traceeven of his capacity. A fierce feud broke out shortly after betweenDonchad, his son, and Turlough, one of his grandsons, and eachsuccessively caught at the helm, but neither succeeding in obtaining thesovereignty of the entire island. After the last-named followedMurhertach also of the Dalcassian house, at whose death the rule oncemore swung round to the house of Hy-Nial and Donald O'Lochlin reignednominally until his death in 1121. Next the O'Connors, of Connaught, took a turn at the sovereignty, and seized possession of Cashel whichsince its capture by Brian Boroimhe had been the exclusive appanage ofthe Dalcassians. Another O'Lochlin, of the house of O'Neill, thenappears prominently in the fray, and by 1156, seems to have succeeded inseizing the over-lordship of the island, and so the tale goes on--awearisome one, unrelieved by even a transitory gleam of order orprosperity. At last it becomes almost a relief when we reach the name ofRoderick O'Connor, and know that before his death fresh actors will haveentered upon the scene, and that the confused and baffling history ofIreland will, at all events, have entered upon a perfectly new stage. 

[Illustration: ROUND TOWER AT DEVENISH. ]

X. 

THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION. 

The invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans differs in several respectsfrom other invasions and conquests, not the least singular feature aboutit being that nearly the whole of that famous band of knightlyadventurers who took part in it, and to whose audacity it was in thefirst instance due, were more or less closely related to one another, either as brothers, nephews, uncles, or cousins. The connecting linkbetween these variously-named relations was one Nesta, princess of SouthWales, daughter of a Welsh king, Rice ap Tudor, a heroine whoseadventures are of a sufficiently striking, not to say startling, character. By dint of a succession of alliances, some regular, othershighly irregular, she became the ancestress of nearly all the greatAnglo-Norman families in Ireland. Of these the Fitzgeralds, Carews, Barrys, and Cogans, are descended from her first husband, Gerald ofWindsor. Robert FitzStephen, who plays, as will presently be seen, aprominent part in the conquest, was the son of her second husband, Stephen, the Castlelan of Abertivy, while Robert and Meiler FitzHenry, of whom we shall also hear, are said to have been the sons of no less aperson than King Henry I. Of England. 

[Illustration: WEST FRONT OF ST. CRONAN'S CHURCH, ROSCREA. (_From aPhotograph_. )]

Conspicuous amongst this band of knights and adventurers was one who washimself no knight, but a priest and the self-appointed chronicler of therest, Gerald de Barri--better known as Gerald of Wales, or GiraldusCambrensis, who was the grandson of Nesta, through her daughterAngareta. 

Giraldus is one of those writers whom, to tell the truth, we like agreat deal better than they deserve. He is prejudiced to the point ofperversity, and gullible almost to sublimity, uncritical even for aneminently uncritical age, accepting and retailing any and everymonstrous invention, the more readily apparently in proportion to itsmonstrosity. For all that--despite his prejudices, despite even hisoften deliberate perversion of the truth, it is difficult to avoid acertain kindliness for him. To the literary student he is indeed acaptivating figure. With his half-Welsh, half-Norman blood; with thenimble, excitable, distinctly Celtic vein constantly discernible in him;with a love of fighting which could hardly have been exceeded by thedoughtiest of the knights, his cousins and brothers; with a pen thatseems to fly like an arrow across the page; with a conceit which knowsneither stint nor limit, he is the most entertaining, the most vividlyalive of chroniclers; no historian certainly in any rigid sense of theword, but the first, as he was also unquestionably the chief and princeof war correspondents. 

Whether we like him or not, we at any rate cannot dispense with him, seeing that nearly everything we know of the Ireland of the Conquest, weknow from those marvellous pages of his, which, if often exasperating, are at any rate never dull. In them, as in a mirror, we see how, when, and where the whole plan of the campaign was laid; who took part in it;what they said, did, projected; their very motives and thoughts--thewhole thing stands out fresh and alive as if it had happened yesterday. 

There were no lack of motives, any of which would have been temptationenough for invasion. To the pious it took on the alluring guise of aCrusade. The Irish Church, which had obtained such glowing fame in itsearly days, had long since, as we have seen, grown into very bad reputewith Rome. Despite that halo of early sanctity, she was held to beseriously tainted with heresy. She allowed bishops to be irregularlymultiplied, and consecrated contrary to the Roman rule by one bishoponly; tithes and firstfruits were not collected with any regularity;above all, the collection of Peter's pence, being the sum of one pennydue from every household, was always scandalously in arrears, nay, oftenno attempt was made to collect it at all. She did many wrong things, butit may shrewdly be suspected that this was one of the very worstof them. 

[Illustration: WEST DOORWAY OF FRESHFORD CHURCH, CO. KILKENNY. _(From aPhotograph. )_]

It is not a little edifying at this juncture to find the Danes of Dublinamongst those who were enlisted upon the orthodox side. Cut off bymutual hatred rather than theological differences from the Church ofIreland, they had for some time back been regularly applying toCanterbury for their supply of priests. These priests upon being sentover painted the condition of Irish heterodoxy in tints of the deepestblack for their own countrymen. Even before this there had been gravecomplaints. Lanfranc, Anselm, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, all had hadtheir theological ire aroused against the Irish recusants. Many of theIrish ecclesiastics themselves seem to have desired that closer unionwith Rome, which could only be brought about by bringing Ireland underthe power of a sworn son of the Church. Henry I--little as that mostsecular-minded of monarchs cared probably for the more purelytheological question--was fully alive to its value as supporting his ownclaims. He obtained from Pope Hadrian IV. (the Englishman Brakespeare), a Bull sanctioning and approving of the conquest of Ireland as promptedby "the ardour of faith and love of religion, " in which Bull he isdesired to enter the island and therein execute "whatever shall pertainto the honour of God, and the welfare of the land. "

Fourteen years elapsed before the enterprise thus warmly commended wascarried into effect. The story of Dermot McMurrough, king of Leinster, and his part in the invasion, has often been told, and does not, Ithink, need dwelling upon at any great length. He was a brutal, violent-tempered savage, detested in his own country, and especially byhis unfortunate subjects in Leinster. How he foully wronged the honourof O'Rorke, a chieftain of Connaught; how, for this and other offences, he was upon the accession of Roderick O'Connor driven away from Ireland;how he fled to England to do homage to Henry, and seek his protection;how, finding him gone to Aquitaine, he followed him there, and in returnfor his vows of allegiance received letters authorizing the king'ssubjects to enlist if they choose for the Irish service; how armed withthese he went to Wales, and there succeeded in recruiting a band ofmixed Norman and Norman-Welsh adventurers--all this is recorded at largein the histories. 

Of the recruits thus enlisted, the most important was Robert de Clair, Earl of Pembroke and Chepstow, nicknamed by his contemporaries, Strongbow, whom Dermot met at Bristol, and won over by a doublebribe--the hand, namely, of his daughter Eva, and the succession to thesovereignty of Leinster--a succession which, upon the Irish mode ofelection, he had, it may be observed, no shadow of right to dispose of. 

Giraldus, who seems to have been himself in Wales at the time, speakssentimentally of the unfortunate exile, and describes him inhaling thescent of his beloved country from the Welsh coast, and feasting his eyestenderly upon his own land: "Although the distance, " he more prosaicallyadds, "being very great, it was difficult to distinguish mountains fromclouds. " As a matter of fact, Dermot McMurrough, we may be sure, was notthe person to do anything of the sort. He was simply hungry--as a wildbeast or a savage is hungry--for revenge, and would have plunged intoany number of perjuries, or have bound himself to give away any amountof property he had no right to dispose of in order to get it. He couldsafely trust, too, he knew, to the ignorance of his new allies as towhat was or was not a legal transfer in Ireland. 

His purpose achieved, "inflamed, " says Giraldus, "with the desire to seehis native land, " but really the better to concoct his plans, hereturned home, landing a little south of Arklow Head, and arriving atFerns, where he was hospitably entertained during the winter by itsbishop. The following spring, in the month of May, the first instalmentof the invaders arrived under Robert FitzStephen, a small fleet of Welshboats landing them in a creek of the bay of Bannow, where a chasmbetween the rocks was long known as "FitzStephen's stride. "

Here they were met by Donald McMurrough, son of Dermot, and ten dayslater drew up under the walls of Wexford, having so far encountered noopposition. 

In this old Danish town a stout fight was made. The townsfolk, no longerVikings but simple traders, did what they could in their own defence. They burnt their suburbs, consisting doubtless of rude wooden huts; shutthe gates, and upon the first two assaults drove back the assailants. Soviolently were they repelled, "that they withdrew, " Giraldus tells us, "in all great haste from the walls. " His own younger brother, Robert deBarri, was amongst the wounded, a great stone falling upon his helmetand tumbling him headlong into one of the ditches, from the effects ofwhich blow, that careful historian informs us incidentally, "Sixteenyears later all his jaw teeth fell out!"

Next morning, after mass, they renewed the assault; this time with morecircumspection. Now there were at that time, as it happened, two bishopsin the town, who devoted their energies to endeavouring to induce thecitizens to make peace. In this attempt they were successful, moresuccessful than might have been expected with men descended from the oldLand Leapers. Wexford opened its gates, its townsmen submitting toDermot, who thereupon presented the town to his allies, FitzStephen, true to his Norman instincts, proceeding forthwith to build a castleupon the rock of Carneg, at the narrowest point of the river Slaney, thefirst of that large crop of castles which subsequently sprang up uponIrish soil. 

The next sharers of the struggle were the wild Ossory clans, whogathered to the defence of their territory under Donough McPatrick, anold and especially hated enemy of Dermot's. The latter had now threethousand men at his back, in addition to his Welsh and Norman allies. The Ossory men fought, as Giraldus admits, with furious valour, but uponrashly venturing out of their own forests into the open, were charged byFitzStephen, whose horsemen defeated them, killing a great number, overtwo hundred heads being collected and laid at the feet of Dermot, who, "turning them over, one by one, to recognize them, lifted his hands toheaven in excess of joy, and with a loud voice returned thanks to Godmost High. " So pious was Dermot!

After this, finding that the country at large was beginning to take somenote of their proceedings, the invaders fell back upon Ferns, which theyfortified according to the science of the age under the superintendenceof Robert FitzStephen. Roderick O'Connor, the Ard-Reagh, was by thistime not unnaturally beginning to get alarmed, and had gathered his mentogether against the invaders. The winter, however, was now at hand, anda temporary peace was accordingly patched up; Leinster being restored toDermot on condition of his acknowledging the over-lordship of Roderick. Giraldus recounts at much length the speeches made upon both sides onthis occasion; the martial addresses to the troops, the many classicaland flowery quotations, which last he is good enough to bestow upon theunlucky Roderick no less than upon his own allies. Seeing, probably, that all were alike imaginary, it is hardly necessary to delay torecord them. 

The next to arrive upon the scene was Maurice Fitzgerald, half brotherof Robert FitzStephen and uncle of Giraldus. Strongbow meanwhile wasstill upon the eastern side of the channel awaiting the return of hisuncle, Hervey de Montmorency, whom he had sent over to report upon thecondition of affairs. Even after Hervey's return bringing with him afavourable report, he had still the king's permission to gain. Early in1170 he again sought Henry and this time received an ambiguous reply, which, however, he chose to interpret in his own favour. He sent backHervey to Ireland, accompanied by Raymond Fitzgerald, surnamed Le Gros, and a score of knights with some seventy archers. These, landing inKilkenny, entrenched themselves, and being shortly afterwards attackedby the Danes of Waterford, defeated them with great slaughter, seizing anumber of prisoners. Over these prisoners a dispute arose; Raymond wasfor sparing their lives, Hervey de Montmorency for slaying. Theeloquence of the latter prevailed. "The citizens, " says Giraldus, "asmen condemned, had their limbs broken and were cast headlong into thesea and so drowned. "

Shortly after this satisfactory beginning, Strongbow himself appearedwith reinforcements. He attacked Waterford, which was taken after ashort but furious resistance, and the united forces of Dermot and theEarl marched into the town, where the marriage of the latter with Eva, Dermot's daughter, was celebrated, as Maclise has represented it in hispicture, amid lowering smoke and heaps of the dead and dying. 

Dermot was now on the top of the wave. With his English allies and hisown followers he had a considerable force around him. Guiding the latterthrough the Wicklow mountains, which they would probably have hardly gotthrough unaided, he descended with them upon Dublin, and despite theefforts of St. Lawrence O'Toole, its archbishop, to effect a pacificarrangement, the town was taken by assault. The principal Danes, withHasculph, their Danish governor, escaped to their ships and sailedhastily away for the Orkneys. 

Meath was the next point to be attacked. O'Rorke, the old foe of Dermot, who held it for King Roderick, was defeated; whereupon, in defiance ofhis previous promises, Dermot threw off all disguise and proclaimedhimself king of Ireland, upon which Roderick, as the only retaliationleft in his power, slew Dermot's son who had been deposited in his handsas hostage. 

It was now Strongbow's aim to hasten back and place his new lordship atthe feet of his sovereign, already angry and jealous at such unlockedfor and uncountenanced successes. He was not able however to do so atonce. Hasculph the Dane returned suddenly with sixty ships, and a largeforce under a noted Berserker of the day, known as John the Mad, "warriors, " says Giraldus, "armed in Danish fashion, having longbreast-plates and shirts of mail, their shields round and bound aboutwith iron. They were iron-hearted, " he says, "as well asiron-armed men. "

In spite of their arms and their hearts, he is able triumphantly toproclaim their defeat. Milo de Cogan, the Norman governor of Dublin, fell upon his assailants suddenly. John the Mad was slain, as were alsonearly all the Berserkers. Hasculph was brought back in triumph, andpromptly beheaded by the conquerors. 

He was hardly dead before a new assailant, Godred, king of Man, appearedwith thirty ships at the mouth of the Liffy. Roderick, in the meanwhile, had collected men from every part of Ireland, with the exception of thenorth which stood aloof from him, and now laid siege to Dublin by land, helped by St. Lawrence its patriotic archbishop. Strongbow was thus shutin with foes behind and before, and the like disaster had befallenRobert FitzStephen, who was at this time closely besieged in his own newcastle at Wexford. Dermot their chief native ally had recently died. There seemed for a while a reasonable chance that the invaders would bedriven back and pushed bodily into the sea. 

Discipline and science however again prevailed. The besieged, excitedboth by their own danger and that of their friends in the south, made adesperate sally. The Irish army kept no watch, and was absolutelyundrilled. A panic set in. The besiegers fled, leaving behind them theirstores of provisions, and the conquerors thereupon marched away intriumph to the relief of FitzStephen. Here they were less successful. Byforce, or according to Giraldus, by a pretended tale of the destructionof all the other invaders, the Wexford men seized possession of him andthe other English, and had them flung into a dungeon. Finding thatStrongbow and the rest were not destroyed, but that on the contrary theywere marching down on them, the Wexford men set fire to their own townand departed to an island in the harbour, carrying their prisoner withthem and threatening if pursued to cut off his head. 

Foiled in this attempt, Strongbow hastened to Waterford, took boatthere, and flew to meet the king, whom he encountered near Gloucesterwith a large army. Henry's greeting was a wrathful one. His anger andjealousy had been thoroughly aroused. Not unwarrantably. But for hispromptness his head-strong subjects--several of them it must beremembered of his own dominant blood--would have been perfectly capableof attempting to carve out a kingdom for themselves at his very gates. Happily Strongbow had found the task too large for his unaided energies, and, as we have seen, had barely escaped annihilation. He was ready, therefore, to accept any terms which his sovereign chose to impose. Hissubmission appears to have disarmed the king. He allowed himself to bepacified, and after a while they returned to Ireland together. Henry II. Landed at Waterford in the month of October, 1171. 

[Illustration: SOUTH WINDOW OF ST. CAIMIN'S CHURCH, INISMAIN. ]

XI. 

HENRY II. IN IRELAND. 

This was practically the end of the struggle. The king had four thousandmen-at-arms at his back, of whom no less than four hundred were knights. In addition his ships contained vast stores of provisions, a variety ofwar devices never before seen in Ireland, artizans for building bridgesand making roads--a whole war train, in short. Such a display of forcewas felt to be irresistible. The chieftains one after the other came inand made their submission. Dermot McCarthy, lord of Desmond and Cork, was the first to do homage, followed by Donald O'Brien, Prince ofThomond; while another Donald, chieftain of Ossory, rapidly followedsuit. The men of Wexford appeared, leading their prisoner with them by achain, and presenting him as an offering to his master, who, firstrating him soundly for his unauthorized proceedings, ordered him to bechained to another prisoner and shut up in Reginald's tower. Later, soothed by his own triumph, or touched, as Giraldus tells us, withcompassion for a brave man, he, at the intercession of some of hiscourtiers, forgave and restored him to his possessions, reserving, however, the town of Wexford for himself. 

From Wexford Henry marched to Dublin, having first visited Tipperary andWaterford. The Danes at once submitted and swore allegiance; so also didO'Carrol of Argial, O'Rorke of Brefny, and all the minor chieftains ofLeinster; Roderick O'Connor still stood at bay behind the Shannon, andthe north also remained aloof and hostile, but air the other chieftains, great and small, professed themselves willing to become tributaries ofthe king of England. 

The idea of an Ard-Reagh, or Over-lord, was no new one, as we have seen, to any of them. Theoretically they had always acknowledged one, although, practically, he had rarely exercised any authority save overhis own immediate subjects. Their feeling about Henry was doubtless thesame. They were as willing to swear fealty to him as to RoderickO'Connor, more so in fact, seeing that he was stronger than Roderick, but that was all. To Henry and to his successors this recognitioncarried with it all the complicated dependence of feudalism, which inEngland meant that his land and everything else which a man possessedwas his only so long as he did service for it to the king. To these newIrish subjects, who had never heard of feudalism, it entailed nothing ofthe sort. They regarded it as a mere vague promise of adhesion, bindingthem at most to a general muster or "hosting" under his arms in case ofwar or some common peril. This was an initial misconception, whichcontinued, as will be seen, to be a deeper and deeper source ofconfusion as the years went on. 

In the meanwhile Henry was established in Dublin, where he keptChristmas in high state, occupying a palace built in the native fashionof painted wicker-work, set up just outside the walls. Here heentertained the chiefs, who were naturally astonished at the splendourof his entertainments. "They learnt, " Giraldus observes withsatisfaction, "to eat cranes"--does this mean herons?--"a species offood which they had previously loathed;" and, in general, were suitablyimpressed with the greatness and glory of the conqueror. The bishopswere most of them already warmly in his favour, and at a synod shortlyafterwards held at Cashel, at which all the Irish clergy wererepresented, the Church of Ireland was solemnly declared to be finallyunited to that of England, and it was laid down that, "as by DivineProvidence Ireland has received her lord and king from England, so sheshould also submit to a reformation from the same source. "

The weather that winter was so rough that hardly a ship could cross thechannel, and Henry in his new kingdom found himself practically cut offfrom his old one. About the middle of Lent, the wind veering at last tothe east, ships arrived from England and Aquitaine, bearers of very illnews to the king. Two legates were on their way, sent by the Pope, toinquire into the murder of Becket, and armed in case of anunsatisfactory reply with all the terrors of an interdict. Henry hastilymade over the government of Ireland to Hugo de Lacy, whom he placed inDublin as his representative, and sailed from Wexford upon EasterMonday. He never again revisited his new dominions, where many of thelessons inculcated by him--including possibly the delights of eatingcranes--were destined before long to be forgotten. 

XII. 

EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION. 

Henry had been only six months in Ireland, but he had accomplishedmuch--more certainly than any other English ruler ever accomplishedafterwards within the same time. He had divided the ceded districts intocounties; had appointed sheriffs for them; had set up three LawCourts--Bench, Pleas, and Exchequer; had arranged for the going oncircuit by judges; and had established his own character for orthodoxy, and acquitted himself of his obligations to the papacy by freeing allchurch property from the exactions of the chiefs, and rigidly enforcingthe payment of tithes. 

In a still more important point--that about which he was evidentlyhimself most tenacious--his success was even more complete. He once forall put a stop to all danger of an independent lordship by forcing thosewho had already received grants of land from the native chiefs tosurrender them into his hands, and to receive them back direct fromhimself, according to the ordinary terms of feudal tenure. 

That he had larger and more statesmanlike views for the new dependencythan he was ever able to carry out there can be no question. As early as1177 he appointed his youngest son John king of Ireland, and seems tohave fully formed the intention of sending him over as a permanentgovernor or viceroy, a purpose which the misconduct of that youthfulRehoboam, as Giraldus calls him, was chiefly instrumental in foiling. 

It is curious to hear this question of a royal viceroy and a permanentroyal residence in Ireland coming to the front so very early in thehistory of English rule there. That the experiment, if fairly tried, andtried with a man of the calibre of Henry himself, might have made thewhole difference in the future of Ireland, we cannot, I think, reasonably doubt. Any government, indeed, so that it was central, sothat it gathered itself into a single hand and took its impress from asingle mind, would have been better a thousand times than the miserablecondition of half-conquest, half-rule, whole anarchy and confusion whichset in and continued with hardly a break. 

This is one reason more why it is so much to be regretted that Ireland, save for a few years, had never any real king or central government ofher own. Had this been the case, even if she had been eventuallyconquered by England--as would likely enough have been the case--theresult of that conquest would have been different. There would have beensome one recognized point of government and organization, and thestruggle would have been more violent and probably more successful atfirst, but less chronic and less eternally renewed in the long run. Asit was, all the conditions were at their very worst. No native ruler ofthe calibre of a Brian Boru could ever again hope to unite all Irelandunder him, since long before he arrived at that point his enemies wouldhave called in the aid of the new colonists, who would have fallen uponand annihilated him, though after doing so they would have been aslittle able to govern the country for themselves as before. 

This also explains what is often set down as the inexplicable want ofpatriotism shown by the native Irish in not combining more resolutelytogether against their assailants. It is true that they did not do so, but the fact is not referred to the right cause. An Englishman of thetime of the Heptarchy had, if at all, little more patriotism, and hardlymore sense of common country. He was a Wessex man, or a Northumbrian, ora man of the North or the East Angles, rather than an Englishman. So tooin Ireland. As a people the Irish of that day can hardly be said to havehad any corporate existence. They were O'Briens, or O'Neils, orO'Connors, or O'Flaherties, and that no doubt in their own eyes appearedto be quite nationality enough. 

Unfortunately both for the country and for his own successors, Henry hadno time to carry out his plans, and all that he had begun to organizefell away into disorder again after his departure. "That inconstantsea-nymph, " says Sir John Davis, "whom the Pope had wedded to him with aring, " remained obedient only as long as her new lord was present, andonce his back was turned she reverted to her own ways again. The crowdof Norman and Welsh adventurers who now filled the country were each andall intent upon ascertaining how much of that country they could seizeupon and appropriate for themselves. There were many gallant men amongstthem, but there was not one apparently who had the faintest trace ofwhat is meant by public spirit. Occupied only by their own interests, and struggling solely for their own share of the spoil, they could neverreally hold the country, and even those parts which they did get intotheir hands lapsed back after a while into the old condition again. 

The result was that the fighting never ended. The new colonists builtcastles and lived shut up in them, ruling their own immediate retainerswith an odd mixture of Brehon and Norman law. When they issued forththey appeared clad from head to foot in steel, ravaging the country morelike foreign mercenaries than peaceful settlers. The natives, driven tobay and dispossessed of their lands, fought too, not in armour, but, like the Berserkers of old, in their shirts, with the addition at mostof a rude leather helmet, more often only with their hair matted into asort of cap on their foreheads in the fashion known as the "gibbe, " that"rascally gibbe" to which Spenser and other Elizabethan writers objectso strongly. By way of defence they now and then threw up a rudestockade of earth or stone, modifications of the primitive rath, moreoften they made no defence, or merely twisted a jungle of boughs alongthe pathways to break the advance of their more heavily armed foes. Theideas of the two races were as dissimilar as their weapons. The instinctof the one was to conquer a country and subdue it to their own uses; theinstinct of the other was to trust to the country itself, and dependupon its natural features, its forests, morasses, and so forth forsecurity. The one was irresistible in attack, the other, as hisconqueror soon learnt to his cost, practically invincible in defence, returning doggedly again and again, and a hundred times over to theground from which he seemed at first to have been so easily and soeffectually driven off. 

All these peculiarities, which for ages continued to mark the strugglebetween the two races now brought face to face in a death struggle, arejust as marked and just as strikingly conspicuous in the first twentyyears which followed the invasion as they are during the succeedinghalf-dozen centuries. 

[Illustration: FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT, MEATH. ]

XIII. 

JOHN IN IRELAND. 

Henry had gone, and the best hopes of the new dependency departed withhim never to return again. Fourteen years later he despatched his sonJohn, then a youth of nineteen, with a train of courtiers, and amongstthem our friend Giraldus, who appeared to have been sent over in somesort of tutorial or secretarial capacity. 

The expedition was a disastrous failure. The chiefs flocked to Waterfordto do honour to their king's son. The courtiers, encouraged by theirinsolent young master, scoffed at the dress, and mockingly plucked thelong beards of the tributaries. Furious and smarting under the insultthey withdrew, hostile every man of them now to the death. The newsspread; the more distant and important of the chieftains declined toappear. John and his courtiers gave themselves up to rioting andmisconduct of various kinds. All hopes of conciliation were at an end. Asuccessful confederation was formed amongst the Irish, and the Englishwere for a while driven bodily out of Munster. John returned to Englandat the end of eight months, recalled in hot haste and high displeasureby his father. 

Twenty-five years later he came back again, this time as king, with amotley army of mercenaries gathered to crush the two brothers De Lacy, who for the moment dominated all Ireland--the one, Hugo, being Earl ofUlster, and Viceroy; the other, Walter, Lord of the Palatinate of Meath. 

Among his many vices John had not at least that of indolence to be laidto his charge! He marched direct from Waterford to Trim, thehead-quarters of the De Lacys, seized the castle, moved on next day toKells, thence proceeded by rapid stages to Dundalk, Carlingford, Downpatrick, and Carrickfergus. Hugo de Lacy fled in dismay to Scotland. The chieftains of Connaught and Thomond joined their forces with thoseof the king; even the hitherto indomitable O'Neil made a proffer ofsubmission. Leaving a garrison at Carrickfergus, John marched back byDownpatrick and Drogheda, re entered Meath, visited Duleck, slept anight at Kells, and so back to Dublin, where he was met by nearly everyAnglo-Norman baron, each and all eager to exhibit their own loyalty. Hisnext care was to divide their territory into counties; to bind them overto supply soldiers when called upon to do so by the viceroy, and toarrange for the muster of troops in Dublin. Then away he went again toEngland. He had been in the country exactly sixty-six days. 

Unpleasant man and detestable king as he was, John had no slight shareof the governing powers of his race, and even his short stay in Irelanddid some good, enough to show what might have been done had a betterman, and one in a little less desperate hurry, remained to hold thereins. He had proved that, however they might ape the part, the baronswere not as a matter of fact the absolute lords of Ireland; that theyhad a master beyond the sea; one who, if aroused, could make the boldestof them shake in his coat of mail. The lesson was not as well learnt asit ought to have been, but it was better at least than if it had notbeen learnt at all. 

At that age and in its then condition a strong ruler--native ifpossible, if not, foreign--was by far the best hope for Ireland. Such aruler, if only for his own sake, would have had the genuine interests ofthe country at heart. He might have tyrannized himself, but the littletyrants would have been kept at bay. Few countries--and certainlyIreland was not one of the exceptions--were at that time ripe for whatwe now mean by free institutions. Freedom meant the freedom of a stronggovernment, one that was not at the beck of accident, and was notperpetually changing from one hand to another. The English people foundthis out for themselves centuries later during the terrible anarchywhich resulted from the Wars of the Roses, and of their own accord putthemselves under the brutal, but on the whole patriotic, yoke of theTudors. In Ireland the petty masters unfortunately were always near; thegreat one was beyond the sea and not so easily to be got at! There wasno unity; no pretence of even-handed justice, no one to step between theoppressed and the oppressor. And the result of all this is still to beseen written as in letters of brass upon the face of the country andwoven into the very texture of the character of its people. 

XIV. 

THE LORDS PALATINE. 

The jealousy shown by Henry and his sons towards the earliest invadersof Ireland is doubtless the reason why Giraldus--for a courtier and anecclesiastic upon his promotion--is so remarkably explicit upon theirroyal failings. The Geraldines especially seem to have been the objectsof this not very unnatural jealousy, and the Geraldines are, on theother hand, to Giraldus himself, objects of an almost superstitiousworship. His pen never wearies of expatiating upon their valour, fame, beauty, and innumerable graces, laying stress especially--and in this heis certainly borne out by the facts--upon the great advantage which mentrained in the Welsh wars, and used all their lives to skirmishing inthe lightest order, had over those who had had no previous experience ofthe very peculiar warfare necessary in Ireland. "Who, " he cries with aburst of enthusiasm, "first penetrated into the heart of the enemy'scountry? The Geraldines! Who have kept it in submission? The Geraldines!Who struck most terror into the enemy? The Geraldines! Against whom arethe shafts of malice chiefly directed? The Geraldines! Oh that they hadfound a prince who could have appreciated their distinguished worth! Howtranquil, how peaceful would then have been the state of Ireland undertheir administration!"

Even their indignant chronicler admits however that the Geraldines didnot do so very badly for themselves! Maurice Fitzgerald, the eldest ofthe brothers, became the ancestor both of the Earls of Kildare andDesmond; William, the younger, obtained an immense grant of land inKerry from the McCarthys, indeed as time went on the lordship of theDesmond Fitzgeralds grew larger and larger, until it covered nearly asmuch ground as many a small European kingdom. Nor was this all. TheWhite Knight, the Knight of Glyn, and the Knight of Kerry were all threeFitzgeralds, all descended from the same root, and all owned largetracts of country. The position of the Geraldines of Kildare was evenmore important, on account of their close proximity to Dublin. In latertimes their great keep at Maynooth dominated the whole Pale, while theirfollowers swarmed everywhere, each man with a G. Embroidered upon hisbreast in token of his allegiance. By the beginning of the sixteenthcentury their power had reached to, perhaps, the highest point everattained in these islands by any subject. Whoever might be called theViceroy in Ireland it was the Earl of Kildare who practically governedthe country. 

Originally there were three Palatinates--Leinster granted to Strongbow, Meath to De Lacy, and Ulster to De Courcy. To these two more wereafterwards added, namely, Ormond and Desmond. The power of the LordPalatine was all but absolute. He had his own Palatinate court, with itsjudges, sheriffs, and coroners. He could build fortified towns, andendow them with charters. He could create as many knights as he thoughtfit, a privilege of which they seem fully to have availed themselves, since we learn that Richard, Earl of Ulster, created no less thanthirty-three upon a single occasion. For all practical purposes thePalatinates were thus simply petty kingdoms or principalities, independent in everything but the name. 

Strongbow, the greatest of all the territorial barons, left no son toinherit his estates, only a daughter, who married William Marshall, Earlof Pembroke. Through her his estates passed to five heiresses, whomarried five great nobles, namely, Warrenne, Mountchesny, De Vesci, DeBraosa, and Gloucester. Strongbow's Palatinate of Leinster was thussplit up into five smaller Palatinates. As none of the new ownersmoreover chose to live in Ireland, and their revenues were merely drawnaway to England, the estates were after awhile very properly declaredforfeited, and went to the Crown. Thus the one who of all theadventurers had cherished the largest and most ambitious hopes in theend left no enduring mark at all in Ireland. 

Connaught--despite a treaty drawn up between Henry I. And CathalO'Connor, its native king--was granted by John to William FitzAldelm deBurgh and his son Richard, on much the same terms as Ulster had beenalready granted to De Courcy, on the understanding, that is to say, thatif he could he might win it by the sword. De Courcy failed, but the DeBurghs were wilier and more successful. Carefully fostering a strifewhich shortly after broke out between the two rival princes of the houseof O'Connor, and watching from the fortress they had built forthemselves at Athlone, upon the Shannon, they seized an opportunity whenboth combatants were exhausted to pounce upon the country, and wrest thegreater part of it away from their grasp. They also drove away the clanof O'Flaherty--owners from time immemorial of the region known as MoySeola, to the east of the bay of Galway--and forced them back acrossLough Corrib, where they took refuge amongst the mountains of farConnaught, descending continually in later times in fierce hordes, andwreaking their vengeance upon the town of Galway, which had been foundedby the De Burghs at the mouth of the river which carries the waters ofLough Corrib to the sea. To this day the whole of this region of MoySeola and the eastern shores of Lough Corrib may be seen to be thicklypeppered over with ruined De Burgh castles, monuments of some four orfive centuries of uninterrupted fighting. 

At one time the De Burghs were by far the largest landowners in Ireland. Not only did they possess an immense tract of Connaught, but by themarriage of Richard de Burgh's son to Maud, daughter of Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, they became the nominal owners of nearly all Ulster toboot. It never was more, however, than a nominal ownership, the clutchof the O'Neills and O'Donnells being found practically impossible tounloose, so that all the De Burghs could be said to hold were thesouthern borders of what are now the counties of Down, Monaghan, andAntrim. When, too, William, the third Earl of Ulster, was murdered in1333, his possessions passed to his daughter and heiress, a child of twoyears old. A baby girl's inheritance was not likely, as may be imagined, to be regarded at that date as particularly sacred. Ulster was at onceretaken by the O'Neills and O'Connels. Two of the Burkes, or De Burghs, Ulick and Edmund, seized Connaught and divided it between them, becomingin due time the ancestors, the one of the Mayos, the other of theClanricardes. 

Another of the great houses was that of the Ormonds, descended fromTheobald Walter, a nephew of Thomas à Becket, who was created hereditarycup-bearer or butler to Henry II. Theobald Walter received grants ofland in Tipperary and Kilkenny, as well as at Arklow, and in 1391Kilkenny Castle was sold to his descendant the Earl of Ormond by theheirs of Strongbow. The Ormonds' most marked characteristic is that fromthe beginning to the end of their career they remained, with hardly anexception, loyal adherents of the English Crown. Their most importantrepresentative was the "great duke" as he was called, James, Duke ofOrmond, who bore an important part in the civil wars of Charles I. , andis perhaps the most distinguished representative of all these greatNorman Irish houses, unless indeed one of the greatest names in thewhole range of English political history--that of Edmund Burke--is to beadded to the list, as perhaps in fairness it ought. 

Troublesome as it is to keep these different houses in the memory, it ishopeless to attempt without doing so to understand anything of thehistory of Ireland. In England where the ruling power was vested firstin the sovereign and later in the Parliament, the landowners, howeverlarge their possessions, rarely attained to more than a localimportance, save of course when one of them chanced to rise to eminenceas a soldier or a statesman. In Ireland the parliament, throughoutnearly the whole of its separate existence, was little more than a name, irregularly summoned, and until the middle of the sixteenth century, representing only one small corner of the country. The kings never came;the viceroys came and went in a continually changing succession;practically, therefore, the great territorial barons constituted thebackbone of the country--so far as it could be said to have had anybackbone at all. They made war with the native chiefs, or else madealliances with them and married their daughters. They raided oneanother's properties, slew one another's kerns, and carried one anotheraway prisoner. Sometimes their independent action went even further thanthis. The battle of Knocktow, of which we shall hear in due time, arosebecause the Earl of Kildare's daughter had quarrelled with her husband, the Earl of Clanricarde, and her father chose to espouse her quarrel. Two large armies were collected, nearly all the lords of the Pale andtheir followers being upon one side, under the banner of Kildare, a vastand undisciplined horde of natives under Clanricarde upon the other, andthe slaughter is said to have exceeded 8, 000. Parental affection is avery attractive quality, but when it swells to such dimensions as theseit becomes formidable for the peace of a country!

XV. 

EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND. 

One of the greatest difficulties to be faced in the study of Irishhistory, no matter upon what scale, is to discover any reasonable methodof dividing our space. The habit of distributing all historical affairsinto reigns is often misleading enough even in England; in Ireland itbecomes simply ridiculous. What difference can any one suppose it madeto the great bulk of the people of that country whether a Henry, whomthey had never seen, had been succeeded by an Edward they had neverseen, or an Edward by a Henry? No two sovereigns could have been lessalike in character or aims than Henry III. And Edward I. , yet when wefix our eyes upon Ireland the difference is to all intents and purposesimperceptible. 

That, though he never visited the country, Edward I. , like hisgreat-grandfather, had large schemes for the benefit of Ireland iscertain. Practically, however? his schemes never came to anything, andthe chief effect of his reign was that the country was so largely drawnupon for men and money for the support of his wars elsewhere as greatlyto weaken the already feeble power of the Government, the result beingthat at the first touch of serious trouble it all but fell to pieces. 

Very serious trouble indeed came in the reign of the second Edward. Thebattle of Bannockburn--the greatest disaster which ever befel theEnglish during their Scotch wars--had almost as marked an effect onIreland as on Scotland. All the elements of disaffection at once beganto boil and bubble. The O'Neills--ever ready for a fray, and the nearestin point of distance to Scotland--promptly made overtures to the Bruces, and Edward Bruce, the victorious king's brother, was despatched at thehead of a large army, and landing in 1315 near Carrickfergus was at oncejoined by the O'Neills, and war proclaimed. 

The first to confront these new allies was Richard de Burgh, the "RedEarl" of Ulster, who was twice defeated by them and driven back onDublin. The viceroy, Sir Edmund Butler, was the next encountered, and healso was defeated at a battle near Ardscul, whereupon the whole countryrose like one man. Fedlim O'Connor, the young king of Connaught, thehereditary chieftain of Thomond, and a host of smaller chieftains ofConnaught, Munster, and Meath, flew to arms. Even the De Lacys andseveral of the other Norman colonists threw in their lot with theinvaders. Edward Bruce gained another victory at Kells, and havingwasted the country round about, destroying the property of the colonistsand slaughtering all whom he could find, he returned to Carrickfergus, where he was met by his brother, King Robert, and together they crossedIreland, descending as far south as Cashel, and burning, pillaging, anddestroying wherever they went. In 1316 the younger Bruce was crownedking at Dundalk. 

Such was the panic they created, and so utterly disunited were thecolonists, that for a time they carried all before them. It is plainthat Edward Bruce--who on one side was descended both from Strongbow andDermot McMurrough--fully hoped to have cut out a kingdom for himselfwith his sword, as others of his blood had hoped and intended beforehim. His own excesses, however, went far to prevent that. So frightfullydid he devastate the country, and so horrible was the famine which hecreated, that many even of his own army perished from it or from thepestilence which followed. His Irish allies fell away in dismay. Englishand Irish annalists, unanimous for once, alike exclaim in horror overhis deeds. Clyn, the Franciscan historian, tells us how he burned andplundered the churches. The annals of Lough Cè say that "no such periodfor famine or destruction of men" ever occurred, and that people "usedthen to eat one another throughout Erin. " "They, the Scots, " says thepoet Spenser, writing centuries later, "utterly consumed and wastedwhatsoever was before left unspoyled so that of all towns, castles, forts, bridges, and habitations they left not a stick standing, nor yetany people remayning, for those few which yet survived fledde from theirfury further into the English Pale that now is. Thus was all that goodlycountry utterly laid waste. "

Such insane destruction brought its own punishment. The colonists beganto recover from their dismay. Ormonds, Kildares, and Desmonds bestirredthemselves to collect troops. The O'Connors, who with all their tribehad risen in arms, had been utterly defeated at Athenry, where the youngking Fedlim and no less than 10, 000 of his followers are said to havebeen left dead. Roger Mortimer, the new viceroy, was re-organizing thegovernment in Dublin. The clergy, stimulated by a Papal mandate, had allnow turned against the invader. Robert Bruce had some time previouslybeen recalled to Scotland, and Sir John de Bermingham, the victor ofAthenry, pushing northward at the head of 15, 000 chosen troops, met theyounger Bruce at Dundalk. The combat was hot, short, and decisive. TheScots were defeated, Edward Bruce himself killed, and his head struckoff and sent to London. The rest hastened back to Scotland with aslittle delay as possible. The Scotch invasion was over. 

It was over, but its effects remained. From one end of Ireland to theother there was disaffection, anger, revolt. England had proved too weakor too negligent to interfere at the right time and in the right way, and although successful in the end she could not turn back the tide. There was a general feeling of disbelief in the reality of hergovernment. A semi-national feeling had sprung up which temporarilyunited colonists and natives in a bond of self-defence. Norman noblesand native Irish chieftains threw in their lot together. The Englishyeoman class, which had begun to get established in Leinster andMunster, had been all but utterly destroyed by Edward Bruce, and theremnant now left the country in despair. The great English lords, withthe exception of Ormond and Kildare, from this out took Irish names andadopted Irish dress and fashions. The two De Burghs, as already stated, seized upon the Connaught possessions of their cousin, and divided them, taking the one Galway and the other Mayo, and calling themselvesMcWilliam Eighter and McWilliam Oughter, or the Nether and the FurtherBurkes. So too with nearly all the rest. Bermingham of Athenry, in spiteof his late famous victory over the Irish, did the same, calling himselfMcYorris; Fitzmaurice of Lixnaw became McMaurice; FitzUrse of Louth, McMahon; and so on through a whole list. 

Nor is it difficult to understand the motives which led to thesechanges. The position of an Irish chieftain--with his practicallylimitless powers of life and death, his wild retinue of retainers whoseonly law was the will of their chief--offered an irresistible temptationto men of their type, and had many more charms than the narrow anduninteresting _rôle_ of liegeman to a king whom they never saw, and theobeying of whose behests brought them harm rather than good. England hadshown only too plainly that she had no power to protect her Irishcolonists, of what use therefore, it was asked, for them to callthemselves any longer English? The great majority from that momentceased to do so. Save within the "five obedient shires" which came to beknown as the English Pale, "the king's writ no longer ran. " The nativeIrish swarmed back from the mountains and forests, and repossessedthemselves of the lands from which they had been driven. No seriousattempts were made to re-establish the authority of the law overthree-fourths of the island. Within a century and a half of theso-called conquest, save within one small and continually narrowingarea, Ireland had ceased even nominally to belong to England. 

[Illustration: TRIM CASTLE ON THE BOYNE. ]

XVI. 

THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY, It was not to be expected, however, that the larger country would forvery shame let her possessions thus slip from her grasp without aneffort to retain them, certainly not when a ruler of the calibre of anEdward III. Came to the helm. Had his energies been able to concentratethemselves upon Ireland the stream which was setting dead againstloyalty might even then have been turned back. The royal interest wouldhave risen to the top of faction, as it did in England, and would havecurbed the growing and dangerous power of the barons. That magic whichsurrounds the word king might--who can say that it would not?--haveawakened a sentiment at once of patriotism and loyalty. 

Chimerical as it may sound even to suppose such a thing, there seems novalid reason why it might not have been. No people admittedly are moreintensely loyal by nature than the native Irish. By their failings noless than their virtues they are extraordinarily susceptible to apersonal influence, and that devotion which they so often showed towardstheir own chiefs might with very little trouble have been awakened infavour of a king. It is one of the most deplorable of the manydeplorable facts which stud the history of Ireland that no opening forthe growth of such sentiment was ever once presented--certainly not insuch a form that it would have been humanly possible for it tobe embraced. 

Edward III. Had now his chance. Unfortunately he was too busy to availhimself of it. He had too many irons in the fire to trouble himself muchabout Ireland. If it furnished him with a supply of fightingmen--clean-limbed, sinewy fellows who could run all day without a signof fatigue, live on a handful of meal, and for a lodging feel luxuriouswith an armful of hay and the sheltered side of a stone--it was prettymuch all he wanted. The light-armed Irish troop did great things atCrecy, but they were never used at home. That Half-hold, which was theruin of Ireland, and which was to go on being its ruin for many and manya century, was never more conspicuous than during the nominal rule ofthe strongest and ablest of all the Angevin kings. 

Something, however, for very shame he did do. In 1361 all absenteelandowners, already amounting to no less than sixty-three, including theheads of several of the great abbeys, were summoned to Westminster andordered to provide an army to accompany Lionel, Duke of Clarence, whomhe had decided upon sending over to Ireland as viceroy. 

Clarence was the king's third son, and had married the only daughter andheiress of William de Burgh (mentioned a little way back as a babyheiress), and through his wife had become Earl of Ulster and the nominallord of an enormous tract of the country stretching from the Bay ofGalway nearly up to the coast of Donegal. Most of this had, however, already, as we have seen, been lost. The two rebel Burkes had gotpossession of the Galway portion, the O'Neills, O'Connors, and otherchiefs had repossessed themselves of the North. So completely indeed wasthe latter lost that Ulster--nominally the patrimony of the Duchess ofClarence--is not even alluded to by her husband as part of the countryover which his government could attempt to lay claim. 

The chief event of this visit was the summoning of a Parliament atKilkenny, a Parliament made memorable ever after by the passing of whatis still known as the Statute of Kilkenny[5]. This Statute, although itproduced little effect at the time, is an extremely important one tounderstand, as it enables us to realize the state to which the countryhad then got, and explains, moreover, a good deal that would otherwisebe obscure or confusing in the after history of Ireland. 

[5] 40 Edward III. , Irish Statutes. 

Two distinct and separate set of rules are here drawn up for twodistinct and separate Irelands. One is for the English Ireland, whichthen included about the area of ten counties, though it afterwardsshrank to four and a few towns; the other is for the Ireland of theIrish and rebellious English, which included the rest of the island; theobject being, not as might be supposed at first sight, to unite thesetwo closer together, but to keep them as far apart as possible; toprevent them, in fact, if possible, from ever uniting. 

A great many provisions are laid down by this Act, all bearing the sameaim. Marriage and fosterage between the English and Irish are forbidden, and declared to be high treason. So, too, is the supply of all horses, weapons, or goods of any sort to the Irish; monks of Irish birth are notto be admitted into any English monastery, nor yet Irish priests intoany English preferment. The Irish dress and the Irish mode of riding areboth punishable. War with the natives is inculcated as a duty bindingupon all good colonists. None of the Irish, except a certain number offamilies known as the "Five Bloods" (_Quinque sanquines_), are to beallowed to plead at any English court, and the killing of an Irishman isnot to be reckoned as a crime. In addition to this, speaking thelanguage of the country is made penal. Any one mixing with the English, and known to be guilty of this offence, is to lose his lands (if he hasany), and his body to be lodged in one of the strong places of the kinguntil he learns to repent and amend. 

The original words of this part of the Act are worth quoting. They runas follows: "Si nul Engleys ou Irroies entre eux memes encontre c'estordinance et de cei soit atteint soint sez terrez e tenez s'il eitseizez en les maines son Seignours immediate, tanque q'il vèigne a undes places nostre Seignour le Roy, et trove sufficient seurtee deprendre et user le lang Englais. "

One would like--merely as a matter of curiosity--to know what appliancesfor the study of that not easiest of languages were provided, and beforewhat tribunal the student had to prove his proficiency in it. When, too, we remember that English was still, to a great degree, tabooed inEngland itself; that the official and familiar language of the Normanswas French, that French of which the Statutes of Kilkenny are themselvesa specimen, the difficulty of keeping within the law at this point must, it will be owned, have been considerable. 

"In all this it is manifest, " says Sir John Davis, "that such as had thegovernment of Ireland did indeed intend to make a perpetual enmitybetween the English and the Irish, pretending that the English should inthe end root out the Irish; which, the English not being able to do, caused a perpetual war between the two nations, which continued fourhundred and odd years, and would have lasted unto the world's end, if inQueen Elizabeth's reign the Irish had not been broken and conquered bythe sword. "

It is easy to see that the very ferocity--as it seems to us the utterand inconceivable ferocity--of these enactments is in the main a proofof the pitiable and deplorable weakness of those who passed them, and tothis weakness we must look for their excuse, so far as they admitted ofexcuse at all. Weakness, especially weakness in high places, is apt tofall back upon cruelty to supply false strength, and a government thatfound itself face to face with an entire country in arms, absolutelyantagonistic to and defiant of its authority, may easily have feltitself driven by sheer despair into some such false and futileexhibitions of power. The chief sufferers by these statutes were not theinhabitants of the wilder districts, who, for the most part, escaped outof reach of its provisions, beyond that narrow area where the Dublinjudges travelled their little rounds, and who were governed still--whengoverned at all--by the Brehon laws and Brehon judges, much as in thedays of Brian Boru. The real victims were the unhappy settlers of thePale and such natives as had thrown in their lot with them, and who wererobbed and harassed alike by those without and those within. The feudalsystem was one that always bore hardly upon the poor, and in Ireland thefeudal system was at its very worst. There was no central authority; noone to interpose between the baronage and the tillers of the soil; andthat state of things which in England only existed during comparativelyshort periods, and under exceptionally weak rulers, in Ireland wascontinuous and chronic. The consequence was that men escaped more andmore out of this intolerable tyranny into the comparative freedom whichlay beyond; forgot that they had ever been English; allowed theirbeards, in defiance of regulations, to grow; pulled their hair down intoa "gibbes" upon their foreheads; adopted fosterage, gossipage, and allthe other pleasant contraband Irish customs; married Irish wives, andbecame, to all intents and purposes, Irishmen. The English power had nomore dangerous enemies in the days that were to come than these men ofEnglish descent, whose fathers had come over to found a new kingdom forher upon the western side of St. George's Channel. 

XVII. 

RICHARD II. IN IRELAND. 

Richard the Second's reign is a more definite epoch for the Irishhistorian than many more striking ones, for the simple reason of twovisits having been paid by him to Ireland. The first of these was in1394, when he landed at Waterford with 30, 000 archers and 40, 000 men atarms, an immense army for that age, and for Ireland it was held anirresistible one. 

It was certainly high time for some steps to be taken. In all directionsthe interests of the colonists were going to the wall. Not only inUlster, Minister, and Connaught, but even in the East of Ireland, thenatives were fast repossessing themselves of all the lands from whichthey had been driven. A great chieftain, Art McMurrough, had madehimself master of the greater part of Leinster, and only by ahumiliating use of "Black Rent, " could he be kept at bay. The towns werein a miserable state; Limerick, Cork, Waterford had all again and againbeen attacked, and could with difficulty defend themselves. The Wicklowtribes swarmed down to the very walls of Dublin, and carried the cattleoff from under the noses of the citizens. The judges' rounds weregetting yearly shorter and shorter. The very deputy could hardly ridehalf-a-dozen miles from the castle gates without danger of being setupon, captured, and carried off for ransom. 

Richard flattered himself that he had only to appear to conquer. He waskeen to achieve some military glory, and Ireland seemed an easy field towin it upon. Like many another before and after him, he found the taskharder than it seemed. The great chiefs came in readily enough;O'Connors, O'Briens, O'Neills, even the turbulent McMurrough himself, some seventy-five of them in all. The king entertained them sumptuously, as Henry II. Had entertained their ancestors two centuries before. Theyengaged to be loyal, and to answer for the loyalty of theirdependants--with some mental reservations we must conclude. In returnfor this submission the king knighted the four chiefs just named, asomewhat incongruous piece of courtesy it must be owned. Shortly afterhis knighthood, Art McMurrough, "Sir Art, " was thrown into prison onsuspicion. He was released before long, but the release failed to wipeout the affront, and the angry chief retired, nursing fierce vengeance, to his forests. 

Richard remained in Ireland nine months, during which he achievednothing, and departed leaving the government in the hands of hisheir-presumptive, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the grandson of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and, therefore, in right of his mother, Earl ofUlster, and the nominal owner of an immense territory, covering nearly athird of the island, barely one acre of which, however, remained inhis hands. 

The king had not been gone long before Art McMurrough rose again. Theyoung deputy was in Wicklow, endeavouring to carry out a projectedcolony. Hearing of this outbreak, he hastened into Meath. An encountertook place near Kells. Art McMurrough, at the head of his own men, aidedby some wild levies of O'Tooles and O'Nolans, completely defeated theroyal army, and after the battle the heir of the English Crown was foundamongst the slain. 

This Art McMurrough, or Art Kavangh, as he is sometimes called, was aman of very much more formidable stamp than most of the namelessfreebooters, native or Norman, who filled the country. His fashion ofmaking his onset seems to have been tremendous. Under him the wildhorsemen and "naked knaves, " armed only with skeans and darts, sentterror into the breast of their armour-clad antagonists. One of the fewearly illustrations of Irish history extant represents him as chargingat breakneck pace down a hill. We are told that "he rode a horse withouta saddle or housing, which was so fine and good that it cost him fourhundred cows. In coming down the hill it galloped so hard that in myopinion, " says a contemporary writer, "I never in all my life saw hare, deer, sheep, or other animal, I declare to you for a certainty, run withsuch speed. In his right hand he bore a great dart, which he cast withmuch skill[6]. " No wonder that such a rider, upon such a horse, shouldhave struck terror into the very souls of the colonists, and inducedthem to comply with any demands, however rapacious and humiliating, rather than have to meet him face to face in the field. 

[6] "Metrical History of the Deposition of Richard II. "

The news of McMurrough's victory and of the death of his heir broughtRichard back again to Ireland. He returned in hot wrath resolved thistime to crush the delinquents. At home everything seemed safe. John ofGaunt was recently dead; Henry of Lancaster still in exile; the Percyshad been driven over the border into Scotland. All his enemies seemed tobe crushed or extinguished. With an army nearly as large as before, andwith vast supplies of stores and arms, he landed at Waterford in 1399. 

This time Art McMurrough quietly awaited his coming in a wood not farfrom the landing-place. He had only 3, 000 men about him, so prudentlydeclined to be drawn from that safe retreat of the assailed. The kingand his army sat down on the outskirts of the wood. It was July, but theweather was desperately wet. The ground was in a swamp, the rainincessant; there was nothing but green oats for the horses. The wholearmy suffered from damp and exposure. Some labourers were hastilycollected, and an attempt made to cut down the wood. This, too, as mightbe expected, proved a failure, and Richard, in disgust and vexation, broke up his camp, and with great difficulty, dragging his unwieldy armyafter him, fell back upon Dublin. 

The Leinster chief was not slow to avail himself of the situation. Henow took a high hand, and demanded to be put in possession of certainlands he claimed through his wife, as well as to retain his chieftaincy. A treaty was set on foot, varied by the despatch of a flying column toscour his country. In the middle of the negotiation startling newsarrived. Henry of Lancaster had landed at Ravenspur, and all England wasin arms. The king set off to return, but bad weather and misleadingcounsel kept him another sixteen days on Irish soil. It was a fatalsixteen days. When he reached Milford Haven it was to find the roadsblocked, and to be met by the news that all was lost. The army ofWelshmen, gathered by Salisbury, had dispersed, finding that the kingdid not arrive. His own army of 30, 000 men caught the panic, and meltedequally rapidly. He tried to negotiate with his cousin, but too late. AtChester he fell into the hands of the victor, and, within a few weeksafter leaving Ireland, had passed to a prison, and from there to agrave. He was the last English king to set foot upon its soil untilnearly exactly three centuries later, when two rivals met to tryconclusions upon the same blood-stained arena. 

From this out matters grew from bad to worse. Little or no attempt wasmade to enforce the law save within the ever-narrowing boundary of whatabout this time came to be known as the Pale. Outside, Ireland grew tobe more and more the Ireland of the natives. Art McMurrough ruled overhis own country triumphantly till his death, and levied tribute rightand left with even-handed impartiality upon his neighbours. "BlackRent, " indeed, began to take the form of a regularly recognized tribute;O'Neill receiving £40 a year from the county of Louth, O'Connor ofOffaly, _£60_ from the county of Meath, and others in like proportion. In despair of any assistance from England some of the colonists formedthemselves into a fraternity which they called the "Brotherhood of St. George, " consisting of some thirteen gentlemen of the Pale with ahundred archers and a handful of horsemen under them. 

The Irish Government continued to pass Act after Act, each more and moreferocious as it became more and more ineffective. Colonists were nowempowered to take and behead any natives whom they found marauding, orwhom they even suspected of any such intention. All friendly dealingwith natives was to be punished as felony. All who failed to shave theirupper lip at least once a fortnight were to be imprisoned and theirgoods seized. Englishmen who married Irish women were to be accountedguilty of high treason, and hung, drawn, and quartered at theconvenience of the viceroy. Such feeble ferocity tells its own tale. Like some angry shrew the unhappy executive was getting louder andshriller the less its denunciations were attended to. 

XVIII. 

THE DEEPEST DEPTHS. 

The most salient fact in Irish history is perhaps its monotony. If thatstatement is a bull it is one that must be forgiven for the sake of thetruth it conveys. Year after year, decade after decade, century aftercentury, we seem to go swimming slowly and wearily on through a vaguesea of confusion and disorder; of brutal deeds and yet more brutalretaliations; of misgovernment and anarchy; of a confusion sopenetrating and all-persuasive that the mind fairly refuses to grapplewith it. Even killing--exciting as an incident--becomes monotonous whenit is continued _ad infinitum_, and no other occurrence ever comes tovary its tediousness. Campion the Elizabethan historian, whose few pagesare a perfect magazine of verbal quaintness, apologizes in the prefaceto his "lovyng reader, for that from the time of Cambrensis to that ofHenry VIII. " he is obliged to make short work of his intermediateperiods; "because that nothing is therein orderly written, and that thesame is time beyond any man's memory, wherefore I scramble forward withsuch records as could be sought up, and am enforced to be the briefer. "

"Scrambling forward" is, indeed, exactly what describes the process. We, too, must be content "to be the briefer, " and to "scramble forward"across these intermediate and comparatively eventless periods in orderto reach what lies beyond. The age of the Wars of the Roses is one ofgreat gloom and confusion in England; in Ireland it is an all butcomplete blank. What intermittent interest in its affairs had beenawakened on the other side of the channel had all but wholly died awayin that protracted struggle. That its condition was miserable, almostbeyond conception, is all that we know for certain. In England, althoughcivil war was raging, and the baronage were energetically slaughteringone another, the mass of the people seem for the most part to have goneunscathed. The townsfolk were undisturbed; the law was protected; thelaw officers went their rounds; there seems even to have been littlegeneral rapine and pillage. The Church, still at its full strength, watched jealously over its own rights and over the rights of those whomit protected. In Ireland, although there was nothing that approached tothe dignity of civil war, the condition of the country seems to havebeen one of uninterrupted and almost universal carnage, pillage, andrapine. The baronage of the Pale raided upon the rest of the country, and the rest of the country raided upon the Pale. Even amongst churchmenit was much the same. Although there was no religious dissension, andheresy was unknown, the jealousy between the churchmen of the two rivalraces, seems to have been as deep as between the laymen, and theirhatred of one another probably even greater. As has been seen in aformer chapter, no priest or monk of Irish blood was ever admitted intoan English living or monastery, and the rule appears to have been quiteequally applicable the other way. 

The means, too, for keeping these discordant elements in check wereludicrously inefficient. The whole military establishment during thegreater part of this century consisted of some 80 archers, and about 40"spears;" the whole revenue amounted to a few hundred pounds per annum. The Parliament was a small and irregular body of barons and knights ofthe shires, with a few burgesses, unwillingly summoned from the towns, and a certain number of bishops and abbots, the latter, owing to thedisturbed state of the country, being generally represented by theirproctors. It was summoned at long intervals, and met sometimes inDublin, sometimes in Drogheda, at other times in Kilkenny, as occasionsuggested. Even when it did meet legislation was rarely attempted, andits office was confined mainly to the voting of subsidies. The countrysimply drifted at its own pleasure down the road to ruin, and by thetime the battle of Bosworth was fought, the deepest depths of anarchyhad probably been sounded. 

The seaport towns alone kept up some little semblance of order andself-government, and seem to have shown some slight capacity forself-defence. In 1412, Waterford distinguished itself by the spiriteddefence of its walls against the O'Driscolls, a piratical clan of WestCork, and the following year sent a ship into the enemy's stronghold ofBaltimore, whose crew seized upon the chief himself, his three brothers, his son, his uncle, and his wife, and carried them off in triumph toWaterford, a feat which the annals of the town commemorate with laudablepride. Dublin, too, showed a similar spirit, and fitted out some smallvessels which it sent on a marauding expedition to Scotland, in rewardfor which its chief magistrate, who had up to that time been a Provost, was invested with the title of Mayor. "The king granted them license, "says Camden, "to choose every year a Mayor and two baliffs. " Also thatits Mayor "should have a gilt sword carried before him for ever. "

Several eminent figures appear amongst the "ruck of empty names" whichfill up the list of fifteenth-century Irish viceroys. Most ofthese were mere birds of passage, who made a few experiments atgovernment--conciliatory or the reverse, as the case might be--and sodeparted again. Sir John Talbot, the scourge of France, and antagonistof the Maid of Orleans, was one of these. From all accounts he seems tohave quite kept up his character in Ireland. The native writers speak ofhim as a second Herod. The colonist detested him for his exactions, while his soldiery were a scourge to every district they were quarteredupon. He rebuilt the bridge of Athy, however, and fortified it so as todefend that portion of the Pale, and succeeded in keeping the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, and the rest of the native marauders to some degree at bay. 

In 1449, Richard, Duke of York, was sent to Ireland upon a sort ofhonorary exile. He took the opposite tack of conciliation. AlthoughOrmond was a prominent member of the Lancastrian party, he at once madegracious overtures to him. Desmond, too, he won over by his courtesy, and upon the birth of his son George--afterwards the luckless Duke ofClarence--the rival earls acted as joint sponsors, and when, in 1451, heleft Ireland, he appointed Ormond his deputy and representative. 

Nine years later he came back, this time as a fugitive. The popularitywhich he had already won stood him then in good stead. Seizing upon thegovernment, he held it in the teeth of the king and Parliament for morethan a year. The news of the battle of Northampton tempted him toEngland. His son, the Earl of March, had been victorious, and Henry VI, was a prisoner. He was not destined, however, to profit by the successof his own side. In a temporary Lancastrian triumph he was outnumbered, and killed by the troops of Queen Margaret at Wakefield. 

His Irish popularity descended to his son. A considerable number ofIrish Yorkist partisans, led by the Earl of Kildare, fought beside thelatter at the decisive and sanguinary battle of Towton, at which battlethe rival Earl of Ormond, leader of the Irish Lancastrians, was takenprisoner, beheaded by the victors, and all his property attained, a blowfrom which the Butlers were long in recovering. 

No other great Irish house suffered seriously. In England the olderbaronage were all but utterly swept away by the Wars of the Roses, onlya few here and there surviving its carnage. In Ireland it was not so. Acertain number of Anglo-Norman names disappear at this point from itsannals, but the greater number of those with which the reader has becomefamiliar continue to be found in their now long established homes. TheDesmonds and De Burghs still reigned undisputed and unchallenged overtheir several remote lordships. Ulster, indeed, had long since becomewholly Irish, but within the Pale the minor barons of Normandescent--Fingals, Gormanstons, Dunsanys, Trimbelstons andothers--remained where their Norman fathers had established themselves, and where their descendants for the most part may be found still. Thehouse of Kildare had grown in strength during the temporary collapse ofits rival, and from this out for nearly a century towers high over everyother Irish house. The Duke of York was the last royal viceroy whoactually held the sword. Others, though nominated, never came over, andin their absence the Kildares remained omnipotent, generally asdeputies, and even when that office was for a while confided to otherhands, their power was hardly diminished. Only the barren title ofLord-Lieutenant was withheld, and was as a rule bestowed upon some royalpersonage, several times upon children, once in the case of Edward IV. 'sson upon an actual infant in arms. 

In 1480, Gerald, eighth Earl of Kildare, called by his own following, Geroit Mor, or Gerald the Great, became deputy, and, from that timeforward under five successive kings, and during a period of 33 years, he"reigned" with hardly an interval until his death in 1513. 

Geroit Mor is perhaps the most important chief governor who ruledIreland upon thorough-going Irish principles. "A mighty man of stature, full of honour and courage. " Stanihurst describes him as being "A knightin valour;" and "princely and religious in his words and judgments" isthe flattering report of the "Annals of the Four Masters. " "His nameawed his enemies more than his army, " says Camden. "The olde earle beingsoone hotte and soone cold was of the Englishe well beloved, " is anotherreport. "In hys warres hee used a retchlesse (reckless) kynde ofdiligence, or headye carelessnesse, " is a less strong commendation, butprobably not less true. 

He was a gallant man unquestionably, and as far as can be seen an honestand a well-intentioned one, but his policy was a purely personal, or atmost a provincial, one. As for the interests of the country at largethey seem hardly to have come within his ken. That fashion of looking atthe matter had now so long been the established rule that it hadprobably ceased indeed to be regarded as a failing. 

[Illustration: FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT, MEATH. ]

XIX. 

THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT, When the Battle of Bosworth brought the adherents of the Red Rose backto triumph, Gerald Mor was still Lord-deputy. He was not deposed, however, on that account, although the Butlers were at once reinstatedin their own property, and Sir Thomas Butler was created Earl of Ormond. According to a precedent now prevailing for several reigns, theLord-Lieutenancy was conferred upon the Duke of Bedford, the king'suncle, Kildare continuing, however, practically to exercise all thefunctions of government as his deputy. 

A dangerous plot, started by the discomfited Yorkist faction, broke outin Ireland in 1487. An impostor, named Lambert Simnel, was sent by theDuchess of Burgundy, and trained to simulate the son of Clarence who, itwill be remembered, had been born in Ireland, and whose son wastherefore supposed to have a special claim on that country. Two thousandGerman mercenaries were sent with him to support his pretensions. 

[Illustration: Ireland In the Reign of Henry VII. ]

This Lambert Simnel seems to have been a youth of some talent, and tohave filled his ugly imposter's _rôle_ with as much grace as it admittedof Bacon, in his history of the reign, tells us that "he was a comelyyouth, not without some extraordinary dignity of grace and aspect. " Thefashion in which he retailed his sufferings, pleaded his youth, andappealed to the proverbial generosity of the Irish people, to protect ahapless prince, robbed of his throne and his birthright, seems to haveproduced an immense effect. Kildare, there is reason to suspect, wasprivy to the plot, but of others there is no reason to think this, andwith a single exception--that of the Earl of Howth--all the lords of thePale and many of the bishops, including the Archbishop of Dublin, seemto have welcomed the lad--he was only fifteen--with the utmostenthusiasm, an enthusiasm which Henry's production of the real son ofClarence had no effect at all in diminishing. 

Lambert Simnel was conducted in high state to Dublin, and there crownedin the presence of the Earl of Kildare, the chancellor, and other Stateofficers. The crown used for the purpose was taken off the head of astatue of The Virgin in St. Mary's Abbey, and--a quainter piece ofceremonial still--the youthful monarch was, after the ceremony, hoistedupon the shoulders of the tallest man in Ireland, "Great Darcy ofFlatten, " and, in this position, promenaded through the streets ofDublin so as to be seen by the people, after which he was taken back intriumph to the castle. 

His triumph was not, however, long-lived. Emboldened by this preliminarysuccess, his partizans took him across the sea and landed with aconsiderable force at Fondray, in Lancashire, the principal leaders onthis occasion being the Earl of Lincoln, Thomas Fitzgerald, brother tothe Earl of Kildare, Lord Lovell, and Martin Schwartz, the commander ofthe German forces. 

The enthusiasm that was expected to break out on their arrival failedhowever to come off. "Their snowballs, " as Bacon puts it, "did notgather as they went. " A battle was fought at Stoke, at which 4, 000 ofthe rebels fell, including Thomas Fitzgerald, the Earl of Lincoln, andthe German general Martin Schwartz, while Lambert Simnel with his tutor, Simon the priest, fell into the king's hands, who spared their lives, and appointed the former to the office of turnspit, an office which heheld for a number of years, being eventually promoted to that offalconer, and as guardian of the king's hawks he lived and died. 

He was not the only culprit whom Henry was willing to pardon. Clemencyindeed was his strong point, and he extended it without stint again andagain to his Irish rebels. He despatched Sir Richard Edgecombe, a memberof the royal household, shortly afterwards upon a mission ofconciliation to Ireland. The royal pardon was to be extended to Kildareand the rest of the insurgents on condition of their submission. Kildare's pride stood out for a while against submission on anyconditions, but the Royal Commissioner was firm, and the terms, easyones it must be owned, were at last accepted, and an oath of allegiancesworn to. Kildare, thereupon, was confirmed in his deputyship, and SirRichard Edgecombe having first partaken of "much excellent good cheere"at the earl's castle at Maynooth, returned peaceably to England. 

The Irish primate, one of the few ecclesiastics who had refused tosupport the impostor, was then, as it happened, in London, and placedstrongly before the king the impolicy of continuing Kildare in office. Apparently his remonstrance had its effect, for Henry issued a summonsto the deputy and all the Irish nobility to attend at Court, one whichwas obeyed with hardly an exception. A dramatic turn is given to thisvisit by the fact that Lambert Simnel, the recently crowned king, waspromoted for the occasion to serve wine at dinner to his late Irishsubjects. The poor scullion did his office with what grace he might, butno one, it is said, would touch the wine until it came to the turn ofthe Earl of Howth, the one Irish peer, as we have seen, who had declinedto accept the impostor in his heyday of success. "Nay, but bring me thecup if the wine be good, " quoth he, being a merry gentleman, "and Ishall drink it both for its sake and mine own, and for thee also as thouart, so I leave thee, a poor innocent!"

Howth, whose speech is recorded by his own family chronicler, receivedthree hundred pounds as a reward for his loyalty, the rest returned asthey came, lucky, they must have felt under the circumstances, inreturning at all. 

Simnel was not the last Yorkist impostor who found credit and an asylumin Ireland. Peterkin, or Perkin Warbeck was the next whom theindefatigable Duchess of Burgundy started on the same stage and upon thesame errand. This time the prince supposed to be personated was theyoungest son of Edward IV. , one of the two princes murdered in thetower. He is also occasionally spoken of as a son of Clarence, andsometimes as an illegitimate son of Richard III. --any royal personage, in fact, whose age happened to suit. In spite of the slight ambiguitywhich overhung his princely origin, he was received with high honour inCork, and having appealed to the Earls of Desmond and Kildare, wasaccepted by the former with open arms. "You Irish would crown apes!"Henry afterwards said, not indeed unwarrantably. This time Kildare wasmore cautious, though his brother, Sir James Fitzgerald, warmly espousedthe cause of the impostor. Perkin Warbeck remained in Ireland about ayear, when he was invited to France and, for a while, became the centreof the disaffected Yorkists there. He was a very poor specimen of thegenus impostor, and seems even to have been destitute of the commonplacequality of courage. 

In spite of the unusual prudence displayed by him on this occasion, Kildare was, in 1497, removed from the deputyship, which was for a timevested in Walter Fitzsimons, Archbishop of Dublin, a declared enemy ofthe Geraldines. Sir James Ormond who represented his brother, the earl, was appointed Lord Treasurer in place of the Baron of Portlester, Kildare's uncle, who had held the office for thirty-eight years. Freshquarrels thereupon broke out between the Butlers and the rival house, and each harassed the lands of the other in the usual approved style. Ameeting was at last arranged to take place in St. Patrick's Cathedralbetween the two leaders, but a riot breaking out Sir James barredhimself up in alarm in the Chapter House. Kildare arriving at the doorwith offers of peace, a hole had to be cut to enable the two tocommunicate. Sir James fearing treachery declined to put out his hand, whereupon Kildare boldly thrust in his, and the rivals shook hands. Thedoor was then opened; they embraced, and for a while peace was patchedup. The door, with the hole still in it, was extant up to the other day. 

The quarrels between these two great houses were interminable, and keptthe whole Pale and the greater part of Ireland in eternal hot water. Their war-cries of "Crom-a-Boo" and "Butler-a-Boo" filled the very air, and had to be solemnly prohibited a few years later by special Act ofParliament. By 1494 the complaints against Kildare had grown so loud andso long that the king resolved upon a new experiment, that of sendingover an Englishman to fill the post, and Sir Edward Poynings was pitchedupon as the most suitable for the purpose. 

He arrived accompanied by a force of a thousand men-at-arms, and five orsix English lawyers, who were appointed to fill the places ofchancellor, treasurer, and other offices from which the presentoccupiers, most of whom had been concerned either in the Warbeck orSimnel rising, were to be ejected. 

It was at a parliament summoned at Drogheda, whither this new deputy hadgone to quell a northern rising, that the famous statute known asPoynings' Act was passed, long a rock of offence, and even still aprominent feature in Irish political controversy. 

Many of the statutes passed by this Parliament--such as the one justmentioned forbidding war cries, others forbidding the levying of privateforces, forbidding the "country's curse" Coyne and livery, and otherhabitual exactions were undoubtedly necessary and called for by thecircumstances of the case. The only ones now remembered however are thefollowing. First, that no parliament should be summoned by the deputy'sauthority without the king's special license for that purpose. Secondly, that all English statutes should henceforward be regarded as bindingupon Ireland; and thirdly, that all Acts referring to Ireland must besubmitted first to the king and Privy Council, and that, when returnedby them, the Irish Parliament should have no power to modify themfurther. This, as will be seen, practically reduced the latter to a merecourt for registering laws already passed elsewhere, passed too oftenwithout the smallest regard to the special requirements of the country. A condition of subserviency from which it only escaped again for a shorttime during the palmy days of the eighteenth century. 

By this same parliament Kildare was attained--rather late in the day--onthe ground of conspiracy, and sent prisoner to London. He lay a year inprison, and was then brought to trial, and allowed to plead his owncause in the king's presence. The audacity, frank humour, and readyrepartee of his great Irish subject seems to have made a favourableimpression upon Henry, who must himself have had more sense of humourthan English historians give us any impression of. One of the principalcharges against the earl was that he had burned the church at Cashel. According to the account given in the Book of Howth he readily admittedthe charge, but declared positively that he would never have thought ofdoing so had he not been solemnly assured that the archbishop was at thetime inside it. The audacity of this defence is not a little heightenedby the fact that the archbishop in question was at the moment sitting incourt and listening to it. 

Advised by the king to provide himself with a good counsel, "By St. Bride"--his favourite oath--said he, "I know well the fellow I wouldhave, yea, and the best in England, too!" Asked who that might be. "Marry, the king himself. " The note of comedy struck at the beginning ofthe trial lasted to the end. The earl's ready wit seems to havedumbfounded his accusers, who were not unnaturally indignant at sounlocked for a result. "All Ireland, " they swore, solemnly, "could notgovern the Earl of Kildare. " "So it appears, " said Henry. "Then let theEarl of Kildare govern all Ireland. "

Whether the account given by Irish historians of this famous trial is tobe accepted literally or not, the result, at any rate, was conclusive. The king seems to have felt, that Kildare was less dangerous assheep-dog--even though a head-strong one--than as wolf, even a wolf in acage. He released him and restored him to his command. Prince Henry, according to custom, becoming nominally Lord-Lieutenant, with Kildare asdeputy under him. The earl's wife had lately died, and before leavingEngland he strengthened himself against troubles to come by marryingElizabeth St. John, the king's cousin, and having left his son Geraldbehind as hostage for his good behaviour, sailed merrily hometo Ireland. 

Perkin Warbeck meanwhile had made another foray upon Munster, where hewas supported by Desmond, and repulsed with no little ignominy by thetownsfolk of Waterford; after which he again departed and was seen nomore upon that stage. Kildare--whose own attainder was not reverseduntil after his arrival in Ireland--presided over a parliament, one ofwhose first acts was to attaint Lord Barrymore and the other Munstergentlemen for their share in this rising. He also visited Cork andKinsale, leaving a garrison behind him; rebuilt several towns inLeinster which had been ruined in a succession of raids; garrisoned theborders of the Pale with new castles, and for the first time in itshistory brought ordnance into Ireland, which he employed in the siege ofBelrath Castle. A factor destined to work a revolution upon Irishtraditional modes of warfare, and upon none with more fatal effect thanupon the house of Fitzgerald itself. 

That Kildare's authority, even during this latter period of hisgovernment was wholly exercised in the cause of tranquility it would becertainly rash to assert. At the same time it may be doubted whether anybetter choice was open to the king--short of some very drastic policyindeed. That he used his great authority to overthrow his own enemiesand to aggrandize his own house goes almost without saying. The titularsovereignty of the king could hope to count for little beside the realsovereignty of the earl, and the house of Kildare naturally loomed farlarger and more imposingly in Ireland than the house of Tudor. Despotismin some form was the only practical and possible government, and EarlGerald was all but despotic within the Pale, and even outside it was atany rate stronger than any other single individual. The DesmondGeraldines lived remote, the Butlers, who came next to the Geraldines inimportance, held Kilkenny, Carlow, and Tipperary, but were cut off fromDublin by the wild mountains of Wicklow, and the wilder tribes ofO'Tooles, and O'Byrnes who held them. They were only able to approach itthrough Kildare, and Kildare was the head-quarters of the Geraldines. 

One of Earl Gerald's last, and, upon the whole, his most remarkableachievement was that famous expedition which ended in the battle ofKnocktow already alluded to in an earlier chapter, in which a largenumber of the lords of the Pale, aided by the native allies of thedeputy, took part. In this case there was hardly a pretence that theexpedition was undertaken in the king's service. It was a family quarrelpure and simple, between the deputy and his son-in-law McWilliam, ofClanricarde. The native account tells us that the latter's wife "was notso used as the earl (her father) could be pleased with, " whereupon "heswore to be revenged upon this Irishman and all his partakers, " Thenotion of a Fitzgerald stigmatizing a De Burgh as an Irishman isdelightful, and eminently characteristic of the sort of wild confusionprevailing on the subject. The whole story indeed is so excellent, andis told by the narrator with so much spirit, that it were pity tocurtail it, and as it stands it would be too long for these pages. Theresult was that Clanricarde and his Irish allies were defeated withfrightful slaughter, between seven and eight thousand men, according tothe victors, having been left dead upon the field! Galway, previouslyheld by Clanricarde, was re-occupied, and the deputy and his alliesreturned in triumph to Dublin, whence the archbishop was despatched inhot haste to explain matters to the king. 

A slight incident which took place at the end of this battle is toocharacteristic to omit. "We have done one good work, " observed LordGormanston, one of the Lords of the Pale, confidentially to theLord-deputy. "And if we now do the other we shall do well, " Asked by thelatter what he meant, he replied, "We have for the most part killed ourenemies, if we do the like with all the Irishmen that we have with us itwere a good deed[7]. " Happily for his good fame Kildare seems to havebeen able to resist the tempting suggestion, and the allies parted onthis occasion to all appearances on friendly terms. 

[7] Book of Howth. 

XX. 

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE. 

The battle of Knocktow was fought five years before the death of HenryVII. Of those five years and of the earlier ones of the new reign littleof any vital importance remains to be recorded in Ireland. With the riseof Wolsey to power however a new era set in. The great cardinal was thesworn enemy of the Geraldines. He saw in them the most formidableobstacle to the royal power in that country. The theory that theKildares were the only people who could carry on the government had bythis time become firmly established. No one in Ireland could standagainst the earl, and when the earl was out of Ireland the whole islandwas in an uproar. The confusion too between Kildare in his properperson, and Kildare as the king's Viceroy was, it must be owned, aperennial one, and upon more than one occasion had all but brought thegovernment to an absolute standstill. 

Geroit Mor had died in 1513 of a wound received in a campaign with theO'Carrolls close to his own castle of Kilkea, but almost as a matter ofcourse his son Gerald had succeeded him as Viceroy and carried on thegovernment in much the same fashion; had made raids on the O'Moores andO'Reillys and others of the "king's Irish enemies, " and been rewardedwith grants upon the lands which he had captured from the rebels. Thestate of the Pale was terrible. "Coyne and livery, " it was declared, hadeaten up the people. The sea, too, swarmed with pirates, who descendedall but unchecked upon the coast and carried off men and women toslavery. Many complaints were made of the deputy, and by 1520 these hadgrown so loud and long that Henry resolved upon a change, and like hispredecessor determined to send an English governor, one upon whom hecould himself rely. 

The choice fell upon the Earl of Surrey, son of the conqueror ofFlodden. Surrey's survey of the field soon convinced him to his ownsatisfaction that no half measures was likely to be of any avail. Theplan proposed by him had certainly the merit of being sufficientlysweeping. Ireland was to be entirely reconquered. District was to betaken after district, and fortresses to be built to hold them accordingas they were conquered. The occupation was thus to be pushed steadily onuntil the whole country submitted, after which it was to be largelyrepopulated by English colonists. The idea was a large one, and wouldhave taken a large permanent army to carry out. The loss too of lifewould have been appalling, though not, it was represented to the king, greater than was annually squandered in an interminable succession ofpetty wars. Probably the expense was the real hindrance. At any rateSurrey's plan was put aside for the time being, and not long afterwardsat his own urgent prayer he was allowed to lay down his uneasy honoursand return to England. 

Meanwhile Earl Gerald the younger had been rapidly gaining favour atCourt, had accompanied Henry to France, and like his father before him, had wooed and won an English bride. Like his father, too, he possessedthat winning charm which had for generations characterized his house. Quick-witted and genial, with the bright manner and courteous ease ofhigh-bred gentlemen, such--even on the showing of those who had no lovefor them--was the habitual bearing of these Leinster Geraldines. The endwas that Kildare after a while was allowed to return to Ireland, andupon Surrey's departure, and after a brief and very unsuccessful tenureof office by Sir Pierce Butler, the deputyship was restored to him. 

Three years later he was again summoned, and this time, on Wolsey'surgent advice, thrown into the Tower. Heavy accusations had been madeagainst him, the most formidable of which was that he had used theking's ordnance to strengthen his own castle of Maynooth. The Ormondsand the cardinal were bent upon his ruin. The earl, however, faced hisaccusers boldly; met even the great cardinal himself in a war of words, and proved to be more than his equal. Once again he was acquitted andrestored to Ireland, and after a while the deputyship was restored tohim, John Allen, a former chaplain of Wolsey's, being however appointedArchbishop of Dublin, and Chancellor, with private orders to keep awatch upon Kildare, and to report his proceedings to theEnglish Council. 

Yet a third time in 1534 he was summoned, and now the case was moreserious. The whole situation had in fact in the meanwhile utterlychanged, Henry was now in the thick of his great struggle with Rome. With excommunication hanging over his head, Ireland had suddenly becomea formidable peril. Fears were entertained of a Spanish descent upon itscoast. One of the emperor's chaplains was known to be intriguing withthe Earl of Desmond. Cromwell's iron hand too was over the realm andspeedily made itself felt in Ireland. Kildare was once more thrown intothe Tower, from which this time he was never destined to emerge. He wasill already of a wound received the previous year, and the confinementand trouble of mind--which before long became acute--brought his lifeto a close. 

His son Thomas--generally known as Silken Thomas from the splendour ofhis clothes--had been rashly appointed vice-deputy by his father beforehis departure. In the month of August, a report reached Ireland that theearl had been executed, and the whole house of Geraldine was forthwiththrown into the wildest convulsions of fury at the intelligence. YoungLord Thomas--he was only at the time twenty-one--hot-tempered, undisciplined, and brimful of the pride of his race--at once flew toarms. His first act was to renounce his allegiance to England. Gallopingup to the Council with a hundred and fifty Geraldines at his heels, heseized the Sword of State, marched into the council-room, and addressingthe Council in his capacity of Vice-deputy, poured forth a speech fullof boyish fanfaronade and bravado. "Henceforth, " said he, "I am none ofHenry's deputy! I am his foe! I have more mind to meet him in the field, than to serve him in office. " With other words to the like effect herendered up the Sword, and once more springing upon his horse, gallopedout of Dublin. 

He was back again before long, this time with intent to seize the town. There was little or no defence. Ormond was away; the walls were decayed;ordnance was short--a good deal of it, the Geraldine enemies said, hadbeen already removed to Maynooth. White, the commander, threw himselfinto the castle; the gates were opened; Lord Thomas cantered in and tookpossession of the town, the garrison remaining placidly looking on. 

Worse was to come. Allen, the archbishop, and the great enemy of theFitzgeralds made an attempt to escape to England, but was caught andsavagely murdered by some of the Geraldine adherents upon the sea coastnear Clontarf. When the news of these proceedings--especially of thelast named--reached England, the sensation naturally was immense. Henryhastily despatched Sir William Skeffington with a considerable force torestore order, but his coming was long delayed, and when he did arrivehis operations were feeble in the extreme. Ormond had marched rapidly upfrom the south, and almost single-handed defended the interests ofgovernment. Even after his arrival Skeffington, who was old, cautious, and enfeebled by bad health, remained for months shut up in Dublin doingnothing, the followers of Lord Thomas wasting the country at pleasure, and burning the towns of Trim and Dunboyne, not many miles fromits walls. 

The Earl of Kildare had meanwhile died in prison, broken-hearted at thenews of this ill-starred rising, in which he doubtless foresaw the ruinof his house. It was not until the month of March, eight months afterhis arrival in Ireland, that Sir William ventured to leave Dublin, andadvance to the attack of Maynooth Castle, the great Leinster strongholdand Paladium of the Geraldines. Young Kildare, as he now was, was awayin the south, but managed to throw some additional men into the castle, which was already strongly fortified, and believed in Ireland to beimpregnable. The siege train imported by the deputy shortly dispelledthat illusion. Whether, as is asserted, treachery from within aided theresult or not, the end was not long delayed. After a few daysSkeffington's cannons made a formidable breach in the walls. The Englishsoldiery rushed in. The defenders threw down their arms and beggedmercy, and a long row of them, including the Dean of Kildare and anotherpriest who happened to be in the castle at the time were speedilyhanging in front of its walls. "The Pardon of Maynooth" was from thatday forth a well-known Irish equivalent for the gallows!

This was the end of the rebellion. The destruction of Maynooth Castleseems to have struck a cold chill to the very hearts of the Geraldines. For a while, Earl Thomas and his brother-in-law, the chief of theO'Connors, tried vainly to sustain the spirits of their followers. Therising seems to have melted away almost of its own accord, and within afew months the young leader himself surrendered to Lord Leonard Grey, the English commander, upon the understanding that his life was to bespared. Lord Leonard was his near relative, and therefore no doubtwilling, as far as was compatible with safety to himself, to do the besthe could for his kinsman. Whether a promise was formally given, orwhether as was afterwards asserted "comfortable words were spoken toThomas to allure him to yield" the situation was considered too gravefor any mere fanciful consideration of honour to stand in the way. LordThomas was not executed upon the spot, but he was thrown into prison, and a year later with five of his uncles, two of whom at least had hadno share whatever in the raising, he was hanged at Tyburn. Of all thegreat house of the Leinster Geraldines only a boy of twelve years oldsurvived this hecatomb. 

[Illustration: FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT, MEATH. ]

XXI. 

THE ACT OF SUPREMACY. 

In spite of his feeble health and feebler energies, Sir WilliamSkeffington was continued Lord-deputy until his death, which took placenot many months after the fall of Maynooth--"A good man of war, but notquick enough for Ireland"--seems to have been the verdict of hiscontemporaries upon him. He was succeeded by Lord Leonard Grey, againstwhom no such charge could be made. His energy seems to have beenimmense. He loved, we are told, to be "ever in the saddle. " Such was therapidity of his movements, and such the terror they inspired that for awhile a sort of awe-struck tranquillity prevailed. He overran Cork;broke down the castles of the Barrys and Munster Geraldines; destroyedthe famous bridge over the Shannon across which the O'Briens of Clarehad been in the habit of descending from time immemorial upon the Pale, and after these various achievements returned triumphantly to Dublin. 

His Geraldine connection proved however his ruin. He was accused offavouring the adherents of their fallen house, and even of conniving atthe escape of its last legitimate heir; of playing "Bo Peep" with him, as Stanihurst, the historian puts it. Ormond and the deputy were neverfriends, and Ormond had won--not undeservedly--great weight in thecouncils of Henry. "My Lord-deputy, " Lord Butler, Ormond's son haddeclared, "is the Earl of Kildare born over again. " Luttrell, on theother hand, declared that "Ormond hated Grey worse than he had hatedKildare. " All agreed that Lord Leonard was difficult to work with. Heseems to have been a well-intentioned man, a hard worker, and a keensoldier, but neither subtle enough nor conciliatory enough for hisplace. He was accused of treasonable practices, and a list of formidablecharges made against him. At his own request he was summoned to court toanswer these. To a good many he pleaded guilty--half in contempt as itwould seem--and threw himself upon the mercy of the king. No mercyhowever followed. Like many another "well-meaning English official" ofthe period, his life ended upon the scaffold. 

A more astute and cautious man, Sir Anthony St. Leger, next took thehelm in Ireland. His task was chiefly one of diplomacy, and he carriedit out with much address. In 1537 a parliament had been summoned inDublin for the purpose of carrying out the Act of Supremacy. To thisproposal the lay members seem to have been perfectly indifferent, but, as was to be expected, the clergy stood firmer. So resolute were they intheir opposition that the parliament had to be prorogued, and upon itsre-assembling, a Bill was hastily forced through by the Privy Council, declaring that the proctors, who had long represented the clergy in theLower House, had henceforward no place in the Legislature. The Act ofSupremacy was then passed: thirteen abbeys were immediately suppressed, and the firstfruits made over to the king in place of the Pope. Thefoundation of the new edifice was felt to have been securely laid. 

This was followed five years later by another Act, by which the propertyof over four hundred religious houses was confiscated. That thearguments which applied forcibly enough in many cases for theconfiscations of religious houses in England had no application inIreland, was a circumstance which was not allowed to count. In England, the monasteries were rich; in Ireland, they were, for the most part, very poor: in England, they absorbed the revenues of the parishes; inIreland, the monks as a rule served the parishes themselves: in England, popular condemnation had to a great degree already forestalled the legalenactment; in Ireland, nothing of the sort had ever been thought of: inEngland, the monks were as a rule distinctly behind the higher orders oflaity in education; in Ireland, they were practically the onlyeducators. These however were details. Uniformity was desirable. Themonasteries were doomed, and before long means were found to enlist mostof the Irish landowners, Celts no less than Normans, in favour of thedespoliation. 

At a great parliament summoned in Dublin in 1540, all the Irish lords ofEnglish descent, and a large muster of native chieftains were for thefirst time in history assembled together under one roof. O'Tooles andO'Byrnes from their wild Wicklow mountains; the McMurroughs from Carlow, the O'Connor, the O'Dunn, the O'Moore; the terrible McGillapatrick fromhis forests of Upper Ossory--all the great O's and Macs in fact ofIreland were called together to meet the Butlers, the Desmonds, theBarrys, the Fitzmaurices--their hereditary enemies now for four longcenturies. One house alone was not represented, and that the greatest ofthem all. The sun of the Kildares had set for a while, and the onlysurviving member of it was a boy, hiding in holes and corners, andtrusting for the bare life to the fealty of his clansmen. 

Nothing that could reconcile the chiefs to the new religious departurewas omitted upon this occasion. Their new-found loyalty was to behandsomely rewarded with a share of the Church spoil. Nor did they showthe smallest reluctance, it must be said, to meet the king's gooddispositions half way. The principal Church lands in Galway were madeover to McWilliam, the head of the Burkes; O'Brien received the abbeylands in Thomond; other chiefs received similar benefices according totheir degree, while a plentiful shower of less substantial, but stillappreciated favours followed. The turbulent McGillapatrick of Ossory wasto be converted into the decorous-sounding Lord Upper Ossory. For ConO'Neill as soon as he chose to come in, the Earldom of Tyrone waswaiting. McWilliam Burke of Galway was to become Earl of Clanricarde;O'Brien of Clare, Earl of Thomond and Baron of Inchiquin. Parliamentaryrobes, and golden chains; a house in Dublin for each chief during thesitting of Parliament--these were only a portion of the good thingsoffered by the deputy on the part of his master. Could man or monarch domore? In a general interchange of civilities the "King's Irish enemies"combined with their hereditary foes to proclaim him no longer Lord, butKing of Ireland--"Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of Englandand Ireland on earth the Supreme Head. "

[Illustration: FONT IN KILCARN CHURCH, CO. MEATH. ]

XXII. 

THE NEW DEPARTURE. 

So far so good. Despite a few trifling clouds which overhung thehorizon, the latter years of Henry VIII. 's life and the short reign ofhis successor may claim to count among the comparatively halcyon periodsof Irish history. The agreement with the landowners worked well, and noserious fears of any purpose to expel them from their lands had as yetbeen awakened. Henry's policy was upon the whole steadily conciliatory. Tyrant as he was, he could be just when his temper was not roused, andhe kept his word loyally in this case. To be just and firm, and to givetime for those hitherto untried varieties of government to work, was atonce the most merciful and most politic course that could be pursued. Unfortunately for the destinies of Ireland, unfortunately for the futurecomfort of her rulers, there was too little patience to persevere inthat direction. The Government desired to eat their loaf before therewas fairly time for the corn to sprout. The seed of conciliation hadhardly begun to grow before it was plucked hastily up by the rootsagain. The plantations of Mary's reign, and the still larger operationscarried on in that of her sister, awakened a deep-seated feeling ofdistrust, a rooted belief in the law as a mysterious andincomprehensible instrument invented solely for the perpetration ofinjustice, a belief which is certainly not wholly extinguished even inour own day. 

For the present, however, "sober ways, politic shifts, and amicablepersuasions" were the rule. Chief after chief accepted the indenturewhich made him owner in fee simple under the king of his tribal lands. These indentures, it is true, were in themselves unjust, but then it wasnot as it happened a form of injustice that affected them unpleasantly. Con O'Neill, Murrough O'Brien, McWilliam of Clanricarde, all visitedGreenwich in the summer of 1543, and all received their peerages directfrom the king's own hands. The first named, as became his importance, was received with special honour, and received the title of Earl ofTyrone, with the second title of Baron of Dungannon for any son whom heliked to name. The son whom he did name--apparently in a fit ofinadvertence--was one Matthew, who is confidently asserted to have notbeen his son at all, but the son of a blacksmith, and who in any casewas not legitimate. An odd choice, destined, as will be seen, to lead toa good deal of bloodshed later on. 

One or two of the new peers were even persuaded to send over their heirsto be brought up at the English Court, according to a gracious hint fromthe king. Young Barnabie FitzPatrick, heir to the new barony of UpperOssory, was one of these, and the descendent of a long line of turbulentMcGillapatricks, grew up there into a douce-mannered English-seemingyouth, the especial friend and chosen companion of the mildyoung prince. 

While civil strife was thus settling down, religious strifeunfortunately was only beginning to awaken. The question of supremacyhad passed over as we have seen in perfect tranquillity; it was a verydifferent matter when it came to a question of doctrine. Unlike England, Ireland had never been touched by religious controversy. The nativeChurch and the Church of the Pale were sharply separated from oneanother it is true, but it was by blood, language, and mutualjealousies, not by creed, doctrine, or discipline. As regards thesepoints they were all but absolutely identical. The attempt to changetheir common faith was instantly and vehemently resisted by both alike. Could a Luther or a John Knox have arrived, with all the fervour oftheir popular eloquence, the case might possibly have been different. NoKnox or Luther however, showed the slightest symptom of appearing, indeed hardly an attempt was made to supply doctrines to the newconverts. The few English divines that did come knew no Irish, those wholistened to them knew no English. The native priests were silent andsuspicious. A general pause of astonishment and consternation prevailed. 

The order for the destruction of relics broke this silence, and sent apassionate thrill of opposition through all breasts, lay as well asclerical. When the venerated remains of the golden days of the IrishChurch were collected together and publicly destroyed, especially whenthe staff of St. Patrick, the famous Baculum Cristatum, part of whichwas believed to have actually touched the hands of the Saviour, wasburnt in Dublin in the market-place, a spasm of shocked dismay ranthrough the whole island. Men who would have been scandalized by noother form of violence were horror-stricken at this. Differences ofcreed were so little understood that a widespread belief that a new eraof paganism was about to be inaugurated sprang up all over Ireland. Tothis belief the friars, who, though driven from their cloisters, werestill numerous, lent their support, as did the Jesuits, who now for thefirst time began to arrive in some numbers. Even the acceptance of thesupremacy began to be rebelled against now that it was clearly seen whatit was leading to. An order to read the new English liturgy was met withsullen resistance--"Now shall every illiterate fellow read mass!" criedArchbishop Dowdal of Armagh, in hot wrath and indignation. Brown, theArchbishop of Dublin, was an ardent reformer, so also was the Bishop ofMeath, but to the mass of their brethren they simply appeared to beheretics. A proposal was made to translate the Prayer-book into Irish, but it was never carried into effect, indeed, even in the next centurywhen Bishop Bedell proposed to undertake the task he received littleencouragement. 

The attempt to force Protestantism upon the country produced one, andonly one, important result. It broke down those long-standing barrierswhich had hitherto separated Irishmen of different blood and lineage, and united them like one man against the Crown. When the common faithwas touched the common sense of brotherhood was kindled. "The Englishand Irish, " Archbishop Brown wrote in despair to Cromwell, "both opposeyour lordship's orders, and begin to lay aside their own quarrels. " Sucha result might be desirable in itself, but it certainly came in the formleast likely to prove propitious for the future tranquillity of thecountry. Even those towns where loyalty had hitherto stood abovesuspicion received the order to dismantle their churches and destroy all"pictures and Popish fancies" with sullen dislike and hostility. Galway, Kilkenny, Waterford, each and all protested openly. The Irishproblem--not so very easy of solution before--had suddenly received anew element of confusion. One that was destined to prove a greaterdifficulty than all the rest put together. 

[Illustration: INITIAL LETTER FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS. ]

XXIII. 

THE FIRST PLANTATIONS. 

With Mary's accession the religious struggle was for a while postponed. Some feeble attempts were even made to recover the Church property, buttoo many people's interests were concerned for much to be done in thatdirection. Dowdal, Archbishop of Armagh, who had been deprived, wasrestored to his primacy. Archbishop Brown and the other conformingbishops were deprived. So also were all married clergy, of whom thereseem to have been but few; otherwise there was no great difference. Asfar as the right of exercising her supremacy was concerned, Maryrelished Papal interference nearly as little as did her father. 

Although the religious struggle was thus for a time postponed, the othervital Irish point--the possession of the land--now began to be pressedwith new vigour. Fercal, Leix, and Offaly, belonging to the fiercetribes of the O'Moores, O'Dempseys, O'Connors, and O'Carrols, lay uponthe Kildare frontier of the Pale, and had long been a standing menace totheir more peaceful neighbours. It was now determined that this tractshould be added to the still limited area of shire land. The chiefs, itis true, had been indentured by Henry, but since then there had beenoutbreaks of the usual sort, and it was considered by the Governmentthat nowhere could the longed-for experiment of a plantation be triedwith greater advantage. 

There was little or no resistance. The chiefs, taken by surprise, submitted. The English force sent against them, under the command of SirEdward Bellingham, was irresistible. O'Moore and O'Connor were seizedand sent prisoners to England. Dangen, which had so often resisted thesoldiers of the Pale was taken. The tribesmen whose fathers had fedtheir cattle from time immemorial upon the unfenced pastures of theplains were driven off, and took refuge in the forests, which stillcovered most of the centre of Ireland. The more profitable land was thenleased by the Crown to English colonists--Cosbies, Barringtons, Pigotts, Bowens, and others. Leix and a portion of Offaly were called Queen'sCounty, in compliment to the queen, the remainder King's County, incompliment to Philip. Dangen at the same time becoming Phillipstown, andCampa Maryborough. The experiment was regarded as eminently successful, and congratulations passed between the deputy and the English Council, but it awakened a deep-seated sense of insecurity and ill-usage, whichargued poorly for the tranquillity of the future. 

Of the rest of Mary's reign little needs to be here recorded. Thatindelible brand of blood which it has left on English history was allbut unfelt in Ireland. There had been few Protestant converts, and thosefew were not apparently emulous of martyrdom. No Smithfield fires werelighted in Dublin, indeed it is a curious fact that in the whole courseof Irish history--so prodigal of other horrors--no single execution forheresy is, it is said, recorded. A story is found in the Ware Papers, and supported by the authority of Archbishop Ussher, which, if true, shows that this reproach to Irish Protestantism--if indeed it is areproach--was once nearly avoided. The story runs that one Cole, Dean ofSt. Paul's, was despatched by Mary with a special commission to "lashthe heretics of Ireland. " That Cole slept on his way at an inn inChester, the landlady of which happened to have a brother, a Protestantthen living in Dublin. This woman, hearing him boast of his commission, watched her opportunity, and stole the commission out of his cloak-bag, substituting for it a pack of cards. Cole unsuspiciously pursued hisway, and presenting himself authoritatively before the deputy, declaredhis business and opened his bag. There, in place of the commissionagainst the heretics, lay the pack of cards with the knave of clubsuppermost!

The story goes on to say that the dean raged in discomfited fury, butthat the deputy, though himself a Roman Catholic, took the mattereasily. "Let us have another commission, " he said, "and meanwhile wewill shuffle the cards. " The cards were effectually shuffled, for beforeany further steps could be taken Mary had died. 

XXIV. 

WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL. 

Upon the 17th of November, 1558, Mary died, and upon the afternoon ofthe same day Elizabeth was proclaimed queen. A new reign is alwaysaccounted a new starting-point, and in this case the traditional methodof dividing history is certainly no misleader. The old queen had beennarrow, dull-witted, bigoted; an unhappy woman, a miserable wife, plagued with sickness, plagued, above all, with a conscience whosemission seems to have been to distort everything that came under itscognizance. A woman even whose good qualities--and she had several--onlyseemed to push her further and further down the path of disaster. 

The new queen was twenty-six years old. Old enough, therefore, to haverealized what life meant, young enough to have almost illimitablepossibilities still unrevealed to her. No pampered royal heiress, either, for whom the world of hard facts had no reality, and the silkenshams of a Court constituted the only standpoint, but one who hadalready with steady eyes looked danger and disaster in the face and knewthem for what they were. With a realm under her hand strong already, anddestined before her death to grow stronger still; with a spirit too, strong enough and large enough for her realm; stronger perhaps in spiteof her many littlenesses than that of any of the men she ruled over. 

And Ireland? How was it affected by this change of rulers? At firstfairly well. The early months of the new reign were marked by a policyof conciliation. Protestantism was of course, re-established, but therewas no eagerness to press the Act of Conformity with any severity, andMass was still said nearly everywhere except in the Pale. 

As usual, troubles began in the North. Henry VIII. , it will beremembered, had granted the hereditary lands of Tyrone to Con O'Neill, with remainder to Matthew, the new Baron of Dungannon, whereas lands inUlster, as elsewhere in Ireland, had always hitherto, by the law ofTanistry, been vested in the tribe, who claimed the right to selectwhichever of their late chiefs' sons they themselves thought fit. Thisright they now proceeded to exercise. Matthew, if he was Con's son atall, which was doubtful, was unquestionably illegitimate, and, therefore, by English as well as Irish law, wrongfully put in the place. On the other hand, a younger son Shane--called affectionately "Shane theProud" by his clansmen--was unquestionably legitimate, and what was ofmuch more importance, was already the idol of every fighting O'Neillfrom Lough Foyle to the banks of the Blackwater. 

Shane is one of those Irish heroes--rather perhaps Ulster heroes, forhis aspirations were hardly national--whom it is extremely difficult tomete out justice to with a perfectly even hand. He was unquestionablythree-fourths of a savage--that fact we must begin in honesty byadmitting--at the same time, he was a very brilliant, and, even in manyrespects attractive, savage. His letters, though suffering like those ofsome other distinguished authors from being translated, are full oftouches of fiery eloquence, mixed with bombast and the wildest and mostmonstrously inflated self-pretension. His habits certainly were notcommendable. He habitually drank, and it is also said ate a great dealmore than was good for him. He ill-used his unlucky prisoners. Hedivorced one wife to marry another, and was eager to have a third in thelifetime of the second, making proposals at the same time to the deputyfor the hand of his sister, and again and again petitioning the queen toprovide him with some "English gentlewoman of noble blood, meet for myvocation, so that by her good civility and bringing up the country wouldbecome civil. " In spite however of these and a few other lapses from thereceived modern code of morals and decorum, Shane the Proud is anattractive figure in his way, and we follow his fortunes with aninterest which more estimable heroes fail sometimes to awaken. 

The Baron of Dungannon was in the meantime dead, having been slain in ascuffle with his half-brother's followers--some said by hishalf-brother's own hand--previous to his father's death. His son, however, who was still a boy, was safe in England, and now appealedthrough his relations to the Government, and Sir Henry Sidney, who inLord Sussex's absence was in command, marched from Dublin to support theEnglish candidate. At a meeting which took place at Dundalk Shane seemshowever to have convinced Sidney to some degree of the justice of hisclaim, and hostilities were delayed until the matter could be reportedto the queen. 

Upon Sussex's return from England they broke out again. Shane, however, had by this time considerably strengthened his position. Not only had hefirmly established himself in the allegiance of his own tribe, but hadfound allies and assistants outside it. There had of late been a steadymigration of Scotch islanders into the North of Ireland, "Redshanks" asthey were familiarly called, and a body of these, got together by Shaneand kept as a body-guard, enabled him to act with unusual rapidity anddecision. Upon Sussex attempting to detach two chieftains, O'Reilly ofBrefny and O'Donnell of Tyrconnel, who owed him allegiance, Shane flewinto Brefny and Tyrconnel, completely overawed the two waverers, andcarried off Calvagh O'Donnell with his wife, who was a sister-in-law ofthe Earl of Argyle. The following summer he encountered Sussex himselfand defeated him, sending his army flying terror-stricken back uponArmagh. This feat established him as the hero of the North. No armywhich Sussex could again gather together could be induced to risk thefate of its predecessor. The deputy was a poor soldier, feeble andvacillating in the field. He was no match for his fiery assailant; andafter an attempt to get over the difficulty by suborning one Neil Greyto make away with the too successful Shane, he was reduced to thenecessity of coming to terms. An agreement was entered into with theassistance of the Earl of Kildare, by which Shane agreed to presenthimself at the English Court, and there, if he could, to make good hisclaims in person before the queen. 

Few scenes are more picturesque, or stand out more vividly before ourimagination than this visit of the turbulent Ulster chieftain to thecapital of his unknown sovereign. As he came striding down the Londonstreets on his way to the Palace, the citizens ran to their doors tostare at the redoubtable Irish rebel with his train of galloglasses athis heels--huge bareheaded fellows clad in saffron shirts, their hugenaked axes swung over their shoulders, their long hair streaming behindthem, their great hairy mantles dangling nearly to their heels. Soattended, and in such order, Shane presented himself before the queen, amid a buzz, as may be imagined, of courtly astonishment. Elizabethseems to have been equal to the situation. She motioned Shane, who hadprostrated himself, clansman fashion upon the floor, to rise, "check'dwith a glance the circle's smile, " eyeing as she did so, not withoutcharacteristic appreciation, the redoubtable thews and sinews of thisthe most formidable of her vassals. 

Her appreciation, equally characteristically, did not hinder her fromtaking advantage of a flaw in his safe-conduct to keep Shane fuming ather Court until he had agreed to her own terms. When at last he wasallowed to return home it was with a sort of compromise of his claim. Hewas not to call himself Earl of Tyrone--a distinction to which, intruth, he seems to have attached little importance--but he was allowedto be still the O'Neill, with the additional title of "Captain ofTyrone. " To which the wits of the Court added--

 "Shane O'Neill, Lord of the North of Ireland; Cousin of St. Patrick. Friend of the Queen of England; Enemy of all the world besides. "

Shane and his galloglasses went home, and for some two years he and theIrish Government left one another comparatively alone. He was supremenow in the North, and ruled his own subjects at his own pleasure andaccording to his own rude fashion. Sussex made another attempt not longafter to poison him in a gift of wine, which all but killed him and hisentire household, which still included the unhappy "Countess" and heryet more unhappy husband Calvagh O'Donnell, whom Shane kept securelyironed in a cell at the bottom of his castle. The incident did not addto his confidence in the Queen's Government, or incline him to trusthimself again in their hands, which, all things considered, was hardlysurprising. 

That in his own wild way Shane kept the North in order even his enemiesadmitted. While the East and West of Ireland were distracted with feuds, and in the South Ormond and Desmond were wasting one another's countrywith unprecedented ferocity, Ulster was comparatively peaceable andprosperous. Chiefs who made themselves objectionable to Shane felt theweight of his arm, but that perhaps had not a little to say to thistranquillity. Mr. Froude--no exaggerated admirer of Irish heroes--tellsus _apropos_ of this time, "In O'Neill's county alone in Ireland werepeasants prosperous, or life and property safe, " though he certainlyadds that their prosperity flourished largely upon the spoils collectedby them from the rest of the country. 

That Shane himself believed that he had so far kept his word withElizabeth is pretty evident, for in a letter to her written in his usualinflated style about the notorious Sir Thomas Stukeley, he entreats thatshe will pardon the latter "for his sake and in the name of the serviceswhich he had himself rendered to England. " Whether Elizabeth, or stillmore Sidney, were equally convinced of those services is anopen question. 

Shane's career however was rapidly running to a close. In 1565 he made asudden and unexpected descent upon the Scots in Antrim, where, after afierce combat, an immense number of the latter were slaughtered, a featfor which he again had the audacity to write to Elizabeth and assure herthat it was all done in her service. Afterwards he made a descent onConnaught, driving back with him into his own country over 4000 head ofcattle which he had captured. His game, however, was nearly at an end. Sir Henry Sidney was now back to Ireland, this time with the expresspurpose of crushing the rebel, and had marched into Ulster with aconsiderable force for that purpose. Shane, nevertheless, still showed adetermined front. Struck up an alliance with Argyle, and wrote to Francefor instant aid to hold Ulster against Elizabeth, nay, in spite of hisrecent achievement, he seems to have even hoped to win the Scotchsettlers over to his side. Sidney however was this time in earnest, andwas a man of very different calibre from Sussex, in whom Shane hadpreviously found so easy an antagonist. He marched right across Ulster, and entered Tyrconnel; reinstated the O'Donnells who had been driventhence by Shane; continued his march to Sligo, and from there toConnaught, leaving Colonel Randolph and the O'Donnells to hold the Northand finish the work which he had begun. 

Randolph's camp was pitched at Dorry--not then the _protégée_ of London, nor yet famed in story, but a mere insignificant hamlet, consisting ofan old castle and a disused graveyard. It was this latter site that theunlucky English commander selected for his camp, with, as might beexpected, the most disastrous results. Fever broke out, the water provedto be poisonous, and in a short time half the force were dead or dying, Randolph himself being amongst the former. An explosion which occurredin a magazine finished the disaster, and the scared survivors escaped indismay to Carrickfergus. Local superstition long told tales of the fieryportents and miracles by which the heretic soldiery were driven from thesacred precincts which their presence had polluted. 

With that odd strain of greatness which ran through her, Elizabeth seemsto have accepted this disaster well, and wrote "comfortable words" toSidney upon the subject. For the time being, however, the attack uponShane devolved of necessity wholly upon his native foes. 

Aided by good fortune they proved for once more than a match for him. Encouraged by the disaster of the Derry garrison, Shane made a hastyadvance into Tyrconnel, and crossed with a considerable force over theford of Lough Swilly, near Letterkenny. He found the O'Donnells, thoughfewer in number than his own forces, established in a strong positionupon the other side. From this position he tried to drive them by force, but the O'Donnells were prepared, and Shane's troops coming on indisorder were beaten back upon the river. The tide had in the meantimerisen, and there was therefore no escape. Penned between the flood andthe O'Donnells, over 3000 of his men perished, many by drowning, but thegreater number being hacked to death upon the strand. Shane himselfnarrowly escaped with his life by another ford. 

The Hero of the North was now a broken man. Such a disaster was not tobe retrieved. The English troops were again coming rapidly up. Thevictorious O'Donnells held all the country behind him. A French descent, even if it had come, would hardly have saved him now. In this extremitya desperate plan occurred to him. Followed by a few horsemen, andaccompanied by the unhappy "Countess" who had so long shared his curiousfortunes, he rode off to the camp of the Scotch settlers in Antrim, there to throw himself on their mercy and implore their support. It wasan insane move. He was received with seeming courtesy, and a banquetspread in his honour. Lowering looks however were bent upon him fromevery side of the table. Captain Pierce, an English officer, had beenbusy the day before stirring up the smouldering embers of anger. Suddenly a taunt was flung out by one of the guests at the discomfitedhero. Shane--forgetting perhaps where he was--sprang up to revenge it. Adozen swords and skeans blazed out upon him, and he fell, pierced bythree or four of his entertainers at once. His body was then tossed intoan old ruined chapel hard by, where the next day his head was hacked offby Captain Pierce, and carried to Sidney, who sent it to be spiked uponDublin Castle. It was but too characteristic an end of an eminentlycharacteristic career. 

[Illustration: ST. PATRICK'S BELL. ]

XXV. 

BETWEEN TWO STORMS. 

By 1566 Sir Henry Sidney became Lord-deputy, not now in the room ofanother, but fully appointed. With the possible exception of Sir JohnPerrot, he was certainly the ablest of all the viceroys to whomElizabeth committed power in Ireland. Unlike others he had theadvantage, too, of having served first in the country in subordinatecapacities, and so earning his experience. He even seems to have beenfairly popular, which, considering the nature of some of hisproceedings, throws a somewhat sinister light, it must be owned, uponthose of his successors and predecessors. 

After the death and defeat of Shane the Proud a lull took place, and thenew deputy took the opportunity of making a progress through the southand west of the island, which he reports to be all terribly wasted bywar. Many districts, he says, "had but one-twentieth part of theirformer population. " Galway, worn out by incessant attacks, couldscarcely defend her walls. Athenry had but four respectable householdersleft, who "sadly presenting the rusty keys of their once famous town, confessed themselves unable to defend it. "

[Illustration: SIR HENRY SIDNEY, LORD-DEPUTY FROM 1565 TO 1587. (_Froman engraving by Harding_. )]

Sidney was one of the first to relinquish what had hitherto been thefavourite and traditional policy of all English governors, that, namely, of playing one great lord or chieftain against another, and to attemptthe larger task of putting down and punishing all signs ofinsubordination especially in the great. In this respect he was thepolitical parent of Strafford, who acted the same part sixty yearslater. He had not--any more than his great successor--to reproachhimself either with feebleness in the execution of his policy. Thenumber of military executions that mark his progress seem to havestartled his own coadjutors, and even to have evoked some slightremonstrance from Elizabeth herself. "Down they go at every corner!" theLord-deputy writes at this time triumphantly in an account of his ownproceedings, "and down, God willing, they shall go. "

A plan for appointing presidents of provinces had been a favourite withthe late deputy, Sussex, and was now revived. Sir Edward Fitton, one ofthe judges of the Queen's Bench, was appointed to the province ofConnaught--a miserably poor appointment as it turned out; Sir JohnPerrot a little later to Munster; Leinster for the present the deputyreserved for himself. This done he returned, first pausing to arrest theEarl of Desmond and carrying him and his brother captive to Dublin andeventually to London, where according to the queen's orders he was to bebrought in order that she might adjudicate herself in the quarrelbetween him and Ormond. 

The two earls--they were stepson and stepfather by the way--had foryears been at fierce feud, a feud which had desolated the greater partof the South of Ireland. It was a question of titles and ownership, andtherefore exclusively one for the lawyers. The queen, however, wasresolved that it should be decided in Ormond's favour. Ormond was "sibto the Boleyns;" Ormond had been the playmate of "that sainted youngSolomon, King Edward, " and Ormond therefore, it was quite clear, mustknow whether the lands were his own or not. 

Against the present Desmond nothing worse was charged than that he hadenforced what he considered his palatinate rights in the old, high-handed, time-immemorial fashion. His father, however, had been inleague with Spain, and he himself was held to be contumacious, and hadnever been on good terms with any of the deputies. 

On this occasion he had, however, surrendered himself voluntarily toSidney. Nevertheless, upon his arrival he was kept a close prisoner, andupon attempting, sometime afterwards, to escape, was seized, and onlyreceived his life on condition of surrendering the whole of hisancestral estates to the Crown, a surrender which happened to fit invery conveniently with a plan upon which the attention of the EnglishCouncil was at that time turned. 

The expenses of Ireland were desperately heavy, and Elizabeth's frugalsoul was bent upon some plan for their reduction. A scheme for reducingthe cost of police duty by means of a system of military colonies hadlong been a favourite one, and an opportunity now occurred for turningit into practice. A number of men of family, chiefly from Devonshire andSomersetshire, undertook to migrate in a body to Ireland, taking withthem their own farm servants, their farm implements, and everythingnecessary for the work of colonization. The leader of these men was SirPeter Carew, who held a shadowy claim over a vast tract of territory, dating from the reign of Henry II. , a claim which, however, had beeneffectually disposed of by the lawyers. The scheme as it was firstproposed was a truly gigantic one. A line was to be drawn from Limerickto Cork, and everything south of that line was to be given over to theadventurers. As for the natives, they said, they would undertake tosettle with them. All they required was the queen's permission. Everything else they could do for themselves. 

So heroic a measure was not to be put in force at once. As far asCarew's claims went, he took the matter, however, into his own hands byforcibly expelling the occupiers of the lands in question, and puttinghis own retainers into them. As fortune would have it, amongst the firstlands thus laid hold of were some belonging to the Butlers, brothers ofLord Ormond, and therefore probably the only Irish landowners whose cryfor justice was pretty certain just then to be heard in high quarters. Horrible tales of the atrocities committed by Carew and his band wasreported by Sir Edward Butler, who upon his side was not slow to commitretaliations of the same sort A spasm of anger, and a wild dread ofcoming contingencies flew through the whole South of Ireland. Sir JamesFitzmaurice, cousin of the Earl of Desmond, broke into open rebellion;so did also both the younger Butlers. Ormond himself, who was inEngland, was as angry as the fiercest, and informed Cecil in plain termsthat "if the lands of good subjects were not to be safe, he for onewould be a good subject no longer. "

It was no part of the policy of the Government to alienate the one manin Ireland upon whose loyalty they could depend at a pinch. By thepersonal efforts of the queen his wrath was at last pacified, and heagreed to accept her earnest assurance that towards him at least noinjury was intended. This done, he induced his brothers to withdraw fromthe alliance, while Sir Henry Sidney, sword in hand, went into Munsterand carried out the work of pacification in the usual fashion, burningvillages, destroying the harvest, driving off cattle, blowing upcastles, and hanging their garrisons in strings over the battlements. After which he marched to Connaught, leaving Sir Humphrey Gilbert behindhim to keep order in the south. 

For more than two years Sir James Fitzmaurice continued to hold out inhis rocky fastness amongst the Galtese mountains. A sort of grim humourpervades the relations between him and Sir John Perrot, the newPresident of Munster. Perrot had boasted upon his arrival that he wouldsoon "hunt that fox out of his hole. " The fox, however, showed adisposition to take the part of the lion, sallying out unexpectedly, ravaging the entire district, burning Kilmallock, and returning again tohis mountains before he could be interfered with. The following year hemarched into Ulster, and on his way home burnt Athlone, the Englishgarrison there looking helplessly on; joined the two Mac-an-Earlas asthey were called, the sons of Lord Clanricarde, and assisted them to laywaste Galway, and so returned triumphantly across the Shannon toTipperary. Once Perrot all but made an end of him, but his soldiers tookthat convenient opportunity of mutinying, and so baulked their leader ofhis prey. Another time, in despair of bringing the matter to anyconclusion, the president proposed that it should be decided by singlecombat between them, a proposal which Fitzmaurice prudently resisted onthe ground that though Perrot's place could no doubt readily besupplied, his own was less easily to fill, and that therefore for hisfollowers' sake he must decline. 

At last the long game of hide-and-seek was brought to an end by SirJames offering to submit, to which Perrot agreeing, he took the requiredoaths in the church of Kilmallock, the scene of his former ravages, andkissed the president's sword in token of his regret for "the said mostmischievous part. " This farce gravely gone through, he sailed forFrance, and Munster for a while was at peace. It was only a temporarylull though. The Desmond power was still too towering to be left alone, and both its defenders and the Government knew that they were merelyindulging in a little breathing time before the final struggle. 

XXVI. 

THE DESMOND REBELLION. 

The tale of the great Desmond rebellion which ended only with the ruinof that house, and with the slaughter or starvation of thousands of itsunhappy adherents, is one of those abortive tragedies of which the wholehistory of Ireland is full. Our pity for the victims' doom, and ourindignation for the cold-blooded cruelty with which that doom wascarried out, is mingled with a reluctant realization of the fact thatthe state of things which preceded it was practically impossible, thatit had become an anomaly, and that as such it was bound either to changeor to perish. 

[Illustration: CAHIR CASTLE, TIPPERARY, TAKEN BY THE EARL OF ESSEX IN1599. _(From the "Pacata Hibernia. ")_]

From the twelfth century onwards, the Desmond Geraldines had been lords, as has been seen, of a vast tract of Ireland, covering the greater partof Munster. Earlier and perhaps more completely than any of the othergreat Norman houses, they had become Irish chieftains rather thanEnglish subjects, and the opening of Elizabeth's reign found them stillwhat for centuries past they had been, and with their power, withintheir own limits, little if at all curtailed. The Desmond of the day hadstill his own judges or Brehons, by whose judgment he professed to rule. He had still his own palatinate courts; he still collected his dues byforce, driving away his clansmen's cattle, and distraining those whoresisted him. Only a few years before this time, during an expedition ofthe kind, he and Ormond had encountered one another in the open field atAffane, upon the Southern Blackwater, each side flying their banners, and shouting their war cries as if no queen's representative had everbeen seen or heard of. 

Such a state of things, it was plain, could not go on indefinitely, would not indeed have gone on as long but for the confusion and disorderin which the country had always been plunged, and especially the want ofall settled communication. The palatinate of Ormond, it is true, wastheoretically in much the same state, but then Ormond was a keenersighted and a wiser man than Desmond, and knew when the times demandedredress. He had of late even made some effort to abolish the abominablesystem of "coyne and livery, " although, as he himself frankly admits, hewas forced to impose it again in another form not long afterwards. 

Sir James meanwhile had left Ireland, and at every Catholic Court inEurope was busily pleading for aid towards a crusade against England. Failing in France, he appealed to Philip of Spain. Philip, however, atthe moment was not prepared to break with Elizabeth, whereuponFitzmaurice, undeterred by failure, presented himself next before thePope. Here he was more successful, and preparations for the collectionof a considerable force was at once set on foot, a prominent Englishrefugee, Dr. Nicolas Saunders, being appointed to accompany itas legate. 

Saunders, who had distinguished himself not long before by a violentpersonal attack against Elizabeth, threw himself heart and soul into theenterprise, and in a letter to Philip pointed out all the advantagesthat were to be won by it to the Catholic cause. "Men, " he assured him, "were not needed. " Guns, powder, a little money, and a ship or two withstores from Spain, and the whole country would soon be at his feet. 

Although absurdly ignorant, as his own letters prove, of a country ofwhich he had once been nominally king, Philip knew rather more probablyabout the circumstance of the case than Saunders, and he met theseinsinuating suggestions coldly. A fleet in the end was fitted out andsent from Civita Vecchia, under the command of an English adventurerStukeley, the same Stukeley in whose favour we saw Shane O'Neillappealing to Elizabeth. Though it started for Ireland it never arrivedthere. Touching at Lisbon, Stukeley was easily persuaded to give up hisfirst scheme, and to join Sebastian, king of Portugal, in a buccaneeringexpedition to Morocco, and at the battle of Alcansar both he andSebastian with the greater part of their men were killed. 

Fitzmaurice meanwhile had gone to Spain by land, and had there embarkedfor Ireland, accompanied by his wife, two children, Saunders, thelegate, Allen, an Irish priest, a small party of Italians and Spaniards, and a few English refugees, and bringing with them a banner especiallyconsecrated by the Pope for this service. 

Their landing-place was Dingle, and from there they crossed to Smerwick, where they fortified the small island peninsula of Oilen-an-Oir, or"Gold Island, " where they were joined by John and James Fitzgerald, brothers of the Earl of Desmond, and by a party of two hundredO'Flaherties from Iar Connaught, who, however, speedily left again. 

But Desmond still vacillated helplessly. Now that the time had come hecould not make up his mind what to do, or with whom to side. He wasevidently cowed. His three imprisonments lay heavily upon his soul. Heknew the power of England better too than most of his adherents, andshrank from measuring his own strength against it. What he did notrealize was that it was too late now to go back. He had stood out forwhat he considered his own rights when it would have been more politicto have submitted, and now he wanted to submit when it was only tooplain to all who could read the signs of the times that the storm wasalready upon him, and that no humility or late-found loyalty could availto avert that doom which hung over his house. 

If Desmond himself was slow to rise, the whole South of Ireland was in astate of wild tumult and excitement when the news of the actual arrivalof Fitzmaurice and the legate became known. Nor in the south alone. InConnaught and the Pale the excitement was very little less. Kildare, like Desmond, held back fearing the personal consequences of rebellion, but all the younger lords of the Pale were eager to throw in their lotwith Fitzmaurice. Alone amongst the Irishmen of his day, he possessedall the necessary qualifications of a leader. He had already for yearssuccessfully resisted the English. He was known to be a man of greatcourage and tenacity, and his reputation as a general stood deservedlyhigh in the opinion of all his countrymen. 

[Illustration: CATHERINE, THE "OLD" COUNTESS OF DESMOND. (Reputed tohave been killed at the age of 120 by a fall from a cherry tree. ) _(Fromthe Burne Collection. )_]

That extraordinary good fortune, however, which has so often befallenEngland at awkward moments, and never more conspicuously than during theclosing years of the sixteenth century, did not fail now. Fitzmauricestarted for Connaught to encourage the insurrection which had been fastripening there under the brutal rule of Sir Nicolas Malby, its governor. A trumpery quarrel had recently broken out between the Desmonds and theMayo Bourkes, and this insignificant affair sealed the fate of what atone moment promised to be the most formidable rebellion which had everassailed the English power in Ireland. At a place called Harrington'sBridge, not far from Limerick, where the little river Muckern orMulkearn was then crossed by a ford, Fitzmaurice was set upon by theBourkes. Only a few followers were with him at the time, and in turningto expostulate with one of his assailants, he was killed by a pistolshot, and fell from his horse. This was upon the 18th of August, 1579. From that moment the Desmond rising was doomed. 

Desmond meanwhile still sat vacillating in his own castle of Askeaton, neither joining the rising, nor yet exerting himself vigorously to putit down. Malby, who had newly arrived from Connaught, took steps tohasten his decision. Ordering the earl to come to him, and the latterstill hesitating, he marched against Askeaton, utterly destroyed thetown up to the walls of the castle, burning everything in theneighbourhood, including the abbey and the tombs of the Desmonds, thecastle itself only escaping through the lack of ammunition. 

This hint seems to have sufficed. Desmond was at last convinced that thetime for temporizing was over. He rose, and all Munster rose with him. Ormond was still in London, and hurried over to find all in disorder. Drury had lately died, and the only other English commander, Malby, wascrippled for want of men, and had been obliged to retreat intoConnaught. The new deputy, Sir William Pelham, had just arrived, and heand Ormond now proceeded to make a concerted attack. Advancing in twoseparate columns they destroyed everything which came in their way; men, women, children, infants, the old, the blind, the sick all alike weremercilessly slaughtered; not a roof, however humble, was spared; not aliving creature that crossed their path survived to tell the tale. LadyFitzmaurice and her two little children seem to have been amongst thenumber of these nameless and uncounted victims, for they were neverheard of again. From Adare and Askeaton to the extreme limits of Kerry, everything perishable was destroyed. The two commanders met one anotherat Tralee, and from this point carried on their raid in unison, andreturned, to Askeaton and Cork, leaving the whole country a desertbehind them. There was little or no resistance. The Desmond clansmenwere not soldiers; they were unarmed, or armed only with spears andskeans. They had just lost their only leader. They could do nothing butsullenly watch the progress of the English forces. Desmond, his twobrothers, and the legate were already fugitives. The rising seemed to beall but crushed, when a new incident occurred to spur it into amomentary vitality. 

Four Spanish vessels, containing 800 men, chiefly Italians, had managedto pass unperceived by the English admiral, Winter's, fleet, and to landat Smerwick, where they established themselves in Fitzmaurice'sdismantled fort. They found everything in confusion. They had broughtlarge supplies of arms for their Irish allies, but there were apparentlyno Irish allies to give them to. The legate and Desmond had first to befound, and now that arms had come, the Munster tribesmen had for themost part been killed or dispersed. Ormond and Pelham's terrible raidhad done its work, and the heart of the rising was broken. The Pale, however, had now caught the fire, and though Kildare, its naturalleader, still hung back, Lord Baltinglass and some of the bolder spiritsflew to arms, and threw themselves into the Wicklow highlands where theyjoined their forces with those of the O'Byrnes, and were presentlyjoined by Sir John of Desmond and a handful of Fitzgeralds. 

Lord Grey de Wilton had by this time arrived in Ireland as deputy. Utterly inexperienced in Irish wars, he despised and underrated thecapabilities of those opposed to him, and refused peremptorily to listento the advice of more experienced men. Hastening south, his advancedguard was caught by Baltinglass and the other insurgents in the valleyof Glenmalure. A well-directed fire was poured into the defile; theEnglish troops broke, and tried to flee, and were shot down in numbersamongst the rocks. 

Lord Grey had no time to retrieve this disaster. Leaving the Pale to themercy of the successful rebels, he hastened south, and arrived in Kerrybefore Smerwick fort. Amongst the small band of officers who accompaniedhim on this occasion were Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, both thenyoung men, and both of them all but unknown to fame. 

The English admiral, Winter, with his fleet had long been delayed by badweather. When at length it arrived, cannon were landed and laid inposition upon the sand hills. Next day the siege commenced. There washeavy firing on both sides, but the fort was soon found to be untenable. The garrison thereupon offered to capitulate, and an unconditionalsurrender was demanded. There being no alternative, these terms wereaccepted. Lord Grey thereupon "put in certain bands, " under the commandof Captain Raleigh. "The Spaniard, " says Spenser, who was an eye-witnessof the whole scene, "did absolutely yield himself, and the fort, and alltherein, and only asked mercy, " This, "it was not thought good, " headds, "to show them. " They were accordingly all slaughtered in coldblood, a few women and priests who were with them hanged, the officersbeing reserved for ransom. "There was no other way, " Spenser observes inconclusion, "but to make that end of them as thus was done[8]. "

[8] "View of the State of Ireland, " pp. 5, 11. 

This piece of work satisfactorily finished, Grey returned rapidly toDublin to crush the Leinster insurgents. Kildare and Delvin, though theyhad kept themselves clear of the rebellion, were arrested and throwninto prison. Small bands of troopers were sent into the Wicklowmountains to hunt out the insurgents. Baltinglass escaped to theContinent, but the two Eustaces his brothers, with Garrot O'Toole andFeagh McHugh were caught, killed, and their heads sent to Dublin. Clanricarde's two sons, the Mac-an-Earlas, were out in the Connemaramountains and could not be got at; but Malby again overran theircountry, burning houses and slaughtering without mercy. In Dublin, theAnglo-Irishmen of the Pale were being brought to trial for treason, andhung or beheaded in batches. Kildare was sent to England to die in theTower. With the exception of the North, which on this occasion had keptquiet, the whole country had become one great reeking shambles; whatsword and rope and torch had spared, famine came in to complete. 

The Earl of Desmond was now a houseless fugitive, hunted like a wolf ormad dog through the valleys and over the mountains of his own ancestral"kingdom. " His brothers had already fallen. Sir John Fitzgerald had beenkilled near Cork, and his body hung head downwards, by Raleigh's order, upon the bridge of the river Lee. The other brother, Sir James, had metwith a similar fate. Saunders, the legate, had died of cold andexposure. Desmond alone escaped, time after time, and month after month. Hunted, desperate, in want of the bare necessities of life, he was stillin his own eyes the Desmond, ancestral owner of nearly a hundred milesof territory. Never in his most successful period a man of anyparticular strength of character, sheer pride seems to have upheld himnow. He scorned to make terms with his hated enemy, Ormond. If heyielded to any one, he sent word, it would be only to the queen herselfin person. He was not given the chance. Hunted over the Slemishmountains, with the price of £1, 000 on his head, one by one the trustycompanions who had clung to him so faithfully were taken and killed. Hisown course could inevitably be but a short one. News reached the Englishcaptain at Castlemain one night that the prey was not far off. A dozenEnglish soldiers stole up the stream in the grey of the morning. Thecabin where the Desmond lay was surrounded, the door broken in, and theearl stabbed before there was time for him to spring from his bed. Thetragedy had now been played out to the bitterest end. As formerly withthe Leinster Geraldines, so now with the Munster ones, of the directheirs of the house only a single child was left, a feeble boy, afterwards known by the significant title of the "Tower Earl, " with theextinguishing of whose sickly tenure of life the very name of Desmondceases to appear upon the page of Irish history. 

XXVII. 

BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS. 

Two great risings against Elizabeth's power in Ireland had thus been metand suppressed. A third and a still more formidable one was yet to come. The interval was filled with renewed efforts at colonization upon a yetlarger scale than before. Munster, which at the beginning of the Desmondrising had been accounted the most fertile province in Ireland, was nowlittle better than a desert. Not once or twice, but many times theharvest had been burnt and destroyed, and great as had been theslaughter, numerous as were the executions, they had been far eclipsedby the multitude of those who had died of sheer famine. 

Spenser's evidence upon this point has been often quoted, but no otherwords will bring the picture before us in the same simple, awfulvividness; nor must it be forgotten that the man who tells it was underno temptation to exaggerate having himself been a sharer in the deedswhich had produced so sickening a calamity. 

"They were brought to such wretchedness, " he says, "that any stony heartwould rue the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens, theycame, creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bearthem. They looked like anatomies of death; they spoke like ghosts cryingout of their graves. They did eat the dead carrions, where they did findthem, yea and one another soon after, in as much as the very carcasesthey spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plotof watercresses or shamrocks, there they thronged as to a feast. "

To replace this older population, thus starved, slaughtered, made awaywith by sword and pestilence with new colonists was the scheme of thehour. Desmond's vast estate, covering nearly six hundred thousand Irishacres, not counting waste land, had all been declared forfeit to theCrown. This and a considerable portion of territory also forfeit inLeinster was now offered to English colonists upon the most advantageousterms. No rent was to be paid at first, and for ten years theundertakers were to be allowed to send their exports duty free. 

Many eminent names figure in the long list of these "undertakers";amongst them Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Wareham St. Leger, Edmund Spenser himself, Sir Thomas Norris, and others, all ofwhom received grants of different portions. But "the greater, " saysLeland, "their rank and consequence, the more were they emboldened toneglect the terms of their grant. " Instead of completing theirstipulated number of tenantry, the same persons often were admitted astenants to different undertakers, and in the same seniory sometimesserved at once as freeholder, leaseholder, and copyholder, so as to fillup the necessary number of each denomination. 

The whole scheme of colonization proved, in short, a miserable failure. English farmers and labourers declined to come over in sufficientnumbers. Those that did come left again in despair after a time. Thedispossessed owners hung about, and raided the goods of the settlerswhenever opportunity offered. The exasperation on both sides increasedas years went on; the intruders becoming fewer and more tyrannical, thenatives rapidly growing more numerous and more desperate. It was plainthat the struggle would break out again at the first chance whichoffered itself. 

That occasion arose not in Munster itself, but at the opposite end ofthe island. In Ulster the great southern rising had produced singularlylittle excitement. The chiefs for the most part had remained aloof, andto a great degree, loyal. The O'Donnells, who had been reinstated itwill be remembered in their own territory by Sidney, kept the peace. SirJohn Perrot, who after the departure of Grey became Lord-deputy, seemsin spite of his severity to have won confidence. Old Tyrlough Luinaghwho had been elected O'Neill at the death of Shane, seems even to havefelt a personal attachment for him, which is humorously shown by hisconsenting on several occasions to appear at his court in Englishattire, habiliments which the Irish, like the the Scotch chiefs, objected to strongly as tending to make them ridiculous. "Prythee atleast, my lord, " he is reported to have said on one of these occasions, "let my chaplain attend me in his Irish mantle, that so your Englishrabble may be directed from my uncouth figure and laugh at him. "

[Illustration: _Sr. John Perrot_ LORD-DEPUTY FROM 1584 TO 1588. ]

Perrot, however, had now fallen under the royal displeasure; had beenrecalled and sent to the Tower, a common enough climax in those days toyears spent in the arduous Irish service. His place was taken in 1588 bySir William Fitzwilliam, who had held it nearly thirty years earlier. Fitzwilliam was a man of very inferior calibre to Perrot. Avaricious bynature he had been highly dissatisfied with the poor rewards which hisformer services had obtained. Upon making some remonstrance to thateffect he had been told that the "position of an Irish Lord-deputy wasan honourable one and should challenge no reward. " Upon this hint heseems now to have acted. Since the Lord-deputy was not to be betterrewarded, the Lord-deputy, he apparently concluded, had better helphimself. The Spanish Armada had been destroyed a few years back, andships belonging to it had been strewed in dismal wreck all along theNorth, South, and West coasts of Ireland. It was believed that much goldhad been hidden away by the wretched survivors, and fired with the hopeof laying his own hands upon this treasure, Sir William first issued apermission for searching, and then started himself upon the search. Hemarched into Ulster in the dead of winter, at considerable cost to theState, and with absolutely no result. Either, as was most likely, therewas no treasure, or the treasure had been well hidden. Furious at thisdisappointment he arrested two upon his own showing of the most loyaland law-abiding landowners in Ulster, Sir Owen McToole and Sir JohnO'Dogherty; dragged them back to Dublin with him, flung them into thecastle, and demanded a large sum for their liberation. 

This was a high-handed proceeding in all conscience, but there was worseto come; it seemed as if the new deputy had laid himself out for thetask of inflaming Ulster to the highest possible pitch of exasperation, and so of once more awakening the scarce extinguished flames of civilwar. McMahon, the chief of Monaghan, had surrendered his lands, heldpreviously by tanistry, and had received a new grant of them under thebroad seal of England, to himself and his heirs male, and failing suchheirs to his brother Hugh. At his death Hugh went to Dublin andrequested to be put into possession of his inheritance. This Fitzwilliamagreed to, and returned with him to Monaghan, apparently for thepurpose. Hardly had he arrived there, however, before he trumped up anaccusation to the effect that Hugh McMahon had collected rents two yearspreviously by force--the only method, it may be said in passing, bywhich in those unsettled parts of the country rents ever were collectedat all. It was not an offence by law being committed outside the shire, and he was therefore tried for it by court-martial. He was broughtbefore a jury of private soldiers, condemned, and executed in two days. His estate was thereupon broken up, the greater part of it being dividedbetween Sir Henry Bagnall, three or four English officers, and someDublin lawyers, the Crown reserving for itself a quit rent. Littlewonder if the other Ulster landowners felt that their turn would comenext, and that no loyalty could assure a man's safety so long as he hadanything to lose that was worth the taking. 

At this time the natural leader of the province was not TyrloughLuinagh, who though called the O'Neill was an old man and failing fast. The real leader was Hugh O'Neill, son of Matthew the first Baron ofDungannon, who had been killed, it will be remembered, by Shane O'Neill, by whose connivance Hugh's elder brother had also, it was believed, beenmade away with. Hugh had been educated in England, had been much atCourt, and had found favour with Elizabeth, who had confirmed him in thetitle of Earl of Tyrone which had been originally granted to hisgrandfather. 

Tyrone was the very antipodes of Shane, the last great O'Neill leader. He was much more, in fact, of an English politician and courtier than anIrish chieftain. He had served in the English army; had fought withcredit under Grey in Munster, and was intimately acquainted with all theleading Englishmen of the day. Even his religion, unlike that of mostIrish Catholics of the day, seems to have sat but lightly upon him. Captain Lee, an English officer, quartered in Ulster, in a veryinteresting letter to the queen written about this time, assures herconfidentially that, although a Roman Catholic, he "is less dangerouslyor hurtfully so than some of the greatest in the English Pale, " for thatwhen he accompanied the Lord-deputy to church "he will stay and hear asermon;" whereas they "when they have reached the church door depart asif they were wild cats. " He adds, as a further recommendation, that byway of domestic chaplain he has at present but "one little cub of anEnglish priest. " Lord Essex in still plainer terms told Tyrone himselfwhen he was posing as the champion of Catholicism: "Dost _thou_ talk ofa free exercise of religion! Why thou carest as little for religion asmy horse. "

Such a man was little likely to rush blindly into a rebellion in whichhe had much to lose and little to gain. He knew, as few Irishmen knew, the strength of England. He knew something also of Spain, and of whathad come of trusting for help in that direction. Hitherto, therefore, his influence had been steadily thrown upon the side of order. He hadmore than once assisted the deputy to put down risings in the north, and, on the whole, had borne his part loyally as a dutiful subject ofthe queen. 

Now, however, he had come to a point where the ways branched. He had tochoose his future course, and there were many causes pushing him all butirresistibly into an attitude of rebellion. One of these was thearbitrary arrest of his brother-in-law Hugh O'Donnell, called Red Hugh, who had been induced to come on board a Government vessel by means of afriendly invitation, and had been then and there seized, flung underhatches, and carried off as a hostage to Dublin Castle, from which, after years of imprisonment, he had managed to escape by stealth in thedead of winter, and arrived half dead of cold and exposure in his owncountry, where his treatment had aroused the bitterest and mostimplacable hostility in the breast of all the clan. A more directlypersonal affair, and the one that probably more than any other singlecause pushed Tyrone over the frontiers of rebellion, was the following. Upon the death of his wife he had fallen in love with Bagnall, theLord-Marshall's, sister, and had asked for her hand. This Bagnall, forsome reason, refused, whereupon Tyrone, having already won the lady'sheart, carried her off, and they were married, an act which the marshallnever forgave. 

From that moment he became his implacable enemy, made use of hisposition to ply the queen and Council with accusations against hisbrother-in-law, and when Tyrone replied to those charges the answerswere intercepted. It took some time to undermine Elizabeth's confidencein the earl, having previously had many proofs of his loyalty. It tooksome time, too, to induce Tyrone himself to go in the direction in whichevery event seemed now to be pushing him. Once, however, his mind wasmade up and his retreat cut off, he set to work at his preparations upona scale which soon showed the Government that they had this time nofiery half-savage Shane, no incapable vacillating Desmond to deal with. 

An alliance with the O'Donnells and the other chiefs of the north washis first step. He was by no means to be contented however with a merelyprovincial rising. He despatched messages to Connaught, and enlisted theBurkes in the affair; also the O'Connor of Sligo, the McDermot and otherwestern chiefs. In Wicklow the O'Byrnes, always ready for a fray, agreedto join the revolt, with all that was left of the tribes of Leix andOffaly. These, with the Kavanaghs and others, united to form a solemnunion, binding themselves to stand or fall together. To Spain Tyronesent letters urging the necessity of an immediate despatch of troops. With the Pope he also put himself into communication, and the rising wasopenly and avowedly declared to be a Catholic one. Just at this junctureold Tyrlough Luinagh died, and Tyrone forthwith assumed thesoul-stirring name of "The O'Neill" for himself. Let the Spanish alliesonly arrive in time and the rule of England it was confidently declaredwould shortly in Ireland be a thing of the past. 

[Illustration: INITIAL LETTER FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS. ]

XXVIII. 

BATTLE OF THE YELLOW FORD. 

The northern river Blackwater--there are at least three Blackwaters inIreland--forms the southern boundary of the county Tyrone, which takes asuccession of deep loops or elbows in order to follow its windings. Atthe end of the sixteenth century and for centuries previously it hadmarked the boundary of the territory of the chiefs or princes of Tyrone, and here, therefore, it was that the struggle between the earl and thequeen's troops advancing from Dublin was necessarily fought out. 

A good deal of desultory fighting took place at first, without anymarked result upon either side. Tyrone got possession of the Englishfort which commanded the passage of the river, but it was in turnsnatched from him by the lately arrived deputy, Lord Borough, who, however, was so severely wounded in the affray that he had to fall backupon Newry, where he not long afterwards died. Ireland was thus for themoment without a governor, and when after a temporary armistice, whichTyrone spun out as long as possible in hopes of his Spanish alliesappearing, hostilities recommenced, the command devolved upon hisbrother-in-law and chief enemy, Sir Henry Bagnall. 

Bagnall had between four and five thousand men under him, Tyrone havingabout the same number, or a little less. A few years previously a verysmall body of English troops had been able, as we have seen, to put toflight fully three times their own number of Irish. In the last dozenyears circumstances however had in this respect very materially changed. The Desmond followers had been for the most part armed only with skeansand spears, much as their ancestors had been under Brian Boru. OneEnglish soldier armed with a gun could put to flight a dozen suchassailants as easily as a sportsman a dozen wolves. Tyrone's men, on theother hand, were almost as well armed as their antagonists. Some ofthese arms had come from Spain, others had been purchased at high pricesfrom the English soldiery, others again from dealers in Dublin andelsewhere. Man to man, and with equal arms, the Ulster men were fullyequal to their assailants, as they were now about to prove. 

In August, 1598, Bagnall advancing from the south found Tyrone engagedin a renewed attack upon the fort of Blackwater, which he had invested, and was endeavouring to reduce by famine. At the advance of Bagnall hewithdrew however to a strong position a few miles from the fort, andthere awaited attack. 

The battle was not long delayed. The bitter personal hatred whichanimated the two leaders seems to have communicated itself to the men, and the struggle was unprecedentedly fierce and bloody. In the thick ofthe engagement Bagnall, lifting his beaver for a moment to get air, wasshot through the forehead and fell. His fall was followed by thecomplete rout of his army. Fifteen hundred soldiers and thirteenofficers were killed, thirty-four flags taken, and all the artillery, ammunition, and provisions fell into the victor's hands. The fortimmediately surrendered, and the remains of the royal army fled inconfusion to Armagh, which shortly abandoning, they again fled south, not attempting to reform until they took refuge at last in Dundalk. 

Such an event as this could have but one result. All the waverers weredecided, and all determined to throw in their lot with the victor. Thetalisman of success is of more vital importance to an Irish army thanprobably to any other, not because the courage of its soldiers is less, but because their imagination is greater, and more easily worked upon. Asoldier is probably better without too much imagination. If the auguriesare unfavourable he instinctively augments, and exaggerates themtenfold. Now, however, all the auguries were favourable. Hope stoodhigh. The Catholic cause had never before showed so favourably. FromMalin Head to Cape Clear all Ireland was in a wild buzz of excitement, and every fighting kern and galloglass clutched his pike with a sense ofcoming triumph. 

XXIX. 

THE ESSEX FAILURE. 

Elizabeth was now nearly seventy years of age, and this was her thirdwar in Ireland. Nevertheless, she and her Council girded themselvesresolutely to the struggle. There could at least be no half-heartedmeasure now; no petty pleas of economy; no penurious doling out of menand money. No one, not even the queen herself, could reasonably questionthe gravity of the crisis. 

The next person to appear upon the scene is Robert Devereux, Earl ofEssex, whose brilliant mercurial figure flashes for a moment across thewild and troubled stage of Ireland, only the next to vanish like someWill-o'-the-wisp into an abyss of darkness and disaster. 

At that moment his fame as a soldier stood as high if not higher thanthat of any of his cotemporaries. If Raleigh or Sidney had more militarygenius, if his old rival, Sir Henry Norris, was a more capable general, the young earl had eclipsed all others in mere dash and brilliancy, andwithin the last few years had dazzled the eyes of the whole nation bythe success of his famous feat in Spain, "The most brilliant exploit, "says Lord Macaulay, "achieved by English arms upon the Continent, between Agincourt and Blenheim. "

[Illustration: ASKEATON CASTLE, THE PROPERTY OF THE EARLS OF DESMOND. (_From the "Pacata Hibernia, " of Sir G. Carew_. )]

Essex was now summoned to the queen and given the supreme command inIreland, with orders to proceed at once to the reduction of Tyrone. Anarmy of 20, 000 infantry and 1, 300 horse were placed under him, and thetitle of Lord-Lieutenant conferred, which had not been granted to anyone under royal blood for centuries. He started with a brilliant train, including a number of well-born volunteers, who gladly offered theirservices to the popular favourite, and landed in Dublin early in themonth of April, 1599. 

His disasters seem to have dated from the very moment of his settingfoot on Irish soil. Contrary to orders, he had appointed his relative, the Earl of Southampton, to the command of the horse, an appointmentwhich even after peremptory orders from the queen he declined to cancel. He went south when he was eagerly expected to go north. Spent a wholefortnight in taking the single castle of Cahir; lingered about theLimerick woods in pursuit of a nephew of the late Desmond, derisivelyknown as the "Sugane Earl, " or "Earl of Straw, " who in the absence ofthe young heir had collected the remnants of the Desmond followers abouthim, and was in league with Tyrone. A few weeks later a party of Englishsoldiers were surprised by the O'Byrnes in Wicklow, and fled shamefully;while almost at the same moment--by a misfortune which was certainly nofault of Essex's, but which went to swell the list of his disasters--SirConyers Clifford, the gallant governor of Connaught, was defeated by theO'Donnells in a skirmish among the Curlew mountains, and both he and SirAlexander Ratcliffe, the second in command, left dead upon the field. 

Essex's very virtues and better qualities, in fact, were all against himin this fatal service. His natural chivalrousness, his keen perceptionof injustice, a certain elevation of mind which debarred him from takingthe stereotyped English official view of the intricate Irish problem; anindependence of vulgar motives which made him prone to see two sides ofa question--even where his own interests required that he should see butone--all these were against him; all tended to make him seem vacillatingand ineffective; all helped to bring about that failure which has madehis six months of command in Ireland the opprobrium ever since ofhistorians. 

Even when, after more than one furiously reproachful letter from thequeen, and after his army had been recruited by an additional force oftwo thousand men, he at last started for the north, nothing of anyimportance happened. He and Tyrone held an amicable and unwitnessedconference at a ford of the little river Lagan, at which the enemies ofthe viceroy did not scruple afterwards to assert that treason had beenconcocted. What, at any rate, is certain is that Essex agreed to anarmistice, which, with so overwhelming a force at his own disposal, naturally awakened no little anger and astonishment. Tyrone's personalcourtesy evidently produced a strong effect upon the other earl. Theywere old acquaintances, and Tyrone was no doubt able to place his casein strong relief. Essex, too, had that generosity of mind which made himinconveniently open to expostulation, and he knew probably well enoughthat the wrongs of which Tyrone complained were far from imaginary ones. 

Another and a yet more furious letter from the queen startled him forhis own safety. Availing himself of a permission he had brought with himto return should occasion seem to require it, he left the command in thehands of subordinates, flew to Dublin, and embarked immediately forEngland. What befel him upon his arrival is familiar to every schoolchild, and the relation of it must not be allowed to divert us fromfollowing the further course of events in Ireland. 

[Illustration: CINERARY URN. (_From a Tumulus near Dublin_. )]

XXX. 

END OF THE TYRONE REBELLION. 

A very different man from the chivalrous and quixotic Essex now took thereins. Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, had expected to be sent to Irelandwhen Essex had suddenly been appointed with ampler powers and a moreextended consequence, and the disappointment had caused him to followthe course of that ill-starred favourite with ill-concealed jealousy toits tragic end. 

Mountjoy was himself a man of cold, clear-sighted, self-seekingtemperament. In almost all English histories dealing with this periodhis steadiness and solid unshowy qualities are contrasted with Essex'sflightiness and failure, to the natural disadvantage of the latter. This, however, is not perhaps quite the last word upon the matter, andit is only fair to Essex that this should be realized. 

[Illustration: CAPTURE OF THE EARL OF ORMOND BY THE O'MORES. (_From the"Pacata Hibernia, " of Sir G. Carew_. ) 1. Ormond and his followers; 2. Rebel horse and foot; 3. Rebels concealed in woods; 4. Bogs. ]

No master hand has as yet made this special portion of Irish history hisown. When he does so--if the keen edge of his perceptions, that is tosay, has not been dimmed by too strong an earlier prepossession--weshall perhaps learn that the admitted failure of Essex, so disastrous tohimself, was more honourable than the admitted and the well-rewardedsuccess of Mountjoy. The situation, as every English leader soon found, was one that admitted of no possible fellowship between twoalternatives, success and pity; between the commonest and mostelementary dictates of humanity, and the approval of the queen and herCouncil. There was but one method by which a success could be assured, and this was the method which Mountjoy now pushed relentlessly, and fromwhich Essex's more sensitively attuned nature evidently shrank. Theenemies it was necessary to annihilate were not so much Tyrone'ssoldiers, as the poor, the feeble, the helpless, the old, the women, andthe little children. Famine--oddly called by Edward III. The "gentlestof war's hand-maids"--was here the only certain, perhaps the onlypossible agent. By it, and by it alone, the germs of insurrection couldbe stamped out and blighted as it were at their very birth. 

There was no further shrinking either from its application. Mountjoyestablished military stations at different points in the north, andproceeded to demolish everything that lay between them. With adeliberation which left little to be desired he made his soldiersdestroy every living speck of green that was to be seen, burn everyroof, and slaughter every beast which could not be conveniently driveninto camp. With the aid of Sir George Carew, who enthusiasticallyendorsed his policy, and has left us a minute account of theirproceedings, they swept the country before them. The English columnsmoved steadily from point to point, establishing themselves whereverthey went, in strongly fortified outposts, from which points flyingdetachments were sent to ravage all the intermediate districts. Theground was burnt to the very sod; all harvest utterly cleared away;starvation in its most grisly forms again began to stalk the land; thepeople perished by tens of thousands, and the tales told byeye-witnesses of what they themselves had seen at this time are toosickening to be allowed needlessly to blacken these pages. 

As a policy nothing, however, could be more brilliantly successful. Atthe arrival of Mountjoy the English power in Ireland was at about thelowest ebb it ever reached under the Tudors. Ormond, theLieutenant-General of the kingdom, had recently been taken captive bythe O'Mores in Leinster, by whom he was held for an enormous ransom. Success, with all its glittering train, seemed to have gone bodily overto Tyrone. There was hardly a town in the whole island that remained inthe hands of the Deputy. Before Mountjoy left all this was simplyreversed. Not only had the royal power regained everything that had beensnatched from it, but from sea to sea it stood upon a far firmer andstronger basis than it had ever done before. 

Gradually, as the area over which the power of the Deputy and his ableassistant grew wider and wider, that of the Tyrone fell away and faded. "The consequence of an Irish chieftain above all others, " observesLeland most weightily, "depended upon opinion. " A true success, that isto say, of which the gleaming plumes and trophies were not immediatelyvisible, would have been far more disastrous than a real failure whichcould have been gilded over with a little delusive gleam of triumph. There was no gleams, real or imaginary, now. Tyrone was fast coming tothe end of his resources. Surrender or starvation were staring him withugly insistence in the face. 

The war, in fact, was on the point of dying out from sheer exhaustion, when a new element came to infuse momentary courage into the breasts ofthe insurgents. Fifty Spanish ships, with Don Juan d'Aguilar and threethousand soldiers on board, sailed into Kinsale harbour, where theyproceeded to disembark and to occupy the town. 

The instant the news of this landing reached Mountjoy, he, withcharacteristic vigour, hurried south with every soldier he couldcollect, so as to cut off the new arrivals before their allies had timeto appear. Not a moment was lost. The Spaniards had landed on the 20thof September, 1601, and by the 23rd the first English soldiers appearedbefore the town, and before the end of the month Mountjoy and Carew hadconcentrated every man they had in Ireland around Kinsale. 

Tyrone and O'Donnell also hurried south, but their progress was slower, and when they arrived they found their allies closely besieged on allsides. Taking advantage of a frost, which had made the bogs passable, O'Donnell stole round the English forces and joined another party ofSpaniards who had just effected a landing at Castlehaven. All Kerry wasnow up in arms, under two local chiefs, O'Sullivan Beare and O'Driscoll. The struggle had resolved itself into the question which side could holdout longest. The English had the command of the sea, but were theSpanish fleet to return their position would become to the last degreeperilous. The game for Tyrone to play was clearly a waiting one. TheSpaniards in Kinsale were weary however of their position, and urged himto try and surprise the English camp. Reluctantly, and against his ownjudgment, he consented. The surprise failed utterly. Information of ithad already reached Carew. The English were under arms, and after ashort struggle Tyrone's men gave way. Twelve hundred were killed, andthe rest fled in disorder. The Spaniards thereupon surrendered Kinsale, and were allowed to re-embark for Spain; many of the Irish, includingO'Donnell, accompanying them. 

This was practically the end. Tyrone retreated to the north, collectingthe remnants of his army as he went. Carew went south to wreak a summaryvengeance upon O'Sullivan Beare, and the other Kerry insurgents, whileMountjoy, following in the wake of Tyrone, hemmed him gradually furtherand further north, repeating at the same time that wasting process whichhad already been only too brilliantly successful. 

Tyrone had wit enough to see that the game was played out. On the otherhand, Mountjoy was eager to bring the war to an end before the queen'sdeath, now hourly expected. Terms were accordingly come to. The earlmade his submission, and agreed to relinquish the title of O'Neill, andto abjure for ever all alliances with foreign powers or with any of theenemies of the Crown. In return he was to receive a full pardon forhimself and his followers, and all his titles and lands were to beconfirmed to him. 

Two days after this the queen's death was announced. We are told thatTyrone, upon hearing of it, burst into a flood of tears. As he had beenin arms against her up to a week before, it can scarcely have been asource of very poignant anguish. Probably he felt that had he guessedthe imminence of the event he might have made better terms. 

[Illustration: TARA BROOCH. ]

XXXI. 

THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS. 

This was the last serious attempt on the part of any individual Irishchieftain to rise against the power of England. The next rebellion ofwhich we shall hear arose from perfectly different causes, and wasgeneral rather than individual, grew indeed before its conclusion to thelarger and more imposing dimensions of a civil war. 

In one respect this six years' struggle was less productive of resultsthan either of the two previous ones. At the end of it, Tyrone was stillTyrone; still the first of Irish subjects; his earldom and his ancestralpossessions were still his. Nay, on crossing a few months later toEngland, and presenting himself to the English Court, he was graciouslyreceived by the new king, and seemed at first to stand in all respectsas if no rebellion had been planned by him, or so nearly carried to asuccessful issue. 

This state of things was a source, as may readily be conceived, ofboundless rage to every English officer and official who had taken partin the late campaign. To see "that damnable rebel Tyrone" apparently inhigh honour caused them to rage and gnash their teeth. "How did Ilabour, " cries one of them, "for that knave's destruction! I adventuredperils by sea and land; went near to starving; eat horse-flesh inMunster, and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at thosewho did hazard their lives to destroy him!"

Sheriffs, judges, commissioners, all the new officials who now began tohurry to the north, shared in this sentiment, and all had their eyes setin wrathful animosity upon Tyrone, all were bent in finding him out insome new treason. That after all that had happened he should end hisdays in peace and honour was not inconceivable merely, but revolting. Hehimself complained about this time that he could not "drink a fullcarouse of sack but the State in a few hours was advertised thereof. " Itwas, in fact, an impossible situation. Tyrone was now sixty-two, andwould have been willing enough therefore, in all probability, to restand be thankful. It was impossible, he found, for him to do so. He washarassed by spies, plunged into litigation with regard to his seignorialrights, and whatever case was tried the lawyers invariably found for hisantagonists. Rory O'Donnell, a brother of Red Hugh, who had been createdEarl of Tyrconnel by James, was in a like case. Both were regarded withdetestation by every official in Ireland; both had not long before had aprice set on their heads; both, it was resolved by all in authority, would, sooner or later, therefore, begin to rebel again. 

Whether they did so or not has never been satisfactorily decided. Theevidence on the whole goes to prove that they did not. The air, however, was thick just then with plots, and in 1607, a mysterious and anonymousdocument, of which Lord Howth was reported to be the author, was foundin the Dublin Council Chamber, which hinted darkly at conspiracies andperils of various kinds to the State, in which conspiracies Tyrone, itwas equally darkly hinted, was in some manner or other involved. 

It was rather a poor plot, still it served its turn. Tyrone receivedwarning from his friends abroad that he was about to be arrested, and soserious was the peril deemed that a vessel was specially sent by them tobring him away in safety. He at once communicated with Tyrconnel, andafter a short consultation the two Earls with their families resolved totake advantage of the opportunity and depart at once. This at the time, and indeed generally, has been construed into a proof of their guilt. Itmay have been so, but, on the other hand, it may just as well not havebeen. Had their innocence been purer than alabaster or whiter than thedriven snow they were probably well advised under existing circumstancesin not remaining to take their trial. 

Right or wrong, with good reason or without good reason, they went, andafter various wanderings reached Rome, where they were received with nolittle honour. Neither, however, long survived their exile. Tyrconneldied the following year, and Tyrone some eight years later, a sad, blind, broken-hearted man. 

Nothing could have been more convenient for the Government than thisdeparture. Under the circumstances, it meant, of course, a forfeiture ofall their estates. Had the extent of territory which personally belongedto the two exiles alone been confiscated, the proceeding, no doubt, would have been perfectly legitimate. Whatever had led to it, the factof their flight and consequent renouncement of allegiance wasundeniable, and the loss of their estates followed almost as a matter ofcourse. A far more sweeping measure than this, however, was resolvedupon. The lawyers, under the direction of the Dublin Government, socontrived matters as to make the area forfeited by the two earls coverno less a space than six entire counties, all of which were escheated tothe Crown, regardless of the rights of a vast number of smaller tenantsand sub-proprietors against whom no plea of rebellion, recently at allevents could be urged; a piece of injustice destined, as will be seen, to bear tragic fruit a generation later. 

The plan upon which this new plantation was carried out was projectedwith the utmost care by the lawyers, the Irish Government, and the kinghimself. The former plantations in Munster were an acknowledged failure, the reason assigned being the huge size of the grants made to theundertakers. Many of these resided in England, and merely drew theirrents, allowing Irish tenants to occupy the land. This mistake was nowto be avoided. Only tracts that could be managed by a resident ownerwere to be granted, and from these the natives were to be entirelydrawn. "As well, " it was gravely stated, "for their greater security, asto preserve the purity of the English language. "

The better to ensure this important result marriages were strictlyforbidden between the native Irish and the settlers, and in order toavoid that ever-formidable danger the former were ordered to removethemselves and their belongings bodily into certain reserved lands setapart for them. 

The person who took the most prominent part in this undertaking was thewell-known Sir John Davis, a distinguished lawyer and writer, who hashimself left us a minute account of his own and his colleagues'proceedings. That those proceedings should have aroused some slightexcitement and dismay amongst the dispossessed owners was not, perhaps, astonishing, even to those engaged in it. In some instances, theproprietors even went the length of bringing lawyers from Dublin, toprove that their estates could not legally be forfeited through theattainder of the earls, and to plead, moreover, the king's recentproclamation which undertook to secure to the inhabitants theirpossessions. In reply to this, Sir John Davis and the othercommissioners issued another proclamation. "We published, " he says, "byproclamation in each county, what lands were to be granted to Britishundertakers, what to servitors, and what to natives, to the end that thenatives should remove from the precincts allotted to the Britons, whereupon a clear plantation is to be made of English and Scottishwithout Irish. " With regard to the rights of the king he is still moreemphatic. "Not only, " he says, "his Majesty may take this courselawfully, but he is bound in conscience to do so. "

These arguments, and probably still more the evident uselessness of anyresistance, seem to have had their effect. The discomfited ownerssubmitted sullenly, and withdrew to the tracts allotted to them. In SirJohn Davis' own neat and incisive words, "The natives seemed notunsatisfied in reason, though they remained in their passionsdiscontented, being grieved to leave their possessions to strangers, which they had so long after their manner enjoyed. "

[Illustration: DOORWAY OF ST. CAEMIN'S CHURCH, INISMAIN, ARAN ISLES. ]

XXXII. 

THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION. 

In 1613, it was resolved by the Government to summon an IrishParliament, for the purpose of giving legality to their recentproceedings in Ulster, and also to pass an Act of formal attainder uponthe two exiled earls. 

The great difficulty felt by the executive was how to secure an adequateProtestant majority. Even after the recent large introduction ofProtestants the great mass of the freeholders, and nearly all theburgesses in the towns were still Roman Catholics. In the Upper House, indeed, the nineteen Protestant bishops and five temporal lords who wereProtestant, made matters safe. The House of Commons, therefore, was therub. Carew and Sir John Davis set their wits energetically to thisproblem. The new towns, or rather agricultural forts, in Ulster were allconverted into Corporations, and each given the power of returning twomembers. The Pale and the Leinster towns, though loyal, were nearly allCatholic. In the west, except at Athlone, there was "no hope, " thepresident reported, "of any Protestants. " From some of the othergarrison towns better things were hoped for, still there was not alittle alarm on the part of the Government that the numbers might stillcome short. 

On the other side the Catholics were equally alive to the situation, andequally keen to secure a triumph. A belief prevailed, too, all overIreland, that the object of summoning this Parliament was to carry outsome sweeping act of confiscation, and this naturally added to theexcitement. For the first time in Irish history a genuinely contestedelection took place. Both parties strained every nerve, both felt theirfuture interests to depend upon the struggle. When at last all themembers were collected it was found that the Government had a majority, though a narrow one, of twenty-four. Barely, however, had Parliamentassembled, before a violent quarrel broke out over the election of aspeaker; the Catholic party denouncing the irregularity by means ofwhich many of the elections had been carried, and refusing therefore toconsider themselves bound by the decision of the majority. Sir JohnDavis had been elected speaker by the supporters of the Government, but, during the absence of the latter in the division lobby, the recusantsplaced their own man, Sir John Everard, in the chair, and upon thereturn of the others a hot scuffle ensued between the supporters of thetwo Sir Johns, each side vehemently supporting the claims of its owncandidate. In the end, "Mr. Treasurer and Mr. Marshall, two gentlemen ofthe best quality, " according to a "Protestant declaration" sent toEngland of the whole occurrence, "took Sir John Davis by the arms, andlifting him from the ground, placed him in the chair upon Sir JohnEverard's lap, requiring the latter to come forth of the chair; which, he obstinately refusing, Mr. Treasurer, the Master of the Ordinance, andothers, whose places were next the chair, laid their hands gently uponhim, and removed him out of the chair, and placed Sir JohnDavis therein. "

The gravity with which we are assured of the gentleness of theseproceedings is delightful. The recusants, with Sir John Everard at theirhead, departed we are further told "in most contentious manner" out ofthe House. Being asked why they did not return, they replied that "Thosewithin the House are no House, and the Speaker is no Speaker; but we arethe House, and Sir John Everard is our Speaker[9]. "

[9] Lodges, "Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, " pp. 410-411. 

Not being able to be otherwise settled, the quarrel was at last referredto the king, and representatives of both sides went to England to pleadtheir cause. In the end twelve of the new elections were found to havebeen so illegally carried that they had perforce to be cancelled, butSir John Davis was at the same time confirmed in the Speakership. 

After this delay the House at last got to work. A formal Act ofattainder was passed upon Tyrone, Tyrconnel, and some of the otherUlster landowners. Every portion of Ireland was next made intoshireland, and the last remnants of the Brehon law abolished. Upon theother hand, the statutes of Kilkenny was at length and finally repealed. Henceforth English and Irish were alike to be admitted to plead theirown cause in the courts of law. 

XXXIII. 

OLD AND NEW OWNERS. 

The zeal for Irish colonization had by no means subsided after theUlster settlement had been established; on the contrary, it was thefavourite panacea of the hour, especially in the eyes of the kinghimself. After one such resounding success, why, it was asked, notextend so evident a blessing to the rest of Ireland? "A commission toinquire into defective titles" was set on foot, whose duty it was tocollect evidence as to the condition of estates, and to inquire into thetitles of owners. The pipe rolls in Dublin and the patents, kept in theTower of London were alike eagerly ransacked, and title flaws found tobe discoverable with the most delightful facility. There was a strongfeeling too about this time in England that something good was to bemade of Ireland. When tens of thousands of acres were to be had almostfor the asking, who could be so slow or so mean-spirited as to hang backfrom doing so. 

Something like a regular stampede of men ambitious to call themselvesundertakers, began to cross over from the larger to the smaller island. Nor was the Government anxious to check this spirited impulse. InWexford alone over 60, 000 acres had been discovered by the lawyers tobelong to the king, and of these a large portion were now settled withEnglish undertakers. In Longford, Leitrim, Wicklow, and many other partsof Leinster, it was the same. Even where the older proprietors were notdispossessed heavy fines were levied in return for fresh grants. Noproof of recent surrender or former agreement was allowed to count, andso ingeniously was the whole scheme carried out, and so inextricable wasthe jungle of legal technicalities in which it was involved, that whatin reality was often sheer confiscations sounded like the most equitableof judicial arrangements. 

The case of the Connaught landowners is particularly characteristic, andas space dwindles rapidly, may serve as an example of the rest. Nearlyall the Connaught gentry, native and Norman alike, had surrendered theirestates either to Elizabeth or to her father, and had received them backagain upon new terms. Legal transfer, however, was so little understood, and the times were so rough and wild, that few had received patents, andtitle-deeds were all but unknown. In James I. 's reign this omission wasrectified and patents duly made out, for which the landowners paid a sumlittle short of £30, 000, equal to nearly £300, 000 at the present day. These new patents, however, by an oversight of the clerks in Chancery, were neglected to be enrolled, and upon this plea fresh ones were calledfor, and fresh fees had to be paid by the landowners. Further it wasannounced that owing to the omission--one over which the owners, it isclear, had no control--all the titles had become defective, and all thelands had lapsed to the Crown. The other three provinces having by thistime received plantations, the Connaught landowners were naturally notslow to perceive the use that might be made of so awkward a technicalflaw. To appeal against the manifest injustice of the decision was oflittle avail, but a good round sum of money into the king's own handswas known to rarely come amiss. They agreed accordingly to offer him thesame sum that would have fallen to his share had the plantations beencarried out This was accepted and another £10, 000 paid, and the evil daythus for a while, but only, as will be seen, for a while averted. 

Charles's accession awakened a good many hopes in Ireland, the Catholicparty especially flattering themselves that a king who was himselfmarried to one of their faith would be likely to show some favour to hisCatholic subjects. In this they found their mistake, and an attempt toopen a Catholic college in Dublin was speedily put down by force. Inother directions a certain amount of leniency was, however, extended torecusants, and Lord Falkland, who a few years before had succeeded SirOliver St. John as deputy, was a man of conspicuous moderation andtolerance. In 1629, however, he resigned, worn out like so many othersbefore and after him by the difficulties with which he had to contend, and not long afterwards a man of very different temperament and widelydifferent theories of government came to assume the reins. 

XXXIV. 

STRAFFORD. 

In 1632, Wentworth--better known as Strafford--arrived in Ireland, prepared to carry out his motto of "Thorough. " Only three years before, he had been one of the foremost orators in the struggle for the Petitionof Right. The dagger of Fenton had turned him from an impassionedpatriot and constitutionalist into a vehement upholder of absolutism. His revolt had been little more than a mask for his hostility to thehated favourite Buckingham, and when Buckingham's murder cleared thepath to his ambition, Wentworth passed, apparently without a struggle, from the zealous champion of liberty to the yet more zealous champion ofdespotic rule. 

[Illustration: THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STAFFORD, 1641. ]

He arrived in Ireland as to a conquered country, and proceeded promptlyto act upon that understanding. His chief aim was to show that aparliament, properly managed, could be made not a menace, but a tool inthe hand of the king. With this end he summoned an Irish one immediatelyupon his arrival, and so managed the elections that Protestants andCatholics should nearly equally balance one another. Upon itsassembling, he ordered peremptorily that a subsidy of £100, 000, to coverthe debts to the Crown, should be voted. There would, he announced, be asecond session, during which certain long-deferred "graces" and otherdemands would be considered. The sum was obediently voted, but thesecond session never came. The parliament was abruptly dissolved by thedeputy, and did not meet again for nearly four years. 

The Connaught landlords were the next whom he took in hand. We have seenin the last chapter that they had recently paid a large sum to theCrown, in order to ward off the dangers of a plantation. This did notsatisfy Wentworth. Their titles were again called into question. Heswept down in person into the province, with the commissioners ofplantations at his heels; discovered, to his own complete satisfaction, that _all_ the titles of all the five western counties were defective, and that, as a natural consequence, all lapsed to the Crown. The juriesof Mayo, Sligo, and Roscommon were overawed into submission, but theGalway jury were obstinate, and refused to dispossess the proprietors. Wentworth thereupon took them back with him to Dublin, summoned thembefore the Court of the Castle Chamber, where they were sentenced to paya fine of £4, 000 each, and the sheriff £1000, and to remain in prisonuntil they had done so. The unfortunate sheriff died in prison. LordClanricarde, the principal Galway landlord, died also shortlyafterwards, of anxiety and mortification. The others submitted, and werelet off by the triumphant deputy with the surrender, in some cases, oflarge portions of their estates, in others of heavy fines. 

By these means, and others too long to enter into here, he contrived toraise the annual Irish revenue to a surplus of £60, 000, with part ofwhich he proceeded to set on foot and equip an army for the king of10, 000 foot and 1, 000 horse, ready to be marched at a moment's notice. This part of the programme was intended as a menace less against Irelandthan England. Charles was to be absolute in both islands, and, to be so, his Irish subjects were to help him to coerce his English ones. 

Let us, however, be just. Strafford was a born tyrant--worse, he was thechampion of an absolutism of the most odious type conceivable, onewhich, if successful, would have been a death-blow to English liberty. But he was also a born ruler. No petty tyrants flourished under hissway. His hand was like iron upon the plunderers, the pluralists, thefraudulent officials, gorged with their ill-gotten booty. What he did, too, he did well. If he struck, he could also protect. He ruthlesslysuppressed the infant woollen trade, believing that it might in timecome to be a rival to the English one, but he was the founder of thelinen trade, and imported Flemish weavers to teach it, and the bestflax-seed to sow in the fields. He cleared the sea of the pirates whoswarmed along the coasts, and had recently burnt the houses and carriedoff the inhabitants of several villages. The king's authority oncesecured he was anxious to secure to the mass of the people, Catholic aswell as Protestant, a just and impartial administration of the law. Noone in Ireland, he was resolved, should tyrannize except himself. 

[Illustration: JACOBUS USSERIUS, ARCHIEPISCOPUS ARMACHANUS, TOTIUSHIBERNIAE PRIMAS]

He and Laud, the primate, were close allies, and both were bent uponbringing the Church of Ireland to an absolute uniformity with that ofEngland, and, with this object, Wentworth set a Court of High Commissionto work to root out the Presbyterian ministers and to suppress, as faras possible, dissent. The Irish bishops and episcopalian clergy were, with hardly an exception, Low Churchmen, with a leaning to Calvinism, and, upon these also his hand was heavy. His regard for the Church by nomeans stood in his way either in his dealings with individual churchmen. He treated the Primate Ussher--one of the most venerated names in allIrish history--with marked contempt; he rated the Bishop of Killaloeupon one occasion like a dog, and told him that "he deserved to have hisrochet pulled over his ears;" boasting afterwards, to his correspondent, of how effectually he had "warmed his old sides. "

In another letter to Laud, we get a graphic and rather entertainingaccount of his dealings with Convocation. The Lower House, it seems, hadappointed a select committee, which had drawn up a book of canons uponthe lines of what were known as the "Nine Articles of Lambeth. "Wentworth was furious. "Instantly, " he says, "I sent for Dean Andrews, that reverend clerk, who sat, forsooth, in the chair at this committee, and required him to bring along the aforesaid book of canons; this heobeyed, . .. But when I came to open the book, I confess I was not somuch moved since I came into Ireland. I told him certainly not a Dean ofLimerick, but an Ananias had sat in the chair at that committee, andsure I was that Ananias had been there in spirit if not in body[10]. "

[10] Earl of Stratford's "Letters and Despatches, " vol. I. P. 342. 

The unhappy Ananias naturally submitted at once to the terrible deputy, and, although Archbishop Ussher and most of the bishops defended theattacked canons, Wentworth carried his point by a sheer exercise ofpower. Throwing the list of canons already drawn out aside, he drew upanother of his own composition, and forced the Convocation to accept it. "There were some hot spirits, sons of thunder, amongst them, " he tellsLaud boastfully, "who moved that they should petition me for a freesynod, but, in fine, they could not agree among themselves who shouldput the bell about the cat's neck, and so this likewise vanished[11]. "The cat, in truth, was a terrible one to bell!

[11] Ibid. 

But the career of the master of Ireland was nearing its end. By thebeginning of 1640 the Scotch were up in arms, and about to descend inforce upon England. The English Puritans, too, were assuming a hostileattitude. Civil war was upon the point of breaking out. Charles summonedWentworth over in hot haste from Ireland, and it was decided betweenthem that the newly-organized Irish forces were to be promptly employedagainst the Scotch rebels. With this purpose Wentworth--now with thelong-desired titles of Earl of Strafford and Lord-Lieutenant ofIreland--hurried back to make the final arrangements. Fresh subsidieswere obtained from the ever-subservient Irish parliament; more recruitswere hastily summoned, and came in readily; the army was put under thecommand of the young Earl of Ormond, and Stratford once more returned toEngland. He did so only to find all his calculations upset. A treaty hadbeen made in his absence with the Scots; the Long Parliament hadassembled, and the fast-gathering storm was about to break in thunderover his own head. He was impeached. Witness after witness poured overfrom Ireland, all eager to give their evidence. Representatives even ofthe much-aggrieved Connaught landlords--though their wrongs did notperhaps count for much in the great total--were there to swell the tide. He was tried for high treason, condemned and executed. In England thecollapse of so great and so menacing a figure was a momentous event. InIreland it must have seemed as the very fall of Lucifer himself!

[Illustration: SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK'S BELL. ]

XXXV. 

'FORTY-ONE. 

Stafford's fall and death would alone have rendered this year, 1641, amemorable one in Irish history. Unhappily it was destined to be made yetmore so; few years, indeed, in that long, dark bead-roll are perhaps asmemorable, both from what it brought forth at the time, and, still more, from what was afterwards to follow from it. 

The whole country, it must be remembered, was in a state of the wildestand most irrepressible excitement. The fall of such a ruler asStrafford--one under whose iron will it had for years lain as in avice--would alone have produced a considerable amount of upheaval andconfusion. The army collected by him, and mainly recruited by Catholics, was regarded with strong disfavour both by Irish Protestants and by theEnglish Parliament, and Charles, much against his will, had been forcedto disband it, and the arms had been stored in Dublin Castle. The men, however, remained, and among the leading Irish as well as Englishroyalists there was a strong desire that they should be kept together, so as to serve if required in the fast nearing struggle. 

Nor was this all. Stafford's persecution of the Presbyterians had doneits work, and the feeling between them and the Irish Church party hadbeen greatly embittered. Amongst the Catholics, too, the most loyal evenof the gentry had been terror-stricken by his confiscations. No one knewhow long his property would remain his own, or upon what pretence itmight not next be taken from him. Add to these the long-gatheringpassion of the dispossessed clans in the north, and that floatingelement of disaffection always ready to stir, and it will be seen thatthe materials for a rebellion were ready laid, and needed only a sparkto ignite them. 

As usually happens in rebellions the plans of the more prudent werethwarted by the impetuosity of the more violent spirits. While Ormond, Antrim, and the barons of the Pale were communicating with the king, andconsidering what were the best steps to take, a plot had been formedwithout them, and was now upon the point of exploding. 

Two men, Rory or Roger O'Moore, one of the O'Moores of Leix, and SirPhelim O'Neill, a connection of the Tyrones, were its main movers, andwere joined by Lord Maguire, a youth of about twenty-two, Hugh McMahon, the Bishop of Clogher, and a few other gentlemen, belonging chiefly tothe septs of the north. The plan was a very comprehensive one. They wereto seize Dublin Castle, which was known to be weakly defended; get outthe arms and powder, and redistribute them to the disbanded troops; atthe same time, seize all the forts and garrison towns in the north; turnall the Protestant settlers adrift--though it was at first stipulatedwithout killing or otherwise injuring them--take possession of all thecountry houses, and make all who declined to join in the risingprisoners. 

Never, too, was plot more nearly successful. October the 23rd was theday fixed, and up to the very evening before no hint of what wasintended had reached the Lords Justices. By the merest chance, and by analmost inconceivable piece of carelessness on the part of theconspirators, it was divulged to a man called Conolly, a Presbyterianconvert, who went straight and reported it to Sir William Parsons. Thelatter at first declined to believe in it, but, Conolly persisting inhis story, steps were taken to strengthen the defences. The guard wasdoubled; Lord Maguire and Hugh McMahon were arrested at daybreak nextmorning; the rest, finding that their stroke had missed, fled with theirfollowers. 

If this part of the rising failed, the other portions, unhappily, wereonly too successful. The same day the Protestant settlers in Armagh andTyrone, unsuspicious of any danger, were suddenly set upon by a horde ofarmed or half-armed men, dragged out of their houses, stripped to theskin, and driven, naked and defenceless, into the cold. No one dared totake them in, every door was shut in their faces, and though at first noactual massacre seems to have been intended, hundreds perished withinthe first few days of exposure, or fell dead by the roadside of famineand exhaustion. 

Sir Phelim O'Neill--a drunken ruffian for whom even the most patriotichistorian finds it hard to say a redeeming word--was here theringleader. On the same day--the 23rd of October--he got possession ofthe fort of Charlemont, the strongest position in the new plantation, byinviting himself to dinner with Lord Caulfield, the governor, andsuddenly seizing him prisoner. Dungannon, Mountjoy, and several of theother forts, were also surprised and taken. Enniskillen, however, wassaved by its governor, Sir William Cole, and Derry, Coleraine, andCarrickfergus, had also time fortunately to shut their gates, and intothese as many of the terrified settlers as could reach them crowded. 

These were few, however, compared to those who could find no such havenof refuge. Sir Phelim O'Neill, mad with excitement, and intoxicated withthe sudden sense of power, hounded on his excited and undisciplinedfollowers to commit every conceivable act of cruelty and atrocity. Disappointed by the failure of the more important part of the rising, and furious at the unsuccess of his attempts to capture the defendedtowns, he turned like a bloodhound upon those unfortunates who werewithin his grasp. Old Lord Caulfield was murdered in Sir Phelim's houseby Sir Phelim's own foster-brother; Mr. Blaney, the member for Monaghan, was hanged; and some hundreds of the inhabitants of Armagh, who hadsurrendered on promise of their lives, were massacred in cold blood. Asfor the more irregular murders committed in the open field uponhelpless, terrified creatures, powerless to defend themselves, they aretoo numerous to relate, and there is happily no purpose to be gained inrepeating the harrowing details. The effect produced by the condition ofthe survivors upon those who saw them arrive in Dublin andelsewhere--spent, worn out, frozen with cold, creeping along on handsand knees, and all but at the point of death--was evidentlyineffaceable, and communicates itself vividly to us as we read theirdescriptions. 

The effect of cruelty, too, is to produce more cruelty; of horrors likethese to breed more horrors; till the very earth seems covered with thehideous brood, and the most elementary instincts of humanity die awayunder their poisonous breath. So it was now in Ireland. The atrocitiescommitted upon one side were almost equalled, though not upon so large ascale by the other. One of the first actions performed by a Scotchforce, sent over to Carrickfergus by the king, was to sally out likedemons and mercilessly slaughter some thirty Irish families living inIsland Magee, who had nothing whatever to say to the rising. In Wicklow, too, Sir Charles Coote, sent to suppress a disturbance amongst theO'Byrnes and O'Tooles, perpetrated atrocities the memory of which stillsurvives in the region, and which, for cold-blooded, deliberate horroralmost surpass those committed in the north. The spearing by hissoldiery of infants which had hardly left the breast he himself openlyavowed, and excused upon the plea that if allowed to survive they wouldgrow up to be men and women, and that his object was to extirpate theentire brood. 

Here and there a faint gleam falls upon the blackened page. Bedell, theBishop of Kilmore, who had won the reverence even of his fiercestopponents, was allowed to remain free and undisturbed in the midst ofthe worst scenes of carnage and outrage; and when a few months later hedied, was followed weeping to the grave by many who had been foremost inthe work of horror. As to the number of those who actually perished, either from exposure, or by the hands of assassins, it has been sovariously estimated that it seems to be all but impossible to arrive atanything like exact statistics. The tale was black enough as it reallystood, but it was made blacker still by rumour and exaggeration. Thereal number of the victims grew to tenfold in the telling. Four thousandmurdered swelled to forty thousand; and eight thousand who died ofexposure, to eighty thousand. Even now every fresh historian sets thesum total down at a different figure. Take it, however, at the verylowest, it is still a horrible one. Let us shut our eyes and pass on. The history of those days remains in Carlyle's words, "Not a picture, but a huge blot: an indiscriminate blackness, one which the human memorycannot willingly charge itself with!"

XXXVI. 

THE WATERS SPREAD. 

So far the rising had been merely local. It was now to assume largerdimensions. Although shocked at the massacre, and professing an eagerdesire to march in person to punish its perpetrators, Charles' chief aimwas really that terms should be made with the leaders, in order thattheir troops might be made available for service in England. 

In Dublin courts-martial were being rapidly established. All Protestantswere given arms; all strangers were ordered to quit the city on pain ofdeath; Sir Francis Willoughby was given the command of the castle; SirCharles Coote made military governor of the city. Ormond was anxious totake the field in the north before the insurrection spread further, before they had time, as he said, to "file their pikes. " This the LordsJustices however refused to allow. They were waiting for orders from theEnglish Parliament, with which they were in close alliance, and wereperfectly willing to let the revolt spread so that the area ofconfiscated lands might be the greater. 

None of the three southern provinces had as yet risen, in the Pale theAnglo-Norman families were warm in their expressions of loyalty, andappealed earnestly to the Lords Justices to summon a parliament, and todistribute arms for their protection. This last was refused, andalthough a parliament assembled it was instantly prorogued, and nomeasures were taken to provide for the safety of the well-disposed. Early in December of the same year Lords Fingal, Gormanstown, Dunsany, and others of the principal Pale peers, with a large number of the localgentry, met upon horseback, at Swords, in Meath, to discuss their futureconduct. The opposition between the king and Parliament was dailygrowing fiercer. The Lords Justices were the nominees of Parliament; torevolt against them was not, therefore, it was argued, to revolt againstthe king. Upon December 17th they met again in yet larger numbers, uponthe hill of Crofty, where they were met by some of the leaders of thenorth. Rory O'Moore, --a man of no little address, who was personallyclear of the worst stain of the massacres, and who had lately issued aproclamation declaring that he and his followers were in arms, notagainst Charles, but the Parliament--was the principal speaker on thisoccasion, and his arguments appear to have decided the waverers. Theyagreed unanimously to throw in their lot with their co-religionists. From that moment the rising had become a national one. The whole islandwas soon in arms. Munster followed Leinster, and Connaught shortlyafterwards followed Munster. Lords Thomond, Clanricarde, and a fewothers stood out, but by the end of the year, with the exception ofDublin, Drogheda, Cork, Galway, Enniskillen, Derry, and some few othertowns, all Ireland was in the hands of the rebels. 

Even then the Lords Justices seem to have but little realized thegravity of the crisis. They occupied their time chiefly in preparingindictments, and cheerfully calculating the fast-growing area of landopen to confiscation. In vain Ormond entreated to be allowed to proceedagainst Sir Phelim O'Neill. They steadily declined to allow him to leavethe neighbourhood of Dublin. 

The northern rising had by this time nearly worn itself out by its ownexcesses. Sir Phelim's efforts to take Drogheda were ludicrouslyunavailing, and he had been forced to take his ragged rabble awaywithout achieving anything. Regarded as an army it had one strikingpeculiarity--there was not a single military man in it! Sir Phelimhimself had been bred to the law; Rory O'Moore was a self-taughtinsurgent who had never smelt powder. They had no arms, no officers, nodiscipline, no organization of any kind; what was more, the men weredeserting in all directions. In the south there was no one either totake the command. The new levies were willing enough to fight, but therewas no one to show them how. The insurrection seemed in a fair way ofdying out from sheer want of leadership. 

Suddenly reinforcements arrived in two directions almost at the sametime. Owen O'Neill--better known as Owen Roe--an honourable and gallantman, who had served with much distinction upon the Continent, landed inDonegal, accompanied by about a hundred French-Irish officers. Heinstantly took the command of the disorganized and fast-dissolvingnorthern levies; superseded the incompetent Sir Phelim, who from thatmoment fell away into contempt and impotence; suppressed all disorders, and punished, as far as possible, those who had been foremost in thework of blood, expressing at the same time his utter detestation of thehorrors which had hitherto blackened the rising. 

Almost at the same moment Colonel Preston, a brother of LordGormanstown, and an officer who had also served with credit in theEuropean wars, landed in the south, bringing with him a store ofammunition and field artillery, and between four and five hundred exiledIrish officers. The two forces thereupon began to assume a comparativelyorganized appearance. Both, however, were so far perfectly independentof each other, and both openly and avowedly hostile to the king. 

To effect a union between these northern and southern insurgents ameeting was summoned at Kilkenny in October, 1642, consisting of overtwo hundred Roman Catholic deputies, nearly all the Irish Roman Catholicbishops, many of the clergy, and some fourteen peers. A council wasformed of which Lord Mountgarret was appointed President. Owen RoeO'Neill was at the same time confirmed in the command of the northernforces, and Colonel Preston in that of the southern. The war wasdeclared to be a Catholic one, to be known henceforward as the CatholicConfederacy, and between old Irish and Anglo-Irish there was to be nodifference. 

Charles's great aim was now to persuade the Confederates to unite withone another in his support. The chief difficulty was a religious one. The Kilkenny Council stood out for the restoration of the CatholicChurch in all its original privileges. This, for his ownsake--especially in the then excited state of feeling inEngland--Charles dared not grant, neither would Ormond abet him in doingso. Between the latter and the Catholic peers there was, however, acomplete understanding, while between him and the Dublin Lords Justicesthere was an all but complete breach. 

The King decided upon a _coup de main_. He dismissed the Lords Justices, and ordered several of the more Puritan members of the Privy Council tobe tried for treason. The result was a rapid exodus of nearly the wholegoverning body to England. Early in 1644 Ormond was made Lord-deputy, and a truce of a year was entered into with the Confederates. Only theextravagance of the latter's demands now stood in the way of acomplete union. 

XXXVII. 

CIVIL WAR. 

The passionate excitement which the news of the Ulster massacre hadawakened in England seems to have deepened, rather than diminished, astime went on, and the details became more known. Nothing that hashappened within living memory can be even approximately compared to it, though, perhaps, those who are old enough to remember the sensationsawakened by the news of the Indian Mutiny will be able most nearly torealize the wrath and passionate desire of revenge which filled everyProtestant breast. That the circumstances of the case were not takeninto consideration was almost inevitable. Looking back with calmervision--though even now a good deal of fog and misconception seems toprevail upon the subject--we can see that some such outbreak was all butinevitable; might have been, indeed ought to have been, foreseen. Awildly-excitable population driven from the land which they and theirfathers had held from time immemorial, confined to a narrow and, for themost part, a worthless tract; seeing others in possession of these "fatlands" which they still regarded as their own--exiled to make room forplanters of another race and another faith--what, in the name of senseor reason, was to be expected except what happened? That the veryinstant protection was withdrawn the hour for retribution would be feltto have struck. The unhappy Protestant colonists were absolutelyguiltless in the matter. They were simply the victims, as the earlierproprietors had been the victims before them. The wrongs that had beenwrought thirty years earlier by Sir John Davis and the Dublin lawyershad been wiped out in their unoffending blood. 

This point is so important to realize, and the whole rising has so oftenbeen described as a purely religious and fanatical one, that it is worthdwelling upon it a minute or two longer. It was a rising, unquestionably, of a native Roman Catholic community against anintroduced Protestant one, and the religious element, no doubt, countedfor something--though it is not easy to say for how much--in the matter. In any case it was the smallest least vital part of the long gatheredfury which resulted in that deed of vengeance. The rising wasessentially an agrarian one--as almost every Irish rising has beenbefore and since--and the fact that the two rival creeds foundthemselves face to face was little more than a very unfortunateaccident. Could the plantations of James the First's time have beenformed exclusively of English or Scotch Roman Catholics, we have noreason, and certainly no right to conclude that the event would havebeen in any way different, or that the number of those slaughtered wouldhave been reduced by even a single victim. 

It was not, however, to be expected that the English Protestants of thatday would realize this. It is not always fully realized even yet. Theheat awakened by that ruthless slaughter, that merciless driving away ofhundreds of innocent women and children, the natural pity for the youthand helplessness of many of the victims has lasted down to our own time. Even to us the outrage is a thousand-fold more vivid than theprovocation which led to it. How much more then to the EnglishProtestants of that day? To them it was simply a new massacre of St. Bartholomew; an atrocity which the very amplest and bloodiest vengeancewould still come far short of expiating. 

It is easy to see that any negotiation with those implicated in a deedwhich had produced so widespread a feeling of horror was a proceedingfraught with peril to the royal cause. Anger does not discriminate, andto the Protestants of England, North and South, old Irish, andAnglo-Irish, honourable gentlemen of the Pale, and red-handed rebels ofUlster, were all alike guilty. Nor was this Charles's only difficulty. The Confederates declined to abate a jot of their terms. The freeexercise of the Catholic religion, an independent Irish parliament, ageneral pardon, and a reversal of all attainders were amongst theirconditions, and they would not take less. These Ormond dared not agreeto. Had he done so every Protestant in Ireland, down to his ownsoldiery, would have gone over in a body to the Parliament. He offeredwhat he dared, but the Irish leaders would listen to no compromise. Theyknew the imminence of the situation as well as he did, and every freshroyal defeat, the news of which reached Ireland, only made them standout the firmer. 

Charles cut the knot in his own fashion. Tired of Ormond's discretionand Ormond's inconvenient sense of honour, he secretly sent over EdwardSomerset, Earl of Glamorgan, to make terms with the Confederates, who, excited at finding themselves the last hope and mainstay of anembarrassed king stood out for higher and higher conditions. ThePlantation lands were to be given back: full and free pardon was to begranted to all; Mass was to be said in all the churches. To these termsand everything else required, Glamorgan agreed, and the Confederates, thereupon, agreed to despatch a large force, when called upon to do so, to England, and in the meantime to make sham terms with Ormond, keepinghim in the dark as to this secret compact. 

It was not long a secret Ormond seems to have had some suspicions of itfrom the beginning, and an incident which presently occurred madesuspicion certainty. The town of Sligo had been captured by theparliamentary troops under Coote, and in October, 1645, an attempt wasmade to recapture it by a party of Irish under a fighting prelate, theRoman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam. In the struggle which ensued theArchbishop was killed, and upon his body was found a copy of the secrettreaty which was straightway despatched by Coote to London. 

It awakened a sensation hardly less than that with which the news of themassacre itself had been received. It was tie one thing still wanting todamage the royal cause. Charles, it is true, denied it stoutly, and theEnglish royalists tried to accept the denial. The Irish ones knewbetter. Ormond, whose own honour was untouched, did what he could tosave his king's. The Confederates, however, admitted it openly, andGlamorgan, after suffering a short and purely fictitious imprisonment, remained in Ireland to carry out his master's orders. 

The already crowded confusion of the scene there had lately been addedto by a new actor. Rinucini, Archbishop of Fermo, had been despatched byPope Innocent X. As his nuncio, and at once threw himself into thestruggle. To him it narrowed itself to one point. The moment, he felt, had now come for the re-establishment of the Catholic religion inIreland, and if possible for its union with one of the Catholic Powersof Europe, and in order to achieve this object, his great aim was tohinder, if possible, anything like a reconciliation between the Catholicinsurgents and the king. 

Meanwhile, peace had been made in England. Charles was a prisoner, andthe final acts of that drama in which he plays so strangely mixed a partwere shortly to be enacted. In Ireland there was no pretence at peace. On the contrary, it was only then that hostilities seem really to havebeen carried on with vigour. At a battle fought upon June 4, 1646, nearBenturb, Owen O'Neill had defeated Munroe and his Scottish forces withgreat slaughter, and from that moment the whole north was in his power. In the south Rinucini was rushing from town to town and pulpit topulpit, fiercely arousing all the Catholic animosity of the countryagainst both English parties alike. In this he was supported by OwenO'Neill, who, with his victorious army, hastened south to meet him. Together the chief and the legate marched in September of the same yearinto Kilkenny; took possession of the Council Chamber; flung theModerates assembled there, including old Lord Mountgarret and the restof the Council, into prison. Ormond was in Dublin, helpless to meet thisnew combination. No orders came from England. The royal cause seemed tobe hopelessly lost. All Ireland was swarming with the troops of theinsurgents. Lord Inchiquin, who had for a while declared for the king, had now gone over to the Parliament. O'Neill and the legate's army wasdaily gathering strength. It needed but a little more energy on theirpart and Dublin itself, with all its helpless crowd of fugitives, mustfall into their hands. 

In this dilemma Ormond came to a resolution. To throw in his lot withRinucini and the rebels of the north, stained as the latter were in hiseyes with innocent blood, was impossible. Even had they been disposed tocombine heartily with him for the royal cause he could hardly have doneso; as it was there was barely a pretence of any such intention. IfCharles could effect his escape and would put himself in their hands, then, indeed, they said they would support him. In that case, however, it would have been as king of Ireland rather than England. Ormond couldnot and would not stoop to any such negotiations. He wrote to theEnglish Parliament offering to surrender Dublin into their hands, and toleave the country. The offer was accepted, and a month later he hadrelinquished the impossible post, and joined the other escaped Royalistsin France. 

XXXVIII. 

THE CONFUSION DEEPENS. 

The indescribable confusion of aims and parties in Ireland begins atthis point to take even more rapid and perplexing turns. That "poorpanther Inchiquin, " as one of his opponents derisively calls him, whohad already made one bound from king to Parliament, now, upon some freshoffence, bounded back again, and made overtures to Preston and theModerates. Rinucini, whose only policy was to hinder any union betweenthe Catholics and Royalists, thereupon fled to O'Neill, and togetherthey opposed the Moderates tooth and nail. The latter were now seriouslyanxious to make terms with the Royalists. The king's trial wasbeginning, and his peril served to consolidate all but the most extreme. Ormond himself returned late in 1648 from France; Prince Rupert arrivedearly the following year with a small fleet of ships off Kinsale, andevery day brought crowds of loyal gentlemen to Ireland as to a finalvantage ground upon which to try a last desperate throw for theroyal cause. 

In Dublin the command, upon Ormond's surrender, had been given by theParliament to Colonel Michael Jones, a Puritan officer, who had greatlydistinguished himself in the late war. The almost ludicrously involvedstate into which things had got is seen by the fact that Jones, thoughhimself the leader of the Parliamentary forces, struck up at thisjuncture a temporary alliance with O'Neill, and instructed Monk who wasin the north, to support him. The king's death brought all theRoyalists, and most of the more moderate rebels into line at last. Rinucini, feeling that whatever happened, his project of a separateIreland had become impossible, fled to Italy. Even O'Neill, finding thathis alliance with Jones was not prospering, and that the stricterPuritans declined with horror the bare idea of holding any communicationwith him or his forces, gave in his adhesion. Old Irish and Anglo-Irish, Protestant and Catholic, North and South, all at last were in arms forthe king. 

The struggle had thus narrowed itself. It was now practically betweenDublin, commanded by Jones, the Parliamentary general, upon one side, and all Ireland under Ormond and the now united Confederates on theother. Cromwell, it was known, was preparing for a descent upon Ireland, and had issued liberal offers of the forfeited Irish lands to all whowould aid him in the enterprise. He had first, however, to land, andthere was nowhere that he could do so excepting at Dublin orLondonderry. All the efforts therefore of the Royalists wereconcentrated upon taking the capital before it became the starting-pointof a new campaign. Marching hastily from Kilkenny, Ormond establishedhimself at a place called Baggotrath, near Rathmines, and close to thewalls of the town. Two nights after his arrival he sent forward a bodyof men under Colonel Purcell to try and effect a surprise. Jones, however, was on the alert; drove Purcell back, and, following him withall the men at his command, fell upon Ormond's camp, where no properwatch was being kept. The surprise was thus completely reversed. Sixthousand of the confederate troops were killed or forced to surrender, and Ormond, with the remainder, had to fall back upon Kilkenny. 

[Illustration: JAMES, DUKE OF ORMOND. (_From an engraving by White, after a picture by Kneller_. )]

The battle of Baggotrath does not figure amongst the more famous battlesof this period, but it was certainly the turning-point of the Irishcampaign. With his crippled forces, Ormond was unable again to take thefield, and Jones was therefore left in undisputed possession of Dublin. A week later, in August, 1649, Cromwell had landed there with 12, 000troops at his back. 

XXXIX. 

CROMWELL IN IRELAND. 

Cromwell had hardly set foot upon Irish soil before he took completecontrol of the situation. The enterprise, in his own eyes and in thoseof many who accompanied him, wore all the sacred hue of a crusade. "Weare come, " he announced, solemnly, upon his arrival in Dublin, "to askan account of the innocent blood that hath been shed, and to endeavourto bring to an account all who, by appearing in arms, shall justifythe same. "

Three thousand troops, the flower of the English cavaliers, with some ofthe Royalists of the Pale--none of whom, it may be said, had anything tosay to the Ulster massacres--had been hastily thrown by Ormond intoDrogheda, under Sir Arthur Ashton, a gallant Royalist officer; and toDrogheda, accordingly in September Cromwell marched. Summoned to yield, the garrison refused. They were attacked, and fought desperately, driving back their assailants at the first assault. At the second, abreach was made in the walls, and Ashton and his force were driven intothe citadel. "Being thus entered, " Cromwell's despatch to the Parliamentruns, "we refused them quarter. I believe we put to the sword the wholenumber of the defendents. I do not think thirty escaped. Those that didare in safe custody for the Barbadoes. .. . I wish, " he adds, a littlelater in the same despatch, "all honest hearts may give the glory ofthis to God alone. "

From Drogheda, the Lord-General turned south to Wexford. Here an equallyenergetic defence was followed by an equally successful assault, andthis also by a similar drama of slaughter. "There was lost of theenemy, " he himself writes, "not many less than two thousand; and, Ibelieve, not twenty of yours from first to last. " The soldiers, he goeson to say, "got a very good booty in this place. " Of "the formerinhabitants . .. Most of them are run away, and many of them killed inthis service. It were to be wished that some honest people would comeand plant here[12]. "

[12] "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches"--Carlyle. 

The grim candour of these despatches needs no comment. We see the wholesituation with that vividness which only a relation at first hand evergives. The effect of these two examples was instantaneous. Most of theother towns surrendered upon the first summons. The Irish army fell backin all directions. An attempt was made to save Kilkenny, but after aweek's defence it was surrendered. The same thing happened at Clonmel, and within a few months of his arrival nearly every strong place, exceptWaterford and Limerick, were in the Lord-General's hands. 

That Cromwell, from his own point of view, was justified in theseproceedings, and that he held himself--even when slaughtering EnglishRoyalists in revenge for the acts of Irish rebels--a divinely-appointedagent sent to execute justice upon the ungodly, there can be littledoubt. As regards ordinary justice his conduct was exemplary. Unlikemost of the armies that had from time to time ravaged Ireland, heallowed no disorder. His soldiers were forbidden by proclamation toplunder, and were hanged, "in ropes of authentic hemp, " as Carlyleremarks, when they did so. The merciless slaughter of two entiregarrisons is a hideous deed, and a deed, too, which appeals withpeculiar force to the popular imagination. As compared to many actsperpetrated from time to time in Ireland, it seems, if one examines itcoolly, to fade into comparative whiteness, and may certainly beparalleled elsewhere. A far deeper and more ineffaceable stain rests--aswill be seen in another chapter--upon Cromwell's rule in Ireland; one, moreover, not so readily justified by custom or any grim necessitiesof warfare. 

The final steps by which the struggle was crushed out were comparativelytedious. Cromwell's men were attacked by that "country sickness" whichseems at that time to have been inseparable from Irish campaigns. Writing from Ross in November, he says, "I scarce know one officeramongst us who has not been sick. " His own presence, too, was urgentlyrequired in England, so that he was forced before long to set sail, leaving the completion of the campaign in the hands of others. 

In the Royalist camp, the state of affairs was meanwhile absolutelydesperate. The Munster colonists had gone over almost to a man to theenemy. The "panther Inchiquin" had taken another bound in the samedirection. The quarrels between Ormond and the old Irish party had grownbitterer than ever The hatred of the extreme Catholic party towards himappears to have been if anything rather deeper than their hatred toCromwell, and all the recent disasters were charged by them to his wantof generalship. The young king had been announced at one moment to beupon the point of arriving in person in Ireland. "One must go and diethere, for it is shameful to live elsewhere!" he is reported to havecried, with a depth of feeling very unlike his usual utterances. He gotas far as Jersey, but there paused. Ireland under Cromwell's rule wasnot exactly a pleasant royal residence, and, on the whole, he appears tohave thought it wiser to go no further. 

His signature, a year later, of the Covenant, in return for the Scotchallegiance, brought about a final collapse of the always thinly cementedpact in Ireland. The old Catholic party thereupon broke wholly away fromOrmond, and after a short struggle he was again driven into exile. Fromthis time forward, there was no longer a royal party of any sort left inthe country. 

Under Hugh O'Neill, a cousin of Owen Roe, who--fortunately, perhaps, forhimself--had died shortly after Cromwell's arrival, the struggle wascarried on for some time longer. As in later times, Limerick was one ofthe last places to yield. Despite the evident hopelessness of thestruggle, Hugh O'Neill and his half-starved men held it with a couragewhich awoke admiration even amongst the Cromwellians. When it wassurrendered the Irish officers received permission to take serviceabroad. Galway, with a few other towns and castles, which still heldout, now surrendered. The eight years' civil war was at last over, andnothing remained for the victors to do but to stamp out the last sparks, and call upon the survivors to pay the forfeit. 

[Illustration: ST. COLUMBA'S ORATORY, KELLS. ]

XL. 

CROMWELL'S METHODS. 

The total loss of life during-those weary eight years of war and anarchyhas been estimated at no less than six hundred thousand lives, and thereseems to be no reason to think that these figures are exaggerated. Whereas in 1641 the population of Ireland was nearly one and a halfmillions, at the end of 1649 it was considerably under one. More than athird, therefore, of the entire population had disappeared bodily. 

Nor were the survivors left in peace to bind up their wounds and mourntheir slain. In England, once the fighting was over, and the swordssheathed, there was little desire to carry the punishment further; andthe vanquished were, for the most part, able to retire in more or lessmelancholy comfort to their homes. In Ireland the reverse was the case. There the struggle had been complicated by a bitterness unknownelsewhere, and had aroused a keen and determined thirst for vengeance, one which the cessation of hostilities only seemed to stimulate intogreater vehemence. 

The effect, especially amongst the Puritans, of the Ulster massacres, far from dying out, had grown fiercer and bitterer with every year. Nowthat the struggle was over, that Ireland lay like an inert thing in thehands of her victors, her punishment, it was resolved, should begin. Hadthat punishment fallen only on the heads of those who could be proved tohave had any complicity in that deed of blood there would not have beena word to say. Sir Phelim O'Neill was dragged from the obscurity towhich ever since the coming of Owen Roe he had been consigned, tried inDublin, and hanged--with little regret even from his own side. LordMayo, who had taken a prominent part in the rising, and was heldresponsible for a horrible massacre perpetrated at Shrule Bridge, nearTuam, was shot in Connaught. Lord Muskerry was tried, and honourablyacquitted. Other trials took place, chiefly by court-martial, and thoughsome of these appear to have been unduly pressed, on the whole, considering the state of feelings that had been awakened, it may beallowed that so far stern justice had not outstepped her province. 

It was very different with what was to follow. An enormous scheme ofeviction had been planned by Cromwell which was to include all thenative and nearly all the Anglo-Irish inhabitants of Ireland, with theexception of the humblest tillers of the soil, who were reserved asserfs or servants. This was a scheme of nothing less than thetransportation of all the existing Catholic landowners of Ireland, who, at a certain date, were ordered to quit their homes, and depart in abody into Connaught, there to inhabit a narrow desolate tract, betweenthe Shannon and the sea, destitute, for the most part, of houses or anyaccommodation for their reception; where they were to be debarred fromentering any walled town, and where a cordon of soldiers was to bestationed to prevent their return. May 1, 1654, was the date fixed forthis national exodus, and all who after that date were found east of theappointed line were to suffer the penalty of death. 

The dismay awakened when the magnitude of this scheme burst upon theunhappy country may easily be conceived. Delicate ladies, high-born menand women, little children, the old, the sick, the suffering--all wereincluded in this common disaster; all were to share alike in this vastand universal sentence of banishment. Resistance, too, was hopeless. Everything that could be done in the way of resistance had already beendone, and the result was visible. The Irish Parliament had ceased toexist. A certain number of its Protestant members had been transferredby Cromwell to the English one, --thus anticipating the Union that was tocome a century and a half later. The whole government of the country wasat present centred in a board of commissioners, who sat in Dublin, andwhose direct interest it was to hasten the exodus as much as possible. 

For the new owners, who were to supplant those about to be ejected, wereready and waiting to step into their places. The Cromwellian soldierswho had served in the war had all received promises of grants of land, and their pay, now several years due, was also to be paid to them in thesame coin. The intention was, that they were to be marched down regimentby regiment, and company by company, to ground already chosen for themby lot, then and there disbanded, and put into possession. A vastProtestant military colony was thus to be established over the whole ofthe eastern provinces. In addition to these an immense number of Englishspeculators had advanced money upon Irish lands, and were now eagerlywaiting to receive their equivalent. 

As the day drew nearer, there arose all over Ireland a wild plea fortime, for a little breathing time before being driven into exile. Thefirst summons had gone out in the autumn, and had been proclaimed bybeat of drum and blast of trumpet all over the country, and as the 1stof May began to approach the plea grew more and more urgent. So evidentwas the need for delay that some, even among the Parliamentarians, weremoved to pity, and urged that a little more time might be granted. Thecommand to "root out the heathen" was felt to be imperative, but eventhe heathen might be allowed a little time to collect his goods, and toprovide some sort of a roof to shelter him in this new and forlorn hometo which he was being sent. 

It happened, too, that some of the first batches of exiles were orderedinto North Clare, to a district known as the Burren, whose peculiarityis that what little soil is to be found there has collected into riftsbelow the surface, or accumulated into pockets of earth at the feet ofthe hills, leaving the rest of the surface sheer rock, the very streams, whose edges would otherwise be green, being mostly carried underground. The general appearance of the region has been vividly described by oneof the commissioners engaged in carrying out this very act oftransplantation, who, writing back to Dublin for further instructions, informs his superiors that the region in question did not possess "waterenough to drown a man, trees enough to hang a man, or earth enough tobury a man. " It may be conceived what an effect such a region, sodescribed, must have had upon men fresh from the fertile and flourishingpasture-lands of Meath and Kildare. Many turned resolutely back, preferring rather to die than to attempt life under such new andhopeless conditions, and stern examples had to be made before theunwilling emigrants were at last fairly got underweigh. 

Yet even such exile as this was better than the lot of some. The wivesand families of the Irish officers and soldiers who had been allowed togo into foreign service, had, of necessity, been left behind, and aconsiderable number of these, the Government now proceeded to ship inbatches to the West Indies to be sold as slaves. Several thousand women, ladies and others, were thus seized and sold by dealers, often withoutany individual warrant, and it was not until after the accidentalseizure of some of the wives of the Cromwellian soldiers that thetraffic was put under regulations. Cromwell's greatness needs nodefence, but the slaughter of the garrisons of Drogheda and Wexford, reckoned amongst the worst blemishes upon that greatness, pales besidesuch an act as this; one which would show murkily even upon theblackened record of an Alva or a Pizarro. 

Slowly the long trains of exiles began now to pour out in alldirections. Herds of cattle, horses laden with furniture, with food, with all the everyday necessities of such a multitude accompanied them. All across that wide limestone plain, which covers the centre ofIreland, innumerable family groups were to be seen slowly streamingwest. There were few roads, and those few very bad. Hardly a wheeledconveyance of any sort existed in the country. Those who were too weakto walk or to ride had to be carried on men's backs or in horse litters. The confusion, the misery, the cold, the wretchedness may be conceived, and always behind, urging them on, rebuking the loiterers, came thearmed escort sent to drive them into exile--Puritan seraphs, with drawnswords, set to see that none returned whence they came!

Nor was there even any marked satisfaction amongst those who inheritedthe lands and houses thus left vacant. Many of the private soldiers whohad received bonds or debentures for their share of the land, had partedwith them long since, either to their own officers or to the trafficersin such bonds, who had sprang up by hundreds, and who obtained them fromthe needy soldiers often for a mere trifle. Sharp-sighted speculatorslike Dr. Petty, by whom the well-known Survey of Ireland was made, acquired immense tracts of land at little or no outlay. Of thosesoldiers, too, who did receive grants of land many left after a while. Others, despite all regulations to the contrary, married Irish wives, and their children in the next generation were found to have not onlybecome Roman Catholics, but to be actually unable to speak a word ofEnglish. Many, too, of the dispossessed proprietors, the younger onesespecially, continued to hang about, and either harassed the new ownersand stole their goods, or made friends with them, and managed after awhile to slip back upon some excuse into their old homes. No sternnessof the Puritan leaven availed to hinder the new settlers from beingabsorbed into the country, as other and earlier settlers had beenabsorbed before them; marrying its daughters, adopting its ways, andbecoming themselves in time Irishmen. The bitter memory of that vast andwholesale act of eviction has remained, but the good which it was hopedwould spring from it faded away almost within a generation. 

XLI. 

THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT. 

Cromwell was now dead, and after a very short attempt at government hisson Richard had relinquished the reins and retired into private life. Henry Cromwell, who had for several years been Lord-Lieutenant inIreland, and had won no little liking by his mild and equable rule, alsohonourably resigned at the same time, and left. Coote, on the otherhand, and Broghill, both of whom had acquired immense estates under theCromwellian rule, were amongst the foremost to hail the Restoration, andto secure their own interests by being eager to welcome the king. Suchsecular vicars of Bray were not likely to suffer whatever king orgovernment came uppermost. 

To the exiled proprietors, who had fought for that king's father and forhimself, it naturally seemed that the time had come for their sufferingsand exile to end. Now that the king had been restored to his own again, they who had been punished for his sake should also, they thought, infairness, again enjoy what had been theirs before the war. 

[Illustration: HENRY CROMWELL, LORD-LIEUTENANT FROM 1657 TO 1660. (_Froma Mezzotint_. )]

Charles's position, it must be acknowledged, was a very difficult one. Late found as it was, the loyalty of Coote, Broghill, and others oftheir stamp had been eminently convenient, as without it the army inIreland would hardly have returned to its allegiance. To deprive them ofwhat they had acquired was felt to be out of the question, and the sameargument applied, with no little force, to many of the other newly-madeproprietors. The feeling, too, against the Irish Catholics was far fromhaving died out in England, and anything like a wholesale ejection ofthe new Protestant settlers for their benefit, would have been verybadly received there. 

On the other hand, decency and the commonest sense of honour requiredthat something should be done. Ormond, who had been made a duke, was atonce reinstated in his own lands, with a handsome additional slice as arecompense for his services. A certain number of other great proprietorsand lords of the Pale, a list of whom was rather capriciously made out, were also immediately reinstated. For the rest, more tardy and lesssatisfactory justice was to be meted. 

A Court of Claims was set up in Dublin to try the cases of those whoclaimed, during the late war, to have been upon the king's side. Thosewho could prove their entire innocence of the original rebellion were tobe at once reinstated; those, on the other hand, who were in arms before'49, or who had been at any time joined to the party of Rinucini, or hadheld any correspondence, even accidentally, with that party, were to beexcluded, and if they had received lands in Connaught might stay thereand be thankful. 

A wearisome period of endless dispute, chicanery, and wrangling followedthis decision. As the soldiers and adventurers were only to bedispossessed in case of a sufficiency of reserved lands being found tocompensate them, it followed that the fewer of the original proprietorsthat could prove their loyalty the better for the Government. At thefirst sitting of the Court of Claims the vast majority of those whosecases were tried were able thus to prove their innocence; and as allthese had a claim to be reinstated, great alarm was felt, and a clamourof indignation arose from the new proprietors, at which the Government, taking alarm, made short work of many of the remaining claims, whereupona fresh, and certainly not less reasonable, clamour was raised upon theother side. 

The end of the long-drawn struggle may be stated in a few words. Thesoldiers, adventures, and debenture holders agreed at length to accepttwo-thirds of their land, and to give up the other third, and on thisarrangement, by slow degrees, the country settled down. As a net resultof the whole settlement we find that, whereas before '41 the Irish RomanCatholics had held two-thirds of the good land and all the waste, afterthe Restoration they held only one-third in all, and this, too, aftermore than two millions of acres previously forfeited had beenrestored to them. 

XLII. 

OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION. 

No class of the community suffered more severely from the effects of theRestoration than the Presbyterians of Ulster. The church party which hadreturned to Ireland upon the crest of the new wave signalized its returnby a violent outburst of intolerance directed not so much against thePapists as the Nonconformists. Of the 300, 000 Protestants, which wasroughly speaking the number calculated to be at that time in Ireland, fully a third were Presbyterians, another 100, 000 being made up ofPuritans and other Nonconformists, leaving only one-third Churchmen. Against the two former, but especially against the Presbyterians, theterrors of the law were now put in force. A new Act of Uniformity waspassed, and armed with this, the bishops with Bramhall, the Primate, attheir head, insisted upon an acceptance of the Prayer-book beingenforced upon all who were permitted to hold any benefice, or to teachor preach in any church or public place. 

The result was that the Presbyterians were driven away in crowds fromIreland. Out of seventy ministers in Ulster, only eight accepted theterms and were ordained; all the remainder were expelled, and theirflocks in many cases elected to follow them into exile. 

This persecution was the more monstrous that no hint or pretext ofdisloyalty was urged against them. They had been planted in the countryas a defence and breakwater against the Roman Catholics, and now thesame intolerance which had, in a great measure forced the latter torebel, was in its turn being brought to bear upon them. 

The Roman Catholics, on the other hand, now found themselves indulged toa degree that they had not experienced for nearly a century. The penallaws at the special instance of the king were suspended in their favour. Many of the priests returned, and were allowed to establish themselvesin their old churches. They could not do so, however, without violentalarm being awakened upon the other side. The Irish Protestantsremonstrated angrily, and their indignation found a vehement echo inEngland. The '41 massacre was still as fresh in every Protestant's mindas if it had happened only the year before, and suspicion of Rome was apassion ready at any moment to rise to frenzy. 

The heir to the Crown was a Papist, and Charles was himself strongly, and not unreasonably suspected of being secretly one also. His alliancewith Louis XIV» was justifiably regarded with the utmost suspicion anddislike by all his Protestant subjects. It only wanted a spark to setthis mass of smouldering irritation and suspicion into a flame. 

That spark was afforded by the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, undercircumstances which were at first believed to point to its having beencommitted by Papists. A crowd of perjured witnesses, with Titus Gates attheir head, sprang like evil birds of the night into existence, ready toswear away the lives of any number of innocent men. The panic flewacross the Channel. Irish Roman Catholics of all classes and ages werearrested and flung into prison. Priests who had ventured to return wereordered to quit the country at once. Men of stainless honour, whose onlycrime was their faith, were on no provocation seized and subjected tothe most ignominious treatment, and in several instances put to death. 

The case of Dr. Plunkett, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, a manwhom even Protestants regarded with the utmost reverence, is the mostnotorious of these. Upon a ridiculous charge of being implicated in awholly mythical French descent, he was dragged over to London, summarilysentenced, convicted, and hung, drawn, and quartered. Although the mosteminent, he was only one, however, of the victims of this most insane ofpanics. Reason seemed to have been utterly lost. Blood and blood alonecould satisfy the popular craving, and victim after victim was hurried, innocent but unpitied, to his doom. 

At last the tide stayed. First slackened, then suddenly--in Ireland atleast--reversed itself, and ran almost as recklessly and as violently asever, only in the opposite direction. In 1685 Charles died, and Jamesnow king, resolved with hardly an attempt at further concealment tocarry out his own long-cherished plans. From the beginning of his reignhis private determination seems to have been to make Ireland astronghold and refuge for his Roman Catholic subjects, in order that bytheir aid he might make himself independent both of England and theParliament, and so carry out that despotism upon which his whole narrow, obstinate soul was inflexibly set. 

His first step was to recall the Duke of Ormond, whom Charles had leftas Viceroy, and to appoint in his place two Lords Justices, Lord Granardand the Primate Boyle, who were likely, he believed, to be moremalleable. All tests were to be immediately done away with. Catholicismwas no longer to be a disqualification for office, and Roman Catholicswere to be appointed as judges. A more important change still, the armywas to be entirely remodelled; Protestant officers were to be summarilydismissed, and Roman Catholic ones as summarily put in their places. 

Such sweeping changes could not, even James found, be carried out all atonce. The Lords Justices were next dismissed, and his ownbrother-in-law, Lord Clarendon, sent over as Lord-Lieutenant. He in turnproving too timid, or too constitutional, his place was before longfilled by Richard Talbot, a fervent Catholic, but a man of indifferentpublic honour and more than indifferent private character. Talbot wascreated Earl of Tyrconnel, and arrived in 1686 avowedly to carry out thenew policy. 

From this point the stream ran fast and strong. The recent innovations, especially the re-organization of the army, had naturally caused immensealarm amongst the whole Protestant colony. A petition drawn out by theformer proprietors and forwarded to the king against the Act ofSettlement had made them tremble also for their estates, and now thisnew appointment came to put a climax to their dismay. What might not beexpected they asked in terror, under a man so unscrupulous and sobigoted, with an army, too, composed mainly of Roman Catholics at hisback to enforce his orders? The departure of Clarendon was thus thesignal for a new Protestant exodus. Wild reports of a general massacre, one which was to surpass the massacre of '41, flew through the land. Terrified people flocked to the sea-coast and embarked in any boat theycould find for England. Those that remained behind drew themselvestogether for their own defence within barricaded houses, and in thetowns in the north, especially in Enniskillen and Londonderry, theProtestant inhabitants closed their gates and made ready to withstanda siege. 

Meanwhile in Dublin sentences of outlawry were fast being reversed, andthe estates of the Protestants being restored in all directions to theirformer proprietors. The charters of the corporate towns were nextrevoked, and new (by preference Catholic) aldermen and mayors appointedby the viceroy. All Protestants were ordered to give up their arms by acertain day, and to those who did not, "their lives and goods, " it wasannounced, "should be at the mercy and discretion of the soldiers. "These soldiers, now almost exclusively Catholic, lived at free quartersupon the farms and estates of the Protestants. "Tories, " lately out"upon their keeping, " with prices upon their heads, were now officers inthe king's service. The property of Protestants was seized all over thecountry, their houses taken possession of, their sheep and cattleslaughtered by hundreds of thousands. All who could manage to escapemade for the north, where the best Protestant manhood of the country hadnow gathered together, and was standing resolutely in an attitude ofself-defence. 

In England, William of Orange had meanwhile landed in Torbay, and Jameshad fled precipitately to France. Tyrconnel, who seems to have beenunprepared for this event, hesitated at first, undecided what to do orhow matters would eventually shape themselves. He even wrote to William, professing to be rather favourable than otherwise to his cause, aprofession which the king, who was as yet anything but firm in his ownseat, seems to have listened to with some belief, and General RichardHamilton was sent over by him to negotiate matters with the viceroy. 

The passions awakened on both sides were far too strong however, for anysuch temporizing. Louis XIV. Had received James upon his flight withhigh honour, and his return to the throne was believed by his ownadherents to be imminent. In England, especially in London, theexcitement against the Irish Catholics was prodigious, and had beenincreased by the crowd of Protestant refugees who had recently pouredin. The Irish regiments brought to England by James had been insultinglydisbanded, and their officers put under arrest. "Lilibullero, " theanti-Catholic street song, was sung by thousands of excited lips. LordJefferies, who embodied in his own person all that the popular hatredmost detested in his master's rule, had been dragged to prison amid thethreatening howls of the populace. The "Irish night, " duringwhich--though without the faintest shadow of reason--the London citizenshad fully believed an Irish mob to be in the act of marching upon thetown, with the set purpose of massacring every Protestant man, woman, and child in it, had worked both town and nation to the highest possiblepitch of excitement. In Ireland too the stream had gone too far and toofast to turn back. The minority and the majority stood facing oneanother like a pair of pugilists. The Protestants, whose property hadbeen either seized or wasted, were fast concentrating themselves behindLough Foyle. Thither Tyrconnel sent Richard Hamilton--who, desertingWilliam, had thrown himself upon the other side--with orders to reduceLondonderry before aid could arrive from England. To James himselfTyrconnel wrote, urging him to start for Ireland without delay. Thoughunprepared at present to furnish soldiers, Louis was munificent in otherrespects. A fleet of fourteen men-of-war, with nine smaller vessels, wasprovided. Arms, ammunition, and money without stint were placed at thecommand of the exile, and a hundred French officers with the Countd'Avaux, one of the king's most trusted officials, as envoy, were sentto accompany the expedition. On March 12, 1689, James II. Landedat Kinsale. 

XLIII. 

WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND. 

James's appearance in Ireland was hailed with a little deserved burst ofenthusiasm. As a king, as a Catholic, and as a man in deep misfortune, he had a triple claim upon the kindly feeling of a race never slow torespond to such appeals. All along the road from Cork to Dublin thepeople ran out out in crowds to greet him with tears, blessings, andcries of welcome. Women thronged the banks along the roadsides, and heldup their children to see him go by. Flowers--as to the poor quality ofwhich it was hardly worth Lord Macaulay's while, by the way, to speak sodisparagingly--were offered for his acceptance, or strewn under hisfeet. Every mark of devotion which a desperately poor country could showwas shown without stint. Accompanied by the French ambassador, amid agroup of English exiles, and advancing under a waving roof of flags andfestoons, hastily improvised in his honour, the least worthy of theStuarts arrived in Dublin, and took up his residence at the castle. 

His sojourn there was certainly no royal bed of roses! The dissensionsbetween his English and his Irish followers were not only deep, butineffaceable. By each the situation was regarded solely from thestandpoint of his own country. Was James to remain in Ireland and to bean Irish king? or was he merely to use Ireland as a stepping-stone toEngland? Between two such utterly diverse views no point of union wasdiscoverable. 

In the interests of his own master, D'Avaux, the French envoy, stronglysupported Tyrconnel and the Irish leaders. The game of France was lessto replace James on the English throne than to make of Ireland apermanent thorn in the side of England. With this view he urged James toremain in Dublin, where he would necessarily be more under the directcontrol of the parliament. James, however declined this advice, andpersisted in going north, where he would be within a few hours' sail ofGreat Britain. Once Londonderry had fallen (and it was agreed upon allhands that Londonderry could not hold out much longer), he could at anymoment cross to Scotland, where it was believed that his friends wouldat once rally around him. 

But Londonderry showed no symptoms of yielding. In April, 1689, Jamesappeared before its walls, believing that he had only to do so toreceive its submission. He soon found his mistake. Lundy, its governor, was ready indeed to surrender it into his hands, but the townsfolkdeclined the bargain, and shut their gates resolutely in the king'sface. Lundy escaped for his life over the walls, and James, in disgust, returned to Dublin, leaving the conduct of the siege in the hands ofRichard Hamilton, who was afterwards superseded in the command by DeRosen, a Muscovite in the pay of France, who prosecuted it with abarbarity unknown to the annals of civilized warfare. 

The tale of that heroic defence has been so told that it need assuredlynever, while the world lasts, be told again. Suffice it then thatdespite the falseness of its governor, the weakness of its walls, thelack of any military training on the part of its defenders; despite thetreacherous dismissal of the first ships sent to its assistance; despitethe long agony of seeing other ships containing provisions hanginginertly at the mouth of the bay; despite shot and shell without, andfamine in its most grisly forms within--despite all this the littlegarrison held gallantly on to the "last ounce of horse-flesh and thelast pinch of corn. " At length, upon the 105th day of the siege, threeships, under Kirke's command, broke through the boom in the channel, andbrought their freights in safety to the starved and ghastly defenders, gathered like ghosts, rather than human beings, upon the quay. Threedays later De Rosen broke up his camp, and moved off in disgust, leavingbehind him the little city, exhausted but triumphant, having saved thehonour of its walls, and won itself imperishable fame. 

While all this was going on in the north, James, in Dublin, had beenbusily employed in deluging the country with base money to supply hisown necessities, with the natural result of ruining all who were forcedto accept it. At the same time the Parliament under his nominalsuperintendence had settled down to the congenial task of reversing mostof the earlier Acts, and putting everything upon an entirely newfooting. It was a Parliament composed, as was natural, almost wholly ofRoman Catholics, only six Protestants having been returned. Its firsttask was to repeal Poynings Act, the Act, which, it will be remembered, was passed in Henry VII. 's reign, binding it independence upon theEnglish Parliament. Its next to establish freedom of worship, giving theRoman Catholic tithes to the priests. So far no objections couldreasonably be raised. Next, however, followed the question offorfeitures. The hated Act of Settlement, upon which all property inIreland was now based, was set aside, and it was setted that all landsshould revert to their former proprietors. Then followed the punishmentof the political adversaries. "The hugest Bill of attainder, " says Mr. Green, "the world has seen, " was hastily drawn up and passed. By itsprovisions over 2, 240 persons were attained, and everything that theypossessed vested in the king. Many so attained were either women oryoung children, indeed a large proportion of the names seem to have beeninserted at haphazard or from some merely momentary feeling of anger orvindictiveness. 

These Acts were perhaps only what is called natural, but it must beowned that they were also terribly unfortunate. Up to that date thosedirectly penal laws against Catholics which afterwards disfigured thestatute book were practically unknown. A Catholic could sit in eitherIrish House of Parliament; he could inherit lands, and bequeath them towhom he would; he could educate his children how and where he liked. Theterror planted in the breast of the Protestant colony by thatinoperative piece of legislation found its voice in the equally violent, but unfortunately not equally inoperative, passed Acts by them in thehour of _their_ triumph. Acts, by means of which it was fondly hopedthat their enemies would be thrown into such a position of dependenceand humiliation that they could never again rise up to be a peril. 

In the north a brilliant little victory had meanwhile been won by theEnniskillen troops under Colonel Wolseley, at Newtown Butler, where theyattacked a much larger force of the enemy and defeated them, killing alarge number and driving the rest back in confusion. William was stilldetained in England, but had despatched the Duke of Schomberg with aconsiderable force. Schomberg's men, were mostly raw recruits, and theclimate tried them severely. He arrived in the autumn, but not venturingto take the field, established himself at Dundalk, where his menmisbehaved and all but mutinied, and where, a pestilence shortlyafterwards breaking out, swept them away in multitudes. 

On both sides, indeed, the disorganization of the armies was great. Fresh reinforcements had arrived for James, under the Comte de Lauzan, in return for which an equal number of Irish soldiers under ColonelMacarthy had been drafted for service to France. In June, 1690, Williamhimself landed at Carrickfergus with an army of 35, 000 men, composed ofnearly every nationality in Europe--Swedes, Dutch, Swiss, Batavians, French Huguenots, Finns, with about 15, 000 English soldiers. He came upto James's army upon the banks of the Boyne, about twenty miles fromDublin, and here it was that the turning battle of the campaignwas fought. 

This battle James watched at a discreet distance from the hill ofDonore. The Irish foot, upon whom the brunt of the action fell, wereuntrained, indifferently armed, and had never before been in action;their opponents were veterans trained in European wars. They were drivenback, fled, and a considerable number of them slaughtered. The Irishcavalry stood firm, but their valour was powerless to turn the day. Schomberg was killed, but William remained absolute and undisputedmaster of the field. 

At the first shock of reverse James flew down the hill and betookhimself to Dublin. He arrived there foaming and almost convulsed withrage. "Madam, your countrymen have run away!" was his gracious addressto Lady Tyrconnel. "If they have, sire, your Majesty seems to have wonthe race, " was that lady's ready retort. 

The king's flight was without reason or measure. As before in England, so now, he seemed to pass in a moment from insane self-confidence to anequally insane panic. He fled south, ordering the bridges to be brokendown behind him; took boat at Waterford, and never rested until he foundhimself once more safe upon French soil. 

His flight at least left the field clear for better men. PatrickSarsfield now took the principal command, and prosecuted the campaignwith a vigour of which it had hitherto shown no symptoms. Sarsfield isthe one redeeming figure upon the Jacobite side. His gallant presencesheds a ray of chivalric light upon this otherwise gloomiest and leastattractive of campaigns. He could not turn defeat to victory, but hecould, and did succeed in snatching honour out of that pit into whichthe other leaders, and especially his master, had let it drop. Brave, honourable, upright, "a gentleman of eminent merit, " is praise whicheven those least inclined to favour his side of the quarrel bestow uponhim without stint. 

William, now established in Dublin, issued a proclamation offering fulland free pardon to all who would lay down their arms. He was genuinelyanxious to avoid pushing the struggle to the bitter end, and to hinderfurther bloodshed. Though deserted by their king, and fresh fromoverwhelming defeat, the Irish troops showed no disposition, however, ofyielding. Athlone, Galway, Cork, Kinsale, and Limerick still held out, and behind the walls of the last named the remains of James's brokenarmy was now chiefly collected. Those walls, however, were miserablyweak, and the French generals utterly scouted the possibility of theirbeing held. Tyrconnel, too, advised a capitulation, but Sarsfieldinsisted upon holding the town, and the Irish soldiers--burning to wipeout the shame of the Boyne--supported him like one man. William wasknown, to be moving south to the attack, and accordingly Lauzan andTyrconnel, with the rest of the French troops moved hastily away toGalway, leaving Sarsfield to defend Limerick as he could. 

They had hardly left before William's army appeared in sight with theking himself at their head, and drew up before the walls. A formidablesiege train, sent after him from Dublin, was to follow in a day or two. Had it arrived it would have finished the siege at once. Sarsfieldaccordingly slipped out of the town under cover of night, fell upon itwhile it was on its way through the Silvermine Hills in Tipperary, killed some sixty of the men who were in charge, and filling the cannonswith powder, burst them with an explosion which startled the countryround for miles, and the roar of which is said to have reached Williamin his camp before Limerick. 

This brilliant little feat delayed the siege. Nevertheless it waspressed on with great vigour. Two more guns were obtained, several ofthe outworks carried, and a breach began to show in the ramparts. It wasnow autumn, the rainy season was setting in, and William's presence wasurgently wanted in England. After another violent attempt, therefore, totake the town, which was resisted with the most desperate valour, thevery women joining in the fight, and remaining under the hottest fire, the besiegers drew off, and William shortly afterwards sailed forEngland, leaving the command in the hands of Ginkel, the ablest of hisDutch generals. 

This first siege of Limerick is in many respects a very remarkable one, and bears a close analogy to the yet more famous siege of Londonderry. To give the parallel in Lord Macaulay's words--"The southern city, " hesays "was, like the northern city, the last asylum of a Church and of anation. Both places were crowded by fugitives from all parts of Ireland. Both places appeared to men who had made a regular study of the art ofwar incapable of resisting an enemy. .. . In both cases, religious andpatriotic enthusiasm struggled unassisted against great odds; in bothcases, religious and patriotic enthusiasm did what veteran warriors hadpronounced it absurd to attempt. "

In Galway, meanwhile, violent quarrels had broken out. The French troopswere sick, naturally enough, of the campaign, and not long afterwardssailed for France. Their places were taken later on by another body ofFrench soldiers under General St. Ruth. St. Ruth was a man of cold, disdainful temperament, but a good officer. He at once set to work atthe task of restoring order and getting the army into a condition totake the field. Early in the spring Ginkel had collected his army inMullingar ready to march to the assault of Athlone, the ancient Normanfortress, upon the bank of the Shannon, which was here spanned by asingle bridge. Upon Ginkel's advance this bridge was broken down, andthe besieged and besiegers were separated therefore by the breadth ofthe river. After an unsuccessful attempt to repair the breach the Dutchgeneral resolved to ford the latter. As it happened the water wasunusually low, and although St. Ruth with a large force was at the timeonly a mile away, he, unaccountably, made no attempt to defend the ford. A party of Ginkel's men waded or swam across in the dark, caught thebroken end of the bridge, and held it till it was repaired. This done, the whole English army poured across the river. 

The struggle was now narrowing fast. Leaving Athlone Ginkel advanced toBallinasloe, so well-known now from its annual sheep fairs. The countryhere is all but a dead flat, but the French general took advantage ofsome rising ground on the slope of which stood the ruined castle ofAughrim. Here the Irish were posted by him in force, one of those deepbrown bogs which cover so much of the surface of Galway lying at theirfeet and surrounding them upon two sides. 

The battle which broke at five o'clock the next morning was a desperateone. Roused at last from his coldness St. Ruth appealed in the mostmoving terms to the officers and men to fight for their religion, theirliberties, their honour. His appeal was gallantly responded to. A lowstone breast-work had been raised upon the hillside in front of theIrish, and against this Ginkel's veterans again and again advanced tothe attack, and again and again were beaten back, broken and, in oneinstance, chased down the hill on to the plain. St. Ruth broke intovehement enthusiasm. "The day, " he cried, waving his hat in the air, "isours, gentlemen!" A party of Huguenot cavalry, however, were presentlyseen to be advancing across the bog so as to turn the flank of the Irisharmy. It seemed to be impossible that they could get through, but theground was firmer than at first appeared, and some hurdles thrown downin front of them formed a sort of rude causeway. St. Ruth flew to thepoint of danger. On his way he was struck by a cannon ball which carriedoff his head, and the army was thus left without a general. Sarsfieldwas at some distance with the reserve. There was no one to give anyorders. The breast-work was carried. The Irish fought doggedly, retreating slowly from enclosure to enclosure. At last, left tothemselves, with no one to direct or support them, they broke and fleddown the hill. Then followed a hideous butchery. Few or no prisonerswere taken, and the number of the slain is stated to have been "inproportion to the number engaged greater than in any other battle ofthat age. " An eye-witness who looked from the hill the next day saidthat the country for miles around was whitened with the naked bodies ofthe slain. It looked, he remarked with grim vividness, like an immensepasture covered with flocks of sheep!

[Illustration: INITIAL LETTER FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS. ]

XLIV. 

THE TREATY OF LIMERICK. 

Nothing was now left but Limerick. Galway had yielded immediately afterthe day of Aughrim, its garrison claiming and obtaining the right ofmarching out with all the honours of war. Tyrconnel was dying, and hadlong lost, too, what little reputation he had ever had as a soldier. Sarsfield, however, stood firm to the last. Fresh reinforcements werehoped for from France, but none came until too late to be of any use. The town was again invested and besieged. An English fleet held themouth of the Shannon so as to prevent any relief from coming to its aid. From the middle of August to the end of September the siege went on, andthe walls, always weak, were riddled with shot and shell. Still itshowed no symptoms of submission. Ginkel, who was in command ofWilliam's army, dreaded the approach of autumn, and had instructionsfrom his master to finish the campaign as rapidly as possible, and withthis end in view to offer good and honourable terms to the Irish. Anarmistice accordingly was agreed to for three days, and before the threedays ended the famous "Articles of Limerick" were drawn up and signed bySarsfield on the one hand, and the Lords Justices, who had just arrivedin camp from Dublin, on the other. 

The exact purport of these articles, and the extent to which they wereafterwards mutilated and perverted from their original meaning has beenhotly disputed, and is too large and complicated a question to enterinto here at any length. Suffice it to say, that they engaged that theRoman Catholics of Ireland should enjoy the same privileges as they hadpreviously enjoyed in the reign of Charles II. ; that they should be freeto follow the same trades and professions as before the war, and thatall who were in arms, having a direct commission from King James, "withall _such as were under their protection_" should have a free pardon andbe left in undisputed ownership of their lands and other possessions. 

It is over the clause placed in italics that controversy has waxedfiercest. That it was in the first draft is admitted; that it was not inthe document itself is equally certain. Had it been intentionally oraccidentally excluded? is the question. William's own words were that ithad been "casually omitted by the writer. " The evidence seems clear, yethistorians, who on other matters would hardly question his accuracy, seem to think that in this instance he was mistaken. That his own mindwas clear on the point there can be little doubt, seeing that he madethe most honourable efforts to get the clause in question carried intoeffect. In this he failed. Public opinion in England ran furiouslyagainst the Irish Catholics, and the Parliament absolutely refused toratify it. The essential clause was accordingly struck out, and thewhole treaty soon became an absolute dead letter. 

On the other hand, the military one, which was drawn up at the same timeand signed by the two generals, was carried honourably into effect. Byits terms it was agreed that such Irish officers and soldiers as desiredto go to France should be conveyed there, and in the meantime shouldremain under the command of their own officers. Ginkel made strenuousefforts to enlist the Irish troops in his master's service. Few, however, agreed to accept his offer. A day was fixed for the election tobe made, and the Irish troops were passed in review. All who would takeservice with William were directed to file off at a particular spot; allwho passed it were held to have thrown in their lot with France. Thelong procession was watched with keen interest by the group of generalslooking on, but the decision was not long delayed. The vast majorityunhesitatingly elected exile, only about a thousand agreeing to takeservice with William. 

The most piteous part of the story remains. Sarsfield, with the soldiersunder him who had elected to go to France, withdrew into Limerick, andthe next day proceeded to Cork, where they were to embark. The news had, in the meanwhile, spread, and the roads were covered with women rushingto see the last of husbands, brothers, sons. Wives, mothers, andchildren followed the departing exiles to the water's edge, imploringwith cries of agony not to be left behind. In the extremity of his pitySarsfield proclaimed that his soldiers might take their wives andfamilies with them to France. It was found utterly impossible, however, to do so, since no transport could be provided for such a multitude. Room was found for a few families, but the beach was still crowded withthose who had perforce to be left behind. As the boats pushed off thewomen clung desperately to them, and several, refusing to let go, weredragged out of their depth and drowned. A wild cry went up as the shipsbegan to move. The crowd rushed frantically along the shore fromheadland to headland, following them with their eyes as long as theyremained in sight. When the last ship had dropped below the horizon, andthe dull autumn dusk had settled down over sea and shore, they dispersedslowly to their desolate homes. Night and desolation must indeed haveseemed to have settled down for good upon Ireland. 

XLV. 

THE PENAL CODE. 

We are now upon the brink of a century as full of strange fortunes forIreland as any that had preceded it, but in which those fortunes weredestined to take a widely different turn. In the two preceding onesrevolts and risings had, as we have seen, been the rule rather than theexception. In this one from the beginning down to within a couple ofyears of its close when a rebellion--which, in most impartialhistorians' opinion, might with a little care have been averted--brokethe peace of the century, hardly a symptom of any disposition to appealto arms is discoverable. Two great Jacobite risings convulsed England;the American revolt, so fraught with momentous consequences, was foughtand carried, but Ireland never stirred. The fighting element was gone. It was in France, in Spain, in the Low Countries--scattered over halfthe battlefields of Europe. The country which gave birth to thesefighters was quiet; a graveyard quiet, it may be said, but stillsignificant, if only by contrast with what had gone before. 

One advantage which the student of this century has over others is thatit has been made the subject of a work which enables us to thread ourway through its mazes with what, in comparison to other periods may becalled ease. In his "History of the Eighteenth Century" Mr. Lecky hasdone for the Ireland of one century what it is much to be desired someone would hasten to do for the Ireland of all. He has broken down abarrier of prejudice so solid and of such long standing that it seemedto be invulnerable, and has proved that it is actually possible to bejust in two directions at once--a feat no previous historian of Irelandcan be said to have even attempted. This work, the final volume of whichhas not yet appeared, so completely covers the whole ground that itseems to afford an excuse for an even more hasty scamper over the samearea than the exigencies of space have elsewhere made inevitable. 

The task to which both the English and the Irish Parliaments nowenergetically addressed themselves was--firstly, the undoing of the Actspassed in the late reign; secondly, the forfeiture of the estates ofthose who had taken the losing side in the late campaign; thirdly, thepassing of a series of Acts the aim of which was as far as possible tostamp out the Roman Catholic religion altogether, and in any case todeprive it of any shadow or semblance of future political importance. 

To describe at length the various Acts which make up what is known asthe Penal code--"a code impossible, " as Mr. Lecky observed in an earlierwork, "for any Irish Protestant whose mind is not wholly perverted byreligious bigotry, to look back at without shame and indignation, " wouldtake too long. It will be enough, therefore, if I describe its generalpurport, and how it affected the political and social life of thatcentury upon which we are now entering. 

In several respects it not a little resembled what is nowadays known as"boycotting, " only it was boycotting inflicted by the State itself. Ascompared with some of the enactments passed against Protestants inCatholic countries, it was not, it must be said, sanguinary, but its aimseemed to be to make life itself intolerable; to reduce the wholeCatholic population to the condition of pariahs and outcasts. No Papistmight possess a horse of the value of over £5; no Papist might carryarms; no Papist might dispose as he chose of his own property; no Papistmight acquire any landed freehold; no Papist might practise in any ofthe liberal professions; no Papist might educate his sons at home, neither might he send them to be educated abroad. Deeper wrong, morebiting and terrible injury even than these, it sowed bitter strifebetween father and son, and brother and brother. Any member of a family, by simply turning Protestant, could dispossess the rest of that familyof the bulk of the estate to his own advantage. Socially, too, a Papist, no matter what his rank, stood below, and at the mercy of, hisProtestant neighbours. He was treated by the executive as a beingdevoid, not merely of all political, but of all social rights, and onlythe numerical superiority of the members of the persecuted creed canhave enabled them to carry on existence under such circumstances at all. 

For it must be remembered (and this is one of its worst features) thatthose placed under this monstrous ban constituted the vast majority ofthe whole country. In Burke's memorable words, "This system of penaltyand incapacity has for its object no small sect or obscure party, but avery numerous body of men, a body which comprehends at least two-thirdsof the whole nation; it amounts to two million eight hundred thousandsouls--a number sufficient for the constituents of a great people[13]. ""The happiness or misery of multitudes, " he adds in another place, "cannever be a thing indifferent. A law against the majority of the peopleis in substance a law against the people itself; its extent determinesits invalidity; it even changes its character as it enlarges itsoperation; it is not particular injustice, but general oppression, andcan no longer be considered as a private hardship which might be borne, but spreads and grows up into the unfortunate importance of a nationalcalamity. "

[13] "Tracts on the Popery Laws. "

As was natural under the circumstances, many feigned conversions tookplace, that being the only way to avoid been utterly cut adrift frompublic life. For by a succession of enactments, not only were the higheroffices and the professions debarred to Roman Catholics, but they wereeven prohibited--to so absurd a length can panic go--from beingsheriffs, jurymen, constables, or even gamekeepers. "Every barrister, clerk, attorney, or solicitor, " to quote again Burke, "is obliged totake a solemn oath not to employ persons of that persuasion; no, not ashackney clerks, at the miserable salary of seven shillings a week. " Itwas loudly complained of many years later, that men used to qualify fortaking the oaths required upon being admitted as barristers or attorneysby attending church and receiving a sacramental certificate on theirroad to Dublin. Others, to save their property from confiscation, sacrificed their inclinations, often what they held to be their hopes ofsalvation, to the exigencies of the situation, and nominally embracedProtestantism. Old Lady Thomond, for instance, upon being reproached bysome stricter co-religionist for thus imperilling her soul, asked withquick scorn whether it was not better that one old woman should burnthan that the Thomonds should lose their own. The head of the housewould thus often present himself or herself at the parish church, whilethe other members of the family kept to the old faith, and the chaplain, under the name of the tutor or secretary, celebrated mass in theharness-room or the servants' hall. 

To the credit of Irish Protestants it may be said that, once the firstviolence of fanaticism had died out, there was little attempt to enforcethe legal enactments in all their hideous atrocity. According to thestrict letter of the law, no Roman Catholic bishop, archbishop, or otherdignitary; no monk, nun, or member of any religious fraternity, couldset foot in Ireland; and any one who harboured them was liable at thethird offence to confiscation of all his goods. A list of parish priestswas also drawn up and certified, and their names entered, and when thesehad died no others were by law allowed to come, any so doing beingliable to the penalties of high treason. As a matter of fact, however, they came with very little hindrance, and the succession was steadilykept up from the Continent. The attempt to stamp out a religion by forceproved to be the most absolute of failures, although, as no rule iswithout its exception, it must be added that in England, where exactlythe same penal laws were in force, and where the number of RomanCatholics was at the beginning of the century considerable, theydwindled by the end of it almost to the point of extinction. In Irelandthe reverse was the case. The number of Roman Catholics, according tothe most trustworthy statistics, increased rather than diminished underthe Penal code, and there were many more conversions from Protestantismto Catholicism than there were the other way. 

This, no doubt, was in great measure due to the neglect with which thescattered Protestant communities were treated, especially in the southand west. The number of Protestant clergymen was extremely small, asmany as six, seven, and even ten livings being frequently held by asingle individual, and of these many were absentees, and their placefilled by a curate. Thus--isolated in a vast Roman Catholic community, often with no church of their own within reach--the few Protestantsdrifted by a natural law to the faith of their neighbours. On theemphatic and angry testimony of Archbishop Boulter, we know thatconversions from Protestantism to Catholicism were in his time extremelycommon amongst the lower orders. By law, too, no marriage between aProtestant and Catholic was recognizable, yet there were many such, andthe children in most cases seem to have reverted to the elder faith. 

[Illustration: "TIGER" ROCHE, A FAMOUS IRISH DUELIST, BORN IN DUBLIN1729. ]

The best side of all this for the Catholics showed itself in thatfeeling of devotion and fealty to their own faith which persecutionrarely fails to awaken, and for which the Roman Catholics of Ireland, high and low alike, have always been honourably distinguished. The worstwas that this sense of being under an immoveable ban sapped at all theroots of manliness and honourable ambition. Amongst the well-to-doclasses the more spirited of the young men went abroad and enlistedunder foreign banners. The rest stayed at home, and fell into an idle, aimless, often disreputable, fashion of existence. The sense of being ofno account, mere valueless items in the social hive, is no doubtanswerable for a good deal of all this. Swift assures us that in histime the Catholic manhood of Ireland were of no more importance than itswomen and children; of no more importance, he adds in another place, than so many trees. With a patience pathetic in so essentially impatienta race, both priests and people seem to have settled down after awhileinto a sort of desperate acceptance of the inevitable. So completeindeed was their submission that towards the close of the century wefind the English executive, harassed and set at nought by its ownProtestant colonists, turning by a curious nemesis to the members ofthis persecuted creed, whose patience and loyalty three quarters of acentury of unexampled endurance seemed to have gone far to prove. 

XLVI. 

THE COMMERCIAL CODE. 

All power, place, and authority had thus once more swung round into thehands of the Protestant colony--"The Protestant Ascendency, " as it cameafter a while to be called. They alone had seats in Parliament, theyalone, until near the end of the century, were competent to vote. Taxeswere collected over the whole island, but only Protestants had a voicein their disposal. All the parliamentary struggles of this century, itmust clearly be understood, were struggles between Protestants andProtestants, and the different political parties, "patriotic" andothers, were parties formed exclusively amongst the Protestantsthemselves. Protestantism was not only the privileged, but it was alsothe polite, creed; the creed of the upper classes, as distinguished fromthe creed of the potato-diggers and the turf-cutters; a view of thematter of which distinct traces may even yet be discovered in Ireland. 

If Protestants, as compared with their Roman Catholic brethren, werehappy, the Protestant colony was very far from being allowed its ownway, or permitted to govern itself as it thought fit. Although avowedlykept as her garrison, and to preserve her own power in Ireland, Englandhad no notion of allowing it equal advantages with herself, or ofrunning the smallest risk of its ever coming to stand upon any dangerousfooting of equality. The fatal theory that it was the advantage of theone country that the other should be kept poor, had by this time firmlytaken root in the minds of English statesmen, and to it, and to theunreasonable jealousy of a certain number of English traders, thedisasters now to be recorded were mainly due. 

Cromwell had placed English and Irish commerce upon an equal footing. Early in Charles II. 's reign an Act had however been passed to hinderthe importation of Irish cattle into England, one which had struck adisastrous, not to say fatal, blow at Irish agricultural interests. Thenas now cattle was its chief wealth, and such a prohibition meant nothingshort of ruin to the landowners, and through them to all who dependedupon them. So far Irish ports were open, however, to foreign countries, and when the cattle trade ceased to be profitable, much of the land hadbeen turned by its owners into sheepwalks. There was a large and anincreasing demand for Irish wool upon the Continent, in addition towhich a considerable number of manufacturers had of late startedfactories, and an energetic manufacture of woollen goods was going on, and rapidly becoming the principal form of Irish industry. The Englishtraders, struck by this fact, were suddenly smitten with panic. TheIrish competition, they declared, were reducing their gains, and theycried loudly, therefore, for legislative protection. Their prayer wasgranted. In 1699, the last year of the century, an Act was passedforbidding the export of Irish woollen goods, not to England alone, butto _all_ other countries. 

The effect of this Act was instantaneous and startling. Themanufacturers, who had come over in large numbers, left the country forthe most part within six months, never to return again. A wholepopulation was suddenly thrown out of employment Emigration set in, but, in spite of the multitude that left, famine laid hold of many of thosewho remained. The resources of the poorest classes are always so low inIreland that a much less sweeping blow than this would at any time havesufficed to bring them over the verge of starvation. 

Another important result was that smuggling immediately began on anenormous scale. Wool was now a drug in the legitimate market, andwoollen goods had practically no market. A vast contraband trade sprangswiftly up upon the ruins of the legitimate one. Wool, which at home wasworth only 5d. Or 6d. A lb. , in France fetched half-a-crown. The wholepopulation, from the highest to the lowest, flung themselvesenergetically on the side of the smugglers. The coast-line was long andintricate; the excise practically powerless. Wool was packed in cavesall along the south and south-west coast, and carried off as opportunityserved by the French vessels which came to seek it. What was meant bynature and Providence to have been the honest and open trade of thecountry was thus forced to be carried on by stealth and converted into acrime. It alleviated to some degree the distress, but it made Law seemmore than ever a mockery, more than ever the one archenemy against whichevery man's hand might legitimately be raised. 

Even this, if bad enough, was not the worst. The worst was that thisarbitrary Act--directed, it must be repeated, by England, not againstthe Irish natives, but against her own colonists--done, too, withoutthere being an opportunity for the country to be heard in its owndefence--struck at the very root of all enterprise, and produced awidespread feeling of hopelessness and despair. Since this was theacknowledged result of too successful rivalry with England, of what use, it was openly asked, to attempt any new enterprise, or what was tohinder the same fate from befalling it in its turn? The wholerelationship of the two islands, even where no division of blood orcreed existed, grew thus to be strained and embittered to the lastdegree; the sense of hostility and indignation being hardly less strongin the latest arrived colonist than in the longest established. "Therewas scarce an Englishman, " says a writer of the time, "who had beenseven years in the country, _and meant to remain there_, who did notbecome averse to England, and grow into something of an Irishman. " Allthis must be taken into account before those puzzling contradictions andanomalies which make up the history of this century can ever beproperly realized. 

XLVII. 

MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT. 

The early half of the eighteenth century is such a very dreary period ofIrish history that there is little temptation to linger over it. Twomen, however, stand out conspicuously against this melancholybackground, neither of whom must be passed over without a few words. 

The first of these was William Molyneux, the "Ingenious Molyneux, " as hewas called by his contemporaries, a distinguished philosopher, whoselife was almost exclusively devoted to scientific pursuits. Molyneux is, or ought to be, a very interesting figure to any one who cares, evenslightly, about Ireland. He was one of the chief founders of thePhilosophical Association in Dublin, which was the parent both of thepresent Dublin Society and of the Royal Irish Academy. He was also aFellow of the Royal Society, and a friend of John Locke, with whom heconstantly corresponded. Both his letters, and those of his brother, Dr. Thomas Molyneux, show the most vivid and constant interest in everythingconnected with the natural history of Ireland. Now it is a moving bog, which has scared the natives in its neighbourhood out of their senses;now, again, some great find of Irish elks, or some tooth of a mammothwhich has been unearthed, and it is gravely discussed how such a"large-bodied beast" could have been transported over seas, especiallyto a country where the "Greeks and Romans never had a footing, " andwhere therefore the learned Mr. Camden's theory, that the elephants'bones found in England were the remains of those "brought over by theEmperor Claudius, " necessarily falls to the ground. Both the brothersMolyneux belong to a band of Irish naturalists whose numbers are, unfortunately, remarkably limited. Why it should be so is not easilyexplained, but so it is. When Irish archaeology is mentioned, the namesof Petrie, of Wilde, of Todd, of Graves, and, last but not least, ofMiss Margaret Stokes spring to the mind. Irish geologists, with SirRichard Griffiths at their head, show as good a record as those of anyother country, but the number of Irish naturalists whose fame hasreached beyond a very narrow area is small indeed. This is the lessaccountable as, though scanty as regards the number of its species, thenatural history of Ireland is full of interest, abounding in problemsnot even yet fully solved: the very scantiness of its fauna being in onesense, an incentive and stimulus to its study, for the same reason thata language which is on the point of dying out is often of more interestto a philologist than one that is in full life and vigour. 

This, however, is a digression, and as such must be forgiven. Returningto the arena of politics, Molyneux's chief claim to remembrance restsupon a work published by him in favour of the rights of the IrishParliament in the last year but one of the seventeenth century, onlyseven years therefore after the treaty of Limerick. 

As one of the members of the Dublin University he had every opportunityof judging how the grasp which the English Parliament maintained bymeans of the obsolete machinery of Poynings' Act was steadily throttlingand benumbing all Irish enterprise. In 1698 his famous remonstrance, known as "The Case of Ireland being bound by Act of Parliament made inEngland, " appeared, with a dedication to King William. It at oncecreated an immense sensation, was fiercely condemned as seditious andlibellous by the English Parliament, by whom, as a mark of its utterabhorrence, it was condemned to be burned by the common hangman. 

Few things will give a clearer idea of the extraordinarily exasperatedstate of politics at the time than to read the remonstrance whichproduced so tremendous a storm. Take, for example, the words with whichthe earlier portion of it closes, and which are worth studying, if onlyfor the impressive dignity of their style, which not a littleforeshadows Burke's majestic prose:--

"To conclude, I think it highly inconvenient for England to assume thisauthority over the kingdom of Ireland, I believe there will need nogreat arguments to convince the wise assembly of English senators howinconvenient it may be to England to do that which may make the lordsand the people of Ireland think that they are not well used, and maydrive them to discontent. The laws and liberties of England were grantedabove five hundred years ago to the people of Ireland, upon theirsubmission to the Crown of England, with a design to keep them in theallegiance of the king of England. How consistent it may be with truepolicy to do that which the people of Ireland may think an invasion oftheir rights and liberties, I do most humbly submit to the Parliament ofEngland to consider. They are men of great wisdom, honour, and justice, and know how to prevent all future inconveniences. We have heard greatoutcries, and deservedly, on breaking the edict of Nantes, and otherstipulations. How far the breaking our constitution, which has been offive hundred years standing exceeded these, I leave the world to judge. "

In another place Molyneux vindicates the dignity of a Parliament inwords of singular force and moderation:--

"The rights of Parliament should be preserved sacred and inviolablewherever they are found. This kind of government, once so universal allover Europe, is now almost vanished amongst the nations thereof. Ourking's dominions are the only supporters of this most noble Gothicconstitution, save only what little remains may be found thereof inPoland. We should not therefore make so light of that sort oflegislature, and, as it were, abolish it in one kingdom of the threewherein it appears, but rather cherish and encourage it wherever wemeet it[14]. "

[14] "The Case of Ireland being bound by Acts of Parliament made inEngland. " By William Molyneux, Esq. , Dublin. 

For a remonstrance so dignified, couched in language so respectful, burning by the common hangman seems a hard lot. The disgrace, if such itwas, does not appear to have very deeply penetrated its author, whopursued the even tenour of his way, and the same year paid a visit tohis friend John Locke, on the return journey from which visit heunfortunately caught a chill, from the effects of which he died thefollowing October. After his death the momentary stir which hiseloquence had created died out, as the circles left by the falling of astone die out upon some stagnant pool, until nearly a quarter of acentury later a much more violent splash again aroused attention, and afar less pacific exponent of Irish abuses than Molyneux sprang fiercelyinto the turmoil. 

Jonathan Swift had been eleven years Dean of St. Patrick's before heproduced those famous letters which have left their mark so indeliblyupon the course of Irish politics. Swift's part in this Stygian pool ofthe eighteenth century is rather a difficult one to explain. He was notin any sense an Irish champion, indeed, objected to being called anIrishman at all, and regarded his life in Ireland as one of all butunendurable banishment. He was a vehement High Churchman, and lookedupon the existing penal proscription under which the Catholics lay asnot merely desirable, but indispensable. At the same time it would bequite untrue to suppose, as is sometimes done, that he merely made acat's-paw of Irish politics in order to bring himself back into publicnotice. He was a man of intense and even passionate sense of justice, and the state of affairs in the Ireland of his day, the tyranny andpolitical dishonesty which stalked in high places, the degradation andsteadily-increasing misery in which the mass of the people were sunk, were enough to lash far less scathing powers of sarcasm than hepossessed to their highest possible pitch of expression. 

[Illustration: DEAN SWIFT. (_From an engraving by Fourdinier afterJervis_. )]

The cause that drew forth the famous Drapier letters--why Swift chose tospell the word _draper_ with an _i_ no one has ever explained--appearsat first sight hardly worthy of the occasion. Ireland wanted a coppercoinage, and Walpole, who was then the Prime Minister, had given apatent for the purpose to a person called Wood, part of the profits ofwhich patent were to go to the Duchess of Kendal, the king's mistress. There seems no reason to think that the pennies produced by Wood were inany way inferior to the existing English ones, and Sir Isaac Newton--whowas at the time Master of the Mint--declared that, if anything, theywere rather better. The real wrong, the real insult, was that the patentwas granted by the Minister without reference to the Lord-Lieutenant, tothe Irish Parliament, or to any single human being in Ireland. It was aproof the more of that total indifference with which the interests ofIreland were regarded, and it was upon this score that Swift's wrathexploded like a bomb. 

The line he chose to take was to attack the patent, not as a monstrousjob--which undoubtedly it was--but from the point of view of the valueof the pennies. Assuming the character of a tradesman, he adjured allclasses of the community, down to the very beggars, not to be induced toaccept them. Assured them that for the benefit of Mr. Wood, "a mean man, a hardware dealer, " every human being in Ireland was about to bedeliberately robbed and ruined. His logic sounded unanswerable to theignorant. His diatribes produced the most extraordinary effect. Aterrific panic set in, and so overwhelming was the sensation that theMinisters in the end found it necessary to cancel the patent, andsuspend the issue of Wood's halfpence. For the first time in Irishhistory public opinion, unsupported by arms, had carried its point: anepoch of vast importance in the history of every country. 

That Swift knew perfectly well that the actual value of the coppercoinage was not a matter of profound importance may be taken forgranted, and so far his conduct is certainly not justifiable on any verystrict rule of ethics. If the pennies were of small importance, however, there were other things that were of more. Little of a patriot as hewas, little as he was supposed, or supposed himself, to care for Irelandor Irishmen, his wrath burnt fiercely at what he saw around him. He saw, too, his own wrongs, as others have done before and since, "writ large"in the wrongs of the country, and resented them as such. With his keen, practical knowledge of men, he knew, moreover, how thick was thatmedium, born of prejudice and ignorance, through which he had topierce--a medium through which nothing less pointed than the forkedlightnings of his own terrible wit could have found its way. Whateverhis motives were, his success at least is indisputable. High Churchmanas he was, vehement anti-papist as he was, he became from that moment, and remained to the hour of his death, beyond all question the mostpopular man in Ireland and his name was ever afterwards upon the lips ofall who aspired to promote the best interests and prosperity oftheir country. 

XLVIIL

HENRY FLOOD. 

The forty years which follow maybe passed rapidly over. They were yearsof absolute tranquillity in Ireland, but beyond that rather negativepraise little of good can be reported of them. Public opinion was to allpractical purposes dead, and the functions of Parliament were littlemore than nominal. Unlike the English one, the Irish Parliament had bythe nature of its constitution, no natural termination, save by adissolution, or by the death of the sovereign. Thus George the Second'sIrish Parliament sat for no less than thirty-three years, from thebeginning to the end of his reign. The sessions, too, had gradually cometo be, not annual as in England, but biennial, the Lord-Lieutenantspending as a rule only six months in every two years in Ireland. In hisabsence all power was vested in the hands of the Lords Justices, of whomthe most conspicuous during this period were the three successivearchbishops of Armagh, namely, Swift's opponent Boulter, Hoadly, andStone, all three Englishmen, and devoted to what was known as the"English interest, " who governed the country by the aid of a certainnumber of great

 Delightful talk! to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot. To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, To breathe th' enlivening spirit and to fix The generous purpose in the glowing breast. 

 _Thomson_

 LORD LIEUTENANT FROM 1745 TO 1754. 

Irish borough-owners, or Undertakers, who "undertook" to carry on theking's business in consideration of receiving the lion's share of thepatronage, which they distributed amongst their own adherents. Of theseborough-owners Lord Shannon was the happy possessor of no less thansixteen seats, while others had eight, ten, twelve, or more, which wereregularly and openly let out to hire to the Government. Efforts werefrom time to time made by the more independent members to curtail theseabuses, and to recover some degree of independence for the Parliament, but for a long time their efforts were without avail, and owing to thenature of its constitution, it was all but impossible to bring publicopinion to bear upon its proceedings, so that the only vestige ofindependence shown was when a collision occurred between the selfishinterests of those in whose hands all power was thus concentrated. 

[Illustration: PHILIP Earl of CHESTERFIELD. ]

About 1743 some stir began to be aroused by a succession of statementspublished by Charles Lucas, a Dublin apothecary, in the _Freeman'sJournal_, a newspaper started by him, and in which he vehementlydenounced the venality of Parliament, and loudly asserted the inherentright of Ireland to govern itself, a right of which it had only beenformally deprived by the Declaratory Act of George I[15]. So unequivocalwas his language that the grand jury of Dublin at last gave orders forhis addresses to be burnt, and in 1749 a warrant was issued for hisapprehension, whereupon he fled to England, and did not return untilmany years later, when he was at once elected member for Dublin. Hisspeeches in the House of Commons seem never to have produced an effectat all comparable with that of his writings, but he gave a constant andimportant support to the patriotic party, which had now formed itselfinto a small but influential opposition under the leadership ofHenry Flood. 

[15] English Statutes, 6 Geo. C. 5. 

Flood and Grattan are by far the two greatest of those orators andstatesmen whose eloquence lit up the debates of the Irish House ofCommons during its brief period of brilliancy, and as such will require, even in so hasty a sketch as this, to be dwelt upon at some length. Since a good deal of the same ground will have to be gone over insucceeding chapters, it seems best to explain here those points whichaffected them personally, and to show as far as possible in whatrelationship they stood one to the other. 

Henry Flood was born near Kilkenny in 1732, and was the son of the ChiefJustice of the King's Bench. At sixteen he went to Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwards to Oxford. In 1759 he entered the IrishParliament as member for Kilkenny, and at once threw himself vehementlyupon the popular side, his first speech being an attack upon the PrimateStone. As an orator his style appears to have been laboured, and hisspeeches brim over in all directions with forced illustrations andmetaphors, but his powers of argument and debate were remarkably strong. For about ten years he waged a continual struggle against theGovernment, urging especially a limitation to the duration of Parliamentand losing no opportunity of asserting its claims to independence, or ofattacking the pension list, which under the system then prevailing grewsteadily from year to year. Upon reform he also early fixed hisattention, although, unlike Grattan, he was from the beginning to theend of his life steadily hostile to all proposals for giving thefranchise to the Catholics. 

[Illustration: RIGHT HON. HENRY FLOOD. (_After a drawing byComerford_. )]

During the viceroyalty of Lord Townshend, who became Lord-Lieutenant in1767, an Octennial Bill was passed limiting the duration of Parliamentto eight years, but this momentary gleam of better things was notsustained; on the contrary, corruption was, under his rule, carried evenfurther than it had been before. Under the plea of breaking the power ofthe borough-owners, he set himself deliberately to make the wholeParliament subservient to Government, thus practically depriving it ofwhat little vestige of independence it still possessed. A succession ofstruggles took place, chiefly over Money Bills, the more independentmembers, under Flood's leadership, claiming for the Irish House ofCommons the complete control of the national purse, a claim as uniformlyresisted by the Government. Though almost invariably defeated on adivision in the end the opposition were to a great degree successful, and in 1773 the hated viceroy was recalled. 

This was the moment at which Flood stood higher in his countrymen'sestimation than was ever again the case. He was identified with all thatwas best in their aspirations, and no shadow of self-seeking had as yetdimmed the brightness of his fame. It was very different with his nextstep. Lord Townshend was succeeded by Lord Harcourt, whoseadministration at first promised to be a shade more liberal and lesscorrupt than that of his predecessors. Of this administration Flood, tohis own misfortune, became a member. What his motives were it is ratherdifficult to say. He was a rich man, and therefore had no temptation tosell or stifle his opinions for place. Whatever they were, it is clear, from letters still extant, that he not only accepted but solicitedoffice. He was made Vice-Treasurer, a post hitherto reserved forEnglishmen, at a salary of £3, 500 a year. 

Although, as Mr. Lecky has pointed out, no actual stain of dishonourattaches to Flood in consequence of this step, there can be no doubtthat it was a grave error, and that he lived to repent it bitterly. Forthe next seven years not only was he forced to keep silence as regardsall those points he had previously advocated so warmly, but, as a memberof the Government, he actually helped to uphold some of the mostdamaging of the restraints laid upon Irish trade and prosperity. Uponthe outbreak of the America war a two years' embargo was laid uponIreland, and a force of 4, 000 men raised and despatched to America atits expense. The state of defencelessness in which this left the countryled, as will be seen in a succeeding chapter, to a great volunteermovement, in which all classes and creeds joined enthusiastically. Floodwas unable to resist the contagion. His voice was once again heard uponthe liberal side. He flung away the trammels of office, surrendered hislarge salary, and returned to his old friends. He never, however, regained his old place. A greater man had in the meanwhile risen to thefront, and in Henry Grattan Irish aspiration had found its clearest andstrongest voice. 

This was a source of profound mortification to Flood, and led eventuallyto a bitter quarrel between these two men--patriots in the best senseboth of them. Flood tried to outbid Grattan by pushing the concessionswon from England in the moment of her difficulty yet further, and bymaking use of the volunteers as a lever to enforce his demands. ThisGrattan honourably, whether wisely or not, resisted, and the Parliamentsupported his resistance. After an unsuccessful attempt to carry aReform Bill, Flood retired, to a great degree, from Irish public life, and not long afterwards succeeded in getting a seat in the EnglishParliament. His oratory there proved a failure. He was "an oak of theforest too great and old, " as Grattan said, "to be transplanted atfifty. " This failure was a fresh and a yet more mortifyingdisappointment, and his end was a gloomy and somewhat obscure one, buthe will always be remembered with gratitude as one of the first who inthe Irish Parliament lifted his voice against those restrictions underwhich the prosperity of the country lay shackled and all but dead. 

XLIX. 

HENRY GRATTAN. 

"Great men, " wrote Sydney Smith, sixty years ago in an article in _TheEdinburgh Review_, "hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live intheir time. What Irishman does not feel proud that he lived in the daysof Grattan? Who has not turned to him for comfort from the false friendsand open enemies of Ireland? Who did not remember him in the days of itsburnings, wastings, and murders?"

Grattan is, indeed, pre-eminently the Irish politician to whom otherIrish politicians--however diverse their views or convictions--turnunanimously with the common sense of admiration and homage. Twocharacteristics--usually supposed in Ireland to be inherentlyantagonistic--met harmoniously in him. He was consistently loyal and hewas consistently patriotic. From the beginning to the end of his careerhis patriotism never hindered him either from risking his popularitywhenever he considered duty or the necessities of the case required himto do so; a resolution which more than once brought him into sharpcollision with his countrymen, on one occasion even at some little riskto himself. 

[Illustration: RIGHT HON. HENRY GRATTAN, M. P. _(From an engraving byGodby after Pope_. )]

In 1775 he entered Parliament--sixteen years, therefore, later thanFlood--being brought in by his friend Lord Charlemont. The struggle withAmerica was then beginning, and all Grattan's sympathies went with thosecolonists who were battling for their own independence. His eloquencefrom the moment it was first heard produced an extraordinary effect, andwhen the volunteer movement broke out he threw himself heartily into it, and availed himself of it to press in the Irish Parliament for thosemeasures of free trade and self-government upon which his heart was setWhen the first of these measures was carried, he brought forward thefamous Declaration of Rights, embodying the demand for independence, ademand which, in the first instance, he had to defend almostsingle-handed. Many of his best friends hung back, believing the time tobe not yet ripe for such a proposal. Even Edmund Burke--the life-longand passionate friend of Ireland--cried out in alarm "Will no one speakto that madman? Will no one stop that madman Grattan?" The madman, however, went on undismayed. His words flew like wild-fire over thecountry. He was supported in his motion by eighteen counties, byaddresses from the grand juries, and by resolutions from the volunteers. By 1782, the impulse had grown so strong that it could no longer beresisted. An address in favour of Grattan's Declaration of Rights wascarried enthusiastically in April by the Irish Parliament, and soimpressed was the Government by the determined attitude of the countrythat, by the 27th of May the Viceroy was empowered to announce theconcurrence of the English legislature. The Declaratory Act of George I. Was then repealed by the English Parliament. Bills were immediatelyafterwards passed by the Irish one embodying the Declaration of Rights, also a biennial Mutiny Act, and an Act validating the marriage ofDissenters, while, above all, Poynings' Act, which had so long fetteredits free action, was once for all repealed. 

This was the happiest moment of Grattan's life. The country, with aburst of spontaneous gratitude, voted him a grant of £100, 000. This sumhe declined, but in the end was persuaded, with some reluctance, to takehalf. A period of brief, but while it lasted unquestionable prosperityspread over the country. In Dublin, public buildings sprang up in alldirections; a bright little society flourished and enjoyed itself; tradetoo prospered to a degree never hitherto known. Between England andIreland, however, the commercial restrictions were still in force. Thecondition of the Irish Catholics, though latterly to some degreealleviated, was still one of all but unendurable oppression. Reform, too, was as far off as ever, and corruption had increased rather thandiminished, owing to the greatly increased importance of the Parliament. In 1789 an unfortunate quarrel sprang up between the two legislaturesover the appointment of a Regent, rendered necessary by the temporaryinsanity of George III. , and this difference was afterwards used as anargument in favour of a legislative Union. In 1793 a measure ofhalf-emancipation was granted, Roman Catholics being admitted to vote, though not to sit in Parliament, an anomalous distinction giving powerto the ignorant, yet still keeping the fittest men out of public life. Upon the arrival of Lord Fitzwilliam as Viceroy in 1795, it wasfervently believed that full emancipation was at last about to begranted, and Grattan brought in a Bill to that effect. These hopes, aswill presently be seen, were destined to be bitterly disappointed. LordFitzwilliam was recalled, and from that moment Grattan was doomed tostand helplessly by and watch the destruction of that edifice which hehad spent his whole life to erect and strengthen. The country grew moreand more restless, and it was plain to all who could read the signs ofthe times that, unless discontent was in some way allayed, a rebellionwas sure to break out. In 1798 this long foreseen calamity occurred, butbefore it did so, Grattan had retired heart-broken and despairing intoprivate life. 

He re-emerged to plead, vehemently but fruitlessly, against the Unionwhich was passed the following spring. As will be seen, when we reachthat period the fashion in which that act was carried made it difficultfor an honourable man, however loyal--and no man, it must be repeated, was more steadily loyal than Henry Grattan--to give it his support. Hebelieved too firmly that Ireland could work out its own destiny best bythe aid of a separate Parliament, and to this opinion he throughout hislife clung. In his own words, "The two countries from their size muststand together--united _quoad_ nature--distinct _quoad_ legislation. "

In 1805 he became a member of the English Parliament, where unlikeFlood, his eloquence had almost as much effect as in Ireland, and wherehe was regarded by all parties with the deepest respect and regard. Hisheart, however, remained firmly anchored to its old home, and all hisrecollections in his old age centred around these earlier struggles. Hedied in 1820, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. One more quotationfrom Sydney Smith sums up the man for us in a few words: "The highestattainments of human genius were within his reach, but he thought thenoblest occupation of a man was to make other men happy and free, and inthat straight line he kept for fifty years, without one side-look, oneyielding thought, one motive in his heart which might not have laid opento the view of God or man. " A generation which produced two such men asHenry Grattan and Edmund Burke might well be looked back to by anycountry in the world as the flower and crown of its national life. Therehave not been many greater or better in the whole chequered history ofthe human race. 

L. 

THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS. 

The revolt of the English Colonies in America, although it evoked nodisloyalty, had a strong and unforeseen influence upon the equallyEnglish colony in Ireland. It would have been strange had it not doneso. The circumstances of the two colonies--looking at Ireland merely inthat light--were in many respects all but identical. If England couldtax America without the consent of its representatives, then, equally itcould tax Ireland, in which case the long struggles lately waged byFlood, Grattan, and others in the Irish Parliament over Money Billswould be definitely decided against it. Compared to Ireland, Americaindeed had little to complain of. The restrictions which held back Irishcommerce still existed in almost all their pristine force. The woollentrade, save for some very trifling home consumption, was practicallydead; even the linen trade, which had been promised encouragement, hadhitherto hardly received any. Bounties had been offered, on thecontrary, to English woollen manufacturers, and duties levied on Irishsail-cloth, which had effectually put a stop to that important branch ofthe trade. Another cause had also affected commerce seriously. Themanufacturers of the north, were almost to a man Presbyterian, and thelaws against Presbyterians had been pressed with almost as much severityas against Catholics. Under the rule of Archbishops Boulter, Hoadly, andStone, who had in succession governed the country, the Test Act had beenemployed with a suicidal severity, which had driven thousands ofindustrious men to join their brethren in America, where they couldworship in peace, and where their presence was before long destined toproduce a formidable effect upon the impending struggle. 

The whole condition of the country was miserable in the extreme. Agriculture was at the lowest possible ebb. The Irish farmers, excludedfrom the English and all foreign markets, were reduced to destitution. Land was offered at fourteen and twelve years' purchase, and even atthose prices found no buyers. Many of the principal landowners wereabsentees, and though the rents themselves do not seem as a rule to havebeen high, the middlemen, by whom the land was commonly taken, groundthe wretched peasants under them to powder with their exactions. Whileeverything else was thus steadily shrinking, the pension list wasswelling until it stood not far short of £100, 000. The additional troopsrecently raised in Ireland had been sent to America, and their absencehad left the country all but defenceless. In 1779, an attempt was madeto carry out a levy of militia, in which Prostestants only were to beenrolled, and an Act passed for the purpose. It failed utterly, for somiserably bankrupt was the condition of the Irish Government, that itwas found impossible to collect money to pay the men, and the scheme inconsequence had to be given up. 

It proved, however, to be the parent of a really successful one. In thesame year a volunteer movement sprang into sudden existence. Belfast hadbeen left empty of troops, and was hourly in fear of a French descent, added to which it was harassed by the dread of a famous pirate of theperiod, called Paul Jones. Under these circumstances its citizensresolved to enrol themselves for their own defence. The idea, oncestarted, flew through the country like wild-fire. The old fightingspirit sprang to sudden life at the cry to arms. After three-quarters ofa century of torpor all was stir and animation. In every direction thegentry were enrolling their tenants, the sons of the great housesofficering the corps and drilling their own retainers. Merchants, peers, members of Parliament all vied with one another, and in a few months'time nearly 60, 000 men had been enrolled. 

Although a good deal alarmed at the rapidity of this movement, theGovernment could not very well refuse to let the country arm in its owndefence, and 16, 000 stand of arms, which had been brought over for theprojected militia, were after a while distributed. The greatest pridewas felt in the completeness and perfection of the equipments. Reviewswere held, and, for once, national sentiment and loyalty seemed to havestruck hands. 

[Illustration: JAMES CAULFIELD, EARL OF CHARLEMONT, COMMANDER OF THEIRISH VOLUNTEERS. (_From an etching after a picture by Hogarth_. )]

Hardly, too, were the volunteers enrolled before it began to be feltwhat a power was thus conferred upon that party which had so longpleaded in vain for the relief of Ireland from those commercialdisabilities under which it still laboured. Although the whole tone ofthe volunteers was loyal, and although their principal leader, LordCharlemont, was a man of the utmost tact and moderation, it was none theless clear that an appeal backed by 60, 000 men in arms acquired a weightand momentum which no previous Irish appeal had ever even approached. 

In October of the same year Parliament met, and an amendment to theaddress was moved by Grattan, demanding a right of free export andimport. Then Flood rose in his place, still holding office, and proposedthat the more comprehensive words Free Trade should be adopted. It wasat once agreed to and carried unanimously. Next day the whole House ofCommons went in a body to present the address to the Lord-Lieutenant, the volunteers lining the streets and presenting arms as they went by. 

The Government were startled. Lord Buckinghamshire, the Lord-Lieutenant, wrote to England to say that the trade restrictions must be repealed, orhe would not answer for the consequences. Lord North, the PrimeMinister, yielded, and a Bill of repeal were brought in, allowingIreland free export and import to foreign countries and to the EnglishColonies. When the news reached Dublin, the utmost delight andexcitement prevailed. Bonfires were lit, houses in Dublin illuminated, the volunteers fired salvoes of rejoicing, and addresses of gratitudewere forthwith forwarded to England. 

The next step in the upward progress has been already partiallydescribed in the chapter dealing with Grattan. At the meeting ofParliament in 1782, the Declaration of Rights proposed by him waspassed, and urgently pressed upon the consideration of the Government. The moment was exceptionally favourable. Lord North's Ministry had bythis time fallen, after probably the most disastrous tenure of officethat had ever befallen any English administration. America had achievedher independence, and England was in no mood for embarking upon freshstruggle with another of her dependencies. In Ireland the Ulstervolunteers had lately met at Dungannon, and passed unanimous resolutionsin favour of Grattan's proposal, and their example had been speedilyfollowed all over Ireland. The Whig Ministry, now in power, was known tobe not unfavourable to the cause which the Irish patriots had at heart. A Bill was brought forward and carried, revoking the recent DeclaratoryActs which bound the Irish Parliament, and giving it the right tolegislate for itself. Poynings' Act was thereupon repealed, and a numberof independent Acts, as already stated, passed by the now emancipatedIrish Parliament. The legislative independence was an accomplished fact. 

The objects of the volunteers' existence was now over. The American warwas at an end, the independence of the Parliament assured, and it wasfelt therefore, by all moderate men, that it was now time for them todisband. Flood, who had now again joined the patriotic party, wasstrongly opposed to this. He pressed forward his motion for "simplerepeal, " and was supported by Lord Bristol, the Bishop of Derry, ascatter-brained prelate, who had been bitten by a passion for militaryglory, and would have been perfectly willing to see the whole countryplunged into bloodshed. A better and more reasonable plea on Flood'spart was that reform was the crying necessity of the hour, and ought tobe carried while the volunteers were still enrolled, and the effectalready produced by their presence was still undiminished. Grattan alsodesired reform, but held that the time for carrying it was not yet ripe. A vehement debate ensued, and bitter recriminations were exchanged. Aconvention of volunteers was at the moment being held in Dublin, andFlood endeavoured to make use of their presence there to get his ReformBill passed. This the House regarded as a menace, and after a violentdebate his Bill was thrown out. There was a moment during which itseemed as if the volunteers were about to try the question by force ofarms. More prudent counsels, however, prevailed, and, greatly to theircredit, they consented a week later to lay down their arms, and retirepeaceably to their own homes. 

LI. 

DANGER SIGNALS. 

The significant warnings uttered by Flood and others against the dangerof postponing reform until the excitement temporarily awakened upon thesubject had subsided and the volunteers disbanded, proved, unfortunately, to be only too well justified. Where Flood, however, haderred, had been in failing to see that a reform which left three-fourthsof the people of the country unrepresented, could never be more than areform in name. This error Grattan never made. During the next ten ortwelve years, his efforts were steadily and continually directed toobtaining equal political power for all his fellow-countrymen alike. Reform was indeed the necessity of the hour. The corruption ofParliament was increasing rather than diminishing. From 130 to 140 ofits members were tied by indissoluble knots to the Government, and couldonly vote as by it directed. Most of these were the nominees of theborough-owners; many held places or enjoyed pensions terminable at thepleasure of the king, and at the smallest sign of insubordination orindependence instant pressure was brought to bear upon them until theyreturned to their obedience. 

Although free now to import and export from the rest of the world nochange with regard to Ireland's commercial intercourse with GreatBritain had as yet taken place. In 1785, a number of propositions weredrawn up by the Dublin Parliament, to enable the importation of goodsthrough Great Britain into Ireland, or _vice versa_, without anyincrease of duty. These propositions were agreed to by Pitt, then PrimeMinister, and were brought forward by him in the English House ofCommons. Again, however, commercial jealousy stepped in. A number ofEnglish towns remonstrated vehemently; one petition despatched to theHouse alone bearing the signature of 80, 000 Lancashire manufacturers. "Greater panic, " it was said at the time, "could not have been expressedhad an invasion been in question. " The result was, that a number ofmodifications were made to the propositions, and when returned toIreland, so profoundly had they been altered, that the patriotic partyrefused to accept them, and although when the division came on, theGovernment obtained a majority it was so small that the Bill was allowedto drop, and thus the whole scheme came to nothing. 

Outside Parliament, meanwhile, the country was in a very disturbedstate. Long before this local riots and disturbances had broken out, especially in the south. As early as 1762, secret societies, known underthe generic name of Whiteboys, had inspired terror throughout Munster, especially in the counties of Cork, Limerick, and Tipperary. Theserisings, as has been clearly proved by Mr. Lecky, had little, if any, connection with either politics or religion. Their cause lay, as heshows, on the very surface, in the all but unendurable misery in whichthe great mass of the people were sunk. 

[Illustration: RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. (_From an engraving by Jonesafter Romney_. )]

Lord Chesterfield, one of the few Lord-Lieutenants who had reallyattempted to understand Ireland, had years before spoken inunmistakeable language on this point. Subletting was almost universal, three or four persons standing often between the landowner and theactual occupier, the result being that the condition of the latter wasone of chronic semi-starvation. So little was disloyalty at the root ofthe matter, that in a contemporary letter, written by Robert Fitzgerald, the Knight of Kerry, it is confidently asserted that, were a recruitingofficer to be sent to the district, the people would gladly flock to thestandard of the king, although, he significantly adds, "it seems to meequally certain that if the enemy effects a landing within a hundredmiles of these people, they will most assuredly join them[16]. "

The tithe system was another all but unendurable burden, and it wasagainst the tithe proctors that the worst of the Whiteboy outrages werecommitted. That these outrages had little directly to say to religionis, however, clear, from the fact that the tithe system was nearly asmuch detested by the Protestant landowners as by their tenants. In thenorth risings of a somewhat similar character had broken out chieflyamongst Protestants of the lower classes, who gathered themselves intobands under the name of "Oak boys" and "Steel boys. " The grievances ofwhich they complained being, however, for the most part after a whilerepealed, they gradually dispersed, and were heard of no more. In thesouth it was otherwise, and the result has been that Whiteboyconspiracies continued, under different names, to be a terror to thecountry, and have so continued down to our own day. 

[16] "History of England in the Eighteenth Century, " vol. Iv. P. 340. 

As long as the volunteers remained embodied there was an all butcomplete cessation of these local disturbances, but upon theirdisbandment they broke out with renewed force. Many too of thevolunteers themselves, who, although disbanded, retained their arms, began to fall under new influences, and to lose their earlierreputation. "What had originally, " in Grattan's words, "been the armedproperty of Ireland, was becoming its armed beggary. " A violentsectarian spirit, too, was beginning to show itself afresh, although asyet chiefly amongst the lowest and most ignorant classes. A furiousfaction war had broken out in the North of Ireland, between Protestantsand Roman Catholics. The former had made an association known as the"Peep-of-day boys, " to which the latter had responded by one called the"Defenders. " In 1795 a regular battle was fought between the two, andthe "Defenders" were defeated with the loss of many lives. The same yearsaw the institution of Orange Lodges spring into existence, and spreadrapidly over the north. Amongst the more educated classes a stronglyrevolutionary feeling was beginning to spread, especially in Belfast. The passionate sympathy of the Presbyterians for America had awakened avehemently republican spirit, and the rising tide of revolution inFrance, found a loudly reverberating echo in Ireland, especially amongstthe younger men. In 1791 in Belfast, the well-known "Society of UnitedIrishmen" came into existence and its leaders were eager to combine thisdemocratic movement in the north with the recently reconstructed RomanCatholic committee in Dublin. All these, it is plain, were elements ofdanger which required careful watching. The one hope, the one necessity, as all who were not blinded by passion or prejudice saw plainly, lay ina reformed Parliament--one which would represent, no longer a section, but the whole community. To combine to procure this, and to sink allreligious differences in the common weal, was the earnest desire of allwho genuinely cared for their country, whether within or without theParliament. Of this programme, the members even of the United Irishmenwere, in the first instance, ardent exponents, and their demands, ostensibly at least, extended no further. In the words of the oathadministered to new members, they desired to forward "an identity ofinterests, a communion of rights, and a union amongst Irishmen of allreligious persuasions, without which every reform in Parliament must bepartial, not national, inadequate to the wants, delusive to the wishes, and insufficient for the freedom and happiness of the country. "

LII. 

THE FITZWILLIAM DISAPPOINTMENT. 

The eagerness shown at this time by the principal Irish Protestants togive full emancipation to their Roman Catholic countrymen is eminentlycreditable to them, and stands in strong relief to the bitterness onboth sides, both in earlier and latter times. By 1792 there seems tohave been something almost like unanimity on the subject. What readsstrangest perhaps to our ears, 600 Belfast Protestant householderswarmly pressed the motion on the Government. In a work, published sixyears earlier, Lord Sheffield, though himself opposed to emancipation, puts this unanimity in unmistakable words. "It is curious, " he says, "toobserve one-fifth or one-sixth of a nation in possession of all thepower and property of the country, eager to communicate that power tothe remaining four-fifths, which would, in effect, entirely transfer itfrom themselves. "

[Illustration: ("A man of importance. ") THE EARL OF MOIRA. _ByGillray_. ]

The generation to which Flood, Lucas, and Lord Charlemont had belonged, and who were almost to a man opposed to emancipation, was fast passingaway, and amongst the more independent men of the younger generationthere were few who had not been won over to Grattan's view of thematter. In England, too, circumstances were beginning to push many, evenof those hitherto bitterly hostile to concession, in the same direction. The growing terror of the French Revolution had loosened the bonds ofthe party, and the hatred which existed between the Jacobins and theCatholic clerical party, inclined the Government to extend the olivebranch to the latter in hopes of thereby securing their support. Pittwas personally friendly to emancipation, and in December, 1792, adeputation of five delegates from the Catholic convention in Dublin wasgraciously received by the king himself, and returned under theimpression that all religious disabilities were forthwith to beabolished. Next month, January, 1793, at the meeting of the IrishParliament, a Bill was brought in giving the right of voting to allCatholic forty-shilling freeholders, and throwing open also to Catholicsthe municipal franchise in the towns. Although vehemently opposed by theAscendency, this Bill, being supported by the Opposition, passed easilyand received the royal assent upon April 9th. 

It was believed to be only an instalment of full and free emancipationsoon to follow. In 1794, several of the more moderate Whigs, includingEdmund Burke and Lord Fitzwilliam, left Fox, and joined Pitt. One of theobjects of the Whig members of this new coalition was the admission ofIrish Roman Catholics to equal rights with their Protestantfellow-country men. To this Pitt at first demurred, but in the endagreed to grant it subject to certain stipulations, and Lord Fitzwilliamwas accordingly appointed Lord-Lieutenant, and arrived in Ireland inJanuary, 1795. 

His appointment awakened the most vehement and widely expressed delight. He was known to be a warm supporter of emancipation. He was a personalfriend of Grattan's, and a man in whom all who had the interests oftheir country at heart believed that they could confide. He had himselfdeclared emphatically that he would "never have taken office unless theRoman Catholics were to be relieved from every disqualification. " He wasreceived in Dublin with enthusiastic rejoicings. Loyal addresses fromRoman Catholics poured in from every part of Ireland. Large supplieswere joyfully voted by the Irish Parliament, and, although he reportedin a letter to the Duke of Portland that the disaffection amongst thelower orders was very great, on the other hand the better educated ofthe Roman Catholics were loyal to a man. For the moment the party ofdisorder seemed indeed to have vanished. Grattan, though he refused totake office, gave all the great weight of his support to the Government, and obtained leave to bring in an Emancipation Bill with hardly adissentient voice. The extreme Jacobine party ceased apparently for themoment to have any weight in the country. Revolution seemed to bescotched, and the dangers into which Ireland had been seen awhile beforeto be rapidly hastening, appeared to have passed away. 

Suddenly all was changed. On February 12th, leave to bring in a Bill forthe admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament was moved by Grattan. OnFebruary 9th, a letter reached Lord Fitzwilliam from Pitt, which showedthat some changes had taken place in the intentions of the Government, but no suspicion of the extent of those changes was as yet entertained. On February 23rd, however, the Duke of Portland wrote, "by the king'scommand, " authorizing Lord Fitzwilliam to resign. The law officers andother officials who had been displaced were thereupon restored to theirformer places. Grattan's Bill was hopelessly lost, and all the elementsof rebellion and disaffection at once began to seethe and ferment again. 

What strikes one most in studying these proceedings is the curious follyof the whole affair! Why was a harbinger of peace sent if only to beimmediately recalled? Why were the hopes of the Roman Catholics, of thewhole country in fact, raised to the highest pitch of expectation, ifonly that they might be dashed to the ground? Pitt no doubt had a verydifficult part to play. George III. Was all his life vehemently opposedto the admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament. Two of the officialswhom Fitzwilliam had dismissed, Cooke, the Under Secretary of State, andBeresford, the Chief Commissioner of Customs, were men of no littleinfluence, and Beresford, immediately upon his arrival in England hadhad a personal interview with the king. That Pitt knew how critical wasthe situation in Ireland is certain. He was not, however, prepared toresign office, and short of that step it was impossible to bringsufficient pressure to bear upon the king's obstinacy. His ownpreference ran strongly towards a Union of the two countries, and withthis end in view, he is often accused of having been cynicallyindifferent as to what disasters and horrors Ireland might be destinedto wade through to that consummation. This it is difficult to conceive;nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the rising of four years laterdated from this decision, and was almost as directly due to it as if thelatter had been planned with that object. 

From this point the stream runs darkly and steadily to the end. LordFitzwilliam's departure was regarded by Protestants and Catholics alikeas a national calamity. In Dublin shops were shut; people put onmourning, and his carriage was followed to the boat by lamenting crowds. Grattan's Bill was of course lost, and the exasperation of the Catholicsrendered tenfold by the disappointment. "The demon of darkness, " it wassaid, "could not have done more mischief had he come from hell to throwa fire-brand amongst the people. "

Henceforward the Irish Parliament drops away into all but completeinsignificance. After two or three abortive efforts to again bringforward reform, Grattan gave up the hopeless attempt, and retiredbroken-hearted from public life. The "United Irishmen, " in the firstinstance an open political body, inaugurated and chiefly supported byProtestants, now rapidly changed its character. Its leaders were now allat heart republicans, and thoroughly impregnated with the leaven of theFrench Revolution. It was suppressed and apparently broken up by theGovernment in 1795, but was almost immediately afterwards reconstructedand re-organized upon an immense scale. Every member was bound to takean oath of secrecy, and its avowed object had become the erection byforce of a republican form of Government in Ireland. The rebellion wasbound to come now, and only accident could decide how soon. 

[Illustration: RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. _(From a sketch from life. )_]

LIII. 

'NINETY-EIGHT. 

It was not long delayed. The Society of United Irishmen had now grown tobe little more than a mere nest of Jacobinism, filled with all theturbulent and disaffected elements afloat in the whole country. Of thissociety Wolfe Tone was the creator, guide, and moving spirit. Any onewho wishes to understand the movement rather as it originally took shapethan in the form which it assumed when accident had deprived it of allits leaders, should carefully study his autobiography. As he reads itstransparent pages, brimful of all the foolish, generous enthusiasms ofthe day, he will find it not a little hard, I think, to avoid someamount of sympathy with the man, however much he may, and probably will, reprobate the cause which he had so at heart. 

Amongst the other leaders of the rising were Lord Edward Fitzgerald, abrother of the Duke of Leinster, Arthur O'Connor, a nephew of LordLongueville, Thomas Addis Emmett, elder brother of the better knownRobert Emmett--whose attempted rebellion in 1803, was a sort ofpostscript to this earlier one--and the two Sheare brothers. Compared toWolfe Tone, however, all these were mere amateurs in insurrection, andpale and shadowy dabblers in rebellion. Lord Edward was an amiablewarm-hearted visionary, high-minded and gallant, but without muchballast, and to a great degree under the guidance of others. Themainspring of the whole movement, as has been seen, was Protestant andNorthern, and now that all hope of constitutional reform was gone, itwas resolved to appeal openly to force and to call in the aid of theenemies of England to assist in the coming struggle. 

Insane as the idea appears, looked back at from this distance, itevidently was not viewed in the same light by those at hand. England andFrance, it must be remembered, were at fierce war, and a descent uponthe Irish coast was then, as afterwards by Napoleon, regarded as anatural and obvious part of the aggressive policy of the latter. In thesummer of 1796 Lord Edward Fitzgerald went to Paris to open negotiationswith the French Directory, and there met Wolfe Tone, who had beeninduced some time before to leave Ireland in order to avoid arrest. LordEdward's Orleanist connection proving a bar to his negotiations, he leftParis, and the whole of the arrangements devolved into the latter'shand. He so fired Carnot, one of the Directory, and still more GeneralHoche, with a belief of the feasibility of his scheme of descent, that, in December of the same year a French fleet of forty-three vesselscontaining fifteen thousand troops were actually despatched underHoche's command, Wolfe Tone being on board of one of them, whichvessels, slipping past the English fleet in the Channel, bore down uponthe Irish coast, and suddenly appeared off Cape Clear. 

[Illustration: THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. _(From a lithograph after a sketchby Hullmandel_. )]

All Ireland was thrown into the wildest panic. There were only a smallbody of troops in the south and not a war-ship upon the coast. Thepeasantry of the district, it is true, showed no disposition to rise, but for all that had the French landed, nothing could have hindered themfrom marching upon the capital. But--"those ancient and unsubsidisedallies of England upon which English ministers depend as much for savingkingdoms as washerwomen for drying clothes, "--the winds again stood trueto their ancient alliance. The vessel with Hoche on board got separatedfrom the rest of the fleet, and while the troops were waiting for him toarrive a violent gale accompanied with snow suddenly sprang up. Thefleet moved on to Bear Island, and tried to anchor there, but the stormincreased, the shelter was insufficient, the vessels dragged theiranchors, were driven out to sea and forced to return to Brest. The shipcontaining Hoche had before this been forced to put back to France, andso ended the first and by far the most formidable of the perils whichthreatened England under this new combination. 

One very unfortunate result of the narrowness of this escape was thatthe Irish Executive--stung by the sense of their own supineness, andutterly scared by the recent peril--threw themselves into the mostviolent and arbitrary measures of repression. The Habeas Corpus Act hadalready been suspended, and now martial law was proclaimed in five ofthe northern counties at once. The committee of the United Irishmen wasseized, the office of their organ _The Northern Star_ destroyed, and animmense number of people hurried into gaol. What was much more seriousthroughout the proclaimed districts, the soldiery and militia regimentswhich had been brought over from England were kept under no discipline, but were allowed to ill-use the population almost at their owndiscretion. Gross excesses were committed, whole villages being in someinstances plundered and the people turned adrift, while half hangings, floggings and picketings, were freely resorted to to extort confessionsof concealed arms. 

Against these measures--so calculated to precipitate a rising, and bywhich the innocent and well-disposed suffered no less than theguilty--Grattan, Ponsonby, and other members of the Opposition protestedvehemently. They also drew up and laid before the House a Bill of reformwhich, if passed, would, they pledged themselves, effectually allay theagitation and content all but the most irreconcilable. Their efforts, however, were utterly vain. Many of the members of the House of Commonswere themselves in a state of panic, and therefore impervious toargument. The motion was defeated by an enormous majority, a generalelection was close at hand, and feeling the fruitlessness of furtherstruggle Grattan, as already stated, refused to offer himself forre-election, and retired despairingly from the scene. 

The commander-in-chief, Lord Carhampton and his subordinate General Lakewere the two men directly responsible for the misconduct of the troopsin Ireland. So disgraceful had become the license allowed that loudcomplaints were made in both the English Houses of Parliament, inconsequence of which Lord Carhampton was recalled and Sir RalphAbercromby sent in his place. He more than endorsed the worst of theaccounts which had been forwarded. "Every cruelty that could becommitted by Cossacks or Calmucks, " he states, "has been committedhere. " "The manner in which the troops have been employed would ruin, "he adds, "the best in Europe. " He at once set himself to change thesystem, to keep the garrison in the principal towns, and to forbid thetroops acting except under the immediate direction of a magistrate. TheIrish Executive however was in no mood to submit to these prudentrestrictions. Angry disputes broke out. Lord Camden, theLord-Lieutenant, vacillated from side to side, and the end was that inApril, 1797, Sir Ralph Abercromby indignantly resigned the command, which then fell into General Lake's hands, and matters again went onas before. 

Meanwhile the failure of the French descent under Hoche, and the defeatof the Dutch fleet at the battle of Camperdown in the autumn of 1797, had determined Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the other chiefs of theexecutive committee to attempt an independent rising. Wolfe Tone wasstill in France, eagerly endeavouring to bring about a fresh expedition, so that their councils had not even the advantage of his guidance. TheGovernment had full information of all their proceedings, being keptwell informed by spies, several of whom were actually enrolled in theassociation. In March, 1798, a sudden descent was made upon theexecutive committee, which had met at the house of a man called Bond, and a number of delegates and several leaders arrested. Lord Edward, however, received warning and went into concealment, and it was while inhiding that he hastily concerted a scheme for a general rising, whichwas now definitely fixed to take place upon the 24th of May. 

[Illustration: LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. _(After a picture by Hamilton. )_]

Only a few days before this date his hiding-place was betrayed to theGovernment by a man named Magan. A guard of soldiers was sent to arresthim, and a desperate struggle took place, in the course of which thecaptain of the guard was fatally stabbed, while Lord Edward himselfreceived a bullet on the shoulder from the effects of which he shortlyafterwards died in goal. Within a day or two of his arrest all the otherleaders in Dublin were also seized and thrown into prison. 

The whole of the executive committee were thus removed at one blow, andthe conspiracy left without head. In estimating the hideous characterfinally assumed by the rising this fact must never be forgotten. Thesickening deeds committed while it was at its height were committed by amass of ignorant men, maddened by months of oppression, and deprived oftheir leaders at the very moment they most required their control. 

In the meantime the 24th of May had come, and the rising had broken out. The non-arrival of the daily mail-coaches was to be the signal, andthese were stopped and burnt by the insurgents in four differentdirections at once. In Kildare and Meath scattered parties of soldiersand yeomanry were attacked and killed, and at Prosperous the barrackswere set on fire, and the troops quartered in it all burnt or piked. InDublin prompt measures had been taken, and the more loyal citizens hadenrolled themselves for their own defence, so that no rising took placethere, the result being that the outlying insurgents found themselvesisolated. In the north especially, where the whole movement had takenits rise, and where the revolutionists had long been organized, theactual rising was thus of very trifling importance, and the whole thingwas easily stamped out within a week. 

It was very different in Wexford. Here from the beginning the rising hadassumed a religious shape, and was conducted with indescribablebarbarity. Yeomanry corps and bodies of militia had been quartered inthe county for months, and many acts of tyranny had been committed. These were now hideously avenged. Several thousand men and women, armedchiefly with pikes and scythes, collected together on the hill of Oulartunder the guidance of a priest named Father John Murphy. They wereattacked by a small party of militia from Wexford, but defeating them, burst into Ferns, where they burnt the bishop's palace, then hastened onto Enniscorthy, which they took possession of, and a few days afterwardsappeared before the town of Wexford. 

Here resistance was at first offered them by Colonel Maxwell, who was incommand of the militia regiments. Nearly all the Roman Catholics, however under his orders deserted, the rest grew disorganized and fled, and the end was that the militia departed and the rebels took possessiontriumphantly of the town. It at once became the scene of horribleoutrages. Houses were plundered; many of the Protestant citizensmurdered; others dragged from their homes, and cruelly maltreated. Bagenal Harvey, a United Irishman and a Protestant, who had beenimprisoned at Wexford by the Government, was released and electedgeneral of the rebels. He found himself, however, utterly unable tocontrol them. A camp had been formed upon Vinegar Hill, near. Enniscorthy, and from it as a centre the whole district was overrun, with the exception of New Ross, where most of the available troops hadbeen concentrated. The wretched Protestants, kept prisoners on VinegarHill, were daily taken out in batches, and slaughtered in cold blood, while at Scullabogue, after an unsuccessful attempt on the part of therebels to take New Ross, the most frightful episode of the whole risingoccurred; a barn containing over a hundred and eighty Protestantloyalists collected from the country round being set on fire, and all ofthem perishing in the flames. 

In the meanwhile troops were rapidly arriving from Dublin. Arklow andNew Ross had defended themselves gallantly, and the rebels had fallenback from them repulsed. Vinegar Hill was attacked upon June 21st byGeneral Lake, and after a struggle the rebels fled precipitately, andwere slaughtered in great numbers. The day before this Father Roche andthe rebels under him were met outside Wexford and also put to flightafter hard fighting. Inside the town a horrible butchery was the sameday perpetrated by a body of ruffians upon over ninety Protestantprisoners, who were slaughtered with great cruelty upon the bridgeleading to New Ross, and only the passionate intervention of a priestnamed Corrin hindered the deaths of many more. 

With the recapture of Wexford and Vinegar Hill the struggle ended. Suchof the rebels as had escaped the infuriated soldiery fled to hidethemselves in Wicklow and elsewhere. Father Michael Murphy--believed byhis followers to be bullet proof--had been already killed during theattack on Arklow. Father Roche was hung by Lake's order over the bridgeat Wexford, the scene of the late massacres. So also was the unfortunateBagenal Harvey, the victim rather than the accomplice of the crimes ofothers. Father John Murphy was caught and hung at Tallow, as were alsoother priests in different parts of the country. The rising had beenjust long enough, and just formidable enough, to awaken the utmostterror and the most furious thirst for vengeance, yet not formidableenough to win respect for itself from a military point of view. As aresult the retribution exacted was terrible; the scenes of violencewhich followed being upon a scale which went far to cause even theexcesses committed by the rebels themselves to pale into insignificance. 

Two final incidents, either of which a few months earlier might haveproduced formidable results, brings the dismal story to an end. InAugust, just after the rising had been definitely stamped out, GeneralHumbert with a little over a thousand French troops under his commandlanded at Killala, where he was joined, if hardly reinforced, by a wildmob of unarmed peasants. From Killala he advanced to Ballina, defeatedGeneral Lake, who was sent against him, and moved on to Sligo. Shortlyafterwards, however, he found himself, after crossing the Shannon, confronted with an overwhelming force under Lord Cornwallis, who hadrecently succeeded Lord Camden, and held double offices ofLord-Lieutenant and Commander-in-chief. Yielding to the inevitable, Humbert surrendered at discretion, and he and his men were received withdue courtesy as prisoners of war. The account given by the bishop ofKillala who was kept prisoner while that town was occupied by theFrench, will be found to be extremely well worth reading. 

The last scene of the drama brings Wolfe Tone appropriately back uponthe gloomy stage. When General Humbert sailed for Killala a much largerFrench force under General Hardi had remained behind at Brest. InSeptember this second detachment sailed, Wolfe Tone being on board theprincipal vessel called the _Hoche_. Outside Lough Swilly they wereovertaken by an English squadron, and a desperate struggle ensued. Thesmaller French vessels escaped, but the _Hoche_ was so riddled with shotand shell as to be forced to surrender, and was towed by the victorsinto Lough Swilly. Here the French officers including Wolfe Tone werehospitably entertained at dinner by Lord Cavan. While at table Tone wasrecognized by an old school friend, and was at once arrested and sentprisoner to Dublin. A court martial followed, and despite his own pleato be regarded as a French officer, and therefore, if condemned shot, hewas sentenced to be hung. In despair he tried to kill himself in prison, but the wound though fatal, was not immediately so, and the sentencewould have been carried rigorously out but for the intervention ofCurran, who moved for a writ of Habeas Corpus on the plea that as thecourts of law were then sitting in Dublin, a court martial had nojurisdiction. The plea was a mere technicality, but it produced therequired delay, and Wolfe Tone died quietly in prison. 

LIV. 

THE UNION. 

By the month of August the last sparks of the rebellion of '98 had beenquenched. Martial law prevailed everywhere. The terror which the risinghad awakened was finding its vent in violent actions and still moreviolent language, and Lord Cornwallis, the Lord-Lieutenant, was one ofthe few who ventured to say that enough blood had been shed, and thatthe hour for mercy had struck. The ferocity with which the end of thecontest had been waged by the rebels had aroused a feeling ofcorresponding, or more than corresponding ferocity on the other side. That men who a few months before had trembled to see all whom they lovedbest exposed to the savagery of such a mob as had set fire to the barnat Scullabogue, or murdered the prisoners at Rossbridge, should havebeen filled with a fury which carried them far beyond the necessities ofthe case is hardly perhaps surprising, but the result was to hurry themin many instances into cruelties fully as great as those which theyintended to avenge. 

It was at this moment, while the country was still racked and bleedingat every pore from the effects of the recent struggle, that Pittresolved to carry out his long projected plan of a legislative Union. Public opinion in Ireland may be said for the moment to have been dead. The mass of the people were lying crushed and exhausted by their ownviolence. Fresh from a contest waged with gun and pike and torch, a mereconstitutional struggle had probably little or no interest for them. Thepopular enthusiasm which the earlier triumphs of the Irish Parliamenthad awakened had all but utterly died away in a fratricidal struggle. Tothe leaders of the late rebellion it was an object of open contempt, ifnot indeed of actual aversion. Wolfe Tone, the ablest man by far on therevolutionary side, had never weaned of pouring contempt upon it. In hiseyes it was the great opponent of progress, the venal slave which hadnot only destroyed the chances of a successful outbreak, and whoseendeavour had been to keep Ireland under the heel of her tyrant. To himthe opposition as little deserved the name of patriot as the veriestplace-men. Grattan, throughout his long and noble career had been assteadily loyal, and as steadily averse to any appeal to force as anypaid creature of the Government. To men who only wanted to break loosefrom England altogether, to found an Irish republic as closely aspossible upon the model then offered for their imitation in France, anything like mere constitutional opposition seemed not contemptiblemerely, but ridiculous. 

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE FOUR COURTS, DUBLIN, FINISHED THE YEAR OF THEUNION, 1800. ]

This explains how it was that no great burst of public feeling--such asa few years before would have made the project of a Union all butimpossible--was now to be feared. Pitt had for a long time firmly fixedhis mind upon it as the object to be attained. He honestly believed theexisting state of things to be fraught with peril for England, and tohave in it formidable elements of latent danger, which a war or anyother sudden emergency might bring to the front. He knew too, undoubtedly, that no opportunity equally favourable for carrying hispoint was ever likely to recur again. 

He accordingly now proceeded to take his measures for securing it withthe utmost care, and the most anxious selection of agents. Two oppositesets of inducements were to be brought to bear upon the two contendingfactions. To the Protestants, fresh from their terrible struggle, thethought of a closer union with England seemed to promise greaterprotection in case of any similar outbreak. Irish churchmen too had beenalways haunted with a dread sooner or later of the disestablishment oftheir Church, and a union, it was argued, with a country whereProtestants constituted the vast majority of the population, wouldrender that peril for ever impossible, and it was agreed that a specialclause to that effect should be incorporated in the Act of Union. To theRoman Catholics a totally different set of inducements were broughtforward. The great bait was Emancipation, which they were privatelyassured would never be carried as long as the Irish Parliament existed, but might safely be conceded once it had ceased to exist. No actualpledge was made to that effect, but there was unquestionably anunderstanding, and Lord Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary, was untiringin his efforts to lull them into security upon this point. 

So much discrepancy of statement still prevails upon the whole subjectthat it is extremely difficult to ascertain what really was theprevailing sentiment in Ireland at this time for and against the projectof a Union. In Ulster the proposal seems certainly to have been all butunanimously condemned, and in Dublin, too, the opposition to it wasvehement and unhesitating, but in other parts of the country it seems tohave met with some support, especially in Galway and Tipperary. InJanuary, 1799, Parliament met, and the proposal was brought forward in aspeech from the throne, but encountered a violent opposition from allthe remaining members of the patriotic party. Grattan, who had returnedto Parliament for the express purpose, eloquently defended the rights ofthe Irish legislature, and was supported by Sir John Parnell, byPlunkett, and by all the more prominent members of the opposition. Aftera debate which lasted nearly twenty-two hours, a division was called, and the numbers were found to be equal; another fierce struggle, andthis time the Government were beaten by five; thus the proposal for thetime was lost. 

Not for long though. Pitt had thoroughly made up his mind, and was benton carrying his point to a successful issue. Most of those who had votedagainst the Union were dismissed from office, and after the prorogationof Parliament, the Government set to work with a determination to securea majority before the next session. There was only one means ofeffecting this, and that means was now employed. Eighty-fiveboroughs--all of which were in the hands of private owners--would losetheir members if a Union were passed, and all these, accordingly, it wasresolved to compensate, and no less than a million and a quarter ofmoney was actually advanced for that purpose, while for owners lesseasily reached by this means peerages, baronetcies, steps in thepeerage, and similar inducements, were understood to be forthcoming asan equivalent. 

It is precisely at this point that controversy grows hottest, and whereit becomes hardest, therefore, to see a clear way between contendingstatements, which seem to meet and thrust one another, as it were at thevery sword's point. That the sale of parliamentary seats--so shocking toour reformed eyes--was not regarded in the same light at the date of theIrish Union is certain, and in questions of ethics contemporary judgmentis the first and most important point to be considered. The sale of aborough carried with it no more necessary reprobation then than did thesale of a man, say, in Jamaica or Virginia. Boroughs were bought andsold in open market, and many of them had a recognized price, so muchfor the current session, so much more if in perpetuity. We must tryclearly to realize this, in order to approach the matter fairly, and, asfar as possible, to put the ugly word "bribery" out of our thoughts, atall events not allow it to carry them beyond the actual facts of thecase. Pitt, there is no question, had resolved to carry his point, butwe have no right to assume that he wished to carry it by corrupt means, and the fact that those who opposed it were to be indemnified for theirseats no less than those who promoted it, makes so far strongly inhis favour. 

On the other hand, the impression which any given transaction leavesupon the generation which has actually witnessed it is rarely entirelywrong, and that the impression produced by the carrying of the IrishUnion--almost equally upon its friends and its foes--was, to put itmildly, unfavourable, few will be disposed to deny. Over and above thisgeneral testimony, we have the actual letters of those who were mainlyinstrumental in carrying it into effect, and it is difficult to readthose of Lord Cornwallis without perceiving that he at least regardedthe task as a repellent one, and one which as an honourable man he wouldgladly have evaded had evasion been possible. It is true that LordCastlereagh, who was associated intimately with him in the enterprise, shows no such reluctance, but then the relative characters of the twomen prevent that circumstance from having quite as much weight as itotherwise might. 

The fact is that the whole affair is still enveloped in such a hedge ofcross-statement and controversy, that in spite of having beeneighty-seven years before the world, it still needs careful elucidation, and the last word upon it has certainly not yet been written. To attemptanything of the sort here would be absurd, so we must be content withsimply following the actual course of events. 

[Illustration: MARQUIS CORNWALLIS. (_Engraved by James Stow from anoriginal drawing by S. D. Koster_. )]

The whole of that memorable summer was spent carrying out the orders ofthe Prime Minister. The Lord-Lieu tenant and the Chief Secretarytravelled in person round Ireland to assist in the canvass, and beforethe Parliament met again the following January, they were able to reportthat they had succeeded. Grattan had been suffering from a severeillness, and was still almost too ill to appear. He came, however, andhis wonted eloquence rose to the occasion. He appealed in the mostmoving and passionate terms against the destruction of the Parliament. Even then there were some who hoped against hope that it might be saved. At the division, however, the Government majority was found to beoverwhelming, only a hundred members voting against it. The assent ofthe Upper House had already been secured, and was known all along to bea mere formality. And so the Union was carried. 

How far it was or was not desirable at the time; how far it was or wasnot indispensable to the safety of both countries; to what extent Pittand in a less degree those who acted under him were or were notblameworthy in the matter--are points which maybe almost indefinitelydiscussed. They were not as blameworthy as they are often assumed tohave been, but it is difficult honestly to see how we are to exoneratethem from blame altogether. The theory that the end justifies the meanshas never been a favourite with honourable men, and some at least of themeans by which the Union of Great Britain and Ireland was carried wouldhave left fatal stains upon the noblest cause that ever yet inspired thebreast of man. Early in the last century Ireland through her Parliamenthad herself proposed a legislative union, and England had rejected herappeal. Had it been accomplished then, or had it been brought about inthe same fashion as that which produced the Union between Scotland andEngland, it might have been accepted as a boon instead of a curse, andin any case could have left no such bitter and rankling memories behindit. It is quite possible, and perfectly logical, for a man to hold thata Union between the two countries was and is to the advantage of both, and yet to desire that when it did come about it had been accomplishedin almost any other conceivable way. 

[Illustration: CRYPT OF CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL. ]

LV. 

O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 

Another century had now dawned, and, like the last, it was heralded inwith great changes in Ireland. More than change, however, is needed forimprovement. "_Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose_" has been saidof French politics, and is at least equally applicable to Irish ones. The Union had not brought union, and the years which followed it werecertainly no great improvement on those that had preceded them. Thegrowth of political institution is not so naturally stable in Irelandthat the lopping down of one such institution tended to make the reststronger or more healthy. It was a tree that had undoubtedly seriousflaws, and whose growing had not been as perfect as it might have been, but it had admittedly borne some good fruit, and might have borne betterhad it been left alone. Anyhow it was gone, and the history of the nexttwenty-nine years is a confused and distracting medley of pettyoutbreaks--that in 1803 of which Robert Emmett was the leader being themost important--and of recurrent acts of repression, out of themonotonous welter of which one great figure presently rises like acolossus, till it comes to dominate the whole scene. 

[Illustration: ROBERT EMMET. (_From a stipple engraving by J. Heath_. )]

At a meeting of Catholic citizens in Dublin in 1800 to protest againstthe Union, Daniel O'Connell, then a young barrister of twenty-six, madehis first public speech, and from that time forward his place as aleader may be said to have been fixed. A Catholic Association had someyears earlier been formed, and of this he soon became the chief figure, and his efforts were continually directed towards the relief of hisco-religionists. In 1815 a proposal had been made by the Government thatCatholic Emancipation should be granted, coupled with a power of veto inthe appointment of Catholic bishops, and to this compromise aconsiderable Catholic party was favourable. Richard Lalor Sheil--next toO'Connell by far the ablest and most eloquent advocate forEmancipation--supported it; even the Pope, Pius VII. , declared that hefelt "no hesitation in conceding it. " O'Connell, however, opposed itvehemently, and so worked up public opinion against it that in the endhe carried his point, and it was agreed that no proposal should beaccepted which permitted any external interference with the CatholicChurch of Ireland. This was his first decisive triumph. 

O'Connell's buoyancy and indomitable energy imparted much of its ownimpulse to a party more dead and dispirited than we who have only knownit in its resuscitated and decidedly dominant state can easily conceive. In 1823 a new Irish Catholic Association was set on foot, of which hewas the visible life and soul. It is curious to note how littleenthusiasm its proceedings seem at first to have awakened, especiallyamongst the priesthood. At a meeting on February 4, 1824, the necessaryquorum of ten members running short, it was only supplied by O'Connellrushing downstairs to the book-shop over which the association met, andactually forcing upstairs two priests whom he accidently found there, and it was by the aid of these unwilling coadjutors that the famousmotion for establishing the "Catholic rent" was carried. No sooner wasthis fund established, however, than it was largely subscribed for allover the country, and in a wonderfully short time the whole priesthoodof Ireland were actively engaged in its service. The sums collected wereto be spent in parliamentary expenses, in the defence of Catholics, andin the cost of meetings. In 1825 the association was suppressed by Actof Parliament, but was hardly dead before O'Connell set about theformation of another, and the defeat of the Beresfords at the electionfor Waterford in 1826 was one of the first symptoms which showed wherethe rising tide was mounting to. 

It was followed two years later by a much more important victory. Although Catholics were excluded from sitting in Parliament the lawwhich forbade their doing so did not preclude their being returned asmembers, and it had long been thought that policy required the electionof some Catholic, if only that the whole anomaly of the situation mightbe brought into the full light of day. An opportunity soon occurred. Mr. Fitzgerald, the member for Clare, having accepted office as President ofthe Board of Trade, he was obliged to appeal to his constituents forre-election, and O'Connell caught at the suggestion made to him ofcontesting the seat. His purpose had hardly been announced before itcreated the wildest excitement all over Ireland. The CatholicAssociation at once granted £5, 000 towards the expenses, and £9, 000 morewas easily raised within a week. In every parish in Clare the priestsaddressed their parishioners from the altar, appealing to them to betrue to the representative of their faith. After a vehement contest, victory declared itself unhesitatingly for O'Connell, who was found tohave polled more than a thousand votes over his antagonist. 

The months which followed were months of the wildest and most feverishexcitement all over Ireland. O'Connell, though he used his "frank, " didnot present himself at the House of Commons. He devoted his whole timeto organizing his co-religionists, who by this time may be said to haveformed one vast army under his direction. In every parish the priestswere his lieutenants. Monster meetings were held in all directions, andit may without exaggeration be said that hardly a Catholic man escapedthe contagion. So universal a demonstration was felt to be irresistible. A sudden perception of the necessity for full and unqualifiedEmancipation sprang up in England. Even the Duke of Wellington bent hishead before the storm. In the king's speech of February, 1829, arevision of the Catholic disabilities was advised. The following monththe Catholic Relief Bill was carried through the House of Commons by amajority of 180, and received the royal assent on the 13th of April. 

Thus the victory was won, and won too without a single shacklingcondition. It was won, moreover, by the efforts of a single individual, almost without support, nay, in several cases against the activeopposition of some who had hitherto been its warmest advocates, a factfor which O'Connell's own violence was undoubtedly largely responsible. This seems to be the place to attempt an analysis of this extraordinaryman, setting down the good and the evil each in their due proportion. The task, however, would in truth be impossible. For good or ill hisfigure is too massive, and would escape our half inch of canvas were weto try and set it there. The best description of him compressible in afew words is Balzac's--"He was the incarnation of an entire people. "Nothing can be truer. Not only was he Irish of the Irish, but Celt ofthe Celts, every quality, every characteristic, good, bad, loveable, orthe reverse which belongs to the type being found in him, only on animmense scale. To the average Irishman of his day he stands as MontBlanc might stand were it set down amongst the Magillicuddy Reeks. Hetowers, that is to say, above his contemporaries not by inches, but bythe head and shoulders. His aims, hopes, enthusiasms were theirs, butthe effective, controlling power was his alone. He had a great cause, and he availed himself greatly of it, and to this and to the magneticand all but magical influence of his personality, that extraordinaryinfluence which he for so many years wielded is no doubt due. 

[Illustration: DANIEL O'CONNELL, M. P. (_From a pen-and-ink sketch byDoyle, in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum_. )]

Two points must be here set down, since both are of great importance tothe future of Ireland, and for both O'Connell is clearlyresponsible--whether we regard them as amongst his merits or thereverse. He first, and as it has been proved permanently, brought thepriest into politics, with the unavoidable result of accentuating thereligious side of the contest and bringing it into a focus. Thebitterness which three generations of the penal code had engenderedonly, in fact, broke out then. The hour of comparative freedom isoften--certainly not alone in Ireland--the hour when the sense of pastoppression first reveals itself in all its intensity, and that bitingconsciousness of being under a social ban which grew up in the lastcentury is hardly even yet extinct there, and certainly was not extinctin O'Connell's time. Another, and an equally important effect, is alsodue to him. He effectually, and as it has proved finally, snapped thattie of feudal feeling which, if weakened, still undoubtedly existed, andwhich was felt towards the landlord of English extraction little lessthan towards the few remaining Celtic ones. The failings of the upperclasses of Ireland of his day, and long before his day, there is no needto extenuate, but it must not in fairness be forgotten that what seemsto our soberer judgment the worst of those failings--their insaneextravagance, their exalted often ludicrously inflated notions of theirown relative importance; their indifference to, sometimes open hostilityto, the law--all were bonds of union and sources of pride to theirdependants rather than the other way. It needed a yet strongerimpulse--that of religious enthusiasm--to break so deeply rooted andinherent a sentiment. When that spark was kindled every other fell awaybefore it. 

As regards England, unfortunately, the concession of Emancipation wasspoilt not merely by the sense that it was granted to force rather thanto conviction, but even more to the intense bitterness and dislike withwhich it was regarded by a large proportion of English Protestants. Anew religious life and a new sense of religious responsibility wasmaking itself widely felt there. The eighteenth century, with itseasy-going indifferentism, had passed away, and one of the effects ofthis new revival was unhappily to reawaken in many conscientious breastsmuch of the old and half-extinct horror of Popery, a horror which foundits voice in a language of intolerance and bigotry which at the presenttime seems scarcely conceivable. 

The years which followed were chiefly marked by a succession of effortsupon O'Connell's part to procure Repeal. An association which had beenformed by him for this purpose was put down by the Government in 1830, but the next year it was reformed under a new name, and at the generalelection in 1831 forty members were returned pledged to support Repeal. The condition of Ireland was meanwhile miserable in the extreme. Afurious tithe-war was raging, and many outrages had been committed, especially against tithe proctors, the class of men who were engaged incollecting the tax. Ribbon associations and other secret societies toohad been spreading rapidly underground. Of such societies O'Connell wasthrough life the implacable enemy. The events of 1798 and 1803 had leftan indelible impression on his mind. The "United Irishmen, " in his ownwords, "taught me that all work for Ireland must be done openly andabove board. " The end of the tithe struggle, however, was happilyapproaching. In 1838 an Irish Tithes Commutation Act was at lastcarried, and a land tax in the form of a permanent rent chargesubstituted. 

Repeal was now more than ever the question of the hour, and to Repealhenceforward O'Connell devoted his entire energies. In 1840 the LoyalNational Repeal Association was founded, and a permanent place ofmeeting known as Conciliation Hall established for it in Dublin. 1841, O'Connell had early announced, would be known henceforward as the yearof Repeal, and accordingly he that year left England and went toIreland, and devoted himself there to the work of organization. Asuccession of monster meetings were held all over the country, thefar-famed one on Tara Hill being, as is credibly asserted, attended byno less than a quarter of a million of people. Over this vast multitudegathered together around him the magic tones of the great orator's voiceswept triumphantly; awakening anger, grief, passion, delight, laughter, tears, at its own pleasure. They were astonishing triumphs, but theywere dearly bought. The position was, in fact, an impossible one tomaintain long. O'Connell had carried the whole mass of the people withhim up to the very brink of the precipice, but how to bring them safelyand successfully down again was more than even he could accomplish. Resistance he had always steadily denounced, yet every day his own wordsseemed to be bringing the inevitable moment of collision nearer andnearer. The crisis came on October the 5th. A meeting had been summonedto meet at Clontarf, near Dublin, and on the afternoon of the 4th theGovernment suddenly came to the resolution of issuing a proclamationforbidding it to assemble. The risk was a formidable one for responsiblemen to run. Many of the people were already on their way, and onlyO'Connell's own rapid and vigorous measures in sending out in alldirections to intercept them hindered the actual shedding of blood. 

His prosecution and that of some of his principal adherents was the nextimportant event. By a Dublin jury he was found guilty, sentenced to twoyears imprisonment, and conveyed to prison, still earnestly entreatingthe people to remain quiet, an order which they strictly obeyed. Thejury by which he had been condemned was known to be strongly biassedagainst him, and an appeal had been forwarded against his sentence tothe House of Lords. So strong there, too, was the feeling againstO'Connell, that little expectation was entertained of its beingfavourably received. Greatly to its honour, however, the sentence wasreversed and he was set free. His imprisonment had been of the lightestand least onerous description conceivable; indeed was ironicallydescribed by Mitchell shortly afterwards as that of a man--"addressed bybishops, complimented by Americans, bored by deputations, serenaded bybands, comforted by ladies, half smothered by roses, half drowned inchampagne. " The enthusiasm shown at his release was frantic anddelirious. None the less those months in Richmond prison proved thedeath-knell of his power. He was an old man by this time; he was alreadyweakened in health, and that buoyancy which had hitherto carried himover any and every obstacle never again revived. The "Young Ireland"party, the members of which had in the first instance been his alliesand lieutenants, had now formed a distinct section, and upon the vitalquestion of resistance were in fierce hostility to all his mostcherished principles. The state of the country, too, preyed visibly uponhis mind. By 1846 had begun that succession of disastrous seasons which, by destroying the feeble barrier which stood between the peasant and acruel death, brought about a national tragedy, the most terrible perhapswith which modern Europe has been confronted. This tragedy, though hedid not live to see the whole of it, O'Connell--himself the incarnationof the people--felt acutely. Deep despondency took hold of him. Heretired, to a great degree, from public life, leaving the conduct of hisorganization in the hands of others. Few more tragic positions have beendescribed or can be conceived than that of this old man--so loved, sohated, so reverenced, so detested--who had been so audaciously, triumphantly successful in his day, and round whom the shadows of nightwere now gathering so blackly and so swiftly. Despair was tightening itsgrip round the hearts of all Irishmen, and it found its strongest holdupon the heart of the greatest Irishman of his age. Nothing speaks moreeloquently of the total change of situation than the pity and respectfulconsideration extended at this time to O'Connell by men who onlyrecently had exhausted every possibility of vituperation in abuse of theburly demagogue. In 1847 he resolved to leave Ireland, and to end hisdays in Rome. His last public appearance was in the House of Commons, where an attentive and deeply respectful audience hung upon thefaultering and barely articulate accents which fell from his lips. In afew deeply moving words he appealed for aid and sympathy for hissuffering countrymen, and left the House; within a few months he haddied at Genoa. Such a bare summary leaves necessarily whole regions ofthe subject unexplored, but, let the final verdict of history onO'Connell be what it may, that he loved his country passionately, andwith an absolute disinterestedness no pen has ever been found toquestion, nor can we doubt that whatever else may have hastened his endit was the Famine killed him, almost as surely as it did the meanest ofits victims. 

LVI. 

"YOUNG IRELAND. "

The camp and council chamber of the "Young Ireland" party was theeditor's room of _The Nation_ newspaper. There it found its inspiration, and there its plans were matured--so far, that is, as they can be saidto have been ever matured. For an eminently readable and all thingsconsidered a wonderfully impartial account of this movement, the readercannot do better than consult Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's "Four Years ofIrish History, " which has the immense advantage of being history takenat first hand, written that is by one who himself took a prominent partin the scenes which he describes. 

The most interesting figure in the party had, however, died before thosememorable four years began. Thomas Davis, who was only thirty at thetime of his death in 1845, was a man of large gifts, nay, might fairlybe called a man of genius. His poetry is, perhaps, too national to beappreciated out of Ireland, yet two, at least, of his ballads, "Fontenoy" and "The Sack of Baltimore, " may fairly claim to compare withthose of any contemporary poet. His prose writings, too, have much ofthe same charm, and, if he had no time to become a master of any of thesubjects of which he treats, there is something infectious in the veryspontaneousness and, as it were, untaught boyish energy of hisIrish essays. 

The whole movement in fact was, in the first instance, a literary quiteas much as a political one. Nearly all who took part in it--Gavan Duffy, John Mitchell, Meagher, Dillon, Davis himself--were very young men, manyfresh from college, all filled with zeal for the cause of liberty andnationality. The graver side of the movement only showed itself when thestruggle with O'Connell began. At first no idea of deposing, or evenseriously opposing the great leader seems to have been intended. Theattempt on O'Connell's part to carry a formal declaration against theemployment under any circumstances of physical force was the origin ofthat division, and what the younger spirits considered "truckling to theWhigs" helped to widen the breach. When, too, O'Connell had partiallyretired into the background, his place was filled by his son, JohnO'Connell, the "Head conciliator, " between whom and the "YoungIrelanders" there waged a fierce war, which in the end led to theindignant withdrawal of the latter from the Repeal council. 

Before matters reached this point, the younger camp had beenstrengthened by the adhesion of Smith O'Brien, who, though not a man ofmuch intellectual calibre, carried no little weight in Ireland. Hisage--which compared to that of the other members of his party, was thatof a veteran--his rank and position as a county member, above all, hisvaunted descent from Brian Boroimhe, all made him an ally and a convertto be proud of. Like the rest he had no idea at first of appealing tophysical force, however loudly an abstract resolution against it mightbe denounced. Resistance was to be kept strictly within theconstitutional limits, indeed the very year of his junction with thisthe extreme left of the Repeal party, Smith O'Brien's most violentproceeding was to decline to sit upon a railway committee to which hehad been summoned, an act of contumacy for which he was ordered by theHouse of Commons into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, and committedto an extemporized prison, by some cruelly declared to be the coal-hole. "An Irish leader in a coal-hole!" exclaims Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, indignantly, can more unworthy statement be conceived? "Regullus in abarrel, however, " he adds, rather grandly, "was not quite the last oneheard of Rome and its affairs!"

In Ireland matters were certainly sad enough and serious enough withoutany such serio-comic incidents. Famine was already stalking the countrywith giant strides, and no palliative measures as yet proposed seemed tobe of the slightest avail. Early in January, 1847, O'Connell left onthat journey of his which was never completed, and by the middle of MayIreland was suddenly startled by the news that her great leaderwas dead. 

The effect of his death was to produce a sudden and immense reaction. Avast revulsion of love and reverence sprang up all over the country; animmense sense of his incomparable services, and with it a vehement angeragainst all who had opposed him. Upon the "Young Ireland" party, as wasinevitable, the weight of that anger fell chiefly, and from the momentof O'Connell's death whatever claim they had to call themselves anational party vanished utterly. The men "who killed the Liberator"could never again hope to carry with them the suffrages of any number oftheir countrymen. 

This contumely, to a great degree undeserved, naturally reacted upon thesubjects of it. The taunt of treachery and ingratitude flung at themwherever they went stung and nettled. In the general reaction ofgratitude and affection for O'Connell, his son John succeeded easily tothe position of leader. The older members of the Repeal Associationthereupon rallied about him, and the split between them and the youngermen grew deeper and wider. 

A wild, impracticable visionary now came to play a part in the movement. A deformed misanthrope, called James Lalor, endowed with a considerablecommand of vague, passionate rhetoric, began to write incentives torevolt in _The Nation_, These growing more and more violent were by theeditor at length prudently suppressed. The seed, however, had alreadysown itself in another mind. John Mitchell is described by Mr. JustinMcCarthy as "the one formidable man amongst the rebels of '48; the oneman who distinctly knew what he wanted, and was prepared to run any riskto get it. " Even Mitchell, it is clear, would never have gone as far ashe did but for the impulse which he received from the crippled desperadoin the background. Lalor was, in fact, a monomaniac, but this Mitchellseems to have failed to perceive. To him it was intolerable that anyhuman being should be willing to go further and to dare more in thecause of Ireland than himself, and the result was that after awhile hebroke away from his connection with _The Nation_, and started a neworgan under the name of _The United Irishmen_, one definitely pledgedfrom the first to the policy of action. 

From this point matters gathered speedily to a head. Mitchell'snewspaper proceeded to fling out challenge after challenge to theGovernment, calling upon the people to gather and to "sweep this islandclear of the English name and nation. " For some months these challengesremained unanswered. It was now, however, "'48, " and nearly all Europewas in revolution. The necessity of taking some step began to beevident, and a Bill making all written incitement of insurrection felonywas hurried through the House of Commons, and almost immediately afterMitchell was arrested. 

Even then he seems to have believed that the country would rise toliberate him. The country, however, showed no disposition to do anythingof the sort. He was tried in Dublin, found guilty, sentenced to fourteenyears' transportation, and a few days afterwards put on board a vesselin the harbour and conveyed to Spike Island, whence he was sent toBermuda, and the following April in a convict vessel to the Cape, andfinally to Tasmania. 

The other "Young Irelanders, " stung apparently by their own previousinaction, thereupon rushed frantically into rebellion. Theleaders--Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others--went about thecountry holding reviews of "Confederates, " as they now calledthemselves, a proceeding which caused the Government to suspend theHabeas Corpus Act, and to issue a warrant for their arrest. A few moregatherings took place in different parts of the country, a few moreineffectual attempts were made to induce the people to rise, one verysmall collision with the police occurred, and then the whole thing wasover. All the leaders in the course of a few days were arrested andSmith O'Brien and Meagher were sentenced to death, a sentence which wasspeedily changed into transportation. Gavan Duffy was arrested andseveral times tried, but the jury always disagreed, and in the end hisprosecution was abandoned. The "Young Ireland" movement, however, wasdead, and never again revived. 

LVII. 

THE FAMINE. 

All the time the earlier of the foregoing scenes were being enacted, thefamine had been drawing its python grasp tighter and tighter around theunhappy island. The first symptoms of the dread potato disease showedthemselves in the autumn of 1845, and even that year there was muchsuffering, though a trifle to what was to follow. Many remedies weretried, both to stop the blight and save the crops, but all alike provedunavailing. The next year the potatoes seemed to promise unusually well, and the people, with characteristic hopefulness, believed that theirtrouble was over. The summer, however, was very warm and wet, and withAugust there came on a peculiarly dense white fog, which was believed byall who were in Ireland at the time to have carried the blight with itin its folds. Whether this was the case or not, there is no doubt thatin a single fatal night nearly the whole potato crop over the entirecountry blackened, and perished utterly. Then, indeed, followed despair. Stupor and a sort of moody indifference succeeded to the former buoyancyand hopefulness. There was nothing to do; no other food was attainable. The fatal dependence upon a single precarious crop had left the wholemass of the people helpless before the enemy. 

Soon the first signs of famine began to appear. People were to be seenwandering about; seeking for stray turnips, for watercresses, foranything that would allay the pangs of hunger. The workhouses, detestedthough they were, were crammed until they could hold no singleadditional inmate. Whole families perished; men, women, and children laydown in their cabins and died, often without a sign. Others fell by theroadside on their way to look for work or seek relief. Only last summer, at Ballinahinch in Connemara, the present writer was told by an old manthat he remembered being sent by his master on a message to Clifden, thenearest town, and seeing the people crawling along the road, and that, returning the same way a few hours later, many of the same people werelying dead under the walls or upon the grass at the roadside. That thisis no fancy picture is clear from local statistics. No part of Irelandsuffered worse than Galway and Mayo, both far more densely populatedthen than at present. In this very region of Connemara an inspector hasleft on record, having to give orders for the burying of over a hundredand thirty bodies found along the roads within his own district. 

Mr. W. E. Forster, who, above all other Englishmen deserved the gratitudeof Ireland for his efforts during this tragic time, has left terribledescriptions of the scenes of which he was himself an eye-witness, especially in the west. "The town of Westport, " he tells us in one ofhis reports, "was itself a strange and fearful sight, like what we readof in beleaguered cities; its streets crowded with gaunt wanderers, sauntering to and fro with hopeless air and hunger-struck look--a mob ofstarved, almost naked women around the poor-house clamouring forsoup-tickets. Our inn, the head-quarters of the road engineer and payclerks, beset by a crowd of beggars for work. " In another place "thesurvivors, " he says, "were like walking skeletons--the men gaunt andhaggard, stamped with the livid mark of hunger; the children crying withpain; the women in some of the cabins too weak to stand. When therebefore I had seen cows at almost every cabin, and there were besidesmany sheep and pigs owned in the village. But now the sheep were allgone--all the cows, all the poultry killed--only one pig left; the verydogs which had barked at me before had disappeared--no potatoes;no oats. "

One more extract more piteous even than the rest: "As we went along ourwonder was not that the people died, but that they lived; and I have nodoubt whatever that in any other country the mortality would have beenfar greater; that many lives have been prolonged, perhaps saved, by thelong apprenticeship to want in which the Irish peasant had been trained, and by that lovely touching charity which prompts him to share hisscanty meal with his starving neighbour. "

Of course all this time there was no lack of preventative measures. Large sums had been voted from the Treasury; stores of Indian cornintroduced; great relief works set on foot. An unfortunate fatalityseemed, however, to clog nearly all these efforts. Either they provedtoo late to save life, or in some way or other to be unsuitable to theexigencies of the case. Individual charity, too, came out upon the mostmagnificent scale. All Europe contributed, and English gold was pouredforth without stint or stay. Still the famine raged almost unchecked. The relief works established by the Government, with the best intentionspossible, too often were devoted to the most curiously useless, sometimes even to actually harmful, objects. To this day "Famine roads"may be met with in the middle of snipe bogs, or skirting precipiceswhere no road was ever wanted or could possibly be used. By the time, too, they were in full working order the people were, in many cases, tooenfeebled by want and disease to work. For close upon the heels of thefamine followed an epidemic hardly less fatal than itself. In the courseof the two years that it raged over two hundred thousand people are saidto have perished from this cause alone, and three times the number tohave been attacked and permanently enfeebled by it. 

In 1849 a Relief Act was passed which established soup kitchensthroughout the unions, where food was to be had gratis by all whorequired it. Long before this similar kitchens had been privately set onfoot, and men and women had devoted themselves to the work with untiringenergy and the most absolute self-devotedness. Of these self-appointedand unpaid workers a large number shared the fate of those whom theyassisted. Indeed, it is one of the most singular features of the timethat not only old, or feeble, or specially sensitive people died, butstrong men, heads of houses--not regarded as by any means speciallysoft-hearted--raised, too, by circumstances out of reach of actualhunger, died--just as O'Connell had died--of sheer distress of mind, andthe effort to cope with what was beyond the power of any human being tocope with. In the single county of Galway the records of the timesshow--as may easily be verified--an extraordinary number of deaths ofthis type, a fact which alone goes far to disprove those accusations ofheartlessness and indifference which have in some instances been toolightly flung. 

After the famine followed ruin--a ruin which swept high and low alikeinto its net. When the poor rate rose to twenty and twenty-fiveshillings in the pound it followed that the distinction between rich andpoor vanished, and there were plenty of instances of men, accounted welloff, who had subscribed liberally to others at the beginning of thefamine, who were themselves seeking relief before the end. The resultwas a state of things which has left bitterer traces behind it than eventhe famine itself. The smaller type of landowners, who for the most parthad kindly relations with their tenants, were swept away like leavesbefore the great storm, their properties fell to their creditors, andwere sold by order of the newly established Encumbered Estates Courts. No proposing purchaser would have anything to say to estates coveredwith a crowd of pauper tenants, and the result was a wholesaleclearance, carried out usually by orders given by strangers at adistance, and executed too often with a disregard of humanity that it isfrightful to read or to think of. Most of the people thus ejected in theend emigrated, and that emigration was under the circumstances theirbest hope few can reasonably doubt. Even here, however, misfortunepursued them. Sanitary inspection of emigrant ships was at the time allbut unheard of, and statistics show that the densely crowded conditionof the vessels which took them away produced the most terrible mortalityamongst the already enfeebled people who crowded them, a full fifth ofthe steerage passengers in many cases, it is said, dying upon thevoyage, and many more immediately after landing. The result of all thishas been that the inevitable horrors of the time have been deepened andintensified by a sense of ill-usage, which has left a terrible legacybehind--one which may prove to be a peril to generations still unborn. Even where those who emigrated have prospered most, and where they ortheir sons are now rich men, they cling with unhappy persistency to thememory of that wretched past--a memory which the forty years which haveintervened, far from softening, seem, in many cases, to have only lashedinto a yet more passionate bitterness. 

In Ireland itself the permanent effects of the disaster differed ofcourse in different places and with different people, but in one respectit may be said to have been the same everywhere. Between the Ireland ofthe past and the Ireland of the present the Famine lies like a blackstream, all but entirely blotting out and effacing the past. Wholephases of life, whole types of character, whole modes of existence andways of thought passed away then and have never been renewed. The entirefabric of the country was torn to pieces and has never reformed itselfupon the same lines again. After a while everyday life began again ofcourse, as it does everywhere all over the world, and in some respectsthe struggle for existence has never since been quite so severe or soprolonged. The lesson of those two terrible years has certainly not beenlost, but like all such lessons it has left deep scars which can neverbe healed. Men and women, still alive who remember the famine, look backacross it as we all look back across some personal grief, somecatastrophe which has shattered our lives and made havoc of everythingwe cared for. We, too, go on again after a while as if nothing hadhappened, yet we know perfectly well all the while that matters are notthe least as they were before; that on the contrary they never canor will be. 

LVIII. 

THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT. 

The story of the last forty years must be compressed into a nutshell. The famine was over at last, but its effects remained. Nearly a millionof people had emigrated, yet the condition of life for those remainingwas far from satisfactory. The Encumbered Estates Act, which hadcompleted the ruin of many of the older proprietors, pressed, in somerespects, even more severely upon the tenants, a large number of whomfound themselves confronted with new purchasers, who, having invested inIrish land merely as a speculation, had little other interest in it. In1850 an attempt at a union of North and South was made, and a TenantLeague Conference assembled in Dublin. Of this league the remnants ofthe "Young Ireland" party formed the nucleus, but were supplemented byothers with widely different aims and intentions. Of these others thetwo Sadleirs, John and James, Mr. Edmund O'Flaherty, and Mr. WilliamKeogh, afterwards Judge Keogh, were the most prominent. These with theiradherents constituted the once famous "Brass Band" which for severalyears filled Parliament with its noisy declamations, and which posed asthe specially appointed champion of Catholicism. In 1853 several of itsmembers took office under Lord Aberdeen, but their course was not a longone. A bank kept in Ireland by the two Sadleirs broke, ruining anenormous number of people, and on investigation was found to have beenfraudulently conducted from the very beginning. John Sadleir thereuponkilled himself; his brother James was expelled from the House ofCommons, and he and several others implicated in the swindle fled thecountry and never reappeared, and so the "Brass Band" broke up, amid thewell-deserved contempt of men of every shade of political opinion. 

After this succeeded a prolonged lull. Secret agitations, however, werestill working underground, and as early as 1850 one known as the Phoenixorganization began to collect recruits, although for a long time itsproceedings attracted little or no attention. 

In 1859 several of its members were arrested, and it seemed then to diedown and disappear, but some years later it sprang up again with a newname, and the years 1866 and 1867 were signalized by the Fenian rising, or to put it with less dignity, the Fenian scare. With the close of theAmerican War a steady backward stream of Americanized Irishmen had setin, and a belief that war between England and America was rapidlyapproaching had become an article of fervent faith with a large majorityin Ireland. The Fenian plan of operation was a two-headed one. There wasto be a rising in Ireland, and there was to be a raid into Canada acrossthe American frontier. Little formidable as either project seems now, atthe time they looked serious enough, and had the strained relations thenexisting between England and America turned out differently, no one cansay but what they might have become so. The Fenian organization, whichgrew out of the earlier Phoenix one, was managed from centres, a mancalled Stephens being the person who came most prominently before theworld in the capacity of Head centre. In 1865 Stephens was arrested inDublin, but managed to escape not long afterwards from Richmond prisonby the aid of two confederates within its walls. The following May, 1866, a small body of Fenians crossed the Niagara river, but the UnitedStates authorities rigidly enforced the neutrality of the Americanfrontier, and so the attempt perished. The same spring a rising brokeout in Ireland, but it also was stamped with failure from its onset, andthe famous snowstorm of that year finished the discomfiture of itsadherents. 

Two other Fenian demonstrations, not to mention an abortive project toseize Chester Castle, were shortly afterwards made in England. In 1867, some Fenian prisoners were rescued in Manchester, while on their way togaol, and in the attempt to burst the lock of the van in which they werebeing conveyed a police officer named Brett, who was in charge of it, was accidentally shot. Five men were found guilty for this offence. OneMacquire was proved to have been arrested by mistake, another Conder hadthe sentence commuted, but three--Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien--were hung. 

Another Fenian exploit of a somewhat different character followed inDecember, 1867, when an attempt was made by some desperados belonging tothe party to blow up the Clerkenwell House of Detention, in which twoFenian prisoners were then confined. Luckily for them, as it turned out, they were not in that part of the prison at the time, or the result oftheir would-be liberators' efforts would have simply been to kill them. As it was, twelve other people were either killed on the spot or diedfrom its effects, and over a hundred were more or less badly wounded. For this crime six persons were put upon their trial, but only one wasconvicted and actually executed. 

The next Irish event of any moment stands upon a curiously differentplatform, though there were not wanting suggestions that the two had anindirect connection as cause and effect. In 1868 the Liberal party cameinto power after the General Election with Mr. Gladstone as PrimeMinister, and the session of 1869 saw the introduction of a Bill for theDisestablishment of the Irish Church. The controversies to which thatmeasure gave rise are already quite out of date, and there is no needtherefore to revive them. Few measures so vehemently opposed haveproduced less startling effects in the end. It neither achieved thosegreat things hoped by its supporters, nor yet brought about the diredisasters so freely threatened by its opponents. To the Roman Catholicsof Ireland the grievance of an alien State Church had, since thesettlement of the tithe question, lapsed into being little more than asentimental one, so that practically the measure affected them little. As an institution, however, the position of the Irish State Church wasundoubtedly a difficult one to defend, the very same arguments whichtell most forcibly for the State Church of England telling most forciblyagainst its numerically feeble Irish sister. Whatever the abstractrights or wrongs of the case it is pretty clear now that the change musthave come sooner or later, and few therefore can seriously regret thatit came when it did. The struggle was protracted through the entiresession, but in the end passed both Houses of Parliament, and receivedthe royal assent on July 26, 1869. 

It was followed early the following year by the Irish Land Act, whichwas introduced into the House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone on February15, 1870. This Act has been succinctly described as one obliging alllandlords to do what the best landlords did spontaneously, and thisperhaps may be accepted as a fairly accurate account of it. Owing to thefact of land being practically the only commodity of value, there hasalways been in Ireland a tendency to offer far more for it than couldreasonably be hoped to be got in the form of return, and this tendencyhas led, especially in the poorest districts and with the smallestholdings, to a rent being offered and accepted often quite out ofproportion to the actual value of the land, though in few instances dothe very highest rents attainable seem even in these cases to have beenexacted. The Act now proposed was to abolish one passed in 1860 whichhad reduced all tenant and landlord transactions in Ireland to simplematters of free contract, and to interpose the authority of the Statebetween the two. It legalized what were known as the "Ulster customs;"awarded compensations for all improvements made by the tenant or hispredecessors, and in case of eviction for any cause except non-paymentof rent a further compensation was to be granted, which might amount toa sum equal to seven years' rent; it also endeavoured to a partialextent to establish peasant proprietorship. That it was a conscientiousattempt to deal with a very intricate and perplexing problem may fairlybe conceded, at the same time it has been its misfortune that it provedsatisfactory to neither of the two classes chiefly concerned, beingdenounced by the one as the beginning of spoliation, by the other as amere worthless, and utterly contemptible attempt at dealing with thenecessities of the case. 

A third measure--the Irish Education Act--was proposed the followingsession, but as it resulted in failure, was popular with no party, andfailed to pass; it need not be entered into even briefly. 1874 saw adissolution of Parliament and a General Election, which resulted in thedefeat of the Liberals, and the return of the Conservatives to office. Before this, a new Irish constitutional party pledged to the principleof Home Government, had grown up in the House of Commons, at first underthe leadership of Mr. Butt, afterwards with new aims and widelydifferent tactics under that of Mr. Parnell. In 1879 an agrarianmovement was set on foot in Ireland, chiefly through the instrumentalityof Mr. Davitt, which has since become so widely known as the LandLeague. It was almost immediately joined by the more extreme members ofthe Irish Parliamentary party. Meetings were held in all directions, andan amount of popular enthusiasm aroused which the more purely politicalquestion had never succeeded in awakening. Subscriptions poured in fromAmerica. A season of great scarcity, and in some districts of partialfamine, had produced an unusual amount of distress, and this and theunsettled state of the Land Question all helped to foster the risingexcitement. The country grew more and more disturbed. Several murdersand a number of agrarian outrages were committed, and the necessity ofstrengthening the hands of the executive began to be felt by both thechief political parties alike. 

In 1880 the Liberal party returned to power after the General Election, and 1881 witnessed the passage through Parliament of two important Irishmeasures. The first of these was a Protection of Life and Property Billbrought in in January by Mr. Forster, then Chief Secretary of Ireland. As was to be expected, this was vehemently opposed by the Nationalistmembers, who retarded it by every means in their power, one famoussitting of the House on this occasion lasting for forty-two hours, fromfive o'clock on the Monday afternoon to nine o'clock on the Wednesdayfollowing, and then only being brought to an end by the authority of theSpeaker. By March, however, the Bill passed, and in the following month, April 7th, a new Irish Land Act was brought forward by Mr. Gladstone, and was passed after much opposition the following autumn. 

The full scope and purport of this Act it is far beyond the limits ofthese few remaining pages to enter upon. Although, to some extent anoutcome of the Act of 1870, it cannot in strictness be called a meredevelopment or completion of it, being in many respects based uponentirely new principles. The most salient of these are what are known asthe "three Fs, " namely--Fixity of Tenure, Fair Rent, to be decided by aLand Court, and Free Sale. As regards the last two, it has been pointedout with some force that the one practically does away with the other, the only person benefited being the immediate occupier, at whosedeparture that fierce competitive desire for the land which is the realroot of the whole difficulty being allowed freer play than ever. Withregard to the first, its effect may be briefly stated as that ofreducing the owner to the position of a rent charger or annuitant uponwhat had before been his own estate, thereby depriving him--even wherewant of means did not effectually do so--of all desire to expend capitalupon what had henceforth ceased to be his property, and over themanagement of which he had almost wholly lost control. That this is achange of a very large and sweeping character it is needless to say. Henceforward ownership of land in Ireland is no longer ownership in theordinary sense of the word. It is an ownership of two persons instead ofone, and a divided ownership, even where two people work togetherharmoniously, is as most of us are aware, a very difficult relationshipto maintain, and is apt to be followed sooner or later by theeffacements of the rights of one or the other. How these divergingrights are finally to be adjusted is at this moment the problem ofproblems in Ireland, and still imperatively awaits solution. 

In October of the same year, 1881, Mr. Parnell, Mr. Davitt, and otherprincipal members of the Land League, were arrested by order of theGovernment, and lodged in Kilmainhan gaol, an event announced the sameevening by Mr. Gladstone at the Guildhall banquet. The following May theLiberal Government resolved however, rather suddenly, to reverse theirprevious policy, and the Irish leaders were set at liberty. About thesame time Lord Cowper and Mr. Forster, the Lord-Lieutenant and ChiefSecretary, resigned, and were replaced by Lord Spencer and LordFrederick Cavendish, who arrived in Ireland avowedly upon a mission ofconciliation. 

The day of their arrival--May 6, 1882--has been made only too memorableto the whole world by the appalling tragedy which took place the sameevening in the Phoenix Park, where Lord Frederick and Mr. Burke, theUnder Secretary, while walking together in the clear dusk, were murderedby a party of miscreants, who escaped before any suspicion of what hadoccurred had been aroused, even in the minds of those who had actuallywitnessed the struggle from a distance. For many months no clue to theperpetrators of the deed was discoverable, and it seemed to be only toolikely to be added to the long list of crimes for which no retributionhas ever been exacted. Happily for Irish credit this was not the case, and six months later, in the month of January, 1883, a series ofinquiries carried on in Dublin Castle led to the arrest of no less thanseventeen men, all of whom were lodged in prison and bail for themrefused. Amongst these was a man of somewhat higher social standing thanthe rest, a tradesman, and member of the Dublin Council, the notoriousJames Carey, who not long afterwards turned Queen's evidence, and it wasmainly through his evidence, supplemented by that of two others, thatthe rest of the gang were convicted. At the trial it was proved that themurder of Lord Frederick Cavendish had formed no part of the originalscheme, and had merely arisen accidentally out of the circumstance ofhis having joined Mr. Burke, who, upon the resignation of Mr. Forster, the Chief Secretary, had been selected by the Invincibles as their nextvictim. Conviction was without difficulty obtained against all theprisoners, and five were shortly afterwards hanged, the remainderreceiving sentence of penal servitude, either for life or long periods. 

Carey's own end was a sufficiently dramatic one. He was kept in prison, as the only way of ensuring his safety until means could be found to gethim out of the country, and was finally shipped some months later to theCape. On his way there he was shot dead by a man called O'Donnell, whoappears to have gone out with him for the purpose. His fate couldcertainly awaken no pity in the most merciful breast. By his ownconfession not only had he to a great degree planned the murder andhelped to draw the others into it, but had actually selected the veryweapon by which it was accomplished, so that of all the miscreantsengaged in the perpetration he was perhaps the deepest dyed and themost guilty. 

Since then, and indeed all along, the struggle in Ireland itself hasbeen almost wholly an agrarian one. The love of and desire for the land, rather than for any particular political development, is what theredominates the situation. A heavy fall of prices has led to a widespreadrefusal to pay rent, save at a considerable abatement upon the alreadyreduced Government valuations. Where this has been refused a deadlockhas set in, rents in many cases have not been paid at all, and evictionhas in consequence been resorted to. Eviction, whether carried out inWest Ireland or East London, is a very ugly necessity, and one, too, that is indelibly stamped with a taint of inhumanity. At the lastextremity, it is, however, the only one open to any owner, _qua_ owner, let his political sympathies or proclivities be what they may, so thatit does not necessarily argue any double portion of original sin even onthe part of that well-laden pack-horse of politics--the Irishlandlord--to say that his wits have not so far been equal to the task ofdispensing with it. 

Within the last two years only one question has risen to the surface ofpolitics which gravely affects the destinies of Ireland, but that one isof so vast and all-important a character that it cannot be evaded. Thequestion I mean, of course, of Home Rule. Complicated as its issues are, embittered as the controversy it has awakened, dark still as are itsdestinies, its history as a piece of projected, and so far unsuccessful, legislation has at least the merit of being short and easily stated. Inthe month of December, 1885, just after the close of the generalelection, it began to be rumoured as forming part of the comingprogramme of the Liberal leader. On April 8, 1886, a Bill embodying itwas brought forward in the House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone; upon June7th, it was rejected upon the second reading by a majority of thirty, and at the general election which followed was condemned by a largemajority of the constituencies. 

And afterwards? What follows? What is its future destined to be? Will itvanish away, will it pass into new phases, or will some form of iteventually receive the sanction of the nation? These are Sphinxquestions, which one may be excused from endeavouring to answer, seeingthat the strongest and most far-reaching heads are at this moment intentupon them--not, so far as can be seen, with any strikingly successfulresult. The Future is a deep mine, and we have not yet struck even aspade into it. 

In every controversy, no matter how fierce the waves, how thick the airwith contending assertions, there is almost always, however, some fact, or some few facts, which seem to rise like rocks out of the turmoil, andobstinately refuse to be washed or whittled away. The chief of these, inthis case, is the geographical position, or rather juxtaposition, of thetwo islands. Set before a stranger to the whole Irish problem--if sofavoured an individual exists upon the habitable globe--a map of theBritish islands, and ask him whether it seems to him inevitable thatthey should remain for ever united, and we can scarcely doubt that hisreply would be in the affirmative. This being so, we have at least itwill be said one fact, one sea-rock high above the reach of waves orspray. But Irishmen have been declared by a great and certainly not anunfavourable critic--Mr. Matthew Arnold--to be "eternal rebels againstthe despotism of fact. " If this is so--and who upon the Irish side ofthe channel can wholly and absolutely deny the assertion?--then our onepoor standing-point is plucked from under our feet, and we are allabroad upon the waves again. Will Home Rule or would Home Rule, it hasbeen asked, recognize this fact as one of the immutable ones, or wouldit sooner or later incline to think that with a little determination, alittle manipulation, the so-called fact would politely cease to be afact at all? It is difficult to say, and until an answer is definitelyreceived it does not perhaps argue any specially sloth-like clinging tothe known in preference to the unknown to admit that there is forordinary minds some slight craning at the fence, some not altogetherunnatural alarm as to the ground that is to be found on the other sideof it. "Well, how do you feel about Home Rule now that it seems to bereally coming?" some one inquired last spring, of an humble butlife-long Nationalist. "'Deed, sir, to tell the truth, I feel as if I'dbeen calling for the moon all me life and was told it was coming downthis evening into me back garden!" was the answer. It is not until agreat change is actually on top of us, till the gulf yawns big and blackunder our very eyes, that we fully realize what it means or what it maycome to mean. The old state of things, we then begin to say toourselves, was really very inconvenient, very trying to all our tempersand patience, but at least we know the worst of it. Of the untravelledfuture we know nothing. It fronts us, with hands folded, smilingblankly. It may be a great deal better than we expect, but, on the otherhand, it may be worse, and in ways, too, which as yet we hardly foresee. Whatever else Home Rule may, would, could, or should be, one thingfriends and foes alike may agree to admit, and that is that it will markan entirely new departure--a departure so new that no illustration drawnfrom the last century, or from any other historical period, is of muchavail in enabling us to picture it to ourselves. It will be noresumption, no mere continuation of anything that has gone before, but aperfectly fresh beginning. A beginning, it may be asked, of what?

LIX. 

CONCLUSION. 

"Concluded not completed, " is the verdict of Carlyle upon one of hisearlier studies, and "concluded not completed, " conscience is certainlyapt to mutter at the close of so necessarily inadequate a summary asthis. Much of this inadequacy, it may fairly be confessed, isindividual, yet a certain amount is also inherent in the very nature ofthe task itself. In no respect does this inadequacy press with a morepenitential weight than in the case of those heroes whose names springup at intervals along our pages, but which are hardly named before thegrim necessities of the case force us onwards, and the hero and hisdoings are left behind. 

Irish heroes, for one reason or another, have come off, it must beowned, but poorly before the bar of history. Either their deeds havingbeen told by those in whose eyes they found a meagre kindness, or elseby others who, with the best intentions possible, have so inflated thehero's bulk, so pared away his merely human frailties, that littlereality remains, and his bare name is as much as even a well-informedreader pretends to be acquainted with. Comparing them with what arecertainly their nearest parallels--the heroes and semi-heroes of Scotchhistory--the contrast strikes one in an instant, yet there is no reasonin the nature of things that this should be. Putting aside those whosenames have got somewhat obscured by the mists of the past, and puttingaside those nearer to us who stand upon what is still regarded asdebateable ground, there are no lack of Irish names which should be asfamiliar to the ear as those of any Bruce or Douglas of them all. Thenames of Tyrone, of James Fitzmaurice, of Owen Roe O'Neill, and ofSarsfield, to take only a few and almost at random, are all those ofgallant men, struggling against dire odds, in causes which, whether theyhappen to fit in with our particular sympathies or not, were to themobjects of the purest, most genuine enthusiasm. Yet which of these, withthe doubtful exception of the last, can be said to have yet receivedanything like a fair meed of appreciation? To live again in the memoryof those who come after them may not be--let us sincerely hope that itis not--essential to the happiness of those who are gone, but it is atleast a tribute which the living ought to be called upon to pay, and topay moreover ungrudgingly as they hope to have it paid to them intheir turn. 

Glancing with this thought in our minds along that lengthened chroniclehere so hastily overrun, many names and many strangely-chequereddestinies rise up one by one before us; come as it were to judgment, towhere we, sitting in state as "Prince Posterity, " survey the variedfield, and judge them as in our wisdom we think fit, assigning to thisone praise, to that one blame, to another a judicious admixture ofpraise and blame combined. Not, however, it is to be hoped, forgettingthat our place in the same panorama waits for another audience, and thatthe turn of this generation has still to come. 

AUTHORITIES. 

 * * * * *

Adamnan, "Life of St. Columba" (_trans_. ). 

Arnold (Matthew), "On the Study of Celtic Literature. "

Bagwell, "Ireland under the Tudors. "

Barrington (Sir Jonah), "Personal Recollections, " "Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation. "

Brewer, "Introduction to the Carew Calendar of State Papers. "

Bright (Rt. Hon. J. ), "Speeches. "

Burke (Edmund), "Tracts on the Popery Laws, " "Speeches and Letters. "

Carlyle, "Letters and Speeches of Cromwell. "

Carew, "Pacata Hibernia. "

Cloncurry, "Life and Times of Lord Cloncurry. "

Clogy, "Life and Times of Bishop Bedell. "

Cornwallis Correspondence. 

Croker (Rt. Hon. W. ), "Irish, Past and Present. "

Davis (Thomas), "Literary and Historical Essays. "

Davies (Sir John), "A Discoverie of the True Causes why Ireland was never Subdued. "

Dennis, "Industrial Ireland. "

Domenach (Abbé), "Larerte Erinn. "

Dymock (John), "A Treatise on Ireland. "

Duffy (Sir Charles Gavin), "Four Years of Irish History. "

Essex, "Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of. "

Froude (J. A. ), "History of England, " "The English in Ireland. "

Giraldus Cambrensis, "Conquest of Ireland, " Edited by J. Dimock, Master of the Rolls Series, 1867; "Topography of Ireland, " Edited by J. Dimock, Master of the Rolls Series, 1867. Green, "History of the English People. "Grattan, "Life and Speeches of Rt. Hon. Henry Grattan. "

Halliday, "Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin. "Hennessy (Sir Pope), "Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland. "Hardiman, "History of Galway. "Howth (Book of), from O'Flaherty's "Iar Connaught. "

Joyce, "Celtic Romances. "

Kildare (Marquis of), "The Earls of Kildare. "

Lodge, "Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica. "Lecky, "History of England in the Eighteenth Century, " and "Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland. "Leland, "History of Ireland. "Maine (Sir H. ), "Early History of Institutions, "

 "Village Communities, East and West. "Max Müller's Lectures. M'Gee (T. Darcy), "History of Ireland. "McGeoghegan, "History of Ireland. "Mitchell (John), "History of Ireland. "Montalembert, "Monks of the West. "Murphy (Rev. Denis), "Cromwell in Ireland. "Madden, "History of Irish Periodical Literature. "McCarthy (Justin), "History of Our Own Times. "

O'Connor (T. P. ), "The Parnell Movement. "O'Flaherty, "Iar Connaught. "

Petty (Sir W. ), "Political Anatomy of Ireland. "Petrie (Dr. ), "Round Towers of Ireland. "

Prendergast, "Tory War in Ulster, " "The Cromwellian Settlements. "

Richey (A. G. ), "Lectures on the History of Ireland. "

Smith (Goldwin), "Irish History and Irish Character. "Spenser (Edmund), "View of the State of Ireland. "Stokes (Miss), "Early Christian Architecture of Ireland. "Stokes (Professor George), "Ireland and the Celtic Church. "

Tone (Wolfe), "Autobiography. "

Vere de (Aubrey), "Queen Meave and other Legends of the Heroic Age, " and "Legends of St. Patrick, "

Walpole, "Kingdom of Ireland. "Webb (Alfred), "Compendium of Irish Biography. "Wilde (Sir W. ), "Lough Corrib, " and "The Boyne and the Blackwater. "

Young (Arthur), "Tour in Ireland. "

INDEX. 

Abercromby, Sir Ralph, 359Act of Supremacy, 152Act of Uniformity, 278Adamnan, 43Adare, 188Affane, battle of, 183Aidan (Saint) and Irish monk, 45Alcansar, battle of, 184Allen, an Irish priest, 184Allen, hill of, 14Allen, John, Archbishop of Dublin, 146Allen, the Fenian prisoner, 406Andrews, Dean of Limerick, 237Angareta, mother of Giraldus, 78Angelsea, settlement of, 67Anglo-Norman invasion, 76Annals of Lough Cè, 109Anselm (Saint), Archbishop of Canterbury, 81Arctic hare, the, 4Ard-Reagh, or Over-king, 91Ardscul, battle of, 108Arklow Head, 93Armagh, Book of, 33Armagh, cathedral of, burnt by Thorgist, 55Armdu, a Viking, 68Arran, isles of, 38Art McMurrough, or Art Kavanagh, 119; master of Leinster, 119; has recourse to Black-rent, 123; entertained by Richard II. , 120; knighted, 120; thrown into prison, 120; released, 120; he hastens to Meath, 121; defeats the royal army, 121; he again meets Richard II. In battle, 121; victorious, 123Ascendency, the Protestant, 307Ashton, Sir Arthur, a royalist officer, 261Askeaton, castle of, 187; destroyed, 188Association, Loyal National Repeal, 386Attainder, Bill of, drawn and passed, 287Athenry, battle of, 110; enfeebled state, 175Athlone, fortress of, 104, 292Athy, bridge of, 128Aughrim, battle of, 293Augustine (Saint), 44D'Aguilar, Don Juan, 215D'Avaux, Count, envoy to James II. , 283

B

_Baculum Cristatum_, or Staff of St. Patrick, 158Baggotrath, battle of, 260Bagnall, Sir Henry, 198; Tyrone marries his sister, 201; becomes his enemy, 201; he marches against Tyrone, 204; he is shot, 205; his army defeated, 205; fort of Blackwater surrendered, 205Ballinasloe, town of, 293Baltimore, stronghold of pirates, 127Baltinglass, Lord, 189Bannockburn, battle of, 108; its effects on Ireland, 108Bannow, bay of, or "FitzStephen's stride, " 83Barnabie FitzPatrick, 157Barries descendants of Nesta, 76Barri, Robert de, 83Barrington's Bridge, 107Barrymore, Lord, 141Beare O'Sullivan, 215Bedell, bishop of Kilmore, 245Beltane, Celtic festival of 1st May, 14Belgic, colony of, 6Bellingham, Sir Edward, 162Belrath, castle of, 141Ben Edar, now Howth, 17Benignus, first disciple of St. Patrick, 35Benturb, battle of, 255Bermingham, Sir John de, victor of Athenry, 110, 111Beresford, Chief Commissioner of Customs, 351Bernard, Saint, of Clairvaux, 81Betas, Celtic houses of hospitality, 14Black-rent, use of, 119, 123, 129Blackwater river, 183; battle of, 203Blaney, Mr. , member for Monaghan, 243Book of Aicill, Aryan law, 25Book of Armagh, 33Book of Howth, the, 140Borough, Lord, deputy, 203Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh, 304, 320Boyle, primate, 280Boyne, battle of the, 288Bramhall, primate, 277"Brass Band, " 403Brehons, judges or law makers, 19, 25Brian Boru, or Boruma, 60, 61; he defeats the Danes, 61; seizes throne of Cashel, 63; over-runs Leinster, 63; subdues Ossory, 63; attacks Meath, 63; burns the stronghold of Tara, 63; becomes Ard-Reagh in Malachy's place, 63; he is called Brian of the Tribute, 64; he becomes master of Ireland, 64; his victory at Clontarf, 66; he marches against Brodar, 68, 69; is killed, 69; mourned and buried, 69, 70. Bridget (Saint), 47; sacred fire of, 47Brodar, a Viking, 66; killed Brian, 67Brown, Archbishop of Meath, 159; deprived, 161Bruce, Edward, in Ireland, 107; battle of Bannockburn, 108; its effects, 108; Bruce lands at Carrickfergus, 108; defeats Richard de Burgh, 108; defeats Sir Edmund Butler at Ardscul, 108; victorious at Kells, 108; meets his brother, 108; is crowned king, 109; devastates the country, 109; defeated and killed at Dunkalk, 110Bruce, King Robert of Scotland, 108Burren, district of the, in North Clare, 269Burgh, Sir William FitzAldelm de, 103Burgundy, Duchess of, 132, 136Burke, Edmund, 330Burke, Mr. Thomas, murder of, 411

C

Calvagh O'Donnell, 167Camden, Lord (Lord-Lieutenant), 359. Campion, historian, the, 125Carew, Sir George, 213, 215, 216, 226Carew, Sir Peter, 178; his atrocities, 178Carey, James, the informer, 412Carhampton, Lord, 358Carle Canuteson, 67Carlow, 154Carneg, rock of, 84Carnot, 355Catholic Confederacy, 249Catholic Relief Bill carried, 381Cashel, Synod of, 92Castlehaven, 215Castlereagh, Lord, Chief Secretary, 370Caulfield, Lord, Governor of Charlemont, 243Cavan, Lord, 365Cavendish, Lord Frederick, murdered, 411Cerd or Nuad of "the Silver hand, " 9Charlemont, Lord, 330Charles I. , accession, 231; he sends Strafford to Ireland, 231, 235, 238; his death, 279Chester Castle, attack on, projected, 405Chesterfield, Lord, Lord-Lieutenant, 344Claims, Court of, 275Clan Naim, 17Clann Dichin, a malediction, 20Clanricarde, Earl of, 105Clarence, Lionel, Duke of, 114Cliach, plains of, 14Clocthech, round towers of, 56Clogher, Bishop of, 241Clonard, town of, 47Clonmacnois, high altar at, 47Clonmel, 262Clontarf, battle of, 71, 74; strand of, 66Clyn, Franciscan historian, 109Cole, Dean of St. Paul's, story of, 163Cole, Sir William, Governor of Enniskillen, 243Coleraine, 243Colkilla, hill of, 14Colman, Bishop, 46Columba (Saint), born, 43; his character, 42, 43; he leaves Ireland, 43; visits Scotland, 43; and Iona, 44Connaught, landowner's case of, 230Connaught, treaty of, 103Connemara, anciently Iar Connaught, 8Conciliation Hall, 386Confederates, Young Irelanders, 395Con O'Neill (Earl of Tyrone) 154Cong, plains of, 7Conyers, Clifford, Sir, Governor of Connaught, 209Cooke, Under-Secretary of State, 351Coote, Sir Charles, 244, 246, 273Cork, town of, 119Cormac, MacArt, 23Cormac O'Conn, King, 11Cornwallis, Marquis, Lord-Lieutenant, 365Corrib Lough, 104Cowper, Lord, 411"Coyne and livery, " 183Croagh Patrick, mountain of, 34Crofty, hill of, 247Crom a Boo, war cry of the Fitzgeralds, 138Cromwell, Henry, Lord-Lieutenant, 76Cromwell in Ireland, 261; he takes Drogheda, 261; Wexford, 262; Kilkenny, 262; Clonmel, 262; his army sickens, 263; Ireland under his rule, 264; the struggle continues, 264; Limerick and Galway yield at last, 264; close of civil war, 265; his methods, 266;

 Catholic evictions, 267; his treatment of Sir Phelim O'Neill, Lord Mayo, and Lord Muskerry, 267; his death, 272Crint, or stringed harp, 52Cruachan, mountain of, 35Curragh of Kildare, 14

D

Danaans, tribe of, 8Danes, 53Danes, Dublin, 67Danes of Limerick, 58-61Dangen, ancient name of Phillipstown, 162Dashda, or Druid chieftain, 53Davis, John, Sir, 95-117; he is elected Speaker, 227; quarrel which followed, 227, 228Davis, Thomas (poet), 290Davitt, Michael, Mr. , 409Declaration of Rights by Grattan, 320Declaratory, Act of George I. , 322"Defenders, " Association of, 345Delvin, Lord, 191Dermot McMurrough, King of Leinster, 83Derry, town of, 171Desmond, Earl of, taken to London, 176; vacillates about rebelling, 185; his death, 192Desmond-Sugane or Straw, Earl of, 200Dillon, Mr. , 391Donald, Chief of Ossory, 90Donegal, chapels in, 43Donore, hill of, 280Douchad, son of O'Brien, 74. Dowdal, Archbishop of Armagh, 159Downpatrick, town of, 99Drapier Papers by Swift, 317Drogheda, Parliament of, 138Drogheda, taken by Cromwell, 261Dublin Castle, 240; plot to seize it, 241; frustrated, 242Dublin, Philosophical Association of, 311Dublin, Society of, 311Duffy, Sir Charles Gavin, 390Dundalk, battle of, 110Dungannon, Matthew, Baron of, 165Dunsany, Lord, 247

E

Edgecombe, Sir Edward, 135Edward, I. , 107Edward II. , 108; Battle of Bannockburn, 108Edward III. , 113; he summons landowners, 114; appoints Lionel, Duke of Clarence, viceroy, 114; Statute of Kilkenny is passed, 115Elizabeth, Queen, 165; entertains Shane O'Neill at Court, 68; account of his visit, 168; Ireland during her reign, 171-172Emmett, Robert, 376Emmett, Thomas Addis, 354Encumbered Estate Court, 400Enniskillen, town of, 247Eochaidh king, tale of, 35Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of, 206; take the command in Ireland, 208; proceeds against Tyrone, 208; his disasters, 208; takes Cahir Castle, 208; meets Lugane Earl, 208; meets Tyrone at Lagan, 209; returns to England, 210Eva, daughter of Dermot, 86Everard, Sir John, 227, 228

F

Falkland, Lord, 231Famine, the first symptoms of, 96; great distress, 397; Mr. Forster reports, 397; Relief Act passed, 399; the ruin which followed it, 400; after effects, 403Fedlim O'Connor, king of Connaught, 108Fenian prisoners, rescue of, at Manchester, 405Fenian rising, 401Fenni or Fenians, IIFercal, tribes of, 161Ferns, town of, 83Finn, McCumal, 14Finn or Fingal, father of Ossian, 11Finvarragh, king of the fairies, 21Firbolgs, race of, 6Fitton, Sir Edward, 176Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 354-359Fitzgerald, Maurice, 83Fitzgerald, Mr. , member for Clare, 380Fitzgerald, Raymond (le Gros), 85Fitzgerald, Sir James, 191Fitzgerald, Sir John, 191FitzHenry, Robert and Meiler, sons of Nesta, 76Fitzmaurice, Lady, 188Fitzmaurice of Lexnaw, 111Fitzmaurice, Sir James, 178; breaks into rebellion, 178; relations between him and Sir James Perrot, 179; burns Kilmallock 179; marches into Ulster, 179; burns Athlone, 179; joins the Mac-an-Earlas, 180; lays Galway waste, 180; crosses the Shannon, 180; surrenders and takes the required oaths at Kilmallock, 180; sails to France, 180; returns, 184; his death, 187Fitzsimons, Walter, Archbishop of Dublin, 137FitzStephen, Robert, 83FitzUrse of Louth, 111Fitzwilliam, Lord, Lord-Lieutenant, 349-350Fitzwilliam, Sir William, Lord-deputy, 199Flood, Rt. Hon. Henry, 323Foltlebar and Feradach, Legends, 16Formorians, race of, 5Forster, Mr. W. E. , 397Forty-shilling Freeholders, Bill of, 349"Four Masters, " the annals of the, 9Foyle, Lough, 165_Freeman's Journal_, 322Fuidhar, or "broken man, " 28

G

Gall (Saint), 36Galway, bay and town of, 104Galway, Jury of, 247George, Duke of Clarence, 129Gerald de Barri, Gerald of Wales, or Giraldus Cambrensis, 78; grandson of Nesta, 78; priest and chronicler, 78; his character as a writer, 78Gerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, son of Geroit Mor, 130Gerald of Windsor, husband to Nesta, 76Geraldines, 101; Giraldus' opinion of them, 101; ancestors of Earls Kildare and Desmond, 102; important position, 102; their keep at Maynooth, 102; power in Ireland, 102; Geroit Mor, or Gerald the Great, 7th Earl of Kildare, 130Gilbert, Sir Humphry, 179Gilla Dacker and his horse, legend of, 14Ginkel, Dutch general of William III. , 291Gladstone, Mr. W. E. , 406; disestablished the Irish Church, 406; introduced Irish Land Act of 1870, 407; of 1881, 409; imprisoned members of Land League, 411; proposed measure of Home Rule of 1886, 414Glenmama near Dunlaven, 68Godred, King of Man, 87Gormanstown, Lord, 249Granard, Lord Justice, 280Grattan, Henry, 328; his loyalty and patriotism, 328; he enters Parliament, 330; his eloquence, 330; Declaration of Rights, 330; retires into private life, 332; protests against the Union, 332; member of English Parliament, 332; his death and burial, 333"Great Darcy of Platten, " 132Gregory, Pope, 44Grey, de Wilton, Lord-deputy, 189Grey, Leonard, Lord, Deputy, 151, 152Griffiths, Sir Richard, Irish geologist, 312

H

Habeas Corpus Act, 351Hadrian IV. , Pope, 81Hamilton, Sir Richard, 282Harcourt, Lord, 325Hardi, French General, 365Harvey, Bagenal, United Irishman and general of the rebels, 363Hasculph, Danish Governor, 86-87Hatton, Sir Christopher, "an Undertaker, " 194Heber and Heremon, sons of Milesius, 10Hoadly, Archbishop of Armagh, 320Hoche, General, 355_Hoche_, vessel called the, 365Home Rule, the question of, 44Howth, Earl of, 134, 136Humbert, French general, 364Hy-Nial, or royal house of O'Neil, 42, 52

I

Iar Connaught, mountains of, 104Ireland, Primeval, 1; its early vicissitudes, 3; South European plants in, 5; early history of, 5-11; its legends, 13-21; Celtic Ireland, 23; early laws of, 26-29; St. Patrick's visit to, 32; the Northern scourge of, 50; invasion by Anglo-Normans, 76; King John in, 98-100; invasion of, by Edward Bruce, 107; Richard II. Visits to, 119; attempt to force Protestantism upon, 158-160; Molyneux's, "The case of, " &c. , 313; Union of Great Britain and Ireland, 367-376Ireland, the future of, 413"Ireland, Young, " party, 390-395Irish Catholic Association, 407Irish Celts, 25Irish Church, disestablishment of, 409Irish Education Act, 408Irish elk, 4Irish export of woollen goods forbidden, 309Irish famine, 396 403Irish hare, 4Irish heroes, 418Irish Land Act, 407Irish volunteers, 336-340Inchiquin, Lord, 256Iona, 44

J

James II. Recalls Lord Ormond, 280; restores Catholics to office, 280; his treatment of Protestants, 281-282; his flight to France, 282; arrives in Ireland, 283; his reception, 284; besieges Londonderry, 285; goes to Dublin, 286; is defeated at the battle of the Boyne, 288; his flight, 289John, the Mad Berserker-warrior, 87Jones, Michael, Colonel, 259Jones, Paul, pirate, 326Joyce's, Mr. , "Celtic Romances, " 13

K

Kelts, battle of, 99Keogh, Judge, 403Kerry, defence of, 215Kerry, plants and animals in, 5Kildare, Dean of, 149Kildare, house of, 102; earls of, 130, 134, 150; "Silken Thomas, " 147; vice-deputy, 147; renounces allegiance to England, 147; takes Dublin, 148; burns Trim and Dunboyne, 149; is defeated, 150; imprisoned and hanged, 150Kilkea, castle of, 144Kilkenny, castle of, 105Kilkenny, statutes of, 115Killala, Bishop of, 365Kilmallock burnt, 179: church of, 179Kimbaoth, prince of Milesia, 10King's County, 52Kinsale, harbour of, 215Knights of Glyn, 102; of Kerry, 102Knockmaa, a hill of, 8Knocktow, battle of, 144; cause of, 106

L

Lacy, Hugo de, viceroy of Henry II. , 92Lagan, ford of, 209Lalor, James, 393Lambay, stand of, 55Lambert, Simnel, 331; received in Dublin and crowned, 134; defeated at Stoke, 135; taken prisoner and appointed turnspit, 135Land League, the, 409Land Lepers, 53, 59Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, 81Langan, Comte de, 288Laoghaire, King of Meath, 34Larkin, Fenian hanged, 406Lecky's, Mr. , "History of the Eighteenth Century, " 300Lee, Captain, 199Leix, town of, 161Leland the historian, 10Liffy river, 87Lilibullero, anti-Catholic song, 283Limerick, articles of, 295Limerick, first siege of, 291Limerick, treaty of, 295Limerick, wood and town of, 117Lindisfarne, peninsula of, 45Londonderry, siege of, 285Lovell, Lord, 135Lucas, Charles, 323Luinagh Tyrlough, 195Lundy, governor of Londonderry, 285

M

Mac-an-Earlas, sons of Clanricarde, 191Macarthy, Colonel, 288McCarthy, Dermot, 90Maccumacthenius, St. Patrick's chronicler, 34Magan, betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 361Maguire, Lord, 241Mahon, King of Munster, 61Malachy or Melachlin, Ard-Reagh, 52Malby, Sir Nicolas, governor of Connaught, 187Mananan MacLir, Legend of Gilla Dacker, 17Marshall, William, Earl of Pembroke, 103Maryborough anciently Campa, 162Mary, Queen of England, 163; her death, 164Maynooth, castle of, 102Mayo, Lord, 267Mayo mountains, 8Maxwell, Colonel, 362McGeoghehan, Abbé, historian, 1McGillapatrick, Lord of Upper Ossory, 168McHugh, 191McMahon, Hugh, chief of Monaghan, 192McMurrough, Dermot, King of Leinster, 83, 241McMurrough, son of Dermot, 83McToole, Sir Owen, 197McWilliam, Burke of Galway, 154

McWilliam Eighter, and McWilliam Oughter, the Nether and Further Burkes, 111McWilliam of Clanricarde, 142Meagher, 391Meath, plains of, 8Mila de Cogan, Norman governor of Dublin, 87Milcho chieftain, 3Milesians or Scoti, 9, 10Mitchell, John, 391Molyneux, Thomas, Dr. , 311Molyneux, William, the "Ingenious Molyneux, " 311Montalembert, M. De, 40Montmorency, Henry de, 85Mortimer, Roger, viceroy, 110Mountgarret, Lord, 249Mountjoy, Charles Blount, 211; his character, 211; establishes military stations, 213; defeats by starvation, 213; defeats Tyrone and the Spanish fleet, 216Moytura, pre-historic battle of the southern, 7Muckern, or Mulkearn noi, 187Mullingar, town of, 292Munroe, General, 255Murhertach, house of, 74Murphy, Father John, 362Murphy, Father Michael, 304

N

_Nation, The_, newspaper, 390Neil Grey, 167Newtown Butler, battle of, 288Norris, General Sir Henry, 206Norris, Sir Thomas, 194Norsmen, or Northmen, or Danes, 7, 53-56

_Northern Star_, newspaper, 358Nuad, King of the Tuatha-da-Danaans, 7-9

O

"Oakboys, " Society of the, 345O'Brian, Prince of Thomond, 90O'Brien, race of, 60O'Brien, Smith, 391O'Brien, the Fenian, 406O'Byrnes, 128O'Carrol of Argial, 91O'Connell, Daniel, makes his first speech, 379; his energy, 379; sets on foot the Irish Catholic Association, 379; carries Catholic rent, 380; contests the county of Clare, 381; his character, 382; his efforts to procure repeal, 385; his enmity to secret societies, 385; founds the Loyal National Repeal Association, 386; his prosecution, 387; found guilty and imprisoned, 387; his last appearance and death, 389O'Connell, John, 391O'Connor, Roderick, the Ard-Reagh, 75, 84-91O'Connors of Connaught, 74Octennial Bill, the, 325O'Curry, 53O'Dogherty, Sir John, 198O'Donnell, Calvagh, 167O'Donnell, of Tyrconnel, 167O'Donnell, Hugh, or Red Hugh, 200. O'Donnell, murder of Carey, 412O'Donnell, Rory, 221O'Donovans, 63O'Driscoll's piratical clan of West Cork, 27O'Dynor, Dermot, or Dermot of the Bright Face, 17O'Flaherty, Edmund, 403Oilen-an-Oir, or Gold Island, 185Ollamhs or Sennachies, head bards, 19O'Lochlin of House of O'Neill, 74O'Moore, Rory or Roger, 241O'Neill, Owen, 248O'Neill, Shane, called the Proud, 165; his character, 166; his eloquence, habits, and morals, 166; his encounter with Sussex, 167; his visit to the English Court, 168; receives title of Captain of Tyrone, 169; returns to Ireland, 169; Sussex attempt to poison him, 169; his descent on the Scots, 170, and on Connaught, 170; his last disaster and death, 172, 173O'Neill, Sir Phelim, 241O'Neills, or Hy-Nials, 60-74Orange Lodges, institution of, 345O'Reilly of Brefny, 167O'Rorke, chieftain of Connaught, 91O'Rorke of Brefny, chieftain of Leinster, 91Ormond, house of, 105-128Ossian, poet and bard, 11-35Ossory, clan of, 84Oswald, King of Northumbria, 44Oswin, King of Northumbria, 46O'Toole, Garrot, 191O'Toole, St. Lawrence, Archbishop of Dublin, 86Oulart, hill of, 362Owel, Lough, near Mullingar, 55

P

Paladius, missionary, 33Parnell, Mr. , 411Parnell, Sir John, 371Parsons, Sir William, 242Patrick (Saint), his birth, 33; lands in Ireland, 33; visits to Meath and to Connaught, Antrim, and Armagh, 34; legends of, by Mr. Aubrey de Vere, 35"Peep of Day Boys, " Society of, 345Pelham, Sir William, Lord-deputy, 188Penal Code, the, 300Perkin Warbeck, 136, 137Perrot, Sir John, I76-179Peter's Pence, collection of, 79Petrie, George, LL. D. , 7Petty, Sir William, his survey of Ireland, 271Philip II. , King of Spain, 183Phoenix organization, 404Phoenix Park tragedy, 411Picts, 53Pierce, Captain, 173Plunkett, Dr. , Archbishop of Dublin, 279Portland, Duke of, 350Poynings' Act, 138Poynings' Act repealed, 287Poynings, Sir Edward, 140Preston, Colonel, 249Protection of Life and Property Bill, 409

R

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 190-191Rents, Black, 17, 123Rents, Fair Rent and Free Sale, 410Rents, Rack, 28Rents, Stipulated, 28Ribbon Association, 385Richard II. Lands at Waterford, 119; his meeting with Art McMurrough, 119; entertains the chiefs, 120; receives their oaths of allegiance, 120; returns to Ireland, 122; encounters Art McMurrough, 122; leaves Ireland, 123Rupert, Prince, 259; his arrival at Kinsale, 259

S

Sadleirs, John and James, 403Sanim Celtic Festival (November 1st), 14Sarsfield, Patrick, 280Saunders, Pope's Legate, 184Schomberg, Duke of, 288Schwartz, Martin, Dutch General, 135Scoti, tribes of the, 9Scullabogue, barn of, 363Sebastian, King of Portugal, killed at the battle of Alcansar, 184Senchus Mor, ancient law-book, 25, 28Shannon, Lord, 322Shannon, river, 91Sheil, Richard Lalor, 379Sidney, Henry, Sir, 174; becomes Lord-deputy, 174; appoints presidents in the provinces, 176; his scheme for reducing expenses, 177; his visits to Munster and Connaught, 179Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, 66Silvermine hills of Tipperary, 291Simon, priest and tutor to Lambert Simnel, 135Sitric, a Viking, 67Skeffington, Sir William, 148Slemish mountains, 33Sligo, town of, 254Smerwick, town of, 185Somerset, Edward Earl of Glamorgan, 254South European Plants in Ireland, 5Southern Moytura, 7Spanish Armada, 197Spenser, Edmund, poet, 190Stanihurst, historian, the, 131Steel boys, Society of, 345St. John, Sir Oliver, deputy, 231St. Leger, Sir Wareham, "Undertaker, " 194St. Ruth, General, 292Stephen, Head Fenian centre, 405Stokes, battle of, 135Stokes, Miss Margaret, 312Stone, Archbishop of Armagh, 320Strafford, Wentworth, in Ireland, 232; orders subsidy of £100, 000, 234; he overawes the juries, 234; his character, 235; his suppression of the woollen trade, 235; founds the linen trade, 235; clears the sea of pirates, 235; sets a Court of High Commission to work, 237; his treatment of Archbishop Ussher, 237; his account of his dealings with Convocation, 237; his return to England, 239; tried for treason, condemned, and executed, 239; effect of his death in Ireland, 239Strangford Lough, 33Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, 82; his marriage with Eva, 86; takes Waterford, 86; is besieged in Dublin, 87; flees to Waterford, 88; thence to England, 88; meets Henry, 88; and returns to Ireland, 89Stukeley, Thomas, Sir, 170, 184Sulcost, battle of, 61Surrey, Earl of, deputy, 145Swift, Jonathan, Dean of St. Patrick's, 315; his character, 315; his Drapier Papers, 317; his attack on Wood's patent, 315; his popularity, 319Swords in Meath, 247

T

Talbot, Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, 208Tanist laws of succession, 27Tara in Meath, 63; battle of, 63Tenant League Confederation, 403Tenure, Fixity of, 410Thomond, Lady, 303Thomond, Lord, 247Tower, the "Tower Earl" of Desmond, 192Townshend, Lord, 325Towton, battle of, 129Tuam, Archbishop of, 254Tuatha-da-Danaans, race of, 7Turgesius or Thorgist, 55Turlough, grandson of Brian, 82Tyrconnel, Lady, 289Tyrconnel, Richard, Earl of, 280Tyrconnel, Rory O'Donnell, Earl of, 221Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of, 199; receives his title from Elizabeth, 199; contrasted with Shane, 199; his religious views, 200; arbitrary arrest of his brother-in-law, 200; marries Bagnall's sister, 201; prepares for rebellion, 202; assumes the title of the O'Neill, 202; is victorious over Bagnall, 205; meets Essex at Lagan, 209; struggle with Mountjoy, 214; he hurries south to meet the Spaniards, 215; encounters Mountjoy and is defeated, 216; reported plot against England, 220; flies the country, 221; dies in exile, 222

U

Union, Pitt's plan of, 268Union, the, 367_United Irishmen_ newspaper, 394United Irishmen, the Society of, 386Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, 163; treatment of by Strafford, 237

V

Vere, Aubrey de, Mr. , Legends of St. Patrick, 35Vinegar Hill, 363Volunteers, Irish, the, 334-340

W

Ware Papers, 163Waterford, town of, 262; defence of, 86; Danes of, 85; Richard II. Lands at, 122Wexford, town of, 83; castle of, 87; siege by Cromwell, 262Whitby, Synod of, 46Whiteboys, outrages of, 342-344Wicklow, landing of St. Patrick in, 33William of Orange in Ireland, 288; he lands at Carrickfergus, 288; meets James's army, is victorious at the battle of the Boyne, 289; offers free pardon, 290; besieges Limerick, 291; his evidence about the treaty of Limerick, 296Willoughby, Sir Francis, Governor of Dublin, 246Winter, Admiral, 187Wolfe, Tone, 354; leader of United Irishmen, 354; meets Lord Edward Fitzgerald in Paris, 355; his scheme of descent, 355; descent fails, 357; a fresh attempt, 358; again fails, 361; is arrested on board the _Hoche_, 361; condemned and dies in prison, 366Wood, patentee of halfpence, 317

Y

Yellow Ford, battle of the, 203"Young Ireland, " party of, 388, 390