'Historical Series 
 

 
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 EDITED BY G. W. PROTHERO, LITT.D., LL.D. 
 
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 LATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. 
 
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 IRELAND 
 
 14941905 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS 
 
 REVISED, WITH AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER 
 (18681905), NOTES, ETC. 
 
 BV 
 
 ROBERT DUNLOP, M.A. 
 
 LECTURER IN IRISH HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1909
 
 First Edition 1896 
 
 Reprinted 1898 
 Second Edition 1909
 
 GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 The aim of this series is to sketch the history of Modern 
 Europe, with that of its chief colonies and conquests, from about 
 the end of the fifteenth century down to the present time. In one 
 or two cases the story commences at an earlier date : in the case 
 of the colonies it generally begins later. The histories of the 
 different countries are described, as a rule, separately ; for it is 
 believed that, except in epochs like that of the French Revolution 
 and Napoleon I, the connection of events will thus be better under- 
 stood and the continuity of historical development more clearly 
 displayed. 
 
 The series is intended for the use of all persons anxious to 
 understand the nature of existing political conditions. "The roots 
 of the present lie deep in the past "/ and the real significance of 
 contemporary eivnts cannot be grasped unless the historical causes 
 which have led to them are known. The plan adopted makes 
 it possible to treat the history of the last fotir centuries in 
 considerable detail, and to embody the most important results of 
 modern research. It is hoped therefore that the series will 
 be useful not only to beginners but to students who have already 
 acquired some general knowledge of European History. For 
 those who ivish to carry their studies further, the bibliography 
 appended to each volume will act as a guide to original sources 
 of information and works more detailed and authoritative. 
 
 Considerable attention is paid to political geography, and 
 each volume is furnished with such maps and plans as may 
 be requisite for the illustration of the text. 
 
 G. W. PROTHERO. 
 
 2231763
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT is hardly correct to say that Irish History is deficient 
 in dramatic passages, and in scenes that lend them- 
 selves to picturesque description. A Froissart would have 
 given life and beauty to the exploits of many of the Anglo- 
 Norman warriors ; a native chronicler of poetic genius would 
 have made the deeds of more than one of the Celtic Princes, 
 especially of Shane O'Neill and of the illustrious Tyrone, shine 
 out in brilliant significance. The story of the sieges of 
 Londonderry and of Limerick, and of the battles of the Boyne 
 and of Aghrim has been told by eminent writers ; but these 
 have belonged to the conquering race ; and the works of 
 writers of the conquered race on these events are dull and 
 imperfect. Irish History contains episodes that a Walter Scott 
 would have animated and made striking; but they have not 
 been treated by a master hand; a "vates sacer" has not 
 appeared to give them attractive form and colouring. 
 
 This side, however, of Irish History is not that which 
 possesses the greatest interest. The march of Irish affaiis 
 after the Anglo-Norman conquest has been, for the most 
 part, outside the great movements of the European World; 
 there has been no Irish Bannockburn and no Irish Flodden; 
 many eminent Irishmen have been more conspicuous in 
 foreign lands than their own. Irish History is most valuable 
 on its internal side, that is, as it unfolds the conditions 
 and circumstances under which the Irish People has existed 
 through many centuries, and has become what it is. The 
 story to a superficial mind may appear " a tale of little
 
 viii Preface. 
 
 meaning," a wearisome account of the long and hopeless 
 struggle of a weak dependency with an infinitely more powerful 
 nation and state. But the series of events which constitutes 
 Irish History is of no ordinary interest to the true historical 
 student and to thinkers and statesmen worthy of the name. 
 The annals of few countries so clearly illustrate the evident 
 sequence of cause and effect in the evolution of the life and 
 the fortunes of a misruled, backward, and most ill fated com- 
 munity. Irish History, especially when contrasted with that 
 of England, shows most strikingly how calamitous were the 
 effects, in the Middle Ages, of the complete absence of a 
 strong monarchy and a strong central government from a land 
 abandoned to feudal oppression and to Celtic tribal disorder 
 and discord. It shows very plainly how ill it may be when a 
 people much superior in civilisation and wealth tries to rule 
 a people inferior in these respects ; how misconceptions and 
 fatal mistakes may follow ; how efforts to extend the domain 
 of good government may lead to gross and far-spreading 
 injustice. It illustrates only too vividly how terrible may be 
 the results of conquest carried out piecemeal, through long 
 spaces of time, and of wholesale confiscation following in its 
 train ; and it signally proves how dreadful may be the issue of 
 conflicts in which a feeble subject race defies the power of a 
 great ruling State, in times of fierce religious and national 
 passion. It indicates, on the other hand, how infatuated are 
 attempts such as these ; especially when the weaker people is 
 torn by intestine broils and divisions, and, while it beards an 
 enemy tenfold in strength, throws its chances away in its 
 insensate quarrels. Irish History places in the fullest light the 
 evils ot wrong done in the name of religion ; of a system of 
 government framed on the principle of the ascendency of a 
 mere sect ; of society formed, in all its parts, on the domination 
 of a small caste, and on the denial of right to a conquered 
 people ; of the divisions of race and faith rending a community
 
 y Preface. ix 
 
 in twain, and forbidding the fusion of classes kept apart, and 
 of commercial restrictions of extreme harshness ; and it teaches 
 a whole series of economic lessons, throughout its long course, 
 of the greatest value. It must be added that it bears witness 
 to the truth, that it is difficult for a Teutonic people to manage, 
 or even to understand, a Celtic, particularly when the latter is 
 on a plane of life, usages, and habits completely different ; and 
 that British policy for Ireland, however well-meaning, has often 
 been mistaken, owing to sheer ignorance, and has been re- 
 peatedly and most unfortunately too late, even in its best and 
 wisest remedial measures. 
 
 The History of Ireland, besides, if I do not err, is deeply 
 interesting for another general reason. Philosophy attests the 
 moral government of the Universe, and rightly asserts the 
 freedom of the will of man. But History recognises and teaches 
 how immense is the power of circumstance in shaping the 
 fortunes of states and nations; and points out that these 
 repeatedly have seemed to depend on what we in our 
 ignorance call accidents. This has especially been the case 
 in the course of the affairs of Ireland; and it cannot fail to 
 attract the attention of a thoughtful mind. Over and over 
 again it has seemed as if Irish History would have been com- 
 pletely changed, with happy results, but for slight incidents 
 that appear but the freaks of Fortune. To refer to a few 
 instances only how different it would have been if Henry of 
 Anjou had not turned aside from the conquest in his power ; 
 had Edward I done for Ireland what he did for Wales; had 
 Henry VIII lived a few years longer; had William III been 
 true to his nature in the affair of the Treaty of Limerick; 
 had not Lord Fitzwilliam been recalled by a petty intrigue; 
 had Pitt, on the occasion of the Union, compelled George III 
 to bow to his will, as he had compelled him before ; had 
 Catholic Emancipation been accomplished with "the wings" 
 in 1825 I In these, and many other important passages of
 
 x Preface. 
 
 Irish History, circumstance, that seems almost fortuitous, has 
 played a decisive and an adverse part ; and a kind of dark 
 and mournful fatality, like the song of the chorus in the Greek 
 Drama, appears to play over a protracted and unhappy 
 tragedy. This is given to us as an ensample, and affords 
 matter for reflection. 
 
 I have written this work on Irish History with a reference 
 to these leading ideas and from these points of view. I have, 
 I hope, composed the narrative in the spirit in which every 
 narrative of the kind should be composed. I have endeavoured 
 to trace the causes of events, to show their connection and 
 relations, to tell the truth fearlessly, to be strictly impartial, 
 and yet always to make allowance for the stress of circum- 
 stance, and for the frailties, the passions, and the ignorance 
 of humanity. I shall have gained my object if I shall have 
 directed the attention of thoughtful minds in Great Britain and 
 Ireland to Irish History. The subject, for various reasons, is 
 of supreme importance to the people of both countries. 
 
 As I have been confined within rather narrow limits of 
 space, I have been obliged to be chary of notes. I have 
 enumerated in the Appendix the authorities, to which the 
 reader may be referred. 
 
 I have to thank the Treasurer and Librarian of the King's 
 Inns, Dublin, for much valuable information. 
 
 WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS. 
 
 GARTNAMONA, TULLAMORE. 
 December i^tk, 1895.
 
 NOTE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 IN undertaking the revision of this little book, I have had 
 to bear in mind that I had a duty to fulfil towards the 
 author as well as towards the public. The late Judge O'Connor 
 Morris held strong views on certain points (see particularly pp. 
 309, 315, 325, 330, 333), with which I either do not or only 
 partly agree ; but it would have been manifestly unfair to 
 tamper with the tone of a book which bears his name on the 
 title page. I have therefore, in the corrections I have found it 
 necessary to make, restricted myself to matters of fact. I 
 believe that the author would have entirely concurred in these 
 corrections. 
 
 With the permission of the Editor, I have added a few 
 notes and extended the list of authorities, marking with an 
 asterisk those books which I thought would prove most useful 
 to readers beginning their study of Irish history. As for the 
 additional chapter, bringing the narrative down to the General 
 Election in 1905, I have endeavoured, I trust not unsuccess- 
 fully, to maintain the attitude of an impartial observer. 
 
 R. D. 
 
 MANCHESTER. 
 
 Ostober, 1909.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. IRELAND BEFORE THE ANGLO-NORMAN CON- 
 QUEST i 
 
 ,, II. THE ANGLO-NORMAN CONQUEST OF IRE- 
 LAND. STATE OF THE COUNTRY FROM 
 THE REIGN OF HENRY II TO THAT OF 
 HENRY VII 24 
 
 ,, III. IRELAND DURING THE TUDOR PERIOD TO 
 
 THE END OF THE REIGN -OF HENRY 
 
 VIII 59 
 
 ,, IV. IRELAND TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF 
 
 ELIZABETH 83 
 
 ,> V. FROM THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH TO THE 
 
 RESTORATION 122 
 
 ,, VI. FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE CAPITU- 
 LATION OF LIMERICK . . . .163 
 
 ,, VII. THE PERIOD OF THE PENAL LAWS IN IRE- 
 LAND. THE REVOLUTION OF 1782. . 197 
 
 VIII. GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT. THE REBELLION 
 
 OF 1798. THE UNION .... 249 
 
 ,, IX. FROM THE UNION TO CATHOLIC EMANCI- 
 PATION 289 
 
 X. FROM 1829 TO 1868 ,,6 
 
 XI. THE PERIOD OF REFORM, 1868 1905 . 
 
 NOTES BY MR DUNLOP . 
 
 34 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 389 
 IMJEX 
 
 403 
 
 MAP OF IRELAND . 
 
 .at end 
 
 L
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IRELAND BEFORE THE ANGLO-NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 Prehistoric Ireland. The Milesian conquerors. The Irish an Aryan 
 Celtic race. Pagan Ireland. The island cut off from the Empire. 
 First traces of Irish history. The mission of Patrick and its results. 
 Ireland little affected by the consequences of the barbarian conquests 
 and the fall of Rome. Splendid achievements of the Early Irish 
 Church. State of society in Ireland before subsequent invasion and 
 conquest. The Monarchy. The inferior kings. The chiefs and other 
 orders. The tribes, clans and septs. The settlement of the land. 
 The Church. The organisation and features of society. The arts of 
 war and peace in Ireland. The Brehon laws. History. Poetry. Music. 
 Architecture. Sculpture. The characteristics of the Irish. The 
 Danish invasions. Brian. Decline of the Monarchy, and of civili- 
 sation. Proximity of England to Ireland. The island exposed to 
 Anglo-Norman conquest. 
 
 THE traces are faint of the prehistoric race which spread over 
 Ireland in remote antiquity. The island is rich in stone monu- 
 ments. It contains numerous "Cyclopean" remains; but it 
 has nothing like Stonehenge in extent and grandeur. Tradition 
 indicates that it was peopled from the East; the Fomorians 
 have been called a Turanian tribe ; the Firbolgs were probably 
 w.i. i
 
 2 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 of the stem of the Belgae ; the Tuatha-na-Danaans, " adepts 
 in Druidical and magical rites " not impossibly a sacerdotal 
 caste are said to have been of Pelasgic origin. The evidence 
 of language, however, admirably sifted by Zeuss, proves that 
 the main body of the Irish people, of which History takes 
 account, was an Aryan community of the great Celtic stock, 
 once dominant in Britain, in Gaul, in Spain, and scattered over 
 other parts of Europe. It seems probable that it belonged to 
 the tribes of the Gael rather than of the Cymry, these last 
 perhaps the Cimmerii of Greek story, the Cimbri, at one time 
 the terror of Rome, and the fathers, almost certainly, of the 
 Celts of Wales. A migration of warlike Celts from Spain, 
 after long wanderings through the Scythian wastes, overran 
 Ireland before the Christian era; the Milesian settlement 
 seems to point to a real conquest. Heber, Heremon, and Ir, 
 the sons of Milesius, are as mythical perhaps as Romulus and 
 Remus, as Arthur and Modred, as Hengist and Horsa; but 
 the families* of the leading Irish chieftains, tradition affirms, 
 sprang from their loins ; and the Milesians seem to have been 
 an aristocratic order. They are described as " bold, honour- 
 able, daring, prosperous, bountiful, and not afraid of battle or 
 combat." [See note on p. 384.] 
 
 The land inhabited by the Irish race is widely separated 
 from the rest of Europe, and is surrounded by Atlantic waves 
 and tempests. Phoenician and Spanish traders seem to have 
 reached its shores, as far back, perhaps, as the day of 
 Carthage; but the Celts have never had a turn for the sea; 
 and Ireland assuredly was, to Roman eyes, even more cut off 
 from the world than Britain. Cagsar scarcely alludes to the 
 island at all ; Agricola thought it not worth invading, though a 
 single legion and a few auxiliaries would, in his judgment, 
 have made the conquest certain. The Celts of Ireland were 
 left to themselves, and to their primitive life and usages, long 
 after Gaul had fallen under the power of Rome, Britain had
 
 i.] fir eland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 3 
 
 known the presence of Roman colonies, and the Celt of the 
 Iberian Peninsula had felt Roman bondage. They, therefore, 
 had no experience or taste of the civilisation that followed the 
 march of the legions ; and the peculiarities of the land they 
 dwelt in, divided by forests and immense peat-mosses, swept 
 by torrents of rain from the West, and with a climate, then 
 and long afterwards, injurious to health, would naturally have 
 kept them in a state of backwardness. Yet in the first 
 centuries succeeding the birth of Christ, we perceive in Ireland, 
 if, no doubt, faintly, the image of an Aryan people established 
 everywhere, and possessing the characteristics of the great 
 Aryan family. A dim shadowy monarchy was in existence ; 
 the names of Conn of the Hundred Battles, of Feredach the 
 Just, of Felim the Lawgiver show that Ireland had her mythical 
 Tullus, and her mythical Numa. A gradation of noble orders 
 appears, in which probably great fighting men, Druids, and 
 poets held a prominent place ; and traces are found of a 
 growing tribal system. Erinn was pagan, and given to 
 idolatry, like Paul's Corinth, but its paganism seems to have 
 been more akin to nature-worship and the cult of the Sun, 
 than to the horrid superstitions of the Cymric race half 
 thralls of the Druidic priesthood which had their chief seats 
 in Anglesea and in parts of Gaul, and which terrified even the 
 trained Roman soldiery. The land seems to have been not 
 divided : there was " not a ditch, nor fence, nor a stone wall," 
 ran an ancient legend, until long afterwards ; and the popula- 
 tion was, probably, still largely nomade. But agriculture, and 
 all that this implies, was common; parts of the community 
 were certainly seated on the soil, under the system of common 
 ownership, and of patriarchal custom, which forms a distinctive 
 mark of an Aryan race. [See note on p. 384.] 
 
 Ireland remained completely outside the track of the first 
 great barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire, and of the 
 influences which these brought with them. The decline of the
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 4 
 
 Imperial power in Britain is attested by a raid on the sea-board 
 of Wales led by Niall of the Nine Hostages, a warrior king of the 
 great Milesian stock, and with difficulty repelled by Stilicho, the 
 conqueror of Alaric, and the friend of Claudian. The ocean 
 foamed with the oars of the Scots," the poet wrote; this was 
 perhaps the first instance of the descents of the Pictish and 
 Scottish races on the decaying settlements of Roman Britain. 
 The kingship of Ireland was held almost continuously by the 
 Hy-Niall the fathers of the O'Neills of History, the most 
 illustrious of the Irish chiefs for nearly five hundred years ; 
 and, doubtless, as nomade life disappeared, the archaic organi- 
 sation of the Aryan races developed itself more thoroughly on 
 the land, in the village community, the sept, and the clan. 
 But, as has always been the case with Aryan peoples, in certain 
 stages of their growth and progress, and has been especially 
 the case with the Celt, Ireland was a land of incessant strife 
 and war ; like the Hindoos, the Hellenes, the Latins, and the 
 Teutons, the Irish Celts were in a state of perpetual tribal 
 discord. Light breaks first on Ireland in the fifth century, 
 when this chaos of rude and wild heathendom was gradually 
 made a Christian body of men united in some measure by a 
 living and common faith. Patrick is a grand historical figure, 
 surrounded though he is by a halo of legends ; the success of 
 his mission was slow but complete. Irish Paganism, possibly 
 for some time in decline, yielded gradually to the influence of 
 the Saint ; " the lights of the Druids were quenched and their 
 spells were broken"; the pagan chiefs bowed before the man of 
 God ; not impossibly what was worst in Irish pagan usages 
 still conspicuous in ancient Indian law was swept away by his 
 amending hand. And Patrick was the founder of that noble 
 Church, which from Ireland sent the everlasting light through 
 a world convulsed by the death-throes of Rome, and overspread, 
 for ages, by ever increasing gloom. [See note on p. 384.] 
 We leap over four stormy centuries, in which the mould of
 
 i.] Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 5 
 
 modern Europe was cast, in the fusion of barbarism and the 
 wreck of the Empire. Fierce and wild races from the deserts 
 of the East poured over the provinces of that Imperial state, 
 which for centuries had held the world at peace, and had been 
 deemed eternal in its majestic structure. Rome was sacked 
 over and over again ; the new Rome on the shores of the 
 Bosporus was threatened by conquering Semite hordes; 
 Attila and his Huns were, with difficulty, expelled from Gaul ; 
 Charles of the Hammer just saved the West from the arms of 
 the Saracen. Meanwhile the Teuton had founded settlements 
 in Italy, in France, in Spain, and in England, destined to 
 become the beginnings of mighty kingdoms; and at last the 
 genius of Charles the Great constructed a new Empire in the 
 midst of the Continent, extending from the Elbe to the Ebro ; 
 and this, though girt round by still untamed tribes, was to be 
 the fruitful germ of the civilisation yet to come. To this 
 source we may largely ascribe monarchic government, the 
 feudal system, the medieval Church, the conception of the 
 state, and the organisation of the land in Europe ; the arrange- 
 ment everywhere bearing the mark of rude and general conquest, 
 and of the ideas of Rome, blending with those of the old 
 Aryan communities. As had been the case before, Ireland was 
 not affected directly by these stirrings of the world, and by the 
 immense consequences following in their train, though in- 
 directly she had a part in them. She continued isolated, to a 
 great extent, so far as regards her secular life, her political 
 existence, and her social usages. The loose supremacy of the 
 Hy-Nialls went on; but it does not seem to have acquired 
 strength, or to have possessed the character of a real Monarchy. 
 The country fell under the rule of four or five houses of 
 chiefs, lords of dominant and powerful tribes, which had more 
 or less subdued the inferior septs and clans; and these were 
 nearly always at feud with one another. The peculiar 
 organisation of the land had become, doubtless, less archaic
 
 6 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 than it had been; collective ownership, the growth of the 
 patriarchal idea, extremely strong in the Aryan races, still 
 prevailed, but had become less general; agriculture had 
 created separate ownership, and that to a very great extent ; 
 and the chiefs of the different tribes, septs, and clans, had 
 gained increased power, and enlarged landed possessions, by 
 processes curiously like those of the feudal system. 
 
 But if the History of Ireland, in those ages, does not, for 
 causes plainly to be traced, show much political or social 
 growth, it discloses one of the grandest and most remarkable 
 religious movements the world has beheld. St Patrick, we 
 have seen, made Ireland Christian ; the island, enclosed by the 
 great sea of the West, was beyond the sphere of the gigantic 
 movements which, north, east, south, and west, overthrew the 
 Empire. The intellect, too, of the Irish, like that of all Celts, 
 is keen, vivid, and especially skilled in communicating its ideas 
 wherever it extends ; and the Irish and Celtic nature is strongly 
 emotional, and vehement in its enthusiastic fervour. These 
 facts explain the astonishing part Ireland played in the ex- 
 tension of the Christian faith, from the sixth until nearly the 
 tenth century. Torn as the land was by intestine broils, the 
 Church maintained a vigorous life of its own; it had its scores 
 of bishops, a great array of clergy, hundreds of holy men in its 
 religious orders ; its monasteries, schools, and colleges were 
 many and flourishing. Learning and piety spread from these 
 centres of light happily not disturbed by the shock of falling 
 Rome; Ireland became a seat of Christianity of a peculiar 
 type ; and she diffused the sacred influence over many lands, 
 doing great things to uphold Christendom, and to preserve the 
 Word in the ages of barbarian conquest. This, indeed, was 
 the most glorious work of the Early Irish Church, a " lasting 
 possession " for the family of man. The zeal of Columba and 
 his successors raised the lamp of life on the shores of lona, 
 and sent its rays over heathen Scotland. It burned in the
 
 i.] v 'Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 7 
 
 Holy Isle of Lindisfarne; the Saxons of Northumbria felt its in- 
 fluence, soon after Augustine had landed on the plains of Kent. 
 Irish missionaries preached in Wales, and beyond the Severn ; 
 their glory shone in many lands of the Continent. Their 
 voices were heard along the Jura; in the Alpine ranges of wild 
 Switzerland ; beside the banks of the Maine and the Rhine ; 
 telling the tidings of great joy to savage conquerors, who still 
 bowed down before Thor and Woden. It is a most significant 
 fact that Charles the Great the embodiment of civilisation in 
 his age had a singular esteem for holy men from Ireland; 
 they were often guests at his Imperial table. And as Ireland 
 sent forth her teachers of the Faith, so she received within her 
 borders thousands of Christians flying from the savagery and 
 turmoil of the dying Roman world. One Merovingian king re- 
 ceived his education in Ireland ; monks, bishops, and priests 
 sought a peaceful refuge from lands watered by the Nile, the 
 Seine, and the Danube, in the crypts of Armagh, and where the 
 Shannon flows beside the lonely churches of Clonmacnoise. 
 
 We may now glance at the state of primitive Ireland, at her 
 institutions, her social structure and her laws, and at the 
 progress she had made in the arts of life, before she felt the 
 effects of invasion and conquest, that is, after the beginning of 
 the ninth century. The ideas that were to prevail in most parts 
 of Europe, and that flowed largely from barbarian dominion, 
 mingling with the influences of Imperial Rome, had not had 
 much power over her people, because she had been little in 
 contact with them. The conceptions of monarchy, with a 
 strong central government, of a church modelled on the Roman 
 type, of aristocracy strictly ordered, of assemblies which were to 
 enact laws, of land stamped with the feudal system, of cities 
 with municipal rights the conceptions, in a word, that appear 
 in the medieval state, were not in existence or were very weak, 
 for Ireland had been nearly a stranger to them. Ireland, 
 nevertheless, presented the image of an Aryan community,
 
 8 Ireland. C CHAP - 
 
 as yet backward, but progressing to a state of higher develope- 
 ment. A monarchy existed, and though in name elective, it 
 had become as nearly hereditary in the Hy-Niall line, as the 
 Empire was in the House of Habsburg. The monarch had 
 little sovereign power ; he was not, in any sense, the Head of 
 a state; he had no Parliament, no Army, no Courts of Justice. 
 But he was the acknowledged superior of every other chief; he 
 seems to have had a right to demand their services, and the 
 armed forces of their tribes in time of war ; he had a claim to 
 something resembling a national tribute. He had a Court, and 
 all that pertained to it ; a nobility like the feudal Companions ; 
 a retinue of Bards and Judges of high degree ; and he perhaps 
 assembled the chief men of Ireland, and possibly representatives 
 of the different tribes, at Tara, the place of royal gatherings. 
 He was regularly crowned with solemn rites; his coronation 
 had much in common with the coronations of the German 
 Caesars. The King of Ireland received the crown, after 
 religious ceremonies, august and striking; in the presence 
 "of the Princes of the Land," of "the Bishops," of the "free 
 states," and possibly of men chosen from the people 1 . 
 
 Four or five lesser kings held the chief rule in Ireland, 
 under their suzerain, the supreme Monarch. These were the 
 heads of the most powerful tribes, which gradually had become 
 dominant; they were akin to the great sovereign nobles of 
 France, and to the Princes of Imperial Germany, dependent 
 in name, but in their own "countries" rulers. Their state 
 resembled that of their overlord ; they had their Courts, their 
 noblesse, and their bands of retainers ; they exercised authority 
 over inferior chiefs ; they commanded the forces of the leading 
 tribes, and of the communities included in them ; and their 
 influence had been for ages increasing. Their kingship, too, 
 
 1 See a most interesting account of the coronation of a king of 
 Connaught in the thirteenth century, in The ff Conors of Connaurht, 
 83 seq.
 
 i-] r Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 9 
 
 ran in the royal lines, if subject to a kind of election ; the 
 Tanist, the successor of the dead king, was not necessarily of 
 his own family, though, in all instances, of his blood ; he was 
 sometimes really chosen by the tribe; and this mode of 
 succession, which seemed so barbarous to Tudor lawyers, was 
 in truth akin to many successions in medieval monarchies, 
 and possibly is a source from which primogeniture arose. 
 These lesser kings probably had the chief power in Ireland; 
 like the great lords and princes of the Middle Ages they kept 
 the land in a state of petty war and trouble. Beneath these 
 kings were the minor chiefs, masters of subject tribes, clans, 
 and the lowest units, the septs ; their condition doubtless in 
 some respects resembled that of their immediate superiors. 
 But they were bound to them by many ties of dependence, 
 analogous to those of the feudal system ; and while their 
 influence over the classes below them was growing, they were 
 falling more and more under the control of the kings. The 
 chiefs of the septs seem to have widely differed in many points 
 from the other chiefs ; the succession to their lands at least 
 though this is a difficult subject was different from that of the 
 acknowledged kings. It was more archaic, and bore the trace 
 of the patriarchal idea of the Aryan family ; but it was a mode 
 of succession like that of the Gavelkind of Kent, though 
 denounced as "sluttish and lewd" by the Cokes and the 
 Spensers. 
 
 Under the chiefs, high and low, there seems to have been 
 a local aristocracy of some kind, differing from the personal 
 noblesse of the kings. The position of this order is, however, 
 obscure ; it may have had something in common with the 
 Anglo-Saxon freeholder. There was a series of classes of 
 inferior grade, but separated by well marked distinctions; 
 they corresponded in some respects to the free tenants, the 
 villeins, and the serfs of the feudal manor. These orders of 
 men were dependent on the chief, his vassals, in fact, in
 
 IO 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 different degrees; they owed him allegiance, and probably 
 supplied a large part of his forces in war. But the Ceile of 
 substance, with herds of his own, was in a far better position, 
 and more free, than the Saer stock or the Daer stock tenants, 
 kept in subjection, though not to the same extent, by loans of 
 cattle from the chief, which made them his debtors, as in the 
 case of the Plebeians and Patricians of Rome. The subjection 
 was in proportion to the amount of the debt, but these various 
 classes, holding land, as they did, with concurrent rights in it, as 
 joint owners, were liable, it would appear, "to a just rent " only, 
 though the chief's power over them had long been growing. 
 Outside the pale of these were the Fuidhir tenants, composed 
 largely of broken men, of captives in war, and of landless 
 outcasts ; these were also followers of the chief in battle ; and 
 they were bound to all kinds of degrading services. The chiefs 
 multiplied this class by a variety of means, for this tended to 
 augment their influence ; they had a right to quarter retainers 
 on them, "the coyne and livery" of a later day ; and they seem 
 to have had a free hand to oppress them. The Fuidhir had 
 no protection against "a rackrent," or indeed against any 
 kind of exaction ; his lot was, doubtless, miserable and hard. 
 But Tudor lawyers and many writers are wholly in error, when 
 they confound the free and other tenants of the Irish chief, 
 with the order of the despised Fuidhirs, and describe the chief as 
 simply a cruel lord of down-trodden serfs ; the assertion is not 
 only false, but absurd. Beside the land-holding classes, there 
 were classes of slaves, the lowest certainly in the social scale ; 
 and as the towns were very few and small, an urban population 
 scarcely existed. 
 
 This organisation of society still archaic but presenting 
 features like those of feudalism as in the case of all Aryan 
 races, had stamped its peculiar character on the land, on which 
 it had been established for ages. The Monarch, the lesser 
 kings, and perhaps all the chiefs, had appropriated large tracts
 
 i.] f Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. n 
 
 of land in demesne which they certainly held as separate 
 owners ; and besides the tribute due to the supreme suzerain, 
 the inferior rulers were entitled to different kinds of services, 
 within the limits of the lands of which they were the heads. 
 Ireland as a whole was not thought of as a common country 
 the idea at least was very feeble the great tribes were the 
 main political units; and beneath these, and forming part of 
 them, were the inferior tribes, the clans, and the septs, 
 possessing landed usages in some respects the same, in others 
 very different. Even the great tribes were still known 
 by the name of Families, a sign of the force of the old 
 patriarchal idea ; their rulers were, or were believed to be, of 
 the blood of an heroic common ancestor; the whole tribe was 
 connected in some sense by this tie ; and the land of the 
 tribe was by tradition its common property. But these con- 
 ceptions had, to a great extent, died out; the heads of the 
 tribes may have had the descent claimed; but the tribes 
 included, we have seen, inferior units, which certainly had not 
 a common origin ; in the tribe, and in these, the land was held 
 for the most part, perhaps, in separate ownership ; this 
 tendency was ever on the increase; and the notion that 
 the tribe lands were subject to collective rights, was prob- 
 ably, as a usage, waning away. This process was going on 
 through the lower tribes and clans, and even down to the 
 smallest division, the sept; separate ownership of the land 
 was always extending; "the primitive communism" of the 
 land was passing away. In the sept, however, the basis of the 
 social fabric, the family idea was still potent, and with this 
 the notion of common property in the land. The lands of 
 the chief of a sept, we have seen, were divided by a process 
 akin to Gavelkind. On the death of a member of a sept, a 
 somewhat similar mode of succession though probably only 
 one of several modes was adopted, the chief, it is alleged, dis- 
 tributing the lands among the remaining members, the nearest
 
 I2 Ireland. t CHAP - 
 
 in blood to the supposed common ancestor. The family idea, 
 too, made artificial ties nearly as strong as natural in the 
 ancient Irish household. The foster child was as much loved 
 as the child by parentage, the godson as the son by blood, 
 these usages, too, seeming odious to Tudor lawyers, who could 
 not ascend to their true sources. [See note on p. 384.] 
 
 The primitive Church in Ireland, as in other countries, was 
 largely moulded on the type of existing society. The Medieval 
 Church in nine-tenths of Europe " reared its mitred front " in 
 feudal Assemblies ; it had its Sovereign Bishops in Germany ; 
 in England its Anselms, Beckets, and Huberts ; its Bishops of 
 Toulouse and Toledo in France and Spain. The ancient Irish 
 Church was fashioned on the tribal system ; the Bishops seem 
 to have been as numerous as were the lesser tribes ; they were, 
 in some measure, perhaps, appointed by the chiefs ; they were 
 very often selected from chieftains' families. The Irish Church, 
 too, like Ireland, was far away from Rome ; in its usages and 
 ritual, perhaps in its sacramental doctrines, it differed widely 
 from that Imperial Church which aspired to supremacy through- 
 out Christendom. In the observance of Easter, in the garb of 
 its priesthood, in the arrangements about tithe, in its spiritual life, 
 it was regarded as almost schismatic at Rome, a thing external 
 to the true Roman communion. It was severely condemned by 
 orthodox servants of ambitious pontiffs as rude and barbarous, 
 as constructed upon a bad pattern, as full of enormities 
 of many kinds; and probably its organisation was weak, 
 its discipline somewhat lax and imperfect, its influence less 
 than it ought to have been in a land torn by perennial dis- 
 cords. Its greatness is most apparent in its heroic missions ; 
 yet it had a zealous and numerous priesthood at home; and 
 theological hatred was in excess, when St Bernard described 
 the ancient Irish Church as "a society that had little hold on a 
 people disorderly in worship, impious in creed, Christians in 
 name, pagans indeed." In one respect, however, this Church
 
 i.] f Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest, 13 
 
 seems to have been less successful in its work than might have 
 been supposed. Sexual licence and impurity have usually 
 been a characteristic defect in the Celtic races, they have 
 darkened the course of French History. They appear to have 
 been marked vices of the old Irish tribes, and the Church 
 made very little impression on them. It has been the glory 
 of the clergy of a later time, to have freed Ireland from this 
 reproach to a remarkable extent. [See note on p. 385.] 
 
 At this period therefore, Ireland, we repeat, was an Aryan 
 people of a somewhat primitive type, yet, unquestionably, in a 
 state of progress, and though differing from the communities 
 of the greater part of Europe, now beginning to grow into 
 medieval nations, still exhibiting points of resemblance to 
 them. Notwithstanding continual feuds and troubles, society 
 in Ireland was kept together by a dependence of orders clearly 
 marked, if less definite than that of the feudal system ; and 
 traditional custom and immemorial usage, we may rest assured, 
 had immense influence. As in the case of all the Celtic races, 
 the Irish were passionately attached to their chiefs; the devotion 
 of the Celt, indeed, to persons as contrasted to laws, to rulers, 
 if great, rather than to institutions, is one of his most distinctive 
 qualities ; it appears strikingly in the history of France. 
 
 We may next briefly survey the advance made by the 
 Irish in the arts of war and of peace. The rude assem- 
 blages of the warriors of the tribes were probably even in a 
 less sense armies, than the hosts called together by the rulers 
 of the Franks, or even than the levies of Egbert and Alfred ; 
 and, at a later period, the weapons of the Irish soldier were 
 very inferior to those of the Norman and Saxon. But the 
 Celtic races have always excelled in war, if this excellence has 
 been rendered, in some degree, fruitless, by certain defects in 
 their brilliant qualities ; and they have shown a ' singular 
 aptitude, in every age, to fall in with the usages of other races 
 in the field, to serve with distinction in foreign armies, and to
 
 I4 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 achieve great things, under great leaders. Celts overthrew the 
 Macedonian phalanx, and made their presence felt with awe in 
 Asia ; Celts, under Hannibal, crossed the Alps, and at Cannae 
 broke the stubborn Roman infantry. So the Irish soldiery 
 turned the scale at Fontenoy, and at Cremona and Dettingen 
 won the applause of their enemies; so they have earned 
 renown, on many a battle-field, in the armies of Austria, of 
 France, and of Spain. 
 
 The earliest Laws of Ireland seem to have been written in 
 verse, like the Runic rhymes, or the Etrurian soothsayings. 
 They were, we have seen, perhaps purged of evil by Patrick, 
 who made "the Law of Nature yield to the Law of the 
 Letter"; and they formed a huge collection of primitive 
 customs. The oldest specimens do not go back beyond the 
 eleventh or twelfth centuries, but they, doubtless, reproduce 
 much of a far more ancient date. These laws have little in 
 common with the decisions of Courts of Justice, or with Acts 
 of Parliament, the great sources of the Law of England, for 
 judicial tribunals, and anything like a Parliament had no 
 existence in the Ireland of the Celt ; they were the studies 
 and reflections of generations of lawyers, known as Brehons, 
 who, if not, in a true sense, a caste, were a corporation held in 
 profound esteem and reverence. The Irish Brehon was an 
 interpreter of the law and a judge; he corresponded to the 
 Homeric Themistes, and to other legal sages of the old Aryan 
 races. The Brehon Laws were execrated by Tudor lawyers 
 and called the usages of a merely barbarian people ; but the 
 sentence, if not without plausible grounds, was, in the main, 
 that of undiscerning ignorance. The worst charge made 
 against them that they did not recognise crimes, and that the 
 "eric," or compensation for blood, was the highest penalty 
 known to them was simply due to the fact that crimes in 
 modern law are a classification of wrongs owing their origin to 
 conceptions that did not exist in ancient Ireland, the con-
 
 i.] ''Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 15 
 
 ceptions of Public Justice and of a Supreme State ; and 
 compensation for homicide was the common mode of redress 
 in the primitive Aryan families. As for other parts of the 
 Brehon Laws, which Tudor lawyers specially condemned, for 
 example, their canons of descent and succession, these were in 
 accord with the actual state of society, and are largely justified 
 on an examination of it, mischievous as they may have been in 
 a subsequent age. The Brehon Laws, so far as they have as yet 
 been published, contain much that is just and wise; but they are 
 deficient in breadth and comprehensive views; and they are 
 overlaid and injured by the refined subtleties and the ingenuity 
 characteristic of Celtic nature. They are full of conceits and 
 extremely complex, never simple or striking in their ideas ; they 
 contrast strangely with the English Common Law, with all its 
 faults, the expression of the mind of a masterful, and an emi- 
 nently practical people. In one respect, however, the Brehon 
 lawyers seem to have had just and enlightened conceptions ; 
 they systematically discouraged collective rights in land, and 
 did much to encourage separate ownership, one of the first 
 great steps in social advancement. 
 
 The Irish have always dwelt in the long-buried past it is 
 a characteristic of the Celtic races ; they possessed annals and 
 chronicles even at this period. It seems vain to dismiss these 
 records as "piles of tinted cloud" that "cannot be condensed 
 into solid fact"; the Irish Annals, it has been acutely re- 
 marked, are singularly correct in their references to comets and 
 eclipses, and to natural phenomena that can be ascertained; 
 Sir James Mackintosh contends "that the Irish are enabled to 
 boast that they possess genuine history several centuries more 
 ancient than any European nation possesses it in its spoken 
 language." Few of the existing Irish annals and histories are 
 of an earlier date than the twelfth century; but they are almost 
 certainly compiled from ancient manuscripts, some, it is be- 
 lieved, running up to the age of Patrick. These archaic produc-
 
 1 6 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 tions are in the Irish tongue, and are for the most part hidden 
 in national libraries ; but one work of the same class, though 
 much more modern, has been not long ago given to the world, 
 translated carefully, and furnished with elaborate notes. The 
 Annals of the Four Masters, collected in the seventeenth century, 
 by learned monks of the Franciscan order, perhaps dependents 
 of the chiefs of Tirconnell, contain an account of Ireland from 
 the earliest times, and are, doubtless, modelled on the type 
 of the old chronicles. They are a rude record of dry state- 
 ments, without a trace of artistic skill, or a pretence to historical 
 form or order; but we catch in the narrative the note of sorrow 
 that seems inherent in Irish nature, and that Irish monks of 
 that age might fitly utter. But the Irish chronicles and annals, 
 like those of the Teutonic races, seem to have been devoid of 
 the charm and keen intelligence which pervade the immortal 
 work of the Greek Father of History. [See note on p. 385.] 
 
 The great poets of the world belong to the Semitic, the 
 Hellenic, and the Teutonic races. The most brilliant poetry 
 of the Celtic race is to be found in the literature of France ; it 
 has been made admirably attractive and correct by the civilisa- 
 tion of many ages ; and French lyrical poetry justly ranks high. 
 But who would compare the rhetoric of Corneille, the weak 
 and lifeless creations of Racine, and the prolific but rather 
 commonplace genius of Voltaire, with the song of David, 
 Ezekiel's grandeur, the rush of Homer's verse, the strength of 
 Aeschylus, the divine touch of Shakespeare, the master hand of 
 Goethe ? The poetry of ancient Ireland seems to have been 
 abundant, but it was certainly not of a high quality. A single 
 Irish epic exists, but a translation has not as yet been attempted. 
 The native Irish poetry of a much later date shows grace and 
 delicacy, even fair promise; but, as is characteristic of the 
 Celtic intellect, at certain stages of its development, it is wanting 
 in strength and overlaid with petty refinements and false orna- 
 ments ; it continually sacrifices truth to form ; it is devoid of
 
 i.] Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 17 
 
 really creative genius. Spenser wrote, with just insight, of the 
 Irish poems of his day : " Yea, truly I have caused divers of 
 them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them, 
 and surely they savoured of sweet wit and good invention, but 
 skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry ; yet were they 
 sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural device, 
 which gave good grace and comeliness unto them." The vein 
 of melancholy pervading Irish nature appears very clearly in 
 old Irish poetry, and also a kind of satiric wit; we see these 
 qualities perhaps in the highest perfection in the pathetic 
 ballads, and the satires of Moore. But place a ballad and a 
 satire of Moore beside a song of Tennyson and a satire of 
 Dryden, and the difference between the poetic power of the 
 Celt and the Teuton will at once be perceived. 
 
 The Semite, the Hellene, and the Teuton have, also, been 
 the great masters of song. The sweet singers of Israel have 
 reappeared in Jewish composers of recent times, and in Jewish 
 musical artists of extraordinary power. The legend of Orpheus 
 attests the Greek love of melody ; the Athenian drama had an 
 orchestra worthy of it. Handel and Beethoven are the chiefs 
 of modern harmony ; the barbarous war songs of the Teutonic 
 tribes are said to have shown a kind of rude majesty. France 
 exhibits what is best in Celtic art; but French music, like 
 French poetry, has never been noted for strength or grandeur. 
 Yet music certainly held a high place among the primitive 
 Celts, and especially so, perhaps, among the old Irish tribes. 
 The harp was the instrument loved by the Celt; the Irish 
 harpers were of peculiar excellence. Giraldus, a half Norman 
 Celt of Wales, who disliked the Irish, has written " that their 
 harpers are incomparably more skilful than any I have seen ; 
 iheir manner is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid, the 
 melody is sweet and sprightly." These ancient musicians were, 
 perhaps, associated with, and formed part of, the Bards, held 
 in honour by the Irish kings and chiefs, and attached to their 
 
 M. I. 2
 
 18 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP 
 
 households from the earliest times; and they had their separate 
 calling down to the seventeenth century. The race of the 
 harpers survived even the revolutions which overwhelmed 
 their masters; one, Carolan, was a really great musician, 
 renowned in the age of Swift and Berkeley; a few were 
 to be found almost within living memory. The old Irish 
 music was rich in melody, occasionally of a most exquisite 
 kind; it was full too of Irish sadness and sorrow. It is to 
 be found to this day in compositions, especially in so-called 
 Italian airs, of which the authors have not acknowledged the 
 origin. [See note on p. 385.] 
 
 In ancient Ireland, as in the rest of Europe, the noble arts 
 of painting and sculpture had made little progress at this period. 
 The figures in the old Irish buildings and churches, in many 
 instances of great antiquity, are rude, unsightly, and without 
 grace of form; they would have shocked even a primitive 
 Hellene. But the Celtic Irish crosses show much skill of 
 workmanship, if not remarkable beauty of design ; and Irish 
 hands have given proof of ingenious cunning, in ornaments of 
 many kinds, in gold, and especially in illuminating sacred 
 manuscripts. These are not specimens of artistic genius, and 
 they disclose the Celtic tendency to oversubtlety ; but they are 
 interesting, and have a real merit of their own. Architecture, 
 in Ireland, in this age, was certainly in a backward state, owing 
 probably to incessant wars and feuds; few dwellings seem to 
 have been built of stone; the petty towns were, perhaps, 
 collections of huts, like the Gaulish oppida of the days of 
 Caesar; even the "forts" of the chiefs were rude and weak 
 structures. The Celtic Irish churches were, for the most part, 
 small, and many, it is said, were built of wood ; but the remains 
 of one or two reveal symmetry and grace, though majesty and 
 strength are here, too, wanting. The mysterious Round Towers, 
 it is commonly supposed, were belfries attached to the ancient 
 churches; but the skill seen in these structures, and their
 
 L] Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 19 
 
 shapely forms, make this supposition open to doubt, and seem 
 to point to the work of a not Celtic race. 
 
 The essential characteristics of the ancient Irish appear even 
 at this remote period. They were those which have marked 
 out the families of the Celts, as these have figured on the stage 
 of History. The Irish were brilliant rather than solid, apt to 
 learn, skilled in diffusing ideas, but wanting in certain elements 
 of intellectual strength belonging to other branches of die 
 Aryan stem. In the works of the mind they were rather 
 ingenious than great; they were subtle, not practical, not 
 supremely gifted, not masters of the realities of things. They 
 had fancy but not imaginative power ; what they accomplished 
 was seldom perfect; they were deficient in depth, and in the 
 highest intelligence. In their moral tendencies they were 
 passionately attached to persons, and had little reverence for 
 institutions and laws; they were emotional, fickle, and easily 
 led, more interesting than formed for high destinies. It would 
 be unjust to describe them as a backward race ; for they lay 
 largely outside the influences that make for progress, and 
 were already being left behind by communities enjoying 
 those advantages. As in the case of all Celts, however, the 
 worst characteristic of the old Irish was their never-ending 
 intestine discord, which kept them constantly in a state of 
 barbarous conflict. This has been seen in other Aryan races, 
 at certain periods of their life and growth; but they have 
 usually been able to emerge from this anarchy, and to combine 
 into real and powerful nations. It has been otherwise with 
 most parts of the Celtic family ; and the Irish are a conspicuous 
 instance of the fact. Nor is the history of France a proof to 
 the contrary : however strong has been her unity for ages, no 
 land has been torn by more relentless factions ; no people has 
 been rent by such savage feuds, especially, like the Irish, in the 
 face of an enemy 1 . [See note on p. 385.] 
 
 1 Caesar thus describes the Gallic Celts of his day. De BtB* G*Uie,
 
 20 Ireland. [CHAP 
 
 From the beginning of the ninth to the eleventh centuries, 
 Celtic Ireland was exposed to the destructive raids of pirate 
 hordes from the isles of the Baltic and from the shores of the 
 Scandinavian Peninsula. The Danish invasions of Ireland ran 
 a different course from those suffered by England at the same 
 period. The Anglo-Saxons resisted the Danes bravely, but 
 they never struck them down in one decisive battle. Alfred 
 was compelled to temporise at the Peace of Wedmore ; a 
 Danish dynasty sat on the throne of England; a Danish 
 settlement spread far inland from the Thames to the Humber ; 
 and the Danes finally became a part of the great English 
 people, and gave it some of its very best elements. In Ireland 
 the invaders were more than once called over by chiefs and 
 princes ready to accept any aid against rivals and foes at 
 home a common and mournful result of Celtic discords ; but 
 though one Danish warrior, perhaps Lodbrog, overran and 
 ruled a large part of the island, the Danes were ultimately 
 subdued, and almost driven out. They appear, in fact, never 
 to have had a permanent hold over nine-tenths of Ireland. 
 They planted colonies along the seaboard ; built probably three 
 or four walled towns Dublin, Waterford and Limerick are the 
 best known of these set up in them a rude municipal govern- 
 ment; and created the principal fisheries of Irish salmon. 
 But Ireland never had her Danelagh; the invaders did not 
 blend with the native race ; the Irish scarcely show a trace of 
 Danish blood. 
 
 The Danes suffered their first great defeat at the hands of 
 King Malachy of the Hy-Niall line "the wearer of the collar 
 of geld " commemorated in the verse of Moore. But the glory 
 of crushing the pirate settlers and expelling them, for the most 
 
 6. i r " In Gallia non solum in omnibus civitatibus, atque in omnibus 
 pagis partibusque, sed paene etiam in singulis domibus factiones sunt. " Of 
 the Irish patriots of 1800-14, Napoleon says, Corr. 32. 328: "Ils 
 etaient divises d'opinion, et se querellaient continuellement entre eux."
 
 i.] Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 21 
 
 part, from the country, belongs to Brian a fine historical 
 figure called not inaptly the Irish Alfred. Brian, one of the 
 lesser kings of the South, was, in a certain sense, an usurper ; 
 he displaced the supreme Hy-Niall dynasty; and became 
 Monarch in the first years of the eleventh century. His reign 
 is still a bright spot in Irish annals ; he kept a distracted land 
 at peace ; repaired much of the ravage done by the Dane ; 
 restored churches and built schools ; in a word, was probably 
 a really great sovereign. The legend that tells how a fair girl, 
 though "rich and rare were the gems she wore," could go in 
 safety everywhere in these golden years, is a tradition of an 
 auspicious period unhappily almost unknown in Irish history. 
 Yet Brian, unlike Alfred, was perhaps only a great chief, 
 passionately revered and loved by his tribal subjects ; he 
 founded no institutions and made no laws ; his good works 
 passed away with him. His name, however, is still famous as 
 the hero of the most decisive victory ever won over the Norse 
 races, which, as we have said, freed Ireland largely from them. 
 The great fight of Clontarf, in which the Celtic tribes, assembled 
 from every part of Ireland, and aided by friendly Scots from 
 the Lowlands, overthrew, under the aged king, the heathen 
 host of Sitric and Sigurd, and drove it into the devouring sea, 
 rang through Christendom as a mighty deliverance, and was 
 long mourned as a woeful day by the Danes. It attests the 
 valour of the Irish race in war; and Irishmen, even now, as 
 they survey the scene, still rich with memories of a Marathon 
 of their own, feel the pride felt by Frenchmen for Valmy and 
 Jemappes. 
 
 Brian was slain at Clontarf, and his death became the signal 
 for a renewal of the tribal wars of Ireland. There is reason 
 to believe that the inferior kings and chiefs had acquired 
 increased influence in the Danish wars, and that this became 
 greater in the period that followed. Their dependent noblesse 
 grew more numerous; their rude military forces were much
 
 22 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 augmented; they multiplied their degraded Fuidhir vassals, 
 thus encroaching on the rights of the freemen; and they 
 maintained a considerable traffic with England in slaves. The 
 ancient organisation of the tribes, clans, and septs, and the pri- 
 mitive settlement of the land, appear to have been much broken 
 up ; and power largely passed into the hands of rude princely 
 warriors, the heads of predatory levies, continually at feud. 
 The Monarchy meanwhile, hereditary no more, was almost 
 in abeyance, or was made only the temporary prize of con- 
 tending chiefs ; the Church and all that pertained to it suffered 
 much ; society in Ireland was being dissolved, and her early 
 civilisation was disappearing, while neighbouring races were 
 being formed into nations, and making a rapid advance in the 
 arts of life. Towards the middle of the twelfth century, 
 Turlogh, the head of the great tribe of the O'Conors of 
 Connaught, became in a certain sense Monarch, after years of 
 disastrous strife with rivals : but he was only " King with 
 opposition," in the old chronicler's words ; he never ruled over 
 a united people. He probably was, however, an able man ; 
 fine edifices remain, the work of his hands ; and he did much 
 to improve his peculiar realm of Connaught, by bridging the 
 great dividing stream of the Shannon, and making it a water- 
 way for his "fleets." After a period of fresh disorder he was 
 succeeded by his son Roderick, the last Monarch of Celtic 
 Ireland. [See note on p. 385.] 
 
 The Irish meanwhile had, for more than a century, main- 
 tained an increasing commerce with England, and had come, 
 in some measure, under English influence. An Irish princess 
 had married into a great Norman house ; the Irish Church was 
 regarded with more than the old disfavour by prelates in close 
 communion with Rome, who surrounded the throne of the 
 Anglo-Norman kings. England, too, after a short but decisive 
 struggle, had fallen under the sword of William ; and his strong, 
 centralised, and, in the main, wise government had done
 
 i.] '"'Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 23 
 
 much to make her a real and a great nation. She was ruled 
 by a race of renowned warriors, as superior to every other race 
 in Europe, as the Romans were to the neighbouring Latins ; the 
 Norman aristocracy were invincible in the field, and foremost in 
 policy, and in the arts of peace. And at the head of this domi- 
 nant caste, was a great sovereign and statesman, Henry of Anjou, 
 one of the chief founders of the English Monarchy, who doubtless 
 saw what were its natural limits. The course of events, therefore, 
 directly tended to bring Ireland under the power of England, 
 and to lead to the subjection of the weaker country, far below 
 England, too, in civilised life. Yet Ireland was a land of 
 considerable extent; she was separated from England by a 
 stormy sea, and by the mountain ranges of Wales ; her 
 pathless, wooded, and waste tracts were not easy to overrun 
 and occupy; and she was inhabited by a race, in many 
 essential points differing very widely from the English people, 
 and already not well disposed to the "Saxon." The Book of 
 Fate had not yet been opened ; but Nature herself had 
 provided that the conquest of Ireland might prove a difficult 
 and protracted task.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ANGLO-NORMAN CONQUEST OF IRELAND. STATE 
 OF THE COUNTRY FROM THE REIGN OF HENRY II 
 TO THAT OF HENRY VII. 
 
 The designs of Henry II for the conquest of Ireland. The Bull of Adrian. 
 Dermod, the dethroned king of Leinster, applies for aid to Henry. 
 The descents of Fitzstephen and Fitzgerald followed by that of 
 Strongbow. Easy superiority of the Norman arms, but no real 
 conquest attempted. Henry II in Ireland. The Synod of Cashel. 
 Policy of the king. He leaves Ireland not having effected the 
 Conquest. Visit of John to Ireland, and his subsequent efforts to 
 extend the power of the Crown. State of Ireland at his death. The 
 period between the reign of John and the accession of Henry IV. 
 Apparent progress of the power of England in Ireland, and its real 
 decline. Many and various causes of this. Transformation of the 
 settlers into the "degenerate Englishry," in parts of the island. The 
 Pale. The Anglo-Irish Land. The Celtic districts. Condition of 
 these separate divisions of Ireland. The Church of the Pale. The 
 ancient Irish Church. Abuses in each, and evil results of their 
 hostility. The conflict of laws in Ireland. The English and the 
 Brehon Law. Bad results of the conflict. Prevalence of misrule and 
 disorder, and miserable state of the humbler classes. Low state of 
 intellectual life in Ireland. The period from the death of Richard II 
 to the accession of Henry VII. Rapid decline of the power of 
 England, and marked advance of the Irishry. Danger of the Pale. 
 The real faults of government in Ireland. The Earl of Kildare 
 supreme in Ireland when Henry VII becomes king. Henry obliged 
 to temporise. After long hesitation the king sends Sir Edward 
 Poynings to effect a thorough reform in Ireland.
 
 tf , 
 
 CH. IL] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 25 
 
 HENRY II had hardly been seated on the throne, when John 
 of Salisbury, a trusted priestly envoy, was sent to Rome to 
 treat for the conquest of Ireland. The king simply followed, 
 in this respect, the policy of his most renowned ancestor. 
 Hildebrand had encouraged William, in his descent on 
 England, on a plea of reforming the old Saxon Church; 
 Henry sought the support of Nicholas Breakspeare an English- 
 man, the Pope Adrian IV to further, on a pretext of the 
 same kind, his designs against the Ireland of the Celt. He 
 found in the Pontiff a willing assistant, for the dislike felt 
 at Rome to the primitive Irish Church had only increased 
 with the lapse of time ; and the Popes had lately made more 
 than one attempt to reform a communion they deemed not 
 orthodox. A legate had visited the island a short time before; 
 and though at a synod of churchmen convened at Drogheda, 
 the question of Easter had been settled in the Roman sense, 
 and the Irish Church had nominally accepted the Roman 
 discipline, still this rude branch of the Christian Tree of Life 
 was regarded as an irregular sapling. Adrian had no difficulty 
 in granting the king his apostolic sanction to subdue Ireland ; 
 his English and Roman sympathies probably concurred. The 
 Pope announced in a Bull that he claimed a right to dispose 
 of "all islands on the globe," and that subject to the suze- 
 rainty of the successors of Peter 1 , "we do hold it good and 
 acceptable, that, for extending the borders of the Church, 
 restraining the progress of vice, for the correction of manners, 
 the planting of virtue, and the increase of religion, you do 
 enter this country, and execute therein whatever shall pertain 
 to the honour of God, and welfare of the land ; and that the 
 people of this land receive you honourably, and reverence you 
 as their Lord." 
 
 Had Henry, backed by the authority of the Pope, trodden in 
 the steps of the great Conqueror, invaded Ireland with a real 
 1 See the BulJ at length in Leland's History, I. 8, ed. of 1773.
 
 26 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 military force, and placed the whole island under genuine 
 Norman rule, he might have had to win a battle of Hastings, 
 but he would have laid the foundations of a solid government, 
 and Irish History would have run a different course. Un- 
 happily, as often has been the case in Irish affairs, the king was 
 turned away from his first purpose, by events which led him into 
 other directions. He was engaged in a disastrous contest with 
 the Celts of Wales, which may have made him cautious, as re- 
 gards those of Ireland ; had become involved in war, about his 
 possessions in France ; and he had to struggle for years with 
 Becket and the Church. Time passed ; and what might have 
 been the occasion for a conquest of Ireland, harsh but com- 
 plete, ended in a mere filibustering raid, of evil omen to 
 England and Ireland alike. The tale of the lust of Dermod, 
 and of the wrongs of O'Ruarc, may be as mythical as that of 
 Lucrece and Tarquin; all that is certain is that, a long time 
 afterwards, Dermod was deposed from the kingship of Leinster 
 by Roderick O'Conor, the titular Monarch, and that Dermod 
 carried his complaints to Henry, reckless of the consequences, 
 after the Celtic fashion. A few words, dropped by the king 
 in Aquitaine, gave the exile the encouragement he sought; 
 and he applied to Richard de Clare, the well-known Strong- 
 bow, and to Robert Fitzstephen and Maurice Fitzgerald, 
 Norman adventurers settled for some time in Wales, for aid to 
 regain his forfeited kingdom. A bargain was easily struck 
 with warriors, ready for feats of arms, and any daring enter- 
 prise that might bring glory, and plunder with it. Strongbow 
 was promised the hand of Eva, the daughter of Dermod, and 
 ample domains in the richest parts of Leinster; Fitzstephen 
 and Fitzgerald were to receive large grants of land ; and the 
 invasion of Ireland was to be the consequence. 
 
 Fitzstephen was the first to make the descent ; he landed 
 at Bannow, on the coast of Wexford, in the beginning of 
 May 1169. The number of his force has been estimated at
 
 jU 
 
 ii-] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 27 
 
 from 500 to 700 men, a mere handful to attempt a conquest ; 
 but it had a company of Norman knights at its head, and a 
 body of men-at-arms, and of trained archers, an array infinitely 
 more formidable than the rude Celtic levies. Having been 
 joined by Dermod and his auxiliaries, the Normans advanced 
 against Wexford ; and the townsmen, composed, in part, of 
 Danes, successfully repelled a first attack. Fitzstephen, 
 however, being resolved to do or die, renewed the attack and, 
 having captured or destroyed the shipping lying in the harbour, 
 he so overawed the defenders by his daring attitude that their 
 arms dropped from their hands, and they gave up the place. 
 After recruiting their strength, the invaders, yielding to the 
 desire of Dermod, advanced into the wilds of Ossory on the 
 borders of Kilkenny and the Queen's Counties. They were 
 entangled amidst peat mosses and defiles, where the light 
 Celtic Kerns proved dangerous foes; but Norman craft and 
 prowess prevailed ; the Celts of Ossory, lured to offer battle in 
 a plain, were easily overwhelmed and put to flight. By this 
 time Roderick had assembled a great motley host, having 
 summoned all the tribes to his standard ; and though many of 
 the chiefs held treacherously aloof, he marched to oppose the 
 already exulting conquerors. But Fitzstephen, having strongly 
 entrenched himself near Ferns, was unassailable, and Roderick, 
 lending an ear to Dermod's overtures, consented to come to 
 terms. Dermod himself was restored to his kingship of 
 Leinster, while the Norman adventurers were allowed to make 
 a settlement along a strip of the sea-board of Wexford. The 
 raid had proved the superiority of the Norman in the field, in 
 Ireland, as in every part of Europe, and the essential weakness 
 of the Irish Celtic Monarchy ; it was to be the prelude of many 
 woes for the island. 
 
 The Norman eagles quickly scented their prey; in the 
 early autumn of 1170, Strongbow had landed at Waterford, 
 with a force of the same quality as that of Fitzstephen, but
 
 28 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 probably two or three times larger, and commanded by 
 warriors of high renown. The old Danish city on the Suir 
 was assailed, and sacked, after a scene of carnage ; Richard 
 de Clare was given the hand of Eva, with the inheritance 
 of the Leinster kingship; the church in which they were 
 made man and wife probably occupied the site of the present 
 Cathedral. Dermod now made claim to the supreme Irish 
 Monarchy; and his son-in-law, bearing all resistance down, 
 pressed forward to seize and master the capital, then also 
 inhabited, in part, 'by Danes. The governor, Hasculf, evidently 
 a Dane, abandoned the city, and with a band of followers 
 betook himself to his shipping in the Bay; and Strongbow, 
 throwing a garrison into the place, overran the rich plains of 
 Meath and Kildare, carrying devastation and terror in his 
 path. The death of Dermod made him master of Leinster; 
 but a sudden turn took place in the invading tide of fortune. 
 Henry, more jealous perhaps than any of his predecessors of 
 the aggrandisement of his powerful noblesse, resented an 
 enterprise undertaken without the regular sanction of the 
 Crown ; he prohibited the passage of supplies to Ireland, and 
 ordered Strongbow and his companions in arms to return. 
 Just at this time too, Hasculf had come back to Dublin, at the 
 head of Scottish and Norse bands, and had laid siege to the 
 city from the sea ; while Roderick, again collecting a Celtic 
 host, sat down before it, along its western front. The 
 garrison was only a few hundred men; but the Norman 
 warrior never confessed defeat; and a desperate sally, 
 which has preserved the names of Raymond Le Gros and 
 Miles de Cogan, compelled the astonished besiegers to dis- 
 appear. The invincible adventurers retained the capital; 
 but Fitzstephen had been hemmed in at Wexford; and 
 Strongbow had failed in an attempt to come to his relief. [See 
 note on p. 386.] 
 
 These predatory attacks had proved the ascendency of the
 
 If 
 n.] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 29 
 
 Norman knight and his men-at-arms ; but they had merely 
 planted a thorn in the side of Ireland ; they had been only to 
 a certain extent successful. Henry set foot in Ireland in 
 October 1171, at the head of an army probably 6000 strong, 
 under the command of 400 Norman knights ; and though this 
 was an insignificant force, compared to that which had won 
 the day at Senlac, he perhaps hoped to complete the conquest. 
 His conduct in Ireland reveals the statecraft, the organising 
 genius, the administrative gifts, which have marked him out 
 as a great ruler; yet he was not blind to the fact that he 
 did not possess the means to reduce the island to real 
 subjection. He asserted his authority as " Lord of Ireland," 
 without interfering with national customs; but, true to his 
 mission as a Son of the Church, he sought to enlist her great 
 spiritual power on his side. At a general synod, held at 
 Cashel, under the sanction of the Pope, and attended by 
 several English Bishops, it was solemnly proclaimed that 
 "Ireland had received a Lord and King at the hand of 
 Providence " ; and the Irish Church was assimilated to the 
 Anglo-Norman model, with protestations against "its abuses 
 and vices." It is doubtful, whether any large number of 
 the Irish Celtic clergy expressed their assent, and their 
 Church was practically but little changed ; yet for the present, 
 at least, the king had been declared ruler of all Ireland by 
 Right Divine. Meanwhile Henry had taken care to secure the 
 allegiance of the late invaders, by granting them the territories 
 they had seized, to be held as ordinary fiefs of the Crown ; and 
 the chain of feudalism was thrown over the whole country, by 
 the assertion of his title as its superior lord, illusory as the 
 pretence was. The magnificence and the power of the great 
 Angevin king seem to have fascinated most of the Irish chiefs ; 
 they were entertained by him in royal state in Dublin ; they 
 made homage, and offered tribute, in return for his politic arts 
 and courtesies ; and though Roderick held aloof for a time, he
 
 3 o Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 soon consented to become a vassal king of Connaught. The 
 supremacy of England, at least in name, over all Ireland, was 
 thus affirmed ; and, at the same time, Henry made an attempt 
 to give it reality within the tracts of Leinster, which had been, 
 in a certain measure, subdued. Parts of this region were made 
 shireland, and were placed under the system of administration 
 and law, which had grown up in England since the Norman 
 Conquest. A governor was appointed with vice-regal functions; 
 something like a great Council was established; Courts of 
 Anglo-Norman law were created; and the "men of Bristol" 
 were given a charter for Dublin. [See note on p. 386.] 
 
 The genius of Henry had traced the lines of dominion; 
 it had not completed a single part of the edifice. No train of 
 colonists followed his army to people the districts it had 
 overrun ; that army, besides, was much too weak to attempt to 
 keep hold on the whole country. The king, too, had been 
 forced to temporise with Strongbow and his companions 
 in arms; he made them, indeed, his vassals in name; but 
 he did not curtail their overgrown power, an essential condition 
 of the existence of order and law. The authority of the Crown 
 was feeble even in the Anglo-Norman region, known afterwards 
 as the English Pale ; and in the Celtic region beyond it was 
 almost a nullity, for the submissions and tributes of the Irish 
 chiefs, even if continued, made it, in no sense, sovereign. Yet 
 had the king remained any length of time in Ireland, he 
 possibly might have established the Monarchy, and made 
 its influence for good felt throughout the island. Unhappily 
 he was obliged to quit Ireland, owing to the quarrel with 
 Rome caused by the murder of Becket ; and he was engaged 
 for years afterwards in foiling the conspiracies of his 
 rebellious sons and his consort. "He departed from Ireland," 
 said an acute historian 1 , "without striking one blow, or 
 
 1 Sir John Davies on Ireland before 1603. (The Morley Edition, 
 
 p. 112.)
 
 ii.] TJie Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 31 
 
 building one castle, or planting one garrison among the 
 Irish; neither left he behind him one true subject more 
 than those he found there at his coming over, which were 
 only the English adventurers spoken of before, who had gained 
 the port towns in Leinster and Munster, and possessed some 
 scopes of land thereunto adjoining, partly by Strongbow's 
 alliance with the Lord of Leinster, and partly by plain invasion 
 and conquest." 
 
 Henry II seems to have perceived the tendency of the 
 Irish Celt to love men, not things ; " the people of that land," 
 wrote the Tudor Davies, " did always desire to be governed by 
 great persons " ; and the renowned Plantagenet flattered this 
 sentiment. He sent his son John, while still in his teens, with 
 a goodly array of Norman knights and nobles, to restore order, 
 if possible, in the Anglo-Norman tracts, and especially to 
 propitiate the rulers of the Celts, growing restless at the 
 progress of the invaders. The mission, however, of John 
 failed; the petulant youth and his gay companions insulted and 
 terrified the Irish chiefs, and what was perhaps worse, harassed 
 the Anglo-Norman settlers by pretensions to parts of their 
 honours and lands, creating the division between the English 
 and the Anglo-Irish " interests," which had evil results during 
 successive centuries. John was chief governor of Ireland 
 during Richard's reign ; and when on the throne, in his mature 
 years, made a real and serious effort to complete the Conquest, 
 and to extend the dominion of the Crown and its influence for 
 good. His policy was marked by his tyrannous nature, but 
 also by the statesmanlike views he had inherited from his 
 illustrious father. He visited Ireland in itself a great thing 
 and throughout V.$ reign endeavoured to bridle the proud 
 nobles, whose teuds threatened to ruin the colony. He 
 enlarged four counties, already shireland, into twelve, bringing 
 the invader's rule to the line of the barrier stream of the 
 Shannon ; he placed them, nominally at least, under the power
 
 3 2 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 of the Crown. He also built Royal Castles one, at Trim, still 
 existing to occupy points of vantage within the territory of the 
 king ; and he enjoined the great feudatories to keep on foot the 
 armed arrays they were bound to maintain. He laboured, too, 
 evidently, in many ways, to improve the state of the Anglo- 
 Norman settlement. The citizens of Dublin obtained a 
 charter; the Courts of Justice were made more efficient, and 
 administered law beyond their former bounds; the Great 
 Charter was extended to the " King's Irish lieges," the name 
 of an Archbishop of Dublin being on the document. John, 
 however, made no attempt to subdue the great Celtic land 
 beyond the growing Pale ; he left it to its feuds, its troubles, 
 its usages ; he only sought to conciliate the Irish chiefs, under 
 the easy conditions imposed by his father, and to gain from 
 them allegiance and tribute. [See note on p. 386.] 
 
 The real condition of Ireland, at the death of John, may 
 be collected from many instructive records. After the lapse 
 of not far from half a century, the Conquest was little more 
 advanced than in 1172. The Anglo-Norman settlement was 
 very weak : a stream of colonists would not flow into it, across 
 wide hill ranges and a tempestuous sea. There was no regular 
 army to support the Government, for this was inconsistent with 
 the ideas of the time ; and, spite of punishments and menaces, 
 the great Lords employed their feudal retainers not in the 
 service of the Crown, but to aggrandise themselves, or to fight 
 with each other. The Pale was not parcelled out among its 
 chief possessors, with a view to military defence, or the require- 
 ments of war ; the great Castles were erected where the owners 
 chose ; and this territory was dangerously open to attack. The 
 domain even of comparative law and order had virtually been 
 but little extended. The administration of the justice of the 
 Crown was of no avail in the lands of the ruling nobles ; these 
 were scenes of lawless disorder and bloodshed, like the vast 
 lordships of that arrogant noblesse which boasted "that the
 
 ff 
 ii.] The Anglo- Norman Conquest of Ireland. 33 
 
 waves were before the sea," and "that they were Rohans if 
 they could not be kings." There was no effective central 
 government, and nothing like a People, even within the circle 
 of the so-called shires ; all was tyranny, violence, feudal 
 oppression. The true Irish land, still two-thirds of the island, 
 was left divided among its Celtic chiefs, who submitted them- 
 selves to their distant suzerain, or took up arms against his 
 nobles, just as it suited their fickle purpose ; this region was 
 also given up to ever-increasing anarchy. Strangely, too, though 
 the Pale had been pushed further, the influence of the Celt 
 was growing within its borders, owing to a most remarkable 
 change of usage and manners, to be noticed afterwards when 
 it becomes fully manifest. England, at this period, had little 
 more hold on Ireland than the Mogul Empire had on India in 
 the days of Clive and Hastings. [See note on p. 386.] 
 
 A period of more than six generations of man divides the 
 reign of John from that of Henry IV. To outward seeming 
 the power of England over Ireland had been extended during 
 this long space of time. Edward I and Edward III would 
 have thought it foul scorn had their supremacy over the whole 
 of the island been questioned in Parliament, or in a Court of 
 Justice ; it had repeatedly been acknowledged by Irish kings 
 and chiefs. The ascendency, too, of the arms of England had 
 been proved decisively throughout this period ; the Anglo- 
 Normans and the Englishry, as their successors were called, 
 were irresistible in the field against the Irish Celts, who could 
 not contend, in open fight, with the knight, the man-at-arms, 
 and the English longbow. Now and then indeed, the light- 
 armed Irish soldiery struck down Norman and Saxon, as in 
 Fitzstephen's time, in cunningly laid ambushes, or in an 
 intricate country; Black Friday, long a day of mourning for 
 the townsmen of Dublin, commemorates a successful Irish raid 
 and massacre. But English conquest made steady progress, if 
 we look at material force only; the De Burghs carried their 
 
 M. i. a
 
 34 Ireland. t CHAP - 
 
 arms through Ulster and Connaught, and the Geraldines to 
 the extreme verge of Munster j the old kingship of the O'Conor 
 was effaced at Athenry; the invasions of the Braces were 
 formidable for a time, but came to an end after the battle of 
 Dundalk ; the Irishry stooped their heads, like reeds, at the 
 sight of the footmen and the bows and bills of Richard II. 
 Nor can it be said that, in all these years, anything like a 
 general resistance was made to the advance of the English 
 enemy, if made in earnest. Occasionally an Irish Vercingetorix 
 appeared ; the heroic deeds of Aedh O'Conor, and of Cathal 
 of the Red Hand, exaggerated by tradition, are told in 
 modern song 1 ; Art MacMurrogh was, for a time, the terror 
 of the Pale; Donald O'Neill a descendant of the Hy-Niall 
 monarchs seems to have aimed at forming a great league 
 under Edward Bruce, to overthrow the Englishry. But national 
 effort there was none, for the national idea did not exist ; the 
 Irish chiefs, ever divided by tribal discord, growing only worse 
 with the progress of time, seemed unable to unite for a patri- 
 otic purpose ; they either fought singly against the enemy at 
 hand, or wasted their strength in destroying each other, or, as 
 often happened, called in the Englishry to come to their aid 
 against their fellows conduct too characteristic of all the 
 Celtic races, but especially, as we have said, of the Irish 
 family*. 
 
 The English dominion in Ireland, having attained its 
 extreme limit at the beginning of the fourteenth century, began 
 from that time forward to decline both in territorial extent and 
 influence. In addition to the causes already referred to, which 
 had led to the feebleness of English power and to misrule 
 and anarchy in Irish affairs the absence of a steady influx of 
 settlers the want of a regular army to complete the conquest, 
 
 1 See Campbell's poem O'Connor's Child. 
 
 1 So Tacitus of the Celts of Britain, Agricola 12, " Dum singuli 
 pugnant, universi vincuntur."
 
 ii.] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 35 
 
 and to vindicate the authority of the state the neglect and 
 misuse of the feudal militia the lawless ascendency of the 
 great nobles the disregard of precautions to defend the Pale 
 and the abandonment of the Celtic tracts to the native 
 chiefs and tribes other causes arose in the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries, to prolong and even aggravate the 
 resulting evils. Thousands of colonists, doubtless, had set 
 foot in Ireland between the reigns of John and Henry IV, 
 but a counter-current had checked the stream ; many had 
 returned to England, unable to endure the misgovernment and 
 oppression existing everywhere; others joined the English 
 army in France. Three or four times, during this period, 
 the forces of the Crown had been assembled, and had easily 
 crushed the foes they encountered ; but no army, as had been 
 the case before, was kept together to hold feudalism down, to 
 overawe the Irishry, to maintain English rule. While, too, the 
 great nobles continued to neglect their duties, made no pro- 
 vision for the defence of their domains, wasted their feudal 
 arrays in petty wars and broils, and, in a word, abused the 
 large powers in their hands, a series of accidents had made 
 their authority perceptibly less where it conduced to good. 
 Some of the old Anglo-Norman Houses had died out; the 
 lands of others had passed into the hands of heiresses, whose 
 lords lived on their estates in England; the heads of not a 
 few had quitted the country ; and thus absenteeism, disastrous 
 at all times, and especially disastrous in a feudal age, had 
 begun to produce its manifold ills in Ireland. Another change, 
 too, in the position of the feudal noblesse, had not only injured 
 the power of the state, but had proved very destructive of 
 order and law, in a considerable part of the ill-fated land. 
 Apart from the De Burghs, the great families of the Geraldines 
 and Butlers had become the chiefs of the descendants of the 
 Anglo-Norman invaders ; and these had acquired by royal 
 grant or usage, rights and powers even larger than those 
 
 32
 
 3 6 Ireland. [ CHAP - 
 
 bestowed somewhat carelessly, at first, on the companions of 
 Strongbow. Within the vast region extending between the 
 verge of Kildare, by Kilkenny, and Limerick, to where the wilds 
 of Kerry meet the Atlantic, these nobles were all but sovereigns 
 in their palatinates, and possessed, in fact, nearly the whole 
 power of government. They created knights, levied war at 
 pleasure, convened feudal assemblies, and held courts of justice; 
 they were, in a word, superior to the state and its will ; it is 
 scarcely necessary to indicate the results. [See note on p. 387.] 
 Other causes concurred to lessen still further the authority 
 of the Crown in Ireland, and to prevent the existence of well- 
 ordered government. The direct influence, nay, the presence 
 of the king was essential to the welfare of the Feudal 
 Monarchy ; he was the true source of Right, and the champion 
 of Law ; he checked the excesses of an encroaching baronage ; 
 he was the vigorous protector, in his own interests, of the 
 Church, the subject classes, and the entire community. Strong 
 as had been the Conqueror's deeply founded government, it 
 almost went to pieces, when Henry II was entangled in 
 foreign quarrels and wars, when Henry III showed himself 
 unable to rule, and during the inglorious reign of Richard II. 
 The complete ascendency of Edward I in his realm was 
 largely due to his devoting his genius to advancing the great- 
 ness of England on the spot, and to the extension of Royal 
 Justice at home. Henry II and John apparently felt that 
 their personal rule in Ireland was required ; and in no part of 
 the dominions of the English Crown was this salutary element 
 of power so needed to keep overbearing feudalism down, to 
 restrain English misrule and Celtic anarchy, and to promote the 
 growth of civilised life. Most unfortunately, for nearly two 
 centuries, Ireland, as has been the case almost ever since, was 
 left without this beneficent influence ; Edward I did not care 
 to visit the country one of the few errors of his glorious reign 
 though he evidently perceived what good might have fol-
 
 IT.] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 37 
 
 lowed ; Edward III thought of it only as a field for recruits, 
 and for revenue in his protracted wars; the showy and 
 frivolous Richard II was the one sovereign who set foot in 
 Ireland, from 1210 to 1394. Even his apparition proved how 
 immense would have been the advantages to a distracted land, 
 had an English monarch directly controlled the administration 
 of Irish affairs, and taken the government of Ireland in hand. 
 But, as we have said, this was denied by fortune ; the very 
 keystone of the Medieval Monarchy, on which the edifice in 
 the main depended, was left out of the arch in Ireland. What 
 wonder then that it was weak and tottering ; what wonder that, 
 in the greatest part of the country, the central government was 
 reduced to nothingness ; that feudalism, lawless and all power- 
 ful, threw its destructive shadow over other parts ; and that the 
 rest of the island remained the domain of the Celt ? 
 
 In the absence of the king, a long series of Viceroys, 
 succeeding each other at brief intervals of time, ruled, or 
 rather pretended to rule, Ireland. This, which constituted the 
 only central government, did not practically extend beyond 
 the Pale, except occasionally, and by fits and starts ; but its 
 nature was such, that it did not increase the influence or the 
 power of the Monarchy ; that it provoked injurious dissensions 
 and feuds ; that it did not promote social or political progress. 
 The Viceroys were chosen from different orders of men ; they 
 received commands from the seat of power in England, 
 repeatedly changing and discordant ; they held different, nay 
 opposite views, as to the direction and management of Irish 
 affairs. Some, like Gaveston, put their trust chiefly in an 
 imposing display of military force; others, like Lionel the 
 Duke of Clarence, aimed at aggrandising the influence of the 
 Crown and giving effect to the will of its ministers, regardless 
 of the means, however unjust ; many, chosen from the official 
 class of nobles, and even of plebeians rising in the state, 
 tried to strengthen the English settlement in the Pale, to
 
 3 g Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 weaken the dominant Anglo-Norman Houses, and to reduce 
 the Irishry, as they were called, to submission, often taking 
 severe, nay atrocious, measures, to attain what they deemed 
 necessary ends; the majority, perhaps, drawn from the old 
 Norman families, adopted an exactly opposite course, upheld 
 feudalism and the abuses of its power, and lorded it over 
 Saxon and Celt alike. For Ireland, therefore, there was 
 nothing like a continuous and a systematic policy; the 
 administration, and the acts of the government, often in- 
 consistent and at odds with each other, kept the land in a 
 state of unrest and trouble ; all that was certain, if irregular, 
 was harsh violence and tyranny exercised in high places. 
 Now and then the power of the Crown was asserted by 
 iniquitous and unscrupulous means ; now and then sentences 
 of forfeiture were pronounced against powerful absentee nobles; 
 the lands of old Norman Houses were occasionally seized to 
 make way for a colony of fresh English settlers ; and, in the 
 case of Lords of the Pale, and even of Irish chiefs, proscription 
 and confiscation were sometimes frequent. On the other 
 hand, Geraldines and Butlers, when enthroned at the Castle, 
 exacted vengeance from those who had wronged their retainers 
 and themselves; oppressed and harried the Englishry of the 
 Pale; and were especially hostile to the subordinates sent 
 from England to observe or to control their acts. The general 
 result, besides misrule, confusion, disorder almost everywhere, 
 was to make the distinction between the recent English 
 settlers, and the old Anglo-Irish inhabitants of the land, of 
 which traces may be found, even in the days of John, more 
 marked and profound, with the progress of time; the "English 
 and Anglo-Irish interests" became intensely hostile, and at 
 continual feud; and the effects, in weakening the power of 
 England, were evil and manifest. 
 
 The most remarkable cause, however, and certainly not the 
 least effective, of the decay and downfall of English power,
 
 ii.] '*' The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 39 
 
 and of misgovernment in a large part of Ireland, remains to be 
 noticed and explained. The conquerors, we have seen, had 
 borne their arms everywhere; they had spread far beyond the 
 Shannon in Connaught ; they had reached the Atlantic line of 
 the coast in Ulster and Munster; and they had planted 
 settlements in these distant regions, while they were dominant 
 throughout three-fourths of Leinster. They might have es- 
 tablished English rule in these wide territories had they 
 remained true to the usages of their race, and had not these 
 been largely transformed by a most singular process, in the 
 course of time. But in different degrees, and in a variety of 
 ways, the descendants of the invaders and their followers 
 adopted the customs of the children of the soil ; changed from 
 Norman lords into Celtic chiefs ; preferred tribal authority to 
 feudal power, and even tribal life to the life of their fathers, 
 nay, in remote districts put on the Irish garb, actually lost the 
 use of their native tongue, and trained their levies for the field 
 after the Irish fashion. Symptoms of the metamorphosis had 
 shown themselves within a few years from the first invasion ; 
 but, by the close of the fourteenth century, they had made whole 
 counties of Ireland almost Celtic, though once leavened with 
 Norman and English elements ; and this revolution had had a 
 potent effect, in narrowing the bounds of English dominion, 
 and in producing misrule and anarchy. The causes of a 
 phenomenon which gave rise to passionate efforts of many 
 English governors 1 to prevent what they deemed an appalling 
 evil, and which English writers have fiercely denounced, are 
 worthy, perhaps, of a passing notice. The Anglo-Norman 
 probably found it more easy to oppress vassal dependents and 
 villeins, by throwing feudal duties aside, and playing the part 
 of an Irish chief; he would, doubtless, largely increase his 
 
 1 These efforts culminated in the celebrated statute of Kilkenny, 
 40 Ed. Ill, enacted during the Viceroyalty of Lionel Duke of Clarence. 
 It was confirmed over and over again, but to no purpose.
 
 4 o Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 authority, in the midst of surrounding Irish clans and septs, 
 by conforming to Irish modes of life and habits. But the 
 paramount cause, it appears likely, was the peculiar influence 
 which the Celtic genius has had in affecting races in contact 
 with it. Butler and Geraldine fell under the fascinating spell 
 of the daughters of the land whom they had married 1 ; the 
 hard nature of Norseman and Teuton yielded to the charm and 
 communicative power of Celtic ideas, as France has made 
 Alsatian and Lorrainer her own ; and the whole course of Irish 
 history attests the fact. The " degenerate Englishry," as they 
 were called, were in immense numbers in the South and the 
 West of Ireland, and even in parts of Leinster, at this period. 
 
 Ireland had thus already become the misshapen and wither- 
 ing limb of the great English Monarchy. The island contained 
 three distinct divisions presenting strongly marked, but very 
 different features. Of the twelve counties which John had 
 made shireland, eight had almost ceased to retain this 
 character; the Anglo-Norman or English Pale had narrowed 
 into the four original shires, Meath, including Westmeath, 
 Louth, Dublin, and Kildare. In this fine rich tract, bounded 
 by the Barrow, the great lakes of Westmeath, the Mourne 
 range, and the sea, the rule of the native chiefs had been 
 almost effaced; the land had been divided among noble 
 houses of Anglo-Norman and English descent, lords of 
 dependents and tenants of the same race, and little affected by 
 contact with the Celt, but with a subject population of the 
 Irishry in their midst. The Pale was the domain of by far the 
 greatest part of the civilisation which had grown up in Ireland ; 
 
 1 So Davis, a man of genius, finely wrote : 
 
 " Those GeraldinesI those Geraldines! not long our air they breathed, 
 Not long they fed on venison, in Irish water seethed, 
 Not often had their children been by Irish mothers nursed, 
 When from their full and genial hearts an Irish feeling burst ! " 
 
 The Spirit of the Nation, p. 98, Ed. 1870.
 
 n-] The Anglo- Norman Conquest of Ireland. 41 
 
 the numerous castles of its ancient Barons, some still existing, 
 were imposing structures ; the agriculture of this region to this 
 day seems more orderly and better settled than in the rest 
 of the island. Dublin, the chief town of this comparatively 
 favoured land, had become a city of some importance, 
 possessing municipal rights, and a few fine buildings ; its 
 townsmen conducted a tolerably good trade with England, and 
 especially with her great port of the West, Bristol. The 
 Parliaments of Ireland, long ago established, were usually 
 assembled in the expanding capital , here, too, were the Castle, 
 and the Royal Courts of Justice administering English law 
 throughout the Pale , and the authority of the Legislature, the 
 Viceroy and the tribunals of the state, was generally recognised 
 within its limits. Wars, offensive and defensive, were but too 
 common ; the feudal arrays of the Pale were often called out in 
 " hostings " against the " Irish enemy " ; the ascendency of one 
 great dominant House, at least, was repeatedly adverse to peace 
 and order. But the sons of the conquerors and their successors 
 had struck root in the Pale, and became a real and settled 
 colony; the whole region, if not to be deemed prosperous, 
 was an oasis in a desert compared to the other parts of Ireland. 
 Yet even the Pale was a distracted land, often a scene 
 of deeds of blood, and of anarchic tyranny. The arrays of the 
 Celts occasionally broke through the Marches, ill-defended, 
 and without sufficient fortresses ; pouring down through the 
 defiles of Wicklow, across the great expanse of the Bog of 
 Allen, and from the " gate of the North," as it was called, near 
 Dundalk, they waged a predatory war with the English settlers. 
 The burghers of Dublin were, over and over again, affrighted 
 by the fires of the Irish foray ; and more than once the weak 
 feudal militia proved no match for the armed swarms of the 
 active " Irish enemy." The subjugated, but untamed, Irishry 
 of the Pale sometimes took part in these destructive raids, 
 rising against masters, feared, but abhorred; the lot indeed
 
 42 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 of these vanquished children of the soil, in the peculiar seat of 
 the Englishry, must have been hard in the extreme. As was 
 often seen, at this time, in such cases, in Europe, this popula- 
 tion, with some exceptions, was left under its native usages ; it 
 was treated as completely alien by the conquering race ; it 
 was outlawed in the relations of ordinary life; and, in the 
 administration of justice, it had scarcely any rights. It was no 
 felony for an Englishman to slay "a mere Irishman"; but 
 this immunity was not reciprocal ; the Irishman who killed an 
 Englishman was held to be a murderer; and the same unfair 
 and odious distinction was maintained in litigation of every 
 kind. The evils resulting from this state of things have 
 possibly been unduly magnified, and could hardly have been 
 very great in other parts of Ireland; but they must have 
 tended, within the narrow limits of the Pale, to promote 
 discords and animosities of race, and to disturb and injure the 
 frame of society. The worst feature, however, in the condition 
 of the Pale, at this period, has yet to be noticed. The heads 
 of the Geraldines, the great House of Kildare, were the feudal 
 suzerains of a large part of this region, many, too, were chiefs 
 of the state at the Castle the well-known seat of the English 
 Government and their overgrown authority was too often 
 displayed in a rule of oppression, gross wrong, and exaction. 
 They were tyrants even of the Anglo-Norman F>aronage; 
 compelled the levies of these to follow their standards, in feuds 
 with the Butlers, or in strife with the Celt ; kept the citizens of 
 Dublin in awe of their power ; and repeatedly perverted the 
 course of justice. The abuse of their dominion, however, was 
 most ruinously shown in a mode of extortion adopted, in part, 
 from Irish chieftains, who, we have already seen, had a right 
 to quarter retainers on their degraded tenants, and, in part, 
 from the Anglo-Norman usage of purveyance. The Kildare 
 Geraldines and their armed followers ate up the resources of 
 the Pale by what became known as the rapine of " coyne and
 
 ii.j The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 43 
 
 livery," a kind of freebooting, of which it was said, " that if it 
 had been practised in Hell, as it hath been in Ireland, it 
 had long since destroyed the very kingdom of Beelzebub V 
 
 Outside the Pale, spread what may be called the Anglo- 
 Irish region, that in which the Englishry, to a great extent 
 " degenerate," were intermixed with the Irishry only in part 
 conquered. This great tract, comprising, with some additions, 
 the eight shires of John, referred to before, formed the 
 counties now known as Wexford and Waterford, Carlow, 
 Kilkenny, Tipperary, Cork, Limerick, and a part of Kerry; 
 and stretched from the course of the Slaney to the mouth 
 of the Shannon, and thence to the hill ranges of the Bays 
 of Kenmare and Dingle. In Wexford, the south-eastern nook 
 of this land, the settlement founded by Fitzstephen had 
 become established; the mountains of Wicklow divided it 
 from the Pale; but it was a colony resembling that of the 
 Pale; its inhabitants, to this day, show scarcely any Celtic 
 blood. Along the southern coast, the counties of Cork and 
 Waterford were still largely peopled by men of English race, 
 ruled by the descendants of Anglo-Norman lords ; but the 
 Irishry had considerably encroached on their bounds, and 
 filled many of the inland districts, especially where these were 
 hill countries. Nearly all the remaining parts of the Anglo- 
 Irish territory were comprised in the numerous lordships of 
 the Butlers and of the Desmond Geraldines, closely re- 
 lated to the great House of Kildare, and exhibiting very 
 similar qualities. The Butlers were the feudal lords of a 
 Baronage largely of Norman and English origin, and of a 
 population of settlers still, in part, English ; but association 
 with the aboriginal race had had its effects in their vast domains; 
 the sons of many of the colonists had become " degenerate " , 
 some of the early colonies had disappeared ; and the Irishry, 
 pressing in on the conquerors in their midst, had impregnated 
 1 Davies 229 30.
 
 44 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 them with Celtic elements of all kinds. The change had 
 been made more marked in the lands of the Desmonds ; in 
 these the Norman and English settlements had been, from 
 the first, comparatively weak, and had, to a great extent, 
 perished ; the inhabitants had become for the most part Celtic. 
 Within this domain too lay a great region, never affected by 
 Norman or Saxon influence, wild hills and plains, closed 
 by valleys and defiles, and spreading from the Shannon to 
 the Atlantic, where Irish clans and septs maintained their 
 rude freedom, and Irish chiefs defied or followed their Des- 
 mond suzerains, in war and peace, at their own will and 
 pleasure. The Butlers, better known by their title of Ormond, 
 had but slightly conformed to the Irish usages ; but the Des- 
 monds, far removed from the Pale, and surrounded by Celts 
 on every side, had become, at least while they lived among 
 them, " more Irish," it was said, " than the Irish themselves," 
 and had adopted the " sluttish Irish customs and habits." 
 
 The Anglo-Irish Land was not wholly without signs of 
 civilised life and social progress. The fertile plains of Kil- 
 kenny and Limerick were studded with castles and noble 
 abbeys ; there was a considerable trade between the ports of 
 Munster and Spain ; the Butlers and the Geraldines were even 
 patrons of learning. These great Norman families, too, it 
 appears certain, retained much of their feudal state, even when 
 they became more or less Irish ; the Plantagenets welcomed 
 their heads at Court, and treated them with the highest dis- 
 tinction ; they perhaps adopted the ways of the Celt, in order 
 chiefly to please the Celts around them. Nor were they 
 inveterate enemies of the Irish chiefs ; they blended with them 
 freely in marriage ; and the Irish chiefs in turn learned much 
 from them, especially in architecture and the art of war. On 
 the whole the ruling orders in this region, whether Norman 
 or Irish, formed a real noblesse, with differences of race be- 
 tween them indeed, but not given up to mere barbarism, the
 
 ff 
 ii.] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 45 
 
 common reproach of many historians. But their territories 
 were not the less a theatre of bloody strife, of misrule of all 
 kinds, of almost incessant disorder and lawlessness. From 
 Kerry to Kildare the land was torn by the fierce conflicts 
 of Ormonds and Desmonds; the Englishry and the Irishry 
 perished by tens of thousands, in feuds that made order and 
 peace impossible ; the first conditions of social well-being and 
 prosperity could not exist or grow up. If exaction, too, in 
 the Pale was grievous, it was infinitely worse in the Anglo- 
 Irish Land ; the coyne and livery, extorted by Geraldine and 
 Butler, throughout their lordships, was like the ravage of 
 locusts ; the Celtic chiefs improved on an evil example ; huge 
 predatory levies were kept on foot, destroying and harrying 
 whole counties. Nor could justice and righteous law have 
 a place in the signiories of the great nobles ; the king's writ 
 had no force in these; their seneschals administered a kind 
 of rude medley of English and Irish custom and usage cor- 
 ruptly, and at the will of their lords; the pleasure of an 
 Ormond or a Desmond was supreme in his Court ; and the 
 prevalence of the Brehon law, in the Celtic regions, alongside 
 quite a different system, there is reason to believe, did much 
 mischief. The condition of all, save the dominant classes, 
 was one of general poverty and harsh subjection ; and, as 
 we have said, the descendants of many of the first colonists 
 had fled from a country unfit to live in. 
 
 We turn to the third division, the Celtic Land, still nearly al- 
 together the seat of the Irishry. This great region included the 
 whole of Ulster, parts of Connaught, then comprising the County 
 of Clare, and also a part of the Midlands of Leinster ; it con- 
 tained the present counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry, 
 Donegal, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, Armagh, Monaghan, 
 Roscommon, Leitrim, Galway, Mayo, Sligo, with Offaley and 
 Leix, now the King's and Queen's Counties, in addition, as 
 we have seen, to Clare. The conquering race had invaded
 
 46 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 and held it in part ; but the feeble colonies they had planted 
 had dwindled away, and in some counties had been blotted 
 out; they were a mere remnant in the midst of the conquered; 
 and though swarms of Scots had descended on the coasts of 
 Ulster, these had not as yet effected a permanent settlement. 
 The great Norman nobles, too, had nearly disappeared; the 
 De Courcies, struck down by the iron arm of John, had sunk 
 into the lords of a petty fief in Munster ; and the De Burghs, 
 rich as they were in Plantagenet blood, had become " degene- 
 rate Englishry " in an extreme sense ; and with their dependent 
 barons and vassals, in the words of the chronicler, " had been 
 metamorphosed like Nebuchadnezzar, who, although he had the 
 
 face of a man, had the heart of a beast; insomuch as 
 
 they had no marks or differences left amongst them of the 
 noble race from which they were descended ; they grew to be 
 ashamed of their very English surnames, and took Irish sur- 
 names and nicknames 1 ." Ulster, Connaught, and a tract of 
 Leinster were, therefore, the seat of the Irishry; in these 
 provinces the descendants of the Irish kings and chiefs, still 
 numerous, and possessing more than their power of old, lived 
 in rude independence amidst their tribes, clans, and septs, 
 little really affected by the march of conquest, and ruling 
 communities still following the usages and the ways of life of 
 the Celt. 
 
 It would be a mistake to suppose that civilisation had no 
 trace of existence in this part of the island, as it certainly had 
 in the remaining parts. There was already a large trade 
 between Galway and Spain, and between Ulster and the 
 South of Scotland ; the Irish chiefs, in imitation of Norman 
 art, had constructed many fine edifices of stone, especially 
 fortresses and religious houses; they had improved the 
 weapons and discipline of their armed levies ; they had inter- 
 married repeatedly into great Norman Houses ; their sons a 
 1 Davies 297-8.
 
 "] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 47 
 
 sure mark that they were held in honour by the most haughty of 
 dominant races having been often lords of daughters of the 
 noblest Norman families. This, nevertheless, like the Anglo- 
 Irish Land, was a centre of continual broil and discord, and 
 of lawless disorder abounding everywhere. The chiefs made 
 frequent descents on the Pale, especially along its northern 
 frontier ; some had crossed the Shannon and made settlements 
 in Leinster and Munster, driving out, or keeping down, the 
 diminishing Englishry. They were, too, as had been the case 
 at all times, in never-ceasing tribal war with each other ; their 
 savage feuds made whole counties desolate; and "degenerate" 
 as many of the Anglo-Normans had become, they appear to 
 have still held them as traditional foes, or took sides with 
 them in their incessant quarrels. 
 
 A great change, meanwhile, fraught with many evils, had 
 been passing over the Irish community, in this, as in other 
 parts of the island. Tribal life, usage, and law, as we have 
 pointed out, still existed in the Pale and the Anglo-Irish 
 tracts, here almost effaced, there still vigorous ; but they were 
 dominant forces in the Irish Land; this was still Celtic in 
 government, customs, and manners. But, as had already begun 
 after the Danish wars, the primitive institutions of the old Irish 
 race had, by this time, been largely transformed ; the archaic 
 type of society had been partly broken up with consequences 
 of a disastrous kind ; the ancient Celtic civilisation was dying 
 out. The supreme hereditary Monarchy was a thing of the 
 past ; a tie had ceased to exist which, in some measure, had 
 kept together the community as a whole. The chiefs, who had 
 survived Norman and English invasion, had grown in power 
 within their dominions; they had conquered many inferior 
 clans and septs, and had reduced these to complete sub- 
 jection; they had multiplied their companions in arms, and 
 made them a rude military noblesse ; they had encroached on 
 the rights of the free clansmen and Ceite, and had largely
 
 48 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 turned them into dependent vassals; and they had greatly 
 increased the classes of their Fuidhirs and serfs, and more 
 than ever laid a heavy hand on them. A kind of barbarous 
 feudalism, in some degree, doubtless, imitated from the Anglo- 
 Norman model, had thus replaced, in a great measure, the 
 old tribal organisation of the land ; this still existed, and was 
 even deeply rooted ; but it was gradually yielding to harsher 
 modes of rule, and to a state of society showing a marked 
 change for the worse. The Irish chief had become more 
 and more a tyrant, a head of savage warriors who carried out 
 his will; his tribe, clan, or sept had become more and more 
 his inferiors; this was especially seen in his "bonaghts and 
 cosherings," the Celtic counterparts of " coyne and livery " ; in 
 a word, the bonds, which had linked together the ancient Irish 
 "Family," had been weakened and, in many parts, severed. 
 This naturally led to ever-growing disorder and troubles; in 
 fact the Irish chiefs seem, at this period, to have been more 
 than ever at feud with each other. 
 
 An influence, too, of the most potent kind, which in 
 happier lands has been, so to speak, a strong cementing force 
 in the social structure, was a source of ill-will and disunion in 
 Ireland. The Church in England, and, indeed, in Europe, 
 many as were its shortcomings, nay its vices, had done wonders 
 in promoting just government, in keeping oppressive feudalism 
 in check, in raising the humbler orders of men to a higher 
 estate, in extending the domain of order and peace, in a word, 
 in furthering the good work of its Master. The results in 
 Ireland had been the very opposite, owing to the division 
 which had existed, from the first moment, between the two 
 really distinct communions, which had been formed after the 
 Norman invasion. Henry II had set up, under the Bull of 
 Adrian, a Church on the orthodox Roman model, and this 
 became the Church of the Pale; the primitive Irish Church 
 of History remained practically unchanged in the Celtic
 
 ff 
 ii.] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 49 
 
 regions. There were marked differences between the two; 
 but differences of ritual and of doctrine were made deeper and 
 worse by distinctions and hostility of race ; the Church of the 
 Pale was that of the Englishry : the Irish tribes clung to their 
 ancient Church ; and perpetual discord reigned between them. 
 Churchmen of the Pale went on " hostings " against the clans 
 and septs; looked on the priests of the Celts as barbarian 
 enemies, and shut them out like pariahs from their communion. 
 The clergy of the old Irish Church did the same, and banned 
 and cursed their Norman and Anglo-Roman rivals. The feud 
 was most bitter and never-ending ; religion, which, elsewhere, 
 threw an arch of peace over waters of civil and social strife, 
 created in Ireland two hostile camps exasperated by fierce 
 sacerdotal passions. Nor can it be said that either Church 
 produced many saintly champions of the faith of Christ, even 
 many men of exalted piety. Several prelates of the Church of 
 the Pale were charged with odious and wicked crimes'; its 
 clergy are said to have been self-seeking, avaricious, cruel to 
 the Irishry in their midst, nay the scum and refuse of the 
 Church in England. The Celtic Church, on the other hand, 
 had ceased to be a shining light of Christendom; its bishops 
 and clergy, at this period, have been described generally as 
 barbarous, ignorant, and, sometimes, vicious and lawless 2 . 
 Ireland had nothing like the noble succession of great church- 
 men, who were the saving health of the English monarchy in 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 Unity of law has been a strong moral tie to keep society 
 together in all ages. This, we have indicated, did not exist in 
 Ireland; the laws of England were dominant in the Pale; 
 they were mixed up with Celtic usage in the Anglo-Irish 
 
 1 Thus Henri de Londres, an archbishop of Dublin, and a witness to 
 Magna Carta, was accused of an atrocious fraud. Leland I. 206. 
 
 a Thus an Irish archbishop of Cashel is said to have committed 
 murder. Ibid. 234. 
 
 M. I. 4
 
 so Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 counties; the Brehon Law was supreme in the Celtic Land. 
 This, we have said, was not a peculiar wrong, in the case of 
 Ireland; a similar state of things was to be found in most 
 countries, where different races were subject to medieval 
 monarchies. But the ascendency of English Law must, we 
 have remarked, have pressed severely on the Irishry of the 
 Pale ; excluded as they were from its Courts of Justice, and 
 from its protection, but not its penalties, it must have often 
 had iniquitous results. The benefits of English Law were, 
 indeed, conferred, as a privilege, on five families of the great 
 Irish chiefs, the "quinque sanguines" of old kingly rank- 
 and were also given freely to the native race as denizens; 
 but this very circumstance shows that those who were deprived 
 of this coveted boon had real cause of complaint ; and the 
 Irishry of the Pale, it must be borne in mind, more than once 
 entreated Plantagenet kings, in vain, that the rights of 
 English Law might be extended to them. On the whole, 
 there can be little doubt that this kind of outlawry and 
 ostracism of part of the subject people was a grievance, and a 
 cause of ill-will and disorder. 
 
 The intermixture of English and Irish law, in what we 
 have called the Anglo-Irish region, seems to have been 
 attended, also, with real evils. This was denounced over and 
 over again in the Parliaments of the age, and prohibited by 
 many severe statutes; and the principal reason assigned was 
 not ill founded. The Brehon Law, we have said, did not 
 recognise crimes, for it had no conception of a state or of 
 public wrongs; and the eric or compensation was the only 
 penalty it inflicted even for the worst deeds of blood. When, 
 therefore, it penetrated into domains where it came in contact 
 with English Law, it appeared an immoral and even a wicked 
 usage that almost secured immunity for crime; it has been 
 called "an ingenious contrivance for compounding felonies"; 
 and as crimes and outrages of every kind were prevalent in
 
 ii.] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 51 
 
 these very districts, it was not unnaturally condemned as a 
 "damnable custom," by minds on the side of order and 
 civilised life, especially as these did not understand its prin- 
 ciples. The Brehon usages, again, in the Celtic Land had bad 
 results in the existing state of society, though they had been 
 certainly improved by the Brehon lawyers, who had brought 
 into them parts of the Canon, and of the Civil Law of Rome. 
 The elective system of Tanist succession appears to have 
 become much more common, and the hereditary principle to 
 have been much less respected, in these centuries of increasing 
 tribal warfare ; and Tudor lawyers, strongly prejudiced as they 
 were, were probably not in error when they maintained that 
 apart from opposition to English power this led to confusion 
 and endless discord. Very possibly, too, the mode of descent, 
 known as Irish Gavelkind, by which the chief distributed, on 
 the death of a member of a sept, his lands, some, indeed, 
 say the entire sept-land among all the remaining members, 
 harmless as it may have been in a primitive age, became 
 adverse to social progress, and to good agriculture, in more 
 modern days'; though, doubtless, it was mere exaggeration to 
 assert that "it was the true cause of the barbarism and 
 desolation of the land 2 ." 
 
 As has usually been the case in misruled countries, the 
 unhappy and backward condition of Ireland was conspicuously 
 seen in the poverty of the state, and the miserable position of 
 the more humble orders of men. Notwithstanding wars with 
 Scotland and France, and peasant risings, and the Black 
 Death, England, at this period, was, by many degrees, the 
 
 1 Modern writers, notably Mr Hallam and Mr Goldwin Smith, seem to 
 have underrated the evils resulting from the state of law and usage existing 
 in Ireland, at this period. The evidence on this subject of many con- 
 temporary statutes, and of very able Tudor statesmen and thinkers, can 
 hardly be questioned. 
 
 2 Davies 291. 
 
 42
 
 52 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 most wealthy of the nations of the North ; her society, if cast 
 in a feudal mould, exhibited a well compacted gradation of 
 classes, from the noble down to the small holder of the soil, all, 
 as we see in the pictures of Chaucer, apparently contented 
 with their lot in life. In Ireland, it was altogether otherwise ; 
 the feeble central government had hardly any revenue; the 
 scanty taxes were squandered in incessant strife, or could not 
 be collected owing to feudal exaction ; the tributes of the Irish 
 chiefs were very seldom paid; the usual returns to the 
 Exchequer were "In Thesauro Nihil." As we have seen, 
 many of the English colonies had vanished, the settlers having 
 left the island in thousands; elements favourable to the 
 formation of a middle class in Ireland already strong in 
 English national life had thus been dissipated or destroyed ; 
 they could not grow up and become vigorous in a land of 
 continual war and confusion. As for the peasantry, if they 
 could be called by the name, and the population of either race, 
 placed at the bottom of the social scale, they were in a state 
 of extreme wretchedness, like the serfs of France, or the 
 predial slaves of Germany. The great nobles and their 
 dependent barons, the leading and even the inferior Irish 
 chiefs, lived in a kind of rude wasteful grandeur, fattening 
 on plunder gathered in on all sides; but their villeins, their 
 Fuidhirs, their degraded bondsmen, were thralls in hopeless 
 distress and want. " What common folk in all this world " so 
 ran a state paper of a later date, but doubtless applicable to 
 this time " is so poor, so feeble, so evil beseen in town and 
 field, so bestial, so greatly oppressed and trodden under foot, 
 fares so evil, with so great misery, and with so wretched a life, 
 as the common folk of Ireland 1 ?" 
 
 In intellectual life and energy Ireland was as backward as 
 in her material condition. Successive generations of great 
 
 1 State Papers Hen. VIII n., Jo . Referred to in Froude's History of 
 England, II. 283 4.
 
 ii.] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 53 
 
 rulers and statesmen had made the government of England the 
 best in the world ; her Parliaments were already the rising 
 power in the state ; they were national councils in no doubtful 
 sense ; they were full of elements of increasing strength and 
 wisdom. And there had been a corresponding movement in 
 the mind of England; Oxford, from the first years of the 
 thirteenth century, Cambridge at perhaps a somewhat later 
 date, had been centres of fruitful mental activity ; Wycliff had 
 been the herald of the Reformation; a noble, nay, a popular 
 literature had appeared, seen in the masterpieces of a great 
 poet, Chaucer, and in the keen and even tragic satire of 
 Langland. Ireland in every particular showed an unhappy 
 contrast to these glories of genius in the highest places, and to 
 these brilliant triumphs of the understanding of man. Her 
 government, confined to the nook of the Pale, was such as has 
 been already described, feeble, without definite policy and aim, 
 capricious and harsh in many acts of violence, but usually 
 impotent to do good, never enlightened, statesmanslike or, in 
 any sense, national. Her Parliaments, little more than Con- 
 ventions of the Pale, were ruled by a few great nobles and 
 churchmen, for a free and strong House of Commons could 
 not exist in a land of tyranny and war, and where, except 
 Dublin, there were but a few towns above the rank of villages ; 
 their legislation was petty, local, selfish, timid, that of a 
 colonial caste in the midst of enemies ; it had nothing resembling 
 the noble statutes enacted at Westminster at this period, the 
 still living sources of English law and liberty. So it was, too, 
 with the work of the mind in Ireland ; this exhibited lethargy, 
 neglect, nay even a marked decline. The Brehon lawyers, 
 indeed, we have said, did much to make the letter of their 
 laws better ; learned men were to be found in many religious 
 houses; there were poets, annalists, and bards in the Celtic 
 Land of the same type as five centuries before ; a kind of 
 literature grew up within the Pale; the Anglo-Irish lawyers
 
 54 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 could show many able "clerks," especially in scions of old 
 Norman Houses. But an attempt to found a University in 
 the capital had failed ; there was nothing like an Irish Oxford 
 or Cambridge, no William of Wykeham or William of Waynflete; 
 the churchmen of both Churches had scarcely a name acknow- 
 ledged by posterity as really great; the level of knowledge 
 throughout the country was pitiably low. Darkness had 
 settled on the ill-fated land which had irradiated Europe at an 
 earlier age ; and this while England was basking in light, and 
 when Christendom had felt the first day-spring of a new era. 
 
 From the death of Richard II to the accession of Henry 
 VII that is throughout nearly all the fifteenth century the 
 state of Ireland became in every respect worse. The causes of 
 the change are easily discerned. Talbot, indeed, the terror of 
 the French name, overthrew Celtic tribes in more than one 
 encounter; and a few able military governors of the Pale 
 appeared. But the Lancastrian Kings completely neglected 
 Ireland, between conquests in France and civil war at home ; 
 the reins were thrown on the necks of Viceroys, who exag- 
 gerated all that was bad in the misgovernment of the past. 
 The feud between the " new Englishry " of the Pale, and the 
 "old Englishry" in it, in part " degenerate," became more than 
 ever envenomed ; obscure governors sometimes struck down 
 great nobles, or played them against each other, to keep up a 
 show of power ; but ultimately the dominant House of Kildare 
 became more than ever the oppressors of the Pale, and held its 
 nominal rulers in fear and subjection. Meanwhile a miniature 
 of the Wars of the Roses was seen in the increasing strife 
 between Butlers and Fitzgeralds, the first supporters of the 
 House of Lancaster, the second devoted to the House of York; 
 local broils were replaced by far spreading warfare, more 
 sustained, for it had a plausible cause or a pretext. The flower 
 of the colonists, too, perished on English battle-fields, in the 
 contest for the throne ; and the land was deprived, to a large
 
 n.j The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 55 
 
 extent, of the few remaining elements of its military power. 
 The refluent stream of the departing Englishry became more 
 rapid and strong than before ; the depopulation of their 
 settlements went on apace ; their colonies, in whole districts, 
 completely disappeared. [See note on p. 387.] 
 
 In this state of affairs, the Irish chiefs still further en- 
 croached on the intruding race, in wild incursions and 
 predatory strife ; they seized and occupied a large part of the 
 Pale; when Bosworth was fought the four shires had been 
 narrowed into a little strip of territory about fifty miles long by 
 twenty broad, extending from Dundalk, on the northern verge 
 of Louth, nearly by the course of the Boyne and the Liffey, 
 and thence to the edge of the hills of Wicklow. The weakness 
 of the Englishry had become so complete that, like the effete 
 Portuguese in Africa, they paid a " Black Rent " to their once 
 contemned enemies ; and a marked sign of humiliation 
 they shrank behind a ditch, built to keep out the rising tide 
 of the Celts. Had the Irish possessed a real leader, or been 
 capable of a vigorous and general effort, the invaders must 
 have been driven into the sea ; the settlement of the Pale 
 would have gone like other settlements. It is unnecessary to 
 repeat that exaction, anarchy, and misery had become worse 
 than ever ; in the picturesque words of a chronicler of the 
 day, " Ireland is the land that the angel understood ; for 
 there is no land of so continual war within itself; ne of such 
 great shedding of Christian blood; ne of so great robbing, 
 spoiling, preying, and burning, ne of so great wrongful 
 extortion continually, as Ireland 1 ." [See note on p. 387.] 
 
 England had been dominant in Ireland for more than 
 three hundred years, and might have reduced her to subjection, 
 over and over again, with fortunate results to both countries, 
 had she really put forth her power. It is an error to imagine 
 that, during this long period, she had been a regular oppressor 
 1 Ware, Writers of Ireland, p. 90.
 
 5 6 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 of the native people, or had dark and evil designs against it. 
 Many Viceroys, indeed, did harsh things; but they were, 
 perhaps, more severe to the English of the Pale, than to the 
 Irishry almost outside the sphere of their influence. It is 
 untrue, besides, that the conquering settlers had been cruel, as 
 a rule, to the native race ; the Norman bore no dislike to the 
 Celt, and treated him, so long as his own position was un- 
 challenged, with indifference and contemptuous kindness ; but 
 the animosities of faith and blood, so terrible afterwards, were 
 as yet not very strong. The faults in the rule of England were 
 altogether different : they were those of negligence, ignorance, 
 want of insight ; and accidental circumstances had also their 
 part. The first Norman descents had inspired an erroneous 
 belief that the conquest of the island would be easily 
 accomplished; and no attempt was made thoroughly to 
 subdue the native Irish. Feeble and irregular efforts of 
 power had divided Ireland into a declining colony, a land 
 of contending nobles, and the regions of the Celt; this 
 state of things had ended in the decay of the Pale, in the 
 general diminution of the English settlers, in the wide-spread 
 lawlessness of the Celtic tribes, in almost universal misrule 
 and disorder. 
 
 The worst instance of neglect, perhaps, was the absence 
 from Ireland of her sovereign lords; the presence of the 
 English kings might have done wonders; but a series of 
 mischances kept them out of Ireland. The charges of 
 persistent cruelty and wrong disappear; but the state of 
 Ireland, at the end of the fifteenth century, was not the less 
 disastrous for England and the lesser island. The whole 
 country was a prey to anarchy a thing of wounds, bruises, 
 and putrefying sores ; the germs of civilisation had been well- 
 nigh destroyed ; Ireland, Norman, Saxon, and Celtic alike, 
 had in the course of ages distinctly gone back, and showed 
 less signs of progress than in the reign of Henry II. The
 
 n.] The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland. 57 
 
 conquest made piecemeal, the complete want of anything 
 resembling good general government, the scarcely checked 
 domination of noble and chief, the strife between the Churches, 
 and the conflict of law, had been some of the manifold causes 
 which had reduced Ireland to her wretched condition, and had 
 all but extinguished the rule of England. And beside this 
 unhappy and distracted land, lay England, rich in national 
 strength, and, even after a period of war, full of elements of 
 progressive national life ; and her statesmen doubtless already 
 felt that a discontented Ireland was likely to prove a dangerous 
 neighbour. The greater and lesser countries were on com- 
 pletely different planes of civilisation and wealth ; should a 
 conflict arise it was easy to perceive that, if it were not made, 
 in a short time, decisive, it might be protracted for many 
 years, especially as the subjugation of Ireland required a real 
 effort. 
 
 Henry VII sat on a tottering throne, long after he had 
 been proclaimed king. His power in England was thwarted 
 by plots and factions ; in Ireland it was little more than a 
 name. Gerald, the eighth Earl of Kildare, revered as the 
 "Great," in the traditions of a race devoted to leaders of men, 
 was Viceroy, and supreme at the Castle ; but his authority in 
 Ireland was very different from that of an ordinary governor of 
 the Pale. He was connected by marriage with the chiefs of 
 the O'Neills, and with the Butlers of Ormond, his feudal 
 enemies ; he had immense influence with the Desmonds of his 
 blood, having saved them from an arbitrary act of attainder. 
 Nature, too, had made him a remarkable man, abounding in 
 wit, resource, and capacity; he could rule, with excellent 
 results, in the interests of the Crown, if given a free hand to do 
 as he pleased ; but he was equally ready to conspire against 
 it, if crossed in any of his ambitious purposes. Henry was 
 compelled to negotiate with a most dangerous subject ; and 
 events soon showed what was the ascendency of Kildare, and
 
 58 Ireland. [CHAP.II. 
 
 what a shadow was English power in Ireland. The Earl, like 
 all the Geraldines, was true to the House of York ; he seems 
 to have aspired to play the great part of a Warwick; he 
 crowned the Pretender, Simnel, with his own hand; and he 
 despatched from Ireland the force which was destroyed at 
 Stoke. The threats and remonstrances of the king proved 
 vain ; and notwithstanding this act of flagrant rebellion, 
 Kildare received a pardon, and was restored to his government. 
 But he continued to be regarded with suspicion ; and, mean- 
 while, the impotence of the state being more than ever 
 manifest, the discords and troubles of Ireland continued to 
 increase, and the ruin of the Pale seemed fearfully imminent. 
 Henry was forced at last to take a decided course ; he resolved 
 to try to effect a thorough change in the system of government 
 and administration that had so long prevailed in Ireland. Sir 
 Edward Poynings, a member of that able official class, 
 encouraged for centuries by the Plantagenets, and especially 
 favoured by the Tudors, was placed at the head of affairs in 
 Ireland, and charged to make a searching and complete 
 reform. The subordinates who accompanied him a signifi 
 cant fact were soldiers, churchmen, and lawyers of English 
 birth ; the Anglo-Irish had been removed from the Castle.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IRELAND, DURING THE TUDOR PERIOD, TO THE END 
 OF THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII. 
 
 The government of Poynings an epoch in Irish History. The Parliament 
 of Drogheda. The reforms it accomplished. "Poynings' Law," and 
 its objects. Kildare placed again at the head of affairs in Ireland. 
 Nature of his government. The Battle of Cnocktue. Character of 
 the Earl. Splendour of the House of Kildare. Gerald, the ninth 
 Earl, made Deputy. The policy of conquest and confiscation in 
 Ireland rejected by the king. His plan for governing Ireland. 
 Kildare, after a short interval of time, replaces Surrey as Deputy. He 
 is imprisoned in the Tower, but made Deputy again in 1532. Danger 
 of England in 1534. Kildare sent again to the Tower. The 
 Rebellion of Silken Thomas. Danger of the Pale and of English 
 power in Ireland. Siege and fall of the Castle of Maynooth. 
 Collapse of the rebellion. Death of Earl Gerald. Execution of 
 Silken Thomas and his uncles. Ruin of the House of Kildare. A 
 child, Gerald, saved to restore the family. The Reformation in 
 Ireland. State of the Church of the Pale and of the Celtic Church. 
 Policy and measures of the king. The Parliament of 1536. The 
 king made Head of the Church, and before long King instead of Lord 
 of Ireland. Other reforms. Opposition. Attempts made by Anglo- 
 Norman lords and Irish chiefs to rise. Battle of Bellahoe. Rapid 
 decline of the insurrection. Progress of the English arms in Ireland. 
 Henry carries out his scheme of Irish government. The Parliament 
 of 1540-2. Success of the king's policy. Ireland at peace. Re- 
 flections. 
 
 THE Viceroys of Ireland had had the title of Lords Lieutenant, 
 or were Deputies of these ; there was scarcely any difference
 
 60 Ireland. [ CHAP 
 
 between their functions; Poynings had the inferior rank of 
 Deputy. His government marks an era in Irish history, 
 though it was brief, transitory, and with few immediate effects. 
 A Parliament was convened at Drogheda, towards the close of 
 1494; a long series of laws was passed, designed to curtail the 
 power of the great nobles, to provide for the defence of the 
 Pale against Celtic tribes, and to extend the influence of 
 English Law, and of the Tudor Monarchy. An opportunity 
 was found to attaint Kildare and some of his kinsmen ; the 
 Earl, after a show of fruitless resistance, was made prisoner 
 and sent off to England. At the same time, an attempt was 
 made to check the waste and rapine of coyne and livery, by sub- 
 stituting a kind of local tax, as a means of providing for the 
 regular maintenance of the army. The dominant Anglo-Norman 
 Lords of the Pale were forbidden to make war, or to " propose 
 ordinances," without the consent of the Executive Government; 
 they were not to assemble their levies of armed retainers ; their 
 rude war-cries were to be heard no more ; their authority in 
 towns was greatly reduced ; they were not to oppress the inferior 
 Baronage, and their vassals and dependents of English blood. 
 Precautions, too, were taken for the defence of the Pale ; the 
 ditch was to be repaired and manned ; the feudal militia was 
 to guard the marches ; the practice of the long bow, beginning 
 to die out, was to be restored and vigorously maintained ; and 
 the usages of the Irishry were not to exist in the Pale, 
 especially the eric, or the fine of blood, murder being made 
 subject to all the results of treason. The statute of Kilkenny, 
 besides, was revised and confirmed, as had often been the 
 case in the preceding century. This famous law was enacted in 
 1367, under the Viceroyalty of Lionel Duke of Clarence, and 
 formed a code of peculiar stringency, intended to keep the 
 Englishry and the Irishry completely apart. It treated the 
 Pale as a separate region, continually exposed to the attacks 
 of enemies, and always to be kept in a state of defence ; it
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period. 6 1 
 
 prohibited intermarriage between the two races, the extension 
 of the Brehon Law and of Irish customs within the precincts of 
 the English Land, and everything that tended to fuse together 
 the Saxon and the Celt. It had, however, been long nearly 
 a dead letter, effaced by influences it could not resist, though 
 probably not altogether powerless; its revival, as before, was to 
 be of little purpose. 
 
 This legislation of Poynings, and his administrative acts, 
 resembled the policy of one of our great Viceroys, in the early 
 days of British rule in India, whose aim was to restrain the 
 misconduct and greed of the Company's chief officials, yet who 
 thought only of the purely English settlements, and regarded 
 the native races with distrust and aversion. The remaining 
 laws of the Deputy's Parliament had, we have said, as their 
 object to make English Law, and the power of the Crown, of 
 greater effect in Ireland. The principal officers of the State, 
 including the Judges, had previously, it would appear, held 
 their places for life, and had been appointed, perhaps, by the 
 Viceroys; they were now to hold strictly at the king's pleasure, 
 a provision, which, within the limits of the Pale, gave a large 
 increase to the Royal authority, and to the Council supreme at 
 Windsor or Greenwich. Concurrently with this enactment, the 
 whole body of law, which successive Parliaments had passed 
 for England, was introduced into Ireland and given full effect ; 
 this sweeping change must have likewise tended, not only to 
 improve the course of justice, and the security of property 
 and private rights, but also to add to the power of the 
 Monarchy, as far as this, for the present, extended. Yet these 
 measures, far-reaching as they seemed, were of much less 
 importance than another reform, especially known as "Poynings' 
 Law," which had great and permanent results in Irish affairs, 
 though this may not have been the design of its authors. The 
 Viceroys of Ireland had, hitherto, convened Parliaments almost 
 as they pleased; one Parliament had rescinded Acts which
 
 62 
 
 Ireland. [ CHAP - 
 
 another had declared to be the law of the land ; and these assem- 
 blies, often irregularly convened, had been usually mere instru- 
 ments of the men in power at the Castle, or of the great and 
 tyrannical feudal nobles. Their legislation had thus been 
 repeatedly inconsistent, harsh, and unwise ; and it had been, 
 in many instances, marked by oppression, and iniquity to the 
 colonists of the Pale. It was, therefore, deemed advisable to 
 secure the control, and even the initiative of making laws, to 
 the Crown ; and it was enacted, " that no Parliament should in 
 future be holden in Ireland, till the king's lieutenant should 
 certify to the king, under the great seal, the causes and 
 considerations, and all such acts as it seems to them ought to 
 be passed thereon, and such be affirmed by the king and his 
 council, and his licence to hold a parliament be obtained." 
 This provision, Hallam has justly remarked, "placed a bridle 
 in the mouth of every Irish Parliament," for it made the king 
 and his council the sole arbiters of what it was to attempt or 
 accomplish; and possibly we may see the profound Tudor 
 statecraft, in this effective, but indirect, stroke of policy. But 
 the authority given to the Crown and its ministers, which 
 assured the subjection of the Irish Parliament, and which, in 
 subsequent times, was fiercely denounced, was certainly re- 
 garded, for many years, as a protection against Viceregal 
 oppression and feudal excesses, within the borders of the Pale '. 
 The rule of Poynings, however, was but for a moment; and 
 parts of his work were to disappear with it, if parts were 
 ultimately to prove enduring. The Deputy represented the 
 "English interest"; the Anglo-Norman "interest" of the Pale 
 resented an ascendency it had always hated, and what it 
 deemed an attack on its rights ; and throughout Ireland the 
 thousands of Kildare's adherents, of both races, stirred in 
 
 This is proved by the repeated requests of the Englishry of the Pale, 
 in the sixteenth century, that Poynings' Law should not be suspended. 
 See too Flood's speech on this subject. Parl. Register, I. 1537.
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period, 63 
 
 threatening wrath. Desmonds and even Ormonds joined in 
 complaints, with chiefs of Celtic tribes in the North and the 
 West; and Henry, in despair, desisted from the task he had 
 undertaken of reforming Ireland. The story has often 
 been told of the Earl's conduct, when summoned before 
 Henry VII and his Council. " I will take your Highness as 
 my advocate against these false knaves," he is said to have 
 exclaimed, with adroit flattery ; and he brazened out a charge, 
 that he had burned the cathedral of Armagh, by adding, with 
 ready wit, " that he only thought of burning the bishop," 
 perhaps a prelate of questionable fame. The king answered 
 the protest of the indignant Council that " all Ireland cannot 
 govern this man," by retorting " this man then shall govern all 
 Ireland"; and within a few days Poynings was recalled, and 
 Kildare, restored to his lands and honours, was made chief 
 ruler of Ireland again, the attainted traitor, too, having become 
 a kinsman of the House of Tudor, by a great English marriage. 
 Whether true or not, the tale proves how weak and vacillating, 
 as regards the affairs of Ireland, was English policy at this 
 period; but probably it represents the king as more fickle 
 and pusillanimous than he really was. He seems to have 
 been menaced by an armed Irish rising, more formidable than 
 had occurred for years ; he was entangled in difficult disputes 
 with Scotland; and the power of the O'Neills, kinsmen and 
 allies of Kildare, was, perhaps, required to keep down the 
 Scottish settlers, who were establishing themselves on the coast 
 of Ulster, and who, apparently, sometimes joined in harrying the 
 Pale. It deserves notice that, just at this time, Henry invoked 
 the aid of Alexander VI to restore order and peace in Ireland, 
 through a Commission of which the heads were the chief 
 English bishops. 
 
 The return of Kildare to power restored the ascendency of 
 his House, and of Anglo-Norman rule, and caused the defeat 
 in Ireland of the "English interest." The Earl, however,
 
 64 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 upheld most of the reforms of Poynings, and proved himself to 
 be a very able governor, and a loyal subject of the Tudor 
 monarchy. His immense influence in Ireland continued to 
 grow, through the authority with the great nobles, and the 
 supremacy over the Celtic chiefs, which he owed, in part at 
 least, to his high qualities; he exercised it with conspicuous 
 skill and success. He repelled, with his Desmond kindred, 
 an attempt made by Perkin Warbeck to attack Cork ; carried 
 the arms of the Crown far beyond the Pale, in "hostings" 
 against the "Irish enemy"; and yet commanded the reverence 
 of many an Irish chief, even besides those allied to his House, 
 for power always has a fascination for the Celt. The most 
 remarkable of these exploits was his victory over the Celts of 
 Connaught, led by one of "the degenerate De Burghs"; they 
 perished in thousands on the field of Cnocktue ; this decisive 
 triumph marked the turn in the tide which had set against the 
 Englishry for a long space of time, and drew forth a savage ex- 
 clamation from one of the nobles of the Pale, significant of their 
 sense of the humiliations of the past. Kildare, too, seems to 
 have been an upright ruler of the land, of which he was all but 
 the sovereign ; he received the Garter and gifts of lands from his 
 grateful king, and a brief season of peace was seen in Ireland, 
 during the later years of his reign as governor. 
 
 The great House of Kildare, indeed, at this time shone out 
 with a lustre which made it prominent, even among the most 
 noble Houses of England, and which mournfully contrasts 
 with the darkness of its fall. Gerald was a patron of art and 
 science; he felt the intellectual movement of his age; the 
 learned student, the canvas fresh from Italian hands, the 
 library filled with goodly volumes, were seen in his stately 
 castles amidst the throng of his men-at-arms and Celtic kerne, 
 and among the minstrels and bards of chiefs of the Irishry. 
 At Maynooth, at Glyn, at Dingle, at Youghal, from the verge 
 of the Pale to the far plains of Kerry, the glory of the
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period, 65 
 
 Renaissance was not wanting in his halls, and in those of his 
 Desmond cousins; it blended with the pomp and circumstance 
 of feudal grandeur and war, and with whatever remained of the 
 poetry and art of the native Irish race. Ariosto recorded, in 
 graceful verse, what the Geraldines were in this day of their 
 renown 1 ; and the Ghirardini, beside the Arno, rejoiced to 
 learn, from the Great Earl himself, how mighty was their name, 
 in a far island of the West 2 . 
 
 The Great Earl died at Athy in 1513 on his way to prosecute 
 the war against O'Carroll. The chronicles of both the races in 
 Ireland agree in describing him as a most remarkable man ; he 
 had ruled the country, too, for nearly the third of a century. 
 He was succeeded as Deputy by his son Gerald, called also 
 the " Great " in Celtic annals ; but, if a gallant warrior, and 
 not devoid of parts, apparently without his father's resource, 
 not skilled in reading the signs of the times, and destined to 
 a most unhappy fate. The Earl trode, for some years, in his 
 predecessor's footsteps ; crushed Irish risings beyond the Pale ; 
 extended the now advancing power of the Englishry; and, 
 save that he was often at feud with his Ormond kindred, 
 maintained the ascendency of his House unchallenged. By 
 this time Henry VII had died, and his son Henry VIII had 
 ascended the throne ; but England was still being dragged in 
 the wake of Spain ; the young King was involved in wars with 
 France ; and, as had happened over and over again, the affairs of 
 Ireland attracted little attention. The fortune of the House of 
 
 1 See the Orlando Furioso, Canto X. Stanzas 87-8 : 
 
 " Sono due squadre, e il conte di Childera 
 Mena la prima ; e il conte di Desmonda 
 Da fieri monti ha tratta la seconda. 
 Nello stendardo, il primo ha un pino ardente; 
 L' altro nel bianco una vermiglia banda." 
 
 2 See the letter of the Earl in The Earls of Kildare, by the Duke of 
 Leinster, p. 64. 
 
 M. I. q
 
 66 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Kildare seemed at its topmost height, when the Earl attended 
 Henry to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and, like his father, 
 wedded a near relation of the King. 
 
 The change, meanwhile, which, for some years, had been 
 passing over the English Monarchy, was beginning to produce 
 its effects in Ireland. The dynasty of the Tudors had, by 
 degrees, acquired stability, and was growing in strength ; the 
 power of feudalism was passing away, with the decline of the 
 great nobles, in a new era; and Wolsey, the Richelieu of his 
 day, was extending the influence of the Crown in every 
 direction, and turning the government into a scarcely veiled 
 despotism. It was impossible that these tendencies should 
 not affect Ireland ; and the condition of the island, where a 
 still struggling colony with difficulty maintained the English 
 name, and where feudal and Celtic chaos prevailed in the 
 great tracts beyond the still narrow Pale, seemed to invite the 
 presence of Royal authority, to subjugate, to civilise, and to 
 enlarge the domain of order. The state papers of the time 
 had begun to teem with accounts of the misrule of the Anglo- 
 Norman lords, of the barbarism of the Celtic chiefs, and of the 
 wretchedness of a community the prey of lawlessness and 
 incessant wars; and numerous schemes had been proposed, 
 especially by English observers on the spot, for reducing the 
 country to complete subjection, and putting an end to disorder 
 and anarchy, by making the power of the Crown absolute, and 
 by colonisation following a thorough conquest. Under the 
 influence, probably, of views of this kind, another turn occurred 
 in the affairs of Ireland; Kildare, though apparently still in 
 power, was removed from his government in 1520; and Lord 
 Surrey, the son of the victor of Flodden, one of the most 
 trusted of Henry's soldiers and statesmen, was placed in his 
 stead, as Viceroy, with the fullest powers. The counsels of 
 Surrey were in accord with the new policy just referred to; 
 and stern and harsh as they certainly were, it is to be regretted,
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period. 67 
 
 perhaps, that they were not followed, as we watch the sub- 
 sequent course of Irish History. Surrey, full of the absolutist 
 ideas of the time, was all for making the king supreme in 
 Ireland, the uncontrolled master, in fact, of everything; and 
 he advised that the country should be subdued once for all, 
 and should be effectively colonised by English settlers, intro- 
 duced in such numbers as to secure their ascendency. But he 
 warned the king that the task would be long and difficult, 
 owing to the extent of Ireland, and the many obstacles the 
 island presents to an invading enemy; to people it, too, with 
 Englishmen, sent from a distance, across the sea, would be far 
 from easy; and a considerable military force would be re- 
 quired. "This land," he wrote with just insight, "is five 
 times as large as Wales, and when King Edward I set on 
 hand to conquer the same, it cost him ten years ere he won it 
 all, although for the most part he was present in his own 
 person ; and there is no sea between England and Wales. I 
 
 fear therefore it cannot be so soon won as Wales was 6000 
 
 men is the least number you must occupy 1 ." 
 
 This policy, however, singularly like the "Thorough" of 
 Strafford in another age, much as it may have been approved 
 by Wolsey, ran counter to the inclinations of the king, and 
 was rejected by him through all the troubles of his reign. 
 Henry VIII was a tyrant, in many of his acts; History 
 sternly condemns his savage temper, and his selfishness almost 
 without a parallel ; but a Celt himself, to a certain extent, he 
 had genuine sympathy with a Celtic race ; and he had formed 
 views on Ireland and Irish government, remarkable for their 
 enlightened wisdom, the best, perhaps, considering the circum- 
 stances of the time, that were ever conceived by an English 
 statesman. He turned a deaf ear to the argument of force, 
 and refused to listen to plans for conquering Ireland with the 
 
 1 State Papers. Carew I. 18. Surrey to Henry VIII. June 30, 
 1521. 
 
 52
 
 68 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 sword, and for "planting" the whole country with English 
 colonies. He wished, indeed, to be a real king in Ireland, 
 and to make his kingship a good influence ; to remove or to 
 lessen the ills that afflicted the people ; to promote order and 
 the authority of law ; in his own words, " to heal the great 
 decay of that fertile land for lack of politic governance and 
 good justice"; and he had a scheme of his own to attain 
 these objects. His idea was to make the power of the Crown 
 felt everywhere, alike by the Anglo-Norman nobles, and by the 
 all but independent chiefs of the Irishry, but to accomplish 
 this by kindness, not by the strong hand ; and, with this end 
 in view, he desired to confer honours on them, to bind them 
 to the Crown by the tie of gratitude, and through them to rule 
 the whole Irish community. The Monarchy would thus be 
 supreme in Ireland; it would gradually bring good govern- 
 ment and peace with it; but it would rest on an aristocracy 
 of Irish origin ; and without violent or dangerous change, it 
 would make its benefits felt through all ranks of the people. 
 It is remarkable, too, that Henry perceived that the law of the 
 Anglo-Saxon was ill fitted to win the sympathy of a Celtic 
 race ; and he sought to respect the Celtic usages in his project 
 for governing Ireland as a whole. "Show unto the Irish 
 lords," he wrote to Surrey, "that it is requisite that every 
 
 reasonable creature be governed by a law But if they 
 
 allege that our laws be too extreme and rigorous ye may 
 
 ensearch of them, under what manners, and by what laws, they 
 will be ordered and governed, to the intent that if their laws be 
 good aud reasonable, they may be approved 1 ." 
 
 Henry, we shall see, did not renounce this policy, though 
 events told strongly against it afterwards. Surrey was recalled 
 from Ireland to conduct a campaign in France ; and Kildare, 
 after a brief interval of time he had become an object of 
 suspicion to the king was restored to his estate as Deputy. 
 1 State Papers II. 52, 53. Froude's History n. 263.
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period. 69 
 
 Years passed, in which Wolsey and his master were engaged 
 in vast designs of conquest abroad, in trying to hold the 
 balance between France and the Empire, in keeping down the 
 power of the House of Commons ; Ireland once more almost 
 passed out of sight. Kildare continued to rule as before ; but 
 he was jealously watched by his Ormond enemies his sister, 
 the " Great Countess," was the chief of these and complaints 
 were repeatedly made of his conduct. Long impunity, however, 
 made him incautious; he wrecked the Pale with the old 
 exactions of his House, levying " coyne and livery " in defiance 
 of the law ; he married two of his daughters to Irish chiefs, 
 O'Connor and O'Carroll, whose tribes had been for ages a 
 thorn in the side of the Englishry, for their territories lay on 
 the verge of the Pale; and he was looked up to as their 
 suzerain by the Celtic clans and septs, from the ranges of 
 Ulster to the far hills of Kerry. He was accused, too, of 
 dabbling in treason, and of treating with Francis I and 
 Charles V, when at war with England, through his Desmond 
 kindred; and in 1527 he was imprisoned in the Tower. 
 Wolsey scornfully denounced him, "as King Kildare, who 
 reigned rather than ruled in Ireland " ; but he was ere long set 
 free, and allowed to return to Ireland, his connexion with the 
 Tudors standing him, perhaps, in stead. He had soon thrust 
 aside a Deputy, Skeffington, who had been set as a kind of 
 watch on his acts; and in 1532 he was again at the head of 
 affairs in Ireland, as Deputy of the king's natural son, the 
 young Duke of Richmond. 
 
 The triumph of the Earl, it appears, impelled him into most 
 dangerous and unwise courses. He dismissed the Archbishop 
 of Dublin from his place as Chancellor ; kept the Council at 
 the Castle in a state of terror; interfered with the judges in the 
 administration of the law ; ruled, in a word, as his fathers had 
 ruled in a different age. He also carried fire and sword 
 through the lands of the Butlers, at this moment powerful at
 
 70 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Court, from their relationship with the rising star, Anne 
 Boleyn 1 ; and he was charged with encouraging chiefs of the 
 Irishry to make inroads upon the borders of the Pale. All 
 this, however, might have gone for nothing, had he not at 
 a most critical juncture been suspected, at least, of fresh acts 
 of treason. By this time the divorce of Catherine had caused 
 the sudden disgrace of Wolsey; the Church in England was 
 being severed from Rome ; and Henry, backed by the mass of 
 the nation, but opposed by many of the nobility, and nine- 
 tenths of the clergy, was threatened by Charles V and 
 Clement VII. The air in England was thick with sinister 
 rumours ; it seemed not improbable that risings at home might 
 find support from enemies abroad. Kildare corresponded, 
 perhaps, with the Emperor, through the Desmonds, as may 
 have been the case before ; the time for trifling and hesitation 
 had passed; in 1534 he was once more a prisoner in the 
 Tower. He seems to have had a foreboding that evil days 
 were at hand ; he appointed Thomas, his eldest son, to act as 
 his Vice-deputy ; he certainly removed the artillery of Dublin 
 Castle to Maynooth and other fortresses of his own; and 
 possibly he hoped that rebellion would come to his aid z . 
 
 Lord Thomas Fitzgerald was a mere youth, not without 
 parts, but hot-headed and rash ; a report that " his father had 
 been cut shorter, as his issue should bee," sent him on the path 
 that led to the ruin of his House. Despising the warnings of 
 the chief Geraldines, he lent an ear to the counsels of his 
 leading Celtic kinsmen ; and " assurying himselfe that the 
 
 1 Margaret, the daughter of Thomas, seventh Earl of Ormond, married 
 Sir William Boleyn, and was the grandmother of the future Queen Anne. 
 Her son Sir Thomas Boleyn became Earl of Ormond ; the head of the 
 Butlers, Pierce, accepting the lesser title of Earl of Ossory. 
 
 2 The act of attainder of Kildare is the principal, almost the only, 
 evidence of his conduct ; a judicious enquirer will not rely too confidently 
 011 a Tudor act of attainder.
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period. 71 
 
 knot of all Ireland was twisted under his girdle," he rushed 
 madly into a war with England. He rode through Dublin at 
 the head of a band of retainers; flung the sword of state 
 on the table of the amazed Council, and having denounced 
 the King in impassioned language, declared that "he would 
 meet him in the field, not serve him in office." Celtic harpers 
 greeted him as " Silken Thomas " a badge of silk was on the 
 helmets of his men and bade him " not to tarry any more " ; 
 he strode wildly forth to assemble his forces. He was soon 
 the leader of a motley array, chiefly of Celtic Kerne from the 
 borders of the Pale ; and he urged the heads of the Butlers to 
 take up arms, " offering to divide the realme of Ireland with 
 them." He had ere long sent envoys to the Pope and to 
 Charles V; the hour had come "to punish Henry for his 
 heresy, lechery, and tyranny." 
 
 Foreign aid, however, as was seen afterwards, proved a 
 light of false hope to Irish rebellion ; no armament from 
 abroad was sent to Fitzgerald. The Butlers, too, scorned the 
 offers of their foe ; the Geraldines of Munster kept aloof; the 
 rising, in the main, was a Celtic raid sustained by the retainers 
 of Kildare in the Pale. Yet the dominion of England was for 
 some months in peril, so precarious even now was her hold 
 upon Ireland. Dublin had been wasted by a destructive 
 plague; the citizens, weakened and disheartened, agreed to 
 open their gates to Silken Thomas; and though afterwards 
 they plucked up courage to resist, the Castle was besieged by a 
 large rebel force, and, being without ordnance, was in grave 
 danger. Meanwhile the Archbishop, who had been deprived 
 of the seals, was murdered in an attempt to escape ; Fitzgerald 
 closed the capital by his sails in the Bay ; and the habitations 
 of the loyal settlers of the Pale were ravaged by plundering 
 swarms of banditti. An armed force was despatched from 
 England ; but its march across the Welsh mountains was slow ; 
 it was retarded by contrary winds for weeks; and its com-
 
 j2 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 mander, Skeffington, the late Deputy, hesitated, for some time, 
 to try to retake Dublin. Soon after its landing Fitzgerald 
 attacked and cut off one of its detachments ; the troops were 
 unable to prevent the destruction of Trim, the chief town 
 of Meath, and of the large village of Dunboyne. Skeffington, 
 too, fell ill, and, during a whole winter, the English army 
 simply did nothing. But for the energy of the Butlers, the 
 Pale might have been lost, and a new conquest of Ireland have 
 been made necessary. These feudal enemies of Kildare, 
 however, invaded his lands, and wrecked his castles ; they 
 compelled Lord Thomas to raise the siege of Dublin ; in 
 a word they held him in check by a predatory war. 
 
 Skeffington was, at last, on foot, in the spring of 1535. 
 The object of his attack was the Castle of Maynooth, a great 
 stronghold from which the Geraldines had often issued with 
 their feudal arrays to overrun the Pale, and the Land of the 
 Celt. The fortress had always been deemed impregnable ; 
 but the Tudors had made their artillery a formidable arm; 
 and a breach was made ere long in the external defences. It 
 is uncertain whether the place yielded to treachery, at last, 
 or to fair fighting ; but the garrison was, to a man, butchered ; 
 and the Irish Annals have bitterly denounced the "Pardon 
 of Maynooth." The victors exacted a savage vengeance from 
 Geraldine retainers who fell into their hands ; the territories 
 of the Kildares became the spoil of their swords ; and in a 
 few weeks the rebellion collapsed. Lord Thomas, who had 
 retreated beyond the Shannon, in the hope of stirring up the 
 Celts of Connaught, found himself deserted by his late allies ; 
 the chiefs, who had thronged to his standards, forsook him 
 and fled, carried away by panic or the fickleness of the Celt ; 
 characteristically they betrayed and turned against each other, 
 when the Englishry had made their power felt. The un- 
 fortunate youth surrendered to Lord Leonard Grey the 
 brother-in-law of his father who had replaced Skefiington,
 
 in.] Ireland during the T^tdor period. 73 
 
 at least in the command of the army ; and " the words of 
 comfort" he confessedly "spoke" were, perhaps, a promise 
 that his prisoner's life was to be spared. Earl Gerald had 
 ended his days, a few months before, in the Tower. X 
 
 The conduct of Henry, at this juncture, was singularly 
 characteristic of the man. The weakness of the Irishry had 
 been made manifest ; the king, in a sudden fit of wrath, took 
 counsel whether the whole of Ireland could not be confiscated 
 and made the prize of the Crown. He gave up, however, this 
 extreme purpose, and had soon returned to the wise policy, 
 which really he had never abandoned. But he laid a heavy 
 hand on rebellion ; he was embarrassed by Lord Leonard 
 Grey's language, but Silken Thomas was sent before long to 
 the block ; five of his uncles perished by the same sentence, 
 two, apparently, without any proof of guilt; and the House 
 of Kildare was struck down by a sweeping attainder. A 
 child, afterwards Gerald, the eleventh Earl, was the only scion 
 left of the ancient family which had overshadowed Ireland 
 with its power; his safety was due to a mere accident. His 
 kinswoman Mary 1 , wife of Brian O'Connor, chief of the greatest 
 tribe on the edge of the Pale, carried him into the difficult 
 wilds of Oftaley; the act of pious care still lives in Celtic 
 tradition. 
 
 An invasion made by Grey he had become Deputy 
 into the territories of the Desmonds, and beyond the Shannon, 
 marked the final close of the great rising of 1534. Meanwhile 
 events in England had widened the breach between the Tudor 
 Monarchy and Rome; the Reformation had begun in a 
 complete change in the ecclesiastical order which had pre- 
 vailed for centuries. Henry VIII had declared himself 
 supreme Head of the Church ; the Episcopate had been made 
 
 1 Daughter of Gerald the ninth Earl, aunt of the eleventh, and half- 
 sister of Surrey's fair Geraldine. The Earls of Kildare, pp. 121, 125.
 
 74 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 an instrument of the Crown ; the Religious Houses were being 
 swept away ; and Thomas Cromwell, with a ruthless but steady 
 hand, was effectually crushing resistance down. That a cor- 
 responding revolution should take place in Ireland was ac- 
 cepted as a matter of course; the example of the greater 
 country should be followed by the less; Henry turned his 
 attention to the twofold Irish Church. This institution had 
 been, in some respects, modified during the course of the 
 preceding century and a half. The Church of the Pale had 
 extended its bounds so far as regards the heads of the clergy ; 
 more sees than of old were filled by Englishmen, for the Lan- 
 castrian kings and Henry VII had courted the Popes; and 
 this was the case, too, with the best benefices. On the other 
 hand, the Irish chiefs seem to have altogether lost their au- 
 thority over the ancient Celtic Church ; the Popes nominated 
 some of the Bishops ; it was crowded by a priesthood de- 
 pendent on Rome, in defiance of celebrated English statutes ; 
 it was putting off its native complexion, and gradually be- 
 coming more and more Papal. The long standing feud between 
 the two Churches remained, however, as bitter as before ; the 
 Church of the Englishry was to the Church of the Irishry, what 
 the Jew was to the despised Samaritan; each embodied the 
 discord of separate races. 
 
 Meanwhile the corruption of the fifteenth century had 
 deeply affected both Churches ; low as had been the state 
 of their spiritual life, this seems to have become even lower 
 than before. Religious houses and buildings, indeed, multi- 
 plied ; the land was strown with edifices, in too many instances 
 emblems of superstition subdued by priestcraft. But if con- 
 temporaneous evidence speaks truth, crime, profligacy, in- 
 dolence, neglect of duty prevailed, far and near, in the two 
 communions; the light within them had become darkness. 
 Several dignitaries of the Church of the Pale were at least 
 charged with atrocious deeds ; an archdeacon was hanged for
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period. 75 
 
 murder in 1525*; and Bishops of the Celtic Church were 
 described as men of blood and violence. Simony and waste 
 ran riot in many sees ; hundreds of churches, it was asserted, 
 lay in ruins ; whole dioceses were left without a due supply 
 of ministers. Some monasteries, as in England, did good 
 work in teaching; the great majority, it has been written, 
 abounded in sloth, incontinence, and all kinds of vices. The 
 worst abuses were, perhaps, found where the influence of the 
 distant Pontiffs was strongest; the "Bishops of Rome" 
 exaggerated as may have been the language were denounced, 
 "for having preferred to the administration and governance 
 of many parishes, vile and vicious persons, unlearned, being 
 murderers, thieves, and of detestable dispositions 2 ." As of 
 old, however, intellectual torpor was perhaps the most striking 
 feature of either Church. England had had a crowd of dis- 
 tinguished churchmen, even during the evil days of the 
 fifteenth century. Wolsey, the foremost statesman of his time, 
 made the diffusion of education his special care; Warham, 
 Fisher, and others were eminent Prelates. But in the age of 
 Erasmus, of Colet, of More, the Church of the Pale and the 
 Celtic Church remained in Ireland in outer darkness; the 
 movement of the Renaissance had scarcely any influence on 
 an ill-informed and superstitious priesthood, not a single ec- 
 clesiastic made a conspicuous mark in Theology, Science, or 
 the New Learning. The laity, for the most part, were in the 
 same state of ignorance} " Lollardry " had been scarcely heard 
 of, even in the Pale; it was wholly unknown in the land of 
 the Celt. The community had hardly felt the rays of the 
 day-spring already high in the heavens. 
 
 The attempt to reform the Irish Churches followed the 
 precedents that had been set in England, and was conducted 
 upon the English model. The chief instrument employed by 
 
 1 The Earls of Kildare, p. 97. 
 
 2 Carew Papers, 31 May, 1534.
 
 76 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Henry and Cromwell was an Englishman, Browne, Archbishop 
 of Dublin, who simply endeavoured to obey his masters. A 
 Parliament was assembled in 1536 ; and, imitating what had 
 been done at Westminster, it declared the King the Head of 
 the Church in Ireland ; cut off that Church from dependence 
 on Rome; made the Irish Bishops satellites of the Crown; 
 and began the dissolution of religious houses. A subsequent 
 Parliament made this spoliation complete : monasteries and 
 nunneries were blotted out by scores, and deprived of their 
 broad lands and possessions; and a change was effected 
 besides, that must have appeared significant. The Kings of 
 England had been Lords of Ireland only, holding the land, 
 under the old bull of Adrian, as vassals, in theory, of the Holy 
 See ; this fiction was, once for all, abolished ; and Henry 
 assumed the title of King of the island. Reforms in doctrine 
 and ritual were not made ; but, exactly as had been the case in 
 England, "idols" were thrown down, "shrines" of peculiar 
 sanctity, and "Holy Roods," especially hallowed by Rome. 
 The jurisdiction of the bishops was somewhat enlarged, no 
 doubt to increase the Royal authority; and a singular effort was 
 made to extend English influence, by securing to " English- 
 men" the best preferments, and by the establishment of 
 "English" schools apparently within the limits of the Pale. 
 
 Reforms like these, mere experiments of foreign power 
 thrust upon a community that could hardly heed them, must 
 obviously have had but little effect. They were probably 
 carried out in the Church of the Pale only, and were scarcely 
 heard of in the Church of the Celt, still beyond the bounds of 
 the Land of the Englishry. They caused, however, some 
 disorder and trouble in the Pale ; Browne was denounced by 
 Cromer, the Primate of Armagh ; and there were bickerings 
 between Anglo-Norman Lords, for the most part blindly 
 devoted to Rome, and the administration of the Castle on the 
 spot. But there was no Pilgrimage of Grace in Ireland, no
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period. 77 
 
 deaths of Catholic or Protestant martyrs, no scenes like the 
 murder of the Carthusian monks, no mighty upheaval of social 
 forces, such as marked the Reformation in its course in 
 England. Religion, ultimately to be the occasion of appalling 
 woes, did not as yet really disturb the Irish community ; even 
 the suppression of the religious houses seems not to have 
 called out a word of protest. The agitation, however, such as 
 it was, in the Pale, quickened a movement of a more 
 formidable kind, which for some time had been on foot in 
 Ireland, and came, to a certain extent, to its aid. The severity 
 shown by Henry to the House of Kildare, the conviction, as it 
 was said, "that the King would never rest, until he had had 
 the blood of the Geraldine race," had exasperated and alarmed 
 the still powerful kinsmen of a family, but yesterday almost 
 supreme in Ireland ; and these began to contemplate another 
 rising. Conn, chief of the warlike tribe of the O'Neills, a 
 descendant of the royal Hy-Niall line, and nearly allied in 
 blood to the Earls of Kildare, was the master spirit of this new 
 league ; but Desmond and the Geraldines of Munster con- 
 curred; and they were joined by other chiefs of the Celts of 
 the South, and by Brian the head, as we have said, of the Celts 
 of Offaley, all connected with the great fallen House. Pre- 
 parations were made to attack the Englishry; arms were 
 collected, and clans mustered; and the late reforms in the 
 Church, and what had followed from them, were employed to 
 give the movement a religious aspect, and to invoke foreign 
 assistance for it. Paul III and Charles V were adjured to 
 support a Holy War in Ireland, with a heretic king ; and the 
 Pope certainly seemed to lend an ear to these prayers. 
 
 The rising, however, menacing as it appeared, though it 
 broke out in places, quickly came to nothing. The pre- 
 servation of the young heir of the Kildares was, probably, a 
 main object of the league ; after hair-breadth escapes, and long 
 wanderings from Oifaley, into the Desmond lands, the child,
 
 78 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 like the Charles Edward of another day, was loyally passed on 
 from clan to clan, as devoted to the Geraldine name, as to the 
 chiefs of their own race ; and he made at last his way into 
 France, still pursued by Henry's vindictive hate. Charles V, 
 too, held in check by Francis I, and even inclining to an 
 alliance with England, had no thought of giving aid to 
 Irish rebels; Paul III was powerless without the emperor. 
 The intended insurrection never came to a head; O'Neill, 
 indeed, made a bold attempt to march southward, and join 
 Desmond; but he was defeated at Bellahoe, on the edge of 
 the Pale; and the Holy War ended in a few petty raids. 
 Grey advanced, for the second time, into the depths of the 
 country ; the march of his troops was more impeded by the 
 difficulties of almost impenetrable tracts, of woods, morasses, 
 and wild hill ranges, than by enemies worthy of the name; 
 and though the subduing of those obstacles took many months, 
 his progress met scarcely any other resistance. Desmond and 
 his Anglo-Norman and Celtic dependents sent in their sub- 
 missions throughout Munster ; and their example was followed 
 by the Irish chiefs who had taken part in the late conspiracy. 
 The Deputy treated all with praiseworthy clemency, and 
 Henry appears to have approved of this conduct. But Grey 
 was a near kinsman of the House of Kildare ; its boyish head 
 had contrived to escape ; this, and a quarrel with the men in 
 power at the Castle, was probably the cause of his ill-explained 
 fall. He was denounced by the Butlers, as a friend of the 
 Geraldines, and met the doom of a traitor a few weeks after- 
 wards, one of the darkest acts of a sanguinary reign. 
 
 Ireland was, for the moment, almost in repose; Henry 
 seized the occasion to give effect to the policy he had thought 
 out for the country. Heads of the great Anglo-Norman 
 families, and leading chiefs of the Celtic tribes, were invited to 
 Court, to meet the king ; and a real effort was made to bind 
 them to the state, by the ties of self-interest, and of the sense
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period. 79 
 
 of gratitude, and to govern Ireland by an aristocracy of this 
 kind. Earldoms were conferred on O'Neill, the late rebel 
 warrior, on O'Brien, chief of the Celts of Thomond, and on 
 the head of the "degenerate De Burghs"; inferior peerages 
 were created also; Desmond and other lords renewed their 
 allegiance ; and heralds proclaimed, in the style of their craft, 
 that these "high and mighty persons had made due obeisance 
 at Greenwich." Other means were adopted, besides, to make 
 the leading men of the Anglo-Irish and Irish races attached 
 to the Crown, and even loyal subjects. In many instances, 
 nobles and chiefs had agreed with Grey, and even with previous 
 deputies, to surrender their lands, and to take grants of them, 
 to be held by the English feudal tenure; these arrangements 
 were now generally carried out ; and if they ran counter to 
 Irish usage and law, and especially to the ancient mode of 
 Tanist succession, they conferred advantages on the grantees, 
 for they increased the power over their dependent vassals, 
 which had been their object, perhaps for centuries. In addi- 
 tion Henry bestowed lands, of the lately abolished religious 
 houses, on the new nobility he had created ; and these men, 
 good Catholics as they may have been, accepted eagerly spoils 
 that seem to have been lavished wholesale. This policy, 
 according to the fashion of the time, received legislative 
 sanction, with due solemnity. A Parliament sat in Dublin, 
 from 1541 to 1542; it was attended, for the first time in 
 history, by prominent chiefs of the Irish race, as well as by 
 Anglo-Norman lords, who had very seldom attended before; 
 and apart from other enactments, dealing with reforms in the 
 Church, all that had lately been done by the King was approved. 
 A very important change, in harmony with Henry's Irish 
 policy, and no doubt in compliance with his will, was, also, 
 made in the administration of affairs in Ireland. By this time 
 order had been restored within the Pale, owing probably to 
 the fall of the House of Kildare ; and the domain of English
 
 8 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 law, and the course of English justice, seem to have extended 
 nearly as far as the shires made by John. Commissioners 
 were now appointed to hold Courts in other and more distant 
 parts of the island ; and in exact accord with the ideas of the 
 King, they were to take account of native Irish usages, and to 
 deal with the Irishry, as with a people "not so perfectly 
 acquainted with the laws, that they could at once live and be 
 governed by them 1 ." 
 
 The effects of this enlightened system of government were 
 remarkable, and deserve attention. Sir Anthony St Leger, one 
 of the best of deputies, carried out skilfully the King's policy ; 
 the success he achieved was great and decisive. The long 
 distracted land was at rest for some years ; signs of prosperity 
 appeared, not only within the Pale, but in the half barbarous 
 regions beyond. There was not a semblance of Irish disorder, 
 even in the last troubled years of the reign of Henry ; an Irish 
 contingent appeared in the ranks of the English army that 
 invaded France, in 1543-4, and captured Boulogne. There 
 were elements certainly of future evil in the changes that had 
 been made in the Church ; but these were not as yet active ; 
 there was as yet little religious strife in Ireland. Law had 
 more influence than it had had ever before; the newly ap- 
 pointed Commissioners had done excellent work; above all 
 the Anglo-Norman lords and the Celtic chiefs, through whom 
 Henry sought to make his government felt, were obedient, and 
 seemed in a state of content. A state paper of the time 
 describes Ireland in these remarkable words: "The winning of 
 the Earl of Desmond was the winning of the rest of Munster 
 with small charges. The making O'Brien an Earl made all 
 that country obedient. The making of McWilliam Earl of 
 Clanricarde, made all that country during his time, quiet, and 
 obedient as it is now. The making of McGilpatrick Baron of 
 
 1 [Leland n. 180184. For a description of Henry's Irish policy see 
 Owens College Historical Essays, pp. 279305.]
 
 in.] Ireland during the Tudor period. 81 
 
 Upper Ossory hath made his country obedient And the 
 
 gentleness that my Lord Deputy doth devise among the people, 
 with wisdom and indifference, doth profit and make sure the 
 former civility, so as presidents in Munster, Connaught, and 
 Ulster, by God's grace, make all Ireland, without great force, 
 to be obedient 1 ." 
 
 Not a few of the inveterate ills of Ireland appear in the 
 period we have just surveyed. The weakness of English rule 
 is seen in the vacillating conduct of Henry VII, and until after 
 the end of the Kildare rebellion. The English and Irish 
 " interests " were at feud, and prevented anything like a 
 systematic policy up to the time of Lord Leonard Grey; this 
 was to be visible again at subsequent periods. The enemies 
 of England, as in the days of Bruce, saw that Ireland was her 
 weakest point ; this was to be recognised in succeeding cen- 
 turies. The scate of the Irish Churches had perhaps become 
 worse ; it had not been improved by Henry's reforms ; the 
 greatest part of the country was still almost half barbarous. 
 But civilisation and all that it implies, owing in some degree 
 to the measures of Poynings, but much more to recent events, 
 had successfully laid hold of the Pale ; we hear no more of 
 coyne and livery, and feudal rapine ; the settlement had been 
 firmly established. The Ditch, and all that this meant, were 
 things of the past ; the power of the Crown, with good results, 
 had extended far beyond the old borders. Much impression 
 had not been yet made on the rude disorder of the Anglo- 
 Norman land, and of the still far-spreading land of the Celt ; 
 these were still under a bad feudalism, and the domination of 
 chiefs, who had destroyed much that was best in primitive Irish 
 society. Something had been done, however, even in this 
 respect; the judicious policy of Henry VIII was being attended 
 with promising results. The aristocracy he had formed looked 
 
 1 Carew Papers i. 246, 8 May, 1553. 
 M. I. 6
 
 82 Ireland. [CHAP. in. 
 
 up to the Crown ; to a certain extent governed in its behalf; 
 it was not impossible that it might become akin to the great 
 nobles of England in the course of time. The Monarchy, in a 
 word, had spread its arms far and wide; its influence had been 
 distinctly beneficent; it had enlarged the limits of order and 
 peace. Had this state of things been allowed to continue, 
 Ireland might gradually have become a prosperous land ; her 
 history might not have been what it is, one of the most woeful 
 in the annals of mankind.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IRELAND TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 The Protestant Reformation of Edward VI in Ireland. Its effects super- 
 ficial. Bellingham Deputy. Invasion of Leix and Offaley. The 
 reign of Mary Tudor. Catholicism restored. Leix and Offaley 
 conquered and colonised, and made the Queen's and King's Counties. 
 Failure of the settlement. Elizabeth Queen. Her Irish policy at 
 first like that of Henry VIII. The Parliament of 1560. The 
 Anglican Reformation in Ireland. Its effects and prospective dangers. 
 Beginning of troubles. Shane O'Neill. He is elected chief of his 
 tribe. He defeats Sussex. He repairs to the Court of Elizabeth, and 
 returns to Ireland. Treacherous policy pursued towards him. He 
 assumes the title of the O'Neill and tries to subjugate Ulster. He is 
 attacked by Sir Henry Sidney, and a league of Irish chiefs. His 
 death and character. The Parliament of 1569. Attainder of Shane 
 O'Neill. Act to make all Ireland shireland. Connaught divided 
 into six counties. Disputes between the English and Irish interests. 
 Opposition to interference with Poynings' Law. " Killings " of the 
 Irishry in Leix and Offaley, and in Wicklow. Projects of colonisation 
 in Ulster. Smith and Lord Essex. Sir Peter Carew. The rebellion 
 of James Fitzmaurice of Desmond. Its causes. Attempt to stir up a 
 Holy War in Ireland. The Desmond rebellion and how it began. 
 Gregory XIII and Philip of Spain. Frightful guerilla war in 
 Munster. The rising of Lord Baltinglass. Defeat of Lord Grey in 
 Wicklow. Massacre of Spaniards and Italians at the fort near 
 Smerwick. End of the Desmond rebellion. Death of the Earl. 
 Confiscation of his possessions. The attempt to colonise them of little 
 
 62
 
 g 4 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 effect. Sir John Perrott Deputy. His character and beneficent 
 government. Parliament of 1585-6. The settlement of Connaught 
 Sir William Fitzwilliam Deputy. His evil conduct. Hugh O'Neill, 
 Earl of Tyrone. Causes that led to his rebellion. He becomes the 
 O'Neill. His ability as a soldier. Battle of the Yellow Ford. 
 Defeat of the English. O'Neill tries to form a great Irish league. 
 He outwits Essex. Mountjoy Deputy. He overruns Ulster. Skilful 
 resistance of O'Neill. Gradual advance of Mountjoy. Landing of a 
 Spanish force at Kinsale. Defeat of O'Neill. He retains his lands 
 and honours. State of Ireland at the death of Elizabeth. Reflections. 
 
 THERE were few signs in Ireland of the many troubles 
 which convulsed England after the death of Henry VIII. 
 There was no conflict between an old nobility and new men 
 gorged with the spoil of Religious Houses; no strife of 
 factions, like that which raged around the throne of a boyish 
 king; no risings of injured peasants repressed, in whole 
 counties, by a foreign soldiery; no fierce struggle between 
 contending faiths, as Protestantism, by degrees, made its 
 influence felt. But Somerset and Northumberland, backed by 
 Edward VI, had tried to put Catholicism down in England ; 
 Catholic ritual and doctrine were abolished; the service 
 of the Mass was replaced by a new Liturgy; the Breviary 
 was turned into the Book of Common Prayer, published 
 in the vulgar tongue, and open to all readers ; the adminis- 
 tration of the Eucharist was completely changed; and most 
 significant, perhaps, of all to the mass of the people the 
 churches were stripped of their costly ornaments. As in the 
 preceding reign, it was deemed in the nature of things that 
 this revolution should extend to Ireland, a mere dependency 
 of the Crown of the Tudors. It was in vain that a wise man 
 at the Castle declared that " things should be letten alone, as 
 king Henry had ordered, otherwise hurly burlys would 
 happen"; the new religious system was to be transferred to 
 Ireland. Sir Anthony St Leger the ungracious duty had 
 been devolved on him did not attempt to assemble a
 
 ff 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 85 
 
 Parliament, to carry out the will of the English Council of State; 
 he simply issued a proclamation (i March 1557) announcing 
 the change. The Liturgy was read in English, in a few 
 churches of the Pale ; a certain number of Prelates concurred ; 
 one Bishop at least, a Protestant zealot, became a missionary 
 of the reformed doctrines, renounced the solemn rite of the 
 altar, and condemned his clergy as superstitious Papists ; and, 
 as had happened in England, relics, pictures, and images, 
 symbols of a faith that had been held for centuries were 
 removed, apparently, from many places of worship. Their 
 removal aroused the passionate wrath of the congregations in 
 more than one instance ; it was occasionally accompanied by 
 wrong and outrage. Attempts were . made to retain the 
 sacred emblems, when several churches were sacked and 
 pillaged by English troops. [See note on p. 387.] 
 
 These changes, however, had little effect throughout the 
 mass of the Irish community. There were disturbances, in- 
 deed, in the Catholic Pale; Dowdal, the successor of Cromer 
 in the see of Armagh, and other bishops made angry protests ; 
 the brethren of suppressed monasteries stirred feebly, in 
 different parts of the country, and began to form elements of 
 troubles yet to come. But the Reformation had scarcely 
 reached the land of the Irishry ; apart from a few wild mob 
 gatherings, the body of the people remained quiescent; the 
 Anglo-Norman lords and the Celtic chiefs, contented with 
 Henry's late policy, made no call on their vassals and 
 clansmen. In truth, Ireland was too inert, too sunk in 
 ignorance, too backward, too distant from the great movement 
 of the age, to be violently agitated by the new doctrines, or by 
 the innovations made by Somerset's Council. In other lands 
 the revolution in faith and thought had shaken society to its 
 innermost depths; the seamless garment had been rent 
 asunder, and Christendom was tearing the shreds into pieces. 
 There were wars and rumours of wars in five-sixths of the
 
 86 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Continent, a League of Schmalkalden, a Battle of Miihlberg ; 
 Luther had aroused Germany, Calvin awakened France, Rome 
 summoned, in self-defence, the Council of Trent ; the armed 
 advance of Protestantism was being confronted by the Catholic 
 revival, and its quickly growing forces. In Ireland, ultimately 
 doomed to a hideous strife of creeds, the mighty religious 
 movement of the sixteenth century as yet exhibited itself 
 mainly in insignificant wranglings and petty broils. 
 
 The reign of Edward VI in Ireland, however, was disturbed 
 owing to a change in secular policy. The Irish tribes of 
 O'Moore and O'Connor possessed the district of Leix and 
 Offaley, lying along the borders of the Pale, and stretching 
 thence, westwards, in the direction of the Shannon. From this 
 region, bounded on one side by broad hill ranges and on the 
 other by the lakes of Westmeath, and fronted by woods, thickets, 
 and the morass of Allen, armed clans had often invaded the 
 seats of the Englishry, and had harried them up to the walls of 
 Dublin. The chiefs had exacted the Black Rent for a long series 
 of years ; and Brian O'Connor, as we have seen, was not only 
 a near kinsman of the House of Kildare, but had taken part in 
 the late risings. He had, however, submitted, like the other 
 lords and chiefs, and had perhaps been promised a peerage by 
 Henry; and O'Moore certainly seems to have become com- 
 pletely reconciled to the king's policy. But their loyalty was 
 doubtful; and, on his return to England in 1548, St Leger took 
 O'Moore and O'Connor with him. The question arose what to 
 do with Leix and Offaley ; this hostile Celtic land was a menace 
 to the Pale; and the English Council resolved to abandon 
 a policy of conciliation which seemed to be unappreciated, 
 and to extend its power, by arms, into this disturbed tract. Sir 
 Edward Bellingham, an able soldier, became Deputy in St 
 Leger's stead ; and little difficulty was found in charging the 
 two chiefs with conspiring with France, then at war with 
 England, and with meditating renewed "treasons." The
 
 ff 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of ElizabetJi. 87 
 
 English soldiery were soon hewing a path through the 
 wilderness, which, at that time, spread from the banks of the 
 Barrow to the verge of Connaught; Bellingham, carefully 
 selecting points of vantage, carried his arms as far as Athlone, 
 on the Shannon ; and forts were built in the midst of Leix 
 and Offaley. 
 
 "The rough handling of the Deputy makes all men 
 despair," was the bitter exclamation of the great Earl of 
 Desmond, loyal as yet to the faith he had pledged to the 
 Crown ; the invasion of Leix and Offaley certainly marked 
 a new era in Irish history, the beginning of many disasters 
 and woes. The accession, however, of Mary Tudor to the 
 throne, for a moment arrested the march of conquest; 
 Bellingham died in 1549, and was replaced by St Leger; the 
 new Deputy was directed to effect another great religious 
 change. The transformation was a reversal of the former ; 
 Catholicism was set up, in Ireland, exactly as it was set up in 
 England ; the Mass was restored, and the old ritual ; the 
 churches were decked out with the old ornaments, so far as 
 these had been saved from heretics ; the people were absolved 
 from the guilt of schism; and the supremacy of Rome in 
 spiritual affairs was unanimously voted by a complaisant 
 Parliament, amidst public and solemn thanksgivings. In 
 Ireland, however, as in England, the lands of the Religious 
 Houses were not given back; the Crown, too, retained 
 considerable ecclesiastical power. It was with Catholicism, 
 also, as it had been with Protestantism ; the revolution in faith 
 was not followed by any striking or memorable results. The 
 zealous Protestant Bishop, indeed, disappeared ; one or two of 
 his brethren, perhaps, were deprived of their sees; but there 
 was no violent religious conflict, no great stirring or shock 
 of warring opinions. Ireland had still no martyrs of either 
 cf the contending faiths ; the community remained undisturbed 
 and passive. While persecution was raging in England, while
 
 gg Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Huguenots were sent to the stake in France, while the 
 marriage of Philip and Mary seemed to portend the speedy 
 triumph of Rome, while Paul IV was preaching a Crusade, 
 throughout Europe, on behalf of the Church, the shock of the 
 great struggle hardly moved Ireland. 
 
 The restoration of the old faith and ritual scarcely retarded 
 the advance of the power of the Englishry. The young Earl 
 of Kildare had been allowed to visit England ; through the 
 influence of Reginald Pole he regained his lands and his 
 honours. It was otherwise with the chiefs O'Moore and 
 O'Connor; their territories had been marked down by the 
 spoiler. O'Moore had died in his foreign prison ; Brian 
 O'Connor was sent back to his tribe; for his daughter, 
 the Irish annals record, " had crossed the sea to fall at the feet 
 of the Queen"; and "there were rejoicings in Leath Mogha 1 , 
 for it was thought, by all, that the O'Connors' Fally would never 
 behold Erin again." But Thomas Radcliff, Lord Sussex, had 
 been made Lord Lieutenant; the Irish Council were men 
 of the "English interest"; and Surrey's schemes of conquest 
 and colonisation were vigorously taken up. An attempt to 
 come to terms with the O'Moores and O'Connors failed 2 ; an 
 English force marched into Leix and Offaley ; the lands of the 
 chiefs and their tribes were declared forfeited ; and Maryborough 
 and Philipstown, the chief towns of the Queen's and King's 
 counties, two new shires created by these means still com- 
 memorate one of the worst acts of this reign. Scores of 
 colonists were poured into the conquered region ; but, like 
 other settlements, before and afterwards, this settlement proved 
 at first a failure. The colonists were far too few in number; 
 no arrangements were made to allot a reasonable share of 
 the lands, that had been seized, to the despoiled Irishry; 
 
 1 Leinster. 
 
 2 See Leland, 11. 221 and Carew State Papers, I. 262, February 25,
 
 i v.l Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 89 
 
 and the ultimate result was only to form a weak class 
 of new possessors of the soil, hemmed in by the descendants 
 of the injured chiefs, and of their devoted septs and clans, 
 brooding on hopes of vengeance, and even yet to prove by no 
 means contemptible foes. 
 
 The first years of Elizabeth's reign were peaceful in 
 England and Ireland alike, a striking contrast with those she 
 lived to witness. Her throne, indeed, seemed for a time 
 in peril, owing to the league between France and Scotland, 
 and to Catholic intrigues at home and abroad; but Philip 
 steadily took her side; her authority was established after a 
 few months. The policy of the queen was judicious and 
 cautious ; she put an end to a disastrous war with France ; she 
 withdrew from continental affairs; she thought of England, 
 and its interests, as her main object. In Ireland something of 
 the same kind was seen ; Elizabeth retained the men in office ; 
 but she sought to return to the mode of government of which 
 Henry VIII had set an example. She would not listen to the 
 complaints of Sussex against Anglo-Norman lords and chiefs 
 of the Irishry ; she rejected his schemes of colonisation and 
 conquest. She, indeed, sanctioned what had been done in 
 Leix and Offaley ; and she turned an eye towards Ulster, 
 where the power of England was weaker than in other parts of 
 the island, and where whole districts were ravaged by continual 
 feuds between the O'Neills and other chiefs and the Scottish 
 settlers. But it is remarkable that she agreed to give back the 
 O'Moores and O'Connors parts of their lands ; even as regards 
 Ulster, her chief thought was peace. This policy, doubtless, 
 was in part due to the charges of recent Irish wars and 
 conquests she was thrifty in this as in all matters but 
 she seems at first to have had a real wish to try to rule 
 Ireland, as her father had tried, through an aristocracy of 
 Norman and Irish blood, formed by the Crown. 
 
 In England, meanwhile, another great change in ecclesi-
 
 po Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 astical and religious affairs had been made. Elizabeth had 
 wished to reestablish her father's system, that is, to secure the 
 supremacy of the Crown in the Church, to do away with the 
 jurisdiction of Rome, and yet to maintain, for the most part, 
 the ancient faith ; but the growing Protestantism of the nation 
 proved too strong for her. The English Church was finally 
 detached from the Holy See ; its polity and doctrines were so 
 arranged as to combine much of the work of Henry VIII with 
 some of the reforms of Edward VI. As the pendulum had 
 swung round in England, it was taken for granted that it 
 was to swing round in Ireland; the new system was to be 
 adopted in the lesser island. At a Parliament assembled in 
 Dublin in 1560, the Catholicism which Mary Tudor had 
 restored was declared unlawful, and a thing of the past, and 
 Elizabethan Anglicanism established in its stead. The supremacy 
 of the Crown, in the Church, in Ireland, was asserted, as in the 
 time of Henry VIII, if not in such offensive language ; the 
 jurisdiction of the Pope was pronounced illegal; and the Mass 
 and the old ritual were condemned by law, with the ornaments 
 and other symbols of the old faith. The Protestantism of the 
 Council of Somerset was to be accepted, also, as the national 
 faith; the new Liturgy, the new Prayer Book, the new 
 sacramental system, were introduced once more, with modifica- 
 tions of no great importance ; and the services of the Church 
 were appointed to be read in the English tongue. At the same 
 time it was provided that, because it was often impossible to 
 find clergymen conversant with the English language, and 
 because ; ' few in the realm can read the Irish letters," it should 
 be lawful to use the Latin tongue. The clergy were made to 
 take an oath of supremacy; this was an obligation too on 
 laymen in the service of the state, under penalty of forfeiting 
 their office; and attendance at the churches where the new 
 faith was taught was enjoined, under penalty of being fined 
 twelve-pence for each offence. [See note on p. 387.]
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth, 91 
 
 The immediate effects of these fresh changes were, however, 
 as before, not very great in Ireland. The Catholic Pale, 
 indeed, seems to have been aroused; the Parliament was, for 
 this reason, suddenly dissolved ; and two of the Irish Prelates, 
 at least, resigned their sees and refused to conform to what 
 they considered unlawful heresy. But, as had happened 
 already, and from the same causes, the revolution in the 
 Church was not acutely or generally felt ; it did not provoke 
 any kind of rising ; it probably did not extend far beyond the 
 Pale ; and the Irish community was not in the state in which 
 it would move deeply the hearts of men. Yet it led to more 
 discontent than had been the case before ; and signs were not 
 wanting that it might become a source, in the future, of many 
 evils. The power of the Englishry was advancing rapidly, and 
 was associated with the rule of the sword, and conquest ; and 
 the new Anglican system was that of the foreign invaders, and 
 of the always detested English interest. The Irishry, on the 
 other hand, were being gradually subdued ; the old Celtic 
 Church was turning towards Rome; its clergy, driven from 
 their altars, in parts of the country, were becoming bitterly 
 hostile to every English influence; and their authority was 
 increasing, as that of the chiefs diminished. In circumstances 
 such as these, should a strange religion, with its observances 
 embodied in a strange tongue, follow the march of conquest, 
 and be imposed on a subjugated and reluctant people, es- 
 pecially in a struggle of contending faiths, it is not difficult 
 to foresee the results. 
 
 The comparative tranquillity of Ireland was now disturbed 
 by a difficult and protracted contest, which placed strikingly 
 on the stage of events one of the most remarkable figures in 
 Irish history. Conn O'Neill, we have seen, had been ennobled 
 by Henry VIII; he had been made Earl of Tyrone, with 
 remainder to a son, of the name of Matthew, who had received 
 the title of Baron of Dungannon, as his lawful heir. The
 
 9 2 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Earl, however, had another son, Shane, a conspicuous specimen 
 of the genius of the Celt ; and Shane had made a great name 
 for himself, in raids against the Scots of the Ulster seaboard, 
 and in feuds with the tribe of the O'Donnells of the North, the 
 hereditary foes of the once royal O'Neills. He was a bitter 
 enemy, too, of his brother Matthew, an ally, it appears, of the 
 Englishry of the Pale ; in one of many skirmishes Matthew was 
 slain (1558); and, as we have said, these troubles had engaged the 
 attention of the Queen and of her Irish Government. On the 
 death of the Earl (1559), Shane was solemnly chosen by his 
 clansmen chief of the great race of the O'Neills ; the dignity 
 recalling the ancient glories of the monarchs of the Hy-Niall line, 
 and giving a suzerainty over a large part of Ulster. This was 
 a scornful rejection of the English earldom, and of the arrange- 
 ment effected by Henry VIII ; it was practically a defiance 
 of English power ; and, in the eyes of the men at the Castle, 
 it was an act of rebellion, as marked and heinous as the 
 expulsion of an English Resident, by a vassal Prince in India, 
 would appear at Calcutta at the present day. Sir Henry 
 Sidney, Deputy, for the time, for Sussex, remonstrated with 
 the lately elected chief; but Shane, as the state papers 
 acknowledge, had, by many degrees, the best of the argument. 
 His brother Matthew was probably not legitimate; and his 
 tribe had never renounced their right to proclaim a chief 
 according to old Celtic usage. 
 
 A series of negotiations followed : Elizabeth, clinging to her 
 father's policy, convinced, perhaps, that her Irish Council were in 
 the wrong, attempted to patch matters up with Shane, who, in 
 turn, adroitly maintained his position. The Queen, however, 
 yielding at last to Sussex, the unscrupulous advocate of extreme 
 measures, consented (1560) to make war on "the Irish rebel"; 
 Shane was attacked by Sussex advancing from the Pale, and by 
 the Scots, and the O'Donnells lying on his rear. But the chief 
 had the inspiration of a true soldier ; he turned against the
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 93 
 
 foes nearest at hand, contrived to capture Calvagh O'Donnell, 
 and wore out Sussex's army in a vain endeavour to force 
 him to give battle in the open. The infuriated Lord 
 Lieutenant had recourse to the deceptions and crimes, which 
 have left a deep stain on English policy in its dealings with 
 Shane ; he did not hesitate to plot his enemy's murder. Shane, 
 however, who seems to have thought the Queen his friend, 
 virtually offered to make her arbiter of his cause ; he repaired 
 (1562), in Celtic state, to the Court of Elizabeth, as an Eastern 
 Prince does to that of Edward VII. His Irish accent, his strange 
 attire, the aspect of his rude noblesse and kerne, provoked mer- 
 riment and contempt at first ; but the chief was more than a 
 match for the scoffers. Elizabeth, and even Cecil, thought the 
 occasion a fitting one to lay a trap for Shane; he was to be 
 detained in England, perhaps not to depart with his life. But 
 Shane, with the peculiar skill of the Celt, flattered the Virgin 
 Queen to the top of her bent, and seems to have really 
 changed her purpose ; the death of the son of the late Baron 
 Matthew had given a new complexion to affairs; and Shane 
 was permitted to return to Ireland. He had agreed to an 
 arrangement, which would have made him a mere vassal of the 
 English Government, and have combined the Irishry of the 
 North against him. He went back to his country with a 
 fixed resolve to disregard a compact imposed by force. 
 
 When his foot was once more on his native heath, the chief 
 boldly threw off the mask. He had kept his eyes and ears 
 open at the Court of the Queen; he had learned that Mary 
 Stuart was already at the head of a conspiracy to win the throne 
 of England, supported by English Catholic nobles, and by her 
 kinsmen of the House of Guise ; he had been in correspondence 
 with the ambassador of Spain ; he knew that the forces of Sussex 
 had been lately reduced. He attacked (1563) the O'Donnells 
 and other chiefs, his foes; swept Ulster with his kerne, from 
 Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle; fell on an English garrison at
 
 94 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Armagh; and even threatened a descent on the Pale. The 
 Lord Lieutenant marched against him in vain; the English 
 troops were unpaid and mutinous; Shane's Geraldine cousin, 
 the Earl of Kildare, held back from an enterprise he disliked; 
 and Sussex retreated, ashamed and discomfited. Treachery 
 was attempted again when force had failed; a device was tried 
 to lure the Irish chief to Dublin; Sussex wrote that his sister 
 would perhaps give him her hancfo before long poison was laid 
 for him, a crime tacitly approved by the Irish Government. 
 Shane, however, saw through, or baffled these wicked expedi- 
 ents; parleys and negotiations were again set on foot; and 
 Elizabeth, at last, had recourse to the policy, which, in the case 
 of the great Earl of Kildare, had been adopted by Henry VII. 
 An amnesty for the past was promised; and Shane, with 
 reservations little more than nominal, was allowed to retain his 
 title as chief of the O'Neills, and to have all the jurisdiction his 
 predecessors had over the lords subject to him, commonly 
 called his urraghs (Sept. 1563). The dangers, which had 
 begun to surround her at home and abroad, doubtless, forced 
 the Queen to make this immense concession. 
 
 The conduct of Shane, up to this time, had shown intelli- 
 gence and powers of a very high order. The chief, however, was 
 ere long to give proof of the fancifulness, and the inability of 
 Celtic nature to see things as they really are, vividly portrayed 
 in Shakspeare's Owen Glendower. He now openly defied the 
 power of England ; erected a fortress near the verge of the Pale, 
 significantly called "the Englishman's hate"; held up the 
 Council at the Castle to scorn and ridicule ; laughed at English 
 titles conferred by Elizabeth; and ravaged more than one 
 outlying English settlement. At the same time (1565) he made 
 a determined effort to subjugate Ulster, and even attacked 
 the MacDonnells almost an act of madness as affairs stood ; 
 he tried to crush the O'Donnells, and all the chiefs of the North; 
 his rude forces were seen in the lands west of the Finn; he
 
 TV.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 95 
 
 lorded it over the Irishry from the Bann to the Erne. Yet, 
 to do him justice, he ruled his own tribe with wisdom and talents 
 admired even by his enemies ; he was not only, they admitted, 
 the " one strong man in Ireland," but a " Prince " who knew 
 how to make himself "loved and obeyed." At last Shane was 
 heard to boast that " Ulster was his own " ; that " he was the 
 O'Neill and would hold what he had won"; and the dream 
 seems to have crossed his mind that he would yet revive the 
 Hy-Niall kingship, the sovereign of an Ireland freed from the 
 stranger. A conflict with the power he had provoked had become 
 inevitable; but Sidney had been set in the place of Sussex, 
 with forces more commensurate to the task. The Deputy 
 assembled a considerable force; sent a detachment to fall on 
 Shane's rear from Derry; and easily persuaded the chiefs of 
 the North and the West to form a league against their dreaded 
 tyrant. Shane, however, was not unequal to himself; he sent 
 messengers to the rulers of France, and to Scottish nobles 
 hostile to England; he made an appeal to his Geraldine 
 kinsmen; he mustered the warriors of his devoted tribe; and 
 nerved himself for a desperate effort. But no friendly succours 
 came from abroad; the Desmonds of Munster were afraid to 
 stir; Sidney advanced steadily, like Bellingham taking posses- 
 sion of important points of vantage; and the territories of the 
 chief were savagely harried. Meanwhile the English had 
 marched from Derry; and the Irish auxiliaries gathered in from 
 all parts of Ulster. Shane and his faithful clansmen stood 
 bravely at bay; but he was struck down in a decisive battle, in 
 which the O'Donnells and other Celtic chiefs joined the 
 Englishry against the son of their ancient kings, as Indian 
 Princes fought against Hyder and Tippoo. The chief took 
 refuge in the camp of the Scots of Ulster; he was ignominiously 
 slain in a drunken brawl; the deed was perhaps instigated by 
 one of Sidney's officers (1567). 
 
 Shane O'Neill stands forth, in striking relief, through the
 
 96 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 dismal tragedy of Irish history. We know nothing of him 
 save from his enemies; these, indeed, have acknowledged his 
 great parts; but they have covered him with the most foul 
 obloquy. An impartial judgment on the singular career of this 
 remarkable personage will be very different. He was a man of 
 lust, but his was the century of Henry VIII, and of Henry of 
 Navarre; he was a man of blood, but more free from its stain 
 than scores of the foremost men of his age; if he broke faith, 
 his was not the infamous guile of soldiers and statesmen who 
 planned his murder. He possessed, in the very highest degree, 
 the excellences and defects of the genuine Celt ; his vanity was 
 on a par with his ambition, but he was a great Irishman in his 
 essential character. He certainly was a distinguished leader in 
 war; he ably governed clansmen who died for him; he was 
 adroit and skilful in trying crises; he outwitted and baffled 
 Elizabethan councils; like others of his line he wished to unite 
 the Irishry against the foreign invader. But he was a Celt, 
 who lived in the past, and whose imagination could not 
 confront realities; it was insanity to think of the days of his 
 fathers; to challenge England to deadly strife; above all to try 
 to destroy the very men, in whom he might, otherwise, have 
 found auxiliaries. Yet the most remarkable feature in this 
 passage of history is the attitude and conduct of nearly all the 
 chiefs of Ulster. They had been cruelly wronged by Shane; 
 some had been for years his inveterate foes. But they must 
 have perceived the advance of the English conquerors; they 
 might have foreseen that the ruin of Shane would in the long 
 run probably be followed by their own. Yet they joined Sidney 
 to destroy a great man of their race; for the idea of nationality 
 did not exist in them; they could not look beyond their septs 
 and their clans; they were still slaves of mere tribal discord. 
 
 The attainder of Shane O'Neill quickly followed his defeat; 
 the " rebel's head, bodied with a stake, stood on the top of 
 Her Majesty's Castle." Tirlogh Lenagh, a kinsman of the
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 97 
 
 defeated chief, was placed in possession of parts of his lands, 
 as Mir Jaffir succeeded to Surajah Dowlah; he was to be a 
 mere puppet of the Irish Government. A Parliament was 
 convened early in 1569 ; some of its enactments were significant 
 in the extreme of the growing expansion of English power in 
 Ireland. The whole country was to be made shire-land; 
 Connaught was divided into six counties, including Clare, then 
 part of Munster ; the assumption of the title or the authority 
 of a chief, in any tract made shire-land, was* declared criminal. 
 A considerable administrative change, meanwhile, had taken 
 place in the remoter parts of the island. Commissioners, we 
 have said, had been chosen by Henry VIII to do justice in 
 regions beyond the Pale, in some measure in accordance with 
 Irish usage ; and the experiment had had considerable success. 
 This system was not formally abandoned ; but, as the march of 
 conquest progressed, and the duties of the central government 
 increased, it was found necessary to establish local deputies with 
 military powers, known by the name of Presidents. There were 
 now two, one for Munster, and one for Connaught ; they went 
 circuit and administered justice ; but their chief mission was 
 to keep the Irishry down. In Roman phrase, the Presidents 
 were Proconsuls, rather than Praetors ; they were men of the 
 sword, much more than of law. It deserves notice that this 
 Parliament was less submissive than its predecessors had 
 been, perhaps because it was stronger and more numerous. 
 Sidney tried to suspend the celebrated Law of Poynings, 
 which gave the initiative in legislation to the Crown, and to 
 impose measures of his own on the Parliament ; but a steady 
 resistance ended in a compromise ; and there was another 
 conflict between " the English interest," now supreme, and the 
 Anglo-Irish of the Pale. 
 
 Parts of Ireland ere long became scenes of barbarities to 
 be deplored by History. The military force in Dublin was 
 small; the Englishry were on the path of conquest, with 
 
 M. I. 1
 
 98 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 spoliation following in its train ; the power of the Irishry, and 
 even of the Anglo-Irish nobles, had been, to a considerable 
 extent, broken. Chiefs of the scattered tribes of Leix and 
 Offaley were, it is said, decoyed, with hundreds of clansmen, 
 by Sidney to death, and massacred through an act of the 
 blackest treachery 1 . The clans of O'Byrne and O'Toole, 
 which had often made raids on the capital from the wild hills 
 of Wicklow, were hunted down and slaughtered by little bands 
 of soldiers with citizens of Dublin in their wake; "the general 
 killings of the Irishry" became a phrase at the Castle. Ulster, 
 however, was the theatre, perhaps, of the worst of these deeds, 
 for the greed and cruelty of private adventure ran riot without 
 control on the part of the state. The discovery of the New 
 World, as of a great Land of Promise, had filled the mind of 
 England with vast colonising schemes ; Ireland was nearer at 
 hand than the Far West ; the vultures, it was said, flocked to 
 make her their prey ; the nobler eagles flew across the ocean. 
 One body of Englishmen made an attempt to found a settle- 
 ment on the coasts of Down ; another, under Walter Devereux, 
 Earl of Essex Elizabeth gave him her special blessing made 
 a similar attempt on the coast of Antrim. Both enterprises 
 came to a miserable end ; but the atrocities, of which Essex 
 and his men were guilty, stand out hideously, even after the 
 lapse of centuries. Fraud and chicane, too, fitly succeeded 
 violence, to effect odious and unjust conquests. Obsolete 
 claims to lands possessed by the Englishry in bygone ages, 
 before the Pale had been narrowed, were set up and audaci- 
 ously pressed ; Sir Peter Carew, a knight of Devonshire, dis- 
 tinguished himself by demands of this kind, which received 
 countenance from the Queen and her ministers. The alarm 
 in the Pale, and far beyond its borders, became so great, that 
 
 1 [Dowling, who had excellent means of knowing the truth, gives the 
 number of those massacred at Mullaghmast at 40. The contemporary 
 Annals of Loch Ct say 74. Cf. Annals of the Four Masters, with 
 O'Donovan's note s. a. 1577.]
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 99 
 
 even the loyal Butlers declared that this wrong could not be 
 endured ; two of the name actually appeared in arms. 
 
 Meantime troubles had arisen in the south of Ireland, 
 leading ultimately to a protracted conflict, the most horrible and 
 revolting that had as yet been witnessed. The honours and 
 the lands of the Desmonds had been inherited by Gerald, the 
 fifteenth and last Earl ; they carried with them the suzerainty 
 of nearly a third of Munster, and the allegiance of clans and 
 septs of the Irishry, from the plains of Cork and Limerick to 
 the Kerry ranges. Gerald was a feeble and half-hearted man ; 
 but the feuds of his house with the Butlers had never ceased ; 
 and the Butlers had long been fast friends of the Crown and 
 the Englishry. Elizabeth warmly took their side ; the Earl of 
 Ormond, in a sense her kinsman, had been a playmate of 
 Edward VI that "young Solomon," as she described the 
 King; and though she had turned a deaf ear to the counsels 
 of Sussex, who demanded "the extirpation of the Geraldine 
 rebels," she peremptorily ordered Sidney to "do Ormond 
 justice" (1567). The Deputy had soon brought Desmond to his 
 knees ; but he made the Earl's brother, Sir John of Desmond, 
 the temporary guardian of the Desmond lands ; and Desmond 
 was arrested and sent to England. Sir John of Desmond met 
 the same fate; and this, Sidney himself asserts, was the 
 occasion of the long and bloody strife that followed 1 . Sir 
 James Fitzmaurice, a cousin of Desmond, an able and even a 
 brilliant man of action, took up arms to defend his House ; the 
 Geraldine baronage, and their Celtic dependents, were hastily 
 summoned into the field; another attempt was made to stir 
 up "a Holy War 2 ." The time seemed not without promise; 
 Elizabeth had been excommunicated by Pius V; another 
 Pilgrimage of Grace appeared at hand in England ; and the 
 yoke of Anglicanism, as it was extended, had begun to weigh 
 
 1 Carew MS. March i, 1583. 
 
 2 See the proclamation, Carew MS. I. 397, 1569. 
 
 72
 
 TOO Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 heavily. The rising, however, came to nothing ; Fitzmaurice, 
 indeed, made wild raids through different parts of Munster 
 and Leinster; but he was not upheld by the great Desmond 
 following; the Earl, not improbably, disapproved of his con- 
 duct. Sidney, ably seconded by Sir John Perrott, the President 
 of Munster, a remarkable man, put the petty insurrection 
 easily down. Fitzmaurice was only too glad to make his 
 escape from Ireland. 
 
 This outbreak, however, was but the prelude to a move- 
 ment of an infinitely more formidable kind. The late Catholic 
 plots in England had failed; Mary Stuart was made to feel 
 she was a close prisoner ; she had been the cause of the doom 
 of Norfolk (1572); the great northern Earls had appeared in the 
 field in vain. But Rome had found fresh weapons to renew the 
 contest with the heretic Queen she had banned and proscribed; 
 England swarmed with seminary priests and Jesuits stirring up 
 rebellion in the name of the faith; and if Philip still held 
 cautiously aloof, the duel between England and Spain had 
 begun, in the exploits of Drake and of English volunteers in 
 arms against Alva in the Low Countries. Things in Ireland 
 seemed to portend trouble; the Englishry of the Pale had 
 deeply resented an attempt made by Sidney to levy a tax by 
 the prerogative, without the consent of Parliament, and the 
 efforts made to impose the Anglican doctrines on them ; and 
 there were disturbances in Ulster, and in parts of Connaught. 
 Gregory XIII, vindictive and sanguine, seems to have per- 
 suaded himself that, in England and Ireland, there would be 
 a general rising in the quarrel of the Church ; and he lent a 
 ready ear to plans for the Crusade. These were soon forth- 
 coming, obscure as his advisers were; Fitzmaurice, who had 
 gone from Court to Court in Europe, to seek assistance in the 
 cause of Ireland, was eager to call the Geraldines to arms 
 again, and to make another desperate appeal to fortune ; the 
 Pope was convinced that a Holy War would, this time, infallibly
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 101 
 
 succeed. A descent on Ireland was arranged at the Vatican ; 
 the enterprise was placed under the auspices of Nicholas 
 Sanders and Matthew de Oviedo, two celebrated emissaries of the 
 Holy See ; a Papal banner was solemnly blessed ; Fitzmaurice 
 was seconded by Thomas Stukely, an English adventurer, 
 driven from his country, but for many years in the pay of 
 Spain ; nor can it be doubted that Philip assented, nay, 
 promised, to send Stukely with an expeditionary force. The 
 King, however, did not fulfil his pledge ; Stukely put to sea, 
 indeed, with some eight hundred Spaniards ; but he received 
 orders ere long that made him land in Portugal. Fitzmaurice 
 nevertheless, with Sanders and Oviedo, reached the coasts of 
 Kerry in the autumn of 1579; the sign in which they were to 
 conquer was unfurled ; and the Irishry of Munster were adjured 
 to rise in the cause of the Pope and the head of the Geraldine 
 name. 
 
 The Earl of Desmond had been permitted, long before this 
 time, to go back to Ireland. But he had been subjected to the 
 severest conditions, and, fearing the worst, he made a convey- 
 ance in trust of his estate ; he was watched with suspicion by 
 the heads of the Government. Whether, at this conjuncture, he 
 had been plotting treason ; or whether he was goaded into a 
 rebellion he deplored; or whether, like a weak creature, he 
 rushed madly to his fate, he suddenly threw in his lot with 
 Fitzmaurice, and began a contest, which he ought to have 
 known was hopeless. A great and general rising, however, 
 took place ; the name of the Desmond, if not of the Pope, 
 was a talisman ; and from the hills of Tipperary to the 
 Atlantic, the Munster Geraldines and their Celtic vassals 
 sprang to arms. A grave disaster befell the rebels at the 
 outset; Fitzmaurice, a man of parts and resource he had 
 never put faith in the weapons of the Church, but irreverently 
 trusted those of the flesh was slain in a skirmish with one of 
 the chiefs of Connaught, who characteristically refused to take
 
 102 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 part with him, and was only too willing to join the Englishry. 
 The rebellion, nevertheless, assumed vast proportions, and 
 gradually became of a most frightful character. Its theatre 
 was the wide expanse of hill, valley, and plain, stretching from 
 the range of the Galties, to the distant sea of Kerry; and this 
 was an almost impenetrable region at the time. Immense 
 masses of forest covered whole counties ; the roads were few 
 and bad, the denies intricate; and the open lands oases in 
 an unexplored wilderness crowned with the castles of Geral- 
 dine and Celtic chiefs, and dotted with the habitations of 
 their vassals and serfs, were scarcely accessible through 
 morasses, thickets, and all kinds of obstacles. This great 
 tract was entered by a few hundred English troops, supported 
 by irregular bands of the Butlers; but the progress of the 
 invaders was slow in the extreme, and scarcely anything was 
 accomplished for many months. The struggle, as always 
 happens, in instances of the kind, acquired from the first a 
 terrible aspect ; two or three fortresses of the Desmonds were 
 sacked, their garrisons ruthlessly flung from the battlements ; 
 fires rose from leagues of woodland, and devoured hundreds 
 of wretched victims ; the infuriated soldiery, often caught 
 in ambushes, without discipline, and forced to live on pillage, 
 committed atrocities fearful to record. The Geraldines and 
 their Irish allies resisted savagely; issuing from fastnesses 
 and labyrinths of the great forest wastes, they swooped down 
 on outlying towns, cut off hostile parties, and, in a word, 
 stung fiercely, like venomous insects driven from their nests. 
 The horrors of the worst kind of guerilla warfare raged, 
 unchecked, over the fairest parts of Munster. 
 
 The far-spreading rising had ere long received unexpected 
 support from two quarters. The Englishry of the Pale, we 
 have seen, had had grounds of complaint; Lord Baltinglass 
 and other Anglo-Irish nobles the Earl of Kildare perhaps 
 shared their counsels broke out into rebellion at this
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 103 
 
 conjuncture. The name of the Holy Father was again 
 employed ; and Sanders, perfectly aware by this time his 
 colleague Oviedo having meanwhile returned to Rome that the 
 Geraldine war in Munster was not a war maintained by real 
 allies of Rome, sought to become a champion of the Pope in 
 Leinster. An accident gave Baltinglass temporary success ; 
 Lord Grey de Wilton, who had been made Deputy, carelessly 
 attacked the rebels in one of the defiles of Wicklow, and was 
 defeated with not inconsiderable loss ; the Celtic clans of this 
 mountainous region, as had often happened before, made the 
 overthrow complete. The rebellion, however, speedily col- 
 lapsed, no doubt because the central Government was at hand; 
 and Baltinglass, seeing the failure of his enterprise, escaped 
 abroad. The second enterprise was of more importance, and 
 seems to have caused much alarm in England. Philip made a 
 secret attempt to send aid to Desmond ; a body of Spaniards 
 and Italians effected a landing near Smerwick, on the sea- 
 board of Kerry, a principal seat of the Geraldine rising. 
 Money and munitions were in abundance, and a fort was 
 built; but the invaders were surrounded by an English 
 squadron ; Grey, hastening from Dublin, attacked them from 
 the coast; they surrendered, it would appear, at discretion. 
 They were deliberately butchered, in cold blood, on the plea 
 that they had no commission from the King of Spain. 
 
 A determined effort was now made to bring the Geraldine 
 war to an end. Pelham, a stern soldier, was placed at the 
 head of three or four thousand English troops; the Earl of 
 Ormond assisted with his feudal levies ; both leaders sought 
 to destroy the remaining Desmond castles, and to force the 
 rebels to fight a decisive battle. These attempts, however, 
 were almost fruitless ; more than one stronghold was razed to 
 the ground, but the enemy refused to be brought to bay ; and 
 the swarms of the Irishry still proved dangerous, amidst wilds 
 where pursuit was hopeless. Another method of warfare was
 
 IO4 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 then adopted; the country was turned into a desert by the 
 invading force ; the growing crops were rooted up, the harvests 
 burned; the population was ruthlessly hunted down; no 
 mercy was shown to sex or old age. This horrible work went 
 on for nearly two years; the retainers of the Butlers made 
 themselves conspicuous for the barbarities they inflicted on 
 their foes of centuries. Devastation and slaughter told at last ; 
 nobles and chiefs fell off from a lost cause; clans broke up, 
 and melted away, to escape famine and misery worse than 
 death ; and many were forced to take up arms against former 
 comrades to save their own lives. The terms the traitors were 
 compelled to accept show how frightful the struggle had 
 become; no Irish soldier was promised quarter until he had 
 brought with him an Irishman's head. Meanwhile the un- 
 happy Earl of Desmond was driven from place to place, with a 
 price set on his head, and vainly endeavoured to avoid the 
 certain coming doom. He had feebly let things drift, and 
 shown no skill or courage ; he had made offers to Pelham that 
 did him no honour. Yet he was still attended by hundreds of 
 devoted followers so great was even now the power of the 
 Geraldine name. He was at last surprised and killed in a 
 nook of Kerry; the war had lasted nearly four years; its 
 appalling traditions still live in Munster. 
 
 The Crusade of Gregory had proved a failure; the 
 Desmond war and the rising of the Pale were not, at bottom, 
 religious movements. Religion, however, had part in them; 
 its influence in the troubles of Ireland was on the increase. 
 The Anglican Church, growing out of the Church of the Pale, 
 was not loved even in the Pale itself; it had become more full 
 of abuses than ever a mere whited sepulchre it was scorn- 
 fully called; its heads shared in the misdeeds of the Irish 
 Government; it was associated with oppression, and had begun 
 to persecute; its doctrines and ritual, foreign and Protestant, 
 were being forced on the Irishry, as English rule made
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 105 
 
 progress; it carried with it not peace and goodwill, but the 
 pitiless sword of the alien conqueror. The ancient Celtic 
 Church, on the other hand, had become a spiritual outpost of 
 Rome; the Pope appointed the Bishops even more than of 
 old; the priesthood hated the Englishry with quickened hatred. 
 The Church was still filled with survivors of the clergy of the 
 Religious Houses ; it was crowded with emissaries of the Holy 
 See denouncing Elizabeth the arch-heretic; its influence, 
 powerful among its superstitious flocks, was being concentrated 
 against the power of England. The aspect and character of 
 the two Churches had thus changed in the course of time : the 
 Church of the Pale, no longer Roman, but Protestant, was an 
 enemy of Rome ; the Celtic Church, condemned as heterodox 
 of old, had become a faithful satellite of the Pope ; and while 
 the ancient discords were more fierce than ever, the Anglican 
 Church had been made a support and a sign of conquest, 
 a moral influence of the worst kind, while the Celtic Church 
 had become a rallying point for the Irishry, its priesthood 
 foes of England, and champions of the race being conquered. 
 The growing strife between Anglo-Saxon and Celt was thus 
 being embittered by a growing strife of religion; this added 
 fuel to a rapidly extending flame ; and yet, we repeat, it was 
 not yet intense, nothing resembling what it was to be in the 
 future. 
 
 The most remarkable event at this time in Ireland was 
 the disposition made of the great Desmond possessions. The 
 Earl, we have seen, had endeavoured to preserve his estates 
 from forfeiture by a deed of feoffment assigning them in trust 
 for himself to Lords Power and Dunboyne and Sir John Fitz- 
 gerald of Cloyne. The deed was regarded as having been made 
 mala fide; and, as the Rebellion drew to a close, an old idea of 
 planting Munster with English colonists was revived. A 
 scheme of colonisation was submitted to Elizabeth by Sir John 
 Perrott, and, being favourably received, was put into execution;
 
 I0 6 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 though it deserves notice that a confiscation on this scale had 
 voices against it in the Irish Parliament 1 . The immense 
 domains of the famous Geraldine House some half-million of 
 acres held in complete ownership were parcelled out among 
 " undertakers," as they were called English gentlemen, for 
 the most part, from Devon and Somerset ; and the English 
 Council made a serious effort to secure the success of the 
 new settlement. In the attempts at colonisation made 
 hitherto, especially in that of Leix and Offaley, the colonists, 
 it was recognised, were far too isolated ; they could not es- 
 tablish themselves in the country; they either disappeared 
 or became a feeble remnant unable to make English influence 
 felt. Precautions were taken against results like these , the 
 undertakers were to live on the lands allotted to them , the 
 grants were of extraordinary size ; forts and houses and dwell- 
 ings were to be built ; and the lands were to be largely 
 peopled with freeholders and tenants of English origin. The ex- 
 periment, however, was not successful ; a considerable number 
 of undertakers obtained grants; some of the descendants of 
 these are owners of lands to this day in the counties of 
 Limerick, of Cork, and of Kerry. But many of the under- 
 takers eluded the terms imposed on them ; never visited their 
 possessions and became absentees; and never established 
 English tenants in them. In other, and perhaps frequent 
 instances, the phenomenon of the past was repeated; the 
 English farmers and labourers sank into the mass of the 
 Irishry around, and were soon " degenerate." 
 
 A brief period of repose followed one of the few seasons 
 of promise in Irish history Sir John Perrott, the author of the 
 plantation, was at the head of affairs at the Castle ; he was 
 an able governor of Ireland in this disturbed century. One 
 act of wrong may be laid to his charge; evil statecraft was 
 
 1 [For a description of the plantation of Munster see the English, 
 Historical Review, vol. III. pp. 250 269.]
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reig-n of Elizabeth. 107 
 
 a characteristic of his age; he kidnapped the heir of the 
 O'Donnells of the North ; and the deed was to have untoward 
 results. But this is the only blot on his good name ; his rule 
 was marked signally by wisdom and justice. Sir John was 
 probably a bastard of Henry VIII; his ideas of government 
 in Ireland were those of his father. He had been deeply 
 impressed by the horrors of the Desmond war, largely due 
 to the weakness of the English forces ; and in accordance 
 with the experience of ages he entreated the Queen to keep 
 up a real army in Ireland. He also extended the limits of 
 English power, for he created seven new counties in Ulster : 
 if this creation was, to a great extent, nominal, in other 
 respects he almost exactly followed the best parts of the Irish 
 policy of Henry VIII. He assembled a Parliament in 1585: 
 like that of 1541, it was attended by Irish chiefs; he seems to 
 have really won their hearts. The most striking feature of 
 his conduct, however, and that which makes him most nearly 
 resemble the King, was the settlement he effected of a large 
 part of Connaught. Many of the chiefs of the province sur- 
 rendered their lands, and took them back to be held on 
 English tenure ; the process, indeed, had been going on, 
 throughout Ireland, for a series of years. The new mode of 
 ownership had, for some time if this was a narrow and 
 strained construction been interpreted as interfering with, 
 perhaps subverting, the ancient Celtic organisation of the land, 
 as annulling, at least greatly lessening, the rights of the free 
 Ceile and of tenants of the superior classes ; there is too 
 much reason to believe that, in many instances, the chiefs 
 accepted these grants for this very purpose ; they had been 
 encroaching for ages on their less dependent vassals. Perrott 
 provided against this abuse of power; in most of the grants 
 made to the chiefs of Connaught, their inferiors were made 
 tenants holding of the Crown rents being substituted for the 
 old Celtic services and the chiefs were indemnified by various
 
 io8 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 means. It has been truly remarked that, in this way, " a large 
 peasant proprietary " was created ; and though a President of 
 Connaught was, ere long, guilty of many acts of odious oppres- 
 sion, " the creation was probably the cause of the comparative 
 tranquillity of Ireland for many years'." Indeed not a few 
 of the chiefs of Connaught took up arms for England, at a 
 great subsequent crisis ; and this settlement of the land may 
 have been a reason. Perrott left Ireland, it should be added, 
 regretted by all sorts and conditions of men. 
 
 The events that followed the departure of Perrott strikingly 
 illustrate the difficulties attending the government of Ireland, 
 having their source in foreign complications. His successor, 
 Sir William Fitzwilliam, a statesman of experience and of ability 
 equal to Perrott, was suddenly called upon to face a danger 
 more menacing than any which had hitherto threatened the 
 English power in Ireland. The news that the long-expected 
 Spanish Armada was at last in sight was an event to try the 
 nerves of the strongest statesman. More than one chief was 
 treated with brutal severity ; large ransoms were extorted 
 from others ; the advance of the law and the faith of England 
 was accompanied by a series of wrongs ; a chain of forts was 
 constructed to bridle the country. These measures were 
 among the many causes of the last great rising of Elizabeth's 
 reign, which seriously threatened her rule, for a time, in 
 Ireland, and brought prominently out the remarkable parts 
 of a most distinguished specimen of the Irish race. Hugh 
 O'Neill was the second son of Matthew, Lord of Dungannon, 
 who, we have seen, had perished in a quarrel with Shane. 
 Matthew had always adhered to the " English interest " ; and, 
 after his death, Hugh had been sent to England, and carefully 
 educated at the Court of the Queen. His early associations, 
 therefore, were wholly English ; unlike his uncle Shane, he had 
 ample means to become conversant with English affairs, and 
 
 1 Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, II. 105.
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 109 
 
 to form a just estimate of the power of England ; and unlike 
 him, too, he had much more of the Anglo-Norman than of 
 the Celt in him the O'Neills and the Kildares were nearly 
 allied in blood for he could grasp realities, and had no vain 
 fancies ; he possessed not only, in a high degree, ability in the 
 field and wisdom in council, but also prudence, real insight 
 and judgment. And the first acts in the life of O'Neill prove 
 that he sought to stand well with the English Government. He 
 had made a name for himself in the Desmond war, he had 
 received the thanks of the high Council of State. The Earldom 
 of Tyrone, too, was at his express request revived by Elizabeth 
 in his favour, though with a strictness that made him her 
 mere vassal ; the object of this policy, he must have seen, was 
 to make him a check upon Tirlogh Lenagh, the elected suc- 
 cessor of Shane O'Neill ; and yet he executed his trust faith- 
 fully. He made himself an instrument of English rule even 
 in the territories of the O'Neills, and treated several of his 
 prisoners with stern severity. 
 
 The suspicion with which he was regarded, however, 
 gradually turned O'Neill against the English Government ; he 
 felt, he wrote himself, that his " destruction was planned." He 
 had, also, peculiar grievances of his own, beside the wrongs that 
 had been done in Ulster ; the heir of the O'Donnells, who had 
 been entrapped by Perrott, had effected his escape, and wedded 
 his sister ; and he had a deadly feud with Sir Henry Bagenal, 
 who fiercely resented the abduction by him of his sister Mabel. 
 He had thus private injuries to avenge ; and, on the death of 
 Tirlogh Lenagh Tyrone, as he should be called, was elected 
 their chief by the voice of his tribesmen, and assumed the old 
 hereditary title of The O'Neill. It is probable, however, that 
 he took this step rather from necessity than of his own desire : 
 he was already suspected by the Irish Government ; he might 
 have been driven from his lands, perhaps murdered, had he 
 rejected the offer of his clan ; he consented to follow a course
 
 1 10 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 he perhaps regretted. But that Tyrone should be declared the 
 O'Neill, that he should place himself in a position, in which he 
 might lay claim to the suzerainty of Ulster, perhaps of Ireland, 
 was, as in the case of Shane, thirty years before, rank treason 
 in the eyes of the Queen and her Council; it was resolved to 
 make war against this " second arch rebel." Yet negotiations 
 went on for many months, for Elizabeth evidently did not wish 
 to strike; and Tyrone made an impression on her mind by 
 able expositions of the numberless wrongs that had been done 
 to the chiefs of the Northern Province. 
 
 The sword was not drawn until 1596; the contest was 
 desultory and intermittent for a considerable time. The 
 English forces in Ireland were, as usual, weak; the nobles of 
 the Pale were slow to appear in arms; the Irish Council ere 
 long discovered that it had to deal with a far-sighted and most 
 able enemy, Tyrone sent envoys to Madrid and Rome, 
 adjuring Philip to avenge the Armada, and Clement VIII to 
 support a persecuted Church; more important certainly, he 
 worked hard to stir up the ashes of conflagrations of the past, 
 and to arouse the Irishry, throughout the island, to unite in 
 something like a national war. But the most remarkable 
 feature of his conduct was this: in complete contrast to Shane 
 O'Neill, he made friendly overtures to the chiefs of Ulster, 
 and won them, almost to a man, to his side; his kinsman, now 
 head of the great O'Donnell clan, threw himself passionately 
 into his cause; the two principal tribes of the North, divided 
 for ages by angry feuds, were thus combined against English 
 rule for the first time. The war went on fitfully for nearly two 
 years, in the wide region of forest and plain, broken by 
 innumerable water lines, which extends from Lough Neagh to 
 the heads of the Shannon; the Irishry were, on the whole, 
 victorious. Many chiefs of Connaught took part with the 
 English, grateful for the wise and just policy of Sir John 
 Perrott, notwithstanding recent acts of wrong done by Bingham,
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 1 1 1 
 
 a President of the Province; but they were defeated by 
 O'Donnell, among the hills of Roscommon. Tyrone himself 
 was nearly always successful; he turned his light-armed kerne 
 to the best advantage; defended position after position, with 
 admirable skill, baffling, harassing, and often beating his ex- 
 asperated foes; and more than one English commander, who 
 had won his spurs in the Low Countries, succumbed to his 
 strokes. 
 
 A signal disaster of the main English force sent ere long a 
 passionate thrill, far and wide, through Ireland. Tyrone, fully 
 alive to the essential difference between the Celtic kerne and 
 the English soldiery, had armed and disciplined parts of his 
 levies, for some years, on the English model; the Irish footman, 
 for the first time in history, was enabled to encounter the 
 English on equal terms. The Irish leader had been laying 
 siege to a foit called Portmore, on the verge of Armagh; his 
 bitter enemy, Bagenal, marched to its relief, with an army 
 perhaps 5000 strong; on the i4th of August, 1598, he found 
 Tyrone with his troops, probably in equal numbers, entrenched 
 in a formidable position at Yellow Ford behind a small feeder 
 of the Blackwater. Bagenal pushed forward, through well-laid 
 obstacles; Tyrone had placed a body of picked men in 
 ambush ; and when the English were entangled in the difficult 
 ground, they were charged in front and flank with irresistible 
 effect. The swords of the Irishry were soon cleaving their way 
 through a multitude of panic-stricken fugitives; the rout was 
 complete, and for some time the English soldier would not face 
 his long-despised enemy 1 . 
 
 Tyrone instantly turned his success to account. He sent 
 emissaries again to Spain and the Pope; called on the clans of 
 
 1 In the picture of the battle, in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, 
 the English and Irish soldiers are armed in th? same manner and are in the 
 same formations. Leland, II. 336, says that the English, man for man, were 
 inferior to their adversaries.
 
 112 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Wicklow to rise, and on the remnants of those of Leix and 
 Offaley; and hastened in person southwards, in the hope of 
 arousing another rebellion, in the great name of the Desmond, 
 still deep in the hearts of thousands of devoted men. The 
 Government in England was gravely alarmed; Elizabeth des- 
 patched Essex, the hero of Cadiz, with an army of fully 17,000 
 men, to crush "her Irish rebel" with overwhelming force. 
 But Essex proved a most incapable leader, brilliant as he 
 certainly was in fight; he marched towards Munster in the first 
 instance, and he was defeated, with heavy loss, on the edge of 
 the Pale, by chiefs of the O'Moores and the O'Connors burning 
 to avenge their wrongs. His subsequent conduct is most 
 difficult to understand; it gave colour to the charges soon made 
 against him. The English commander consented to meet 
 Tyrone; in a parley that followed, the artful Irish chief perhaps 
 unfolded schemes that could only lead to treason, and certainly 
 sent his adversary away outwitted, and pledged to an ignomi- 
 nious truce. The army of Essex, already shattered, was spread 
 over different parts of the country; had Tyrone received the 
 assistance he had some right to expect, the power of England 
 in Ireland might have been shaken to its base. 
 
 Once more, however, foreign aid to Ireland failed: the 
 friendly sails from Spain were delayed; the gift of the Pope, a 
 crown of feathers a phcenix rising from its ashes must have 
 seemed a mockery; the " Earl of Straw," the heir of the 
 Desmonds he was so called in ridicule by Celtic wit, which 
 seldom spares a jest at misfortune could not gather together 
 the Munster Geraldines; the opportunity, at the decisive 
 moment, was lost. Essex was reprimanded by his indignant 
 sovereign ; the English army, largely increased, was placed in 
 the hands of Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, a soldier of parts 
 and of some experience. Tyrone and the Northern chiefs were 
 left almost isolated, though the Irish tribes on the borders of 
 the Pale kept detachments of the invaders in check, sallying
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 113 
 
 from the glens of Wicklow, and across the waste of Allen. 
 Mountj oy advanced steadily, adopting the system of warfare 
 proved to be successful before; his army, carefully supplied 
 from the rear, established itself by degrees in the enemy's 
 country, growing in strength, as it moved slowly forward; and 
 points of vantage were occupied and firmly held. Tyrone, 
 nevertheless, and his brother-in-law O'Donnell, made a stubborn 
 and protracted resistance: the scene of the contest the strip of 
 country between Lough Neagh and the long course of the 
 Erne, and covered by the Blackwater in front was not dense 
 with forests like the Desmond land, but a labyrinth of rivers, 
 lakes, and woods; the Irish chiefs long held Mountjoy at bay, 
 making good use of their water lines, often striking outlying 
 posts with effect. The English commander, having made his 
 base secure, ere long pursued the atrocious but efficacious 
 methods, which had at last prevailed in the great Desmond 
 rising. His forces were pushed forward in separate bodies, 
 carrying devastation and death in their track; their march was 
 seen in the flames of hamlet and cottage, and in the destruction 
 of everything that could yield food; and the Irishry, armed 
 and unarmed, were slaughtered wholesale. The barrier of 
 Ulster was at last forced; the torrent of invasion rolled 
 forward, sweeping obstacles away in its lava-like course, until 
 it reached the interior of the Northern Province. Still, how- 
 ever, Tyrone and O'Donnell fought sternly on ; few dependent 
 chiefs and tribes fell away; the horrible struggle was main- 
 tained for a long succession of months. 
 
 The arrival at last of help from Spain gave a new turn 
 to the still doubtful contest. Don Juan D'Aquila landed at 
 Kinsale, in the south of Munster, in September 1601 ; he was 
 at the head of 3000 or 4000 men, followed by another little 
 expeditionary force. The enterprise, however, had been ill 
 directed ; the descent was to have been effected on the coast 
 of Sligo, where Tyrone could easily have joined his allies, and 
 
 M. i. 8
 
 114 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 made the war in Ulster formidable in the extreme. But 
 phantoms rose before the Spanish seamen ; the wreck of the 
 Armada had reached that coast, and ten or twelve large 
 warships had perished ; the invaders had chosen to follow the 
 old path of commerce between Spain and the southern parts 
 of Ireland. Tyrone and O'Donnell found themselves com- 
 pelled to move across Ireland from North to South; their 
 famishing levies dwindled away rapidly, in a march of nearly 
 two hundred miles, through intricate obstacles of many kinds ; 
 they were but an armed mob when they reached the hill 
 ranges overlooking Kinsale. By this time an English fleet 
 blockaded the port. Mountjoy, loyally seconded by the nobles 
 of the Pale true as steel like their English Catholic brethren 
 in the face of the detested Spaniard had laid siege to the 
 place inland; the foreigners were hemmed in and shut up. 
 Tyrone proposed to give his troops rest ; to form an en- 
 trenched camp and to hold a position, from which he could 
 fall on his enemy's rear; O'Donnell urged an immediate 
 attack; the counsels of Celtic rashness prevailed. Mountjoy 
 drew a detachment from his lines; the rebel army, weakened 
 and harassed, was easily routed; the divisions of its chiefs 
 contributed, perhaps, to the result. The Spaniards were, ere 
 long, permitted to depart, Don Juan cursing his allies with 
 true Castilian pride ; and, after a few struggles, marked by the 
 heroic defence of Dunboy, a great Celtic stronghold, the long 
 protracted rebellion finally collapsed. Ireland lay prostrate at 
 the feet of Mountjoy ; but the resistance of Tyrone had been so 
 formidable that his fate was very different from that of Shane 
 O'Neill. Clearheaded, and able to see things as they were, 
 he accepted the terms offered by Mountjoy; he renounced 
 the princely title of the O'Neill, but was allowed to retain his 
 lands and his earldom. It is said that he shed tears when he 
 heard of Elizabeth's death, believing that, had he held out a 
 little longer, he would have got more favourable terms from her 
 successor.
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 115 
 
 The state of Ireland, after the contest with Tyrone, was 
 one of appalling desolation and woe. Even within the Pale, 
 but little ravaged by war, a seat of trade and comparative 
 order, the price of the necessaries of life had risen fourfold ; 
 beyond, from the hills of Antrim to the shores of Cork, the 
 land was a waste of ruin and despair. The commerce with Spain 
 had almost disappeared ; the town of Galway has never re- 
 covered this loss. Whole counties were strown with the wrecks 
 of abbeys and castles, fine monuments of medieval genius ; 
 they were not to be replaced, as has been the case in England, 
 by modern structures of beauty and grandeur ; other storms of 
 destruction were to break on Ireland : but that of the sixteenth 
 century was the most fatal to art. The most terrible feature of 
 the time, however, was the fate that had overtaken the great 
 mass of the people. A third part of the community, it is 
 believed, had perished, victims of the sword, of famine, of 
 fell miseries, to which few parallels can be found in history. 
 Great tracts were deserts of more hideous aspect than even the 
 battle-fields of the Thirty Years War, and the Palatinate and its 
 cities, when given to the flames. Flocks of wolves howled 
 over thousands of corpses, left unburied amidst broken heaps 
 of villages ; the air was thick with flights of birds of prey far 
 and near feasting on human carrion ; Elizabeth had been told, 
 before the war had ended, that " she reigned in Ireland over 
 ashes and dead carcasses." As for the survivors of the tragedy, 
 " out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping 
 forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them : 
 they looked like anatomies of death ; they spoke like ghosts 
 crying out of their graves." In the agony of desperation and 
 want many a mother devoured the babe she had slain : troops 
 of gibbering idiots gave awful proof how the minds of men had 
 given way under the stress of horror and fear. 
 
 The spiritual and religious state of Ireland had much in 
 common with this material ruin, but presented ominous 
 
 2
 
 u6 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 features especially its own. We have already seen how the 
 Anglican Church, successor of the old Church of the Pale, but 
 Protestant and opposed to Rome, was following in Ireland the 
 march of conquest, and was being forced on a reluctant people, 
 and how the old Celtic Church, become intensely Papal, was 
 being made more hostile than ever to English rule ; we have 
 also noticed the numerous resulting evils. We may shortly 
 glance at the condition of thought and feeling, and of piety and 
 morality, that was being developed out of this inauspicious 
 order of things. The dignitaries of the Anglican Church 
 remained true to the worst hatreds of the Church of the Pale, 
 and regarded the Irishry as a detested race; and as their 
 Church was being extended by the sword, their influence for 
 evil was widely diffused. They had become tools of the men 
 at the Castle ; their animosities were quickened by the zeal of 
 creed; they persecuted harshly far and wide; an Anglican 
 Archbishop had even consented to the torture of a Prelate 
 appointed by the Pope. Their spiritual authority, however, 
 was next to nothing ; heads of a Church that had no hold on 
 the people, their clergy might spread over many districts, and 
 engross most of the good things of the world, but they 
 preached, for the most part, in empty churches, though attend- 
 ance at these was prescribed by law ; they were regarded as 
 mere creatures of the English enemy, talking blasphemy in a 
 foreign tongue ; their voices were raised, in vain, in a wilder- 
 ness. As always happens, too, in the case of a communion 
 like this, religious indifference, sloth, inertness, were the 
 characteristics of its scanty flocks ; the spirit of Protestantism 
 had as yet scarcely entered the country, if that of intolerance 
 was abroad ; and, for the rest, the old abuses of the Church of 
 the Pale, simony, profligacy, waste, the decay of churches, and 
 wickedness raised to high places, abounded in its successor, 
 with little change. As for the Church of the Irishry apart 
 from its devotion to Rome superstition was its most marked
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 1 1 7 
 
 feature ; and its priesthood as yet had made no impression on 
 the ignorance, the licentiousness, and the odious vices ap- 
 parently general among all orders of men. It was, of course, 
 a bitter enemy of the Anglican Church; but Ireland, we 
 repeat, had not yet had experience of religious hatreds at 
 their worst. 
 
 The intellectual life of Ireland continued to be, as was 
 indeed natural, deplorably weak throughout this period. 
 Trinity College was founded in 1591; it was to become a 
 mother of eminent men, but it was as yet only in its early infancy. 
 A few books were published in Dublin, but they were mostly 
 produced by English pens ; the best commentaries on Ireland, 
 at this time, were, with hardly an exception, the works of 
 Englishmen. Two or three of the Irish Chancellors of the day 
 were learned and even distinguished men ; the influence of the 
 Irish Bar was growing, as English law spread beyond the Pale ; 
 the Irish House of Commons, largely increased in numbers, 
 more than once resisted Tudor stretches of power with the 
 spirit of the volunteers of 1781-2, and had, doubtless, mem- 
 bers of parts and capacity. But in the age of Shakespeare, of 
 Spenser, of Bacon, when the intellect of England flashed out 
 in a glory of Dramatic Art, of Song, of Philosophy, certainly 
 more splendid than has since been seen, no great writer or 
 thinker appeared in Ireland; her literature in the sixteenth 
 century is the dross of antiquity, useful only as a witness to her 
 unhappy fortunes. The learned researches of the Brehon 
 lawyers, the poetry of the native bards and minstrels, were 
 probably less abundant in these troubled years than they had 
 been in preceding ages ; the destruction of the Religious 
 Houses, the wrongs occasionally done to the Celtic priest- 
 hood, nay, their increased activity in the cause of Rome, 
 contributed probably to this decline. The annalists and 
 chroniclers, however, seemed to have toiled on ; and a native 
 literature was growing up of an historical kind, of a significant
 
 II( 9 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 character, which it has ever since retained. It was marked by 
 a note of unceasing sorrow ; by fear rather than hatred of the 
 conquering race ; by a concentrated, but intensely narrow love 
 of country ; above all, by an inability to see that the many 
 woes of Ireland had their counterparts, as a rule, in the history 
 of the time. 
 
 Signs of the old and long-standing ills of Ireland are still 
 manifest in this period. English policy fluctuates, if usually 
 harsh ; the Government at the Castle varies in its conduct and 
 aims ; the " English and Anglo-Irish interests " repeatedly 
 clash ; ruthless conquest is carried out piecemeal ; colonisation 
 fails as in the Plantagenet age. The peculiar and striking 
 features, however, of this time are of a different kind. The 
 march of conquest in Ireland is slow and uncertain ; it is 
 usually sustained by inadequate force ; but it has a character 
 of atrocity and systematic cruelty, which it did not possess in 
 preceding centuries. Not to speak of the contest with Shane 
 O'Neill, the Desmond rebellion and the war with Tyrone 
 were, we have said, attended by events of horror, of barbarity, 
 of inhuman destruction, conspicuous, even in an age of 
 violence ; Ireland was to endure perhaps even more severe 
 trials, but hardly again such a protracted agony. It was a 
 special characteristic of this period, too, that attempts were 
 made over and over again to assimilate Ireland to a Tudor 
 ideal, to force on the Irishry modes of life and thought, alien 
 to them, and disliked or abhorred. The old policy of keeping 
 Saxon and Celt apart, of preventing the fusion of the two 
 races, was abandoned, as English rule advanced; the states- 
 manlike policy of Henry VIII to make England supreme in 
 Ireland, but to give the Irish a share in government, and to 
 respect their ancient customs and usages was in turn replaced 
 by an opposite policy; Ireland was to accept, in all things, 
 whatever Englishmen should impose. This was most evident 
 in the efforts made to extend the domain of the Anglican
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the' reign of Elizabeth. 119 
 
 Church; but it was apparent in all the relations of life; 
 projects to extirpate Brehons, bards, "poets," and to coerce 
 the Irishry to conform to Anglo-Saxon ways, were in high 
 favour at the seats of power in those days. The hatred, the 
 loathing, the pitiless contempt felt by the conquering towards 
 the conquered race is, also, an unhappy feature of the time ; 
 the Englishry regarded the Irishry as the worst kind of 
 savages'. 
 
 We may glance at the causes of this evil state of things; 
 for it left unfortunate results behind. Something was due to 
 the nature of Irish conquest a prolonged strife exasperating 
 the fiercest passions and something to faults in the English 
 national character, stern, and devoid of sympathy with other 
 races. But England, throughout this period, was either en- 
 gaged in watching secret but most dangerous foes, or was in a 
 death struggle with Rome and Spain; Ireland, in the crisis of 
 the sixteenth century, was the scene of conspiracies against 
 her power, recurring over and over again ; and though the 
 Irishry received little aid from Philip and the Popes in their 
 frequent risings, we cannot feel surprise that England struck 
 hard, and crushed rebellion with an unsparing hand. This 
 was the main cause of the frightful atrocity, which marked the 
 Irish wars of those days; and if we recollect that England 
 fought for existence, the result becomes a subject more of 
 regret than of wonder. As for the efforts of later Tudor 
 statesmen to compel Ireland to accept an alien faith, and to 
 conform to usages prescribed for her, this was in accord with 
 the spirit of the age, as we see it in many parts of Europe ; 
 indeed something of the same kind was seen in the system of 
 legislation and the mode of government adopted in England 
 in the Tudor period. The sentiments unhappily felt by 
 
 1 Shakespeare, the embodiment of English genius in that age, and it 
 must be added of English prejudice, places but one Irishman on the stage, 
 and he is a contemptible fool.
 
 120 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP, 
 
 Englishmen towards Irishmen are, in part, explained by the 
 passions aroused in a protracted conflict; but they flowed, 
 also, from another source. England and Ireland were lands 
 as far asunder as the poles, in wealth, civilisation, and social 
 progress ; the one was the first nation in Europe, the other the 
 most backward community ; this largely accounts for the 
 scornful aversion of the conquering to the conquered race. 
 
 Impartial history properly condemns much that was done 
 in Ireland in this period. Man, however, is the creature of 
 his age ; and all that is worst in Irish affairs had its parallel in 
 contemporary events. If rebellion in Ireland was mercilessly 
 crushed, and the island was strewn with ashes and blood. 
 Alva did the very same things in the Netherlands, and was 
 more pitiless than Sussex and Mountjoy. If we blame the 
 perfidy with which Shane O'Neill was treated, it was the age 
 of the odious "serpent of Florence," of the massacre of St 
 Bartholomew, of the murder of Coligny. We regret attempts 
 to force the Anglican Church on the Irishry ; but these were as 
 nothing to what was done to stamp out heresy in Spain and in 
 Italy, and to place whole orders of men under the yoke of 
 Rome. The slaughter at the fort of Smerwick was a crime ; 
 but it was a trifle compared to many a deed of blood, of which 
 France was the scene in the civil wars of the time. The 
 sixteenth century, in fact, was an age of violence, when 
 Christendom was torn in pieces in a deadly strife ; and Ireland 
 had but a share in the conflict. Let it be said, too, that 
 Elizabeth and English statesmen were often ignorant of what 
 was being done in their name in Ireland ; it should be added 
 that the weakness, the want of concert, the divisions of Irish 
 nobles and chiefs, and the still backward state of almost the 
 whole community, contributed to the unhappy fate of their 
 country. 
 
 The prospect for Ireland was not wholly dark at the close 
 of the sixteenth century. Civilisation had established itself in
 
 iv.] Ireland to the end of the reign of Elizabeth. 121 
 
 the Pale ; this region, indeed, had almost lost the name, as the 
 limits of English power advanced ; nearly the whole island had 
 been made shireland. There was a semblance at least of 
 constitutional government, as the Irish Parliament advanced 
 in influence ; the domain of order and law had been largely 
 increased. The land had been cruelly wasted by the sword ; 
 but the sword had hewn its way through the dense jungle of 
 half-barbarous feudal and Celtic rule, which had been a 
 barrier for ages to every kind of progress; it might yet 
 inaugurate a better order of things. The conflict, which had 
 been so prolonged and grievous, was not yet wholly one of 
 race and religion, although tending in both directions; the 
 wounds it had inflicted might perhaps have been healed. 
 Ireland, if we except a part of Ulster, was completely in the 
 hands of the conquerors ; the dark course of her fortunes 
 might even now have been turned. The policy of Henry VIII 
 had become impossible ; but if Ireland, at this juncture, had 
 been placed under an enlightened despotism, like that of 
 India, that respected native usage and law while it maintained 
 the rule of civilised power, her future history might have been 
 very different. She was in a state not unlike that of France 
 after the peace of Vervins, exhausted by war, torn by angry 
 passions. But she was to find no Henry IV and Sully ; she 
 was to proceed along a path thickly strown with disasters and 
 sorrows.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FROM THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH TO THE 
 RESTORATION. 
 
 An amnesty proclaimed at the accession of James I. Tyrone is received 
 at Court, with his kinsman O'Donnell, made Earl of Tyrconnell. 
 Religious troubles easily put down by Mountjoy. Abolition of the 
 Brehon Law and Celtic usages, in all parts of Ireland. Substitution of 
 English law and the English system of land tenure. Consequences 
 of this revolution. The flight of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, and of other 
 Irish chiefs. Confiscation of their territories. Six counties of 
 Ulster at the disposition of the Crown. The Plantation of Ulster. 
 Peculiarities and characteristics of the scheme. The effects of this 
 colonisation perhaps exaggerated. The prosperity of Ulster, however, 
 begins from this time. Resentment of the Irishry of Ulster. Progress 
 of confiscation in time of peace. The beginning of the era of 
 Protestant ascendency in Ireland, and of Catholic subjection. Decline 
 of the independence of the Irish Parliament, and the causes of this. 
 Deceptive tranquillity and prosperity of Ireland after the death of 
 James. The state of the island really dangerous. The reign of 
 Charles I. The Viceroyalty of Strafford. His tyranny; the evils it 
 produced, and the good it accomplished. The great Ulster rising of 
 1641. There was no general premeditated massacre. Spread of the 
 insurrection. Defection of the old Catholic Englishry. Civil war in 
 Ireland. The Catholic confederation of Kilkenny. Extreme signifi- 
 cance of this assembly. Division of parties in it, and the results. 
 The Cessation of 1643. Tortuous policy of the King. Prolonged 
 negotiations. The Glamorgan Treaty. The Peace of 1646. It 
 concedes hardly anything to the Confederates, and especially to the 
 Celtic Irishry. Indignation of the extreme parties. Rinuccini and
 
 CH. v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 123 
 
 Owen Roe O'Neill. The Battle of Benburb. Results of O'Neill's 
 victory. Danger of Dublin. Ormond surrenders the city to repre- 
 sentatives of the Long Parliament, and leaves Ireland. Jones defeats 
 Preston. Inchiquin defeats Taaffe. The Confederates treat again for 
 peace. The Peace of 1648 9. Ormond returns to Ireland. The 
 Royalists and Confederates unite after the death of the King. De- 
 parture of Rinuccini from Ireland. O'Neill stands aloof. Battle near 
 Dublin and defeat of Ormond. Death of O'Neill. He had turned to 
 Ormond when it was too late. Cromwell lands in Ireland. Drogheda 
 and Wcxford. The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The settle- 
 ment of the land. Government of Cromwell. The beginnings of the 
 Irish Union. The Restoration. Reflections. 
 
 THE reign of James I, if not an eventful, is a very im- 
 portant period in Irish history. It was inaugurated by 
 measures, intended, no doubt, to bind up, in some degree, the 
 deep wounds of the people. An amnesty was proclaimed for 
 all that had been done in the war ; a veil of oblivion was 
 thrown over the past; the brother of O'Donnell, the chief 
 lately in arms, was made a peer, as Earl of Tyrconnell ; and 
 Tyrone and the new Earl were received in state at Court 
 Parts of the country were stirred, ere long, by religious 
 troubles ; but these were of no present interest ; they were 
 significant, at most, of dangers yet to come. The Catholic 
 world seems to have believed that James would reverse the 
 policy of his predecessor; and when this expectation had 
 proved almost vain, the priesthood of the Irish Catholic 
 Church, long devoted followers of the Holy See, succeeded in 
 provoking a few angry risings. The clergy of the Anglican 
 Church were driven from their homes, in two or three of the 
 principal towns of Munster; the Mass, nominally at least 
 proscribed by law, was celebrated with great pomp in many 
 places, and mutterings of rebellion were even heard. Mountjoy, 
 however he had been made Lord Lieutenant easily put 
 down a petty sacerdotal movement which had scarcely any 
 general support; Ireland, in fact, had been so exhausted by
 
 124 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 war that the community, as a whole, was quiescent. There 
 was no Irish Gunpowder Plot ; and when, as the result of that 
 unhappy crime, many Catholic priests were expelled from 
 Ireland, there was no murmur of open discontent. 
 
 By this time the whole island had been made shireland; 
 
 the king's writ was supposed to run everywhere; the king's 
 
 judges went regular circuits ; the machinery at least of English 
 
 law had been set up in the four Irish provinces. But that law 
 
 was largely encountered and checked by the medley of feudal 
 
 and Celtic law and usage, which still prevailed in great parts of 
 
 the country; it was still, to a considerable extent, a dead 
 
 letter. Within the limits of the old Pale it probably was 
 
 completely supreme ; it determined the rights of all classes of 
 
 men; its odious distinctions between the Englishry and the 
 
 Irishry had become obsolete, if not yet abolished by any act of 
 
 the state. Beyond, in the Anglo-Norman lands, its influence 
 
 had been immensely extended ; it had effaced the jurisdiction 
 
 of the great feudal nobles, as these had yielded to the advance 
 
 of conquest ; it had replaced the will of Butler and Geraldine 
 
 in their vast palatinates. But even in this region it was crossed 
 
 and thwarted by Anglo-Norman and Celtic customs; the 
 
 Brehon lawyers had still power; the laws they administered had 
 
 wide influence; and the English system of tenure was in direct 
 
 conflict with the ancient Celtic organisation of the land, which, 
 
 in many districts, had not disappeared. In the Celtic Land, 
 
 as we may still call it, subdued and ravaged as it had 
 
 been, English law was opposed by these and other hostile 
 
 elements; the primitive modes of Tanist succession and of 
 
 Gavelkind were in common use ; indeed the claim of a tribe 
 
 to elect its chiefs had, as we have seen, led to two bloody wars. 
 
 But in this, and in other large parts of Ireland, what was most 
 
 in antagonism to English law, was the archaic land-system of 
 
 the Irish Celts, still deeply and widely rooted in the soil 
 
 This system, as we have said, had been encroached on, and
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 12$ 
 
 weakened by the Irish chiefs for ages ; and the practice, which 
 had become frequent, of surrendering lands to a great extent, 
 to be regranted and held by English tenure, had blotted it out 
 in many counties. But the old relations springing from the 
 land, and powerfully affecting whole orders of men, remained 
 in full force, in an immense territory; and millions of acres 
 were still parcelled out between owners possessing the rights of 
 chiefs, and their free tenants and vassal dependents, each class 
 holding by immemorial custom. 
 
 The opportunity was now taken to extend English law to 
 every part of Ireland, to annihilate the old Celtic laws and 
 usages, and consequently to destroy the Celtic land-system, 
 the mould of society in many and great districts. This was 
 part of the policy of forcing the conquered to adopt the 
 institutions of the conquering race, which had been in progress 
 for a series of years ; but Tudor lawyers, we have seen, had a 
 peculiar aversion to almost everything savouring of Irish law, 
 the result partly, at least, of their ignorance, if not without 
 foundation in reason. English law was pronounced the sole 
 law of the land; the Brehon Laws were condemned as evil 
 customs ; Tanistry and Gavelkind were declared illegal ; 
 English modes of succession were made to prevail everywhere ; 
 the English methods of holding land were substituted uni- 
 versally for the ancient Irish methods; and surrenders and 
 regrants of land were very generally made. This revolution, 
 searching and immense, was doubtless attended with some 
 good results; Tanistry and Gavelkind had caused real evils, 
 and were hardly compatible with social progress; the law of the 
 Eric-fine had done mischief; the primitive system of Irish land 
 tenure seemed as far behind the age as the feudal system, to 
 which, loose and ill-defined as it was, it bore, we have said, 
 a kind of resemblance. But a sudden change affecting the 
 relations of life, especially as it was thrust on a reluctant 
 people, provoked, far and wide, discontent and alarm. The
 
 126 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Brehon judges were regretted as martyrs ; the effort to destroy 
 their cherished customs was resented by the Irishry as a cruel 
 injury; the new law of the alien shocked their deepest sym- 
 pathies. This was especially the case in all that was connected 
 with the land ; the conversion of Irish into English tenures 
 unquestionably annihilated rights wholesale ; over large areas, 
 and in many thousand instances, the free Ceile, the Saer 
 stock and the Daer stock tenants, in different degrees joint 
 owners of the soil, sank into the position of mere tenants at 
 will, in fact, nearly that of the degraded Fuidhirs. It is true 
 that the privileges of these classes seem to have been considered 
 in some cases, where lands were surrendered and granted again ; 
 but this was not of common occurrence. As a rule, the claims 
 of the members of the tribes, clans, and septs, to the lands 
 which they had held for ages were trampled under foot ; and this 
 in considerable parts of Ireland. The consequences were not 
 difficult to perceive ; it was as if the Village Community and the 
 Joint Family were effaced by a freak of mere power in India. 
 
 The abolition of Celtic usage and law was followed by a 
 confiscation of immense proportions. Tyrone and his kinsman 
 Tyrconnell suddenly fled from Ireland; they were accompanied 
 by several inferior chiefs; the fugitives were proscribed and 
 attainted ; and the vast territories, which they had ruled, were 
 forfeited. It is useless to enquire whether they had plotted 
 treason the charge usually made on occasions of the kind 
 or whether they knew they were doomed beforehand. Their 
 flight was followed almost immediately by the rebellion of 
 O'Dogherty and O'Cahan, by which the area of confiscated 
 lands was extended over the six Ulster counties of Armagh, 
 Cavan, Londonderry, Fermanagh, Tyrone, and Donegal; 
 and it appears certain that this large tract, comprising 
 more than three millions of acres, was declared to be 
 at the disposition of the Crown. An effort was now made 
 to pour into this region a great stream of English and 
 Scotch colonists, and to make it the seat of a strong settle-
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 127 
 
 ment attached by blood and faith to the British name. The 
 genius of Bacon and the experience of Davies presided over 
 this new "Plantation"; precautions were taken to avoid the 
 failures of previous attempts at colonisation of the kind. The 
 lands chosen for the settlement seem to have been not more 
 than half-a-million or six hundred thousand acres'; but these 
 we know comprised the best lands ; the residue, then a tract 
 of moor, woodland, and waste, was probably abandoned to the 
 native race. In the arrangement and distribution of the lands 
 to be colonised the example of the Desmond forfeitures was, 
 in part, followed, but large deviations also were made from it. 
 Parts of the lands were granted to "undertakers" of English 
 and Scottish origin, and parts to officers who had served in the 
 late war ; and care was taken, as before, that the grants should 
 be small, in fact much smaller than had been the case in 
 Munster. But very stringent conditions were imposed to pre- 
 vent the evils which had occurred previously; points of vantage 
 were to be strongly occupied; the settlers were to build fortified 
 dwellings, and, as a rule, to be always resident; their lands 
 were to be thickly peopled by men of their own blood ; a 
 colony, really of a military type, was thus to be established in 
 the midst of the Irishry, and to be kept if possible free from 
 contact with them. In other, and very important respects, the 
 Desmond precedent was completely set at nought. A con- 
 siderable part of the lands to be planted was allotted to the 
 Irishry to be held, as owners and tenants, by English tenure ; 
 they were thus to be indemnified for what they had lost, and 
 to be isolated as a separate people. The Anglican Church, 
 too, obtained large grants; and nearly the whole of the county of 
 Derry was handed over to the city of London. At the same 
 
 1 For the very difficult question of the extent of the original forfeitures, 
 and of the lands actually settled, see, and compare, Hill, Plantation of 
 Ulster, Introduction, 4, and Pynnar's Survey, Ibid. 445, 589. Reid's 
 Presbyterian Church, I. 86. Hallam, in. 504. [Bagwell, I. chap. V.]
 
 128 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 time provision was made for the liberal endowment of the new 
 University, 
 
 The prosperity which a part of Ulster has enjoyed has 
 been ascribed by a series of writers to this " Plantation " ; but 
 there is much exaggeration in the assertion. Many families, 
 indeed, of English and Scottish descent especially of Scottish 
 established themselves in the tracts which had been assigned 
 to them ; and the colony was from the first more thriving than 
 any preceding colonies of the kind. But, as had happened 
 in Munster before, the conditions of the settlement were ill 
 observed; non-residence was common, lands were not occu- 
 pied by a sufficient number of the immigrating race ; the Irishry 
 largely intermingled with it, spite of every effort to keep them 
 apart. Derry, too, became especially a land of absentees ; of 
 the six counties in which the Plantation was made, the children 
 of the soil remained the mass of the population in three. Down 
 and Antrim had been colonised before, without interference on 
 the part of the state, by successive inroads of Scottish settlers ; 
 these counties are, by many degrees, the most prosperous and 
 the richest in Ulster, and those that show the greatest preponder- 
 ance of Teutonic blood. It seems probable that the progress 
 of Ulster, which certainly dates from the seventeenth century, 
 was rather due to the colonising genius of the Scotch and to a 
 continual influx of men of their race than to the Plantation, 
 considered by itself; this, in many respects, was hardly success- 
 ful. Still the advance which Ulster has made in the course of 
 time coincided with that of the settlement of the reign of James ; 
 and this was, doubtless, a potent element in it. On the other 
 hand the Plantation was, beyond dispute, a cause of many and 
 dangerous evils. In the allotment of the forfeited lands, the 
 rights of the native race were destroyed or neglected ; chiefs 
 of families held in reverence for ages were rudely de- 
 spoiled; the tribal system of tenure was broken up; whole 
 classes of occupiers of the soil were injured. To the feelings
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 1 29 
 
 engendered by this violent change we must mainly attribute 
 another great rising, attended with most unhappy results, and 
 fraught, for a time, with grave peril to the state. 
 
 Ireland was now completely in the conqueror's hands ; as 
 far as the sword and law could effect it, the type of Celtic 
 society had been nearly effaced. There was still an opportunity 
 to make order and prosperity grow up under a good govern- 
 ment, like that, as we have said, of India at this day; but the 
 course of events was unhappily different. The country, as had 
 been the case for years, was an object for the English adven- 
 turer ; the men at the Castle had, for a long time, been eager 
 to gorge themselves in forfeitures ; the necessities of the king 
 were great. Under the operation of these causes, confiscation 
 went on at a prodigious rate ; whole tracts were wrested from 
 their possessors by atrocious wrong. In five or six of the 
 central counties thousands of acres were seized and transferred; 
 a large part of Wicklow was torn from the mountaineers, for 
 generations the enemies of the Pale; the same process took 
 place in other counties. The means adopted to produce thest 
 results were an odious combination of tyranny and fraud. 
 Obsolete claims to lands were set up by descendants of colon- 
 ists of Plantagenet times, as had been done by Sir Peter Carew; 
 hundreds of ancient Royal grants were pronounced invalid; 
 the right of the Crown to large domains was asserted with 
 success; legal ingenuity and chicane were taxed to pick out 
 flaws in titles. The work of rapine was assisted by a brood of 
 harpies, known by the evil name of " discoverers," by servile 
 judges, by terrified juries; under these influences it made rapid 
 progress. At last an attempt was made, on a mere technical 
 plea, to confiscate the great district of Connaught, which had 
 been the subject of Sir John Perrott's settlement; but this claim 
 was bought off for the present ; James probably was afraid to 
 maintain it. But " the ravage of war," in the words of Burke, 
 was carried on "in peace," over a large part of Ireland; 
 
 M. i. 9
 
 130 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 thousands of the Irishry and some of the old Englishry felt 
 that their lands were marked down as a prey ; insecurity and 
 alarm prevailed far and wide. 
 
 Events, meanwhile, had been tending to increase and 
 widen the division of faith in the Irish community, and to 
 make the resulting evils more general and intense. The 
 Anglican Church had, by this time, been established in every 
 part of the island ; it had taken possession of all that belonged 
 to the Church of the Pale and the ancient Celtic Church; 
 it was, in fact, the only ecclesiastical body recognised by the 
 law. Its characteristics had not changed, or had changed 
 only, perhaps, for the worse; it remained an instrument 
 of the rule of the Castle; it persecuted in the midst of a 
 conquered people. If it had begun to produce a few eminent 
 men, it was as full as before of the old and bad abuses ; as a 
 spiritual agency it had made no progress; and it was more 
 hostile than ever to Rome and to the great mass of Irishmen 
 more Catholic than they had been at any time for it 
 had been affected by the religious movement of England, and 
 many of its clergy were extreme Puritans. At the same 
 time, the power of the Anglican Church had, in another way, 
 been immensely extended. It had been the Church only of a 
 feeble colony; it was now the Church of a great dominant 
 class, spreading as conquerors over many parts of the country ; 
 and this class, settled amidst the Irishry, was strongly and 
 aggressively Protestant, upheld Protestantism as a sign of 
 supremacy, and regarded with peculiar aversion and contempt 
 Catholicism and the subjugated Catholic Celts, nay even the 
 old Englishry, nearly all Catholics. The era of Protestant 
 ascendency, and all that the word implies, had, in fact, already 
 begun in Ireland; a dominant Church was supported by a 
 dominant caste, and both laid a yoke on the neck of five-sixths 
 of the people. The inevitable result was to quicken religious dis- 
 cords, and to make them far more bitter than they had ever been.
 
 v.] From tJie death of Elizabeth to tlie Restoration. 131 
 
 The same consequences had been produced by another and 
 different series of causes. The Catholic Church of Ireland 
 had become every year more a satellite of Rome ; its clergy 
 hundreds of whom were emissaries of the Papal Court were 
 probably the most Roman in Europe; and, persecuted as it 
 had been and despoiled, it hated the Anglican Church, the 
 Irish Protestant name, nay Protestant England, with unceasing 
 hatred. The influence of its priesthood too had greatly 
 increased, for, as we have said, this had rapidly grown, as the 
 power of the Irish chiefs had declined ; and if its moral 
 authority, as a Christian order of men, was not yet what it was 
 to become, it was the spiritual leader, we must not forget, 
 of the Catholic Englishry, and of the Irish Celts, that is of the 
 immense majority of the Irish people. It had thus become a 
 representative, in a certain sense, of the Irish Catholic com- 
 munity as a whole; it naturally inspired this with its own 
 sentiments; it exasperated the feelings of anger and fear 
 already quickened by conquest and other wrongs. Simul- 
 taneously with this, the Irish Catholics had been subjected to 
 different kinds of grievances, on the ground of their religion 
 only. The sectarian tests of the reign of Elizabeth had been 
 almost idle and empty menaces; the oath of supremacy had 
 been scarcely ever tendered ; attendance at Protestant worship 
 had not been enforced. All this had, by degrees, been 
 changed, as the march of conquest had advanced in Ireland 
 and Irish Protestantism had acquired more strength ; Catholic 
 " recusants," as they were now called, were, in many instances, 
 kept out of the service of the state, debarred from holding 
 offices and from the practice of the law, nay fined and made 
 liable to other penalties, because they would not accept the 
 tests now often imposed on them. This system of persecu- 
 tion, doubtless, was rather teasing than cruel; but the era of 
 Catholic subjection had, also, opened for Ireland ; and from 
 this and the other causes referred to, religious animosities had 
 been greatly augmented.
 
 132 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 The Government at the Castle had undergone, at the same 
 time, a well marked change. It had long been composed 
 wholly of the "English interest"; but soldiers were now 
 replaced, for the most part, by Anglican Churchmen and 
 men of English law ; a Government of this type was naturally 
 harsh to the subject races over which it ruled. It was not a 
 general or equal despotism, but rather a bureaucracy, exclusive 
 and severe ; it weighed heavily on the Catholic Celt, and even 
 on the Englishry of the old faith; its principal work was to 
 look out for forfeitures, which it often enforced by the very 
 worst means. Another institution of Ireland, too, which had 
 given signs of promise, had been transformed. The Irish 
 Parliament, we have seen, had grown out of the Conventions 
 of the Pale, had gradually acquired no little influence, and had 
 shown, more than once, in the sixteenth century, a sentiment 
 of independence, even a love of liberty. These hopeful germs 
 had been destroyed : in spite of a protest made by the 
 Baronage of the Pale, the class most worthy of honour, perhaps, 
 in the country, James, with a stroke of the pen, created forty 
 boroughs out of "beggarly hamlets," of "no account"; and 
 the Irish House of Commons was unfairly packed by nominees 
 of the Crown and members of the ruling English colonies, 
 who had been established in power in the land. The single 
 Irish Parliament of this reign enacted some good and useful 
 laws, especially an act for effacing old distinctions of race, so 
 far as legislation could effect this object. But it was chiefly 
 remarkable for a fierce quarrel between the English and 
 Protestant party, and the Catholic " recusants " of either race ; 
 these were overborne, but still formed a minority which could 
 make itself felt The Irish Parliament had thus become 
 essentially an instrument of English power and of the dominant 
 Anglo-Protestant interest, which always had a majority in it ; 
 it did not, in any true sense, represent the country ; it lost its 
 old independent spirit ; it was, as a rule, submissive and servile, 
 though occasionally affected by gusts of passion. Without the
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 133 
 
 support of a strong community, of anything even resembling a 
 section of public opinion, it had little in common with the 
 great Houses of Westminster. 
 
 Ireland, however, at the death of James I, was apparently 
 tranquil, nay in a state of progress. Peace had repaired some 
 of the ravages of war ; the introduction of a vigorous race of 
 settlers had improved husbandry and the face of the country ; 
 signs of material prosperity began to be seen. The mass of 
 the people, too, seemed quiescent; and English statesmen, 
 with the optimistic fancies which have often deluded them in 
 the case of Ireland, announced that " the strings of the Irish 
 harp were in tune," and that the Irish were orderly, even 
 contented. Yet elements of ill-will, of passion, of strife were 
 gathering beneath the surface of things, more dangerous per- 
 haps than at any previous time. The Irishry fiercely resented 
 the fall of their chiefs, the extinction of their customs, the 
 annihilation of their rights, and especially the destruction of 
 the tribal land-system ; the Continent had received despoiled 
 Irish exiles, trained to war, and thirsting for revenge for wrong; 
 the reiterated process of confiscation had aroused anger and 
 terror. The domination, too, of the Anglican Church, the 
 vexatious persecution which it promoted, above all, the 
 extension over great parts of the country of numbers of 
 settlers, seated on the land, as a caste alien in race and 
 faith from the children of the soil, had provoked deepseated 
 and bitter discontent; their feelings were quickened by the 
 Catholic priesthood, more powerful than it had ever been, 
 and were shared by many of the old Englishry. The Govern- 
 ment, besides, was a bad Government, harsh, sectarian, narrow, 
 often iniquitous ; it was trying to wrest everything to submission 
 to the rule of the Castle, repeatedly abused for the very worst 
 purposes. As the general result, the divisions of race and 
 faith, unhappily the cardinal fact of Irish History, were never 
 before so profound and menacing. The separation between
 
 134 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 the Englishry in the Middle Age, and the aboriginal Celts, in 
 every part of Ireland, was as nothing compared to the deep 
 distinction between the English and Scotch settlers and the 
 Irishry of the existing time; the feud between the Norman 
 Church of the Pale and the ancient Church of the Celts was a 
 trifle compared to the hostility, in Ireland, of Anglicanism and 
 Rome; and all the evils of disunion had thus increased and 
 multiplied. It should be observed, too, that the lines between 
 races and faiths, except in the case of the old Englishry, nearly 
 all Catholics, were coincident ; the Colonists were Protestants, 
 the Celtic-Irish Catholic ; and the fact would necessarily 
 aggravate any dangers at hand. And it might well be, in the 
 actual state of Europe, when the great Catholic reaction 
 seemed certain of success, in the first triumphs of the Thirty 
 Years War, and when Protestantism was being forced back in 
 Germany and in England, that, in Ireland, the division of 
 creed would be attended with the most fatal results. 
 
 The first years of the reign of Charles I are remarkable 
 only, as respects Ireland, for vacillation in the rule of the 
 Castle, for the continuance of its bad modes of government, 
 and for the utter disregard which seems to have been shown to 
 the stand made against the King in the English Parliament. 
 The duplicity however, which was the most marked feature of 
 the conduct of Charles in Irish affairs, was soon exhibited by 
 a striking example. The King made a solemn promise in 
 reply to a remonstrance from Ireland addressed to him, that 
 the confiscations in Connaught should not proceed, on the 
 technical pretence which had been made for them ; he added 
 that a prescription of sixty years should prevail against a claim 
 of the Crown in order to check the continual forfeitures of 
 land; he pledged himself to mitigate the tests imposed on 
 "recusants"; and he received ,120,000 a great sum for the 
 Ireland of that age as the consideration for what were called 
 his "Graces." The grant had been made contingent on the
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 135 
 
 ratification of the " Graces " by Parliament ; but, with his usual 
 duplicity, Charles, having got the money, failed to perform 
 his part of the bargain, and no Parliament was summoned. 
 In 1633 Strafford was sent to Ireland; the Viceroyalty of that 
 most remarkable man forms a memorable passage in Irish 
 History. The Irish policy of the great despotic statesman had, 
 as we have said, much in common with that which Surrey 
 had proposed a century before to Henry VIII. Strafford 
 wished to make the King absolutely uncontrolled in Ireland, 
 and practically to subjugate the island by another conquest. 
 For this purpose he largely increased the Irish army; and if 
 this force was to be employed against English liberty it was 
 also to uphold in Ireland the rule of the sword. Strafford, too, 
 spurned " the Graces " aside ; he pressed on the work of 
 spoliation in Connaught, with a determination and constancy 
 that bore resistance down ; and there can be little doubt that 
 many other parts of Ireland were marked out " for his majestic 
 rapine." At the same time he laid a weighty and levelling 
 hand on all orders of ruling men in the island ; the Council at 
 the Castle, Nobles, Prelates, Judges, and leaders of the colonial 
 caste, bowed submissively to his imperious will ; "the King," he 
 boasted with reason, "could do what he pleased in Ireland." 
 And Stratford, like Thomas Cromwell in England, saw how 
 a Parliament could be made to carry out his work ; thrusting 
 aside the fears of his weak master he twice assembled the Irish 
 Parliament ; and if he induced it to pass some salutary laws, he 
 played its discordant factions against each other, and com- 
 pelled it to be his accomplice in promoting arbitrary power. 
 The Viceroy even went so far as to attempt to enforce religious 
 conformity against the Presbyterians, and to prop up Angli- 
 canism by fresh penalties, the least statesmanlike of all his 
 acts. Ireland was kept for years under a stern despotism, 
 maintained by the strong arm, and by a master mind. 
 
 The tyranny of Strafford, severe as it was, brought, never-
 
 1 36 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 theless, good fruits with it. He enforced order with a steady 
 will; he made law obeyed and respected, to a degree never 
 seen in Ireland before. The great despot, too, kept the petty 
 despots under; from the prelate arid the peer to the last 
 settler, the classes, which had domineered in Ireland, found 
 their occupation of wrong gone ; the jackals shrunk from the 
 lordly lion. If he confiscated, on an immense scale, this was 
 done without distinction of blood and creed; the lands of 
 Protestant and Catholic, of Saxon and Celt, were equally grist 
 to his mill; Irishmen had alike to submit to the rights of 
 conquest. If the Church policy of Strafford, too, was bad, 
 especially in irritating the Scotch colonists, devoted adherents 
 of John Knox, he was the first and one of the few Viceroys who 
 made a real effort to reform the flagrant abuses of the Irish 
 Anglican Church ; and many as were his faults, it may be said 
 of him, that he stood supreme above Irish factions, and gave 
 Ireland at least a strong and firm government. Nor can it be 
 doubted that this eminent ruler greatly improved the material 
 state of the island ; he opened sources of commerce, lessened 
 taxation, encouraged agriculture in many ways ; and Ireland 
 owes her linen manufacture to him. The good results were 
 seen in a very short space of time ; the prosperity of Ireland, 
 such as it was, made a marked and even a rapid advance. An 
 historian, by no means partial to Straiford, has thus described 
 what was best in his rule: "Peace, order, obedience and 
 industry distinguished the present period from that of any 
 former administration; the value of land was increased; 
 commerce extended; the customs amounted to almost four 
 times their former sum; the commodities exported from 
 Ireland were twice as much in value as the foreign merchan- 
 dise imported; and shipping was found to have increased 
 even an hundredfold 1 ." 
 
 1 Leland, in. 41.
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 137 
 
 The great Viceroy fell : and the Irish Parliament, which 
 had meekly obeyed his imperious commands, turned suddenly 
 .against him in the hour of peril. It impeached several of 
 Stafford's creatures; agents were despatched to England to 
 remonstrate, and to set forth its grievances. This committee 
 seems to have been in close relation with the popular leaders in 
 the Long Parliament ; it played on the necessities and the fears 
 of the King ; Charles consented, at last, to concede " the 
 Graces" unjustly withheld by a Royal breach of faith. The 
 time for compromise, however, had passed; a frightful ex- 
 plosion in Ireland was about to burst. At the Castle the 
 reins had fallen into the hands of William Parsons and John 
 Borlase; the Lords Justices as their title was were utterly 
 unfit to rule the country, in the season of trouble which now 
 had opened. By this time Scotland had risen against the 
 Crown ; a Scottish army had entered England ; the Long 
 Parliament was in conflict with the King ; in England and in 
 Ireland alike the power of the state appeared greatly weakened. 
 The opportunity was not missed by a knot of men nearly all 
 descendants of chiefs of different degrees, who had lost their 
 lands through the Plantation of Ulster and other confiscations 
 of the two last reigns to strike a blow to regain their pos- 
 sessions, and to stir up a great Irish rising. The soul of the 
 League was Roger O' Moore a scion of the old race which 
 had ruled in Leix ; he had the sympathy at heart of the heir of 
 Tyrone, an exile held in honour at the Court of Spain, in the 
 armies of which he had served with distinction ; and he found 
 associates in O'Neills, Maguires, Macmahons, O'Reillys, Byrnes, 
 representatives of ruined tribes, clans, and septs. The plan 
 of the conspirators was to seize the Castle of Dublin, and to 
 paralyse the Government on the spot ; and then to arouse the 
 Irishry throughout Ulster, to summon them to arms to avenge 
 their wrongs, and to take hold again of their lost lands. The 
 design was favoured by some of the Irish priesthood, and
 
 138 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 perhaps by two obscure men of the Englishry of the Pale ; it 
 received countenance from Spanish statesmen ; and Richelieu, 
 at this moment no friend of England, appears at least to have 
 connived at it. 
 
 The meditated attack on the Castle failed; it had been 
 disclosed by a mere accident ; and two of the rebel chiefs were 
 arrested. But a general rising took place in Ulster; on the 
 night of the 22nd of October 1641, the Irishry sprang up and 
 swept over the province, from the borders of Armagh to the 
 hills of Donegal, The forts, which had been constructed as 
 centres of defence, were suddenly seized in different places ; 
 some of the ftw towns that were rising were captured; the 
 colonists and their families were driven from their homes in 
 many of the districts which had been lately settled. It has 
 been alleged by a series of writers that a great and preconcerted 
 massacre occurred of men, women and children of the British 
 name; the number has varied from 300,000 to 50,000 victims. 
 But this is a myth devised by passion and self-interest; un- 
 questionably much that was atrocious was done, as has always 
 happened in crises of the kind : there were cruel scenes of 
 revenge and blood ; but the deaths of the settlers caused by 
 violence seem not to have been more than a few thousand, 
 though doubtless numbers perished from other causes, cold, ex- 
 posure, and the hardships of winter. It should be added that, 
 whatever the reason, all of Scottish blood were spared at first 
 by the rebels ; Sir Phelim O'Neill, one of their chief leaders, 
 announced that they were in arms in the name of the King ; 
 these two facts alone tell strongly against the theory that there 
 was anything that can be called a general massacre'. On the 
 other hand the colonists, stricken down at first, had ere long 
 
 1 It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to examine the question of the 
 alleged massacre of 1641. [The subject has been exhaustively and ably 
 treated by Miss Hickson, Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, or the 
 Massacres <?/" 1641. i vols. 1884.]
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 139 
 
 stood savagely at bay ; and, after the fashion of a dominant 
 race, they were guilty of barbarities of all kinds, probably equal 
 to any yet inflicted on them. And when armed troops at last 
 appeared in the field, the conduct of their leaders seems to 
 have been such as it was in other Irish rebellions; the country 
 was harried far and wide ; the insurgents were slaughtered 
 without mercy, or regard to infancy, sex, and age : the Irishry 
 were treated as mere beasts of prey. The rebellion followed 
 the course of recent confiscations ; it extended into Wicklow, 
 Longford, and one or two other counties, which had been 
 scenes of recent "plantations." 
 
 The rising of the Celts of Ulster soon received the support 
 of another but very different movement. The old Englishry 
 of the Pale and in other parts of Ireland were, we have seen, 
 nearly all Catholics; they had suffered from the religious 
 persecution of late years ; they were exasperated by the severe 
 measures taken against the Catholics of England by the Long 
 Parliament. An Act of that Assembly, wholly unlawful, and 
 trampling on the rights of the Irish Parliament, which offered 
 lands in Ireland to such "adventurers" as would advance 
 money to put down the Ulster rebellion, had alarmed and 
 exasperated some of their leading men; the Lords Justices 
 had grossly affronted several Lords of the Pale by hinting that 
 they were in the plot of O'Moore; they had refused to 
 convene the Irish Parliament, which would have at least 
 listened to complaints of grievances ; and a widespread feeling 
 of panic was abroad, exhibited in stories of hideous portents, 
 that Catholicism in Ireland and the Catholic name were to be 
 extirpated by a Puritan crusade. Many Catholics of the Pale 
 at last rose in arms, and many of the Catholic Englishry 
 in other counties; but they professed, and doubtless felt, 
 they were loyal to the Crown, and they rose only to defend 
 their religion, threatened, as they not unjustly believed, with 
 destruction. A considerable irregular force was arrayed and
 
 1 40 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 placed under the command of Preston, a scion of one of the 
 Houses of the Pale, who had seen much service; and the 
 insurrection spread over parts of Leinster and Munster. 
 Meanwhile the rebels of Ulster had passed under the control 
 of Owen Roe O'Neill, a kinsman of the illustrious Tyrone, and 
 a distinguished soldier in the army of Spain ; and O'Moore 
 evidently a very able man had the address to bring together 
 the leaders of both risings, and to persuade them to act in 
 concert in the war. The "armies" of the Irishry and the 
 Englishry thus nominally coalesced, though they had scarcely 
 a single object in common ; and their chiefs were completely 
 separated in their aspirations and views. 
 
 The insurrectionary forces, though mainly composed of 
 peasants hardly armed, and the rudest levies, had soon 
 swarmed over large tracts of the country, keeping, as a rule, 
 divided from each other in the field. The resistance they 
 encountered was fitful and weak, for events had well-nigh 
 paralysed the power of the state. The Lords Justices made 
 scarcely a sign, and have been charged with letting the 
 rebellion go on in order to reap a crop of forfeitures; the 
 Royal army, commanded by Ormond, a most noble-minded 
 servant of Charles, was deplorably small, and full of discontent ; 
 the Long Parliament, if burning to strike down the " accursed 
 Irish Papists," whatever their race, was engaged in a bitter 
 quarrel with the King, and was unable to act with effect in 
 Ireland. Civil war raged in three of the Irish provinces, 
 in a desultory fashion, for many months; Connaught alone 
 was kept in comparative peace by Clanricarde, the head of the 
 ancient De Burghs, and one of the best and truest of the 
 Cavaliers. The struggle was still often marked by atrocious 
 deeds, when Protestant and Catholic, Saxon and Celt, en- 
 countered each other in irregular strife : these scenes formed a 
 hideous war of race and religion. But when anything like real 
 war was conducted, Preston and O'Neill kept their troops
 
 v.] From the deatJi of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 141 
 
 under, upheld discipline, always gave quarter; Ormond, too, 
 acted as became a soldier ; Lord Inchiquin alone, in command 
 for the Crown in Munster, gave a free hand to the excesses of 
 his men, nearly all of the colonial Englishry, and allowed their 
 evil passions to run riot. The conflict disclosed no events of 
 interest ; there were two or three sieges of walled towns ; but 
 nothing worthy of the name of a battle was fought ; the scene 
 was one of petty skirmishes, general confusion, and bloodshed. 
 Numbers, however, and enthusiasm told by degrees : the Royal 
 army, and the scanty levies sent in driblets, from time to time, 
 by the Long Parliament, gradually lost their hold over five- 
 sixths of the island, though they retained possession of many of 
 the towns and forts. By the summer of 1643, tne rebel forces 
 were masters of by far the greatest part of Ireland. 
 
 A remarkable effort had, meanwhile, been made to give the 
 two-fold rising coherence, and even a constitutional aspect. 
 The rebellion in Ulster, we have seen, had had the support of 
 some of the Irish priesthood; and the Catholic Primate of 
 Armagh had described it as just. This was a significant 
 prelude to what was to follow ; a synod of the Catholic clergy 
 and gentry met in Kilkenny in May 1642 ; and an Assembly, 
 professing to represent the Catholics of both races, in all 
 parts of Ireland, met also, in the same place, in October. 
 It deserves notice that this Convention, which spoke for the 
 first time in the name of an immense majority of the Irish 
 people, was brought together by sacerdotal influence ; nothing 
 could prove more the power of the priesthood, and how even 
 the germs of Irish national life, which in no age had a chance 
 of being developed, had long before this been wholly ex- 
 tinguished. The Assembly it strongly resembled in form the 
 General Assembly of the Kirk in Scotland was composed of 
 clerical and lay members ; it called itself the " Confederation 
 of the Irish Catholics" ; it assumed most of the authority of a 
 real Parliament, and of the executive government of the state.
 
 I42 Ireland. [C HAP - 
 
 It ruled through a Supreme Council, with subordinate pro 
 vincial and lesser Councils; the Supreme Council took into 
 its hands the general direction and control of the war, and 
 nearly the whole administration of civil affairs. The Con- 
 federates repudiated with indignant emphasis the charge that 
 they were, in any sense, rebels; "Irishmen, unanimous for 
 God, for King, for Country," such was the device on their 
 common seal they declared that they were in arms only to 
 defend the rights of the Church, of the Crown, of Ireland ; and 
 while they announced themselves loyal subjects of Charles, 
 they avowed their hostility to the Long Parliament and 
 especially to its Puritan zealots flinging back on these the 
 charge of rebellion. They prepared lists of grievances and 
 demands to be laid before the King ; and at the same time the 
 Council divided Ireland into four districts to be held by 
 its troops, and sent envoys to Foreign Powers France and 
 Austria were the chief of these to seek assistance, or, at least, 
 sympathy. 
 
 Had the Confederates, at this juncture, been swayed by a. 
 single commanding and able ruler, and been firmly united in 
 mind, they possibly might have obtained terms for Ireland, 
 which would have made a change in her subsequent history. 
 The civil war in England had gone against the Parliament ; its 
 authority in Ireland was very weak ; and if Charles cared little 
 about any of his Irish subjects, he probably preferred the 
 Catholic Irish at heart, to English Puritan and Scotch Presby- 
 terian settlers, even if these formed a new "English interest." 
 Ormond too, inclined strongly towards the old Englishry ; he 
 had, in fact, kinsmen in the Confederate ranks ; Clanricarde, a 
 Catholic himself, held the same sentiments; and both nobles, 
 foremost among the servants of the Crown, detested the men 
 in power at the Castle, and had no liking for the dominant 
 colonial caste in Ireland. A settlement, therefore, might have 
 been effected, which would have undone some, at least, of the
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 143 
 
 wrongs of the past ; the Long Parliament might have accepted 
 a compromise, for its power was, at present, in the greatest 
 danger. But there was no Tyrone in the Supreme Council, no 
 one deserving the name of a true statesman ; and once more 
 the divisions, which so often have wrecked Irish hopes, de- 
 prived the Confederates of weight and strength, though in this 
 instance Celtic want of insight was not chiefly to blame. The 
 sacerdotal party thought only of the claims of the Church; 
 wished to establish it in complete ascendency ; aimed at 
 making Ireland a satellite of Rome, a Catholic outpost against 
 Protestant England. The old Englishry sought merely to 
 obtain a mitigation of the religious tests, to secure freedom of 
 worship and just government : they had a traditional aversion 
 to the Celtic Irishry ; and they condemned to a man the 
 rising of Ulster, and the deeds of blood which had been the 
 consequence. The Irish Celts and their leaders, on the other 
 hand, had their eyes fixed on their tribal possessions ; they 
 loved their ruined altars, but their hearts were set on being 
 masters again of their lost lands ; and they had bitterly 
 resented a resolution made by the Supreme Council, which 
 dashed these hopes. The Confederacy, formidable as its 
 appearance was, was thus really little better than a rope of sand, 
 which an accident, or even a slight strain, might dissolve, or 
 at least render of not much practical use. 
 
 A truce or cessation, as it was called, was made between 
 the Confederates and the King, in the autumn of 1643, to the 
 intense indignation of the men in power at Westminster. 
 Negotiations went on for many months, interrupted by oc- 
 casional skirmishes in the field and by the conflict of race and 
 creed continuing to rage in many parts of Ireland. Extra- 
 vagant demands were made on Charles by agents of the 
 Catholic Irish League and of the Protestant settlers, significant 
 of the passions burning in their hearts; but these were 
 dismissed and came to nothing. The position of the King
 
 144 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 had become difficult in the extreme ; to yield to demands of 
 Irish Catholics would increase the anger of Puritan England, 
 nay irritate his most devoted friends ; every allowance certainly 
 is to be made for him. But nothing can excuse the perfidious 
 selfishness of his conduct, at this crisis of Irish affairs ; it was a 
 principal cause of his unhappy fate. His object was to induce 
 the Confederacy to give him armed support, and yet to 
 concede as little as possible to them, and he employed 
 Ormond, now Lord Lieutenant, to make what he called " the 
 best bargain " for him, and to treat openly on this basis. But, 
 seeking as it were to have two strings to his bow, he empowered 
 a favourite, Glamorgan, to deal in secret with the Catholic 
 Irish, and to offer large terms, in the hope of gaining their 
 assistance, in any event. This Kingcraft seemed, for a 
 moment, successful; the Confederates trusting to Royal pro- 
 mises sent a contingent of troops that landed in England, and 
 made preparations to send more ; and though these auxiliaries 
 were destroyed by Fairfax, Protestant England and the Parlia- 
 ment were long kept in dread of an invasion of Papist Irishry, 
 more abhorred than savages, and stained, as it was noised 
 abroad, with the blood of a hideous massacre. Meanwhile, 
 Ormond, loyal and honest, proposed a settlement which went 
 no further than to secure a kind of toleration for the Irish 
 Catholics, and a limited freedom of Catholic worship; Gla- 
 morgan held out brilliant but indistinct hopes, and made offers 
 more ample than those of Ormond ; but neither the one nor the 
 other fell in with the demands of the extreme Confederate 
 parties, or agreed to an Irish Catholic ascendency, or to a revo- 
 lution in the ownership of the land. Ere long Glamorgan's 
 dealings were found out ; Charles instantly disowned them in 
 fear and trembling at the anger of the incensed Parliament ; 
 and as Naseby had by this time been lost, and the cause of the 
 King was on the verge of ruin, a majority of the Confederates 
 thought that all that was to be done was to accept the terms
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 145 
 
 of Ormond, almost illusory as they were. They had gained 
 scarcely anything, and had provoked the indignation of the 
 great mass of Englishmen ; there can be no stronger proof of 
 the weakness and absence of wisdom, and of the divisions, 
 which prevailed in their councils. 
 
 The "Peace of 1646," as it was called, however, did not 
 bring the civil war in Ireland to an end. Charles, now a 
 captive in the hands of the Scots, let Ormond know that he 
 would not be bound by it he feared Presbyterian and Puritan 
 wrath the men of violence in the Confederacy protested 
 against it. The priestly party had, for some time, been 
 backed by Rinuccini, a nuncio from Rome, and a repre- 
 sentative of ultramontane policy, and of the Catholic revival, 
 its passions, its hopes; and Rinuccini had no notion of con- 
 senting to the terms of Ormond for Catholic Ireland. He 
 cared nothing for the cause of a heretic king; he had regarded 
 Glamorgan as an empty boaster ; he was determined to secure 
 Ireland for the Church and the Catholic Powers of Europe. 
 Drawing the priests and their followers in his wake, he flung 
 himself into the arms of Owen Roe O'Neill and of the insur- 
 rectionary Celts of Ulster, indignant to a man that their claims 
 to the land had been disregarded in the negotiations of late 
 years. A sudden turn in the war had just given O'Neill 
 extraordinary influence in the Confederate councils. Monroe, 
 an officer in command of the Parliamentary forces in Ulster, had 
 sought an opportunity to attack O'Neill ; on the 5th of June 
 1646, he crossed the Blackwater, not far from the scene of 
 Tyrone's victory at Yellow Ford, and fell on the Irish leader 
 near the village of Benburb. He was at the head of some 
 7000 men ; O'Neill was, it seems, inferior in numbers ; but he 
 contrived to keep his enemy all day in check, until he had 
 called in an outlying detachment; and he skilfully assailed 
 Monroe with decisive effect, as that commander was about to 
 retreat. The army of Monroe, nearly all Scots, fighting 
 
 M. I. 10
 
 146 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 hopelessly, with a river at its back, appears to have been 
 almost destroyed; its remains fled in utter rout, far beyond 
 Armagh, leaving the Irishry masters of the greatest part of 
 Ulster. 
 
 This victory raised Irish hopes to the highest pitch of 
 daring; Rinuccini and his adherents beheld a vision of 
 Ireland saved by a Catholic Holy War; O'Neill and his 
 Celts thought the time had come when the land would be set 
 free from the stranger. The moderate party in the Con- 
 federacy was swept away; amidst Te Deums in Catholic 
 places of worship, execrations of heresy and its votaries, and 
 wild gatherings of the Irishry in arms, the war broke out 
 fiercer than ever, and spread far and wide. Preston and 
 O'Neill continued in command ; they approached Dublin 
 with a motley force of probably 20,000 men, much larger 
 than any which could be opposed to it. The capital was for 
 a time in real danger : but Preston and O'Neill disliked each 
 other ; their troops were men of different races and thoughts ; 
 Irish divisions and jealousies fought once more on the side of 
 the enemies of the Irish cause, and paralysed the arms that 
 sought to uphold it. The menacing demonstration came to 
 nothing: a long series of negotiations followed, in which 
 Ormond endeavoured in vain to induce the Confederates to 
 accept the Peace. His resolution was ere long taken : it was 
 worthy of his noble and high-minded character. The Parlia- 
 ment and the Army were now supreme in England ; reinforce- 
 ments were being sent by degrees to uphold the Protestant 
 name in Ireland, and to make English authority felt ; the King 
 was a discrowned prisoner, weaving the web of guile, in 
 which he was to be fatally meshed. Ormond had no thought 
 of leaving Ireland a prey to Rinuccini and rebellious Celts in 
 arms; of blotting out the English and Scotch settlements; 
 of making the island a scene of turbulent anarchy ; and as he 
 could rule no longer himself, he handed his trust over to the
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 147 
 
 rulers in power. He resigned the Sword of State to Commis- 
 sioners named by the Parliament, and left Ireland still a loyal 
 servant of the Crown. 
 
 At this critical juncture the tide turned quickly and strongly 
 against the Confederates in the field. Dublin had been placed 
 in the hands of Michael Jones, a stout and able Puritan soldier ; 
 he succeeded in mustering a respectable force, and he com- 
 pletely defeated Preston near the borders of Meath. Mean- 
 while Inchiquin, a scion of the great race of O'Brien, who had 
 gone over to the side of the Parliament, had stormed the holy 
 city of Cashel; in a short time he routed the Confederate 
 Taaffe, in a combat amidst the Tipperary wilds. These 
 defeats, and the growing power of the Houses at Westminster, 
 placed the Moderate party in the Confederacy in the ascendant 
 again; Rinuccini and O'Neill resisted in vain; negotiations 
 were opened once more with Ormond and with Henrietta 
 Maria, the Queen of Charles, both at this time in France. A 
 treaty was made towards the close of 1 648 l containing some- 
 what larger concessions than that which had proved abortive 
 two years before ; and Commissioners of Trust, as they were 
 called, were appointed to see its provisions executed. This 
 compact was accepted by the great body of the Confederates 
 as all they could reasonably expect; Ormond returned to 
 Ireland, and a large part of the Confederate forces united with a 
 few thousand Royalists, still willing to follow their old leader ; 
 the whole being placed under Ormond's command. The 
 execution of the King ere long followed ; and this tragic event 
 gave a great increase to the power of Ormond thus strangely 
 restored. The old Englishry, who had never lost their attach- 
 ment to the Crown, took up arms again in its cause, and shook 
 off all contact with rebel Celts; Inchiquin returned to his 
 former allegiance, and appeared in the field with his Munster 
 
 1 It was not actually signed until 14 January, 1649, but it had been 
 arranged some time before. 
 
 10 2
 
 14 8 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 levies ; and Ormond soon found himself at the head of forces 
 formidable in numbers at least A thrill of loyalty had passed 
 over Ireland, and had produced great and unexpected results. 
 Rinuccini had left Ireland by this time; he had failed to 
 annex the island to the Holy See. Owen Roe O'Neill, how- 
 ever, remained; it ought to have been his first step to join 
 Ormond and the Confederates in the war. The English 
 Parliament had marked down his Celts for vengeance, and 
 had disposed beforehand of Irish lands; he should have made 
 common cause against the common foe. But he bitterly 
 resented the late peace and the attitude of the old Englishry ; 
 no provision had been made for the forfeited lands ; he kept 
 aloof from his former allies, nay negotiated with Parlia- 
 mentary men in England a passage of history that remains 
 obscure. Meanwhile Ormond and his forces overran the 
 country ; even the Scots of Ulster had declared for the King, 
 for the tragedy at Whitehall had stirred all Scotsmen ; Derry 
 and Dublin were the only towns of any size that held out for 
 the Regicide Commonwealth; the prospects of Charles II 
 seemed so promising that his arrival in Ireland was daily 
 expected. Ormond laid siege to Dublin in the summer of 
 1649; and his success was, at Westminster, deemed to be 
 certain. In an attempt, however, to cut off supplies from the 
 Bay, he extended his army, and was struck down by Jones ; 
 his retreat from the capital was the first signal of the discom- 
 fiture of the Confederate cause. It was now known that 
 Cromwell was on his way to Ireland; Owen Roe O'Neill 
 turned at last to Ormond, and offered to unite with him 
 against the dreaded invasion. But the divisions of Irishmen 
 had done their work; the opportunity, as had happened so 
 often, was lost; a terrible hour for Ireland was at hand. 
 O'Neill died a few weeks afterwards ; he was certainly a brave 
 and accomplished warrior; he is still a hero of the traditions 
 of the Irish Celt; but he was evidently devoid of statesmanlike
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 149 
 
 wisdom. He is largely to blame for the disunion that did so 
 much to wreck the cause of his countrymen in the long civil 
 war ; he seems, like so many Celts, to have been carried away 
 by fancies, and to have been unable to understand hard facts 1 . 
 Cromwell landed in Dublin in August 1649, at tne head of 
 10,000 men of the New Model, the invincible soldiers of 
 Naseby and Preston. In justice to a great ruler of men it is 
 necessary to remember from what point of view he regarded 
 Ireland and Irish affairs. A Puritan of the sternest type, he 
 hated Irish Catholics, whether Celts or Saxons ; he had 
 witnessed a combination to make Ireland a place of arms for 
 the Catholic Powers, a centre of the detested influence of 
 Rome. But, in addition, he believed that Ulster had been 
 the scene of a general massacre of the British settlers; the 
 Protestant caste in Ireland, in his eyes, was the only order of 
 men that could be true to England, nay capable of being a 
 civilised race ; he knew that England had been threatened by 
 an invasion of the abhorred Irishry, during many years; the 
 great majority of Irishmen were resisting England to the last 2 . 
 He had resolved, therefore, to lay a heavy hand on Ireland ; 
 to exact a terrible vengeance, righteous in his belief; to be 
 the chosen instrument of the wrath of God, in punishing an 
 accursed and rebellious people. His feelings, in a word, were 
 those of the Englishmen of his day who had devoted their 
 lives and swords to the Puritan cause, indeed of the great body 
 of Englishmen, whose hatred and contempt of the Irish had 
 
 1 The confused and complicated events of the civil war in Ireland from 
 1641 to 1649, are better described by Mr Gardiner than by any other 
 historian. Leland's narrative is also good. For the feelings of the Irish 
 Celts, see two remarkable ballads by Thomas Davis and Sir Gavan Duffy 
 in The Spirit of the Nation, u and 28. 
 
 2 For Cromwell's views on Ireland, at this conjuncture, see Mr Gardiner's 
 History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, I. pp. 1.59-40, 147-8, and a 
 remarkable letter of Cromwell, pp. 163-4.
 
 150 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 only increased ; they were shared by his army of fierce zealots ; 
 and the fanaticism of his men was, no doubt, quickened by 
 the prospect of a rich spoil of Irish land. 
 
 The Puritan army had reached Drogheda in the first week 
 of September. The place, a walled town, of some strength, 
 was held by Sir Arthur Aston, a Royalist officer, with about 
 3000 men, in a great measure English. Cromwell's batteries 
 ere long effected a breach : the besieged, however, held 
 stubbornly out ; a fierce assault was made on a shattered 
 rampart ; and Cromwell passed the word round, that there was 
 to be no quarter. A horrible scene of bloodshed followed; 
 Aston and many of his troops were slaughtered ; little mercy 
 was shown to the Irishry in the town; Catholic friars were 
 seized and killed in cold blood. Having struck a blow meant 
 to deal terror, Cromwell marched southwards along the coast ; 
 he had the command of the sea, and knew its value ; he was 
 aware of the obstacles to an advance inland, and of the dangers 
 of the Irish climate to English soldiers, proved by the ex- 
 perience of many wars; and he had determined, with true 
 military insight, not to penetrate into the interior until he had 
 made his power felt. He was before Wexford in the early days 
 of October ; the townsmen, it is said, had done much injury to 
 English shipping by acts of piracy; at all events they were 
 nearly all " Irish Papists." The place fell mainly through an 
 act of treason, but the atrocities of Drogheda occurred again ; 
 the butchery that went on seems to have been deliberate. 
 Friars were also, in this instance, marked down for vengeance; 
 the crucifixes they held out, in hopes of mercy, were signs of 
 idolatry in Puritan eyes ; they were pitilessly slain as the 
 most hateful of men. "God," wrote Cromwell to Speaker 
 Lenthall, "in His righteous justice brought a just judgment 
 upon them." 
 
 The deeds done at Drogheda and Wexford were of the 
 most ruthless kind ; Puritan wrath was certainly one of Crom-
 
 v.] From tlie death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 1 5 1 
 
 well's motives. But they were not without example in the 
 wars of that age ; it was necessary to strike a terrible blow, in 
 the existing state of affairs in Ireland; and as the English 
 troops of Aston were the first to suffer, military ends were 
 perhaps the principal object. Be this as it may, the cruel fate 
 of Drogheda caused the surrender of many fortified towns; 
 that of Wexford opened the south of Leinster to Cromwell. 
 The victorious army now marched inland ; the campaign that 
 followed was not without changes of fortune. Cromwell was 
 forced to draw off from the walls of Waterford ; and though 
 Kilkenny fell to his arms, a stern resistance was offered by 
 Clonmel, where Hugh O'Neill, worthy of his illustrious race, 
 kept the conqueror at bay for more than two months. Whether 
 these checks are to be ascribed to the courage of despair, 
 aroused by a struggle of life and death, exasperated by ferocious 
 passions, or more probably to the great difficulty of conducting 
 war in an intricate country from the days of Strongbow to 
 that of Mountjoy the chief obstacle to invasion from England 
 the ultimate result was scarcely retarded. The task of Crom- 
 well in Ireland was ere long completed; the ever recurring 
 divisions and feuds of Irishmen contributed to the event, as 
 had so often happened. The impulse which had united 
 Ormond and the Confederates, for a time, soon lost its force 
 and gave way under the stress of defeat; the Royalists, for 
 the most part Protestants, had little in common with Catholics 
 in arms, opposed to them in the field but yesterday ; and this 
 was notably the case with the levies of Inchiquin, composed, 
 as we have seen, of English settlers, and hated by the 
 Catholics since the storm of Cashel. A great defection took 
 place in Munster ; thousands of the troops of Inchiquin and 
 Ormond went over to the Puritan camp; the hopes of 
 Charles II in Ireland were suddenly quenched; the Con- 
 federacy once more was almost broken up. Cromwell took 
 his departure from Ireland in May 1650; he had, as always,
 
 I52 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 shown himself to be a great soldier, if humanity shudders at 
 Wexford and Drogheda. 
 
 A large part of Ireland had now been subdued, but 
 
 Ormond had still an army in the field ; it was not impossible 
 
 still to defend the line of the Shannon and the wilds of 
 
 Connaught. But Ormond was a Protestant and a servant of 
 
 the young King; the war in Ireland had aroused the worst 
 
 religious passions, especially since the advent of Cromwell; 
 
 the conduct of Charles in Scotland, where he had declared 
 
 himself the instrument of the Presbyterians in power, had filled 
 
 the Irish Catholics with terror and despair ; and a new schism 
 
 divided their councils. The sacerdotal party came once more to 
 
 the front; a Catholic Bishop appeared in the field and fell, 
 
 preaching a Holy War with his dying lips; Catholic priests 
 
 assembled their flocks in thousands, denouncing Ormond and 
 
 the " Dagon of loyalty " ; Catholic Ireland was told to stand 
 
 aloof from a false king, from heretics in the guise of Royalists, 
 
 from Protestants whatever side they took in the war ; and in 
 
 these circumstances it was but too evident that the contest 
 
 could not be long maintained. Ormond was driven from 
 
 Limerick, where he had hoped to make a stand, by a rabble 
 
 maddened by these wild appeals ; and after parleying with the 
 
 Confederates for some time, he returned to France feeling all 
 
 was lost. His office was conferred by Charles on Clanricarde: 
 
 an Irish Catholic, it was hoped, could yet do something with 
 
 Irish Catholics ; and Clanricarde made strenuous efforts to win 
 
 over the Moderates of the League to the side of the King. 
 
 The priestly leaders, however, prevailed ; they actually offered 
 
 Ireland, as a kind of prize, to the Duke of Lorraine, and were 
 
 indignant at the frustration of their plan. Meanwhile Ireton, 
 
 who had taken command of Cromwell's army, had advanced to 
 
 the Shannon; Athlone was captured, and Limerick fell after 
 
 another noble effort of Hugh O'Neill ; and Galway was before 
 
 long surrendered, the military operations of the Irish having
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 153 
 
 been almost paralysed. The civil war in Ireland had come to 
 an end ; the catastrophe had been accelerated by one of the 
 worst instances of Irish dissension that history records. 
 
 Ireland lay prostrate at the feet of Cromwell ; the doom of 
 the great Puritan was sternly enforced. Some of the leaders of 
 the rebellion of 1641 had perished; some remained to fall into 
 the hands of the hangman. The religion of the great body of 
 the Irish people was proscribed, as idolatry to be purged out 
 of the land ; the celebration of the Mass was made a crime ; 
 not a few priests who tried to live among their flocks, and to 
 do their sacred office in secret, were carried off to the West 
 Indies and sold as slaves. This was the fate, too, of many 
 of the Irishry who had appeared in arms; merchants from 
 Bristol contracted for the odious traffic of shipping them to 
 Barbadoes for the planters; hundreds were doubtless thrown to 
 the sharks on the voyage; but the descendants of the exiles 
 are still known as what are called "the low whites" of the 
 island. The lot, however, of the great body of the Confederate 
 forces was less wretched; it was shared by numbers of Irish 
 Catholics who could no longer live in the land of their birth. 
 Ever since the days of Tyrone and Desmond Irish soldiers had 
 made their way to the Continent ; it was deemed good policy 
 by the English Council of State, to encourage an emigration of 
 this kind and to drain away elements that might become 
 perilous. From 30,000 to 40,000 men, who had served, for 
 the most part, in the late contest, were thus allowed to depart 
 from Ireland; they flocked to the camps of foreign Powers; 
 and they formed the first contingent of the host of Irish exiles, 
 bitter enemies of the British name for more than a century and 
 a half. 
 
 The subjugation of Ireland inspired Cromwell with a 
 project of colonisation and of settling the land, more general 
 and complete than had been ever thought of. The Long 
 Parliament, we have seen, had offered forfeited lands to
 
 154 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 "adventurers" who had advanced moneys in the Irish war; 
 the Puritan army was formidable and large; and unhappily 
 nearly the whole of the Irish people had been in arms against 
 the newborn Commonwealth. Protestant Royalists had fought 
 for Charles with Ormond; even the Irish Presbyterians had 
 resisted Cromwell; the old Englishry and the Irishry, all 
 Catholics, with few exceptions, had been in the field against 
 Puritan England, for long years ; the Irishry of the Celtic race 
 in Ulster were stained with the blood of 1641. Enormous 
 confiscations had been already made; Cromwell resolved to 
 " plant " the " adventurers " and his victorious soldiery in these 
 tracts in Leinster, Munster, and Ulster; and to compel the 
 "rebel" owners of land to take refuge in Connaught. The 
 forfeited lands in four counties were set apart for the use of 
 the Commonwealth ; those in eighteen were to be bestowed 
 on the "adventurers" and the Puritan host; those in seven 
 were to be given to the English army at home, and to the 
 levies of Munster which had deserted the King. The lands 
 were to be allotted at nominal prices, to pay the " adventurers " 
 and the arrears of the army ; the portion of those who had lost 
 their possessions was to be " Hell or Connaught," a phrase 
 that has come down to this time. Spoliation, on this gigantic 
 scale, was veiled under a semblance of law; "Courts of 
 Claims " were set up, in which those who could prove " con- 
 stant affection" to England since 1641 were not to be ejected 
 from their lands the judges, be it observed, were Puritans ; 
 but a test of this kind was well-nigh mockery. About 40,000 
 new owners of land were thus to be scattered over three-fourths 
 of Ireland, and even, to a certain extent, in Connaught ; for 
 that province at last was not exempted from large forfeitures. 
 But it should be observed, as had so often occurred before, the 
 owners of land were alone to be disturbed ; the cultivators of 
 the soil were to remain on it, hewers of wood and drawers of 
 water foi Puritan masters.
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 155 
 
 The Confiscation was carried out by degrees from 1652 to 
 1654. The Royalist Protestant owners were largely spared; 
 but numbers of the old Catholic Englishry and of the Irish 
 Celts were deprived of their estates, and were, as it was called, 
 "transplanted" to Connaught. Millions of acres were trans- 
 ferred by these means ; descendants of barons of the Pale and 
 of Irish chiefs were proscribed and ruined by equal wrong; 
 the distinction of blood between the two races was thus 
 lessened, and that of religion was made more marked ; all 
 had been condemned as " Papists " and " rebels." Thousands 
 of "adventurers" and soldiers were poured into these districts, 
 all Protestants, probably for the most part Puritans, and 
 animated by hatred and scorn of the Irishry in their midst. 
 The method by which the settlement was at last completed 
 curiously illustrates the ideas and sentiments of the time. 
 The "adventurers" and the soldiers were " planted " together 
 for the sake probably of common defence ; and the lands were 
 to be distributed to the soldiers by lot, for they had announced 
 that they "would rather take a lott upon a barren mountain 
 from the Lord, than a portion in the most fruitful valley of 
 their own choice." Unfortunately, however, when the trial 
 came the military saints rose up in wrath; the lands to be 
 divided were of most unequal value ; those whose lot fell on a 
 bad heritage quarrelled with those whose lot fell upon a good ; 
 they had ceased to approve of the ways of Providence. After 
 long disputes and troubles, a very able man, Dr Petty, was 
 selected by Henry Cromwell he had been made Deputy by 
 the Protector to carry out the scheme of colonisation in a 
 rational way. Petty made an excellent survey of Ireland, 
 a remarkable performance for the seventeenth century and 
 distributed most of the forfeited lands among the new colonists 
 in tolerably just proportions, and with a due regard to value. 
 
 The results of Cromwell's settlement of the land of Ireland 
 must be noticed when, a few years afterwards, it was modified
 
 I5 6 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 to a considerable extent. Enough here to say that in large 
 parts of Ireland it placed a ruling caste, in the main Puritan, 
 and almost wholly of English descent, on the neck of the 
 Catholic Irish people; and apart from special causes of 
 decline such a scheme of landed relations could not really 
 flourish. Yet there is much evidence that Ireland made 
 material progress in the years that followed ; though probably 
 this, in a great degree, was another illusion of English states- 
 men. It is true that, except during the shock of the 
 Cromwellian storm, the country was less ruined and harried 
 than in the wars of Elizabeth's reign; yet civilisation was 
 generally effaced where it had begun to make its influence 
 felt ; a number of towns and villages were destroyed ; 
 a third part of the population, it has been said, disappeared 
 again. In circumstances like these the establishment of a 
 strong Government for Cromwell ruled in Ireland with a 
 high hand the introduction of a new breed of colonists, and 
 the advance of agriculture in their train, above all the en- 
 forcement of order and law, seem to have produced benefi- 
 cent results, as regards the resources and the wealth of the 
 country ; these certainly increased, as in the time of Straflford. 
 The peace, indeed, was the peace of oppression and despair; 
 signs were soon seen that it could not be lasting; the ashes 
 were burning beneath the surface. Nevertheless Clarendon, 
 an unwilling witness, thus described some effects of Cromwell's 
 rule in Ireland ; " there were many buildings raised for beauty, 
 as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees, and 
 fences and enclosures raised throughout the kingdom, purchases 
 made by one from another, at very valuable rates, and all 
 other conveyances and settlements executed, as in a kingdom 
 at peace with itself 1 ." 
 
 Cromwell effected one great Constitutional change in the 
 Government of Ireland deserving special notice. The Long 
 
 1 See Macaulay's essay on Sir William Temple, n. 12, ed. 1854.
 
 v.] From the death of Elisabeth to the Restoration. 157 
 
 Parliament, we have seen, had violated the rights of the Irish 
 Parliament ; the Irish Parliament had had, for years, a strong 
 Catholic minority in it. This state of things was not to be 
 endured by the great Puritan despot of England; besides, 
 Cromwell doubtless perceived that the parliamentary unity of 
 the Three Kingdoms was necessary to secure for England a 
 leading place in Europe. He did away with the Irish Parlia- 
 ment, but summoned a certain number of members, of course 
 of the dominant race and faith, to represent Ireland in his 
 reformed House of Commons; he was thus the precursor of 
 the Union of another age. His rule in Ireland continued to 
 be the stern tyranny it was from the first, but not a murmur 
 of discontent was heard ; the land, we have said, was at peace 
 under the Puritan sword. Henry Cromwell, who remained at 
 the head of Irish affairs, was a right-minded and humane man ; 
 he restrained the fanaticism of his Council to a certain extent ; 
 but the great mass of the Irish people was kept in a state of 
 abject submission. The revolution, which after the death of 
 Cromwell led to the Restoration of Charles II, ran a course, 
 in Ireland, somewhat like that in England. There was no 
 Rump like that of the Long Parliament, but the army and 
 its leading chiefs were divided; Ludlow, who had been ap- 
 pointed to command in Dublin, aspired to play the part of 
 Lambert ; but a junta of the old Royalist officers seized the 
 reins of power, and soon came into communication with 
 Monk. A slight attempt at opposition was made by Crom- 
 wellian soldiers, who had settled on their lands; but Ireland 
 like England declared for a "free Parliament," and Charles 
 was ere long seated on his Irish throne. 
 
 During the period we have been just surveying some of 
 the characteristics of the Ireland of the past disappear or 
 become less prominent. We pass from the Ireland of the 
 Pale extended by conquest, but still largely affected by Celtic 
 usage, to an Ireland subjugated and under English law; we
 
 158 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 reach a time of something like Constitutional Government 
 supreme in every part of the country ; we see at the Castle the 
 rule of the soldier replaced by that of the prelate and lawyer, 
 and of the commanding mind of Strafford. An era of horrible 
 civil war follows; the hostile races and faiths of Ireland 
 encounter each other in deadly conflict; an immense majority 
 of the Irish people, at a time when religious passions had 
 peculiar force, engage in a struggle with Puritan England ; and 
 Cromwell closes the strife, crushing Ireland down, and ruling 
 the country with an iron hand after effecting an immense 
 change in its social condition. The period, as a whole, 
 contains two phases ; each presents dark and sinister features, 
 and reveals much that History deplores, if all is not disastrous 
 and evil 
 
 In the first phase peace is not broken by the sword, but 
 an archaic type of society is effaced by the introduction of 
 English law and land-tenures, by force; and vast tracts of 
 Ulster are torn from their old possessors, and made the seat 
 of a colony foreign in faith and blood. Large confiscations 
 follow that are mere acts of wrong ; and the extension of the 
 sphere of the Anglican Church, the continuous immigration of 
 Protestant settlers, the fierce resistance of the Irish Catholic 
 Church, and the religious persecution which is the result, 
 enormously increase animosities of creed and enlarge the old 
 and deep divisions of race in Ireland. The Irish Parliament, 
 also, is packed, in the interest of the Crown and of the 
 English and Scotch colonies; and an era of despotic rule is 
 marked by the perfidy of Charles I, by Stafford's tyranny, by 
 the attempt to confiscate wholesale, by mere arbitrary power. 
 Yet civilisation did, to some extent, make real progress in 
 those days, especially in Ulster; and the organising genius of 
 Strafford and his firm and equal government unquestionably 
 caused material prosperity to advance. 
 
 In the second phase the seeds of evil bear their natural fruit:
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 159 
 
 the rising of the Celts of Ulster in 1641, to be distinctly traced 
 to the spoliation of their lands, and the defection of the old 
 Catholic Englishry, mainly due to the wrongs done to their 
 faith, lead to a murderous civil war. In this the power of 
 England is shaken for a time; Catholic Ireland, divided 
 against herself, defies Protestant England and keeps her in 
 dread of invasion at a most critical time ; but after a struggle 
 protracted for years, she succumbs, largely owing to her own 
 disunion. Cromwell then subdues Ireland as she was never 
 subdued before; he confiscates millions of acres of Irish 
 land ; he makes a conquering army of Puritan soldiers lords of 
 a Catholic people vanquished and abhorred; he establishes 
 Protestant Ascendency, and its correlative, Catholic subjection, 
 in Ireland, in the very worst form. Nevertheless Cromwell's 
 Irish policy had a good side ; it secured order and a kind of 
 social progress: above all it prefigured the Union. 
 
 Three great facts appear with peculiar clearness through 
 the troubled confusion of this whole period ; they should be 
 steadily kept in mind. Firstly, the annihilation of old Celtic 
 usage, especially of the tribal land system, the substitution of 
 English law, the confiscations of the reigns of the two first 
 Stuarts and of the rule of Cromwell, the establishment of the 
 dominant Anglican Church, and the ascendency secured for 
 English and Scotch settlers all this was a continuation of the 
 Tudor scheme of forcing foreign institutions on the Irish 
 people. Part of this policy was, in a sense, successful ; part 
 was unquestionably well meant, but much of it was due to sheer 
 cupidity, to bad statecraft, to the passions of conquest ; but its 
 results in the main were to make the great mass of Irishmen 
 more hostile to England than they had ever been, and to 
 aggravate the divisions and strife of races in Ireland. Secondly, 
 the interference of the Crown with the Irish Parliament, and 
 the arbitrary conduct of the Long Parliament in imposing on 
 Ireland measures of its own, did infinite mischief of many
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 kinds ; the growth of constitutional government was stopped ; 
 undue favour was shown to a ruling caste, which felt that it 
 was given a free hand to oppress; the foundations of many evils 
 in the future were laid. The third and most striking feature of 
 the period was this the religious discords of Ireland became 
 suddenly more intense than they had ever been; and in the 
 struggle, which was the result, they seem to make other divi- 
 sions less, nay to efface them to some extent. In the Civil 
 War, from 1641 to 1652, the name of Protestant and Catholic 
 separated the hostile camps more thoroughly than that of 
 Saxon and Celt; but the distinction of religion, it must be 
 borne in mind, largely coincided with that of race, and had 
 only lately acquired a special prominence of its own. Cromwell 
 made this distinction extraordinarily wide; the Protestant 
 Irish, in his eyes, were the sheep to be protected in the fold ; 
 the Catholic Irish were the goats to be hunted away and 
 destroyed, and difference of race was of little moment. 
 Religion appears from this time forward to be the determining 
 force in Irish History, which seems to revolve, as it were, around 
 the destinies of an Ireland of opposite faiths ; and yet perhaps 
 if not so plainly manifest the distinction of race had after all 
 the most potent influence. 
 
 The progress of English power in Ireland, in this period, 
 bears the character it bore in the age of Elizabeth; it was 
 often marked with guile and most atrocious deeds; and the 
 wrongs of Ireland were many and cruel. Yet parallels to 
 them may be found in contemporaneous, even in more recent 
 history; this must be taken into account in a fair review of the 
 subject. Most of the confiscations which took place in Ire- 
 land, from the days of Mountjoy to those of Cromwell, were 
 iniquitous in the extreme; but it was the time of the Edicts of 
 Restitution, and of the rapine carried out in Germany with 
 even less pretence to justice. The perfidy of James I and of 
 Charles I, and Stratford's tyranny in Irish affairs, resemble
 
 v.] From the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration. 161 
 
 parts of the stern policy of Richelieu in France; all were alike 
 instances of the abuse of the rights claimed by kings in the 
 seventeenth century. What was done at Drogheda and 
 Wexford was less horrible than what was done at the sack of 
 Magdeburg; Cromwell may have thought of what had been 
 charged against Tilly. The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland 
 had much in common with the Republican conquest of La 
 Vendee; in both cases a community relatively small rushed to 
 arms against a great nation, which claimed its allegiance, at a 
 grave crisis; in both cases the vengeance inflicted was frightful. 
 The peace given to Ireland by Cromwell, indeed, was very 
 different from the peace given by Bonaparte to La Vendee; 
 but, in a matter like this, the standard of opinion in the 
 seventeenth century completely differed from that of the 
 nineteenth, especially in a religious contest. For the rest, 
 the aversion and contempt, due to causes before referred to, 
 with which Ireland inspired Englishmen, were naturally in- 
 creased in this period; and her divisions, her weakness, her 
 wretched state, contributed, as before, to bring on her much 
 that she suffered. "A people," it has been truly said, "divided 
 internally, and without the element of political organisation, 
 invites the sword of the conqueror 1 ." 
 
 The Irish community was being now cast into a mould of 
 usage, of life', of relations, which, though modified to a very 
 great extent, has never yet been completely effaced. In every- 
 thing, but especially in the land, and in by far the greatest 
 part of the country, a ruling and foreign Protestant caste were 
 made masters of a conquered Catholic people; each was 
 divided from the other by the most unhappy, memories. 
 Protestant Ascendency and Catholic Subjection were giving 
 the social structure, so to speak, its form; the distinction of 
 religion, we repeat, seemed to have replaced the old distinction 
 
 1 Gardiner's History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, I. 176. 
 M. I. 1 1
 
 162 Ireland. [CHAP. v. 
 
 of race, though perhaps this was in appearance only. The 
 condition of things thus evolved was pregnant with evils, and 
 has been attended with calamitous results; and though it had 
 had its origin in the past, it was in a great degree brought 
 about by the Cromwellian Conquest. The despotism of 
 Cromwell was a bad government; but it produced, in Ireland, 
 some good fruits; and had it been gradually made to conform 
 to justice, to wisdom, to reason, to right, it might have 
 established an order of things which would have been its 
 vindication in the sight of history. This, however, was not to 
 be the course of events in Ireland; light was not yet to shine 
 on her dark destiny.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE CAPITULATION 
 OF LIMERICK. 
 
 Contrast between England and Ireland at the Restoration. Confusion and 
 disorder in Ireland. Multiplicity of claims arising from the land. 
 The policy of the King dictated by Clarendon. The Church restored. 
 Presbyterian ministers expelled. Lavish grants of land. The decla- 
 ration of the King as to the land. The Acts of Settlement and 
 Explanation. Wrong done to many Catholic owners. Injustice of 
 the arrangement as a whole. The Cromwellian Conquest and 
 settlement in the main confirmed. The results. Protestant as- 
 cendency and Catholic subjection made permanent. The Vice- 
 royalty of Ormond. Restrictions on the commerce of Ireland. The 
 Viceroyalties of Lord Berkeley and Lord Essex. Ireland compara- 
 tively prosperous and free from trouble at the death of Charles II. 
 Accession of James II. What his Irish policy ought to have been. 
 His views on Irish affairs. Clarendon made Lord Lieutenant. 
 Tyrconnell possesses real power. He transforms the army in Ireland. 
 He is made Deputy. The military and civil power handed over to the 
 Catholics. Rising of the Irishry. The Revolution of 1688. Attitude 
 of Catholic Ireland. The Irish spring to arms. The colonists driven 
 into Ulster. Enniskillen and Londonderry. The siege of London- 
 derry. Heroism of the defence. The siege raised. The Battle of 
 Newton Butler. The Irish Parliament of 1689. Character of its 
 measures. These have been much misrepresented. Invasion of 
 Ireland by Schomberg. He is compelled to retreat into winter 
 quarters. William III takes the field. The Battle of the Boyne. 
 Fine conduct of the Irish horse. Defeat of the Irish army and flight 
 
 ii a
 
 1 64 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 of James. The first siege of Limerick. Fine exploit of Sarsfield. 
 William raises the siege. Marlborough takes Cork and Kinsale. 
 Great results of this success. Ginkle takes Athlone. Battle of 
 Aghrim. Defeat of the Irish army. The second siege and the 
 capitulation of Limerick. The Articles. Departure to France of a 
 large part of the Irish army. Reflections. 
 
 THE contrast, continually on the increase, which England and 
 Ireland always presented, was more conspicuous at the 
 Restoration than at any previous time. In England the 
 Monarchy and the Church had fallen ; but the civil war was 
 not a death struggle; the supremacy of the law had been 
 maintained ; the type of civilised life had not been broken up ; 
 the land had not been torn from its owners wholesale. The 
 condition of Ireland was altogether different ; a horrible conflict 
 of races and faiths had been prolonged for over ten years; 
 the structure of society had been overthrown ; and a huge 
 confiscation, greater than any other of the kind, had seated a 
 Puritan army on the soil, the rulers of a conquered Catholic 
 people. On the return of Charles II to the throne the peace 
 enforced by Cromwell 'in Ireland ceased; everything became 
 confusion, disorder and trouble; and, at the prospect of a 
 change in the existing order of things, there were wild stirrings 
 of fear, of hope and of passion. This movement was chiefly 
 associated with the land thrown, it was said, "like a stag to 
 a ravening pack of hounds"; and the new Government was 
 beset by many kinds of claimants, eager to retain what they 
 had already won, or to recover possessions taken from them in 
 the Revolutionary period now come to an end. The Crom- 
 wellian soldiery laid their hands on their swords and vowed 
 they would keep what the Lord had bestowed; the "ad- 
 venturers" were equally bold and tenacious. But Royalist 
 Protestants, who had served with Ormond, and Catholic 
 Confederates, who had been in arms for the King, insisted on 
 being restored to the lands of which they had been deprived
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the L imerick Capitulation. 165 
 
 by Cromwell; leaders of the Celtic Irishry made the same 
 demand ; and Royalist officers sought to obtain compensation, 
 in land, for arrears of pay. The Anglican Church, too, had 
 lost its estates; its episcopate seems to have almost dis- 
 appeared, though its rkual and worship had not been 
 proscribed; and the Presbyterian clergy of the Scotch colonists 
 had, in Ulster, and even in the other provinces, encroached on 
 its benefices, to a certain extent. 
 
 The task before Charles in Ireland was difficult in the 
 extreme ; to do justice was perhaps impossible. The con- 
 duct of the King, however, reflected the passions of the 
 hour, and was marked by the favouritism and the want of 
 good faith characteristic of his House. A considerable part 
 of the Cromwellian forfeitures had not yet passed out of the 
 hands of the state; the Anglican Church regained its 
 possessions, including its large revenue of tithes; and its 
 hierarchy was replaced in its old splendour. The Presbyterian 
 ministers were expelled from the glebes and houses they had 
 obtained ; a test was ere long imposed on them, resembling 
 that which had been imposed on Catholics (Nonconformist 
 persecution prevailed in England) this compelled a certain 
 number to leave Ireland ; and though not the cause of much 
 present mischief, was ultimately to lead to grave evils. At 
 the same time large grants of land were made to the Duke of 
 York, to Ormond, and to other friends of the King; and 
 several of the great nobles of the old Catholic Englishry 
 recovered the estates of which they had been despoiled. 
 Many thousands of acres were thus bestowed, without regard to 
 equity or sound policy; but Charles had been persuaded, or 
 had persuaded himself, that, with dexterous management, a 
 sufficient fund of land would remain to satisfy the great crowd 
 of claimants. In this, as in all other matters, Clarendon was, 
 for the present, his chief adviser; like nine-tenths of his 
 countrymen, Clarendon hated the Catholic Irish with intense
 
 166 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 hatred, and wished to uphold the Protestant and colonial 
 caste in Ireland ; and the King probably shared this feeling, at 
 least had no desire to be a Don Quixote, and to show Irish 
 sympathies that would offend Englishmen. It was announced 
 that the " English interest " was to be maintained in Ireland ; 
 and the Government issued a Declaration, arranging the 
 claims to the Irish land upon this basis. The " adventurers " 
 and the Cromwellian soldiers were, with some exceptions, to 
 retain their possessions; certain classes of Protestant owners 
 were to regain their estates ; and some lands were allotted to 
 Royalist officers, in discharge of their pay. These demands 
 would obviously absorb the great bulk of the land ; but there 
 remained the large body of the Irish Catholic owners, perhaps 
 4000 or 5000 persons, and what was this order of men to 
 receive ? An expedient was devised, which was not the least 
 base of the many devised by Stuart statecraft. The Catholic 
 owners were to be restored ; but their restoration was not to 
 take place until they had satisfied a test of "innocence," 
 severe as that of Cromwell's "constant affection," and so 
 framed that few, it was thought, could get through its meshes. 
 It was nothing to Charles that he had made solemn pledges to 
 them on many occasions ; they were a weak and inconvenient 
 class of " Irish Papists," to be disposed of by one means or 
 another. 
 
 The Irish Parliament had by this time been restored as 
 part of the old Constitution of the land; it was to give the 
 Declaration the sanction of law. But it was full of Protestant, 
 even of Puritan zealots ; scarcely a Catholic, in fact, had a 
 seat in it ; and an outcry arose against the proposed arrange- 
 ment, denounced as too favourable to the subject race and 
 faith. The discussion was transferred to the Council at White- 
 hall, which kept a strict hold, under Poynings' Law, on the 
 assembly in Dublin, in this matter ; but though angry clamour 
 was frequent and loud, little change was made in the original
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the L imerick Capitulation. 1 67 
 
 terms, and an Act, known as the Act of Settlement, was 
 passed, confirming the distribution of the Irish land, of which 
 we have seen the main outlines. Meanwhile, however, an 
 incident had occurred which threw everything into confusion 
 again. A Commission had been appointed to decide who 
 "were innocent Papists"; and, strange to say, many more 
 Catholic owners contrived to satisfy the iniquitous test of 
 "innocence" than Charles and his advisers had deemed 
 possible. The " English interest " in Ireland broke out into 
 wrath; an insurrection was threatened by the Cromwellian 
 soldiers ; the Castle was for some time in danger. After 
 months of delay and bickerings of all kinds a compromise was 
 at last effected ; an Act of " Explanation " was added to the 
 Act of Settlement. The adventurers and the soldiers were 
 forced or induced to surrender a third part of their lands ; the 
 Catholic owners adjudged " innocent " were reinstated ; and a 
 few were restored by the special favour of the King. But the 
 great body of the Catholic owners, from 3000 to 4000 in 
 number, were not allowed to try to make proof of "innocence"; 
 they were shut out from all hope of relief; they were deprived 
 of their ancestral estates for ever, an act of the grossest and 
 most cruel injustice. Many of the injured class carried their 
 swords to the Continent, and became another contingent of 
 exiles eager to avenge their wrongs on the English name. 
 
 The settlement of the Irish land thus effected was 
 alike unwise and unjustifiable. The dominant Church of a 
 caste regained all that it had lost; courtiers and favourites 
 obtained possessions to which they had no claim ; the 
 Cromwellian forfeitures, immense and unjust, were to a 
 considerable extent ratified; thousands of despoiled owners 
 were deprived of their rights ; the seeds were thickly sown of a 
 harvest of evil. The most striking feature certainly of the 
 scheme, and that attended by the most lasting results, was the 
 confirmation, in a very great degree, of the huge confiscation
 
 !68 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 due to the sword of Cromwell. The two Acts of Settlement, 
 as they may be called, permanently transferred to Protestant 
 English owners, for the most part of the Puritan faith, at least 
 a fourth part of the land of Ireland ; and these were surrounded 
 by a Catholic people reduced to serfdom, but retaining the 
 Celtic memory of the past. This state of things was to prove 
 enduring ; but Cromwell's project of colonising the Irish land, 
 effectually and on an enormous scale, failed, as projects of the 
 kind had failed before. The number of the settlers was, from 
 the first, too small; the Cromwellian soldiers sold their 
 allotments wholesale; most of the "adventurers" were ab- 
 sentees, adding thus to a list already too large ; the colonists 
 who remained sank, in thousands of instances, into the mass 
 of the Irishry in their midst, a transformation which had been 
 seen through centuries. The ultimate effect of the Cromwellian 
 Conquest was to plant in the land of Ireland three or four 
 thousand owners, alien in race and faith from the occupiers of 
 the soil, and separated from them by the worst traditions 1 . 
 
 The confirmation, however, of the Cromwellian forfeitures 
 gave to the Protestant Ascendency, which, we have said, had 
 before this time been established in power, a great addition of 
 strength and influence. The Protestant English and Scotch 
 colonists were now the possessors of perhaps three-fourths of 
 the soil ; a fourth only was left to the old owners, the Catholic 
 Englishry and the Catholic Celts ; and beneath these were the 
 conquered Catholic Irishry, five-sixths of the population of the 
 country. In by far the greatest part of Ireland, therefore, a 
 dominant caste, distinct in blood and religion, and hostile to 
 the mass of the people, had been made owners of nearly all 
 the land ; the subject race had sunk into mere occupiers. The 
 
 1 Mr Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. u. 
 chap. 6, contains an admirable sketch of the Cromwellian confiscations and 
 their results. See also Mr Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, 
 and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice's Life of Sir William Petty.
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the Limerick Capitulation. 169 
 
 only exception to this state of things was found in the colonised 
 parts of Ulster, where the settlers were numerous, and of all 
 classes. The social relations, connected with the land, which 
 would grow out of this state of affairs would necessarily bear 
 the marks of their origin ; from this time forward, agrarian 
 discontent, occasionally associated with rebellious movements, 
 becomes a marked feature of Irish History. But if Protestant 
 Ascendency, as we have said, was most distinctly apparent in 
 the land, it had become established in every part of the 
 political and social life of Ireland, almost as completely as 
 under the rule of Cromwell. The Irish Catholic Church, 
 indeed, and its priesthood were not persecuted as they had 
 lately been ; and after the Restoration, the Catholic faith was 
 usually tolerated, even protected. But the Irish Parliament 
 was composed of Protestants; Protestants, as a rule, filled 
 every office of trust; Catholics, except at rare intervals of 
 time, were excluded from the administration of the state, and 
 even from municipal offices. Ireland was thus finally separated 
 into the two divisions, to which we have so often referred; 
 Protestant Ascendency was embodied in the English and 
 Scotch Protestants, a caste possessing almost supreme power ; 
 Catholic Subjection was seen in a vanquished Catholic people. 
 The distinction, too, between the old Englishry and the Irish 
 Celts had become much less marked; both races had been 
 involved in a common wreck of fortune. 
 
 The order of things which the Restoration left standing in 
 Ireland was unnatural, and was certain to lead to ills in the 
 future. For the present, however, the land was at peace; 
 the strong hand of Cromwell was still felt; after a brief 
 interval of passing trouble Protestant Ireland saw its domi- 
 nation secured ; Catholic Ireland acquiesced, brooding only on 
 its wrongs. This period of repose, broken by faint stirrings of 
 unrest, disorder, and smothered discontent, signs of passions 
 smouldering beneath the surface, continued for nearly twenty-
 
 170 Ireland, [CHAP. 
 
 five years, and was perhaps the longest of its kind that had yet 
 been seen. The government, during the greater part of this 
 time, was placed in the well-tried hands of Ormond, created 
 a duke by Charles II, and perhaps the foremost subject of 
 the Crown; his Viceroyalty was one of no little interest. 
 Ormond was not a statesman of a high order, but he was an 
 administrator of considerable powers ; and if feeling and 
 interest made him incline to the side of Protestant Ascendency 
 somewhat too much, he had none of the English contempt 
 for Irishmen ; he was a true and noble-minded Irishman at 
 heart, he had a genuine and a patriotic love for his country. 
 His conduct in peace had some points in common with his 
 conduct during the protracted Civil War. A Protestant him- 
 self, and a loyal subject, he upheld the " Protestant interest," 
 now supreme in Ireland; and he refused to listen to complaints 
 against the Acts of Settlement they were, in his view, 
 necessary to maintain the present order of things a resolve 
 not surprising in his case, for they had made him the master 
 of large estates. He had little sympathy, too, with leaders of 
 the Irish Celts ; he had not forgotten their attitude in the war ; 
 they had repudiated his advice on the Acts of Settlement; and, 
 not improbably, he felt towards them as the great nobles of 
 the old Englishry had felt for ages. Nor did he do much to 
 mitigate the state of Catholic subjection he found established ; 
 he did not use his immense influence to introduce Catholics 
 into the Irish Parliament; he left Protestant Ascendency to 
 rule, throughout Ireland, in the Municipal Bodies, which 
 especially controlled the petty boroughs of James ; he did not 
 admit Catholics to offices of trust ; he did not dispense, as had 
 been often done before, with the religious tests to which they 
 were exposed. Nevertheless Ormond was a good governor, 
 wise, moderate, upright, strictly just within the limits of the 
 system made to his hand ; he maintained order and law with 
 success; like Strafford he kept petty tyrants under; he won
 
 vi.j From the Restoration to the L imerick Capitulation. 1 7 1 
 
 the esteem even of the oppressed Catholics. Above all, while 
 he upheld the Anglican Church, he gave its Catholic rival real 
 freedom ; its clergy, rescued from the proscription of the 
 Cromwellian era, and allowed to do their offices among their 
 flocks, acknowledged him as their benefactor and friend. 
 
 This policy was not profound or far-sighted, but it was 
 wise, prudent, and perhaps suited to the time. In other 
 respects Ormond was more free to act ; his administrative 
 capacity was conspicuously shown. True to the example of 
 all the best Viceroys, who felt that Ireland required a strong 
 central government, he greatly increased and improved the 
 army ; and he set on foot a militia in the Irish counties which 
 performed the functions of a good local police. By these 
 means he was enabled to put down every attempt to disturb 
 the public peace, to make his government respected by all 
 orders of men, to secure obedience in a country ever distracted 
 by savage animosities and feuds, even if it seemed for the 
 moment at rest. But the most striking feature of Ormond's 
 rule was his unremitting and successful zeal in promoting 
 everything that could advance the prosperity and material 
 wealth of the country; "he trode here," he said, "in the steps 
 of Strafford"; and he was worthy of the great man, in this 
 respect, his model. He encouraged the trade of Ireland in 
 many ways ; he paid much attention to her agriculture ; he 
 stimulated the manufacture of linen, nearly abandoned during 
 the late civil war; he gave a remarkable impulse to the 
 manufacture of wool, already a promising Irish industry; he 
 introduced machinery of many kinds from England. Or- 
 mond, too, was almost the first projector of what may be 
 called Public Works in Ireland; and he was an excellent 
 patron of arts and learning. He founded a great Hospital 
 for soldiers, like that at Greenwich ; the University of Dublin 
 owed much to him ; he re-established a school 1 , near his an- 
 1 Kilkenny College, originally a foundation of the Cathedral of St Canice.
 
 172 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 cestral town, Kilkenny, which was soon to form the young 
 minds of Swift and of Berkeley. 
 
 Under the government of Ormond, and, indeed, through 
 the whole of the reign of Charles II, Ireland made decided 
 material progress. The existing order of things seemed firmly 
 established ; the dominant caste made civilisation spread ; the 
 wealth of the country largely increased ; something like 
 prosperity appeared again. Dublin grew into a city of 50,000 
 souls ; a few of the seaport towns revived ; Belfast began to 
 show signs of thriving ; there was a real advance in husbandry 
 and trade. Macaulay has described in picturesque language 
 Petty's settlement in the wilds of Kerry ; and doubtless there 
 were other settlements of the kind, oases in rude and half- 
 peopled deserts. This progress, however, met a sudden 
 check, the first of many checks of the kind, attended ultimately 
 with evil results. In conformity with the selfish legislation of 
 the day, Ireland was excluded from the Navigation Acts of 
 England ; she was thus almost shut out from trade with the 
 colonies; and her ship-building industry, in some degree, 
 suffered. These restrictions probably were as yet not much 
 felt, in the case of a poor and backward country ; but another 
 restriction did real injury. A period of agricultural distress in 
 England was followed by a rapid decline in rents ; and the 
 English Parliament, in consequence, forbade the import of 
 animals of most kinds, and even of meat, from Ireland, the 
 principal sources of her still scanty wealth. This prohibition 
 aroused the anger of Petty, a keen and able economic 
 thinker, who had feathered his nest through the Cromwellian 
 forfeitures; he compared it to the colonial tyranny of Spain 1 . 
 Ireland, nevertheless, continued to advance, in spite of the 
 loss of a most important market; her woollen manufacture 
 especially throve. The time had not yet come when she was 
 to learn how mischievous commercial restrictions could prove. 
 1 Life of Sir William Petty, p. 143.
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the Limerick Capitulation. 1 73 
 
 There were two interludes to Ormond's government ; they 
 were significant, in some degree, of the future. Lord Berkeley 
 of Stratton was made Lord Lieutenant in 1670; the appoint- 
 ment was part and parcel of the French policy inaugurated 
 by the Treaty of Dover, which involved concessions to all 
 Catholic subjects of Charles. Catholics were admitted, in 
 Ireland, to different offices; the Mass was celebrated in 
 Dublin with extraordinary pomp; an attempt was made to 
 introduce Catholics into Corporate Bodies; an outcry was 
 raised against the Acts of Settlement. This policy aroused 
 the indignation and fear of the Protestant caste in all parts of 
 the country ; but it was reversed when Danby became 
 Minister, and the French alliance was denounced at West- 
 minster. Lord Berkeley was replaced by Lord Essex ; 
 Protestant Ascendency was completely restored in Ireland ; 
 and the reports that had been spread about "a second 1641," 
 and an " Irish St Bartholomew," proved wholly groundless. 
 Ormond was before long in office again ; he steadily followed 
 the course of conduct of which we have given a brief 
 description. He kept the hostile races and faiths of Ireland 
 at peace; maintained order with a firm but kind hand; and 
 continued to make earnest and successful efforts to improve 
 the material state of the island. It is remarkable that during 
 the last agitated years of the chequered reign of Charles II 
 Ireland was apparently in deep repose, illusory as the appear- 
 ance was. The furious passions engendered by the Popish 
 plot led, indeed, to one most unhappy event : Oliver Plunkett, 
 the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, was charged a bar- 
 barous falsehood with a treasonable design to stir up a 
 rebellion in Ireland, and was executed at Tyburn after a 
 mock trial ; but this was the only Irish victim of Gates and his 
 crew, while noble blood flowed freely on English scaffolds. 
 While Shaftesbury was shaking the state to its basis, while 
 England was being convulsed by maddened factions, Ireland
 
 1^4 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 remained quiescent under Ormond's rule, though Shaftesbury 
 had tried to make her a pawn in his game. 
 
 The calm prevailing in Ireland was but little disturbed 
 when James II ascended the throne. Faint murmurs were 
 heard from the Catholic priesthood ; petitions against the Acts 
 of Settlement were preferred ; there was some agitation in the 
 ranks of the dominant race. But nothing like the disorder of 
 the Restoration was seen; the active leaders of the Irishry 
 had disappeared; and the Irishry remained passive in the 
 silent endurance, often characteristic of the Celtic nature, 
 before it breaks out into a burst of passion. Had James been 
 a statesman of real parts, had a Richelieu or a Wolsey been in 
 his councils, an occasion had now perhaps presented itself to 
 do much to settle the affairs of Ireland, possibly even to give a 
 new turn to her history. The power of the King in England 
 was great, owing to the strong reaction of the last few years ; 
 his authority in Ireland was very large ; in every part of his 
 dominions he had no common influence. In these circum- 
 stances a wise and able ruler might conceivably have wrought 
 an effectual change in the dangerous and false state of things 
 in Ireland ; have made Protestant Ascendency less harsh, and 
 Catholic Subjection less painful; have in some measure 
 smoothed away the lines that separated hostile races and 
 faiths; above all have tried to conciliate by doing justice. 
 There was very little in the mere letter of the law 1 , to exclude 
 Catholics in Ireland from offices in the state, from the 
 legislature, from municipal rights ; and the tests in their way 
 had been seldom enforced until after the beginning of the 
 
 1 Macaulay, History of England, II. 383, ed. 1858, note, seems to think 
 that the only religious test imposed on Irish Catholics at this time was that 
 created by the old Act of Supremacy of Elizabeth. A more stringent test 
 was, however, imposed by the 17-18 Car. 2, chap. 6, though it seems not 
 to have been often enforced. Irish Catholics at this period were not so 
 much proscribed by law as by the force of Protestant ascendency.
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the L imerick Capitulation. \ 7 5 
 
 seventeenth century. If James had cautiously ignored these 
 obstacles; if he had gradually admitted Irish Catholics into 
 the service of the Government and the administration of 
 affairs, if he had given them something akin to civil equality, 
 the Protestant Irish would doubtless have made angry com- 
 plaints, but he would hardly have set Englishmen strongly 
 against him, great as was their dislike of " Irish Papists," or 
 have provoked dangerous opposition at Westminster. The 
 King, however, might well have gone further ; it was essential 
 to place landed relations in Ireland on a reasonably sound 
 and natural basis. Ancient confiscations should not have been 
 touched; but the Cromwellian confiscations were not of old 
 date ; they were, in numberless instances, grossly unjust ; and 
 the Acts of Settlement were tainted throughout with wrong. 
 The Catholic owners, despoiled without getting a hearing, 
 ought certainly to have been permitted to assert their rights ; 
 and those who had been pronounced "innocent," under a 
 legitimate test, might have been indemnified by grants of 
 Crown lands in England Petty actually proposed a scheme 
 of the kind 1 or by grants in the American colonies. As for 
 other Catholic owners wrongfully dispossessed, their estates 
 had been obtained at a nominal price ; and their present pos- 
 sessors might have been rightly asked to pay the state a larger 
 part of their real value, and thus to create a fund which would 
 have afforded the old owners a measure of relief. By these 
 means the most glaring evils in the land system of Ireland 
 would have been partly removed, and animosities of race and 
 faith would have been probably lessened. 
 
 James, however, was in no sense a statesman ; and except 
 Ormond, whom he removed from his post, he had no able 
 counsellor on Irish affairs. His views respecting Ireland were 
 for a time uncertain; he hesitated before he committed him- 
 self to a policy fatal to himself and his House. Like all the 
 1 Life of Sir William Petty, p. 273.
 
 !^6 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Stuarts, he cared little about his Irish subjects ; he had much 
 of the English aversion to the race ; as a King of England he 
 felt he was bound to support the Protestant "English interest." 
 But he was a bigoted Catholic, on the other hand; and, 
 unlike his illustrious grandfather, Henry IV, he was ultimately 
 to show that he thought a Mass was worth a great deal more 
 than a Crown. His first measures for Ireland appeared 
 moderate; he appointed Clarendon Lord Lieutenant, with 
 directions to uphold the Acts of Settlement, but to admit 
 Catholics to office in the state; and Clarendon, though an 
 obsequious courtier, had all his father's contempt for Irishmen, 
 and was decidedly a friend of the ruling Protestant caste. 
 Two or three Catholics were admitted to the Council in 
 Dublin; had things gone no further, an act of justice would, 
 in the eyes of History, if not of partisans, have excused a 
 technical breach of the law. But Clarendon was soon made 
 to feel that he was not a real governor. The command of the 
 army in Ireland had been placed in the hands of Richard 
 Talbot, the well-known Tyrconnell; and if Talbot's faults 
 have perhaps been magnified, he was certainly a rash and 
 intemperate man, a Catholic of the most extreme type and 
 bitterly hostile to the Protestant name in Ireland. Talbot 
 practically thrust the Lord Lieutenant aside, and began to do 
 acts of high-handed power, alike reckless and of evil omen to 
 the state. He disbanded the militia formed by Ormond 
 because it was composed, in the main, of Protestants; he 
 dismissed Protestant officers from the army wholesale; he 
 placed Catholic officers in their stead ; and he filled the ranks 
 with the Catholic Irishry. It was his boast, and it soon 
 became evident, that the power of the sword was being 
 transferred from the dominant to the subject race in Ireland. 
 TyrconnelFs conduct naturally provoked the resentment 
 of the classes that ruled in Ireland an alien caste hemmed in 
 on all sides by enemies. But anger changed into consternation
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the L imerick Capitulation. 1 77 
 
 and dismay when the news arrived, in the spring of 1687, 
 that Clarendon had ceased to be Lord Lieutenant, and that 
 Tyrconnell had been made Deputy. James had now embarked 
 on the disastrous course which was soon to lead to the ruin of 
 his throne ; and there can be no doubt that, like his ill-fated 
 father, he had resolved to make use of Catholic Ireland in the 
 attack he had begun on Protestant England. He had in 
 Tyrconnell a tool to his hand ; the Deputy instantly effected 
 a violent change in the whole order of affairs in Ireland, 
 which literally set everything upside down. The Irish army 
 was increased and filled with Catholics ; the dominant 
 Protestants were replaced by men of the despised race and 
 faith, in all departments of the state. The Bench was packed 
 with Catholic Judges; the municipal bodies were remodelled, 
 and made Catholic; Catholic magistrates and sheriffs were 
 appointed by scores; in civil administration Catholics were 
 made supreme. The result was such as has often been seen, 
 when a down-trodden order of men suddenly acquire power ; 
 a Catholic ascendency vehemently avenged the wrongs a 
 Protestant ascendency had done; the Protestants, dominant 
 but yesterday, suffered gross injuries, in every relation and 
 walk of life. Tyrconnell ere long had denounced the Acts of 
 Settlement, which, indeed, had ceased to protect titles, owing 
 to decisions of the lately made Judges; he certainly con- 
 templated a great transfer of the Irish Land. This became 
 the signal of a wide-spread agrarian rising ; old dispossessed 
 owners claimed their lands again ; the new landlords were 
 unable to assert their rights; floods of the infuriated Irishry 
 swept away Petty's settlement and other centres of industry ; 
 anarchy ran riot over whole counties. Ireland wore the aspect 
 of France, in 1789, when the flames of many a chateau 
 expressed the hatred the peasant bore to his seigneur ; and a 
 great emigration of the Protestants of all classes followed. 
 
 The Revolution by this time had taken place in England ; 
 
 M. I. 13
 
 j^g Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 William and Mary had been made King and Queen; James 
 was a discrowned and fugitive exile. Catholic Ireland, how- 
 ever, declared for him to a man ; and Catholic Ireland, but a 
 few months before apparently in a state of torpid submission, 
 sprang to arms with the passionate impetuosity of the Celt. 
 The Irish Catholic, indeed, had no love for the House of 
 Stuart, but he felt that its rights were bound up with his own ; 
 and the time had come, he believed, to take vengeance for the 
 past, from the days of Elizabeth to those of Cromwell. Once 
 more, therefore, the great body of the Irish people threw itself 
 violently across the path of England, at a critical and Revo- 
 lutionary time ; and the traditional hatred of the Irishry felt 
 by Englishmen, was quickened to fury by the recent con- 
 duct of James, in bringing over regiments from Ireland, to 
 menace his English subjects. Prudence and reflection were 
 cast to the winds; few countries have ever beheld such an 
 armed rising as that of Ireland at this conjuncture. The 
 army was suddenly increased sixfold in numbers; out of a 
 population of perhaps a million and a half of souls, 100,000 
 were made ready for the field, an effort greater than that 
 of France in 1793-4. The movement comprised all Irishmen 
 of the Catholic name, for the extinction of the old tribal 
 system had effaced tribal discords and jealousies; the old 
 Englishry and the Celtic Irishry had been brought together 
 by common suffering; and potent incitements added their 
 impulse. Tyrconnell declared that now or never was the time ; 
 priests, as in former days, preached a Holy War; France, it 
 was noised abroad, would soon aid Ireland; hundreds of 
 exiles, disciplined in foreign armies, flocked to the Irish shores 
 to train the masses of levies. In a few months the bodies in 
 arms were great ; and if the infantry were ill equipped and of 
 little worth, the cavalry, largely composed of men of birth, 
 with good officers, as a rule, at their head, was a force that was 
 in no sense to be despised. The leaders belonged, for the
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the L imerick Capitulation. \ 79 
 
 most part, to the old Englishry, but some were of genuine 
 Celtic blood. 
 
 The levies of the Irishry were soon in motion, overrunning 
 the three southern provinces like a horde. The Englishry 
 in Munster and Connaught made an attempt at resistance, 
 but Lords Inchiquin and Kingston were beaten in the field; 
 the force of overwhelming numbers swept away all before it. 
 The colonists and their families, who were driven from their 
 homes, turned towards the powerful settlements in the north, 
 largely peopled by men of their own race and faith ; Ulster 
 was their City of Refuge in the hour of trial. Some betook 
 themselves to the lesser towns, which had been rising in parts 
 of the province ; many gathered behind the line of the Erne, 
 and were welcomed at Enniskillen, a fortified place, the centre 
 of a strong Protestant colony ; but the great majority, it is said 
 30,000 souls, made their way to the extreme verge of the north, 
 to Derry. This city, we have seen, had a name in the days of 
 Shane O'Neill ; it had been afterwards destroyed by a Celtic 
 raid ; but it rose from its ashes when the great Plantation was 
 made, and it had become the seat of the government of 
 the London merchants, who had obtained the tracts of confis- 
 cated land in the neighbourhood. The burghers had given the 
 place the name of their great capital ; and Londonderry had 
 been for some time a thriving and growing seaport of Ulster. 
 The town was protected by a rude wall and a ditch ; a few 
 guns they may still be seen, preserved, through two centuries, 
 with pious care crowned a rampart that seemed incapable of 
 defence. The population, however, were sturdy Protestants of 
 Anglo-Saxon and Scottish blood ; they had lately given a proof 
 of their quality. At the approach of one of Tyrconn ell's 
 Catholic regiments, thirteen apprentices had shut the gates; 
 they were made heroes by the rest of the townsmen. London- 
 derry, however, had consented to receive a small Protestant 
 garrison within its walls ; this was in the hands of an officer, of 
 
 12 2
 
 i8o Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 the name of Lundy, believed to be true to the Protestant 
 name. 
 
 England and France were, before long, at war ; the great 
 rivals, William III and Louis XIV, representatives, in a certain 
 sense, of Protestantism and Catholicism still in conflict, were 
 contending for the prize of dominion in Europe. James had 
 resolved to go to Ireland to support his own cause ; he landed 
 at Kinsale in the spring of 1689. He had received some funds 
 from France and a few hundred officers, but Louis had refused 
 to send an army ; France did not possess the command of the 
 sea; she required all her forces to maintain a struggle which 
 was soon to rage from the Theiss to the Scheldt. James had 
 entered Dublin by the end of March ; he was welcomed with 
 all the pomp the capital could display ; a flag streaming from 
 the Castle and bearing the device " now or never, now and for 
 ever 1 ," expressed the passionate hopes of Catholic Ireland. By 
 this time a large Irish army, from 25,000 to 30,000 strong, had 
 entered Ulster and drawn near Londonderry ; the command 
 had been bestowed on Rosen, a French general of some 
 distinction ; French officers were forming the Celtic levies ; the 
 principal, almost the last bulwark of Protestant Ireland seemed 
 about to fall. James set off from Dublin, confident of success ; 
 an incident he thought decisive increased his hopes just as 
 he arrived in Rosen's camp. Lundy, who controlled the 
 military force within Londonderry, had betrayed his trust; 
 he had actually sent away two regiments despatched from 
 England to defend the place ; he entered into secret parleys 
 with the enemy; he deserted at a moment he deemed opportune. 
 Londonderry was thus abandoned to herself; but she had no 
 thought of yielding to "Irish Papists" ; she nerved herself for a 
 struggle of life and death. Some seven thousand men were 
 
 1 This device reappeared, in several places, at the General Election of 
 1891. The Celts have long memories.
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the L imerick Capitulation. 1 8 1 
 
 found able to bear arms ; these gathered around the little 
 garrison ; in an incredibly short time all had been made ready 
 for a desperate and protracted defence. A cry of "no 
 surrender" burst from the walls when James approached 
 relying on Lundy's treachery; and on the igth of April a 
 formal summons to give up the town was rejected with 
 contempt. 
 
 A siege followed, not the least memorable of the great 
 sieges of which History tells. Fire opened on defences which 
 the French officers believed could not be held for two days; 
 reiterated assaults were courageously made. But the men 
 of Londonderry clung to their walls ; the strictest discipline 
 was admirably maintained; select bodies of volunteers were 
 placed, each in its own station, to guard the ramparts ; in 
 a short time fierce and determined sallies discomfited and 
 amazed the host of the enemy. And, while military order was 
 sternly upheld, nothing was left undone to keep enthusiasm at 
 its height ; Baker, a soldier, won the hearts of the townsmen ; 
 a clergyman, Walker, stirred the whole town by his impassioned 
 appeals to the God of battles ; hours were devoted to fasting 
 and solemn prayer ; the fervour of religion, the pride of race, 
 the scorn of the enemy, the hatred of ages, kept up the 
 defenders, when it was said, " they were as the Israelites in the 
 Red Sea." The besiegers, maddened by a resistance they had 
 treated, at first, as a jest, ere long made ready for a decisive 
 effort ; in the first week of June a resolute assault was made 
 against the weakest point in the ramparts. The Irishry fell 
 on, in overwhelming numbers, and with valour acknowledged 
 by their foes; but the stubborn endurance of the defence 
 prevailed; the women of Londonderry rushed into the fight 
 when the issue was for a time doubtful ; the assailants at last 
 were driven away in defeat. 
 
 The siege was now turned into a blockade, an agony ever 
 increasing during many weeks. The Irish army closed the
 
 1 82 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 approaches to the town ; lined on either side the banks of the 
 Foyle, the river that brought the port its wealth, and ere long 
 drew a great boom across, to prevent the arrival of relief from 
 the sea. But Londonderry remained defiant, though the 
 crowds of fugitives within the walls were consuming fast the 
 store of provisions which had been laid in before the contest 
 began. The ramparts were manned, heavy as was the hand of 
 death ; arms were found to grasp weapons which other arms 
 had dropped; stern voices mingled the watchword of "no 
 surrender " with appeals to the Most High to save his children 
 from the "idolatry of Rome" and the "cruelties" of the Celt. 
 A prospect of relief appeared at last ; the sails of an expe- 
 ditionary force were descried in the Bay ; but they drew off, for 
 their leader, Kirke, thought it had become impossible to effect 
 a landing ; and the beleaguered town was left to its fast-failing 
 resources. The sufferings of the besieged soon became intense ; 
 the refuse of the sewer, the vermin of the street, were welcome 
 additions to the wretched supplies of food; and Rosen he 
 had only just taken the command in person tried barbarous 
 expedients to compel the garrison to yield. But nothing could 
 subdue those undaunted spirits ; the dread approach of famine 
 was despised ; the dole of bread was carefully preserved for 
 the haggard spectres that guarded the walls ; death was dreaded 
 as little as the detested enemy. The city was on the brink of 
 starvation, when, on the twenty-eighth of July, three vessels 
 were seen bearing down on the obstacle thrown across the 
 Foyle. Kirke had received positive orders to relieve the 
 place ; the boom was broken, after a first effort had failed the 
 horror of the suspense was long remembered and London- 
 derry was set free from her pain. The siege had lasted a 
 hundred and five days ; soon all that was seen of the Irish 
 army was the cloud of dust that marked its retreat. 
 
 The raising of the siege of Londonderry gave a new turn 
 to the war; the men of Enniskillen defeated the Irishry at
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the L imerick Capitulation. 183 
 
 Newton Butler, in a fierce encounter 1 , chiefly remarkable for 
 the bloody revenge taken by the colonial caste on the enemy. 
 Meanwhile James had gone back to Dublin, and had been 
 engaged in setting up his government ; he had become a mere 
 puppet in the hands of French officials and soldiers, and of the 
 Irish leaders. One act of his administration deserves severe 
 censure ; he issued a base coinage, remembered for years as a 
 wicked fraud by the Dublin citizens ; and he gave a free scope 
 to the ascendency of the men of his faith, which had been the 
 chief work of the reckless Tyrconnell. In the existing condition 
 of Ireland, however, measures like these cannot cause surprise : 
 his treasury was empty and his army was in the field; the 
 wrongs of Catholic Ireland were cruel and many; religious 
 passions had been stirred up to frenzy ; and, in this, as in all 
 other instances, allowance must be made for a Revolutionary 
 time. 
 
 The King convened the Irish Parliament in May 1689; the 
 conduct of that assembly has been the subject of the misrepre- 
 sentation of partisan writers; but if some of its acts were 
 indisputably bad, few are without precedent or partial excuse ; 
 others are fairly entitled to praise ; and the crisis, we repeat, 
 must be taken into account. The Parliament was for the 
 most part composed of Catholics ; but there were more Protest- 
 ants in it than there had been Catholics in any Irish Parliament 
 for many years; this partial transformation was an inevitable 
 event. Nor was it composed in the main of Irish Celts; it 
 contained many members, indeed, of great Milesian Houses; 
 but the large majority was formed of the old Englishry, men of 
 birth and honour, in many instances; and there was a con- 
 siderable admixture of very distinguished lawyers. Two 
 measures of the Parliament have been denounced as un- 
 paralleled in their reckless barbarity ; the Acts of Settlement 
 
 1 Colonel Wolseley, an ancestor, we believe, of Lord Wolseley, dis- 
 tinguished himself greatly on this occasion.
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 were summarily repealed; an Act of Attainder was passed 
 against about 2,500 persons, supposed to be adherents of 
 William III, if they did not return to Ireland on a given day. 
 The Acts of Settlement, however, were utterly unjust; they 
 were of recent date and had been the subject of protests over 
 and over again : as for the Act of Attainder, it was levelled 
 against presumed enemies of James, who had left the country ; 
 and in this respect it bears a strong resemblance to the decrees 
 of the Convention of 1793, against the French emigre's, which 
 History has, on the whole, justified. It deserves notice, more- 
 over, that innocent purchasers, after the Acts of Settlement, 
 were to be indemnified ; the Act of Attainder, too, was .con- 
 ditional only, and, as a matter of fact, a Bill of the same kind 
 was actually passed by the English House of Commons ; and if 
 we recollect how little respect had been given to titles to Irish 
 land for ages, what injury confiscation had wrought in Ireland, 
 and especially what were the animosities of the hour, this 
 legislation is not to be blamed without reserve. Another Act 
 of the Parliament of 1689 has also been described as of the 
 very worst kind; it declared the independence of the Irish 
 Parliament, and that Ireland was not bound by laws passed at 
 Westminster. This, however, had always been the doctrine of 
 the best Irish lawyers ; it had been asserted in more than one 
 Irish Parliament; the encroachments, in this respect, of the 
 English Parliament had been of comparatively modern origin ; 
 the worst, perhaps, was that of the Long Parliament, in the 
 matter we have seen of the "Adventurers'" lands 1 . On the 
 other hand some measures of this Parliament of James were 
 not without marks of good sense and wisdom. Its Declaration 
 in favour of religious liberty savoured of the Declaration of 
 
 1 For the question of the independence of the Irish Parliament see the 
 excellent work of the Rt Hon. J. T. Ball, Irish Legislative Systems, 
 Chapters 4, 5, 6. Macaulay, History of England iv. 216, begs the whole 
 question.
 
 vi.] From tJu Restoration to the Limerick Capitulation. 185 
 
 Indulgence made by the King; but it made a really just 
 partition of the property of the Church between the rival faiths, 
 and it can hardly be blamed for taxing absentees, an order of 
 men disliked in Ireland since the feudal age. It should be 
 added that this Parliament tried unsuccessfully to repeal the 
 Law of Poynings, which, we have said, had been a cause of 
 discontent, and which had been denounced by the Catholic 
 Confederates of 1 642-8 \* 
 
 While James was thus playing the king in Dublin, an 
 English army had landed on the coast of Down, in order to 
 effect the re-conquest of Ireland. Its commander was an aged 
 veteran, Schomberg; and though it was largely composed of 
 ill-trained levies, it contained some regiments of excellent 
 soldiers. In numbers it was about equal to the Cromwellian 
 army, which had subjugated Ireland forty years before; but it 
 had a very different chief at its head, and its operations seem 
 to have been badly directed. It is not easy to understand why 
 an attempt was not made to descend on Dublin, and strike a 
 decisive blow ; Schomberg, like Cromwell, had the command 
 of the sea; and the Irish army, after its late defeats, was 
 disheartened and in a pitiable plight. Schomberg, however, ad- 
 vanced cautiously from Carrickfergus, southward ; his marches, 
 through a difficult country, were slow ; the Irish climate made 
 havoc of his men ; and his army was half destroyed before it 
 reached Dundalk, more than fifty miles from the Irish capital. 
 He was compelled to retreat into winter quarters ; this gave 
 James time to restore his army, and to make preparations to 
 renew the contest. The Irish ry seconded his efforts with 
 
 1 Mr Lecky's account of the proceedings of the Irish Parliament of 1689 
 is just and impartial. History of England in the Eighteenth Century, II. 
 Chap. 6, pp. 182, 190. Macaulay's is inaccurate, and conveys a false im- 
 pression. See also the Patriot Parliament by Thomas Davis, a one-sided 
 but very able and learned narrative. 
 
 * See note at end of Chapter.
 
 1 86 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 enthusiastic ardour; their wasted ranks were rilled with thou- 
 sands of recruits ; and in a few months they were formidable 
 in numbers at least, the infantry still raw and bad, but the 
 horse good. An important reinforcement, too, had arrived : 
 Louis had sent 6000 or 7000 French troops to Ireland to the 
 assistance of the fugitive king of England. 
 
 The contest in Ireland had become so doubtful, that 
 William had resolved to conduct it in person. He landed at 
 Carrickfergus in June 1690; it is still difficult to explain why 
 he did not aim at Dublin. He was at the head of an army of 
 about 36,000 men, composed of many races and tongues, 
 English, Danes, Bran den burgers, Dutch, Germans, but well 
 disciplined and prepared for the field ; two bodies were con- 
 spicuous in the motley array, the Enniskilleners thirsting for 
 another Newton Butler, and Huguenot exiles eager to avenge 
 the great wrong of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
 William tacitly condemned the late campaign of Schomberg; 
 though usually methodical and slow in war, he made his 
 advance as rapid as possible; on the evening of the 3oth June 
 his army had reached the northern bank of the Boyne, the 
 stream that here divides the counties of Louth and Meath. 
 James had been advised by the French officers to fall back 
 behind the line of the Shannon, the enemy being greatly 
 superior in strength; but the Irish leaders had insisted on 
 defending Dublin; and the Irish soldiery burned to strike a 
 blow at the " Saxon." The King's forces were perhaps 30,000 
 strong, all, except the French, and the Irish cavalry, of very in- 
 ferior quality ; they occupied the southern bank of the Boyne 
 and had been made ready to fight a pitched battle. The veteran 
 Schomberg was the chief of William's lieutenants; the youthful 
 Berwick, a bastard of James, the warrior of Almanza on another 
 day, was in the ranks of the French auxiliaries. But the hero 
 of the Irishry was Patrick Sarsfield, a scion of a House of the 
 old Englishry, who had done good service with Churchill at
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the Limerick Capitulation. 187 
 
 Sedgemoor, and had given proof of valour and resource in the 
 present war in Ireland. 
 
 The battle that followed, known as the Battle of the Boyne, 
 fought on the ist of July 1690, was not a remarkable passage of 
 war, but is remembered with feelings of pride and shame by the 
 still divided races and faiths of Ireland. The position of James 
 was strong against a direct attack ; a broad and deep river ran 
 before his front ; his reserves were thrown back out of the sight 
 of the enemy. But a narrow defile at Duleek near his rear was 
 almost his only avenue of retreat; and this had a disastrous 
 effect on the issue of the day. A son of Schomberg was ordered 
 to threaten the Irish left ; this movement might cause the loss 
 of the pass ; the French contingent and Sarsfield were accord- 
 ingly detached to guard a point of supreme importance. 
 Meanwhile the main body of William's forces crossed the 
 Boyne at fords near the village of Oldbridge; the result was 
 what almost always happens when real soldiers encounter mere 
 rude levies. The Irish infantry, deprived of their French allies, 
 gave way as their foemen approached the southern bank ; the 
 plain was soon crowded with flying masses hurrying towards 
 the reserves gathered around Donore. But it was otherwise 
 with the Irish cavalry; they made a desperate and heroic 
 stand; Danes, Huguenots, and Englishmen were more than 
 once driven back. Schomberg met a soldier's death in the 
 struggle; in fact the Irish horsemen maintained their ground 
 until William had turned, from near Drogheda, the position 
 from his left ; even then they fell back fighting on Donore. A 
 last effort was made to resist at that place ; but the battle had 
 by this time been won ; the defeated army was soon in full 
 retreat on Dublin. The French, however, had occupied the 
 defile at Duleek ; their absence from the field was an irreparable 
 loss; but it certainly averted a complete rout 1 . 
 
 1 A spirited account of the Battle of the Boyne will be found in the 
 Memoirs of Dumont de Bostaquet, a Huguenot seigneur in the service of
 
 1 88 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 James was soon again an exile on his way to France ; his 
 conduct at the Boyne had been unworthy of him; he had 
 expressed his distrust of his Irish soldiers, and had abandoned 
 them in the hour of disaster. William had before long been 
 received in Dublin, to the enthusiastic delight of the Protestant 
 townsmen; the government of his adversary at once disappeared. 
 The King delayed for a time in the capital, and did not press 
 his defeated enemy ; he was perhaps kept back by the news of 
 the reverse at Beachy Head ; but, hero as he was, he was not 
 a great captain; he never excelled in the direction of war. His 
 hesitation enabled the Irish army, still probably 20,000 strong, to 
 reach in safety the line of the Shannon; it had assembled around 
 Limerick by the close of July. The city, like Londonderry, was 
 rudely fortified; but Lauzun, the chief of the French contingent, 
 and his officers pronounced it unable to resist an attack made 
 by even a small force ; they were, in truth, sick of the war in 
 Ireland ; they had no faith in the Irish levies ; their only 
 thought was to see France again. But the Irish leaders were 
 of a different mind, and they found a response in the hearts of 
 their men; Limerick was the rallying point of their race in 
 peril; Limerick was to be defended at any risk, to the last. 
 After angry discussions Lauzun and his regiments fell back on 
 Galway; the Irishry were left to make a stand at Limerick. 
 Their nominal commander was a French officer, but the real 
 leader was their beloved Sarsfield. 
 
 Preparations for resistance were now made ; the place 
 gradually acquired increasing strength. Limerick, then the 
 second of Irish cities, rose from an island, surrounded by the 
 Shannon ; this was approached by bridges, protected by forts, 
 
 William. He especially praises the conduct of the Irish horsemen. We 
 have only space for a single passage, p. 272: "Nous nous melames parmi 
 les ennemis et les rompimes; mais le Sieur cle Belcastre, commandant 
 notre escadron, ayant etc fort blesse, Varenques culbute, le vent et la 
 poussiere nous etant contraires, notre escadron se retira en desordre."
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the L imerick Capitulation. 1 89 
 
 commanding most of the space outside the walls. Unguarded 
 points were fortified by works hastily raised; the adjoining plain 
 was broken up by fences, and obstacles were accumulated to 
 repel an attack. Stores of provisions, too, were brought in ; the 
 threatened garrison spared no efforts; the citizens joined 
 heartily in the labours of the defence. William was before 
 Limerick in the second week of August ; one of the forts was 
 captured by a sudden assault; he began to draw his lines 
 round the beleaguered city. He had, however, only light guns 
 with him ; a siege train was still on the way ; over-confidence 
 alone can explain the mistake of challenging an enemy when 
 still unprepared. The opportunity was seized by Sarsfield; 
 he was informed by a deserter that the heavy guns were 
 approaching William's camp by the roads from Cashel ; and 
 sallying from the place, he crossed the Shannon, fell on the 
 artillery park at the cross-roads of Ballyneety, and destroyed it 
 with a loss of scarcely a man. The stroke was brilliant and 
 well directed ; the Irish chief was soon in Limerick again. 
 
 William, a tenacious, if not a great commander, continued 
 the attack in spite of this reverse. He contrived to repair two 
 of the heavy guns, and -kept up a desultory fire on the place ; 
 in truth, like all the officers in his camp, he was confident that 
 it must soon fall. Limerick, however, held out with unflinching 
 constancy ; the waters of the Shannon had begun to rise ; the 
 rainy season would soon make the surrounding plain a pesti- 
 lential swamp ; the King resolved to try the effect of an assault 
 before the Irish climate had decimated his men. On the 
 27th of August a column of picked English troops endeavoured 
 to storm a breach still imperfect; it was followed by a con- 
 siderable part of the army 1 . But the assailants encountered 
 
 1 Macaulay, History of England, V. 309, seems rather to underrate the 
 force of the assailants. The account of Dumont de Bostaquet is more full 
 and clear. He says, pp. 287-8: "Les ennemis chargerent nos troupes 
 dans leur retraite, et nous tuerent ou blesserent plus de quinze cents
 
 190 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 foemen worthy of their steel ; the Irishry fought with desperate 
 courage; the women as at Londonderry took part in the fight; 
 and the attack was repulsed with heavy loss. The King, 
 alarmed at the prospect of danger before him, raised the siege, 
 and drew off his discomfited army ; he was, in a few days, on 
 his way back to England. The heroism of Limerick and the 
 skill of Sarsfield kept the scales of fortune still in suspense. 
 
 Justice has not been done to the defence of Limerick by 
 historians of the conquering race; but it may stand by the 
 side of that of Londonderry ; in both instances the courage of 
 despair baffled the calculations of experienced soldiers, and 
 plucked victory out of the extreme of danger. Before long 
 Marlborough had taken Cork and Kinsale ; this was the most 
 brilliant exploit of the war; the blow was aimed at the 
 communications of the French by sea; and it had great, 
 perhaps decisive effects 1 . Lauzun and most of his troops 
 took their departure for France; the defence of Ireland was 
 left almost altogether to the Irish army. France in truth had 
 given the Irishry but little help ; like Spain, in the preceding 
 century, she had treated them as mere pawns in her game; 
 this was almost inevitable in the cas of a power which did 
 not possess the command of the sea, and had to send troops to 
 a distant island, surrounded by the Atlantic, but near England 
 and her fleets. The contending armies went into winter 
 quarters, the English occupying the greater part of the country 
 to the east of the Shannon, the Irish for the most part west of 
 the river ; it is unnecessary to say how unequal they were in 
 all that makes troops fitted to take the field. Ginkle, a 
 
 homines. Cette entreprise ne seivit qu'a nous faire perdre beaucoup de 
 monde; le regiment des gardes flamandes perdit beaucoup d'officiers, mais, 
 plus que tous, les regiments fran9ais. " 
 
 1 Lord Wolseley, History of Marlborough, n. 157, 220, has given us an 
 admirable and discriminating account of the capture of Cork and Kinsale 
 and of the results.
 
 vi.j From the Restoration to the Limerick Capitulation. 191 
 
 Dutchman, commanded William's forces; the Irish were in 
 the hands of Saint Ruth, a French general sent from Versailles ; 
 but they remained devoted as ever to Sarsfield, and unhappily 
 Saint Ruth and Sarsfield disliked each other. Athlone was 
 attacked by Ginkle in June 1691 ; he was soon master of the 
 part of the town along the Leinster shore of the Shannon ; but 
 he encountered a stubborn resistance on the Connaught shore, 
 where part of the Irish army held a fort on the passage. The 
 assailants were more than once beaten off from the bridge 
 which spanned the stream near the centre of the place; but 
 they crossed on the 3oth by a ford lower down and drove the 
 enemy out of the fort, which they seized. Saint Ruth had 
 remained inactive in his camp hard by; he had had angry 
 disputes with Sarsfield; the fatal divisions of Ireland had 
 appeared once more. 
 
 The French commander, stung to the quick by a defeat 
 due to his own neglect, now determined to fight a pitched 
 battle. Sarsfield, a much abler soldier, protested in vain ; Saint 
 Ruth would not listen to the advice of his colleague. He 
 drew together all the forces at hand, and placed them in a 
 position of formidable strength, their front covered by a bog 
 near the valley of the Suck, their flanks protected on either 
 side by obstacles, and on the left by the hamlet and the old castle 
 of Aghrim. No effort was spared to arouse the hearts of his 
 men ; he harangued regiments in person and bade them 
 do or die; priests with crucifixes passed along the ranks 
 and adjured them to fight for their homes and their faith. 
 Ginkle had reached the enemy by the i2th of July, at the 
 head of about 20,000 men; the Irish were not more than 
 25,000, but they held a position of such vantage that Ginkle 
 hesitated for a time to attack. The battle began at about five 
 in the afternoon; an attempt against the right of the Irish 
 failed ; and Ginkle's army endeavoured in vain to make its way 
 through the yielding morass, and to fall in force on the
 
 192 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 enemy's centre. The Irish, protected by a hastily formed 
 breastwork, repelled successfully every attack; and Saint Ruth 
 shouted victory as he beheld the best troops of England 
 recoiling in defeat. An effort was next made to turn the Irish 
 left; at this critical moment Saint Ruth was slain; and Sarsfield, 
 on whom the command devolved, was not only ignorant of the 
 plans of his chief, but had received positive orders not to 
 employ the reserve. The attack on Aghrim proved at last 
 successful, very probably owing to this untoward accident ; the 
 whole Irish army gave way by degrees, but it fought heroically 
 while a chance was left. The hatred of the victors was seen in 
 a hideous butchery ; thousands of corpses marked the line of 
 the rout. 
 
 The broken wreck of the Irish army drifted in part to 
 Galway, and in part to Limerick. Galway opened its gates in 
 a few days; most of the towns in Munster and Connaught, 
 which held out for James, were soon given up to his rival's 
 troops ; Limerick alone continued to defy the enemy. After 
 the defeat of William, the year before, the city had been the 
 scene of bickerings between Berwick, the nominal governor, 
 Tyrconnell, and the officers of the Irish garrison ; the defences 
 appear to have not been improved. Ginkle advanced cautiously 
 against the place, and invested it with methodical care ; he had 
 evidently not forgotten the lesson taught by the assault. He 
 kept within his lines for nearly a month, before he ventured to 
 risk an attack ; the chief bridge leading into Limerick was then 
 all but captured, and a fort outside it was successfully stormed. 
 By this time Tyrconnell had died ; the heads of the extinct 
 government of James were within the town, and sighed for 
 relief; the Irish soldiery, cowed by the horrors of Aghrim, 
 seemed unwilling to prolong a now hopeless contest. Sarsfield, 
 with true judgment, resolved to make terms, while arms still 
 remained in his hands; and he entered into parleys with 
 Ginkle. The capitulation was agreed to on the 3rd of October
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the Limerick Capitulation. 193 
 
 1691 ; the Culloden of the Irishry had been fought; the "red 
 eye of battle " had closed in despair on the struggles and the 
 hopes of Catholic Ireland. 
 
 The Treaty of Limerick forms a melancholy passage in Irish 
 History 1 . It consisted of two parts. The military articles were 
 signed by the generals of both armies including Sarsfield 
 under his title of Earl of Lucan; unquestionably they were 
 faithfully observed. The chief of these provisions was that 
 soldiers of the Irish forces should have a right to " enlist in the 
 service of France." Advantage was generally taken of this con- 
 dition ; the great majority of the men who had made a stand 
 at Aghrim and defended Limerick went into exile. The gallant 
 Sarsfield was at their head; he was to die the most enviable 
 of deaths on the field of Landen, in the face of the enemy, 
 but in the hour of triumph. His followers were to increase 
 the list of the Irish foes of England, and to form the nucleus of 
 the celebrated body of men, " ever and everywhere " true to the 
 Bourbon lilies, who were to win renown for the Irish name in 
 war, on many a hard fought day from Cremona to Minden. 
 
 The civil articles of the capitulation bore the names of 
 Ginkle, of the functionaries who had been made Lords Justices 
 by William when he had left Ireland, and of Sarsfield and 
 other superior Irish officers. Unlike the military articles, they 
 were not respected, and the violated " Treaty of Limerick " is 
 still properly a word of reproach. By one of the articles it was 
 declared that Irish Catholics should have " such privileges in 
 the exercise of their religion, as were consistent with the laws 
 of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II"; 
 this secured them toleration at least for their faith, if it did not 
 make them eligible to hold offices in the State. An amnesty, 
 too, was extended to the townsmen of Limerick, and to all 
 
 1 The capitulation of Limerick is set out at length in Leland, ill. 
 appendix, 619, 634. It should be carefully studied. The accounts of 
 most historians are superficial and inaccurate. 
 
 M. I. 13
 
 194 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 officers and soldiers of the Irish army, under conditions that 
 must be pronounced fair; and there were other provisions of 
 the same character. The most important, however, of the 
 civil articles a subject of passionate disputes afterwards 
 was this, "the inhabitants or residents of Limerick, or any 
 garrison in the possession of the Irish ; all officers and 
 soldiers" of the Jacobite army in five specified counties, and 
 all "persons under their protection in the said counties " ; and 
 all " commissioned officers " in counties occupied by William's 
 troops, were to be restored to their estates, should they make 
 submission to the new government : this provision, it was 
 calculated, would save their lands for more than three 
 thousand owners. Unhappily a mistake was committed here ; 
 the comprehensive words " under their protection in the said 
 counties" were omitted in one draft; but William expressly 
 declared that this was an oversight, and the words, therefore, 
 must be held to have been part of the Treaty. The Lords 
 Justices undertook to " use their utmost endeavours," that the 
 articles "should be ratified and confirmed" by the Irish 
 Parliament ; if this confirmation was, perhaps, necessary, it was 
 taken for granted that no difficulty could arise. 
 
 Irish History presents some points of resemblance, and 
 others of difference, in the two periods, between the death of 
 Elizabeth and the Restoration, and between the accession of 
 Charles II and the Treaty of Limerick. In both instances a 
 season of deceptive rest was followed by a rising of the subject 
 community and by a fierce conflict of races and faiths. In both 
 cruel wrongs were done to Ireland ; the spoliation of the times 
 of James I and of Charles I, and the frightful proscription 
 effected by Cromwell, found their counterparts in the Acts of 
 Settlement, and in the evil policy which led up to them. In 
 both material prosperity faintly appears, only to end in material 
 ruin ; in both England was guilty of unjust oppression, and 
 of forcing her institutions on a reluctant people; in both
 
 vi.] From the Restoration to the Limerick Capitulation. 195 
 
 Protestant Ascendency makes progress, and with Catholic 
 Subjection becomes more and more the characteristic type of 
 society. The differences, however, are strongly marked ; in the 
 first period the old Englishry stood widely apart from the Irish 
 Celts, at least until the Cromwellian Conquest ; in the second 
 they are made almost one with them, under the influence of 
 misgovernment from which both suffer. The line between the 
 races is thus still more lessened until it appears well nigh to 
 vanish ; but if it may yet be traced, and is real, the line 
 between religions becomes more and more deep, and separates 
 Ireland, more and more, into a Protestant body of settlers and 
 a mass of Catholics. In the second period, too, civil war 
 assumes a nobler aspect than in the first; it ceases to be on 
 the part of the Irishry a merely tribal resistance to a conquering 
 Power ; it is notable for heroic deeds on both sides, though 
 fatal Irish disunion is not absent. The Irish Parliament, 
 besides, of 1689 contrasts favourably with the Confederacy of 
 1642-8; and, on the whole, in the second period religious 
 passion is hardly as fierce as in the first, although it remains a 
 dominant force. The two periods have one feature, of the 
 very highest importance, in common : in both Ireland strikes 
 hard at England in a time of peril and revolution; and in 
 both Ireland has to pay the penalty. 
 
 Catholic Ireland was now at the feet of William, almost as 
 completely as she had been at the feet of Cromwell. The 
 men, indeed, were of different natures : but would Protestant 
 Ireland thirsting for revenge, would the men at the Castle 
 looking out for forfeitures, as in the day of Borlase and 
 Parsons, would the English Parliament supreme in the State, 
 long accustomed to meddle in Irish affairs, and eager to make 
 an example of "Irish Papists," permit the King to carry out 
 the principles of religious toleration and of natural justice in 
 the case of Ireland, which he had made his own ? Would the 
 Treaty of Limerick suffice to restrain savage animosities of race 
 
 132
 
 196 IrekuuL [CHAP.VI. 
 
 and fiuth, cupidity, and the anger and pride of a conquering 
 people, or would it prove worse than an empty delusion? On 
 that issue much might jet depend, though it is difficult to 
 suppose that, in any event, die existing state of things in 
 Ireland could endure, or produce permanent peace and good 
 government. But the resuk was to be seen ere long; Ireland 
 was about to enter on perhaps the most sad and disastrous 
 period of her whole history, bearing in mind die contem- 
 poraneous state of die world. 
 
 Note, p. i$5- Mr Ledcjv History gf Em^mmd im tie EigktamUi 
 Cemtmrj* n - % ** Mr Fronde, Tie Emgpsh im frxtmml, I. 191, state 
 that IVijaiBj,' Law was repealed by the Iri& PjiFuafirt in 1689. UBS 
 stems to be am enor. No sniiicped is to be farad in Idle Ads of thai 
 THil MI ! set forth m Doris's work. Lebnd, in. 540, Edition 1773, 
 rfnilf says that PoynaagsT Law was not repealed owing to the imter- 
 positiiM of James. Macadaj, History af Emg!Lxl, rr. aij. Edttioo 1858, 
 does Bot icfar to this svbject. 
 
 jThetraAof themrtlci irraif tobeftataBiHiepeaEBgPojmngi^Law 
 was actaally passed by the **''* and COBBKHS; radt it did not iixuwv 
 mall GC. Davis, Pttrui PmrBmrnat/, ed. DVHJ, p. 140.]
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PERIOD OF THE PENAL LAWS IN IRELAND. 
 THE REVOLUTION OF 1782. 
 
 Retrospect of Irish History, since the Anglo-Norman Conquest. The 
 influence of circumstance on events. The Treaty of Limerick 
 violated. Ruin of Catholic owners. The Penal Code enacted by 
 degrees. Its threefold object, to exclude the Catholics from the land 
 and from all power in the State, to degrade them, and to keep their 
 Church in subjection. Its disastrous effects. Emigration of Catholics 
 from Ireland. Distinguished Irish Catholic exiles. The "wild 
 geese." The Irish Brigade. How the Code affected the land, 
 commerce, and social relations. Demoralisation caused by it. 
 Subjection of Protestant Ireland to England. Commercial restric- 
 tions. Destruction of the Irish woollen manufacture. Measures 
 against the Irish Presbyterians. The evil results. The Irish 
 Parliament. Its composition and weakness. Restrictions on it. 
 Declaratory statute that the English Parliament could bind Ireland by 
 its laws. Modification of Poynings' Law. Heads of Bills. The 
 Irish Parliament inferior and subject. The Irish-Anglican or Es- 
 tablished Church. Its characteristics. The Irish Catholic Church. 
 The Irish Bench and Bar. Appearance of the country. Molyneux, 
 Swift, and Berkeley. Their writings on Ireland. Gradual improve- 
 ment before the middle of the eighteenth century. Social and 
 political progress. An " Irish interest " formed in the Irish Parlia- 
 ment. Opposition to the Government. The "Undertakers." Anthony 
 Malone. Condition of Ireland about 1 760. The Whiteboy and other 
 movements. Agrarian crime in Ireland. The first years of the reign 
 of George III quiet in Ireland. Henry Flood. The Viceroyalty 
 of Lord Townshend. Quarrel with the "Undertakers" and the
 
 198 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Irish Parliament. The Viceroyalty of Lord Harcourt. Influence on 
 Ireland of the revolt of the American colonies. Profuse corruption. 
 Attitude of the Irish Parliament. Extreme distress and fear of 
 invasion. The Volunteer movement. Henry Grattan. Concession 
 of a partial Free Trade to Ireland. Demands for Legislative 
 Independence. The Volunteers at Dungannon. Grattan moves the 
 Legislative Independence of Ireland. The Revolution of 1782. 
 Relaxation of the Penal Code. Irish Literature, Art, and Science. 
 Reflections. 
 
 A PERIOD of five centuries had now passed away, since 
 England had begun to establish her rule in Ireland. During 
 the first three of these she had only succeeded in making her 
 influence felt within a narrow Pale, diminishing too in the 
 course of time ; the rest of the island had been abandoned to 
 half barbarous feudalism, and to chiefs of the Celts. The first 
 Tudor Sovereigns had, in different ways, made real attempts to 
 extend the power of the Monarchy over the whole of Ireland, 
 and to enlarge the domain of order and law ; the policy of 
 Henry VIII in this respect was, for the most part, marked by 
 enlightened wisdom. But the King's system of government 
 ceased with his life; and a series of unhappy circumstances 
 destroyed the promise of the auspicious era that seemed 
 about to open. The Reformation separated England and 
 Ireland by degrees, if this, for a long time, was not a main 
 cause of disunion ; the advance of the dominion of England 
 was characterised by spoliation, often unjust, and by irregular 
 risings of nobles and chiefs ; and, at the great crisis of the 
 sixteenth century, Ireland threw in her lot with the foes of 
 England, and was gradually subjugated by evil and atrocious 
 methods. The struggle of race and religion, which had long 
 been growing, now became more internecine and fierce ; con- 
 fiscation proceeded on a gigantic scale ; the usages of the Irish 
 Celts were blotted out ; and masses of settlers, alien from the 
 children of the soil, were made possessors of vast tracts of 
 territory, torn from their ancient owners and occupants by all
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 199 
 
 kinds of wrong. After the era of Protestant Ascendency had 
 thus begun, the subject Catholic people rose once more; 
 Ireland crossed England again at a most critical time ; a 
 period of savage civil war followed ; and Cromwell placed the 
 whole island under the Puritan yoke, trying to crush out all 
 distinctions, save that of faith, enormously increasing the 
 Protestant settlements, and governing by an absolute despotism 
 of the sword. The Restoration, in the main, confirmed his 
 policy ; after a brief period of treacherous repose, Catholic 
 Ireland, for the second time in the seventeenth century, took up 
 arms against Protestant England, and engaged in a desperate 
 strife with her far stronger neighbour at a moment of revolution 
 and national danger. The result was what might have been 
 foreseen : Catholic Ireland went down in an unequal conflict, 
 having provoked the indignation and wrath of England; and 
 she had now to abide the results of another conquest. 
 
 These considerations must be borne in mind as we review 
 the dark and calamitous period of Irish History we are about 
 to traverse. It should be added that if the lot of Ireland had 
 been, for five hundred years, that of a neglected and a 
 misruled dependency, this was less dae to positive faults of 
 her own, or to positive faults of the dominant country, than to 
 what, in our ignorance, we must call the evil play of fortune. 
 A series of accidents had checked the growth and development 
 of the English power, throughout the island, in the Middle Ages ; 
 instead of a strong and well-ordered Monarchy, only a feeble 
 settlement had been made, by the side of feudal and Celtic 
 anarchy. Consequently, at the momentous epoch of the 
 sixteenth century, when the world was passing into a new 
 existence, Ireland was centuries behind England, in civilisation 
 and social progress; this single circumstance largely explains 
 the train of unhappy events that followed. It makes us 
 understand, to a considerable extent, why Ireland parted from 
 England at the Reformation ; why English statesmen tried to
 
 2OO Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 impose their institutions on a people they deemed barbarous, 
 and to obliterate Irish laws and customs ; why the colonisation 
 of Ireland by foreign settlers seemed necessary to the well- 
 being of Ireland herself, and a policy of the first importance 
 to the State ; why, from the days of Mary Tudor to those of 
 Cromwell, the confiscation of the Irish land was carried out as 
 part of a system of government ; why Protestant Ascendency 
 was established by degrees, and Catholic subjection was made 
 more and more complete. The atrocities, the crimes, the 
 follies, the wickedness, which took place during this long 
 agony, are not, indeed, excused by reflections like these. It is 
 impossible to justify much that was done in the Desmond and 
 Tyrone wars, in the conflict of 1641-9, in the Cromwellian 
 Conquest and the settlement of the land, in the struggle of 
 1689-91 ; and not to speak of numberless things of the kind, 
 the rapacity, the guilt, and the systematic cruelty of many 
 Tudor and Stuart Viceroys, the greed and tyranny of successive 
 swarms of colonists, the perfidy of Charles I and of Charles II, 
 and the conduct of the warring races and faiths of Ireland, in 
 instances unhappily too frequent, deserve to be severely 
 condemned. Still circumstance, superior to the will of man, 
 does account for much that is most deplorable in the melan- 
 choly drama of Irish History, and that almost from the 
 beginning to the end. Not the least remarkable fact, in the 
 course of events, was that England was, in the main, Teutonic, 
 and Ireland, in the main, Celtic; few races present more 
 striking features of contrast, or have found it more difficult to 
 agree, when one is dominant and the other subject. 
 
 The Irish Parliament was convened a few months after the 
 fall of Limerick. Every Catholic had been shut out from it 
 by an Act recently passed by the English Parliament ; in the 
 existing condition of Ireland, indeed, the precaution probably 
 was superfluous. The men at the Castle, we have seen, were 
 on the look-out for forfeitures ; the dominant Protestant caste
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 201 
 
 was smarting from the effects of wrongs done in the late years 
 of trouble ; the short-lived ascendency of the Irish Catholics 
 had been followed by their defeat and ruin ; and Catholic 
 Ireland was in the grasp of her conquerors. A furious outcry 
 arose in the Irish Parliament against the article, in what was 
 now known by the pacific name of the Treaty of Limerick, 
 which assured Catholic owners their estates, in the counties 
 "under the protection of the Irish army"; this, we have 
 seen, was ratified by William III, under peculiar circum- 
 stances, by his positive order ; but the concession was 
 denounced as an act of treason to the State. The king, 
 indeed, had, for some time, as was to be expected from his 
 well-known character and tendency to toleration in religious 
 matters, been trying to do justice to the Irish Catholics; he 
 had already caused the lands of some to be restored ; he had, 
 in fact, offered them terms, before Aghrim, much more 
 favourable than those agreed to at Limerick. Nothing, how- 
 ever, could stop the Assembly in Dublin ; it quarrelled with 
 Lord Sidney, who had been made Lord Lieutenant, and 
 repudiated every part of his master's policy ; and Sidney was 
 compelled at last to prorogue and dissolve it, for it had 
 assumed an attitude, on a grave question, the subject, in after 
 years, of angry disputes, in which it asserted a right denied to 
 it at Westminster. A short interval of comparative peace 
 followed ; during this time William continued to give back 
 parts of their lands to some Catholic owners ; but unfortu- 
 nately he lavished enormous grants of land, forfeited in the 
 late war, on favourites, courtiers, and Dutch soldiers, after the 
 bad fashion of Charles II. The English Parliament took the 
 matter in hand; condemned the conduct of the king in no 
 measured terms ; and ultimately insisted that the forfeited 
 lands should be resumed, and disposed of anew. The Irish 
 Parliament, meanwhile, had assembled again ; William, from 
 what motive is not known, consented that a Bill, confirming
 
 2O2 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 the Treaty of Limerick, should not contain the important words, 
 on which he had himself insisted ; and Catholic owners, whose 
 rights had been saved, as being " under the protection of the 
 Irish army," were left naked and defenceless before their foes. 
 It was a grave breach of faith on the part of the king, even if 
 he was not, perhaps, wholly a free agent; but William, if a 
 great, was not a scrupulous statesman ; and it is to the honour 
 of the Irish House of Lords, that it passed the Bill by a 
 majority of one vote only. But hundreds of Catholic owners 
 were nevertheless despoiled; the iniquities of the "Graces," 
 and of the Acts of Settlement, were unhappily repeated, with 
 the attendant evils. 
 
 The Treaty of Limerick had thus been broken; it was 
 violated afterwards in a much worse fashion. By another 
 article and respecting this no doubt can exist as to the words 
 that were used it was provided, we have said, that the Irish 
 Catholics should possess the same rights "in the exercise of 
 their religion," as the law allowed, and as they " enjoyed in the 
 reign of Charles II." Though they had been subjected to 
 many galling tests, they had been practically little molested in 
 their faith, passing over the persecution of Cromwell especi- 
 ally in the reign of Charles referred to. But England was 
 incensed with Catholic Ireland ; the Parliament at Westminster 
 was enacting most cruel laws against the English Catholics; 
 and the colonists in Ireland had but one thought, that of 
 trampling down their abhorred enemies. With the approbation 
 of the English Parliament, and of a long succession of British 
 statesmen, the Irish Parliament, from this time forward, and 
 during a period of many years, extending far into the eighteenth 
 century, passed laws levelled at the Irish Catholics, which not 
 only cast the Treaty of Limerick to the winds and placed 
 their faith under an odious ban, but directly aimed at de- 
 priving them of almost all rights, political, civil, nay of a social 
 kind, and at degrading them into a mere race of Helots. We
 
 vii.J The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 203 
 
 cannot dwell in detail on the execrable Penal Code ', we can 
 only glance at its most salient features. After the forfeitures 
 of the reign of William III, on a final adjustment made by 
 the English Parliament, about 300,000 acres of the Irish land 
 had been given back to their old possessors; about 800,000 
 had been bestowed on new men, largely English absentees; 
 and probably not more than one-eighth of the Irish soil, after 
 the confiscations of a century and a half, remained in the 
 hands of Irish Catholic owners, whether of the old Englishry, 
 or of the Celtic race. It was the first object, however, of the 
 Penal Code, and of its authors the ruling Protestant caste, to 
 divorce the Catholics as completely as possible from the land, 
 the source of wealth and political power, and to deprive them 
 even of the remnant they still retained, after the wrongs they 
 had endured for ages. To effect this purpose the Irish 
 Catholic was disabled from acquiring the ownership of land, 
 or even from having an incumbrance on it ; the only tenure of 
 land he could obtain, was a short leasehold at a rack rent, a 
 tenure obviously designed for humble peasants ; and, at the 
 same time, the few Catholics who had preserved their estates, 
 were compelled to allow them to be split in fragments, and to 
 " gavel " among their children at death, the idea being that, by 
 this provision, their " properties would soon crumble away and 
 disappear." Other laws, all with the same fell purpose, but 
 some inspired by evil malice and hate, were passed to complete 
 this exclusion from the land. A Catholic estate was not to 
 " gavel," should the eldest son conform to the dominant faith ; 
 
 1 Vincent Scully on the Penal Code is a book of some research. 
 Howard's Popery Cases will be read with profit. Burke's Tracts on the 
 Popery Laws, though mere incomplete sketches, bear the marks of his 
 philosophic and masterly hand. The Irelande politique, sociale, et 
 religieuse of De Beaumont is worth careful study. An excellent dissertation 
 on the Irish Penal Code will be found in Mr Lecky's England in the 
 Eighteenth Century, vol. I. chap, i; vol. II. chap. 7.
 
 204 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 a Protestant man or woman, who married a Catholic, was 
 subject, if an owner of land, to the Code ; the eldest son of a 
 Catholic owner, who became a Protestant, was given a right to 
 reduce his father's fee simple to a life interest, and to possess 
 himself of the expectant estate ; a wife or child, tempted to the 
 same apostasy, was entitled to an immediate provision from 
 the land, and was removed from the control of the head of the 
 family. 
 
 The second great object of the Penal Code was to shut out 
 the Irish Catholic from any place of trust in the State, nay 
 from the pale of civilised life. He had been forbidden, we 
 have seen, to have a seat in his country's Parliament ; he was 
 ere long deprived of the elective suffrage; he was excluded 
 "from the corporations, from the magistracy, from the Bar, 
 from the Bench, from the County Grand Juries, even from the 
 Parish Vestries"; he could not "be a sheriff, a solicitor, a 
 gamekeeper, a constable." The proscription went even lower 
 down ; the Irish Catholic could not serve in the Army or on 
 the Fleet ; he could not possess any arms or weapons ; he was, 
 in a word, " only recognised by law for repression and punish- 
 ment," and disentitled to nearly all the rights of a freeman. 
 And while this people of Pariahs, who, be it observed, formed 
 the overwhelming majority of the community as a whole, "was 
 excluded, in its own country, from almost every profession and 
 from every Government office, from the highest to the lowest," 
 the Code went out of its way, so to speak, to humiliate the 
 whole body of the Irish Catholics, to degrade them, in a word, 
 to the position of outcasts. It is unnecessary to point out how 
 the laws as to the land could make the life of a Catholic owner 
 wretched; a rebellious son, an adulterous wife could defy his 
 authority and simply rob him ; and it should be added that, 
 even in his dying hour, he could not commit his children to 
 the care of a guardian of his own faith ; he was compelled to 
 devolve this trust on a Protestant. Other provisions of the
 
 vu.] The Period of tJie Penal Laws in Ireland, 205 
 
 Code were, perhaps, even worse : the intermarriage of Catholics 
 and Protestants was made almost a crime a law like the 
 barbarous medieval statutes, which forbade a Saxon to wed a 
 Celt; the Catholic was not allowed to educate a child in a 
 Catholic school, at home or abroad ; the University of Dublin 
 shut her gates on him ; he could not, however high his rank, 
 possess a horse worth more than ^5 ; in many instances he was 
 made liable to pay a disproportionate amount of taxes, and 
 other imposts of a similar kind. In short, he was insulted, as 
 well as injured, in every walk of life; he was described as the 
 " Common Popish Enemy " in many statutes, and in speeches 
 of Viceroys, and in the Irish Parliament ; it was even solemnly 
 laid down from the Bench of Justice, "that his existence in 
 Ireland was not to be presumed." 
 
 The last great object of the Penal Code was to destroy the 
 organisation of the Church of the Irish Catholics, and to make 
 their religion a by- word and a reproach. "Catholic arch- 
 bishops, bishops, deans, and vicars general " were doomed to 
 exile; if they returned to Ireland they were guilty of high 
 treason, and liable to the frightful penalties annexed to the 
 crime. The same law was applied to the regular clergy; 
 monks, friars, and even nuns could not remain in Ireland ; if 
 they did they carried their lives in their hands. The Mass was 
 not proscribed, as in the days of Cromwell ; the Irish, it was 
 felt, must have some religion ; but the old statutes of Elizabeth 
 remained in force; new laws greatly increased their stringency. 
 Catholic priests were allowed to do their office, provided their 
 names were placed in a register of the State, and that they 
 took an oath of abjuration which, by degrees, was made so 
 iniquitous that they could not take it : if these conditions were 
 not observed they might lawfully be expelled from Ireland, and 
 hanged as malefactors should they return. The Catholic 
 ritual and worship were deliberately banned ; a priest, though 
 registered, " could not have a curate ; no chapel could have a
 
 2O6 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 steeple or bells; no cross could be publicly erected, pil- 
 grimages to holy wells were even forbidden " ; the penalty, in 
 default of payment of a fine, "was the degrading one of 
 whipping." In a word, the most cherished observances of a 
 great and ancient Church were prohibited and even made 
 criminal ; and detestable encouragement was given by the law 
 to bribe the Catholic priest to renounce his faith, and to 
 punish him should he attempt to make a proselyte. Looking 
 at the Code as a whole, Burke wrote the simple truth, when he 
 described it 1 as "a complete system full of coherence and 
 consistency in all its parts, a machine of wise and elaborate 
 contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverish- 
 ment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in 
 them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the 
 perverted ingenuity of man." 
 
 Such were the methods devised to make the system of 
 Protestant Ascendency secure in Ireland, to stereotype it, so 
 to speak, in the land, and to place a Catholic people in 
 enduring bondage. It is a mistake to suppose that the Penal 
 Code was not enforced, and was a complete failure ; its terrors 
 caused many Catholics of the higher orders to conform to Pro- 
 testantism, or to make the pretence ; they could not otherwise 
 call themselves freemen ; nay, could hardly exist in their own 
 country. The nobler spirits, however, of the proscribed com- 
 munion took refuge on the Continent, and joined the crowd of 
 Irish exiles, who, since the days of Tyrone, had been scattered 
 over many lands, united in hatred of England and her power. 
 We cannot attempt to enumerate the names, still less to 
 describe the brilliant careers, of the Catholic Irish, of either 
 race, who won honour for themselves, in war or in peace, in 
 the service of states which bade the strangers welcome. A 
 branch of the old race of OfFaley became the Condes of Ofelia 
 
 1 Bnrke's letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe. Works. Cited by Mr Lecky, 
 History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I. 302.
 
 vii.] TJu Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 207 
 
 in Spain : more than one chief of the O'Neills and the 
 O'Donnells found distinguished places in the Spanish army; 
 other eminent Spanish soldiers were Irish. The Austrian and 
 even the Russian armies had, also, great Irishmen among their 
 leaders ; Browne, who would have triumphed at Prague, had 
 he been in command ; Lacy, who discomfited Frederick the 
 Great on the theatre of the operations of 1866; a second 
 Browne and Lacy honoured by the Czars ; Maguire and 
 Nugent illustrious in a subsequent age. But France was the 
 chief home of the exiles ; her armies were filled with Irish 
 officers, conspicuous on many a field of fame ; O'Brien, Lord 
 Clare, decided the result at Fontenoy ; Lally at Wandewash 
 fought with heroic valour. Nor should history pass over the 
 great deeds of the generations of Irish soldiers, who, low as 
 their station was, made their country renowned in the records 
 of more than one Continental service. Here again France 
 played the principal part : the "wild geese," as they were 
 fancifully called, flew in thousands from Ireland, to join her 
 armies ; in less than a century, it has been said, a quarter of a 
 million of Irish recruits found a place in her celebrated Irish 
 Brigade; and they amply justified the noble words, "Semper 
 et ubique fideles " inscribed on their banners. They turned 
 the scale at Almanza and Fontenoy; at Dettingen extorted 
 from George II the bitter words, "curse on the laws that 
 deprive me of such men " ; won the admiration of Villars, of 
 Berwick, of Vendome, of Saxe, in many a well-contested cam- 
 paign ; and, whether in good or in evil fortune, were always 
 among the best troops of France. 
 
 The history, in fact, of Catholic Ireland is largely that of 
 those courageous exiles, during this dismal part of the eighteenth 
 century. As for the Catholic Irish who remained at home, 
 the consequences of the Penal Code were, in the main, such as 
 its authors had hoped for. The few Catholic owners of land 
 who survived, whether of Anglo-Norman or Celtic descent,
 
 208 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 sank gradually into poverty and despair; their existence was 
 one of continual alarm and wretchedness. Involved as they 
 were in a common ruin, old distinctions of race had almost 
 disappeared ; the sons of the Barons of the Pale and of Celtic 
 Princes were equally despised and degraded Pariahs; they 
 vegetated listlessly on the ancestral estates, which the law was 
 filching from them by degrees, excluded from power and place 
 in the State, defeated and broken down in the battle of life, 
 insulted and oppressed even by the refuse of the dominant 
 caste which had been made their masters. Their lives, too, 
 were a round of anxiety and pain ; they were beset by detest- 
 able harpies of the law, picking flaws in their titles, like the 
 old " discoverers," and informing against them in the Courts of 
 Justice, if such a name could be given to these; their foes 
 were often those of their own households ; their feelings were 
 tortured, their families rent in twain, in the most ordinary 
 relations of domestic life. Passing from this order of men, the 
 Irish Catholic was not actually forbidden to trade ; but he was 
 shut out from the municipal bodies, which had great advan- 
 tages in this respect, and even from many corporate towns ; he 
 was subjected to all kinds of unfair restrictions; and though 
 many of the class did engage in commerce, and even 
 acquired wealth in time, they were not numerous enough to 
 make their influence felt, during the first half of the eighteenth 
 century. As for the Catholic masses seated on the soil, they 
 were the villeins and serfs of conquering settlers, alien in blood 
 and creed, and for the most part hostile ; and prohibited as 
 they were from holding land, except by a tenure of the worst 
 kind, they were reduced to a multitude of petty occupiers, 
 discouraged in their industry, kept down through life, unable 
 to improve their lands and themselves, and sinking into 
 appalling poverty. Oppression and exaction on the part of 
 the ruling class, the degradation and misery of the subject race 
 were the necessary results of this state of things. Ireland,
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 209 
 
 Swift tells us, was, even in his time, a land of desolation and 
 widespread ruin ; and it was a land of ever-recurring famines, 
 in which the peasantry perished in thousands. As regards 
 Catholic Ireland as a whole, the law and everything pertaining 
 to it had been made its most deadly enemy; and a just 
 Nemesis brought the inevitable results. To the train of 
 feelings produced by the Penal Code we must largely attribute 
 the hatred of law, the dislike of the existing order of things, 
 the dread of the Government, the jealous suspicion of the 
 administration of justice, in all its parts, the undefined, but 
 not the less real discontent which prevailed in Catholic 
 Ireland even in recent times, and has by no means altogether 
 disappeared. 
 
 The Penal Code drew an impassable gulf between the 
 Protestant and the Catholic Irish ; but, if Lazarus had the evil 
 things of this world, many of the good things were lost to Dives. 
 A system of legislation which placed society, already distorted 
 by long misgovernment, upon a false and unnatural basis, 
 which forbade kindly relations to grow up between the divided 
 orders of a whole community, and which checked the develop- 
 ment of industry and wealth, could not fail to react with evil 
 effects on the classes themselves which it seemed to favour. 
 Protestant Ireland did not thrive under the scheme of injustice 
 which made it the tyrant of Catholic slaves; and special causes 
 worked in the same direction. The Protestant owners of land 
 being unable to sell to Catholics, or to borrow money from 
 them, their estates were kept in a kind of mortmain, out of 
 commerce, and not supplied by capital ; and for this and other 
 reasons they were usually not wealthy. Hundreds of the order, 
 too, were mere absentees, and absenteeism enormously in- 
 creased, owing to circumstances we shall briefly glance at. 
 Numbers of landlords let their lands on long leases to 
 persons of their own faith, who had a monopoly of the 
 market, and paid but nominal rents. This body of men, the 
 
 M. i. 14
 
 2io Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 notorious middlemen, neither landlords nor tenants in a true 
 sense, generally sublet their holdings three or four deep ; they 
 were the worst oppressors of the Catholic peasant ; and a 
 gradation of tenures was thus created, which meshed the land, 
 so to speak, in destructive shackles, prohibiting improvement 
 and secure possession. Added to the degradation of the 
 Catholic occupant, these facts, and others to be referred to, 
 were the principal causes that Ireland made little or no pro- 
 gress for a long series of years ; that barrenness and misery 
 seemed stamped on her soil ; that the whole dominant caste was 
 not prosperous. The same things were observed in the sphere 
 of commerce, though here restriction, we shall see, had far- 
 reaching effects; the privileges enjoyed by the Protestant 
 trader were injurious to him in the highest degree, starved the 
 very trade he considered his own, made him slothful, careless, 
 and neglectful of his business. So it was in agriculture, in which 
 the Protestant had advantages denied to the Catholic tenant ; 
 this had a tendency to encourage neglect and idleness, the 
 natural result of unfair monopoly. The Penal Code, however, 
 was most pernicious to Protestant Ireland in its moral effects. It 
 cut off the upper classes from those beneath them, made them 
 domineering, harsh, exacting, like the French seigneurs of the 
 old regime; it created habits of extravagance, of lawlessness, 
 of licentious recklessness, attended with the most unhappy 
 results. Its influence was even worse in the lower ranks of 
 Protestants; it marked them off as an overbearing class, 
 encouraged to oppress and vex the Catholics in their midst, it 
 made them insolent, conceited, and more deserving of dislike 
 than their betters. Demoralisation, profound but subtle, and 
 pervading the social structure from top to bottom, was, in a 
 word, the effect of the Penal Code, as regards the whole people 
 of Protestant Ireland. 
 
 England, too, made the Protestant colony feel that it was a 
 subject settlement to be treated with contempt ; the injurious
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in h'eland. 211 
 
 consequences soon became manifest. We have referred to the 
 commercial restrictions of the reign of Charles II ; these were 
 greatly aggravated in the reigns that followed. Ireland con- 
 tinued to be excluded from the Navigation Acts, and was still 
 prohibited to send live animals and even meat to England, 
 checks on her industry which did increasing mischief as the 
 land became, by degrees, more settled. Her woollen manu- 
 facture, however, remained ; and as Irish wool was of the very 
 best quality, a large capital was attracted to this branch of 
 trade, and numbers of artisans found employment in it. English 
 jealousy destroyed this promising growth; the Irish woollen 
 manufacture was suppressed ; Ireland was forbidden to export 
 the raw material to any country, except England; even her 
 linen manufacture was discouraged and starved. The results 
 were, in the highest degree, unfortunate ; the land was smitten, 
 as it were, with a blight ; the development of its resources was 
 stopped ; and thousands of Protestant settlers left the island, 
 like the Englishry of medieval times, flying from a land where 
 they could not exist. In many other respects the dominant 
 caste was injured and oppressed by the mother country. The 
 Parliament of Westminster, we have seen, had, long ago, 
 asserted a right to enact laws that affected Ireland; it "de- 
 clared" that right by a positive statute, and exercised it over 
 and over again ; and it reduced the Irish Parliament to a mere 
 vestry by methods we shall soon briefly mention. Meanwhile 
 "the English interest" was supreme at the Castle; nearly every 
 high place in the Government, the Anglican Church, and the 
 Law, was filled by Englishmen, with watchful care; the 
 Protestants of Ireland were practically shut out by a narrow, 
 domineering, and harsh bureaucracy composed mainly of 
 English functionaries. At the same time the scanty resources 
 of Ireland were charged with an ever-augmented list of pensions, 
 often of the most scandalous kind ; if Parliamentary corruption 
 did not as yet flourish, it was because the necessity had not 
 
 142
 
 212 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 arrived ; and the men in office gave a free rein to favouritism, 
 to jobbing, to maladministration, to waste, in every department 
 of the public service. A cause of disunion had arisen, also, 
 which seriously weakened the Protestant colony. So far 
 back, we have seen, as the time of Strafford, and still more 
 after the Restoration, Presbyterianism in Ireland had been 
 discouraged ; it was gradually subjected to a kind of proscrip- 
 tion, for, strange to say, Irish Anglican Churchmen, almost the 
 only members of the Irish Parliament, appear to have regarded 
 it with peculiar dislike. The Irish Presbyterians, who formed 
 the best element of the Protestant population of Ulster, were 
 excluded from office in the State by strict tests; even their 
 creed received toleration only. The injury done to them was 
 as nothing compared to the iniquities of the Penal Code ; but 
 it divided the Protestant name in Ireland; it caused many 
 Presbyterians to quit the island, in an emigration prolonged for 
 years ; and it drew a line, in landed relations in Ulster, between 
 the Anglican owner of the soil and the Presbyterian occupant, 
 which caused many evils, and is still distinctly marked. 
 
 " Protestant Ireland," it was finely said by Grattan, thus 
 "knelt to England on the necks of her countrymen." The 
 condition of affairs we have shortly described appeared in the 
 institutions of the land, and throughout the frame of Irish 
 society. The Irish Parliament had, by this time, reached the 
 fullest proportions it ever attained ; its House of Commons was 
 composed of 300 members, a number of small boroughs having 
 been created, in addition to the forty of James I. As a 
 representative Body this House of Commons existed, so to speak, 
 only in name ; it had nothing to do with Catholic Ireland, save 
 to oppress it and do it wrong ; it was elected by small bodies 
 of the Protestant caste ; and it was filled by nominees of the 
 Crown which, as yet, had a large majority of votes, and by 
 dependents of the colonial aristocratic Houses which possessed 
 the chief part of the land of the country. Though still fettered
 
 VIL] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 213 
 
 by Poynings' Law, the Irish Parliament had, by degrees, 
 acquired an initiative in legislation, in a qualified sense; the 
 Viceroy had ceased to command what it was to enact before- 
 hand; and it had been permitted for a long time to present 
 what were called " Heads of Bills" to him, and thus to discuss 
 future laws within its precincts. But these Heads of Bills had 
 to pass through the ordeal of the criticism of the Irish and the 
 English Privy Councils ; they could be amended or changed by 
 these ; the English Privy Council could throw out any proposi- 
 tions of the kind; and any " Heads of Bills" it returned to the 
 Irish Parliament could be only passed or rejected by that 
 Assembly, however they might have been transformed or 
 altered. As a Legislature the Irish Parliament was thus a mere 
 shadow ; and in most other respects it had little power or 
 influence. It was overborne by the English Parliament, which 
 bound Ireland by laws passed at Westminster; its House of 
 Lords was not even a Court of ultimate appeal. It had little 
 control over the finances of Ireland, for the hereditary revenues 
 of the Crown, which it could not touch or regulate, were 
 nearly sufficient to supply the wants of the Government, at 
 least for a considerable time ; and though the Irish House of 
 Commons claimed a right to propose and to enact Money 
 Bills, and to be the only body that could lawfully tax Ireland, 
 the first claim was subject to the Law of Poynings, and the 
 second was regarded with dislike in England. The Irish 
 Parliament, besides, had no power over the military force 
 within Ireland ; this was under the Mutiny Acts of England ; 
 and it should be added that as the Triennial and the Septennial 
 Acts did not extend to Ireland, the Irish Parliament continued 
 to exist during the whole reign of the Sovereign on the throne, 
 and could be dissolved only on a demise of the Crown. An 
 Assembly so devoid of every popular element, standing on so 
 narrow and false a basis, so exposed to sinister and evil 
 influence, so cabined and confined at every point, so maimed
 
 214 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 and limited in authority, was obviously a bad organ of Govern- 
 ment, and was little respected even by Protestant Ireland. 
 The Irish Parliament was held up by Swift 1 to execration and 
 contemptuous scorn. 
 
 From the Parliament we pass to the Anglican Church in 
 Ireland, which we have left out of sight for a considerable time. 
 This Establishment, as it was now sometimes called, had 
 undergone some changes in the course of a century, but its 
 essential characteristics remained nearly the same. It had 
 been adorned by a few eminent Prelates; Ussher and Bedell 
 in the seventeenth century, King, Browne, and Synge in the 
 next age were in different ways distinguished men ; and 
 Berkeley, illustrious in many spheres of letters, was, as a 
 thinker, hardly inferior to Butler in his admirable writings on 
 the Christian faith. But Swift's description of the Irish Bishops 
 of his time English highwaymen who had stolen the Episcopal 
 robes if a caricature, is not wholly false; not a few of the 
 heads of the Irish Establishment were self-seeking, hard, 
 worldly-minded men, such as an institution would naturally 
 produce which was not a living Christian reality, and not 
 strong with true spiritual strength. At this period the Irish 
 Anglican Church had become more than ever an instrument of 
 the State; two of its Archbishops, Boulter and Stone, were 
 rulers at the Castle for many years, and, in fact, directed Irish 
 affairs; but, as we have seen, it had shared the fortunes of 
 Protestant Ireland, in some respects, and all its best prefer- 
 ments were held by Englishmen. For the rest it still was what 
 it had always been, a secular rather than a spiritual arm, a 
 Protestant outpost, so to speak, planted in the midst of Catholic 
 Ireland, without the slightest moral influence on it, a mere 
 source of irritation, and a badge of conquest ; and it had little 
 
 1 Swift, however, was not just to the Irish Parliament or the Irish 
 landlords of his day. He was a high Churchman, and they treated the 
 Irish Anglican Church with no favour.
 
 vii.] 77/(? Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 215 
 
 hold even on Protestant Ireland, for like other institutions that 
 do not fulfil their purpose, it still abounded in abuses wide- 
 spread and flagrant. It was, in Macaulay's picturesque phrase, 
 a Church that filled the rich with good things, and sent the 
 hungry empty away. Its bishops wore purple and fine linen ; 
 its higher dignitaries formed a prosperous gentry; but its minor 
 clergy were few and half starved, and its services were neglected 
 in most parts of the country. Cathedrals in ruins, churches in 
 decay, whole parishes without a priest or a curate, scandals of 
 many kinds in clerical life, disregard of duty in high and low 
 places these were still the visible signs of the Irish Anglican 
 Church ; Swift, infinitely the keenest observer of his day, 
 believed that its fall was already certain. The Church, too, it 
 deserves notice, was betrayed and injured by its natural friends; 
 the Irish Parliament and the owners of the Irish land not only 
 treated it with marked contempt, but despoiled it of a large 
 part of its property. In one respect the Irish Anglican Church 
 harshly oppressed the down-trodden Catholic peasant, and laid a 
 heavy and mischievous burden on him. It possessed the greater 
 part of the tithe of the country; its ministers levied this 
 impost in the very worst way, from the Helots of an alien 
 communion. This was the more iniquitous, because pastoral 
 lands had been practically discharged of tithe by a series of 
 votes of the Irish Parliament ; the charge was laid on the petty 
 crop, which had been raised by the Catholic husbandmen. 
 This was simply shameful and grotesque wrong; as Grattan 
 said, the crook of the so-called shepherd was only known to 
 the flock when it was thrust into the sheep. 
 
 The Irish Catholic Church presented a striking contrast to 
 its pampered rival. It lay, so to speak, in the valley of the 
 shadow of death; its priesthood were the despised and 
 rejected of men; yet proscription and persecution could not 
 destroy the spiritual life which was strong in it, even the 
 organisation which upheld its structure. It no longer wore the
 
 216 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 arrogant aspect it had often worn in the seventeenth century, 
 especially in Catholic Confederate days; but it retained its 
 hold on the heart of Catholic Ireland ; it represented in a real 
 sense her people ; it was their support in their long night of 
 affliction. Its clergy were ignorant, nay, superstitious, as a 
 class ; but they were pious, virtuous, zealous of good works ; 
 in this period of trial and unceasing sorrows they were 
 gradually working a moral transformation in their flocks, and 
 weaning them from vices common to Celts, an achievement 
 deserving the highest praise. 
 
 We turn to an institution of a very different kind, at 
 this time confined to Protestant Ireland, and exhibiting 
 the effects of the peculiar position made by England for her 
 Protestant colony. The Irish Bench and Bar had played 
 a conspicuous part in the sixteenth and the seventeenth 
 centuries ; both were virtually open to all Irishmen without 
 regard to distinctions of creed, at least as almost a general 
 rule ; both could show a noble succession of lawyers by no 
 means inferior to their English brethren. In the first part of 
 the eighteenth century the profession had markedly changed 
 for the worse, owing to the operation of the Penal Code and 
 to the slights from which Protestant Ireland suffered. The 
 Irish Catholic was excluded from the Bench and the Bar, 
 which were strictly reserved for the Protestant caste ; and this 
 monopoly had its natural results in checking industry and 
 casting a blight on talent. The chief places too on the Bench, 
 we have seen, were in all cases bestowed on Englishmen ; the 
 Castle practically ruled the Judges and the Bar ; and it should 
 be added that the Irish Judges continued to hold their offices 
 at the will of the Crown and had not the protection secured 
 for their fellows in England, while the Habeas Corpus Act 
 did not extend to Ireland. All this made the Bench and Bar 
 of Ireland comparatively subservient, degraded, weak; the 
 administration too of the inhuman Penal Code, which conse-
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 217 
 
 crated wrong in the name of justice, had a tendency in the 
 same direction; Swift and even Berkeley had no respect or 
 liking for the leading men of the gown in their day. Noble 
 exceptions nevertheless existed ; the Irish Bench and Bar had 
 some eminent names even in this season of dreary eclipse. 
 The most remarkable of these was Anthony Malone, a scion 
 of the old race of Offaley, already conspicuous for his fine 
 parts, and soon to appear brilliantly on the political scene. 
 
 The condition of Ireland at this period was also seen on 
 the face of the country. Swift has informed us that the 
 ravage done by the war of 1689-91 exceeded that done from 
 1641 to 1649; if this is an exaggeration we may believe his 
 statement that, as we have said, the land was half a desert 
 during the first quarter at least of the eighteenth century. 
 Very few country houses or demesnes were seen; for 
 absenteeism, we have remarked, had produced the middleman, 
 and severed the landlord from the land; absenteeism had 
 been greatly augmented by the exclusion of the Protestant 
 gentry from office in the state ; and, in consequence, numbers 
 of the Irish landlords lived abroad or in England, and spent 
 little on their estates. The commercial restrictions had the 
 same effects ; the habitations even of the largest occupiers of 
 the soil were squalid and mean amidst the prevailing poverty; 
 and the traveller roamed through great wastes of pasturage 
 where agriculture scarcely existed, unfenced and half-grazed by 
 scanty flocks and herds. As for the mass of the population, 
 the broken remains of the tribes, clans, and septs of another 
 age, it was huddled into miserable Celtic hamlets, or scattered 
 in hovels in the rural districts, especially where it had been 
 driven to the hills ; its wretched appearance, its rags, its dirt, its 
 sloth, its beggary, expressed a condition which Swift compared to 
 that of the swine of the field, and from which even Berkeley 
 turned away with disgust. The country too was hardly opened 
 by roads ; the forests and woods which had covered the land
 
 2 i8 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 had, to a considerable extent, disappeared ; but the means of 
 communication were few and bad, and the tract west of the 
 Shannon, part of the old Celtic land, was in a state of 
 barbarism, probably worse than that which ever existed under 
 its native rulers. Dublin, the seat of the Government, had 
 continued to increase; and Cork, Belfast, and some of the 
 seaport towns, presented a comparatively prosperous aspect. 
 But the great majority of the inland towns remained petty 
 and even decaying villages, without commerce, and showing 
 scarcely a sign of progress. Ireland, in a word, was as a whole 
 in a pitiable state ; one special feature of the social structure was 
 significant and deserves close attention. Her history, we have 
 pointed out, had in the medieval age made the developement 
 of a middle class impossible ; the events of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries had inevitably produced the same result. 
 Ireland at this period had scarcely a middle class at all; and 
 this at the time when the great middle class of England was 
 covering the seas with its merchant fleets, was beginning its 
 reign of manufacturing greatness, and was rapidly advancing 
 to power in the state. 
 
 The degradation of Ireland in all its classes naturally 
 engendered feelings of arrogance and contempt on the part of 
 its alien English masters. They looked down on the Catholic 
 Irish as a people of serfs, and on the Protestant colony as a 
 subject settlement, to be dealt with at the pleasure of the 
 mother country. The Irish Catholics did not utter a murmur ; 
 but the Protestants resented the selfish policy which sacrificed 
 them to narrow English interests and the domineering temper 
 and self-sufficient attitude of the officials from England en- 
 throned at the Castle. The first notable symptom of this 
 angry discontent appeared in a book called the Case of Ireland, 
 written by William Molyneux, a friend of Locke, a member for 
 the University of Dublin in the Irish Parliament, and a very 
 able and fearless man ; he was indignant at the annihilation of
 
 viz.] The. Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland, 219 
 
 Irish commerce, especially of the rising woollen manufacture ; 
 he wrote to prove that the English Parliament had no right to 
 bind Ireland by Acts passed at Westminster; and he main- 
 tained a position which had been a subject of angry contro- 
 versy for more than a hundred years with real learning and 
 much force of argument. The English House of Commons 
 which, we have seen, had asserted the right on many occasions, 
 ordered the work to be burned by the common hangman ; but, 
 as Grattan said, it was more easily burned than answered ; and 
 the conclusions of the author, which probably had a preponder- 
 ance of legal authority on his side, were triumphantly vindicated 
 in another age. 
 
 During the period however we are now reviewing, the 
 great champion of the Protestant Irish was Swift, certainly, in 
 his peculiar style, the foremost political writer in the English 
 tongue. Swift despised and hated Catholic Ireland; he was 
 an enemy of the Presbyterian Irish ; he is not to be relied on 
 in his savage diatribes on the Irish Parliament and the Irish 
 landlords, who, we have said, had injured the Established 
 Church. But he threw a flood of light on the state of 
 Ireland in the first thirty years of the eighteenth century ; and 
 he set forth admirably and with inimitable skill the grievances 
 and the wrongs of the Protestant settlers. The best known 
 exhibition of his powers was seen in the affair of Wood's 
 patent, a job arranged by the English Government for the 
 benefit of the Duchess of Kendal, one of the most greedy of 
 royal favourites, which would have imposed on Ireland a base 
 copper coinage, and probably would have disturbed her 
 currency. In a series of letters written in homely language, 
 but rich in sarcasm and in telling invective, Swift, in the part 
 he assumed of a Dublin " Drapier," denounced the patent as a 
 destructive fraud, and Wood as a wicked and rapacious 
 trickster; and though his statements were overcharged and 
 unscrupulous, he successfully exposed a scandalous abuse.
 
 22O 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 The fourth letter rose to the height of an argument for the 
 liberty of the Irish legislature, and for the right of Irishmen to 
 govern themselves ; the effect it produced was widespread and 
 magical. Protestant Ireland rallied around the exponent of 
 the injuries done to its constitutional rights ; every attempt to 
 put Swift down ignominiously failed ; the patent was cancelled 
 and Wood disowned ; and Pope recorded the triumph in the 
 well-known line, "The rights a Court attacked, a Poet saved." 
 Yet other political writings of Swift on Ireland are perhaps not 
 of inferior value. His ghastly cannibal scheme to lessen Irish 
 poverty is a piece of hideous and revolting irony ; but it bears 
 the stamp of the genius of Gulliver. His Short View of Ireland 
 sums up in a few pregnant sentences the innumerable ills from 
 which the colony suffered; it is a mine of information in a 
 short compass. His History of an Injured Lady admirably 
 shows up the Pharisaical cant in which English opinion 
 indulged with reference to Irish affairs at the time ; the lesson 
 is even now appropriate ; and the keen remark " we are in the 
 condition of patients who have physic sent to them by doctors 
 at a distance, strangers to their constitution and the nature of 
 the disease," deserves the attention of English politicians at 
 this hour. In all these compositions the "saeva indignatio" 
 appears ; but they overflow also with the many gifts which 
 characterised the author's extraordinary mind. 
 
 Swift stirred Protestant Ireland to its depths, and aroused 
 feelings which, having slept for a time, acquired ultimately 
 formidable strength. Berkeley also wrote much on the state 
 of Ireland ; he was a notable contrast in this respect to Swift. 
 We must pass over the speculations of this profound thinker 
 on the nature of things and the understanding of man, and the 
 admirable pages in which he unfolds, in more perspicuous and 
 succinct language, the principal doctrines of the Wealth of 
 Nations. If bitterness and anger are the essential features of 
 Swift's writings on Irish affairs, wisdom and charity are the
 
 vii.] TJte Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 221 
 
 characteristics of those of Berkeley. He is not blind to the 
 wrongs done to the Protestant colony by English selfishness ; 
 but he tries to reconcile the English in England and the 
 English in Ireland by appeals to their common origin and 
 common interests; and he labours earnestly to allay the 
 feelings of discontent entertained by the settlers towards the 
 mother country. The best of the Irish essays of Berkeley is 
 no doubt the Querist, a masterly review of the ills of Ireland 
 and of the remedies proposed by the philosophic author. 
 It sets forth clearly the mischievous effects of the extravagance 
 and the recklessness of the upper classes, of absenteeism in 
 landed relations, of the idleness which was the besetting sin of 
 the peasantry; it dwells on the folly of neglecting the domestic 
 trade of Ireland because the foreign trade was checked and 
 kept down ; and it shows how unwise it is to complain of a 
 Government, whatever may be the faults of its policy, while the 
 community does not turn its industry to account. Berkeley's 
 Platonism does not shrink from sumptuary laws; like a 
 faithful disciple of the great master, he would have imposed on 
 the state the task of moulding the social life of Ireland by law ; 
 the remarks he makes on the necessity of directing fashion, of 
 organising labour, of discouraging waste, and on the accumula- 
 tion of excessive wealth are not in accord with modern thought. 
 But his observations on education in its various branches, 
 especially on that of the landed gentry, on the developement of 
 agriculture, planting and building, on the value of technical 
 modes of instruction, and on the amelioration of the lot of the 
 peasantry are enlightened in the highest degree ; and he is 
 never better than when he adjures Irishmen to be self-reliant, 
 and to make the most of the order of things they find around 
 them. Berkeley was admirable and far beyond his age in all 
 that related to the Irish politics of the day. He distinctly 
 perceived the evils that flowed from the separation of the 
 Catholics from the land, in the interest of Protestant as-
 
 222 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 cendency itself. He saw how the Established Church was 
 doomed to sterility, if it stood haughtily aloof from Catholic 
 Ireland ; he urged that its services should be performed in the 
 Irish tongue in the remote and Celtic parts of the country. 
 With admirable liberality too he advised that the University 
 should be opened to the Irish Catholics, an idea probably 
 odious to most of his brethren on the Bench ; and he antici- 
 pated the policy of a better age, when he asked, in the very 
 spirit of Grattan, "whether a scheme for the welfare of this 
 nation should not take in the whole inhabitants, and whether 
 it be not a vain attempt to project the flourishing of our 
 Protestant gentry, exclusive of the bulk of the natives ? " 
 
 A change, gradual but making steady progress, began to 
 pass over the state of Ireland after the first thirty years of the 
 eighteenth century. The generation that had witnessed the 
 Boyne and Aghrim was gone ; the worst animosities of civil 
 war had died out ; Time was slowly throwing its kindly 
 growths over a settlement of confiscation and conquest. The 
 human conscience revolted against the barbarous laws which 
 had been passed to degrade the Irish Catholics, and to humiliate 
 them in the relations of life; the Penal Code, in these respects, 
 was largely evaded. The Courts of Justice, too, felt the effects 
 of this sentiment ; the vile trade of the informer was not en- 
 couraged ; by the ingenuity of legal fictions, the provisions of 
 the Code were made means to keep Catholic estates in the 
 hands of their owners. At the same time not a few of the 
 Protestant gentry Anthony Malone was a notable instance 
 held the lands of Catholics on secret trusts, for the benefit of 
 the true possessors ; and these trusts, though contrary to law, 
 were hardly ever broken. The class of Catholic landlords was 
 thus left to live in peace; and something like friendly inter- 
 course, on equal terms, grew up between them and their Pro- 
 testant fellows. No change, however, was made in the laws 
 which forbade the Catholic from acquiring land, or even a
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 223 
 
 partial interest in it; and he remained wholly excluded from 
 office in the state, and completely deprived of political power. 
 A Catholic class of traders was springing up, some rising in the 
 social scale; but it was still kept in an inferior position; and 
 as to the great body of the Catholic peasantry, they continued 
 in a state of want and serfdom. An evil attempt, indeed, had 
 been made, and was still being tried, to outrage their faith 
 by a shameful expedient. The, were forbidden by the law 
 to educate their children ; and Charter Schools, as they were 
 called, were set up, in which " the young of the Papists," as 
 they were contemptuously called, were given instruction and 
 were fitted out in life, if they would abandon their parents and 
 become Protestants. The Charter Schools were largely en- 
 dowed and established in many parts of the country ; but a 
 system of making proselytes by unnatural means, proved, as 
 might have been expected, a most sorry failure. 
 
 Meanwhile the material condition of Ireland was making a 
 slow but steady advance. Despite of misgovernment of many 
 kinds, the country was in profound peace ; social order was for 
 the most part upheld. The natural results became apparent ; 
 the wealth of Ireland increased by degrees ; the restraints on her 
 trade were, in different ways, lessened. Ireland was occasionally 
 allowed to export live and dead stock to England ; she main- 
 tained a great traffic of this kind with the Continent ; she sent 
 wool to France by smuggling in immense quantities. Her 
 resources were thus more and more developed ; while, at the 
 same time, roads and even canals opened the rural districts 
 and caused numerous markets to grow up under a system of 
 local and municipal government, which, though confined to 
 the Protestant caste, was not without real merits of its own. All 
 this reacted with happy effects on the land; the country gentry 
 became much more rich; they gradually ceased to be mere 
 alien colonists, acquired local and even Irish sympathies, 
 were " more racy of the soil," as it was said, than their fathers.
 
 224 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Absenteeism diminished in a perceptible way; more of the 
 Protestant landlords became resident ; the good consequences 
 were in time manifest. The middleman tenures, indeed, re- 
 mained common, with their evil effects on landed relations; 
 the habits of the gentry hardly improved ; the humbler tillers 
 of the soil were still steeped in poverty. But kindlier feelings 
 certainly grew up between the owners of land of the higher 
 orders and the Catholic tenants in occupation of the soil; these 
 turned towards their masters with something like the old senti- 
 ment of the clansmen to their chiefs, a sentiment deeply rooted 
 in the nature of the Celt ; and this feeling grew stronger in the 
 course of time. It was at this period, and during the next half 
 century, that most of the great country seats and demesnes 
 that exist in Ireland were laid out and formed; and Arthur 
 Young, who wrote in 1776-8, gives on the whole rather a 
 pleasing account of the relations between the chief resident 
 gentry and their dependents, if farmers of the better 
 class. A marked improvement also took place in the towns 
 within the reach of commerce and its benign influence. Dublin 
 grew into a really fine capital, adorned with many noble public 
 buildings and with institutions that told of progress. Cork too 
 and Belfast became seats of trade ; even some of the inland 
 towns showed signs of active life. And with this material, 
 there was social and moral progress; the influences of the 
 eighteenth century effected something, if not much, in miti- 
 gating Protestant ascendency in its worst aspects and in 
 making Catholic subjection less grievous; and there was a 
 development of letters, of art and of science, on which we shall 
 say a few words afterwards. 
 
 This change, as had been the case before, affected the 
 institutions and the social life of Ireland. The government 
 of the country remained much as it had been ; it abounded in 
 many, perhaps increasing abuses; it was still for the most part 
 carried on by Englishmen. But the Irish Parliament grew in
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 225 
 
 authority by degrees, for the hereditary revenue of the Crown 
 had become insufficient to supply the demands of the State and 
 the public service ; a National Debt was being formed, and it 
 was now necessary to convene the Irish Houses, every second 
 year at least, in a regular manner. A party in it, slowly acquiring 
 influence, denounced the Pension List and other acts of the 
 Castle; as early as 1731 it began to claim a right to deal with 
 the national funds, and the patriotism of "Tottenham in his 
 boots," whose vote proved decisive, was long remembered as that 
 of a champion of freedom. The power, however, of the Irish 
 Parliament was much more augmented by the increase of the 
 wealth and the development of a new spirit in the landed 
 gentry. As the Protestant aristocracy grew richer and thus 
 gained more influence in the state, as it formed more and more 
 a resident class, as its sentiments gradually became more Irish, 
 it began to dislike the rule of the men at the Castle and to 
 seek to assert an authority of its own ; it employed its crowd 
 of nominees in the Irish House of Commons to resist a govern- 
 ment to which it had been long subservient ; and thus an 
 opposition to the Crown and its measures, slowly gathering in 
 strength, was created by degrees. The " English interest" in a 
 word, as in bygone times, was confronted by a new " Irish 
 interest." This body of men which was a mere oligarchy, took 
 no thought of the mass of the people, especially of the down- 
 trodden Catholics ; it was often grasping, corrupt, selfish, more 
 than once, borrowing an ominous name, it became an " under- 
 taker " to do the work of the Castle, in return for a lavish bribe 
 of patronage and place. Nevertheless the appearance of this 
 Junta was a change for the better in the affairs of Ireland, even, 
 in a certain sense, marked a turn in her history. The men of 
 the " Irish interest " understood Ireland in a way beyond the 
 reach of officials from England ; they were experienced in local 
 Irish business; many as were their faults they loved their 
 country, after their own fashion; and, from the nature of the 
 
 M. I. 15
 
 226 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 case, they were compelled to advocate liberal measures and to 
 denounce abuses. A quarrel between Archbishop Stone, still 
 the real head of the Irish Government, and several chiefs of 
 leading Irish families ultimately led in 1753 to an angry 
 rupture; the "Irish interest" insisted that it had a right to 
 appropriate a surplus of national money, and came into conflict 
 with the men in power. The Government triumphed, but with 
 much difficulty; from this time forward the Opposition became 
 a real force in the Irish Parliament. In this struggle it had the 
 support of the head of the great House of Fitzgerald and of 
 many of the principal Irish nobles; but its real leader was 
 Anthony Malone, who, according to Grattan, gave proof of re- 
 markable powers as a statesman and orator. [See note on p. 388.] 
 The Established Church was but little affected by the 
 influences of the new era. Its highest places, however, were by 
 degrees less filled by Englishmen than they had been; some 
 of its Prelates even took up the ideas of Berkeley as to the 
 Irish Catholics. The position of the Irish Catholic Church 
 was greatly improved ; its worship, indeed, was still celebrated 
 in miserable "chapels," as they were called; its stately ritual 
 was still proscribed; as of old, it was barely tolerated by the 
 law. But many of the restraints on it had become obsolete; 
 its priesthood were not hunted down and banned ; its organ- 
 isation was rooted in the land; the Government had even 
 entered into relations with it. Its hold on its flocks had only 
 strengthened, as it had won its way through a sea of troubles ; 
 it embodied even more fully than half a century before, the 
 feelings and the hopes of Catholic Ireland. Meanwhile it had 
 wrought a marked change in the moral condition of the Irish 
 peasantry. Its clergy had all but eradicated the sexual licence, 
 which, we have seen, had been the reproach of the Ireland of 
 the Celtic tribes ; and though the degradation of the humblest 
 classes was such, that a rude harem was not seldom an append- 
 age to a great country mansion, this was looked upon as an
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 227 
 
 accursed spot. The people brought up under this guidance, 
 were servile, priest-ridden, and superstitious ; but they were re- 
 markable for their domestic virtues, and this remains to this day 
 their character. As for the Irish Bench and Bar, a very potent 
 influence in a country governed as Ireland was, it had under- 
 gone a change in all respects for the better. The rising gene- 
 ration of the Irish Judges disliked and discountenanced the 
 Penal Code; the highest posts in the Law were sometimes 
 held by Irishmen ; the whole profession became more Irish, 
 less subservient, more attached to their country. This change 
 had been partly due to the fact, that though Catholics remained 
 excluded from the Bar, many had nominally conformed to 
 satisfy the law, like the " nouveaux convertis " of the French 
 Huguenots, and some of these were distinguished men. 
 
 Ireland, after the middle of the eighteenth century, thus 
 became different, in many respects, from what it had been from 
 the reign of William III to that of George III. This progress, 
 however, was only partial and superficial to a considerable 
 extent ; it was probably exaggerated by observers of the day. 
 The profound divisions of race and faith, which kept society 
 asunder, continued to exist ; this ulcer had been only filmed 
 and skinned over; Catholics and Protestants were separated by 
 the widest barriers through life. The few Catholic gentry who 
 remained were still a feeble and timid order of men ; they 
 were still all but outside the pale of the law; they could not 
 lift Catholic Ireland out of subjection. The Protestants were 
 as yet a dominant caste that held a Catholic people down ; if in 
 the most important of social relations, that between the 
 owners and occupiers of the soil, a distinct improvement was 
 manifest, the evils of the past were still but too prevalent. 
 Enormous tracts of land were still held by absentees, and 
 mismanaged in many instances; middleman tenures, if 
 diminishing, were very common, preventing improvement and 
 causing much mischief; numbers of the lesser gentry were 
 
 152
 
 228 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 oppressive landlords. Complaints of harsh extortion and 
 wrong are to be found in several publications of the day, and 
 even in speeches in the Irish Parliament ; and though the 
 great resident landlords did much good, as a class they were 
 comparatively few. The condition of the great mass of the 
 peasantry remained that of serfs; their submissiveness, even 
 the affection they showed to superiors who happened to be 
 kindly masters, were closely allied to the feelings of slaves. 
 We do not hear of appalling famines again ; and Arthur Young 
 said that in the better parts of Ulster and in most of the 
 Counties of Leinster, the humbler tillers of the soil fared as 
 well as their fellows in England. But it was otherwise in 
 whole tracts of Munster and in three-fourths of Connaught ; 
 the population in these was still in a state of wretchedness. 
 As always happens in a distempered society, a general spirit 
 of lawlessness was still common; the upper classes, not re- 
 strained by opinion, had still, in a very great degree, the habits 
 of extravagance and licentiousness seen in their fathers ; they 
 were given to excesses of all kinds and were most reckless 
 duellists. As for the classes beneath them, these expressed the 
 sense of suffering and wrong seething beneath the surface, in 
 the agrarian risings, which, we have said, may be traced back 
 to the immense confiscations of the past. In the first part of 
 the century Connaught was disturbed by armed bands known 
 by the name of " Houghers " ; these destroyed the flocks and 
 herds of men of substance in whole counties. Many years 
 afterwards the " Oakboys " and " Steelboys " arose in parts of 
 Ulster and caused grave troubles; unjust taxes, tithes and 
 harsh acts of landlords seem to have been the provocation of 
 these movements ; and they were remarkable as leading to a 
 great increase of the emigration of Presbyterian families from 
 Ireland. The most formidable, however, of these risings one 
 that nearly makes a period in Irish history was that of the 
 " Whiteboys," as they were called ; this convulsed large
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 229 
 
 districts of Munster and even of Leinster; it created for a 
 time almost a Reign of Terror ; and it formed the peculiar type 
 of agrarian disorder, which has agitated Ireland ever since, at 
 different intervals of time. The " Whiteboys," like the " Ca- 
 misards" of the Cevennes, appeared at night, in white shirts, in 
 multitudes ; the grievances they denounced were the enclosure 
 of common lands, extravagant rents, and the impost of tithe ; 
 and they combined into an organisation of such strength that, 
 to a great extent, they effected their objects. The law and the 
 power of the state were confronted by the law and the power 
 of secret societies, drawing the peasantry together into a huge 
 League; and the mandates of this were steadily carried out 
 by outrages of all kinds, and by deeds of blood and violence. 
 The " Whiteboys " were only slowly put down ; a Draconic 
 Code, still in force, was required to crush them ; and, as we 
 have said, combinations of this sort, connected with and 
 springing from the land, have never since ceased to exist 
 in Ireland. The " Whiteboy " movement does not appear to 
 have been in a true sense rebellious, or to have had a 
 political object; but this, we have remarked, has sometimes 
 been an end of Irish agrarian outbreaks ; it is enough to refer 
 to the history of Ireland within the last few years. 
 
 We may follow the course of Irish History, after the 
 accession of George III to the throne, more closely than we 
 have followed it of late. An incident had just occurred before, 
 which proved the change that Protestant Ireland was going 
 through, since the colonial caste had become Irishmen. The 
 commercial restrictions imposed on Ireland had caused a 
 movement to arise in the reign of Anne, in favour of a Union 
 with England, which, like the Scottish Union, might secure a 
 free trade; but this failed owing to English commercial 
 jealousy. The project was revived in 1759, perhaps with the 
 approbation of the first Pitt ; but it provoked such indignation 
 that it was quickly dropped. Another incident in the following
 
 230 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 year, showed how the " Irish interest " strong at this time at 
 the Castle, could venture to cross the men in power at 
 Westminster. The death of George II had brought to an 
 end the Parliament which had sat in Dublin, without a 
 fresh election, for thirty-three years ; and it had become neces- 
 sary to assemble a new Parliament. To effect this, it had been 
 long the practice, under Poynings' Law, which we must bear in 
 mind secured the initiative in legislation to the Irish Viceroy, 
 to send over two or three Bills to England, to be returned by 
 the Privy Council there ; one of them was by recognised 
 custom a Money Bill. But the Irish House of Commons had, 
 we have seen, claimed for a long time an exclusive right to 
 deal with Money Bills within its own sphere ; and the Irish 
 Privy Council, led by Anthony Malone, advised the English 
 Council, on this occasion, that a Money Bill should not be 
 transmitted to England, considering the state of Irish opinion. 
 The English Council insisted on a settled precedent against, 
 be it observed, the wishes of Pitt and Anthony Malone was 
 dismissed from his post as Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer; 
 but the dispute not only proved that the "Irish interest" could 
 be independent, and took the right course, but led to irritation 
 that soon began to fester. It should be added, as a further sign 
 how Protestant Ireland was becoming awake, that there had 
 been a movement for some years to extend the English 
 Septennial Act to Ireland, and to make the duration of the 
 Irish Parliament not coextensive with the reign of the 
 Sovereign, in order to bring it more under electoral control. 
 This demand had been urged by Charles Lucas, an apothecary 
 of Dublin, who, with inferior parts, was true to the political 
 creed of the " Drapier," especially as to the right of Ireland to 
 self-government; and Lucas became so popular that he was 
 chosen to represent the City in 1760-1. The Irish Protest- 
 ants, in fact, had for some time resented the subjection in 
 which they were held, and had begun to agitate for a change in
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 231 
 
 the treatment they received. Swift and Berkeley had left no 
 successors of equal power ; but a popular Protestant Press had 
 grown up ; and a series of writers, some able men, had con- 
 demned the restraints placed on Irish commerce, and had 
 dwelt on the economic ills which checked Irish progress. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, these symptoms of trouble, the 
 Irish Parliament and the British Government continued in 
 harmony for some years. The " Irish interest " was in the 
 ascendant in Dublin ; combining its own influence and that of 
 the Crown, it was completely supreme in the Irish Lords and 
 Commons. The conduct of that Parliament, and of those who 
 ruled it, reflected the sentiments of the aristocratic order which 
 now virtually directed Irish affairs. The upper classes of 
 Ireland, and indeed most of the Protestants, did not forget 
 what their descent was, and how closely associated they were 
 with the mother country; they were usually loyal to the 
 Crown and to British Imperial interests, however they might 
 wrangle with English officials on the spot. The Irish Parlia- 
 ment, accordingly, upheld the war policy of Pitt -it showed 
 real sympathy with the Great Commoner in the closing years 
 of the Seven Years' War, and cheerfully voted large supplies; 
 and a succession of Lords Lieutenant, who held office in the 
 first years of the reign of George III, reported, in its favour, in 
 language of high praise. In return for a support, by no means 
 forced or feigned, the " Irish interest," or the " Undertakers," 
 as they were called, were virtually made the Governors of the 
 country ; its administration, with the incidental patronage, 
 passed into their hands. It is unquestionably true that, in 
 executing this trust, much jobbing and even corruption may be 
 laid to their charge ; but this was inevitable in a state of things 
 in which a strong public opinion could not exist ; whatever may 
 be said, their rule was less faulty, nay purer than that of the 
 " English interest " ; and they set on foot a system of Public 
 Works in Ireland, which proved of real and permanent use.
 
 232 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 The " Undertakers " besides, as we have said, were necessarily 
 inclined to take the popular side; they endeavoured to cut 
 down the scandalous list of pensions; and they induced the 
 Parliament to pass Bills for making the tenure of the Irish 
 judges secure and for extending the Habeas Corpus Act to 
 Ireland, which, however, were rejected by the English Council. 
 In this liberal policy they found a champion in Henry Flood, a 
 young man of remarkable powers, and possessing solid gifts as 
 a public speaker, who was destined to play a conspicuous, if a 
 somewhat questionable part, on the stage of Irish History, in 
 after years. 
 
 In 1767, George Lord Townshend, a brother of the better 
 known Charles, assumed the reins of power at the Castle; his 
 Viceroyalty gave a new turn to affairs in Ireland. Townshend 
 was sent over by the English Ministry to carry out, in Ireland, 
 a policy dear to the heart of the king ; he was to break down 
 the authority of the " Undertakers," as Bute and Henry Fox 
 had tried to break down the authority of the great Whigs of 
 England ; but he proved a vexatious and unsuccessful bungler. 
 After much opposition, and with great difficulty, he contrived 
 to obtain from the Irish Parliament a vote for the "Augmen- 
 tation," as it was called, of the Irish Army ; and he promoted 
 the enactment of an Octennial Bill, corresponding to the 
 Septennial Act in England, for limiting the existence of the 
 Irish Parliament. This probably was a Machiavellian policy ; 
 for the " Undertakers " and, indeed, the Irish House of 
 Commons were, at heart, strongly opposed to the measure; 
 but Townshend turned Protestant Irish opinion against them ; 
 he had persuaded himself that the change would increase his 
 chances of destroying the "Irish interest," which he had begun 
 for some time to hate. He was checked, however, in his 
 career, by a sudden quarrel with the Irish House of Commons 
 upon the subject, on which, eighty years before, it had come 
 into conflict with Lord Sidney, and with regard to which it had
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 233 
 
 been always jealous. It rejected a Money Bill, transmitted 
 from England, on the ground " that it did not take its rise in 
 the House of Commons"; angry debates and recriminations 
 followed ; and Townshend prorogued the Irish Parliament, not 
 venturing, as Sidney had done, to dissolve it. The Lord 
 Lieutenant now addressed himself, for many months, to his 
 appointed task of striking down the obnoxious "Irish in- 
 terest," and of securing a majority in the Commons for the 
 Crown; the policy of Bute and Henry Fox was copied; 
 several noble " Undertakers " were dismissed from office, and 
 pensions and places were lavished wholesale to purchase votes 
 in the Irish Parliament. English writers, in this, as in other 
 instances, have denounced Irish politicians for accepting these 
 bribes; but the corruption practised by Townshend was not 
 worse than the corruption practised by Bute and Fox ; it was 
 less scandalous than that which " the English interest " had 
 made a method of government for many years ; and English- 
 men at least have no right to make such a charge. Townshend 
 succeeded in packing the Irish Parliament, when it assembled 
 again in 1772; but he encountered such an opposition that he 
 was ere long recalled. 
 
 The successor of Townshend was Lord Harcourt, a great 
 peer and a skilled diplomatist ; his Chief Secretary, too, was an 
 adroit Parliamentary hand. The " Undertakers " were won 
 over again ; Flood, now preeminent in the House of Commons, 
 was conciliated by a high and lucrative place; the same 
 influence gained Hely Hutchinson, a lawyer of considerable 
 repute, and an economic writer of real merit, who had con- 
 demned the impediments to Irish trade. Things went on 
 smoothly in Ireland for a time; indeed the only important 
 domestic measure which engaged the attention of the Irish 
 Parliament was a proposal to tax absentee owners of land, 
 which ultimately did not become law, owing to the opposition 
 of Whig English Peers, and to the persuasive, but perhaps
 
 234 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 sophistical arguments of Burke, already a man of mark in the 
 British Parliament. Foreign affairs, however, began ere long 
 to create a great stirring of Irish opinion, which gradually 
 produced momentous results. The quarrel with America, 
 followed by civil war, had broken out ; and, for many reasons, 
 the American cause found support and sympathy in Protestant 
 Ireland. England had claimed a right to legislate for America, 
 even to tax her; the very same right, as respects their own 
 country, had been persistently and ably denied by a long 
 series of well known Irishmen, and even, to a great extent, in 
 the Irish Parliament. The Presbyterians, too, who had left 
 Ireland during a succession of years, were numerous in the 
 army of the revolted colonists ; Presbyterian Ulster was, almost 
 to a man, enthusiastic for the success of Washington. The 
 Irish Parliament, true to its instincts, and filled with nominees 
 of the Crown and the great Nobles, resisted this movement 
 for a considerable time ; it passed a resolution against the 
 American revolt ; it voted large sums to maintain the war ; it 
 even sent part of the Irish army, which, it had been arranged, 
 was to remain at home, to serve with the force under Howe, in 
 the American contest. By degrees, however, it began to waver ; 
 the majority for the Government fell off; it oscillated with the 
 uncertainty often seen in it, and natural to an ill-constituted 
 assembly of the kind. Harcourt now followed in the track of 
 Townshend, with a recklessness from which even Townshend 
 would have shrunk; eighteen Peerages were created in a 
 single day; extravagant patronage was scandalously abused; 
 and corruption ran riot in the public service. 
 
 The majority of the Government in the Irish Houses was 
 kept together by these means ; but it was under the influence 
 also of higher motives. The Protestant aristocracy, so power- 
 ful in it, was decidedly on the side of the Crown and of 
 England, up to the last moment of the American war; the 
 Irish Parliament continued to vote supplies for it, as late as
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 235 
 
 Saratoga and York Town; it even passed a perpetual Irish 
 Mutiny Act, which gave the Executive absolute control over 
 the Irish army. The course of events nevertheless compelled 
 it, at last, to follow in the wake of Protestant Ireland, and to 
 take part in a Revolution, in which, in its later stages, it joined 
 enthusiastically. The condition of Ireland, when France and 
 Spain had declared against England and become allies of 
 America, was such as to cause profound irritation and alarm ; 
 to arouse feelings against the mother country, which might, 
 otherwise, have been inactive for years; and at last to pro- 
 voke a general demand for a thorough change in the Con- 
 stitution and the administrative system established, in their 
 present forms, for nearly a century. Ireland was all but 
 bankrupt in 1776-9; taxation had reached its utmost limits 
 and weighed heavily upon the country ; and the Government 
 was forced to borrow from the English Treasury, and even 
 from a private Irish bank, to meet the requirements of 
 the public service. The causes of this collapse were but too 
 evident ; an embargo had been laid on exports to England, 
 on pretexts that could not bear the light; and the war with 
 France had deprived Ireland, to a considerable extent, of the 
 large trade, in part lawful, in part contraband, which she had 
 been carrying on for a long time with France and which, it 
 was said, had made Munster and Connaught French provinces. 
 The evils of the commercial restrictions, which had kept 
 Ireland back for generations, were thus made more ruinous ; 
 and at the same time the Pension List had enormously 
 increased, and the corruption and waste of the Government 
 were far worse than ever. The country, too, was left almost 
 without defence; a great part of the Irish army was in 
 America; an attempt to form a militia had failed; a French 
 descent on the coasts was deemed imminent; and French 
 privateers swarmed around the Irish ports, and preyed on an 
 already expiring commerce.
 
 236 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 The distress of the country caused a widespread demand 
 for the removal of the impediments on Irish commerce, and 
 for Free Trade on a liberal basis. Opinion had long been setting 
 in this direction ; the evils wrought by the fettering of the trade 
 of Ireland, had, we have said, been proved by able Irish 
 writers, from the days of Petty onward; and Hume and, 
 above all, Adam Smith had exposed the fallacies of the 
 colonial and the mercantile system, to which Irish interests had 
 long been sacrificed. The Government of Lord North was 
 willing to make large concessions ; Burke pressed the claims of 
 his countrymen, with admirable skill, his reward was the loss 
 of his seat for Bristol but selfish British jealousy once more 
 prevailed ; a slight relaxation of the Irish commercial Code, 
 made in 1778, only provoked resentment. But, in the mean- 
 time, a formidable power had grown up in Ireland, which soon 
 told with effect on England, at this juncture pressed on all sides 
 by her enemies. The forlorn and defenceless state of the 
 land caused Protestant Ireland to spring to arms, in order to 
 protect its hearths and its homes ; volunteers suddenly enrolled 
 themselves in multitudes ; and before many months had passed, 
 40,000 men were arrayed, a powerful patriotic force, self- 
 governed, and beyond the control of the Castle. The 
 movement was spontaneous and universal ; the Protestant 
 aristocracy stood at its head ; the Duke of Leinster, the chief 
 of the Fitzgerald name, and Lord Charlemont were among its 
 leaders ; and though it drew its strength from the Protestant 
 caste, Catholic Ireland gradually took part in it. There is no 
 reason to doubt that the first object of the Volunteers was the 
 defence of Ireland ; but the development of their power and 
 the evident fact that they were a force practically irresistible 
 at the time, soon caused them to urge the demand for Free 
 Trade, with an efficacy and a significance that the Government 
 was compelled to recognise. The cannon of the volunteers of 
 the Capital bore the ominous device " Free trade or this"; and
 
 vii.] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 237 
 
 Hussey Burgh, a brilliant speaker in the Irish House of 
 Commons exclaimed, " Talk not to me of peace ; it is not 
 peace, but smothered war. England has sown her laws in 
 dragon's teeth, and they have sprung up in armed men." 
 
 Lord Buckinghamshire, by no means an able man, had been 
 Lord Lieutenant for some time ; he looked on, with impotent 
 dismay, at a movement which he could not check or direct. 
 The Volunteers, concentrating and giving effect to the passions 
 and the will of Protestant Ireland, soon made their power felt 
 in the Irish Parliament, which rapidly fell in with a popular 
 rising, in which the great nobles, too, had taken part. Flood 
 had long chafed at a silence imposed on him; he was in a 
 short time afterwards dismissed from office; and he eagerly 
 took up the cause of Free Trade, which he advocated with 
 characteristic skill. He was supported by many very able 
 men ; especially by Henry Grattan, a young orator who had 
 given proof of most remarkable gifts, and was soon to become 
 the foremost of Irish statesmen. The united influences in 
 favour of Free Trade had ere long irresistible effect ; they 
 were powerfully aided by combinations not to import or make 
 use of British manufactures an idea as old as the day of 
 Swift, and lately adopted by the American Colonists ; and the 
 Volunteers terrified the English ministry. The British Parlia- 
 ment practically gave up the contest; in 1779 and the following 
 year, a series of measures was passed, which brought the 
 whole system of Irish commercial restrictions, so to speak, to 
 the ground, and secured for Ireland a largely extended trade. 
 Ireland was no longer excluded from the Navigation Acts ; the 
 traffic with the colonies was thrown open to her; she could, with 
 large limitations, export to England ; above all she acquired 
 the right to export wool and woollen manufactures to all 
 foreign countries, a prohibition which had done infinite 
 mischief being thus removed. 
 
 The surrender of the British Parliament on this important
 
 238 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 subject led to further and larger demands from Ireland. 
 England had treated Protestant Ireland as a subject colony; 
 she had asserted and enforced claims to bind Ireland by her 
 laws ; she kept the Irish Parliament in bondage by Poynings' 
 Law; she had deprived the Irish House of Lords of its 
 jurisdiction in appeals ; she had denied to Irishmen valuable 
 rights she had secured for herself in 1688. This whole course 
 of policy had been denounced, from time to time, by dis- 
 tinguished Irishmen ; it was now assailed by a rising flood tide 
 of opinion. The impending triumph of the American cause 
 gave new strength to a general impulse ; America had been a 
 contemned dependency; her example was not to be lost on 
 Protestant Ireland. A cry for legislative independence, and 
 for a radicaljphange in the system of English rule in Ireland, 
 went forth, and spread all over the country; it found expression 
 in the different Public Bodies, from Corporate Towns to the 
 County Grand Juries. But, as may be supposed, its great 
 exponent was the formidable and invincible Volunteer force, 
 which had continued rapidly to grow in numbers, and had 
 become a disciplined, even a well equipped army, under 
 officers, many of whom had experience in the field. The attitude 
 of the Volunteers remained unchanged ; they proclaimed their 
 loyalty to the Crown and to England, but insisted that Ireland 
 should obtain liberty ; their weight in the scale of events was 
 decisive, for the Government had no means to withstand their 
 purpose, and they gathered to their side the moral forces, which 
 otherwise might have been arrayed against them, by remaining 
 steady supporters of order and law. The movement became 
 so powerful, that the Ministry in England learned with 
 alarm, that magistrates and even judges were not inclined to 
 give effect in Ireland to an English statute, and sheriffs to 
 execute an English judgment. "The independence of Irish 
 legislation," wrote the successor of Buckinghamshire, Lord 
 Carlisle, "has become the creed of the kingdom."
 
 VIL] The Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland. 239 
 
 The Irish Parliament resisted for a time a movement which 
 practically sought to subvert the Constitution of the country 
 and its relations with England. Recourse was once more had 
 to the methods employed to secure votes by corrupt agencies ; 
 a majority was obtained to uphold the Government; and it 
 should be added that some of the leading Irish nobles feared a 
 violent Revolution which they deemed at hand. But a strong 
 opposition maintained" the popular demand ; Flood, who had 
 long made the subject his own, condemned Poynings' Law with 
 great force of reasoning ; and other prominent men took the 
 same side. Grattan, however, was by far the foremost champion 
 of the claim to Legislative Independence and Self-Govern- 
 ment ; he had adopted the views of Molyneux and Swift from 
 early youth; in April, 1780, he brought the question forward 
 in a speech long remembered as one of his finest efforts. His 
 address was premature and was withdrawn ; and the Irish 
 Parliament kept up for some months an attitude apparently 
 hostile to a great organic reform. Meanwhile, however, the 
 voice of Protestant Ireland rose higher and higher; it was felt 
 even by the ministers in power that it had become impossible 
 to oppose it with effect. At the beginning of 1782, a great body 
 of Delegates from the Volunteers of Ulster assembled in the 
 Church of Dungannon ; it insisted, in language of stern 
 earnestness, on the repeal of the Act that declared the English 
 Parliament entitled to pass laws that affected Ireland, on a 
 thorough modification of Poynings' Law, and on other measures 
 enlarging Irish liberty ; the result was immense even in the two 
 Irish Houses. Ere long the defeat of England in the American 
 War caused the fall of the Tory Administration of North ; the 
 Rockingham Government came into office ; and its attention 
 was at once directed to Irish affairs. Burke had genuine 
 sympathy with the Irish cause ; this was shared, in some 
 degree, by Fox; their influence probably swayed the great 
 Whig magnates. The Duke of Portland was appointed Lord
 
 240 
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Lieutenant ; and a Royal Message was sent to the Houses at 
 Westminster, to consider how Ireland was to be pacified. 
 
 The Irish Parliament had shown, by this time, that it would 
 no longer offer a vain resistance ; it was affected, too, by the 
 change in the Councils of England; it threw in its lot with 
 Protestant Ireland. The movement, carrying everything 
 before it, was thus described by Portland : " all sorts and 
 descriptions of men unanimously and most audibly call upon 
 Great Britain for a full and unequivocal satisfaction " ; and the 
 statement was in no sense overcharged. At this crisis the men 
 in power in England sought to gain time to effect a compro- 
 mise ; they believed a violent Revolution near ; Fox and even 
 Burke had become alarmed. But Grattan refused to concede 
 even a day's delay; on the i6th of April, 1782, he moved an 
 address in the House of Commons, setting forth the wrongs of 
 which his countrymen complained, and demanding the legisla- 
 tive independence of Ireland in their name. It was a stirring 
 and dramatic historical scene ; troops of Volunteers lined the 
 approaches to the stately building in which the Parliament held 
 its Session ; the House of Commons overflowed with members ; 
 its galleries were crowded with all that was most conspicuous 
 and beautiful in the aristocratic life of Ireland. The orator 
 entranced the audience that hung on his lips; his speech, if 
 perhaps not one of his very best, was remarkable alike 
 for its brilliancy and its wisdom ; for the eloquence in which 
 it asserted the claims of Ireland; for the patriotic hope it 
 expressed that England and Ireland would become fast friends, 
 indissolubly united, when right had been done ; for the senti- 
 ment apparent in many passages, that the Volunteers must 
 not overawe the state, that wild ideas must be eschewed, 
 that the Parliament must be supreme in Ireland marked 
 principles in Grattan's political creed. His specific demands 
 were that the Act declaring that Ireland could be bound by 
 English laws should be repealed ; that Poynings : Law should be
 
 VIL 1 The Revolution of 1782. 241 
 
 so modified that the Irish Parliament should possess freedom ; 
 that the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords 
 should be restored to it and be final ; and that the recent 
 Mutiny Act, which placed the Irish army under the permanent 
 control of England, should be withdrawn. 
 
 Grattan's address was carried without a dissentient vote, 
 amidst a tumult of enthusiastic applause. The Ministry in 
 England had but one course to take ; they yielded with good 
 grace, and with words of sympathy. Resolutions in the 
 English Houses were ere long followed by statutes conceding 
 Grattan's demands, which broke the shackles which had held 
 down Ireland, and changed her from a mere dependency into a 
 nearly Sovereign state. English Acts of Parliament thereafter 
 were not to affect Ireland ; the Irish House of Lords regained 
 its rights over appeals; the perpetual Irish Mutiny Act was 
 limited. As for Poynings' Law, an Act of the Irish Parliament 
 took away the initiative in legislation from the Viceroy; and it 
 deprived the Irish and the English Privy Councils of the power 
 of altering, suppressing or rejecting Bills or their Heads. The 
 Irish Parliament was left free to discuss and to make laws in 
 the same way as the British Parliament ; but it was provided 
 that any Bills it might pass should be returned under the Great 
 Seal of England ; it was thus subjected to a kind of Ministerial 
 veto, in addition to the Constitutional veto of the Crown, but 
 virtually, with almost as little effect. The security of the Habeas 
 Corpus Act had been obtained for Ireland before this time; 
 the tenure of the Irish Judges was ere long placed on the 
 same footing as that of their English brethren. The vexatious 
 tests and other disabilities which, we have seen, had been im- 
 posed on Presbyterian Ireland were also removed ; for Presby- 
 terian Ireland had flung itself into the Volunteer movement. 
 The evil consequences of these wrongs, however, survived; 
 they are not wholly things of the past at this day. 
 
 The political crisis, of which we have traced the course, has 
 
 M. I. 16
 
 242 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 been rightly called the Revolution of 1782. The triumph was 
 that of the Irish Protestant Colony ; its Legislative Assembly, 
 the Irish Parliament, had been made nearly coordinate with 
 that of Great Britain ; Protestant Ireland was all but an inde- 
 pendent state, and in theory was united to England only by 
 the link of the Crown. Catholic Ireland still remained a 
 distinct people, oppressed and degraded in the relations of life ; 
 but she had in some measure shared in the benefits of increased 
 liberty, and been raised out of bondage. Many causes had 
 conspired still further to soften the feelings of the Irish Protes- 
 tant to the Catholic, and to lead to a relaxation of the Penal 
 Code. The Catholics had been submissive and peaceful for 
 years ; they had joined, we have said, in the Volunteer move- 
 ment; they had lately been permitted to serve in the British 
 army. Rome, too, had ceased to be an aggressive Power; the 
 liberal and sceptical tendencies of the eighteenth century had 
 produced a general tone of religious indifference in politics 
 and in social opinion. The interests, too, of the Protestant 
 Irish induced them to modify the Penal laws ; the prohibition 
 to sell or to mortgage their lands to Catholics was felt to be a 
 grievance as time rolled on ; and higher motives concurred to 
 make them willing to lighten the chains of Catholic slavery. 
 The movement in favour of Protestant rights had awakened 
 sympathy with Catholic wrongs ; the Volunteers at Dungannon 
 had emphatically declared they "rejoiced" at the mitigation of 
 the Anti-Catholic laws. Effect was given to these opinions in 
 the Irish Parliament; a series of Acts were passed, from 1771 
 to 1782, which gradually extended relief to the Irish Catholics. 
 They were first enabled to take leases of unprofitable waste ; 
 next to take leases of land for 999 years ; finally to purchase 
 land in fee simple and to lend money on land; these con- 
 cessions being in Protestant interests. They were also relieved 
 by law from wrongs which custom, however, had made largely 
 obsolete; their estates were not to "gavel" upon a descent;
 
 viz.] The Revolution of 1782. 243 
 
 the iniquities which encouraged a son to plunder his father, and 
 brought misery into Catholic households, were put an end to, 
 almost without exception; measures of degradation, such as 
 that which forbade a Catholic to have a horse worth more than 
 ^5, were repealed; and the organisation of the Catholic 
 Church received legal sanction. The Irish Catholics, never- 
 theless, were still excluded from all share of political power, 
 and were still wholly without direct influence in the state. 
 Flood, Charlemont, and the immense majority of even the 
 most enlightened men of Protestant Ireland, insisted that their 
 disabilities must be maintained; and Grattan himself, who had 
 the genius to see that "the Protestant could not be free as long 
 as the Catholic was a slave," declared that Protestant Ascend- 
 ency must prevail in Ireland. 
 
 We pass from one of the few bright passages of Irish 
 History to glance at the achievements of Irish intellect, which 
 we have left unnoticed for a considerable time. There was 
 little opportunity for the development of the works of the 
 mind during the long period of trouble and civil war, between 
 the Desmond rising and the Boyne and Aghrim, when Ireland 
 it may be said was finally subdued. Some excellent writers, 
 however, appeared, especially Divines of the Irish Anglican 
 Church : Anglican Theology was in its golden age, and the 
 Bench and Bar of Ireland had many distinguished ornaments. 
 The literature, too, of the native race was not without 
 specimens of real merit ; the great work of the Annals of the 
 Four Masters was compiled, we have said, in the seven- 
 teenth century, and some Irish Histories showed research and 
 learning. That literature, however, retained the character to 
 which we have before adverted ; it was a tale of Celtic sorrow 
 dwelling on the past. In the first three quarters of the 
 eighteenth century Ireland possessed illustrious names in 
 many departments of letters. We have already alluded to 
 Swift and Berkeley, the first incomparable in the field of satire, 
 
 16 a
 
 244 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 the second great as a metaphysician and a deep thinker ; and to 
 these should be added Edmund Burke, the philosophic states- 
 man of a troubled era, and, but far less in eminence, 
 Oliver Goldsmith, whose Vicar of Wakefieldtiiat charming 
 picture of simple life and manners is probably of its kind 
 unrivalled. We may refer, besides, to a list of distinguished 
 men : Francis Hutcheson, a very able writer on moral 
 philosophy and the Deism of the age ; Leland, breathing the 
 ideas of the most enlightened Protestants of 1771-82, whose 
 History of Ireland is still of value ; Warner, who first exploded 
 the falsehoods of the alleged massacre of 1691 ; and a number 
 of others we cannot dwell on. The political and economic 
 wrongs of Protestant Ireland attracted the attention of other 
 powerful minds; Lord Molesworth, Sir James Caldwell, and, 
 above all, Hely Hutchinson have left works on the subject 
 of real merit. Nor are writers of Catholic Ireland wanting, 
 though still nearly all in the same vein of thought Curry, 
 whose History of the Civil Wars of Ireland should be studied 
 by every candid enquirer; MacGeoghegan, who wrote well 
 on the same theme ; De Burgo, whose work on the Irish 
 Dominicans is a model of erudition and research ; Charles 
 O'Conor, a descendant of the last of the Irish Kings, and 
 the most learned antiquary of his time. Ireland had few 
 painters and sculptors, but her actors and musical artists 
 were of peculiar excellence. Her architecture was hardly of 
 high quality; some of the public buildings indeed of Dublin, 
 constructed in this period, are remarkably fine ; but the great 
 country seats are in the bad Georgian style, and contrast pain- 
 fully with the ruins of the abbeys and castles effaced in the 
 barbarous wars of the sixteenth century. [See note on p. 388.] 
 But if the intellect of Ireland was brilliant at this time, the 
 standard of her education and mental culture was far lower 
 than that of England or Scotland. The books published in 
 Dublin were comparatively few ; they were often mere copies
 
 vii.] The Revolution of 1782. 245 
 
 of English and Scotch publications. The aristocracy usually 
 sent their sons to Eton and Harrow, to Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge; these were assimilated by degrees to English gentlemen, 
 though they still retained peculiarities of their own resembling 
 those, as we have said, of the seigneurs of old France. The 
 University of Dublin educated well the sons of the lesser 
 gentry and professional men; but it was not supported by 
 great public schools, as the English Universities were and are, 
 a deficiency from which it still suffers ; and it was long known 
 by the name of the " Silent Sister." Middle-class education was 
 wretchedly bad, for a middle class hardly existed, as we have 
 said; and if the children of the Irish Catholic gentry, as the 
 Penal Code was relaxed by degrees, were often trained in their 
 first years in France, the mass of the Irish Catholics were left 
 in gross ignorance, the Charter Schools, we have seen, having 
 happily failed. Two characteristics of the Irish literature of 
 this part of the century deserve attention. The works written 
 by the conquering and the conquered race were wholly dis- 
 similar in thought and tendency ; they reflected the distinction 
 in blood and faith rooted in the frame of Irish society; and 
 nothing appeared to lessen this wide division, to make its 
 lines, as it were, to run into each other. Swift and Berkeley 
 addressed the Protestant caste ; Curry and Charles O'Conor 
 wrote for the Catholic Irishry; and, though it has been in some 
 measure softened, this difference has continued down to the 
 present day. A great change, however, passed over the style 
 and language of Irish authors and public speakers in the course 
 of the eighteenth century. Swift wrote as an Englishman in 
 all his works ; he is simplicity itself, without a trace of rhetoric; 
 Berkeley imitated Plato, but is, nevertheless, English; the same 
 may be said of all the best writers of Ireland until the reign of 
 George III. But after this time elements of the Celtic mind 
 appear strikingly in compositions even of Irish Protestants; 
 they give life, splendour, and epigram to Grattan's speeches;
 
 246 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 they animate the delightful pages of Goldsmith ; they are seen 
 in the gorgeous rhetoric, the exaggerated phrases, and the 
 vehemence often found in the orations of Burke. The pheno- 
 menon is curious and not easily explained. 
 
 England must for the most part bear the blame for the 
 misgovernment of Ireland during the long period of which we 
 have tried to describe the character. The Penal Code, indeed, 
 was enacted by the Irish Parliament; the oppression and 
 exaction seen in landed relations may be laid to the charge of 
 the Irish Protestant caste. But England and her statesmen had 
 absolute control over Irish affairs throughout this whole time ; 
 they looked on the evil that was being done, nay encouraged its 
 perpetration in many instances; English selfishness and arro- 
 gance are wholly responsible for the commercial restrictions 
 imposed on Ireland and for the bad rule of the "English 
 interest." Some excuses, however, may be rightly made for 
 the system of iniquitous law and tyranny which prevailed in 
 Ireland before 1782. England was incensed with Catholic 
 Ireland in 1691 ; she felt her Protestant colony to be a burden. 
 The Irish Penal Code was almost a counterpart of measures 
 taken against the Huguenots of France ; it was only forgotten 
 an immense distinction that the one affected a people, the 
 other a sect. So too, the trade legislation that impoverished 
 Ireland was that of the colonial and the mercantile system ; it 
 was merely left out of sight that it injured Ireland infinitely 
 more than it could injure remote colonies. Every reasonable 
 plea must be allowed by History; but the fact remains that 
 English rule in Ireland was nearly as bad as it could be in this 
 period ; and the lamentable consequences survive to this day. 
 It is true that Ireland was in a wretched condition and had 
 been misgoverned for centuries before 1691 ; but it is equally 
 certain that all her ills increased, and were, so to speak, made 
 permanent in the state of things that existed in the following 
 age. The Revolution of 1782 was wholly the work of the
 
 vii.] The Revohition of 1782. 247 
 
 Irish Protestants ; and English writers who condemn them are 
 mere partisans. Protestant Ireland had suffered from wrongs 
 done by England far more than America ; Protestant Ireland 
 rightly insisted on obtaining justice. The attitude, too, of the 
 Irish Protestants has not received the commendation it deserves. 
 They remained loyal to the mother country; they fought for 
 her, and filled her armies; they only demanded rights long 
 enjoyed by Englishmen. And it should be added that, in 
 some degree at least, the spirit of liberty which animated 
 themselves produced sympathy with down-trodden Catholic 
 Ireland. 
 
 The Revolution of 1782, we have seen, made Ireland 
 almost a Sovereign state, with a legislature nearly coordinate 
 with that of England ; made Ireland, in theory at least, all but 
 an independent people. What probabilities were there that a 
 settlement of this kind would take root, flourish, and become 
 enduring ? England had made the concession in generous 
 words; but every English statesman of mark disliked it, and 
 saw that it might be fraught with evil. The English and Irish 
 Parliaments, from the nature of things, would differ in opinion, 
 perhaps come in conflict, on questions of the gravest import- 
 ance ; this would inevitably strain, nay, might break up the 
 Empire. Besides, the arrangement effected in 1782 was against 
 the genius and the tendencies of the age; these were in the 
 direction of the consolidation of states, not of their division 
 into separate parts. Cromwell had accomplished an Irish 
 Union; Petty, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, and other distin- 
 guished men had declared that a Union was the first need of 
 Ireland. Looking, too, at Ireland and her existing condition, 
 would the settlement of 1782 have happy results ? Would the 
 Irish Parliament, confined to the Protestant caste, and from its 
 composition exposed to corruption, grow into a patriotic and 
 pure assembly, govern Ireland for the general good, be proof 
 against evil influences from without ? Would " the Protestant
 
 248 Ireland, [CHAP. vn. 
 
 Settlement," as Grattan fondly hoped, " expand into the Irish 
 nation " ; would anything efface the profound distinctions which 
 had kept Ireland a distracted land for ages, and make her a 
 really united people, capable of self-government and fit for 
 liberty ? Could Parliamentary government really prosper in a 
 community constituted as Ireland was, in which, it was said, 
 "a living head was at the top of a paralytic body" ; in which 
 the middle class was still deplorably feeble, in which the mass of 
 the peasantry remained degraded serfs? Might not occasions 
 arise in which the old feuds and animosities of the past would 
 break out, and tear to pieces the superficial veil thrown over 
 the present? History was before long to answer questions 
 which had already flitted across reflecting minds.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT. THE REBELLION OF 1798. 
 THE UNION. 
 
 Ireland almost an independent state, in theory, under the Constitution of 
 1782. Influences that made the Irish Parliament and Ireland, in a 
 great degree, dependent. Simple Repeal, and the Act of Renuncia- 
 tion. The Commercial Propositions of 1785. The Regency Question 
 in 1789. Flood, supported by the Volunteers, endeavours to reform 
 the Irish Parliament in 1783. Characteristics of that Assembly. 
 Flood's reform rejected. Material prosperity of Ireland from 1782 
 101789. Necessary reforms neglected. Pitt. Grattan. Fitzgibbon. 
 Influence of the French Revolution on Ireland. Movement in Pres- 
 byterian Ulster. Theobald Wolfe Tone. He founds the Society of 
 the United Irishmen. His qbjects and policy. The Society seeks to 
 gain over Catholic Ireland. How it is affected by the French Revolu- 
 tion. Agrarian disturbance. Extension of the United Irish Society. 
 Policy of Pitt. Influence of Burke. The Catholic Relief Act of 1 793. 
 Other measures of the year. Lull in Ireland in 1794. The appoint- 
 ment of Lord Fitzwilliam as Viceroy. His recall. The results. Lord 
 Camden made Viceroy. Policy of Protestant Ascendency restored. 
 Fitzgibbon made Earl of Clare. Extension of the United Irish move- 
 ment. It becomes rebellious. It makes its way into Catholic Ireland. 
 The Orange Society and its adherents. The Defenders. Orange 
 outrages throw many Irish Catholics into the arms of the United 
 Irishmen. The French descent on Bantry in 1796. Apparent quies- 
 cence of Catholic Ireland. State of Ulster and of Ireland in 1797. 
 Rebellion gathering. Armed levies in Ulster and insurrection planned 
 in Dublin. The Government compelled to strike. Want of a regular
 
 250 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 military force. Ulster disarmed in part. Many barbarities committed, 
 but a rising prevented. The Directory of the conspirators in Dublin 
 arrested. Arrest and death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. The rising 
 forced to a head. Conduct of Lord Clare. Atrocities in parts of the 
 South. Outbreak of the Rebellion of 1798. Civil war in Wicklow and 
 Wexford. Gallantry displayed on both sides. The rising put down. 
 Deeds of blood and cruelty. Lord Cornwallis made Viceroy. State of 
 Ireland in 1798 9. The Parliament of Grattan. The descent of 
 Humbert. Death of Wolfe Tone. Preparations for the Union. The 
 policy of Pitt. The Union at last carried and by what means. 
 Reflections. 
 
 THE Settlement of 1782, we have said, made Ireland approxi- 
 mate to an independent state ; her Parliament was, in theory, 
 all but Sovereign in foreign, commercial, and domestic affairs. 
 The King of England, indeed, was necessarily King of Ireland; 
 the British Executive Government had an authority, analogous 
 to a ministerial veto 1 , on laws enacted by the Irish Parliament. 
 But by the letter of the new Constitution, at least, Protestant 
 Ireland, through her Legislature, was nearly supreme, almost 
 absolute within the domain appertaining to it. The King of 
 Great Britain and Ireland could declare war ; the British 
 Parliament might enthusiastically support this policy ; but the 
 Irish Parliament had, conceivably, a power to thwart it, to 
 refuse supplies and troops to maintain it, to pass resolutions 
 protesting against it. So too, there was nothing to prevent the 
 Irish Parliament from prohibiting British imports by hostile 
 tariffs, from encouraging Irish exports by extravagant bounties, 
 nay even from encroaching on the monopolies of English 
 foreign trade by arrangements of its own. Above all, the 
 Constitution of 1782 gave to the Irish Parliament logically a 
 right to have an Irish Executive dependent on it, to select, to 
 appoint, and to dismiss its ministers, nay to make it impossible 
 for a Viceroy to hold office against its will, though he had been 
 nominated by the Crown, and though he possessed the confi- 
 
 1 See on this point, Ball, Legislative Systems, 136 and note 278 9-
 
 viii.] Grattaris Parliament. 251 
 
 dence, in every respect, of the British Government. It should be 
 added that the ministerial veto on enactments passed by the Irish 
 Parliament was, as we have remarked, of scarcely any avail ; in 
 the words of one of the ablest Irishmen of his day, it was " a 
 restraint that created a theoretic dependence, but left a practi- 
 cal independence 1 "; and abstractedly, we repeat, Ireland was 
 now connected with Great Britain by the tie of the Crown 
 only. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to point out how a relation like 
 this anomalous, irrational, and by means of which two states, 
 nearly coequal in theory, were brought together and called a 
 single state was full of elements of trouble and grave danger. 
 The Irish Constitution of 1782, however, was widely different 
 in fact from what it was on paper ; its essential vices were in 
 a great measure checked by influences which prolonged its 
 existence, and possibly might have made it endure. Protestant 
 Ireland, we have seen, was in the main loyal, and devoted to 
 the connection with England ; it therefore usually followed the 
 lead of the British Parliament and the British Government ; 
 and even under the new arrangements it acquiesced, as a rule, 
 in what was done at Westminster, recalcitrant as it had been of 
 late. The Irish Presbyterians, indeed, had for many years 
 shown signs of disaffection, soon to become perilous, and 
 Catholic Ireland, as yet an inert mass, was obviously a force 
 that might prove formidable ; but the Irish Protestants, as a 
 people, remained disposed to bow to the will of the mother 
 country, throughout the whole range of affairs of state, unless 
 attacks were made on their own interests. The Irish Parlia- 
 ment, again, supreme in Ireland, was, we have seen, largely an 
 instrument of English power; it represented the rule of the 
 Castle and of a narrow oligarchy, attached necessarily to 
 
 1 Speech of Speaker Foster in the Irish House of Commons, Feb. 17, 
 1800. For the reason that the ministerial veto was so inoperative see 
 Ball, ante.
 
 252 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 British rule ; it was powerfully swayed by gross corruption ; 
 and though it sometimes showed a will of its own, and, as 
 always, was liable to sudden fits of change, it continued 
 generally to follow in the wake of the British Parliament, and 
 to obey the dictates of the British Ministry. More important 
 too, perhaps, than anything else, the Irish Parliament never 
 claimed a right to create an Executive subject to it ; under the 
 Constitution of 1782, as under the state of things that existed 
 before, it accepted the Viceroy and the Ministers appointed, in 
 England, by the Crown ; and this single circumstance had a 
 most potent effect in keeping it in the line of British politics, 
 and in maintaining the connection between the two countries. 
 The centrifugal forces, in a word, were extremely strong under 
 the Settlement of 1782; but they were largely controlled by 
 centripetal forces, which prevented its flying, almost at once, 
 to pieces 1 . 
 
 The tendency of the British and Irish Parliaments, nay of 
 England and Ireland, to come into conflict under the conditions 
 we have briefly described, would evidently be strongest in 
 times of trouble and war, and in these instances would be 
 most dangerous. It manifested itself, however, even in the 
 years of peace and of general tranquillity in both islands which 
 preceded the outbreak of the Revolution in France, and the 
 world-wide upheaval and strife that followed. On three oc- 
 casions, from 1782 to 1789, the relations between the two 
 Legislatures were more or less strained, and signs of dissension 
 became apparent which might have developed very grave 
 results. The new Irish Constitution had hardly been made 
 when it was strenuously urged in the Irish Parliament that the 
 
 1 The checks, which enabled the Irish Parliament of 1782 to work, in 
 some degree, in harmony with the British Parliament and British Execu- 
 tive, could not exist in the case of any Irish Parliament at the present day; 
 and no paper constitution could create them. Every one acquainted with 
 Irish affairs knows that the centrifugal forces would master the centripetal.
 
 viii.] Grattan' s Parliament. 253 
 
 " Simple Repeal " of the Declaratory Act, in which the English 
 Parliament had asserted a right to bind Ireland by laws passed 
 at Westminster, could not completely annul the claim. Flood, 
 who had been lately eclipsed by Grattan, and had begun to 
 detest his successful rival, eagerly took up a cry which, it must 
 be added, was not without valid legal sanction. The British 
 Parliament eluded a possible quarrel by passing an Act so- 
 lemnly renouncing the right; but, at this very moment, 
 Portland and other English statesmen were secretly con- 
 demning the recent settlement, and were at least thinking of 
 expedients by which the supremacy of England over Ireland 
 might be restored. A somewhat graver occasion of dispute 
 arose only three years afterwards. The second Pitt, by this 
 time in power, with the economic instinct which was his best 
 gift, wished to extend the trade between England and Ireland, 
 still, as we have seen, in part restricted; he sought, in return, 
 to induce Ireland to make a contribution to Imperial Defence; 
 and he probably entertained a design of securing for the 
 British Parliament and the British Government a regulating 
 power over Irish foreign commerce, an object which Fox, also, 
 had certainly at heart. The Irish Parliament in 1785 assented 
 to the propositions of the English minister ; but these aroused 
 such a tempest of wrath in England the idea of an increase 
 of free trade with Ireland was odious to English commercial 
 jealousy that Pitt was compelled to modify his first project; 
 and the propositions subsequently laid before the Irish Parlia- 
 ment not only pressed hardly on Irish commerce, but trenched 
 on the legislative independence which had been the great gain 
 of the Revolution of 1782. Grattan denounced the whole 
 scheme in one of the most brilliant and powerful of his 
 impassioned speeches ; it was so ill received that the measure 
 was dropped. The last difference was the most serious of all ; 
 but for an accident it might have had untoward results. In 
 1788, when George III became insane, the British Lords and
 
 254 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Commons, as is well known, practically elected a Regent by a 
 stretch of power ; but this was resented by the Irish Parliament 
 as an interference with its Constitutional rights ; and Grattan 
 persuaded the Irish Houses to disregard what was being done 
 at Westminster, and to invite the Prince of Wales 1 , by an 
 address of its own, to become "Regent of Ireland." The 
 recovery of the King brought the dispute to a close, and no 
 mischief was actually done ; but it had become evident that, 
 owing to the divergence in the conduct of the British and the 
 Irish Parliaments, the Head of the State in Great Britain and 
 Ireland might be the same person with very different rights, or 
 even, conceivably, different persons. 
 
 The Irish Parliament, however, it has been given the 
 name of Grattan, its chief founder on its new basis seemed 
 to be more endangered at this period by its weakness and its 
 shameful abuses, than by its relations with the British Parlia- 
 ment. It had not been forgotten that it had resisted Protestant 
 Irish opinion for a long time in the movement of 1779-82; 
 and Flood, backed by the force of the Volunteers, still a 
 most formidable power in the state, made a great effort to 
 reform it in 1783. The British Parliament of the eighteenth 
 century was by no means free from the grossest defects ; but it 
 was very different from the ill-ordered Assembly which held its 
 sittings in College Green, not far from the centre of the Irish 
 capital. The Irish Parliament contained some independent 
 men, especially of the class of the great resident gentry; it 
 possessed a really patriotic party led by an illustrious chief, 
 Grattan ; it abounded in able and brilliant lawyers ; its debates 
 reveal considerable powers of thought and of eloquence. But, 
 taken as a whole, it was a corrupt assembly, badly constituted, 
 and subject to evil influence ; nor did it represent in any real 
 
 1 Excellent authorities have long ago maintained that the conduct of the 
 Irish Parliament, on this occasion, was more wise and constitutional than 
 that of the British Houses.
 
 viii.] G rattans Parliament. 255 
 
 sense even the dominant caste of Protestant Ireland. Its 
 House of Lords had a large array of Bishops, mere mouth- 
 pieces of the Government of the day ; its lay Peers were for 
 the most part composed of ennobled descendants of the old 
 plebeian settlers, and of men elevated to their present rank by 
 the worst kind of patronage. Such a body was not an 
 aristocracy worthy of the name ; the Irish House of Commons 
 was, in many respects, even worse. Its constitution had not 
 been changed by the Revolution of 1782; it remained, as 
 regards the mass of its members, an assembly of nominees of 
 the Government, and of the great ruling oligarchy of the 
 " Irish interest." Of its 300 seats, not 100 were open, that is, 
 subject to the Electorate's will; more than 200 had become 
 the property of the Crown, and of leading nobles and 
 commoners, the absolute owners of the numerous petty 
 boroughs, who were thus supreme in the Lower House in 
 Ireland. The Irish House of Commons, too, had been long 
 crowded with pensioners and placemen of many kinds; it 
 contained, it has been said, more than 100 of these; and 
 Grattan compared these mere tools of the Castle to "animals of 
 prey in the guise of senators, disgracing the seats which once 
 belonged to the people." And the Irish House of Commons, 
 we must bear in mind, was not only wholly composed of the 
 Protestant caste, but was elected by the Protestant caste only, 
 and its electorate was exceedingly small. Catholic Ireland 
 was no more represented in it, than a Red Indian tribe is in 
 the American Senate. 
 
 The movement, however, of Flood for reform completely 
 collapsed and came to nothing. The Volunteers, indeed, held 
 an Assembly in Dublin ; an eccentric Prelate, the Bishop of 
 Derry, spoke at this Convention, as it was called, in the most 
 reckless language. But Charlemont had wisely placed himself 
 at their head ; the Delegates were, for the most part, moderate 
 men; and no attempt was made to overawe the Parliament
 
 256 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 by a display, as was feared, of military force. The Reform 
 Bill of Flood would have made a real change in the electorate 
 and the representation of Protestant Ireland; but, in con- 
 sonance with his well-known views, it kept the Irish Catholics 
 still excluded from the state; it denied them the smallest 
 share of political power ; it could have only been a makeshift 
 for a time. It was twice summarily rejected by the Irish 
 Parliament ; and Grattan. though a reformer, even then, on 
 principle, gave it, it should be observed, but a lukewarm 
 support, perhaps because he was fiercely opposed to Flood, 
 whom he had lately denounced in a ruthless philippic. There 
 was in fact no pressure from without at the time to compel the 
 Irish Parliament to reform itself; the very idea was odious to 
 the English Government ; and the present season was by no 
 means opportune. From 1782 to 1789 the material progress 
 of Ireland was very marked ; an organic change in her consti- 
 tution seemed out of place and reason. Her prosperity, no 
 doubt, was comparative only, and was interrupted by one or 
 two bad years ; whole counties were still in a most backward 
 state, especially parts of Munster and Connaught; and there 
 was a fresh outbreak of Whiteboy outrages and many other 
 signs of agrarian disorder. But the correspondence of all the 
 Viceroys in office, and numberless speeches in the Irish 
 Parliament, prove that Ireland made a real advance in wealth 
 and resources at this period, and that, too, tried by every 
 possible test. Her finances were in a singularly flourishing 
 state; they even bore the strain of the evil times that followed. 
 Her agriculture developed apace; huge areas of pasture 
 became tillage; and if this was largely an artificial change, 
 the result was an immediate increase of opulence. Her linen 
 manufacture, too, made immense progress; the chief seat of 
 this industry, Ulster, became the most stirring and perhaps the 
 richest of the Irish provinces, notwithstanding the troubles of 
 a not distant past; and other manufactures grew up in Leinster
 
 viii.] Grattaris Parliament. 257 
 
 and Munster. Nor were the causes of this improvement 
 difficult to ascertain ; the expansion of trade, to a great extent 
 set free, the relaxation of the barbarous Penal Code, which 
 brought land into commerce again, nay the hopes inspired by 
 the Revolution of 1782, quickened enterprise and increased 
 wealth; even the legislation of the Irish Parliament, which 
 favoured bounties, corn laws and protective duties, had ten- 
 dencies in the same direction, at least for a time. 
 
 The prospect for Ireland, therefore, from 1782 to 1789, 
 was not without promise in the future, anomalous as was her 
 political system. But, apart from her relations with England, 
 the dominant state, we can now see that her institutions must 
 have been greatly changed, if her Constitution was to have a 
 chance of permanence. Her Parliament, the corrupt conclave 
 of an exclusive caste, divided from the people in race and 
 faith, should have been thrown open to Protestant and 
 Catholic alike; the petty boroughs should have been swept 
 away ; the electorate should have been composed of all classes, 
 without regard to religious distinctions. Catholic Ireland 
 should have been received within the Pale of the State, not 
 treated as a subject community ; Catholics should have been 
 admitted to all offices of trust, and placed on the same level 
 of rights as Protestants. If the Established Church, too, was 
 to be left standing, the iniquity of the tithe should have been 
 removed, especially as the impost oppressed the Presbyterian 
 no less than the Catholic, and was felt by both to be a cruel 
 grievance. But even Grattan, the chief of the Irish Liberals, 
 did not in these years advocate such large reforms, though 
 they were in accord with his political sympathies. He con- 
 tented himself at this time with denouncing the abuses of 
 the Irish Parliament, and with proposing a change in the 
 system of tithe ; he did not, earnestly at least, as yet urge the 
 questions of Parliamentary Reform and Catholic rights. He 
 doubtless felt that it would be hopeless to attempt to bring 
 
 M. i. 1 7
 
 258 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 forward projects of this kind; and he seems to have thought 
 that Ireland was in need of political rest after the events of 
 1782. Unquestionably, however, Parliamentary Reform and 
 Catholic Emancipation, as it had begun to be called, were 
 objects next to this great man's heart; his ideal was an 
 Ireland really made a nation by the union of her races and 
 creeds under an equal law and represented in a free and 
 popular Parliament ; but an Ireland, too, in which the Protes- 
 tant classes would retain the ascendency inseparable from the 
 ownership of the great mass of the land of the country, and 
 from a superiority in civilisation and wealth. 
 
 The reforms, indeed, that Ireland required were simply 
 impossible at this period. Pitt was in the plenitude of his 
 power in England; but as a constitutional statesman he did 
 not interfere with the state of things established in 1782, 
 except indirectly, and at grave crises. He gave little attention 
 to Irish affairs at this time; his knowledge of them, indeed, 
 was always imperfect, a defect unhappily common to many 
 who have filled his place ; and he had nothing of his great 
 father's insight into men and things beyond his experience. 
 As an economist he recommended a commutation of the Irish 
 tithe, but he made no attempt to settle a question already 
 provoking intense discontent. Whatever may have been the 
 case as to England, he trifled with Parliamentary Reform in 
 Ireland ; and as to Catholic Emancipation ', he professed 
 himself opposed to it in the early years of his ministry. In 
 this state of things the men in power at the Castle and the 
 oligarchy who ruled the Irish Parliament were given a free 
 hand to do as they pleased ; and they rejected every project of 
 reform, a commutation of the tithe, a plan to remove the 
 worst abuses in the Irish Parliament, any change in the 
 existing Parliamentary system, even the slightest extension of 
 
 1 See a remarkable letter of Pitt cited by Mr Lecky, History of 
 England in the Eighteenth Century, VI. 375.
 
 vin.] The Rebellion of 1798. 259 
 
 Catholic liberty. They entrenched themselves, in a word, 
 behind institutions, as narrow and iniquitous as those of 
 Venice, but without the grand Venetian traditions; as things 
 went on reasonably well in Ireland they governed without a 
 thought of the morrow. The master-spirit of this selfish Junta 
 was John Fitzgibbon, a lawyer of humble origin, but a man of 
 remarkable parts and great force of character, a most com- 
 manding figure in Irish politics in the later years of the 
 eighteenth century. Fitzgibbon had meditated deeply on 
 Irish History; he believed that the liberalism of his own 
 time had not effaced the animosities of the past in Ireland, or 
 even made a great change in the profound distinctions of race 
 and faith which divided her people ; he thought the ideal of 
 Grattan midsummer madness ; and he declared that Ireland 
 could never become a nation in the true sense of the word. For 
 these reasons he had convinced himself that Protestant 
 ascendency must be maintained in Ireland ; that Catholic 
 subjection must continue; that if Protestant Ireland was to 
 exist, it must depend for support on England ; that the best 
 way to accomplish this was to leave things in their present 
 state ; and he therefore strenuously opposed the policy of re- 
 forming the Irish Parliament, and of making farther concessions 
 to Catholic Ireland. His views unquestionably contained much 
 truth, and some of his predictions have been unhappily fulfilled; 
 but history may ask if his own course of conduct did not largely 
 contribute to these results. 
 
 The French Revolution came like a tempest to disturb a 
 season of comparative peace in Ireland, and to shake to its 
 foundations the ill-ordered structure of her constitution and 
 social life. Its influence was first seen in Presbyterian Ulster, 
 where many causes concurred to give it no ordinary force. 
 The National Assembly had swept away the old order of 
 things in France, had put an end to exclusive privilege, had 
 founded institutions on a democratic basis ; all this aroused the 
 
 172
 
 260 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 sympathies of the Presbyterian Irish, who had long been kept 
 down by unjust laws and by the rule of an aristocratic caste, 
 who had scarcely a voice in the Irish Parliament, and who 
 disliked a system of government which shut them out from its 
 sphere. The Church, too, in France had fallen and the tithe 
 with it; French republican ideas were abroad; and a com- 
 munity, chiefly composed of farmers and traders, which could 
 not endure Prelacy, had long denounced tithe, and had a 
 traditional distaste for monarchy, especially when upheld by a 
 narrow dominant class, was deeply stirred by these great and 
 sudden changes. A movement in favour of a thorough reform 
 of the Irish Parliament, of a large extension of the electoral 
 franchise, and perhaps against the Established Church and 
 tithe, spread from Belfast, now a growing seat of trade, over 
 many towns of the Northern Province and even in large 
 parts of the rural districts ; and it drew into it all that was 
 most daring and enthusiastic in Presbyterian Ireland. Several 
 leaders of the movement, which in a few months acquired 
 considerable strength and volume, were able and energetic 
 men; its chief director was Theobald Wolfe Tone, a young 
 lawyer of no common powers and a very remarkable man of 
 action, who even at this time had revolutionary ends in view, 
 and probably was at heart a rebel. Tone saw clearly that even 
 to attain the objects his colleagues had set before them, still 
 more to compass what he aimed at himself, it would be 
 necessary to obtain general and powerful popular support ; and 
 for this he looked to the mass of Catholic Ireland, still almost 
 passive, but beginning to stir in some of its parts with 
 quickening life, and subject to many grievances and wrongs. 
 He founded in 1791 the Society of United Irishmen, the 
 original centre of which was in Ulster ; its professed aim was 
 to combine a demand for Parliamentary reform with the con- 
 cession of Catholic emancipation in the widest sense ; it hoped 
 in this way to enlist Catholic Ireland in its cause.
 
 VIIL] The Rebellion of 1798. 261 
 
 The French Revolution had meanwhile been making its 
 influence felt in Catholic Ireland. The few Catholic nobles 
 and gentlemen of high degree, descendants, for the most part, 
 of the old Englishry who had preserved the wrecks of their 
 estates, were alarmed at its anarchic tendencies; their sym- 
 pathies were with the perishing French Monarchy; and this 
 was the feeling of the higher Catholic clergy. But the Catholic 
 mercantile class, which had been growing up in Ireland, and 
 had gradually acquired wealth and power, saw in the inaugura- 
 tion of the new era in France and in the establishment of a 
 political system based on the assertion of the Rights of Man 
 and of religious and civil equality in the extreme sense, the 
 prospect of abolishing the whole Penal Code and of raising 
 Catholic Ireland out of its present condition ; the very con- 
 cessions which had been obtained made it the more determined 
 to seek a less imperfect liberty. A Catholic Committee to 
 sustain the Catholic cause had existed in Dublin since 1759; 
 its aristocratic leaders left it at this juncture; but their places 
 were filled by men of a very different type; and these co- 
 operated with the United Irishmen. The appointment of 
 Wolfe Tone to be the secretary of the Catholic Committee 
 marked the alliance of that body and the Society in Belfast ; 
 the two began thenceforward to act in concert. The French 
 Revolution at the same time had gradually affected the subject 
 masses of the Irish Catholics, still little better than serfs. 
 They heard that in the great land, whither their fathers had 
 gone for three generations to fight its battles, a dominant and 
 oppressive Church had been overthrown ; that an aristocracy, 
 lording it over the children of the soil, had fallen ; that tithe 
 had been abolished and the exactions of landlords ; and, in the 
 liberation of the peasantry of France, they felt dimly a hope 
 of liberation for themselves. A movement, dull, feeble, and 
 aimless as yet, stirred these inert multitudes in a few counties ; 
 but it showed itself, not in a cry for political changes, but in
 
 262 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 a widespread disinclination to pay tithe, and even rent, and in 
 occasional risings against the landed gentry. Emissaries from 
 Wolfe Tone and his colleagues quickened the impulse; the 
 Whiteboy system had prepared the way ; there was a consider- 
 able outburst of agrarian disorder and crime. 
 
 The two movements, distinct as yet, but already tending to 
 run into each other, went on rapidly through 1792. The 
 United Irishmen established a violent Press in Ulster ; volun- 
 teers were enrolled in the name of National Guards; the 
 Society organised itself in many parts of the North; and 
 numerous societies were affiliated to it, in Dublin, and other 
 towns of the South. From these centres the new doctrines 
 were disseminated far and wide through the country; and 
 exactly as had happened in France, where the ruin of 
 the Seigneurs had illustrated the Rights of Man, the revolt of 
 the peasantry against their superiors became more and more 
 general. The state of lawless disturbance on the increase in 
 Ireland, and especially the inclination of two forces, Presby- 
 terianism and Catholicism, hitherto fiercely opposed, to form 
 a coalition, ominous and strange, perplexed and alarmed the 
 British Ministry, the more so that many Protestants of the 
 Anglican Church had joined the ranks of the United Irishmen. 
 After many hesitations and long delays, Pitt, completely re- 
 versing his late policy, resolved to make the Irish Catholics 
 large concessions ; in this he probably was inspired by Burke, 
 the lifelong friend of Catholic Ireland, who always had strong 
 Catholic sympathies, and who, in the existing state of Europe, 
 sought to combat French Jacobinism with the powerful forces 
 through which Catholicism appeals to man; and Pitt, doubt- 
 less, too, was alive to the facts, that war with France was 
 already at hand, and that England would have Catholic Powers 
 as allies. In 1792 the Irish Parliament had passed an Act, 
 which removed, but only to a small extent, the disabilities still 
 affecting the Irish Catholics ; Pitt, a few weeks before war was
 
 viii.] The Rebellion of 1798. 263 
 
 proclaimed, insisted that a much larger measure should be 
 brought forward, against the protest of the Irish Government, 
 and especially of Fitzgibbon, who had been made Chancellor, 
 and for some time was supreme at the Castle. The proposed 
 scheme though with large and somewhat galling exceptions ad- 
 mitted the Irish Catholic to many offices of trust ; and it thus 
 secured him, really for the first time, a share of political rights 
 in the State. But its most striking and greatest feature was 
 this : it gave the Catholic the electoral franchise, while it did 
 not permit him to have a seat in Parliament. 
 
 The measure was introduced into the Irish Parliament 
 under conditions that illustrate, very clearly, the nature of 
 the Constitution of 1782. According to true Parliamentary 
 usage, Grattan and his adherents should have been placed in 
 office, and should have had the honour and the responsibility 
 of a great reform carrying out their policy, at least in part; 
 this would have been the case, as a matter of course, at West- 
 minster. But the conduct of the Bill was left to the men in 
 power at the Castle, notoriously its professed opponents ; the 
 majority in their hands were bidden to support it, and it was 
 thus deprived of all that would give it grace and significance. 
 It passed, however, easily through both the Irish Houses 
 if not without a bitter speech of Fitzgibbon for the Govern- 
 ment was all powerful in both ; and not only Grattan and his 
 followers, but the independent party of the leading and resident 
 Irish gentry, assailed as they already were as landlords, were 
 still in favour of concessions to the Irish Catholics, as they had 
 been from 1771 to 1782. But the essential vices and defects 
 of the measure were exposed, with great ability, by two or three 
 of these very men ; in truth it was an ill conceived and mis- 
 chievous scheme, too characteristic of the inexperience of Irish 
 affairs, often exhibited by Pitt and his colleagues. It proposed 
 to enfranchise the Catholic multitude, that is to flood the 
 constituencies, at a critical moment, with masses of servile and
 
 264 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 ignorant peasants; and yet it kept out of Parliament the 
 Catholic gentry, the very class which it ought to have brought 
 in. It is not easy to understand the reason of such a plan, 
 certain in time to be fraught with great evil; but not im- 
 probably Pitt and the English Ministers thought as actually 
 was the case for many years that the Irish Catholic voters 
 would continue to be mere passive instruments of their 
 superiors, and that the Bill therefore would not have much 
 effect, and would be a large reform in appearance mainly. 
 The measure was accompanied by other measures which 
 reduced the number of placemen and pensioners in the Irish 
 House of Commons, and faintly presaged further reforms in 
 Parliament; and steps were taken to form a militia force in 
 Ireland, and to disband the Volunteers in Ulster, who had 
 proclaimed themselves a National Guard. 
 
 The United Irish and agrarian movements appear to have 
 become less active, for some months, after the Relief Act, as it 
 was called, of 1793. Their organisations, indeed, were no 
 doubt extended, and communications had begun to be opened 
 with France, now engaged in a desperate strife with Europe ; 
 but they were not so potent as they had been, at least on the 
 surface. This was probably due, in part, to the still uncertain 
 state of the war; in part to the repressive measures of the 
 Irish Parliament, and to its attitude of loyalty to the British 
 Government ; but in part, also, to the recent concessions, which 
 detached some Catholic leaders from their Protestant allies. A 
 Catholic Convention, which had been called together, was 
 dissolved when the late Act was passed ; it is very remarkable 
 that the failure to carry a measure of Parliamentary Reform, in 
 the Session of 1794, though it blasted the hopes of the 
 United Irishmen, did not cause an outburst of widespread 
 disorder. For a moment, indeed, it seemed not impossible 
 that the elements of trouble in Ireland might be set at rest. In 
 the first days of 1795, Lord Fitzwilliam, a member of the
 
 VIIT.] The Rebellion of 1798. 265 
 
 great Whig Secession, was sent to Ireland, as Lord Lieutenant ; 
 and, beyond question, he had permission to give the counten- 
 ance of the Government to further concessions to demands 
 made by the Irish Catholics, who, very properly, were not 
 satisfied with the imperfect measure of 1793, and claimed to 
 be placed on a complete equality of political and civil rights 
 with the Protestants. All Catholic Ireland concurred in this 
 demand, especially the Peerage, the gentry, and the superior 
 clergy, Conservative, to a man, in their instincts; and had it 
 been complied with, it might have happened that Irish History 
 would have opened a brighter page, and have not had to record 
 the tragic events that followed 1 . Fitzwilliam entered, as was 
 his Constitutional course, into negotiations with Grattan and 
 his friends, who, however, refused to take office ; and he re- 
 peatedly urged on the English Cabinet the pressing need of 
 Catholic Emancipation in the fullest sense. He was, however, 
 somewhat hasty and indiscreet; he infuriated the Junta in 
 power at the Castle, by dismissing one of their most prominent 
 men, and by threatening to dismiss others ; and he was perhaps 
 rather too pronounced in his official language. He was at a 
 moment's notice removed from his post, with an angry minis- 
 terial reproof, though the Cabinet had at least acquiesced in his 
 conduct ; and it was announced that concessions to the Irish 
 Catholics were not to be made, nay, that a complete change in 
 Irish policy was to take place. It is impossible for us to enlarge 
 on this subject ; but it is almost certain that Fitzwilliam was 
 made a victim of intrigues begun at the Castle, and calculated 
 to tell with effect in England, and also of the bigotry of 
 George III, who through representations made by Fitzgibbon 
 his "leprous distilment" seems to have reached the ear of 
 the King had set his conscience against the Catholic claims. 
 
 1 [Fitzwilliam's mission was perhaps not so much to secure further 
 concessions, amounting to complete emancipation, for the Catholics, as to 
 effect a thorough reform in the spirit of administration. ]
 
 266 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Fitzwilliam's departure from Ireland was a day of mourning ; 
 farewell was bidden him in the voice of a disappointed people ; 
 "a cloud," it has been said, "has ever since hung on the land." 
 It is impossible to assert that a frank compliance with the 
 demands of the Catholics, at this juncture, would have pre- 
 vented the horrors of 1798; all that is certain is that an 
 opportunity was lost, and that thenceforward events took a 
 most unhappy course. Lord Camden was made Fitzwilliam's 
 successor; his mission was to restore the old system of 
 Protestant Ascendency in a changed era, and to keep Catholic 
 Ireland down, when the United Irishmen were appealing to it, 
 when it was already gravely disturbed, and when the French 
 Republic, triumphant over a world of foes, was proclaiming the 
 Evangel of the Rights of Man. The Junta at the Castle was 
 given a new lease of power; Fitzgibbon was raised to the 
 historic peerage of Clare ; efforts were made to arouse religious 
 animosities in the Irish Parliament, and even in different parts 
 of the country. This bad policy Pitt probably was not aware 
 of it was severely condemned by leading men in not a few 
 counties; their able protests remain, and do them honour. 
 
 The conduct of the Government now gave an enormous 
 impulse to the United Irish movement, and to the agrarian 
 disorder of Catholic Ireland; the success of the arms of 
 France, no doubt, cooperated in the same direction. The 
 United Irish leaders, seeing there was no hope of accomplishing 
 their ends by Constitutional means, began, as Tone had done 
 from the first, to think that revolution was their only chance ; 
 they gradually turned into dark and desperate courses. Their 
 organisation was made military ; their societies were prepared 
 for a call to the field ; supplies of arms were eagerly sought ; 
 the districts in which they possessed influence were placed 
 under the command of officers; and attempts were made 
 secretly to enrol and drill levies capable of an armed rising. 
 The emissaries sent to France became more numerous; the
 
 vi".] The Rebellion of 1798. 267 
 
 principal of these was Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a scion of the 
 great house of Kildare ; and the heads of the French Republic 
 were invited to strike England through Ireland, and to set the 
 Irish people free. At the same time, true to their policy from 
 the first, the United Irishmen made renewed efforts to drag 
 Catholic Ireland into their wake; the confiscation of the land 
 was held out as a bribe to a credulous peasantry; Irishmen 
 were to have their own when they were released from the 
 bonds of landlords and the collectors of tithe. A movement, 
 now distinctly rebellious, was thus linked with a movement 
 springing from the land ; thousands of Catholics fell into the 
 United Irish ranks ; agrarian outbreaks, in many places, 
 assumed the aspect of a predial war; and the tendency of 
 Irish agrarian trouble to resist the power of the State, and to 
 become revolutionary, grew very manifest. As yet, however, 
 the United Irishmen, except in Ulster, were hardly organised ; 
 and the Catholic peasantry were still a chaotic mass, tossed 
 hither and thither, without real leaders. 
 
 A movement, meanwhile, of a very different kind, directly 
 opposed to that of the United Irishmen, but indirectly giving 
 it powerful aid, had been acquiring considerable strength in 
 Ulster, and even extending beyond its limits. In the Northern 
 Province, the Celtic Irishry, all Catholic, and the Protestant 
 descendants of the old settlers, were, in many districts, closely 
 intermixed ; perennial feuds had existed between them. This 
 state of disorder had greatly increased, as lawlessness had 
 spread through parts of Ulster; and from 1791 to 1795 the 
 Protestant Peep-of-Day Boys, as they were called, and the 
 Catholic Defenders came into repeated conflict. The first- 
 named body, largely composed of members of the Established 
 Church in the lower ranks of life, disliked the Presbyterian 
 and United Irish movement, which Catholic Ireland was 
 invited to join; they formed the Orange Society, as it has 
 ever since been called ; and they began to proclaim a kind of
 
 268 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Holy War against the Catholic population in parts of Ulster. 
 The ranks of the Orangemen rapidly increased ; their organi- 
 sation became powerful, and spread even to the Southern 
 Provinces ; undoubtedly it obtained the support of a con- 
 siderable number of the Ulster gentry, and possibly even 
 of the Irish Government. Irregular attacks, often savagely 
 avenged, were made, from time to time, on the Catholics 
 of the North; and hundreds of peasant families were driven 
 from their homes, and sent in poverty and despair to find 
 refuge in counties of the West. This crusade, which quick- 
 ened the religious animosities of the past, thwarted the policy 
 of the United Irish leaders, who sought to combine all Irishmen 
 in support of their cause ; but they perceived how they might 
 turn it to account; and they acted with no little skill and 
 promptitude. They spread abroad the report, multiplied by a 
 thousand tongues, that the dreaded Protestant Saxons of Ulster 
 had banded themselves together to effect the destruction of 
 Celtic and Catholic Ireland ; that what was being already done 
 was a presage only of atrocities worse than the Cromwellian 
 Conquest ; and that the only hope for the Irish Catholic was 
 to join heart and hand the patriotic League, which offered him 
 liberty, and would secure him safety. These rumours had extra- 
 ordinary effect on an ignorant and down-trodden peasantry; 
 after the Orange outrages, immense numbers of the Catholics of 
 the South, as well as the North, took the oath of the United 
 Irishmen, and enrolled themselves on the lists of their musters, 
 many, without knowing it, thus embarking in a rebellious cause. 
 It is certain, however, that at this juncture, the Irish 
 Catholics were not prepared to attempt to rise against the 
 State in force. Wolfe Tone landed at Havre in the first 
 months of 1796 one of other emissaries but their born 
 leader; and his capacity and earnestness made a real 
 impression on the Directory, then in the seat of power in 
 Paris. He advocated a formidable descent on Ireland, with
 
 viii.] The Rebellion of 1798. 269 
 
 the arguments of an enthusiastic rebel; it is to his credit 
 that he made scarcely a stipulation for himself, and that he 
 tried to obtain pledges that, in the event of success, his country 
 was not to be made a dependency of France. A large fleet, 
 carrying 15,000 troops, under the command of the illustrious 
 Hoche, set sail from Brest, in December, upon the enterprise; 
 it is remarkable that it did not make for Dublin, or a port of 
 Ulster as Tone had advised ; it sought to effect a landing on 
 the extreme verge of Munster, perhaps because an attempt of 
 the kind had proved successful more than a century before. 
 The French navy, however, was in a wretched state; Hoche, 
 in a frigate, never reached the Irish coast, and the principal 
 part of the invading fleet, after making Bantry Bay in safety, 
 was driven out to sea by a furious tempest. It has been 
 thought, however, that Grouchy, the second in command, might 
 have landed with a not inconsiderable force ; if so Munster 
 might have been overrun, and become for a time a French 
 province 1 ; on this occasion, as on the day of Waterloo, Grouchy 
 perhaps did England really good service. The failure of the 
 expedition has been ascribed to chance ; History more justly 
 points out that it is not easy to invade an island, cut off 
 from the Continent by a dangerous and most stormy sea, 
 especially with an inferior naval force. Yet the most striking 
 feature of the descent was this : the Irish Catholics, assumed 
 by Tone and his colleagues to be burning to rise in arms, 
 remained quiescent, and even showed signs of loyalty; and 
 some of the most Catholic towns of Munster their governing 
 bodies were, however, Protestant declared, with apparent 
 enthusiasm, for the existing Government Too much is not to 
 be made of this : the Celts of Connaught did not spare the 
 survivors of the Armada wrecked on their shores, though their 
 hearts were probably in the Armada's cause; but the fact 
 remains, and it is very significant. 
 
 1 Traditions of the incapacity of Grouchy still exist at Bfintry.
 
 270 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 The failure at Bantry did not change the purpose of the 
 United Irish leaders; but it made them cautious, and they 
 resolved, if possible, not to attempt a rising before the French 
 had made a successful landing. Ulster, nevertheless, and other 
 parts of Ireland, were in a state of hardly suppressed rebellion, 
 sustained by a savage war of classes, throughout nearly the 
 whole of 1797. A United Irish Directory had been formed in 
 Belfast, enforcing its mandates far and wide; an insurrectionary 
 army was held in the leash, drilled, and to a certain extent, 
 disciplined; it may have numbered, on paper, 100,000 men. 
 Meanwhile, regular and sometimes successful efforts were 
 made to seduce the troops in the province, and the militia, 
 largely Catholics, from their allegiance; the arm of justice was 
 often paralysed by the intimidation of juries and hideous out- 
 rages ; in short a kind of anarchic government acquired despotic 
 power by means of a system of terror. At the same time the 
 feud of the Orangemen and Defenders grew more desperate ; 
 an ever-increasing stream of Catholics was swept into the 
 United Irish ranks; fresh crowds of fugitives were driven 
 southwards, fleeing, they spread abroad, from the Protestant 
 wrath to come. Another United Irish Directory had its seat 
 in Dublin ; some of its leaders were able men ; but their chief 
 trust was placed in Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was to 
 command the armed levies of the South, and whose great 
 name seemed a tower of strength. These levies, it was said, 
 numbered 200,000 men an estimate, beyond doubt, excessive; 
 but tens of thousands of the Catholic peasantry had by this time 
 become United Irishmen, and many of them had been rudely 
 armed and disciplined. The plan of the conspirators was to 
 seize the Castle of Dublin, as in 1641, to occupy the capital, 
 and to make the men in power prisoners ; and then to rise 
 generally throughout the country, when the invasion of the 
 French had been made certain. In the interval of time re- 
 maining, fresh efforts were made to exasperate and extend the
 
 viii.] The Rebellion of 1798. 271 
 
 agrarian war; maps of the old confiscated lands were prepared; 
 old prophecies that the Saxon was to be expelled from Ireland 
 were noised abroad, sometimes by the lower orders of priests ; 
 the peasantry were told that their alien masters were doomed. 
 In this way the rebellious and the agrarian movements became 
 thoroughly united in some districts; plantations were cut down 
 and smithies blazed for the manufacture of a formidable 
 weapon, the pike; and the organisation of the Whiteboy 
 system, with its central and local secret societies, was set 
 on foot to promote the United Irish cause, and to oppress, 
 terrorise, and despoil its opponents. This combination, how- 
 ever, does not appear to have been complete in more than 
 a few counties ; and it did not exist, it has been said, in 
 Connaught. 
 
 This state of things in Ireland was perilous in the extreme ; 
 affairs in Europe, and even in England, increased the peril. 
 Notwithstanding the failure of 1796, a great French fleet had 
 assembled at Brest, and a Dutch fleet was at anchor near the 
 Texel, in order to renew a descent on Ireland Tone had 
 indefatigably pressed on the enterprise ; France had already 
 nearly mastered the Continent ; the very naval power of Great 
 Britain had been shaken, especially by symptoms of disaffection 
 in the fleet. The Irish Government was perfectly justified in 
 resolving to crush out rebellion in time; Clare, its master- 
 spirit, deserves credit for a resolution and daring worthy of 
 Strafford. But it was most unfortunate that it had not the 
 support of a regular and well organised military force; the 
 army in Ireland was only a few thousand men ; the militia had 
 become deeply tainted ; the men at the Castle had largely to 
 rely on the yeomanry, a numerous volunteer levy, raised to a 
 great extent by the local gentry, and mostly Protestants burning 
 with Orange passions. Under these circumstances, it was 
 inevitable, perhaps, that, when an effort was made to put 
 down a rising, horrible excesses should take place ; unhappily
 
 272 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 these were widespread and revolting. Ulster was selected as 
 the first point of attack; the leaders of the conspiracy were 
 arrested ; the incendiary Press was scattered to the winds ; a 
 general process of seizing and collecting arms was enforced in 
 the Province without scruple or mercy. Houses were burned 
 down wholesale to compel the surrender of weapons; bands of 
 yeomen harried the Catholic districts; confessions were ex- 
 torted by atrocious methods; wherever an attempt at resistance 
 was made, it was repressed by wild and relentless cruelties. 
 In a word a kind of savage guerilla warfare, not unlike that of 
 the Desmond conflict, and aggravated by a furious strife of 
 race and creed, raged for a time in many parts of Ulster ; and 
 hundreds of captives were hurried off, and put on board the 
 fleet, an event ominously connected with the Mutiny at the 
 Nore. The head of the rebellion was broken by these means ; 
 it should be added that, ruthless as they were, these deeds had 
 been sanctioned by the Irish Parliament, which, indignant and 
 alarmed at a state of affairs in which the Protestant caste 
 seemed marked out for destruction, had given the freest scope 
 to severities of every kind, by passing laws of draconic harsh- 
 ness. The Government, after a pause of a few weeks, turned 
 against the conspiracy in the capital; it must be borne in mind 
 that though a French invasion had been stopped by the great 
 fight of Camperdown, the warrior of Italy was at this very 
 moment on the French coasts, planning a descent on England. 
 Spies and informers had kept Camden, Clare, and the Council 
 apprised of all that was going on ; the rebel Directory were 
 made prisoners ; and the arrest and subsequent death of Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald deprived the leaders of the intended rising 
 of a head in whom they placed extraordinary trust, though 
 there was little to recommend him except a name, still a spell 
 of power among the peasantry of the South \ 
 
 1 Of the influence of the Geraldine name on the Irish peasantry, Davis 
 has finely and truly written :
 
 VTII.] The Rebellion of 1798. 273 
 
 If frightful excesses had already occurred, the Irish Govern- 
 ment, up to this point of time, recollecting the situation, can 
 be hardly blamed. Thenceforward, however, it must be gravely 
 censured, if some excuse can be made for its conduct. The 
 brain of the conspiracy, had, so to speak been smitten; but 
 the paralysed members still stirred with life ; all prospects of a 
 rising had not disappeared. Fitzgibbon knew that the plan of 
 the rebel leaders was not to move until the French had landed; 
 he seems, like Claverhouse, to have deliberately resolved to 
 force insurrection into premature being, and to stifle it in 
 blood before it could obtain aid from abroad. By his counsels 
 more than by those of any other personage, the system of 
 terror which had succeeded in the North, was carried out with 
 infinitely more recklessness and severity in parts of the southern 
 provinces. The yeomanry were let loose like banditti ; villages 
 were burned and sacked to get at hidden arms ; the Catholic 
 peasantry were hunted down and plundered ; torture was 
 inflicted on hundreds of ill-fated prisoners. This evil policy, 
 which, be it observed, was denounced by Abercromby, the 
 commander-in-chief of the regular army, and a true soldier, 
 had the result expected from it. It became impossible to 
 await the coming of the French; the people in several counties 
 were driven into revolt : and the sanguinary rebellion of 1798 
 broke out on the 23rd of May in that year. 
 
 The rising was confined to a part of Leinster ; it was 
 generally feeble and ill-combined ; it became formidable in a 
 
 "True Geraldines! brave Geraldines ! as torrents mould the Earth, 
 You channelled deep old Ireland's heart by constancy and worth; 
 When Ginkle leaguered Limerick, the Irish soldiers gazed, 
 To see, if in the setting sun dead Desmond's banner blazed ! 
 And still it is the peasant's hope upon the Cuirreach's mere, 
 They live who'll see ten thousand men, with good Lord Edward here! 
 So let them dream till brighter days, when, not by Edward's shade, 
 But by a leader true as he, their lines shall be arrayed ! " 
 
 The Spirit of the Nation, p. 101 . 
 M. 1. 1 8
 
 274 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 nook of the province only. An attempt to attack Dublin 
 from without, connected with an insurrection within, was easily 
 quelled by the armed force on the spot, and by the energy of 
 the Protestant citizens ; and though barbarous deeds of blood 
 were done, the rebels in Kildare, Carlow, and Meath were 
 quickly subdued. The rising, however, was universal and 
 fierce in the two beautiful counties of Wicklow and Wexford, 
 the fairest part of the south-eastern tract of Ireland. In this 
 prosperous region, the strife between the Orangemen and 
 Defenders had raged for some months ; and the efforts of the 
 Government to bring rebellion to a head had been marked 
 with peculiar cruelties. The conflict from the first was a 
 savage war of religion ; it was also to some extent a struggle of 
 race ; but, in this instance, the double lines of distinction in 
 Ireland did not coincide ; the rebels were for the most part, of 
 Anglo-Norman or English descent : it was a war of armed 
 Protestants, backed by a military force, waged with a Catholic 
 peasantry, half maddened by wrong. For nearly a month the 
 issue of the contest was very doubtful ; it assumed a terrible 
 and hideous aspect ; it is impossible to adjust the balance of 
 evil deeds done on either side, the loyalists especially dis- 
 graced themselves by outrages on women to an appalling 
 extent. The horrors of the scenes that were witnessed are 
 relieved by the proofs of devoted courage that were shown : 
 the Protestants fought with the reckless pride characteristic of 
 a dominant race ; the Catholics exhibited heroic daring, at 
 Vinegar Hill, Oulart, and New Ross; the fowling-piece and 
 the long pike had great effect in brave and resolute hands : 
 and one of the rebel leaders these were often priests 
 displayed a capacity worthy of a born general. After many 
 efforts the rising was at last quenched in ashes and blood ; but 
 the rebels had occupied the town of Wexford for a time ; and 
 had the march of the Catholics on Arklow proved successful, 
 the capital would have been in the gravest danger.
 
 viii.] The Rebellion of 1798. 275 
 
 The rebellion scarcely made a sign in Connaught; it 
 appeared in Munster in only a few weak gatherings. Ulster, 
 where the conspiracy had been most deeply laid, did not stir 
 during the war in the South-East ; the causes of this deserve 
 passing notice. The preparations for a rising had been already 
 prevented ; the Presbyterians waited the advent of the French ; 
 they resented too, a quarrel between France and the United 
 States. But the most effective cause of their inaction was this : 
 the struggle in Wicklow and Wexford was one of religions; 
 and the United Irishmen of Ulster stood aloof from a purely 
 Protestant and Catholic conflict, which ran counter to their 
 hopes and sympathies. The rebellion of 1798 was almost 
 wholly fought out by Irishmen; it had nearly ceased when 
 troops poured in from England; it called out high Irish 
 qualities, if it was full of horrors. By this time Camden had 
 been replaced by Cornwallis, a capable and humane soldier ; 
 but a kind of guerilla struggle lingered for a few months 
 among the valleys and hills of Wicklow, the fastness of the 
 Celtic mountaineers of old. A short period like a White 
 Terror followed, marked by the passions of a dominant race 
 let loose against one alike subject and despised ; and many 
 disgraceful deeds were certainly done. These atrocities how- 
 ever were rather the work of officials of the Castle, of the 
 yeomanry and their chiefs, and of Protestant bigots of the 
 middle and lower classes, than of the landed gentry, of any 
 degree; hundreds of these, even in Ulster, condemned what 
 was going on ; and Cornwallis was in error when he involved 
 all the loyalists of Ireland in a common censure. Nevertheless 
 the state of Ireland was lamentable after the close of 1798; it 
 left a legacy of blighted hopes and most evil memories. It 
 was not only that fair parts of the country had been ravaged 
 by a barbarous strife; the material was as nothing to the 
 moral ruin. The influences that had, for many years, seemed 
 to lessen the differences of blood and faith, and even to have 
 
 1 3 2
 
 276 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 healed many wounds of the past, had disappeared in an 
 inhuman struggle ; the old distinctions had come out, deeply 
 marked as ever; the conflict, if not wholly, had been in the 
 main a war of race, and above all of religion. The visions of 
 the United Irishmen had sunk in a sea of blood; the ideal of 
 Grattan had proved impossible ; the aspirations of a new era 
 had been as idle as the French dreams of 1789. The ruling 
 orders of Ireland had been made revengeful; the classes 
 beneath them had beheld the prospect of enlarged liberties 
 suddenly withdrawn ; the lines of demarcation between the 
 owners and occupiers of the soil, and between Catholic and 
 Protestant had been greatly widened. This change for the 
 worse, which put the whole country back, was very marked in 
 the Irish Parliament ; it had become a mere court to register 
 what the Castle and Clare ordered ; the independent party in 
 it had dwindled almost to nothing; and Grattan and his 
 followers, indignant at recent events, unable to check the 
 course of the Government, and saddened at the failure of the 
 hopes of 1782, had seceded from it in anger and despair. 
 Long before this time they had made a last fruitless effort 
 in the cause of Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary 
 Reform. 
 
 Before the rebellion had finally collapsed, a French squad- 
 ron, and a few hundred men, had landed near Killala, on the 
 coast of Mayo. Napoleon had taken the main fleet of France 
 to the East, where it perished in the great fight of the Nile; 
 he had no taste for rebellion, Irish or other; the French 
 Directory sent only an insignificant force to the shores of 
 Ireland. Its leader Humbert, however, was a brilliant soldier ; 
 he routed a body of militia, three-fold in numbers, in a combat 
 known as the " Race of Castlebar " ; he gave Cornwallis much 
 to do before he was compelled to surrender. Another petty 
 French descent was remarkable only for the capture of Wolfe 
 Tone, after a sharp engagement ; the unfortunate chief of the
 
 vin.] The Union. 277 
 
 United Irish movement he had served in the expedition to 
 Bantry, and had witnessed the disaster of Camperdown was 
 doomed to the ignominous death of a felon, though he held 
 the commission of a French general ; he only averted his fate 
 by suicide. Tone was infinitely the first of the rebel leaders ; 
 he had capacity, resource, true faith in his cause, and patrio- 
 tism, distempered but sincere ; his figure will live in Irish 
 History. After a few severe examples had been made, the 
 conspirators, who had fallen into the hands of the Irish Govern- 
 ment, were amnestied, under not unfair conditions ; their lives 
 were spared, but they had to leave the country. They were, 
 none of them, men of marked powers : but some won honour 
 in foreign lands; two or three gallantly followed Napoleon's 
 eagles ; more than one made a name for himself in America. 
 Much in their conduct is to be sternly condemned ; yet, at this 
 distance of time, it deserves a kind of sympathy. They had at 
 first only Constitutional reforms in view ; they were drawn into 
 rebellion and its evil courses, in part by the revolutionary 
 ideas of France, but in part by the misdeeds of the Irish 
 government. And if they were guilty of the unhappy attempt 
 of connecting rebellion with an agrarian rising, and of hounding 
 on an ignorant peasantry against their superiors, we must bear 
 in mind that Ireland had genuine wrongs at this time : that 
 they had a lofty, if a mistaken ideal; that they staked their 
 lives on the cause they upheld ; that they did not appeal to the 
 base passion of greed only ; that they were not subsidised by 
 incendiaries of blood ; that, when all was lost, they did not 
 turn against each other, in Ireland at least, and sully the name 
 of Irishmen '. 
 
 The rebellion of 1798 had only just ended, when Pitt began 
 to lay grounds for the Union. The contest had been tardily 
 put down; reinforcements from England had come in late; 
 
 1 For a favourable view of the United Irish leaders, see the fine ballad, 
 "Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight." The Spirit of the Nation, p. 41.
 
 278 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 but we may summarily reject the wicked myths evil phantoms 
 rising from a field of carnage that Pitt fomented a rising in 
 arms, and let Irish factions tear each other to pieces, in order 
 to promote a measure he had at heart. The Union of Great 
 Britain and Ireland had not only been projected, we have said, 
 by many able thinkers; it had been in the minds of several 
 English statesmen, ever since the Revolution of 1782. Apart, 
 however, from faults, on which we shall say a word hereafter, 
 Pitt, it is evident from his letters and speeches, did not 
 thoroughly comprehend the whole reasons that made a Union 
 a necessity of State at this time, or perceive the consequences 
 that might flow from it. He saw, as the Regency Question 
 had made manifest, that the two Legislatures might danger- 
 ously clash ; he saw, too, -the danger of this at a period of war, 
 though, in England's struggle with Revolutionary France, the 
 Irish Parliament had given him most cordial support. He saw, 
 also, that probably the best means to secure the Established 
 Church in Ireland, to keep the land in Protestant hands, in a 
 word to maintain what he called " the Protestant Settlement," 
 was to make Ireland one with Great Britain ; nor was he blind 
 to the possible evils of the existing state of Catholic Ireland. 
 But, though he was not insensible to them, he did not com- 
 pletely grasp the truths that, after the horrors of 1798, the 
 only hope for Ireland, torn as she had been by a barbarous 
 strife of race and faith, was to bring her under the control of 
 an Imperial Parliament; and that the only wise policy for a 
 British Minister, was, with the aid of a strong and just govern- 
 ment, to place Catholic and Protestant, Saxon and Celt on an 
 equal level of civil and religious rights. This justification of 
 the Union he did not fully realise, at least he did not act 
 boldly as if he did ; and we may smile at his notions that the 
 introduction of Irish members into the United Parliament 
 might largely increase the power of the Crown, and that a 
 Union would cause Irish faction quickly to cease. Pitt, in
 
 vii i. J The Union. 279 
 
 fact, as we have before remarked, was ignorant of the true 
 state of Ireland, like most British statesmen 1 ; and in the case 
 of Ireland as in that of France in 1792-3, he had not the 
 genius to perceive what was beyond his immediate ken. 
 
 It was the wish of Pitt to combine the Union with the 
 emancipation of the Irish Catholics, and with measures to 
 provide funds for the support of the Catholic Irish priesthood, 
 and for the commutation of the tithes of the Established 
 Church; he had seen, we have said, the bad effects of this 
 impost. This policy was in the right direction ; but it was not 
 original, as has been alleged ; the Irish Parliament would have 
 conceded the Catholic claims in 1795; the payment of the 
 priests was an old idea, and had been advocated by Irish 
 writers and statesmen ; the commutation of the tithe was a 
 favourite plan of Grattan. Pitt, however, did not persist in 
 the project, which he had hoped to make an essential part of 
 the Union ; he yielded to the counsels of Clare, greatly trusted 
 by him in Irish affairs, and consented to deprive his measure 
 of its best features ; he knew, too, at this time, that George III 
 was obstinately opposed to the demands of the Catholics. 
 This was the first of his grave mistakes on the subject : it is 
 the more to be blamed because Cornwallis, able to gauge Irish 
 opinion on the spot, always insisted that the Union could not 
 succeed, if Catholic Emancipation was not made, so to speak, 
 its gift. Means were taken, towards the close of 1798, to 
 ascertain the judgment of Irishmen on the question; a few 
 of the great borough-mongering Peers agreed to support the 
 scheme, should it serve their interests ; a number of members 
 
 1 We have seen what Swift thought on this subject. Burke wrote 
 thus: "The fashion relative to Ireland is the wish that they should hear 
 of it, and its concerns, as little as possible." Grattan expressed himself in 
 these words : "Ireland is a subject the Cabinet considers with a lazy con- 
 tumely, and picks up here and there, by accident or design, interested or 
 erroneous intelligence."
 
 280 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 of the Irish Houses were ready to obey the Minister on the 
 usual terms ; some of the independent landed gentry, alarmed 
 at the events of 1798, beheld, in a Union, safety for themselves; 
 the leading men of Catholic Ireland, much as they had 
 resented Fitzwilliam's recall, were not unwilling to consider 
 the subject. But an immense majority of the Irish Protestants, 
 the trading classes of Dublin, almost to a man, and nine tenths, 
 git least, of the Irish Bar, were indignant at the very thought of 
 a Union, and expressed their sentiments in emphatic language: 
 this is the more remarkable because the country was held down 
 by a British armed force, and the views of the British Ministry 
 was perfectly well known. In these circumstances, Robert 
 Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary of Cormvallis, 
 announced, somewhat vaguely, the policy of Pitt, in the Irish 
 House of Commons, in a speech on the address, made in 
 January 1799; but an amendment was rejected by one vote 
 only; and as this was plainly equivalent to a defeat, the 
 measure was permitted to drop for a time 1 . 
 
 Though the Government had been baffled in the Irish 
 Lower House, it obtained a large majority in the Irish House 
 of Lords, where the influence of Clare was easily supreme. 
 The British Parliament had, about the same time, passed 
 Resolutions in favour of the Union, by an overwhelming 
 superiority of votes ; and Pitt insisted that the measure should 
 be carried out in Ireland. But it was far from easy to give his 
 purpose effect ; and means were adopted, the exact nature of 
 which has been matter of controversy ever since, but of which 
 the general character is not doubtful. The Irish Parliament 
 had long been swayed by corrupt influence ; this had probably 
 increased since 1782; it had been openly exercised on the 
 Regency Question; and it was resolved, in Castlereagh's 
 cynical phrase, to " buy up the fee-simple of Irish corruption," 
 
 1 In a debate on the report to the Address the Government was defeated 
 by 5 votes.
 
 viii.] The Union. 281 
 
 by an accelerated purchase made once for all, and to secure a 
 majority for a Union in the Irish Houses, by largely extending 
 the processes which had long been in use. Direct bribery 
 was not employed ; but promises of peerages were lavishly 
 scattered; places were created and places unscrupulously 
 filled, in order to obtain support for the scheme ; officials were 
 threatened with dismissal if they did not vote for the Govern- 
 ment; appeals were persistently made to the hopes and the 
 fears of the members in both parts of the Irish Parliament. 
 Simultaneously pledges were given that immense sums were to 
 be paid to the patrons and the proprietors of the numerous 
 boroughs to be disfranchised ; and one of the reforms effected 
 in 1793, by which placemen in the House of Commons were 
 compelled to vacate their seats, was twisted into a method to 
 secure a majority. By these expedients, regarded by Corn- 
 wallis witn disgust, but employed by his Chief Secretary with 
 unflinching boldness, the Irish Parliament was packed to vote 
 for a Union; but it is only just to add that, from the first, 
 many of its members and the number certainly tended to 
 increase conscientiously approved of Pitt's policy. Recourse, 
 too, was had to other means, to influence Irish opinion outside 
 the Parliament in behalf of the contemplated measure. Able 
 pamphlets were published, and a Press subsidised ; Cornwallis 
 went on progress through different counties, to canvass, so to 
 speak, for the Union; and many favourable addresses were 
 obtained, though these were of a questionable kind, and the 
 adverse petitions were much more numerous. The Irish 
 Government, however, chiefly directed its efforts to enlist 
 Catholic Ireland on its side ; and incidents occurred, even yet 
 obscure, that form an unhappy passage in Irish History. Pitt 
 had informed Cornwallis that the Union was to be a "Pro- 
 testant Union," in the phrase of the time ; he told the Lord 
 Lieutenant, very plainly, that Catholic Emancipation was to be 
 no part of the measure. But his own speeches in the British
 
 282 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 House of Commons implied that he approved of the Catholic 
 claims, and that they might be conceded when the Union had 
 become law ; he certainly encouraged Cornwallis, and gave 
 him power to bid openly for Catholic support; he perhaps 
 authorised Cornwallis to assure the Irish Catholic leaders that 
 their cause was his own. That upright but not very astute 
 nobleman, always the earnest champion of the Irish Catholics, 
 placed his own interpretation on Pitt's hints and words : he 
 had many conferences with the Heads of Catholic Ireland, and 
 entreated them to use their influence to promote the Union; 
 he unquestionably held out hopes, if he did not make promises; 
 he left them under the impression that their Emancipation was 
 certain and at hand. It should be added that, before this 
 time, Cornwallis had been negotiating with the Irish Catholic 
 Bishops, with reference to a provision for the priesthood ; Pitt 
 seems to have been not aware of this ; but the fact is, not the 
 less, of extreme significance. The broad result was that the 
 Catholic leaders generally threw in their lot with the Union, 
 and drew the Catholic masses with them ; Catholic Ireland, 
 in the main, declared for the measure; and this, Pitt and 
 Cornwallis agreed, was of supreme importance. A small 
 minority, however, of the Irish Catholics, with more insight, 
 and perhaps with more ambitious views, protested vehemently 
 against the proposed scheme; among these was Daniel O'Con- 
 nell, a young lawyer, just beginning his career. 
 
 The devices employed to bring about the Union made 
 their effects apparent in the Irish Parliament, when it assembled 
 again in January 1800. An amendment to the Address, by 
 which it was sought to stop the progress of the measure, was 
 rejected ; the Question was introduced, a few days afterwards, 
 by a message from the Viceroy sending to both Houses the 
 Resolutions voted by the British Parliament, and recom- 
 mending the policy sanctioned by it. The debates on the 
 subject, arising in different ways, were impassioned, and took
 
 VIIL] T/ie Union. 283 
 
 up much time; but they are marked by ability of a very 
 high order. Castlereagh advocated the scheme, with calm 
 power and thoroughness ; Clare, in a speech of real insight 
 and force, insisted, that in a Union lay the only hope of 
 Property, of Law, and of the Established Church, in Ireland. 
 A fine array of eloquence was marshalled on the other side ; 
 the Bar engaged its most brilliant ornaments, Saurin, Plunket, 
 Bushe, and other eminent worthies; the Speaker Foster rose 
 to the height of a great argument, in a most weighty and 
 thoughtful harangue. But Grattan towered above all his fellows 
 he had lately returned to the House of Commons in 
 language of singular beauty and pathos, accompanied by 
 solemn and prophetic warnings, he advised the Parliament 
 not to destroy itself, and to preserve its existence for the Irish 
 "nation." All opposition, however, proved vain; the Govern- 
 ment retained the majority it had procured ; Resolutions, 
 passed by the Irish Parliament, in favour of a Union, were 
 translated into Articles and Bills ; and the measure of Pitt 
 received the sanction of both the Irish and the British Parlia- 
 ments. It deserves notice that a proposal to refer the decision 
 of the question to the Irish electorate was angrily resented by 
 Pitt and Castlereagh; the voice even of Protestant Ireland, 
 though that of a minority of the Irish people, and of a minority 
 in the main loyal, was not allowed to pronounce on this 
 matter 1 . It is certain however, that, in its later stages at 
 least, the measure did not provoke widespread discontent; 
 there was no passionate outburst of opinion against it. Dublin 
 and the Irish Bar, indeed, remained bitterly hostile ; but there 
 was little murmuring in the country districts; the mass of 
 Catholic Ireland did not stir ; its leaders looked forward with 
 anxious hope ; the trading classes were induced to expect that 
 the Union would bring them large benefits; Presbyterian 
 
 1 The Catholic Irish multitude, however, it must be borne in mind, had 
 possessed the suffrage since 1 793.
 
 284 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Ireland seems to have thought that its favourite linen manu- 
 facture would make great progress. The attitude of the 
 majority of the people was one of apathy ; it was felt that a 
 measure, backed by the British Parliament and the British 
 army, could not be withstood ; but unquestionably a minority, 
 growing in strength, inclined very decidedly towards a Union. 
 
 The Union was accomplished by evil means ; nor was it 
 a well conceived measure, even within the narrow limits traced 
 out by Pitt. The Irish and British Legislatures were merely 
 combined, and emerged in a single Imperial Parliament; 
 Ireland retained the Viceroy, a separate Government, a sepa- 
 rate Administration, separate Courts of Justice, even separate 
 Exchequers for a considerable time. The shadow of an 
 independent State was suffered to exist; as Foster truly 
 predicted, an occasion was offered to demands to give the 
 shadow substance; the consequences have not proved to be 
 fortunate. The worst feature, however, of the Union was this : 
 what should have been its most vital part was not found in it ; 
 Catholic Emancipation, a provision for the priests, even the 
 commutation of the tithe were left out ; Catholic Ireland was 
 still deprived of legitimate rights. The remaining portions of 
 the scheme were of less importance, and do not deserve peculiar 
 attention. The maintenance of the Established Church was 
 made a solemn and fundamental law ; with what results time 
 was to show in its fulness; the settlement of the Land was 
 left, of course, as it was; but undoubtedly the hope of pre- 
 serving this had weight with numbers of the landed gentry, 
 alarmed at the threats, uttered in 1798, to undo the confis- 
 cations of the past. The fiscal arrangements were harsh to 
 Ireland; she was to contribute two seventeenths to the 
 Imperial expenditure, a proportion certainly in excess ; her 
 trade was somewhat further enlarged, and ultimately was to be 
 completely free; but the commercial benefits, which, Castle- 
 reagh declared, would follow the Union, have not been
 
 viii.] The Union. 285 
 
 realised. The Irish Peers lost their seats in the Irish House 
 of Lords; a small body of the order have ever since been 
 chosen to represent them in the Imperial Parliament ; the 300 
 members of the Irish House of Commons were reduced to 100 
 in the Imperial House, a number that ought to have been 
 adequate to make the will of Ireland sufficiently felt. For the 
 rest, while much that the Union should have contained 
 was unhappily not comprised in it, much that was discredit- 
 able, in its incidents, was faithfully carried out ; the borough- 
 mongering nobles and commoners were gorged with the spoil 
 that had been promised ; and the pledges of corruption were 
 duly fulfilled. 
 
 Pitt was a large minded and enlightened statesman; he 
 certainly desired, when the Union was secure, to carry out the 
 measures of relief for the Irish Catholics which, from the 
 outset, he had had in view. He probably reckoned on his 
 prodigious influence; but he had unhappily kept the king in 
 the dark, though fully aware of the king's sentiments ; a 
 ministerial cabal was formed against him ; and George III, on 
 a preposterous plea, pressed with the obstinacy of a dis- 
 tempered mind, peremptorily refused to listen to the Catholic 
 claims. The subsequent conduct of Pitt in this matter has 
 indisputably thrown a shadow on his name. He resigned his 
 office, when he had persuaded himself that he could not carry 
 out his Irish Catholic policy; he is entitled to every credit 
 attaching to the act. But in a very short time he let his 
 master know that he would not urge the question again; he 
 supported a violent Anti-Catholic Ministry; he returned to 
 office, but took no steps to vindicate the demands of Catholic 
 Ireland. All this has exposed his memory to grave suspicion ; 
 and History can hardly withhold its censure. It is idle to say 
 that he told Cornwallis that the Union was to be a Protestant 
 one only : he held out hopes himself to the Irish Catholics ; 
 he invited Cornwallis to do the same; he carried the Union,
 
 286 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 to some extent at least, by obtaining Irish Catholic suppoit, 
 secured only by what were deemed promises, that Catholic 
 relief would certainly follow. In these circumstances, it was 
 not enough to have simply abandoned the helm ; he ought to 
 have insisted on the king's adopting his measures, and had he 
 done so, he must have attained his object ; and his subsequent 
 attitude has a look of insincerity if not worse. We fear it must 
 be said that, in his wish to accomplish the Union, he did not 
 scruple to allow the Irish Catholics to entertain hopes which, 
 he well knew, might not be fulfilled ; that he all but pledged 
 himself to them, through his Lord Lieutenant, though he felt 
 he might not be able to redeem the pledge; and that he 
 thought his conscience absolved by a resignation, which he 
 took care should not last long, without even trying to give 
 effect to a policy, to which he stood committed as a man and 
 a minister. The best excuses perhaps to be made for him are 
 that, in his ignorance of Ireland and her real state, he did not 
 understand all that was involved in the course he took, and 
 that, in the death struggle of 1804-5, he believed it was his 
 duty to become the Head of the State, without regard to 
 consistency, or too fine a sense of honour. A most un- 
 fortunate fact, nevertheless, remained : by one of those 
 accidents so frequent in Irish History, Catholic Ireland was 
 again deceived ; what was done had only too much in common 
 with Strafford's " Graces," and the broken Treaty of Limerick. 
 
 Under the Constitution of 1782 Ireland unquestionably 
 made social and material progress ; the ancient divisions 
 of blood and creed, which for centuries have kept her races 
 apart, and her feuds of class had, to some extent, disappeared. 
 In these circumstances it was not impossible, though, in our 
 judgment, it was not probable, that Grattan's ideal might have 
 been realised, that Ireland might have become "a nation," 
 with a free Parliament and a powerful landed gentry, the 
 respected superiors of a contented peasantry. But the French
 
 VIIL] The Union. 287 
 
 Revolution scattered these hopes to the winds ; its destructive 
 influence was as fatal, perhaps, in Ireland as in any part of 
 Europe; it blighted the fair promise of the close of the 
 eighteenth century. We must add, too, that having regard to 
 the relations it created between Great Britain and Ireland, the 
 Constitution of 1782 was not likely to endure; it was hardly 
 compatible with the security of the British Empire ; it was an 
 anachronism distrusted by British statesmen. Be this as it 
 may, the French Revolution, searching Irish institutions to the 
 very core, proved how ill-ordered and dangerous they were ; 
 society in Ireland was seen to be deeply diseased, and divided 
 by distinctions only hidden for a time; and errors of policy 
 and faults of the British and Irish Governments prevented 
 reforms which might, conceivably, have averted the disastrous 
 events that followed. Rebellion, however, began to lift its 
 head; a revolutionary movement to combine Irishmen in a 
 league against England, the common enemy, and to stir up 
 anarchical strife, was crossed and baffled by another movement, 
 characteristic of the hatreds of the past; and the end was a 
 horrible war of race and religion. For much that was done in 
 1798, Clare and the men at the Castle are to be severely 
 blamed; but their position, we must recollect, was difficult in 
 the extreme ; and if they forced civil war to come to a head, 
 they certainly prevented a worse catastrophe. As affairs stood 
 when the rebellion had ended, a Union had become a neces- 
 sity of State, in the interest of Ireland and of Great Britain 
 alike; but Pitt managed the settlement badly; and the Union 
 was an ill-designed measure, carried by sinister means through 
 the Irish Parliament, and accompanied by an act of wrong to 
 Catholic Ireland, of which the results are felt to this hour. 
 Still Pitt must not be too harshly judged ; in the existing state 
 of the world he was bound to accomplish a Union at almost 
 any risk and cost. 
 
 Ireland entered into a Union with England under unhappy
 
 288 Ireland. [CHAP. vm. 
 
 conditions, and at an inauspicious time. The Catholic question 
 was one of pressing importance, and if unsettled, certain to cause 
 trouble; the country required other reforms, the necessity of 
 which had begun to be seen by some of the best men in the 
 Irish Parliament. Ireland was in want of a strong but pro- 
 gressive government ; but she had been united with Great 
 Britain at the very time when the conflict with Fiance was soon 
 to become one of life and death ; when all hopes of changes in 
 the State seemed gone ; when reactionary ideas had immense 
 force; when unbending Toryism was supreme, nay absolute. 
 And the reforms she needed were, in some instances, in direct 
 conflict with British prejudice, in others were little understood 
 by British statesmen; and Ireland was to be ruled by a 
 Parliament that knew her not, and by politicians well meaning, 
 indeed, but -often ill-informed and without sympathy ; it being 
 doubtful, too, at least, if in the peculiar state of her representa- 
 tion, she would possess sufficient influence of her own. The 
 prosperity of Ireland, too, had been largely destroyed; the 
 land had been devastated by civil war ; the dregs of rebellion 
 lingered; animosities of race and faith had been fearfully 
 revived; above all, perhaps, the island, as had always been 
 the case, was far behind England in civilisation and wealth. 
 These circumstances alone made it no easy task to govern 
 Ireland well in an Imperial Parliament, and by ministers 
 dependent on it. If the Union was a necessity of the time, if, 
 on the whole, it was to effect great good, it was to be seen 
 that it was not an unmixed blessing, and that it was to be 
 accompanied, at least, with some real evils.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FROM THE UNION TO CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 
 
 The effect on Ireland of the renewal of the war with France in 1803. 
 Emmett's rebellion. Measures of repression. Spread of Orangeism. 
 The Catholic Irish Question in the Imperial Parliament. Failure of 
 the Catholic leaders. Rise of O'Connell. His character and political 
 aims. His efforts at first of little avail. The Question of the Veto. 
 The Catholic Question in the Liverpool Government. Its position 
 near the end of the war. Growing attachment of Ulster to the British 
 connection and the Union, and the causes. Material progress of 
 Ireland up to 1815. The Amalgamation of the Irish with the Imperial 
 Exchequer. Irish Finance. Sudden and continuous decline of Ireland 
 after the war. Irish landed relations. Their evils and dangers. 
 Policy of the British Government. Sir Arthur Wellesley and Peel. 
 Creation of the Irish Constabulary force. O'Connell forms the 
 Catholic Association. Its enormous influence in Ireland. The pro- 
 posed compromise of 1825. Its failure. The Clare Election. Triumph 
 of O'Connell. Catholic Emancipation. Reflections. 
 
 THE Union was accomplished a few months only before the 
 brief truce concluded with France at Amiens. The renewal of 
 the great war, in the spring of 1803, was a disaster for the 
 whole civilised world ; like other passages of the French 
 Revolution it was attended with evil results for Ireland. Some 
 of the United Irish leaders, who, after the late amnesty, had 
 made their way into France, began to conspire anew against 
 the British Government ; and they sought the assistance of the 
 
 M. i. 1 9
 
 290 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 First Consul, now bent on an invasion of England, to further, if 
 possible, another Irish rising. They were, however, unable to 
 agree in a common design ; the fatal discords of Irishmen kept 
 them apart; and Napoleon, who throughout his whole career 
 detested rebellious, and even popular movements, regarded 
 them, we have seen, with distrust and contempt 1 . He treated 
 them as he treated Italians and Poles who sought to make him 
 a champion of a " national cause " and appealed to him in the 
 name of " national liberty." He flattered them with fair words 
 and promises ; made some officers of an " Irish Legion," 
 partly formed of the emigrants of 1798, and partly, perhaps, 
 of veterans of the old Irish Brigade ; he enrolled this force in 
 the ranks of the "Army of England "; he kept it as near the 
 Irish coasts as possible; and though, unlike Hoche and the 
 French Directory, he never had Irish independence in view, or 
 thought of making Ireland a principal point of attack, a 
 "diversion," in this direction, he believed worth trying, and in 
 one of his many projects for a descent on England a secondary 
 descent on Ireland has a place. Napoleon, in a word, made 
 Ireland a mere pawn in his game; and when Trafalgar had 
 put an end to all hope of striking England at the heart, the 
 "Irish Legion" followed the fortunes of the Grand Army, a 
 small fraction of the gigantic military power of France. The 
 conspiracy, however, which had been formed again, and the 
 presence of an Irish armed force on the French seaboard, 
 unhappily led to another attempt at Irish rebellion, which, 
 though contemptible in its results, might have been more 
 disastrous than has been commonly supposed. Robert Em- 
 mett, a young enthusiast of 1798, had interviews with the 
 United Irishmen in France, and, it has been said, with the 
 First Consul; he resolved to embark on the desperate enter- 
 prise of assailing, once more, British power in Ireland. His 
 plan was the old one of seizing the Castle, and of summoning 
 1 Sec Chapter I. note, ante, p. 20.
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 291 
 
 the populace of Dublin to arms ; but he had the assistance of 
 an able man, in after years a distinguished soldier of France, 
 and he was promised considerable support from the adjoining 
 counties. His plot, however, was probably disclosed; and 
 "Emmett's rebellion" ended in a mere street brawl, unfortu- 
 nately disgraced by the murder of an eminent Irish judge. The 
 ill-fated youth paid ere long the penalty of his crime; his 
 memory in Ireland is not forgotten; but though not without 
 daring, and even resource, he was only an inferior Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald. 
 
 This petty outbreak caused alarm in England and Ireland, 
 which seems excessive at this distance of time ; severe measures 
 of repression followed, prolonged unhappily for many years, 
 and too common an expedient of Irish government. Insur- 
 rection Acts, the enforcement of martial law, and repeated 
 suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, became regular methods 
 of British rule in Ireland, with little interruption, until the end 
 of the war, and even during the succeeding period. These 
 severities were no doubt a legacy bequeathed by the defunct 
 Irish Parliament, which had never hesitated to put disorder 
 down, and had been extravagantly merciless in the crisis of 
 1798; nor should we forget that Irish rebellion would have 
 been a terrible danger to the State from 1803 to 1805, when 
 the Grand Army was encamped round Boulogne, nay, until 
 after Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon. But repression was 
 much too indiscriminately applied, and was made to extend to 
 a series of social ills for which different remedies should have 
 been found ; and though it is impossible to assert that, had the 
 state of things before the Union continued to exist, legislation 
 and administration would have been better or more wise, still 
 we see in this system a bad sign of the hard and oppressive 
 Toryism of the day, and in some degree, perhaps, of the want 
 of intelligence and of sympathy of British statesmen in Irish 
 affairs. Another pernicious result of the war and of the spirit 
 
 19 2
 
 292 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 prevailing in Irish government was a great increase and exten- 
 sion of what we may describe as Orangeism, and all that is 
 implied in the name. The Orange societies, we have seen, 
 had been long established ; they had unquestionably weakened 
 the United Irish movement; they had done good service, 
 though in an evil way, in forcing rebellion in Ireland to a head, 
 and in subduing it in the open field. They had also been 
 supported by the Irish Government as far back, perhaps, as 
 1795 ; and here again British rulers had succeeded to a state 
 of things they found in existence. But Orangeism was directly 
 encouraged after the Union for many years in Ireland ; it was 
 deemed a check on Irish disaffection and crime ; it furnished 
 the army with thousands of recruits, and especially with a body 
 of brave and loyal officers ; it had two of the Royal Family on 
 its lists, it was powerfully sustained by opinion in England, 
 and it made rapid and widely reaching progress. The Orange 
 Associations spread far and near; they drew into their ranks 
 immense numbers of Irish Protestants of the lower orders the 
 worst specimens of the Ascendency that bore their name ; and 
 they had adherents in some of the Irish landed gentry, dis- 
 trustful, since recent events, of Catholic Ireland. This organi- 
 sation of domineering sectarian faction, backed by the State, 
 but lawless and no part of it, had a most mischievous effect in 
 making more wide and broad the old distinctions of blood revived 
 in Ireland, and in exasperating passions of class ; it was Pro- 
 testant oppression in its most odious aspect ; it quickened all 
 that was most dangerous and bad in Catholic Ireland. Un- 
 doubtedly, when its evils had become manifest, it was not 
 favoured by the few real statesmen in power in Ireland soon 
 after the Union; but its disastrous work was not easily undone; 
 and, in another way, it had an injurious tendency. The great 
 majority of the Irish gentry have never been Orangemen in any 
 sense, or can be said to have had Orange sympathies; yet 
 they were largely subjected to this reproach when Orangeism
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 293 
 
 was condemned in high places ; and the results for them have 
 not been fortunate. 
 
 The Catholic Question was however the main incident in 
 the affairs of Ireland, that in which the gravest issues were 
 involved at this period, and for years afterwards. Pitt returned 
 to office in 1804; the Irish Catholic leaders, for the most part 
 men of high degree, had remained quiescent during the rule of 
 Addington; they now confidently believed their opportunity 
 had come. A deputation from their body waited on the 
 Minister ; they relied on what they conceived were the pledges 
 on the strength of which they had given the Union support ; 
 they dwelt, it has been alleged, with emphasis on two papers 
 written by Castlereagh and Cornwallis, and placed in their 
 hands. But Pitt threw them over, whatever the excuse; he 
 declared that the time was not expedient; he put them off 
 with faint words of compromise. They then turned in their 
 strait to Fox ; a vehement and able debate followed, remark- 
 able for the appearance, for the first time, of Grattan in the 
 Imperial Parliament his speech was a magnificent display; 
 but Pitt voted against any measure of relief, though he recog- 
 nised, he said, the Catholic claims "in principle." When Fox 
 and Lord Grenville came into office, Fox candidly informed 
 the Catholic leaders that Catholic emancipation was not 
 possible; the obstinate bigotry of George III was, in truth, 
 approved by nearly his whole family ; indeed, as is well known, 
 this Ministry fell in an attempt to obtain a concession for 
 English Catholic officers, which had been extended by the 
 great measure of 1793 to their Irish fellows. The Government 
 of "all the Talents" was well disposed to Ireland; but it 
 accomplished little, save to mitigate, in part, the system of re- 
 pression for years in force ; and it should be added that, when 
 it resigned, it had coercive measures in view, owing to the 
 apprehension of French influence, and of the effects of Napo- 
 leon's conquests on disaffected Ireland. These measures were
 
 294 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 adopted by their Tory successors and, to a certain extent, 
 received the sanction of Grattan, an enemy of the French 
 Revolution in all its phases ; it may be said too, here, that he 
 had attached himself to the small party of Whigs who sought 
 to continue the war; his speech against Napoleon in 1815 
 remains one of his most brilliant efforts. Meanwhile the 
 Irish Catholic Question had begun to lose ground in the 
 Imperial Parliament, and Irish Catholic hopes were painfully 
 deferred. At the general election of 1807 the subject was 
 made a battle cry of party, and British opinion, become 
 intensely Protestant, through the influence of the narrow 
 Toryism of the time and of the evangelical school of teaching, 
 pronounced decisively against the Irish Catholic claims. A 
 national sentiment also concurred; Catholic France was at the 
 feet of Napoleon ; the Pope was Napoleon's submissive 
 instrument ; was this the time to listen to Catholic Ireland, 
 the friend of England's declared foes ? 
 
 The Irish Catholic leaders, we have seen, were nearly all 
 nobles and great gentlemen ; one only, indeed, represented the 
 middle and trading class prominent at the Catholic Committee 
 of 1792-93. Their somewhat feeble efforts had conspicuously 
 failed ; they were now to give place to a very different person- 
 age, the Liberator, as he has been justly called, of Catholic 
 Ireland. O'Connell, by this time, though still kept down by 
 one of the exceptions in the Act of 1793, which prevented 
 him attaining the rank of King's Counsel, had risen to eminence 
 at the Bar of Ireland ; he was soon to become its most striking 
 figure, less on account of mere learning, or even eloquence 
 great as were the effects of his rude strength of speech as for 
 his unparalleled skill in the conduct of causes. He had, we 
 have seen, when almost a youth, made an energetic protest 
 against the Union ; he doubtless believed, with other able men, 
 that the cause of the Irish Catholic would, not improbably, be 
 thrown back in the Imperial Parliament ; he clearly perceived
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 295 
 
 that Catholic Ireland would necessarily acquire, in the course 
 of events, enormous power in an Irish Parliament. Nor is it 
 possible to deny that he retained these views throughout his 
 long and chequered career, and that he was sincere as a 
 champion of Repeal, if he certainly put the question more 
 than once aside, and even dealt with it as a mere party move. 
 At this juncture, however, the Catholic claims engrossed the 
 attention of the Irish Catholics; and O'Connell devoted his 
 commanding powers to their cause. He obtained a place on 
 the Catholic Committee ; gradually forced aside by his capacity 
 and will its aristocratic and inefficient leaders ; and became, as 
 Chairman, its master spirit in 1810, when in his thirty-sixth 
 year. His antecedents, his training, his remarkable gifts made 
 him singularly fitted to direct the cause of Catholic Ireland to 
 a triumphant issue. He had been versed in the arts of the 
 smuggler from early boyhood ; he was perfectly skilled in the 
 wiles of the law ; though a Celt of the Celts, and richly 
 endowed with the gaiety, the fancy, the quick mind of the 
 Celt, his intelligence was massive, his sagacity profound ; 
 unlike most Celts he had hard common sense, the power of 
 seeing things as they really are, the spirit of compromise and of 
 waiting on events; he was the very man to vindicate, with success, 
 claims urged on behalf of a still wronged people, certain to be 
 opposed by the party dominant in the State, and by powerful 
 interests backed by Government and ultimately tending to 
 agitation and trouble. It was, however, the distinctive 
 mark of O'Connell's genius that he saw how in the existing 
 condition of Catholic Ireland, and especially of the Irish 
 Catholic priesthood forces utterly disregarded since 1798 it 
 was possible to combine a vast array of power, which might 
 compel a settlement of the Catholic Question, and this too 
 without violence, disorder and crime, by the mere organisation 
 of a great popular movement. For the rest, O'Connell had 
 strong Conservative sympathies ; he hated the French Revo-
 
 296 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 lution and all its works ; he condemned the United Irish, and 
 the late agrarian risings; he had the instinct of the rights of 
 property in the highest degree ; and he had thus much in com- 
 mon with parts of Protestant Ireland, and especially with the 
 Irish landed gentry, of whom he attracted numbers to his side, 
 though it was his fate ultimately to injure the whole order. 
 O'Connell breathed a new life into the almost dying 
 movement, in behalf of the Catholic claims, from the first 
 moment. He made vehement appeals to the Catholic 
 masses, in homely, coarse, often scurrilous language, required, 
 he insisted, to rouse them up ; he endeavoured to extend the 
 Catholic Committee in Dublin, by affiliated Committees, 
 throughout the country. His influence, however, was but 
 little felt for a time; it was chiefly manifested, indeed, in the 
 masterly craft with which he turned aside the arm of the law, 
 directed against him by the Irish Government especially in 
 his evasion of a celebrated Act prohibiting assemblies of a 
 representative kind, and aimed at the Catholic Convention 
 of 1792-3, and in his powerful speeches at the Bar, in 
 defence of the Catholic Press, to which he had given a great 
 impulse. The Catholic Question languished for some years; 
 its prospects were gravely imperilled by dissensions, which 
 divided the Catholic community in Great Britain and Ireland. 
 So far back as 1799, i n tne negotiations before the Union, the 
 Heads of the Catholic Church in Ireland had consented that the 
 appointment of the Irish Bishops should be subject to a veto on 
 the part of the Crown ; the policy of the Holy See had, for many 
 years, been in this direction, as was notably seen in the famous 
 Concordat between the Church and the State in France ; and 
 in 1808, and again in 1814, two high personages supposed to 
 express the sentiments of Pius VII, the Pope, t unequivocally 
 declared for the veto in Ireland. The Catholics of England 
 and Scotland almost to a man, and a large majority of Irish 
 Catholics of the higher orders, supported a measure, which they
 
 ix.j From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 297 
 
 deemed a security for order and peace in the State; but 
 O'Connell, and the whole Catholic Irish priesthood, denounced 
 it as Erastianism of the very worst kind, and insisted that the 
 Church it received nothing from a State which had been for 
 ages its deadly enemy should retain the freedom which, in a 
 qualified sense, it possessed, even under the Penal Code 1 . 
 These differences of opinion almost caused a schism ; the 
 advocates of the Catholic Cause seemed to be in the position 
 of a house divided against itself. Grattan he supported the 
 veto brought forward the Catholic claims in 1809 and 1810; 
 but as usual Parliament pronounced against him, though his 
 eloquence never rose to a more imposing height. The Question, 
 however, made some progress, especially as the fortunes of the 
 war turned; it was treated by the Liverpool Ministry as an 
 open question a proof that its importance was not under- 
 stood; but Canning and Castlereagh were in its favour. It 
 obtained a majority in the House of Commons in 1813, the 
 veto being part of the proposed scheme; but the Bill was 
 destroyed in Committee, and was ultimately let drop. 
 
 The results, therefore, of our rule in Ireland, during the 
 fifteen years that followed the Union, had been, if we speak 
 generally, these. A system of severe repression had been 
 established, and, for the most part, affected Catholic Ireland ; 
 there had been a large growth of Orangeism favoured by the 
 State, and stirring the passions of the Irish Protestants ; 
 divisions of race and religion had probably widened ; and 
 Catholic Emancipation had been long postponed, nay, at the 
 present moment, seemed all but hopeless. We must seek for 
 the causes of this state of things, mainly in the feelings 
 engendered in 1798, in the measures then adopted by the 
 Irish Parliament, in the apprehensions produced by the war, 
 and in the reactionary Tory spirit of the time ; but something, 
 
 1 Burke, it is evident from many passages in his writings, would have 
 opposed the veto in Ireland.
 
 298 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 too, must, certainly, be ascribed to narrow-minded bigotry in 
 high places, to prejudice and ignorance in the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, and to the want of insight of many of the statesmen in 
 power. Signs of a change for the better were, however, 
 visible; the Catholic Question would have made progress, 
 but for disunion in the Catholic Body as a whole ; in some 
 respects distinct and hopeful improvements in Irish affairs 
 had become manifest. The extension of trade, soon to become 
 free, had greatly increased the wealth of Ulster ; her linen 
 manufacture made an immense advance ; many tracts of the 
 province were enriched ; Belfast became a large port and a 
 noble seat of commerce. The very district of Ireland which 
 had been the centre of the rebellious movement of 1793-8, 
 became, in its Teutonic and Protestant parts, and these were 
 in all respects dominant attached by degrees to British rule 
 and the Union; and this sentiment, ever since growing 
 stronger, was promoted by a wise act of policy, the signifi- 
 cance of which should have been more clearly perceived. The 
 Irish Presbyterian Ministry had, for many years, received a small 
 endowment from the State ; this was considerably augmented 
 after the Union, and so distributed that it enlisted the interests 
 of the clergy on the side of the Government ; and the Presby- 
 terian Church, in Ulster, a most potent influence, has ever 
 since been devotedly loyal, and a firm ally of the British 
 connection, some proof perhaps of what the result might have 
 been had the Catholic Irish Church been treated in the same 
 way, as was contemplated in 1799 and 1800. It should be 
 added that, while the war continued, the wealth of Ireland 
 generally was certainly increased. This comparative pro- 
 sperity was, no doubt, to a great extent, fictitious ; it largely 
 depended on mere passing causes ; the parade made of it by 
 politicians, at the time, was another instance of the delusive 
 optimism respecting Ireland, too often seen in opinion ; and 
 the whole social structure of Ireland, as was soon to appear,
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 299 
 
 was resting on dangerous foundations, that were becoming 
 worse. Still the influence of enlarged trade told ; and as long 
 as the high war prices lasted, Ireland made real material 
 progress. 
 
 A short time after the close of the war a change in the 
 financial system of Ireland was made on which it is necessary 
 to say a word. Ireland, it was soon found, could not afford to 
 pay the two-seventeenths of the expenditure, which, we have 
 seen, had been the share arranged at the Union the amount 
 was certainly too large : and the Debt of Ireland had, 
 accordingly, increased much more quickly than that of Great 
 Britain. It had been settled when the Union took place that 
 when the Debts of the two countries and their contributions 
 stood in the same ratio, they might be thrown, so to speak, 
 into one; this event happened in 1816-17; the two Debts 
 became a single National Debt; and the separate Irish Ex- 
 chequer ceased to exist, being merged in the Imperial 
 Exchequer. The Debt of Ireland before the Union was, 
 proportionately, very much less than that of Great Britain ; by 
 the amalgamation of the two Debts, the two islands were made 
 liable, apparently, to a common burden ; and this has been 
 denounced as a gross wrong, not only by clamorous Irish faction, 
 but by more than one capable and well-informed thinker. It 
 must be borne in mind, however, that, for more than thirty 
 years after the consolidation of the twofold Debt, the taxation 
 of Ireland was much lower than that of either England or 
 Scotland ; the burden, therefore, was not, in fact, common ; 
 and if a grievance existed in this matter, it was not nearly so 
 great as has been often alleged. Soon after the middle of the 
 nineteenth century the taxation of Ireland was enormously 
 increased by the very Minister who has been held up to the 
 mass of Irishmen as their best friend, the notable champion 
 of their rights and liberties; and it seems probable this at 
 least is the better opinion that it has been, ever since,
 
 300 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 excessive, compared to that of Great Britain. At the same 
 time, the contributions to Irish demands and needs, made 
 lavishly by the Imperial exchequer, often in the nature of free 
 grants, and amounting to an immense sum, must be considered 
 on the other side ; and it is idle to argue that this is not to be 
 taken into account. We cannot examine the problem further ; 
 a commission to enquire into the subject reported in 1896 in 
 favour of a diminution of Irish taxation ; all that can be said is 
 that if we recollect the numberless, complex, and uncertain 
 elements, which necessarily enter into the question, it will be 
 difficult in the extreme ever to adjust the balance. 
 
 The close of the war was followed by a period of distress, 
 felt severely in Ireland for a considerable time, accompanied 
 by grave social evils, and culminating in famine in parts of the 
 country. The contraction of the currency produced suffering 
 in a community where there was little credit, where, as at all 
 times, the middle class was weak, and where the mass 
 of the people was a rent-paying peasantry. But the chief 
 immediate cause of distress was the sudden collapse of prices, 
 an inevitable incident of the peace, which affected in a great 
 variety of ways the different classes connected with the soil, 
 and disorganised relations, never well-ordered, and becoming, 
 for some time, more and more vicious. The main structure of 
 the land system of Ireland continued to be what it had long 
 been ; except in a part of Ulster the owners and occupiers of 
 the soil were parted by distinctions of blood and faith ; even in 
 Presbyterian Ulster there was a separation of this kind; ab- 
 senteeism still, to a great extent, prevailed ; middleman 
 tenures, though fast diminishing, were still numerous ; and the 
 great body of the peasantry were poor and servile, especially in 
 parts of Munster, and throughout Connaught. But a whole 
 series of events had, for many years, concurred to increase the 
 population in a remarkable degree, and to create an immense 
 change in landed relations, of which the evil effects became
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 301 
 
 but too apparent. The long war produced a demand for corn 
 and meat, threw millions of acres into tillage, and covered 
 them with a teeming peasantry living from hand to mouth. 
 The corn laws of the Irish Parliament cooperated in the same 
 direction ; and this was an effect, too, of the Relief Act of 
 1793, which by giving the franchise to the Catholic masses 
 encouraged their superiors to multiply them on the soil, in the 
 position as it was called of "forty shilling freeholders," but 
 really of dependent serfs. By these means the population, it is 
 believed, more than doubled in less than forty years ; and by 
 the end of the war it had begun to press heavily on the 
 resources of the land, if not yet so fearfully redundant as it was 
 to become. 
 
 The economic consequences of this abnormal growth were 
 that rents rose extravagantly in a short space of time, that the 
 wages of labour immensely diminished, and that a huge mass 
 of penury was thrown upon the land eking existence out on a 
 most precarious root. The social consequences were also 
 well marked ; middleman tenures began to disappear quickly ; 
 but the landed gentry lived at a more expensive rate, and 
 many became more harsh and strict in their dealings with the 
 peasantry than their fathers had been. Things, however, went 
 on tolerably well, so long as the high war prices lasted; Ireland 
 certainly became, by degrees, more wealthy ; what was rotten 
 in her social condition hardly attracted notice. But when her 
 resources were immensely reduced by the fall in value of nearly 
 all her products, the evils of the increase of her population 
 were most acutely felt; the misery of her backward districts 
 became infinitely worse ; hundreds of thousands of souls were 
 brought to the verge of starvation; from 1818 to 1822, 
 especially in the last named year, parts of some counties 
 were afflicted by famine. Yet these were not the only, or 
 perhaps the most grave results : rents suddenly fell with the 
 fall of prices; a collapse of the wages of labour followed;
 
 302 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 society from top to bottom became out of joint and disordered. 
 Evictions took place in portentous numbers ; thousands of the 
 occupiers of the soil were driven from their homes, like the 
 humble peasants of England in the sixteenth century; and 
 widespread discontent filled whole parts of the country. One 
 circumstance of extreme importance made this process of dis- 
 possession most harsh and iniquitous. It is a necessary 
 incident of the Irish small farm system the same fact has 
 been seen in other lands that the occupier makes the 
 improvements on his farm ; in fact creates what may be 
 called its plant ; this had become almost a universal custom 
 with the extension of tillage and population ; and in this way 
 the tenant class in Ireland had acquired a kind of concurrent 
 right in their holdings. It is perfectly true that, in the great 
 mass of instances, the Irish landed gentry had respected this 
 right it curiously corresponded in some respects to the archaic 
 joint ownership of Celtic tenure, that of the comparatively 
 "free tenants" ; and in Ulster it had become a recognised 
 form of property 1 . But too many exceptions to the usage were 
 made; and as evictions multiplied in this period of distress, 
 the rights of the Irish occupier were not seldom destroyed by 
 extravagant, thoughtless, and needy landlords, especially of 
 the middleman order. The evil consequences became at 
 once manifest : the Whiteboy system arrayed a law of its 
 own, to which the tenant appealed for aid against the law of 
 the land he had always thought his foe ; secret societies 
 enforced their mandates by assassination and outrages of 
 many kinds ; and the divisions in society in Ireland opened 
 wide again. 
 
 This season of distress was a kind of prelude to one far 
 
 1 The Ulster custom of Tenant Right has been ascribed to the Celtic 
 tenure of the "free tenants." This seems doubtful, for the custom prevailed 
 most strongly in the colonised country. [There seems good reason to trace 
 its origin to Scotland. See, in the Digest of the Devon Report, I. 294, the 
 interesting statement of John Hancock.]
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 303 
 
 more terrible that was to come. The conduct of the people 
 of England and of the men who ruled Ireland, at this crisis, 
 must be rapidly glanced at. British charity flowed into the 
 famine-stricken districts ; Parliament held enquiries, and voted 
 a large sum for relief. But no attempt was made to under- 
 stand or lessen the deep-seated social ills of the country; they 
 were, indeed, aggravated by bad laws and by bad statesman- 
 ship. A Poor Law should have been enacted to compel 
 property to guard against an excessive population, ever in 
 want, and to bear its already weighty burden ; the middleman 
 tenures should have been abolished, or made perpetual in 
 some instances ; above all, eviction should have been dis- 
 couraged, and the rights of the occupier in the soil should 
 have been made secure. Nothing, however, in these directions 
 was done; Ireland had never been subject to the English 
 Poor Law, and this, perhaps on account of its grave abuses, 
 was not extended to her at this time; no changes were made 
 in the middleman system, great and evident as were its 
 numerous mischiefs ; the process of wholesale eviction was not 
 checked ; the rights of the tenant were permitted to be wrongly 
 confiscated in many thousand cases. Unhappily, on the 
 contrary, the law of ejectment was made more expeditious and 
 cheap than before, so that facilities for eviction were recklessly 
 given ; and in supposed respect for the rights of property, the 
 rights of the tenant were sacrificed to the English law of 
 tenure, imposed on Ireland like other institutions of the 
 kind at no time in accord with Irish ideas, and absolutely 
 unjust, in the landed relations, which had been growing up for 
 some years in Ireland. Nor was this all ; it was not perceived 
 that Whiteboyism and agrarian trouble were symptoms of evil 
 in the frame of society, and a kind of rude defence against 
 social wrongs ; the whole force of the law and of repressive 
 measures, designed to deal with rebellious movements, was 
 directed against "a system of wild justice," the phrase is
 
 304 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 O'Connell's which commanded sympathy; and the result 
 was to quicken the angry discontent felt widely through the 
 Irish community. England had, certainly, to complain at 
 this time of the " Six Acts," and of other examples of bad 
 government ; but the case of Ireland was by many degrees 
 worse. 
 
 During the first twenty years that followed the Union, 
 Ireland was ruled almost wholly by English statesmen, nearly 
 all men of an inferior order. "The English interest," in a 
 word, became again dominant ; " the Irish interest " was held 
 of little account; and this is the more remarkable because 
 Ireland had many public men of conspicuous parts. The 
 change was very apparent in the Irish Bar, placed under 
 English Chancellors for years; it may be said generally that, 
 throughout this period, little regard was given to Irish opinion. 
 To the mediocrities from England there were two exceptions, 
 Sir Arthur Wellesley, Irish by birth indeed, but English in 
 blood, in faith, in ideas, was Chief Secretary for Ireland for 
 some months; and Peel from 1812 to 1818. Of Wellesley at 
 the Castle little need be said; he was true to the narrow 
 Toryism of the day ; gave proof as always of sound common 
 sense ; and showed a strong aversion to the corrupt jobbing of 
 administration in Irish affairs, an evil heritage of the past for 
 which Englishmen are chiefly to blame. Peel, however, made 
 a real mark in Ireland ; his Irish career was notable for several 
 reasons. He was bitterly denounced as "Orange Peel," by 
 O'Connell, and his sympathies were on the side of Protestant 
 Ireland ; but he fully perceived the evils of the whole Orange 
 system, its fiercely sectarian and factious temper, dangerous to 
 public order, and even to the State ; he kept it under, and 
 gave it no countenance. But Peel's most remarkable work in 
 Ireland a social reform of the first importance was the 
 creation of the great Constabulary force, followed ulti- 
 mately by the institution of paid magistrates, which has long
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 305 
 
 formed the general police of the country. A measure of this 
 kind was greatly needed ; the old local Irish Constabulary was 
 feeble and worthless; the military power in Ireland had 
 performed, hitherto, many of -the duties of a police with 
 mischievous results; and if ordinary justice was well ad- 
 ministered by the landed gentry of high degree, a large section 
 of the magistracy was ignorant and corrupt, and represented 
 Protestant Ascendency too faithfully on the Bench. The 
 reform of Peel, fully developed in time, has contributed 
 powerfully to preserve public peace and order throughout 
 Ireland ; to make the administration of justice more pure and 
 impartial ; to lessen one of the worst of Irish ills the bad result 
 of a lamentable past the spirit of lawlessness, and of want of 
 self-restraint, pervading unhappily many classes of men. Yet 
 Peel was wanting in much, as a ruler in Ireland : he did 
 nothing to mitigate the social mischiefs which grew out of Irish 
 landed relations ; he was the author, it is believed, of the 
 cheap code of ejectment; he carried out the severest repression 
 in protecting what he unwisely regarded as the rights of land- 
 lords. He was, also, an able opponent of the Catholic claims ; 
 in fact, he was a good specimen of a great middle class 
 Englishman, conservative, prejudiced, slow to be moved, un- 
 able to grasp ideas that were foreign to him. He changed, 
 indeed, his views as to Ireland more than once afterwards; 
 but the change unfortunately was very late. 
 
 The policy adopted for Ireland, in these years of distress, 
 once more illustrated the ignorance of British statesmen 1 as to 
 the conditions of social life in Ireland ; and showed very clearly 
 how difficult it was to govern, with success, a country linked to 
 Great Britain, but centuries behind it in general progress. An 
 incident happened in 1821, not without interest to students 
 
 1 This was often noticed by O'Connell, like so many of his prede- 
 cessors. 
 
 M. I. 20
 
 306 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 of Irish History; George IV made an entry, in state, into 
 Dublin, the first King of England, since Richard II, who had 
 set foot in Ireland, except as an enemy. He was one of the 
 worst of British Sovereigns ; and yet his presence was greeted 
 with tumultuous acclaim, a significant proof of what might 
 have been the effect of Kingship, on the spot, on Celtic 
 nature, always attached to persons rather than to institutions and 
 laws. During the period between 1813 and 1820, Grattan had 
 continued to advocate the Catholic claims, but under cir- 
 cumstances in many respects adverse. The Veto still divided 
 the whole Catholic Body; and Grattan was repudiated, as a 
 champion of their cause, by O'Connell, the priesthood, and 
 the mass of Catholic Ireland. Yet the high souled patriot 
 clung, as he said, " with desperate fidelity," to right and 
 justice; and though he never obtained a majority in behalf of 
 his demand, he lived to see that his adversaries were evidently 
 losing ground. He passed away quietly in 1820, a great 
 orator, a real statesman, a lover of his country, in the best 
 sense of the word ; it deserves notice, too, that, in his later 
 years, he seems to have grown reconciled to the Union he had 
 so fiercely denounced. His successor was Plunket, greatly his 
 inferior in every way as a political figure, but a Parliamentary 
 speaker of the very first order, whose cogent logic and sedate 
 eloquence were more in harmony with a British audience than 
 the declamation and fiery passion of Grattan, injured as these 
 sometimes were, by a bad mannerism. By this time the 
 Catholic Question was gradually making way in British 
 opinion ; it was ably sustained by the united Whig party, 
 which was slowly regaining its place in the State. Neverthe- 
 less, though Plunket, in 1821, succeeded in carrying a Bill 
 through the House of Commons, in favour of the Catholic 
 claims, this was thrown out by the House of Lords ; and as 
 provisions for the veto had been attached to it, the measure 
 was condemned by O'Connell and his adherents.
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 307 
 
 If the Catholic Question had, by this time, distinctly made 
 an advance in England, in Ireland it seemed as if it had gone 
 back. O'Connell, indeed, had never lost heart ; he continued 
 to address meetings and to give effect to " agitation," a word 
 he had made his own ; but the " Veto " had greatly weakened 
 his efforts; and not to speak of numbers of Liberal Protestants, 
 the Catholic nobles and gentry held aloof from him. With his 
 singular fertility of resource, however, he formed, at last, a 
 plan of operations, so to speak, which ere long combined all 
 Catholic Ireland into an overwhelming popular movement, 
 and made Catholic Emancipation a necessity of the time. 
 With a few followers, for the most part young men of the 
 gown, he created in 1823 the Catholic Association, a League 
 organised on a very different model from the Conventions and 
 the Committees of the past. O'Connell had always looked to 
 the Catholic priesthood; he found in them most able and 
 eager allies in furthering the great combination he had in view. 
 A complete change had passed over this order of men, since 
 the days when they were only able to do their office in secrecy 
 and stealth under the Penal Code ; and when, trained as they 
 usually had been under the old Church of France, they had 
 acquired habits of slavish respect for authority. The Irish 
 Parliament had given them the College of Maynooth; as 
 Wolfe Tone had predicted, their education at this place had 
 inspired them with strong Irish sympathies ; they were chiefly 
 drawn from the ranks of the higher peasantry ; and they had 
 no liking for British rule in Ireland, or for the rights of Irish 
 Protestant landlords. They were, in fact, animated by the 
 spirit of the old Confederates of 1643; and their Church, 
 besides, had become a real power in the State, spreading its 
 fine edifices far and wide, very different from the miserable 
 chapels of a century before. O'Connell had soon drawn the 
 priesthood to him ; but the problem was how to make their 
 influence tell decisively on the Caiholic masses, and to attract 
 
 20 2
 
 308 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 these in full strength towards the cause. To attain this object 
 the priests were engaged to appeal to their flocks in every parish, 
 to make Catholic Emancipation an article of faith, to unite all 
 Catholics in the demand in the name of religion. But 
 O'Connell felt that this was not enough : a social movement 
 was to sustain the political; and general and earnest efforts 
 were to be made to redress or to mitigate the wrongs of the 
 Catholic peasantry. For this purpose a fund was to be raised 
 by subscriptions, however small, from every part of Ireland ; 
 and the Catholic Association, backed by a popular Press, and 
 working, through its societies, in every county, was to leave 
 nothing undone to expose acts of injustice, to defeat the 
 process of ejectment in the Courts of Law, to protect, by all 
 means in its power, the Catholic occupier of the soil. 
 
 The movement, inaugurated in this way, went on with 
 extraordinary force and speed. O'Connell proved a tower of 
 strength in himself; his energy, his daring, his masterly skill in 
 combining arrangements, in thwarting the attempts of officials 
 eager to bring him within the meshes of the law, and in 
 winning the hearts of thousands by his stirring appeals, had 
 effects that quickly became manifest. Yet the priesthood 
 played, perhaps, a more striking part ; their immense spiritual 
 authority was everywhere employed to extend what was 
 preached as a kind of crusade ; and the Catholic Association 
 had, in a few months, active centres in every part of Ireland 
 drawing into their midst the humbler Catholics to a man. All 
 Catholic Ireland felt the impulse ; the aristocratic classes, 
 lukewarm before, felt inspired by a great Tribune with 
 sudden confidence ; the universal support the movement 
 obtained was seen in the vast sum of the "Catholic Rent," the 
 penny contributions of distressed millions. Not the least 
 potent of the influences that gained the people were, as 
 O'Connell had foreseen, the successful efforts made to defend 
 the peasantry from acts of wrong : bad landlords were baffled
 
 rx.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 309 
 
 by ingenious lawyers, or denounced by village orators and in 
 county newspapers; Orangeism on the Bench was unmasked 
 and condemned ; and in this way evictions were very largely 
 checked, and instances of oppression made less common. 
 The most significant feature of the whole movement was this : 
 the passions of great bodies of men had been aroused; but 
 O'Connell and the priesthood held them in the leash; Catholic 
 Ireland obeyed its leader's command, "shed not a drop of 
 blood, it will only help the enemy 1 "; and at his bidding 
 agrarian disorder and crime, previously rampant, almost dis- 
 appeared. Prosecutions of O'Connell proved idle as the wind ; 
 an Act specially passed to put the Association down was 
 eluded as usual, and made impotent. Canning said, with 
 truth, that within two years, an " Imperium in Imperio " had 
 been formed in Ireland, more powerful than the State, and 
 more generally obeyed. Yet, at this conjuncture, when it 
 seemed probable, that he could secure emancipation almost on 
 his own terms, O'Connell gave a signal proof of the spirit of 
 compromise, which was one of his distinctive qualities. A 
 Bill, drawn it is believed by his hand, and conceding most of 
 the Catholic claims, passed the House of Commons in 1825 ; 
 but it was accompanied by what were known as its " wings," 
 proposals to make a provision for the Irish Catholic clergy, 
 and for disfranchising the peasant masses the " forty shilling 
 freeholders" before referred to for their power, it was per- 
 ceived, might become dangerous. O'Connell assented to these 
 measures, though, hitherto, he had been opposed to them 2 ; 
 
 1 "The red right hand of God's avenging justice," said O'Connell in 
 one of his harangues to the peasantry, "hangs over the land of the 
 murderer." Compare with this, Parnell's cynical phrase, "crime is un- 
 necessary. '' 
 
 2 ["I saw," he said in explanation of his conduct, "there was a 
 prospect of achieving the liberty of Ireland by means at which and under 
 other circumstances I should have shuddered with horror."]
 
 310 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 but the whole scheme was rejected by the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 The fate of these measures, which, had they passed, might 
 have changed the character of subsequent Irish History, only 
 urged O'Connell to redoubled efforts. With much adroitness 
 he appealed to the English Dissenters, announcing that he was 
 fighting their cause the Repeal of the Test Act was at 
 hand ; he sought aid from the Irish emigrants, already 
 numerous, in the United States ; he made a profound im- 
 pression on Catholic France, some of whose leading men 
 openly expressed their sympathy. Meanwhile the agitation at 
 home became more formidable and irresistible week after 
 week; and by the close of 1827 the Association had not only 
 become the dominant force in Irish affairs, but was enabled 
 successfully to defy the Government. The ascendency of 
 O'Connell was, in fact, complete ; many circumstances had 
 concurred to extend his influence and to urge the Catholic 
 Question forward. He had called, not in vain, on the Liberal 
 Irish Protestants, the sons of the adherents of Grattan in the 
 Irish Parliament ; they had zealously advocated the Catholic 
 claims ; with their assistance he had wrested several seats from 
 the Ascendency party at the General Election of 1826. Lord 
 Wellesley, too, a real and far-seeing statesman, had been 
 Viceroy since 1821 ; he not only favoured the Catholic cause, 
 but pronounced for more than one of the social reforms which 
 Peel and others had deemed impossible ; and he had set his 
 face steadily throughout the country against Orangeism and 
 its violent partisans, who kicked fiercely, but to no purpose, 
 against the pricks, by public meetings, wild clamour, and 
 even riots. 
 
 The occasion ere long came which suddenly brought to a 
 head a crisis evidently for some time impending. Mr Vesey 
 Fitzgerald accepted office in the Wellington Administration in 
 1828; he was obliged to seek re-election for the County of
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 311 
 
 Clare. He was an amiable, enlightened, and able man ; his 
 father had been an ally of Grattan's ; Catholic Emancipation 
 had no more loyal friend. But the time had come for a trial 
 of strength between the Association and the forces opposed to 
 it; O'Connell, though with reluctance, resolved to stand 
 against Fitzgerald for the representation of Clare, though as a 
 Catholic he could not enter Parliament. The contest that 
 followed is not yet forgotten ; it marked a turn in the course 
 of Irish history. The landed gentry of the county took the 
 side of Fitzgerald to a man; they canvassed for him with 
 assiduous zeal, for they resented, not unreasonably, what they 
 thought the intrusion of a stranger backed by a dictatorial 
 League ; they called upon their submissive dependents for 
 their votes ; they never doubted but that, as had been their 
 wont, these vassals would flock to the poll for their candidate. 
 But a moral change had passed over the Irish peasant; the 
 word of the Association had gone forth ; the " Liberator's " 
 influence swept opposition away ; the priests of Clare pro- 
 claimed from a hundred altars that the struggle was one for 
 the faith of God ; the forty shilling freeholders broke away, in 
 one mass, from their lords ; and O'Connell was returned in an 
 easy triumph. 
 
 A Revolution in Ireland seemed now at hand ; the Catholic 
 Association ruled five-sixths of the island ; it was clearly 
 perceived that the great body of the peasantry would not obey 
 their superiors, and was eager to follow the example set by 
 Clare. Opinion in Ireland, too, there can be little doubt, had 
 even among the chief part of the Protestants inclined for some 
 time towards the Catholic claims ; an immense meeting of the 
 landed gentry had declared for them ; their opponents for the 
 most part were Orangemen and their partisans'. The repre- 
 sentatives of Ireland, indeed, did not fully reflect this sentiment 
 in the Imperial Parliament ; but though in numbers they were 
 quite sufficient, they were largely composed of Tory nominees,
 
 312 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 and of men from Ulster of extreme Protestant views ; the 
 Liberal party, if very able, was relatively small. Peel and 
 Wellington however saw that the time had come when 
 Catholic Emancipation could no longer be deferred; after a 
 show of opposition on the part of the King, Parliament gave 
 its assent in 1829 to a measure of relief which ought to have 
 been an essential part of the Union a generation before, and 
 which though probably, in any case, it could not have been 
 very long delayed was actually obtained by an agitation 
 which had convulsed Ireland, and had made too evident the 
 weakness of British rule. The galling disabilities of the Irish 
 Catholics, left existing under the Act of 1793, were finally 
 removed by this concession ; and Catholic Ireland was, for the 
 first time, admitted fully within the pale of the State, and, with 
 scarcely an exception, was placed on a level of political rights 
 with Protestant Ireland. The full policy which Pitt had contem- 
 plated was not, however, carried out ; no provision was made 
 for the Irish Catholic clergy ; above all there was no com- 
 mutation of the tithe. The boon of Emancipation, too, was 
 grudgingly given ; Peel and Wellington yielded with bad grace; 
 O'Connell was not permitted to take the seat he had won ; he 
 was not even raised to the rank of King's Counsel, to which 
 he had been made eligible by the late measure. And if, as is 
 most probable, it had become necessary to disfranchise the 
 forty-shilling freeholders, and to deprive masses of the peasants 
 of votes unwisely given them many years before, this was an 
 unfortunate accompaniment of a remedial policy ; it bore too 
 much the look of angry revenge. 
 
 Catholic Emancipation was a measure of justice ; it was 
 certainly attended with good results. A Revolution in Ireland 
 was perhaps stayed by it; it may have made Irish agitation 
 less violent and dangerous than it would have been otherwise ; 
 it contributed to some important reforms. But it was a 
 measure of justice far too long delayed; and evil consequences
 
 ix. 1 From the Union to CatJiolic Emancipation. 313 
 
 have flowed from it, not only for Ireland, but for the whole 
 Empire. Time was soon to show how unfortunate it was that 
 it was not accompanied by an endowment for the Irish Catholic 
 priesthood, and that the Anglican Church in Ireland was 
 allowed to retain the wrongful and oppressive claim to an 
 uncommuted tithe. But worse and more permanent ills 
 followed : Catholic Emancipation, extorted as it was, added to 
 the discord of race and faith in Ireland ; the agitation through 
 which O'Connell triumphed deprived property of its legitimate 
 influence, broke up the structure of Irish society, made ruins, 
 but put nothing in their place. It increased the aversion to 
 British rule and law, inherited by the peasantry through ages 
 of wrongs ; it made them dangerously conscious of their 
 power. It also enthroned faction in the Imperial Parliament, 
 to which statesmen have often most unwisely yielded ; it has 
 tended to make the Irish representation a reproach and a 
 byeword. Above all it gave immense authority in the State to 
 a mass of ignorant and extreme opinion, not tempered by 
 middle class ideas, swayed by sacerdotal or worse influence, 
 and often extravagant and unjust ; and this has repeatedly had 
 disastrous effects, not only in purely Irish affairs, but on the 
 course of the national policy. 
 
 There is much in the conduct of affairs in Ireland, from 
 1800 to 1829, which impartial history regrets and condemns. 
 The Irish Catholic leaders were wronged; Protestant Ascen- 
 dency secured a new lease of power; encouragement to 
 Orangeism was unwisely given ; severe measures of repression 
 were continued too long, and administered in a reckless 
 fashion; the necessity of social reforms was not perceived, 
 especially in the sphere of landed relations ; a bad land sys- 
 tem was made worse by bad laws ; the Catholic Question was 
 put back for years; Catholic Emancipation came too late, 
 was ungracefully conceded, and under the worst conditions. 
 The train of evils that followed has been made manifest; in
 
 314 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 this whole course of policy we see proof of prejudice and 
 narrow-mindedness in the Imperial Parliament, and of ignor- 
 ance and want of sympathy in British statesmen. Yet the 
 circumstances of the period must be taken into account ; it 
 was an age of war, reaction, and hard Tory ideas ; if Ireland 
 had cause of complaint, England had cause also; the time 
 was unpropitious to test the Union and its effects. Nor is 
 there any reason to suppose that Grattan's Parliament would 
 have governed Ireland better, or even nearly as well : from 
 1782 to 1789, when the opportunity really offered, it set its 
 face against every reform in Ireland; its measures from 1795 
 to 1799, especially during the rebellion of 1798, were atrocious, 
 and marked by the rage of a dominant caste. It is a most 
 significant fact it cannot be got over that, from 1800 to 
 1829, there was no movement in Ireland against the Union, 
 nothing more than a few weak protests ; Grattan accepted the 
 Union, and so did the whole Whig party, its vehement adver- 
 saries in 1799-1800; this is almost a conclusive proof that 
 Ireland was more contented after the Union than she had 
 been before. On the other hand, notwithstanding a season of 
 terrible distress, Ireland certainly made material progress in 
 the thirty years that followed the Union ; above all, Protestant 
 Ulster became devotedly loyal, having previously been on the 
 verge of rebellion ; the forces of Irish disaffection were ex- 
 tremely weakened ; and it must be fairly added that the mind 
 of England had, however slowly, begun to turn towards Ireland. 
 Looking at the subject from an Imperial point of view, the 
 Union may have saved these islands from conquest ; a single 
 Parliament and a centralised Government were required to 
 conduct the war with Napoleon ; after this experience England 
 can hardly doubt that she must keep Ireland in her own 
 hands. 
 
 The long reign of Toryism, and of reaction in the State, 
 was about to pass away in 1829. England, strong, masterful,
 
 ix.] From the Union to Catholic Emancipation. 315 
 
 ruled by ideas in many respects inapplicable to Irish affairs, 
 was entering on a path of great general reform ; she could only 
 attain her ends through Parliamentary government, and the 
 ascendency of the party of progress. Ireland was weak, 
 divided, infinitely behind Great Britain ; her whole social 
 system was deeply diseased, especially in what related to the 
 land; her population was becoming alarmingly dense; if some 
 of her grievances were fully perceived, others were less intelli- 
 gible to English statesmen. And her Catholic millions, serfs 
 for ages, untrained to freedom and self-government, had been 
 suddenly invested with power, which was practically in the 
 hands of a great demagogue, and of a priesthood which carried 
 out his commands. In these circumstances, was it not probable 
 that many Irish reforms would be ill conceived, would be 
 delayed and injured by the strife and the spirit of party ? Was 
 it not probable that Ireland might become the battle ground 
 of contending English factions, and, in the result, might gravely 
 suffer? Was it not probable that what was most peccant in 
 the structure of her society would not be understood, or would 
 be understood when it was too late, and that immense evils 
 might be the consequence, even though much had been done 
 for her by a well-meaning and enlightened policy? And might 
 not the enfranchisement of Catholic Ireland, as affairs stood, 
 lead to extravagances and mischiefs of many kinds, injurious to 
 Great Britain and Ireland alike, and attended with numerous 
 and dangerous ills? Time was to give an answer, at least in 
 part, to questions even yet not finally answered.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 FROM 1829 TO 1868. 
 
 State of England in 1832. The Irish Reform Act. O'Connell declares for 
 Repeal of the Union. Failure of the movement. The Question in the 
 House of Commons. Great speech of Peel. The war against Irish 
 Tithe. A measure of commutation passed after a long delay. The 
 Irish Anglican Church. Partial reform. National education in Ire- 
 land. Vices of the system. The Irish Administration of the Melbourne 
 Government. O'Connell abandons Repeal. His influence in the 
 Government. Drummond. His authority in Irish affairs. Extension 
 of the Constabulary force. Orangeism discountenanced. Bureau- 
 cratic rule of the Castle. The Irish Poor Law. The Irish Municipal 
 Reform Act. The second administration of Peel. O'Connell and 
 Repeal. The Monster Meetings. Trial of O'Connell. His release. 
 The Young Ireland Party. Put down by O'Connell and the priest- 
 hood. Significance of this. The increased Maynooth grant. The 
 Queen's Colleges. The Devon Commission. The Report. The 
 Famine, 1845, 1846, 1847. Conduct and policy of Peel and 
 Russell Governments. World- wide Charity. The rising of 1848. 
 Smith O'Brien. John Finton Lalor. The Irish Exodus. Immense 
 results. Visit of the Queen in 1849. The Encumbered Estates Acts. 
 Their mischievous effects. Condition of Ireland after the Famine. 
 Optimism. Superficial prosperity. Dangerous symptoms. State of 
 Irish Letters. Art and Science. The Fenian rising of 1867. Re- 
 flections. Conclusion. 
 
 THE agitation for Reform in 1831-32 shook society in England 
 to its depths ; revolution, perhaps, was only averted by the 
 good sense of the aristocracy, and of a well ordered people,
 
 CHAP, x.] From 1829 to 1868. 317 
 
 trained for centuries in self-government. The time, both 
 before and after 1832, was unpropitious to Irish affairs; the 
 attention of British statesmen was chiefly directed to the 
 condition of England, and of our foreign relations. The Irish 
 Reform Act added a few members to the Irish representation 
 in the House of Commons; but it placed the franchise on 
 rather a high level; and, after the extinction of the forty- 
 shilling freeholds, it was supposed that the Catholic masses 
 would lose much of their power. The first part of Lord Grey's 
 Ministry was chiefly remarkable, as respects Ireland, for a 
 strenuous but unsuccessful effort made by O'Connell to arouse 
 popular feeling against what he called " the accursed Union." 
 He may have clung to the faith of his youth, and thought the 
 measure a disastrous event ; but personal motives certainly 
 concurred; he had resented the petty affronts of 1829 ; he had 
 supported the administration at the crisis of Reform with great 
 ability and important results ; yet he found himself excluded 
 from office in the State, nay the Emancipation Act made a 
 dead letter, as regards the demands of Catholic Ireland. His 
 agitation for Repeal, however, completely failed, though he 
 had drawn into the House of Commons a train of followers, 
 nominees of his own and of the Catholic priesthood, a number 
 that was soon to increase ; it was notable chiefly for his 
 characteristic baffling of the law, and his savage quarrels with 
 Mr Stanley, the Chief Secretary. He brought the subject 
 before the House of Commons in 1834; but he gained the 
 vote of only a single English member ; the occasion was most 
 worthy of notice for the conclusive proof afforded in the 
 debate that the wealth of Ireland, faulty as was the state of her 
 social life, had been steadily on the increase. The speech of 
 Peel was perhaps the ablest defence of the Union ever made 
 in the Imperial Parliament ; and O'Connell the fact is of 
 great significance let the question drop for a series of years. 
 At this period, indeed, the mind of Catholic Ireland had
 
 318 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 been concentrated on a very different matter; a wild move- 
 ment attended by a frightful outbreak of crime had been 
 sweeping over large parts of the country. As we have seen, 
 the Anglican Church had retained its tithe ; the commutation, 
 advocated by Pitt and Grattan half a century before, had not 
 been carried out; a feeble attempt in that direction, recently 
 made, had practically had hardly any results. As the popula- 
 tion of Ireland increased and the land became more and more 
 divided into little tillage holdings, the grievance of the impost 
 was more acutely felt ; it was in fact a gross wrong, which the 
 Catholic occupier of the soil, made aware of his power by the 
 events of late years, could not be expected patiently to endure. 
 The collection of the tithe, too, had for some time been made 
 more onerous, in not a few instances, by Protestant clergymen 
 of extreme views ; and Orange faction had given them sinister 
 support. O'Connell pronounced against tithe, with no uncer- 
 tain voice; the Catholic priesthood, angry perhaps that the 
 State had made no provision for them, came again enthusiasti- 
 cally to his aid ; the power of the Catholic Association, though 
 nominally suppressed, was arrayed to some extent on behalf of 
 the new cause. It should be observed however that, on this 
 occasion, O'Connell and his satellites were not able to keep 
 the forces of disorder down, as had been the case from 1823 
 to 1829; indeed O'Connell made scarcely an attempt of the 
 kind. The Catholic peasantry took the matter into their own 
 hands ; the payment of tithes was resisted in many counties ; 
 the efforts of the law and of a strong government proved 
 utterly unable to enforce payment. The Tithe War, as it was 
 not improperly called, raged with little intermission for several 
 years ; and in two or three places bloody encounters occurred 
 between the Constabulary and the half-armed levies they met. 
 But these were not the worst symptoms ; the crusade against 
 Tithe was backed by the Whiteboy system, at times quiescent, 
 but never defunct ; and the machinery of that organisation of
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 319 
 
 crime was put in force to uphold the movement. Secret 
 societies, spreading far and wide, sent forth their mandates; 
 assassinations and deeds of outrage rapidly multiplied ; and 
 the arm of the law was paralysed, in whole districts, by 
 intimidation and the refusal of juries to convict. In 1833, 
 there were 9000 cases of crimes of this type ; political agitation 
 had again been sustained by agrarian trouble. 
 
 A measure of repression, the most severe perhaps of any 
 enacted in Irish affairs, was passed to put down this frightful 
 state of things; it was opposed by O'Connell with great power 
 and skill, and, indeed, proved the forerunner of events that led 
 to the fall of the Grey Cabinet ; but it was completely success- 
 ful in its immediate object; the reign of criminal anarchy soon 
 came to an end. The wrong of the Tithe, however, was at last 
 recognised, unhappily owing to the effects of a social conflict ; 
 and measures were adopted to redress a grievance, which 
 ought not to have lasted down to the nineteenth century. 
 Incidents followed that showed, only too plainly, how a 
 reform for Ireland, in itself well designed, might be delayed 
 for years, in the existing state of politics, and be made into a 
 pretext for the mere strife of faction. The question of the 
 tithe was mixed with the question of appropriating to the use 
 of the State part of the excessive revenue of the Established 
 Church in Ireland; this caused the resignation of Mr Stanley 
 in 1834; and a Bill proposed by Peel, in his first short 
 Ministry, for the simple Commutation of the Irish Tithe, 
 was defeated by the Whig opposition of the day, because 
 the principle of appropriation was not found in it. When 
 this party move had driven Peel from office, the two questions 
 were again combined by the Government of Lord Melbourne 
 in 1836 ; but the policy of appropriation was rejected by the 
 House of Lords ; and ultimately the Melbourne Ministry gave 
 it up. A measure for the Commutation of the tithe alone, 
 the famous " Appropriation Clause " being left out, was passed
 
 320 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 by Parliament in 1838 ; and justice in this matter was done to 
 Ireland, but justice deferred too long, and after disastrous 
 events. The reform effected, nevertheless, was excellent and 
 wise; the tithe was commuted into a rent charge, a quarter 
 less in amount than the total impost ; the owners of land, and 
 not its occupants, were rendered liable to the payment of the 
 substituted charge. By these means the Irish Catholic 
 peasantry were relieved from a most odious tribute to an 
 alien Church; complaints on this subject were never heard 
 again ; the Irish Established Church, in fact, obtained a new 
 lease of existence. 
 
 The position, however, of that Church had attracted atten- 
 tion, long before this time, especially among English Liberal 
 statesmen. Superficially it had undergone considerable change, 
 since we have seen what it was in the eighteenth century. It 
 had been graced by some very able Divines, if by no prelate 
 who can be named with Berkeley ; it had been almost com- 
 pletely freed from the moral scandals which had been its 
 reproach; its ministers, as a class, were good and amiable 
 men, in many cases worthy country gentlemen. Its discipline, 
 too, had been greatly improved; it had felt, through all its 
 parts, the beneficent influence of the religious opinion of the 
 nineteenth century, requiring, as it did, a high standard of 
 clerical duty. But its essential nature had remained the same; 
 it was still the institution of a conquering race planted in the 
 midst of a conquered people, a spiritual, but a hostile, watch- 
 tower; it possessed great revenues to little purpose; it was 
 "a lodge in a garden of cucumbers," that bore no fruit ; it had 
 not much authority over its own flocks ; it was an object of 
 hatred to the Catholic priesthood, and of the fierce detestation 
 of the Catholic peasant as long as it continued to exact tithe. 
 Through the effects, besides, of the Evangelical English move- 
 ment, it had become somewhat rudely proselytising of late; 
 and yet as a Church it had not fulfilled its mission ; it was no
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 321 
 
 living image of its Divine Master ; its high places were filled 
 with sons of the great landed gentry, who looked to the Castle 
 rather than to Heaven ; and its revenues had been misapplied 
 and wasted. No wonder then that, in 1831-2, it became the 
 object of persistent attack ; but the Liberal opinion of that day 
 never contemplated Disestablishment in any sense; it aimed 
 only at a reform of the Church; as it was, indeed, this so-called 
 sacrilege was the origin of the great Oxford Tractarian move- 
 ment. The Irish Establishment was deprived of ten sees, and 
 its revenues were redistributed, to some extent, in order to 
 make it more efficient, by a measure which passed, with little 
 difficulty, in 1833, the principle of appropriation not being 
 pressed ; and this, and the far greater measure, commuting 
 the tithe, were the only changes attempted for a long series of 
 years. The maintenance of the Anglican Church in Ireland 
 had, indeed, we have seen, been made a part of the Union ; 
 but though the compact was respected for more than half a 
 century, the end of the institution came at last, as had been 
 foreseen by most thoughtful minds. To describe the process 
 is not within our limits; Disestablishment, we shall only 
 remark, was not accompanied, as it ought to have been, by the 
 provision for the Irish Catholic priesthood, which Pitt, Grattan, 
 and many of their best successors in England and Ireland had 
 always had in view. 
 
 Another important measure of reform for Ireland was 
 carried into effect by Lord Grey's Government (1830-34). The 
 " English Schools " of the Tudor period, made appendages of 
 the Established Church, had disappeared into the night of the 
 past; the Charter Schools, worthy of the Penal Code, main- 
 tained an existence only in name. Peel had appointed a 
 Commission, in 1812, to consider Irish Education of the 
 primary kind; but its labours had, virtually, had no results; 
 and Irish Primary Education, as to the work of the State, had 
 fallen into the hands of a Society, not without merit, but 
 
 M. i. 21
 
 322 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Protestant in its complexion, and disposed to make proselytes. 
 Catholic Ireland justly resented this: and, meanwhile, the 
 children of the dense Catholic masses grew up, to a great 
 extent, in ignorance, though, be it said to their parents' honour, 
 petty or "hedge" schools had been set up at their expense in 
 many places, and had thousands of scholars. Mr Stanley 
 established in Ireland, in 1831-4, the system of Primary 
 Education long known as National ; it was founded on 
 principles in accord with the rather shallow Liberal ideas of 
 the day. The children of the humbler classes were to be 
 instructed in schools of the State ; for secular education they 
 were to be taught together; they were to receive religious 
 education apart, from pastors of their respective communions. 
 This system, largely modified indeed, has been in existence for 
 more than sixty years ; Parliament has lavished enormous free 
 grants upon it ; and unquestionably it has had a large measure 
 of success, for the children of a people that sat in darkness 
 have had their eyes opened to the light of knowledge. But the 
 instruction afforded has not been very good ; except in parts of 
 Ulster it is not popular; the principle on which it rests was 
 never accepted by the clergy of the Irish Anglican Church ; it 
 is secretly disliked by the Catholic priesthood; it is not in 
 harmony with the convictions of five-sixths of the Irish 
 community. It is, in fact, a principle which degrades spiritual 
 things, and makes them secondary, so to speak, to temporal ; 
 it sacrifices the Divine to the human ; it shocks the religious, 
 if you will, the superstitious conscience. After years of con- 
 tention and angry bickering, the system actually in force at 
 present, is this : the principle of " united secular education, and 
 separate religious education " has been tacitly given up in most 
 places; and of the thousands of National Schools in Ireland, 
 the great majority are of a sectarian character, that is, the 
 scholars are all Catholics or all Protestants. But the system 
 is still pervaded by the original principle : the schools are
 
 x -l From 1829 to 1868. 323 
 
 sectarian with a conscience clause, as it is called; the Bible 
 cannot be read in a Protestant school; in a Catholic school 
 there can be no Catholic emblem. The immense majority of 
 the Irish people will never approve of this state of things at 
 heart, though it has found favour in the sight of Presbyterian 
 Ireland 1 . 
 
 O'Connell's attitude to the Ministry of Lord Grey had been 
 repeatedly one of fierce hostility; and this had contributed, 
 with other causes, to retard the march of reforms in Ireland. 
 The situation had changed when Lord Melbourne came into 
 office (1835); his Government was weak in England and Scot- 
 land; but O'Connell's following, known as his "Tail," had grown 
 into very large proportions ; and the Minister sought the great 
 Irishman's support. A compact angrily denounced at the 
 time, but hardly to be condemned by History, was made 
 between the Whigs and O'Connell ; its terms were of most 
 marked significance. The Government placed the lion's share 
 of Irish patronage in O'Connell's hands, and undertook to 
 further Irish reforms; O'Connell in turn gave them the 
 numerous votes at his command, and formally abandoned the 
 demand for Repeal, a circumstance that must be borne in mind 
 in considering his conduct as respects the Union. The period 
 that followed was, on the whole, one of just and enlightened 
 rule in Ireland, and of legislation on the side of progress, if 
 this was somewhat feeble, and not marked by peculiar insight. 
 O'Connell did not abuse his trust ; the appointments he prac- 
 tically made were nearly always good, especially his appoint- 
 ments to places at the Bar ; he gave proof of discernment, fair 
 play, and a sincere regard for the maintenance of the just 
 
 1 Burke, the deepest of political thinkers, especially on Irish affairs, has 
 over and over again insisted that education in Ireland should be, above all 
 things, religious. He would have condemned the principle of the National 
 system. Ireland, as a whole, would wish Primary Education to be what is 
 called Denominational. 
 
 21 2
 
 324 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 rights of property, in the great but difficult position which he 
 held. It may be said of him that Protestant Ireland had little 
 reason to complain of his acts, and that Catholic Emancipation 
 was made, for the first time, a reality by him in Irish affairs ; 
 this was certainly one of the best episodes in his career. In 
 this policy he was loyally upheld by Lord Mulgrave, the Lord 
 Lieutenant, and by the Chief Secretary, Lord Morpeth ; and he 
 had the assistance of Catholic law officers of great powers, 
 who did much to make Irish administration equal and just, 
 without regard to distinctions of race and faith. 
 
 The Under-Secretary Drummond, too, played a conspicuous 
 part at the Castle, in these years, though his influence on events, 
 great as it certainly was, has been somewhat unduly magnified, 
 and its effects have not been in all respects beneficent. 
 Drummond was a Scotchman of fine parts and of an iron will, 
 in his views rather a hard doctrinaire, but able and gifted with 
 the faculty of command. His conception of the true policy 
 for Ireland was, to make the supremacy of a just administra- 
 tion universally felt; to hold the balance even between 
 contending factions and sects; to do right to Protestant and 
 Catholic alike ; and, in order to further these great objects, to 
 extend and strengthen the power of the central government. 
 Much that he accomplished deserves high praise, if his conduct 
 was not always right or judicious. His authority was soon felt 
 by the men in power ; and in conjunction with them he 
 laboured, with success, to give Catholic Emancipation real 
 effect, to make the Irish Catholic feel that the State was his 
 friend, to keep Protestant ascendency, and its excesses, under. 
 He struck a blow at Orangeism, its adherents, and its evil 
 works, which may be said to have been almost fatal; the 
 organisation and influence of that bad system, of lawless as- 
 sociation, have never since been so strong. Yet Drummond, 
 unquestionably, was too disposed to identify the great body of 
 the Irish landed gentry with Protestant ascendency in a bad
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 325 
 
 sense ; his frequent lectures to them were not wise; he was not 
 just to the order, as a whole, especially to its more prominent 
 members. The principal achievement, however, of this re- 
 markable man was to make a large increase in the Constabulary 
 force established by Peel many years before, and to extend the 
 arrangements for paid magistrates; and he set the system, in 
 part, on a new footing, by throwing the appointments largely 
 open to Catholics. By these means Ireland was virtually placed 
 under the control of a highly organised police, possessing 
 immense authority and administrative powers; and this de- 
 velopment of Peel's policy has had, but to greater extent, the 
 effects it produced from the first. The Constabulary force and 
 the paid magistrates have done wonders in maintaining order, 
 and in keeping lawlessness of all kinds down ; the system has 
 gained the confidence of all classes ; it is not too much to say 
 that it has held up to Irishmen the example of a high standard 
 of well performed duty, the value of which has been very great. 
 Yet disadvantages are to be set against this : the system, as, 
 indeed, was Drummond's object, has enormously increased 
 the power of the Castle ; but, in combination with other 
 causes, it has greatly diminished the influence of the Irish 
 landed gentry, and this has been, on the whole, unfortunate. 
 It has tended to strengthen in Ireland " the English interest," 
 and to make the Central Government, more and more, what it 
 has always been, a bureaucratic regime. 
 
 The Melbourne Government deserves the credit of settling 
 the great Question of the Tithe in Ireland (1838). Its leaders 
 however, like almost all the English statesmen of that 
 generation, did not attempt to apply a remedy to the grave 
 evils of Irish landed relations; they were certainly not fully 
 alive to them. These relations had, in some respects, im- 
 proved ; but in others they were growing distinctly worse ; we 
 shall briefly examine the subject afterwards, when the attention 
 of Parliament was directed to it, unhappily at an untoward
 
 326 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 season. The Melbourne Administration however, possibly be- 
 cause the new English Poor Law was coming into effect, did 
 really see what was the worst feature, perhaps, in the structure 
 of social life in Ireland, the presence of a huge population on 
 the soil, and did try to make a change for the better. A late 
 Report had disclosed the appalling fact that two millions and 
 a half of beings in Ireland were sunk in the lowest depths of 
 wretchedness ; and society was injured in all its parts, owing 
 to the destructive burden of this vast mass of penury. All the 
 evils we have noticed before, rents forced up, wages beaten 
 down, millions squatted on the land in little patches, and the 
 potato made the only staff of life, had been increasing to a 
 marked extent ; there had been no actual dearth since 1822, 
 but this state of things was fast becoming dangerous. The 
 Melbourne Government gave Ireland (1838), what should have 
 been given a century before, a Poor Law framed on the English 
 model ; and this measure, asserting as it did the principle that 
 Property is bound to support Poverty, and above all, to 
 provide against its excess, has ultimately had very good results. 
 But it was introduced, as it were, at the eleventh hour; its 
 immediate effects could not be great ; and it utterly failed, as 
 we shall see, to deal with the calamity of a few years afterwards, 
 which involved Ireland in a great catastrophe. The last im- 
 portant measure of the Melbourne Ministry was a well-designed 
 but imperfect reform of Municipal Government throughout 
 Ireland (1840). The great majority of the Irish Corporate 
 Bodies were the rulers of the small Parliamentary boroughs, 
 originally set up by James I, and of boroughs of a similar 
 class ; they had become centres of Protestant ascendency of 
 the worst kind; and they were very properly swept away. 
 But Municipal Government was not placed on a popular basis 
 in the great towns of Ireland, largely owing to the opposition 
 of the Tories of the time ; and a reform in this respect has to 
 be yet accomplished. It is scarcely necessary, however, to
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 327 
 
 remark that municipal life in Ireland can never be as powerful 
 and free as it is in Great Britain ; the differences between the 
 two countries make this impossible. 
 
 The policy and the measures of the Melbourne Government 
 had certainly accomplished much good in Ireland, if their short- 
 comings have been long ago apparent. The Union was very 
 decidedly strengthened ; Catholic Emancipation was effectually 
 carried out ; especially all orders and classes of men were made 
 to feel they were under an equal law, a result for Irishmen of 
 supreme importance. The Ministry, however, weak in Great 
 Britain from the first, became year after year weaker; it 
 ultimately sank into mere impotence. The causes of this were 
 threefold : the people of England and Scotland were eager for 
 reforms, which the Government did not try to undertake, and 
 resented the time devoted to Irish affairs; the country was 
 rallying around Peel, the great leader of an Opposition of 
 formidable power ; and the conduct of O'Connell, and of the 
 men in his train, had, in Parliament and elsewhere, given 
 extreme offence. The representation of Ireland, indeed, had, 
 by this time, become much degraded; the "Tail" of 
 O'Connell was composed of very inferior men, mere in- 
 struments of his will, without station or wealth, and thrust into 
 the House of Commons by himself and the Irish priesthood ; 
 O'Connell had, over and over again, shocked Englishmen by 
 his abusive language; and all this had caused very general 
 disgust. 
 
 The Melbourne Ministry was swept away in 1841 ; but 
 "the Irish difficulty," to use his own words, confronted Peel 
 almost from the outset, though he was at the head of a 
 very strong Government. The Whig Opposition, Catholic 
 Ireland, and O'Connell loudly pronounced against him ; and 
 he was greatly hampered by Orange partisans, and by the 
 supporters of Protestant ascendency throughout Ireland, who 
 persisted in seeing their champion in him. He had really no
 
 .328 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 sympathy with men of this type ; but he was not quite free 
 from the associations of the past ; and some appointments he 
 made were supposed to indicate that he was returning to the 
 exclusive and sectarian Irish Tory policy, which had prevailed 
 before 1829. O'Connell instantly seized the occasion; de- 
 clared that "justice to Ireland" had become impossible; and, 
 for the second time, made an effort to combine a great 
 popular movement against the Union. 
 
 Whether this crusade was a mere party move, or whether 
 the Irish leader had faith in it, and believed that he could 
 achieve Repeal, is, perhaps, impossible to determine ; but the 
 circumstances point to the first conclusion. O'Connell once 
 more brought into play the forces which had proved irresistible 
 in 1824-28: he called on the priesthood to rally around him; 
 he appealed to the Catholic millions to join the cause; he 
 adjured all Irishmen to remember the days of the Volunteers, 
 and to strike for the free Parliament of 1782. The powerful, 
 well-contrived, and far-spreading machinery of the Catholic 
 Association was again employed ; the Catholic Rent was again 
 collected ; and the agitation against the Union, with hundreds 
 of priests at its head, was made, to a certain extent, a religious 
 cry, and was maintained throughout the country by numerous 
 bodies of men affiliated to the great central League of Repeal. 
 The movement, organised and directed in this way, assumed in 
 1843 gigantic proportions ; Catholic and Celtic Ireland flocked 
 around O'Connell, and especially around its sacerdotal leaders ; 
 " monster meetings," as they were fitly called, attended by 
 hundreds of thousands of peasants, were assembled, in different 
 places, in the southern provinces; and O'Connell addressed 
 them in impassioned language, not seldom of an ail-but 
 treasonable kind. Yet this agitation had nothing like the 
 strength of that which had caused the Catholic claims to 
 prevail ; and it was resisted by forces which made it hopeless. 
 Very different from what happened from 1813 to 1828,
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 329 
 
 England and Scotland condemned it to a man ; it was dis- 
 countenanced by more than one Irish Catholic bishop, and by 
 a certain number of the Irish Catholic clergy. But above 
 all and this was the most marked distinction the property 
 of Ireland and her intelligence were almost wholly arrayed 
 against it; Liberal Protestants of the school of Grattan agreed, 
 in this matter, with extreme Orangemen, and with the great 
 body of the Catholic gentry; in fact the best and most vigorous 
 elements in Irish social life were thoroughly combined to 
 support the Union. The real lesson of the movement of 1843 
 was, in truth, this, that Irish Nationality, a vain phantom that 
 never existed in any true sense, was, in the eyes of the Irish 
 Catholic Celts and their leaders, what it had been in those of 
 Rinuccini and his priests, and that Catholic ascendency was 
 not to be endured by the Ireland of loyalty, substance, and 
 thought. 
 
 It may be affirmed with certainty that an armed rising was 
 never within O'Connell's mind ; but the Government took only 
 due precautions, in subjecting the use of arms to close 
 restrictions, and in sending an additional military force to 
 Ireland. Peel confronted the movement with calm stead- 
 fastness ; declared that he preferred civil war to Repeal ; and 
 when a great monster meeting had approached Dublin, caused 
 O'Connell and several of his lieutenants to be placed under 
 arrest. The trial that followed was, in some respects, un- 
 fortunate ; the foremost man of Catholic Ireland was arraigned 
 before a Court of Protestant judges, one, notoriously, an 
 extreme partisan ; Catholic jurors were excluded from the jury 
 list, through a mistake not discovered to this day; and the 
 proceedings wore a look of real injustice. But the wrong that 
 was done was redressed by the House of Lords, adverse in 
 politics as it was to the accused ; the omission in the jury list 
 was sternly condemned; O'Connell and his associates were 
 at once set free. The movement against the Union, never-
 
 330 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 theless, had been completely stayed ; the whole agitation 
 speedily collapsed; O'Connell practically abandoned Repeal 
 once more, covering a timid and even an ignominious retreat 
 by a pretence in favour of a Federal scheme of Irish Govern- 
 ment, which a few politicians had seemed to approve. It is more 
 than doubtful, we repeat, if, at this time, he felt the hatred of 
 the Union he professed; still more so that he believed its 
 abolition possible; and it is certain that, imposing as were 
 the arrays of his masses of Catholic Celts, they had not the 
 cause of Repeal at heart, and saw in it a means only to effect 
 other ends. One remarkable episode of the movement de- 
 serves the attention of the student of Irish History. O'Connell 
 obtained the enthusiastic support of a small knot of very able 
 men, who represented the ideas of the nobler spirits of the 
 United Irishmen of another day ; one, Davis, was gifted with 
 real genius; others, especially Duffy he died recently, in 
 honoured old age had great parts; all advocated Repeal in 
 the firm belief that it would make Ireland a nation, and do 
 good to the different races and faiths. Yet the "Young 
 Ireland " party, as it was called, was summarily put down by 
 O'Connell and the priests, the moment it ventured to cross his 
 will ; in a few weeks it was simply effaced. This was another 
 example of the divisions which have wrecked so repeatedly an 
 Irish cause; but the fate of Young Ireland was of deeper 
 import ; it proved what the conceptions were of " Nationality " 
 and political freedom, in the mind of Catholic and sacerdotal 
 Ireland. 
 
 The Repeal movement, easily stopped as it was, un- 
 questionably made a deep impression on Peel. Circumspect 
 and cautious, he received new ideas slowly, but he could act 
 boldly on them when once convinced ; he turned his mind to 
 a remedial Irish policy. Very possibly, if he had had the 
 power, he would have tried to effect what Pitt and Grattan 
 had wished, and have made a provision for the Irish Catholic
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 331 
 
 priesthood; still the attempt would have destroyed his Ministry. 
 But he largely increased the revenue of the College of 
 Maynooth, in the hope, probably, that this would raise the 
 status and position of the Irish priests, and attract into their 
 ranks sons of the Catholic gentry; the measure was in the 
 right direction ; but the immense majority of this order of men 
 is still drawn from the class of the superior peasantry, and has 
 the feelings of the Catholic occupier of the soil. Another 
 important measure of Peel was an effort to improve and 
 extend the education of the higher middle class in Ireland, 
 which had remained in a deplorably low condition. He 
 established the " Queen's Colleges," as they have been called ; 
 but these institutions embodied the faulty principle of the 
 Primary or National system referred to before ; they were con- 
 demned as " godless " by the Irish Catholic Bishops; and though 
 they have been, in some degree, successful, and have flourished 
 in Presbyterian Ireland, Catholic Ireland has no sympathy 
 with them. Since Peel's time, a kind of University, on the 
 French model, has been set up in Ireland, with fruitful results ; 
 but the education provided for the upper middle class of the 
 Irish Catholics is still bad and imperfect. The University of 
 Dublin indeed, to her great credit, has long ago thrown open 
 her degrees and honours of every kind to the Irish Catholic ; 
 this liberality began as far back as 1793 ; it has been steadily, 
 and ever since, continued. But the University of Dublin 
 remains a Protestant place of learning ; its teaching and spirit 
 are distinctly Protestant ; a Catholic atmosphere, so to speak, 
 does not breathe in it. Catholic Ireland, as Burke and 
 Newman have written, has a just claim to a Catholic 
 University of its own. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that, by this time, Peel had 
 broken completely with the system of Protestant ascendency 
 in Irish affairs, with which, indeed, he never had heartfelt 
 sympathy. He soon dissociated himself still further from the
 
 332 Ireland. 
 
 past ; he took an important step in his reforming Irish policy, 
 which, but for subsequent events, might have had immense 
 results. As Chief Secretary, we have seen, he had disregarded 
 the rights of the tenant in Irish landed relations; he had, 
 perhaps, sanctioned the code of speedy ejectment ; he had 
 steadily enforced the demands of landlords. But he was the 
 first economic statesman of his day ; his mind had, by degrees, 
 opened to the evils and dangers of the land system of 
 Ireland; he resolved, if possible, to devise a remedy. He 
 appointed the well-known Devon Commission to report on the 
 condition of the Irish land, on its modes of tenure and 
 occupation, and the social results ; and certainly, had he long 
 remained Minister, he would have made very considerable 
 changes in it. The essential features of the Irish land 
 system, since we glanced at what they were thirty years 
 before, were still, to a great extent, unaltered ; there were the 
 same divisions between the owner and the occupier of the 
 soil; if absenteeism had, perhaps, increased, absentee estates 
 were being better managed; middleman tenures had continued 
 to grow less, but they still wrought harm in great tracts of the 
 country ; the large body of the peasantry was still in a most 
 backward state. For the rest the landed gentry had markedly 
 improved, in manners, habits of life, and reverence for law ; in 
 these respects they were different even from their fathers ; but 
 the events of 1824-29 had broken down their power and 
 alienated their dependents from them ; as the value of their 
 estates rose, and the system of large farming became developed, 
 the tendency to exaction became stronger in them ; their 
 relations with the peasantry grew, by degrees, less friendly. 
 Yet these bad characteristics of the land system of Ireland 
 were as nothing compared to its worst vices. The enormous 
 increase of the population, before referred to, had, we have 
 seen, forced up rent to an excessive rate, had covered the land 
 with dense swarms of misery, had reduced wages to the very
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 333 
 
 lowest point, had, in a word, as was truly said, " based society 
 in Ireland on the potato"; and all this had made Irish landed 
 relations disorganised in the highest degree, and perilous to all 
 classes, and even to the State. Meanwhile the concurrent 
 rights in their holdings, which the peasantry had acquired by 
 what they had done on them, had continued to increase to an 
 enormous extent ; and as the competition for the soil became 
 more intense, by the multiplication of beings on it, large sums 
 were paid for the "good will" of farms, which really conferred 
 a proprietary right in them. The moral claims to the land, 
 created by these means, were, we repeat, protected in the 
 great mass of cases ; indeed they never could have grown up 
 otherwise ; and the wild complaints made, in this respect, 
 against the Irish landed gentry, have been grossly exaggerated, 
 or are absolutely false. The claims, however, which in fact 
 approached a joint ownership over millions of acres, continued, 
 as before, to be not law-worthy ; they had never been recog- 
 nised by the State ; and, in consequence, they were too often 
 destroyed by eviction and other unjust proceedings. The 
 result was that agrarian disorder and the Whiteboy system had 
 never ceased; Lord Wellesley had described this state 
 of things, a few years before, as "a complete system of 
 legislation, with the most prompt, vigorous and severe ex- 
 ecutive power, armed for all purposes of savage punishment " ; 
 and, in 1844, more than 1000 agrarian crimes had disgraced 
 Ireland. In Ulster landed relations were in a better condition ; 
 but, even in Ulster, what was known by the name of the 
 Tenant Right had been sometimes invaded. 
 
 The Report of the Devon Commission was composed by 
 landlords, but, if somewhat timid, it was of great value, 
 especially in showing how the land system of Ireland grew 
 out of the conquests and confiscations of the past. The 
 evidence appended is of extreme importance; it illustrated 
 amply and with perfect clearness the numberless social and
 
 334 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 economic ills which had been the results of Irish land tenure, 
 especially in the fifty years previously, and the dangers of a 
 redundant population crowded on the soil. The recommenda- 
 tions of the Commission were, however, faulty, and too charac- 
 teristic of British ignorance of Irish affairs ;- they did not aim 
 at giving the sanction of law to the joint ownership of the 
 Irish tenant 1 , which ought to have been their main object; 
 they described it in the spirit of the Tudor lawyers, who 
 sneered at the landed usages of the Celt, as an excrescence on 
 the true rights of property, and this caused grave discontent in 
 Ulster. The Commission, nevertheless, proposed measures for 
 compensating tenants for improvements added to their farms ; 
 a Bill to this effect was introduced afterwards ; but it perished 
 in the wreck of Peel's Ministry. The Irish Land Question, as 
 it has ever since been called, remained nearly untouched for a 
 long series of years ; feeble attempts to deal with it failed. 
 
 Repeated and earnest efforts have been made to settle this 
 question in quite recent times ; but the subject falls outside the 
 scope of this work 2 ; a word or two only can be said on it. An 
 endeavour to secure the joint-ownership of the Irish tenant 
 was made in 1870; the measure was based on sound prin- 
 ciples ; but it did not completely solve the problem. Another 
 experiment was tried in 1881, a surrender to a rebellious 
 movement fastening, as in 1798, on agrarian trouble, and 
 loathsome for many base deeds of wickedness; the joint- 
 ownership of the tenant received the fullest protection; but 
 this was accomplished by so bad a process that the Irish 
 land system has been almost torn to pieces. The Irish 
 
 1 Burke, with his superior insight, saw even a century ago that the 
 Irish tenant was morally a joint-owner of the land, and indicated, too, the 
 true principles by which his joint-ownership should be vindicated by law, 
 namely, turning him into a copyholder at a just rent. 
 
 2 [It should be remembered that this paragraph was written in 1895. 
 See Chapter xi.j
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 335 
 
 tenant has now large proprietary rights in the land ; his mode 
 of tenure, once perhaps the worst in Europe, has been made 
 liberal in the highest degree ; but the Irish landlord has been 
 grossly wronged ; and the relations between the two classes 
 have been so adjusted that a notion is abroad that the whole 
 landed system of Ireland must be turned upside down, by a 
 general expropriation of Irish landlords and the conversion of 
 tenants into owners in their stead, as if Irish confiscations had 
 not already pointed their moral. 
 
 In Ireland, however, as too often has been the case in 
 India, Nature ere long suddenly interposed to show, by an 
 awful example, what terrible ills may overtake a community, 
 seated on the land in overflowing multitudes, and depending for 
 existence on a supply of perishable food. In the autumn of 
 1845 the potato failed, to a considerable extent, in most parts 
 of Ireland ; and the results, though less tragic than they were to 
 become, were, even from the first moment, dreadful. No 
 premonitory signs of the visitation had appeared ; it fell on the 
 land like the ravage of war and pestilence. The millions of 
 wretchedness, vegetating on patches of the soil, were torn from 
 their homes in destitute masses, driven to and fro in search of 
 the means of life; and even the classes next above were 
 reduced to extreme want. This was especially the condition 
 of things in the great Celtic districts west of the Shannon, and 
 in three or four of the counties of Munster, in which poverty 
 had for ages prevailed ; and though famine was largely averted 
 in these, the enormously dense population cruelly suffered. In 
 the better parts of Ireland there was less actual want; but 
 even in these there was great distress ; loud murmurs of 
 discontent were heard, and society became more or less 
 disorganised. These evils, however, were but the prelude to 
 the appalling catastrophe which quickly followed. In 1846 
 the potato all but wholly perished ; the crop of cereals too was 
 lamentably short ; and dearth, which became devouring famine
 
 336 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 in too many places, spread over nine-tenths certainly of the 
 afflicted country. The recently made Poor Law, as may be 
 supposed, was utterly unable to meet the strain of starving 
 millions crying out for relief; the efforts made by the Govern- 
 ment, gigantic as they were, but not well conceived in some 
 respects, proved to a certain extent fruitless ; and though the 
 destitute population was for the most part saved, many 
 thousands of lives were unhappily lost. In nearly all the 
 poverty-stricken districts, wherever the land had been densely 
 occupied, wherever the means of communication were few, and 
 especially along the distant coasts of the sea, the famine had 
 a fearfully large tale of victims ; it was a famine of the middle 
 ages in the nineteenth century. The more prosperous counties 
 witnessed no scenes like these; but still they suffered severely; 
 and almost everywhere disease and fever followed in the train 
 of indigence. Meantime as the calamity developed itself, 
 society in some districts simply went to rack; and hundreds 
 of thousands of peasants fled from a land which seemed 
 smitten as it were by a plague of Egypt. 
 
 The attempts made by the State to cope with this crisis 
 were extraordinary, and successful in the main ; but, as we 
 have said, they were not without mistakes ; they strikingly 
 showed how difficult it was for a Government, ruled by English 
 ideas, to deal with the disaster which had befallen Ireland. 
 O'Connell by this time was approaching his end; the great 
 agitator, baffled and sick at heart, had almost left the political 
 scene; but when it had become evident that famine was 
 threatening Ireland, with other thoughtful men, he adjured 
 the Ministry not to permit the export of grain from Ireland 
 until the population had been secured a sufficient amount of 
 food. But the principle of laissez faire then prevailed in 
 our Councils; a proposal of the kind was rejected, as an 
 illegitimate interference with trade ; and, indeed, there were 
 solid objections to it, though it would probably have been tried
 
 X -J From 1829 to 1868. 337 
 
 by a Parliament of this day. Peel, however, with a true states- 
 man's instinct, did not allow the relief of Irish distress to 
 depend wholly on the so-called laws of supply and demand; 
 he caused large supplies of corn and flour to be secretly 
 introduced into the most impoverished districts; he set a 
 system of Public Works on foot; and by these means the 
 suffering of 1845 was, to a very considerable extent, lessened. 
 He had left the helm when the trial of 1 846 came ; Lord John 
 Russell and his colleagues had to confront a calamity infinitely 
 worse and more general. They were able, humane, and en- 
 lightened men ; they were firmly resolved that the starving 
 multitudes of Ireland should be, if possible, fed; with this 
 object in view they freely lavished, with the approval of 
 Parliament, the wealth of the Treasury. Nor can it be doubted 
 that they achieved great results; hundreds of thousands of 
 lives were beyond question saved ; the fell hand of famine was 
 removed from many districts; the land passed through an 
 ordeal of fire, scathed indeed cruelly, but still spared. The 
 Government, however, were too much swayed by economic 
 doctrines, which probably would have had sufficiently good 
 results in Great Britain, but which, in some measure, were 
 wrongly applied to Ireland. They did not follow the example 
 of Peel; they left to the resources of ordinary trade the supply 
 of food to the poor and remote parts of Ireland ; this would 
 have done well enough in a commercial country, but was 
 unfortunate in one where there was comparatively little traffic ; 
 and, in consequence, many unhappy beings perished. The 
 Government, too, refused to expend any money on reproduc- 
 tive Public Works, for this would check, they imagined, private 
 enterprise, a notion, in the existing state of things, most false ; 
 and yet they squandered enormous sums, at the rate, indeed, 
 of five millions a year, on useless works, nearly all to this day 
 unfinished. They made the conditions of relief, moreover, 
 stringent in the extreme; the peasant was compelled to give 
 
 M. i. 22
 
 333 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 up all but the smallest plot of land before he could obtain aid 
 from the State; and if this principle was certainly sound, it 
 was carried out with unbending harshness, and it provoked 
 far-spreading terror and discontent. And while the Govern- 
 ment were giving effect to a policy, of which the necessary 
 result was to force multitudes of beings from their little homes, 
 they did nothing to make provision for the immense emigration 
 which quickly followed ; this, too, was abandoned to trade and 
 its energies. The consequences were lamentable in the highest 
 degree ; hundreds of fugitives from the famine met untimely 
 deaths in the bad and half-seaworthy vessels of that day, and 
 never saw a new home across the Atlantic 1 . 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, errors like these the Govern- 
 ment, we repeat, did prevent famine, except in a few isolated 
 and remote spois ; it indisputably deserves the high praise of 
 history. Its conduct contrasts most honourably with that of 
 the Irish Parliament and Executive in 1740-1, when a dis- 
 astrous famine had swept over the land*; these were then in 
 their worst and lowest state ; and they appear to have done 
 scarcely anything to mitigate distress. And whatever may have 
 been the shortcomings of the State, the heart of the English 
 people went out to Ireland ; its charity was most profuse and 
 noble ; it showed in many ways the most kindly sympathy. 
 This impulse, indeed, was world-wide and general ; contribu- 
 tions for the starving Irish millions flowed in from the United 
 States, from all lands on the Continent, and even from the 
 Ottoman Empire ; the sorrows of Ireland had made mankind 
 her kin. Nor were numberless and magnificent instances of 
 
 1 A noble-minded philanthropist, the late Sir Stephen De Vere, 
 braved the horrors of more than one of these passages in order to direct the 
 attention of the Government to these evils. Another, Mr Vere Foster, 
 followed his example. 
 
 * Very interesting details respecting this famine will be found in 
 Berkeley's Letters. [See also The Groans o) Ireland, 174^. The com- 
 parison in the text is unfair to the Irish Parliament.]
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 339 
 
 good works wanting on the part of Irishmen of the upper 
 classes, and especially of the great landed gentry. Too many 
 evictions indeed took place ; too many peasants were expelled 
 from their dwellings, in circumstances that must be called 
 deplorable ; but the Government, it must be remembered, had 
 set the example of this by making the surrender of land a 
 condition of relief; and it encouraged evictions by different 
 means, for the belief was universal that the petty occupiers of 
 the soil must, by some process or other, be removed from it. 
 But rents and arrears of rents were very largely remitted ; 
 estates were deeply mortgaged to procure funds to make 
 provision for humble dependents; great works of enclosure 
 were completed, at the expense of landlords, in order to create 
 supplies of wages ; hundreds of families of the higher orders 
 were zealous in deeds of good. The facts should be noticed, 
 for the conduct of the Irish gentry in the Famine of 1845-7, 
 as it has been named, has been repeatedly denounced by 
 lying demagogues, for the unscrupulous purposes of mere 
 faction. 
 
 The events of 1846-7 aroused fierce passions in Ireland, 
 which culminated at last in a petty show of rebellion. This 
 movement was altogether different in character and aim from 
 the great Repeal movement. O'Connell had by this time 
 gone he had sunk broken-hearted into the grave, a light 
 disappearing in gloomy eclipse ; and the more violent spirits 
 of the young Ireland party, indignant at what they denounced 
 as the wicked Irish policy of the British Government, lifted up 
 their heads again, and began to think of a rising. An attempt 
 was made to stir up the country ; an incendiary Press was set 
 up in the capital ; appeals were made to the people to take up 
 arms and to die in the field, not in a ditch, of starvation. The 
 French Revolution of 1848 gave an impulse to an agitation of 
 no essential force ; a deputation from Ireland was received by 
 Lamartine ; and the condition of affairs in Dublin, and in a 
 
 22 2
 
 340 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 few other districts, appeared menacing in the spring of that 
 year. The Catholic priesthood, however, condemned the 
 movement, and kept the Catholic masses aloof; its leaders, in 
 fact, were for the most part Protestants; it had more in 
 common with the United Irish movement of 1793-8 than with 
 those of which O'Connell was the head. The " chiefs of the 
 men of 1848," as they were called, were easily put down by the 
 arm of the law ; some were prosecuted and sent into exile 
 abroad; and a miserable exhibition of puny armed force, 
 directed by Smith O'Brien, a landed gentleman of considerable 
 parts, but a vain enthusiast, was suppressed by a small party 
 of police. The rising was treated in England with contempt 
 and ridicule ; but it might have been more grave than it 
 actually was had not Smith O'Brien, greatly to his honour, 
 refused to appeal to agrarian passions and to proclaim a war 
 to the knife against landlords, as his less scrupulous partisans 
 advised. The failure, however, of 1848 left a legacy, so to 
 speak, which deserves notice. John Finton Lalor, one of the 
 minor leaders, an obscure but a capable man, saw the power 
 of the ideas of 1793-8; he adopted the doctrines of the 
 extreme United Irishmen ; he placed on record sentiments of 
 no slight significance. "The cry of Irish nationality," he 
 wrote in substance, " and the cry against the Union, are of 
 little use ; they have no real hold on the minds of the people ; 
 what the peasantry want is the land for themselves; this cry 
 must be combined with the others; the British Government 
 can be only attacked successfully through an attack on the 
 Irish landed gentry." This republication of the United Irish 
 faith attracted no attention at the time; but it has indicated 
 the unquestionable truth that, although nearly a century has 
 elapsed, it has been impossible to create in Ireland a general 
 and persistent movement against the Union that has continued 
 in force for any length of time ; and it has marked out, as it 
 were, the lines of the agitation of late years in Ireland, revolu-
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 341 
 
 tionary and agrarian at once, and characterised by a savage 
 war against rent and landlords. 
 
 The emigration from Ireland, meanwhile, had continued; 
 it was being developed into that great exodus of the Irish race 
 which has so powerfully affected subsequent events. The 
 Queen visited Ireland in 1849 ; notwithstanding the famine 
 and the late rising she received an enthusiastic greeting, an 
 incident that conveys its own lesson; that the visit has not 
 been often repeated and prolonged has been one of the few 
 mistakes of a most glorious reign. Society in Ireland was now 
 gradually settling down ; the occasion seemed a fitting one to 
 make a great experiment in the adjustment of Irish landed 
 relations. Little had hitherto been done for the occupier of 
 the soil ; but the events of the last few years, it was thought, 
 would make the subject of his tenure of slight importance ; and 
 the Government turned their eyes towards the Irish landed 
 gentry. That order of men, from many causes, of which mere 
 extravagance was certainly the least, had had their estates 
 heavily charged with debt ; the law made the transfer of these 
 difficult ; and they had suffered terribly through the effects of the 
 famine. At the same time they had lost most of their political 
 power since 1828, and the events that followed; they had 
 become divided more and more from their tenants ; they had 
 been deprived of much local influence, through the growing 
 bureaucratic rule of the Castle ; and they had, as a class, 
 provoked opinion in England, which forgot that the evictions it 
 condemned had been encouraged by the State and made a 
 part of its policy. They were, in a word, weak, isolated, and 
 unpopular; it was resolved to expropriate by a summary 
 process as many of the body as it was supposed could not 
 fully discharge the duties of property. An Act of Parliament 
 of the most drastic kind was passed to effect the sale of Irish 
 Encumbered Estates, and a tribunal was set up to carry out its 
 objects. The proceedings that followed had too much resem-
 
 34 2 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 blance to the shameful confiscations of the seventeenth century. 
 Estates were flung into the market wholesale, until land 
 became a mere drug; hundreds of old and worthy families 
 were involved in ruin ; the* rights of thousands of creditors 
 were ruthlessly destroyed. This state of things went on for 
 some years ; and ultimately nearly a sixth part of the land of 
 Ireland has been transferred under the Encumbered Estates 
 Acts. Confiscation, however, is seldom a good thing; this 
 policy of wrong has proved a complete failure. Its authors 
 hoped that a large number of Englishmen and Scotchmen 
 possessing wealth would become owners of the Irish land to a 
 considerable extent; and that these would improve the con- 
 dition of the occupiers of the soil, and develope the resources 
 of a backward country. The result has been almost wholly 
 the reverse : English and Scotch capital has only reached the 
 land of Ireland in the mischievous form of great absentee 
 mortgages; the purchasers under the Encumbered Estates 
 Acts have been nearly all poor and hard-fisted Irishmen, for 
 the most part of an inferior class; and these have proved 
 landlords of a very bad type, successors of the nearly extinct 
 middleman, and gravely responsible for all that has been worst 
 in Irish landed relations for many years. The Encumbered 
 Estates Acts, too, it is scarcely necessary to say, have struck a 
 blow at the Irish landed gentry from the effects of which they 
 have never recovered ; and the consequences have been, in 
 many ways, unfortunate. 
 
 The Census of 1851 disclosed the fact that the population 
 of Ireland had been reduced by the huge number of two 
 millions of souls. This diminution has steadily gone on ; a 
 new Irish people, in truth, has been created by emigration, in 
 the United States. History will have to say, in the future, 
 whether this change has ultimately made for good or for evil ; 
 but unquestionably it had most beneficial effects on the 
 material condition of Ireland for many years. A dense mass
 
 x] From 1829 to 1868. 343 
 
 of wretchedness, which preyed on the land, injured all its 
 relations, and opposed an almost insuperable bar to social 
 progress, was removed by the events of 1845-7 > the imme- 
 diate good that followed was not doubtful. Districts filled by 
 millions who could not till them, were laid open to improved 
 husbandry ; the wages of labour rapidly increased ; the 
 competition for the soil, for a time, lessened ; rent ceased to 
 be unnaturally forced up. A long period ensued, in which 
 Ireland made a certain and steady advance in wealth, and put 
 on a look of even marked prosperity. The middleman 
 tenures almost disappeared ; thousands of acres were occupied 
 by English and Scotch farmers, who spent large sums in 
 improvements of many kinds; the results, for many years, 
 were full of brilliant promise. The mud hovel and the potato 
 patch vanished gradually from large and increasing areas ; the 
 face of the landscape wore a better aspect ; the Ireland of 
 half-starving multitudes was seen no more. A number of 
 causes concurred to multiply the resources of the country in 
 different ways ; the prices of agricultural produce were high ; 
 the railway system opened new markets and made them easy 
 of access ; immense sums were lent by the State on favourable 
 terms for great works of drainage ; the Irish linen manufacture 
 made decisive strides. The material good effected was 
 striking and great; the country seemed transformed in many 
 places as regards its husbandry and the breeds of its animals ; 
 some of the towns, especially Belfast, grew immensely in 
 population and wealth ; above all the condition of nine-tenths 
 certainly of the peasantry was extraordinarily improved. The 
 misery and rags of the past seldom offended the eye; the 
 potato ceased to be the only chief staple of food. 
 
 This material progress, too, seemed to many observers 
 accompanied by a real moral progress. The Ireland of 
 1852-65 appeared in a state of comparative content; scarcely 
 a ripple disturbed the surface of things ; the great body of the
 
 : : , Inland. [CHAP. 
 
 people uttered no murmurs. The memories of the late 
 troubled era were deemed forgotten ; not a sound against the 
 Union was heard; political agitation was voted a thing of the 
 past. A movement in favour of Tenant Right, indeed, made 
 a feint stir in 18523 ; bat it passed away and had no results, 
 an attempt to improve Irish landed relations, in accord with 
 the proposals of the Devon Commission, foiled by a not 
 creditable intrigue in Parliament, collapsed, and yet no general 
 complaints were made. Even agrarian disorder immensely 
 diminished; a few agrarian crimes were provoked, now and 
 then, by harsh evictions and acts of the kind ; but it sank to 
 an ebb never known before; it seemed extinguished by the 
 prosperity of the time. The land, as a whole, was almost at 
 rest; the relations between the owners and the occupiers of 
 the soil were thought to have very greatly improved, for rents 
 were well paid, and there was little social trouble; the old 
 divisions between them seemed much less; even laws, framed 
 on English ideas and disregarding the moral rights of the 
 Irish tenant, provoked no opposition worthy of the name. 
 Meanwhile the forces that had crossed British rule in Ireland, 
 and had shaken society but a short time before, had, ap- 
 parently, lost their hold on the people; they were, at least, 
 quiescent and scarcely thought of. The heads of the Irish 
 Catholic Church, recollecting the events of 1848, forbade their 
 clergy to take part in politics, and set their faces against all 
 movements of the kind. The representation of Catholic 
 Ireland had sunk into a weak and querulous faction, oc- 
 casionally trying to make itself felt by throwing its weight into 
 the scales of party, but usually dragged in the wake of 
 Liberal Ministries. Ireland seemed peaceable, submissive, 
 reconciled to England ; the period was like that of the reign 
 
 of Ormond between the Restoration and the Revolution of 
 
 r68& 
 
 In these circumstances many believed that the "Pacata
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 3^5 
 
 Hibernia " of Tudor writers had emerged over the horizon at 
 last ; a large majority of British statesmen thought the " Irish 
 difficulty" had been set at rest Yet Ireland was tranquil on 
 the surface only ; elements of disorder and peril were gathering 
 by degrees, which were to explode the shallow optimism of 
 the hour. The growth of Irish prosperity was beyond dispute ; 
 but it mainly depended on a mere accident, the flourishing 
 state of agriculture and almost excessive prices. The social 
 structure of Ireland had been radically changed, with con- 
 sequences, in many respects, excellent; but the system of 
 small farms, and all that this implies, remained much more 
 general than was commonly supposed ; it deserves notice that 
 the large English and Scotch occupiers who had "planted" 
 whole districts seldom fared well ; many left the country, like 
 the colonists of old, or sank into the mass of the Irishry. 
 Meanwhile landed relations had not become essentially better 
 in some of their features, in spite of apparent signs to the 
 contrary; in others they grew worse by degrees. The 
 bureaucratic rule of the Castle successfully enforced obedience 
 to law ; but it had continued to weaken the landed gentry, and 
 this was attended with many evils. That order of men, we 
 have said, in the last century resembled the old seigneurs of 
 France; they had developed into an aristocracy attached to 
 their country, and kindly in nature, many as were their faults : 
 they were now being assimilated again to the French seigneurs, 
 living among dependents, but without influence, and ruled by 
 the officials of a Central Government They had thus privi- 
 leges without powers or duties, a thoroughly false position for 
 a dominant class, which gradually lessened the deference felt 
 for them, and estranged them more and more from the people ; 
 and, at the same time, the purchasers of lands under the 
 Encumbered Estates Acts proved, we have seen, generally 
 harsh landlords, and this cast discredit on the body of 
 landlords as a whole. Things went on well enough while the
 
 346 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 tenant-farmer throve ; but discontent began slowly to seethe ; 
 and signs of it occasionally appeared in agrarian crimes, 
 though as yet too few to attract much notice. Simultaneously 
 rents rose, as the riches of the country increased ; and, in 
 addition, the rights which the tenant had gained through 
 improvement and the sale of "goodwill," rights equivalent 
 often to real joint-ownership, had been augmented to an 
 extraordinary extent. Yet these rights were still kept outside 
 the pale of the law ; and thus if much positive wrong was not 
 frequently done, law and fact continued to be in conflict 
 throughout the sphere of Irish landed relations. 
 
 All this sank deep into the minds of the peasantry ; if they 
 acquiesced, they had the memory of the Celt ; they had ac- 
 quired a rapidly increasing sense of their power, as education 
 had made way among them ; and though they did not combine 
 in any agrarian movement, for an opportunity did not occur, 
 their apparent content was not real. A young generation too 
 of priests was arising, which looked to agitation and its hopes 
 again ; these secretly fanned a flame beneath its ashes ; and 
 the complete failure of reform as regards the land, in Parlia- 
 ment, caused sullen passions to burn beneath the surface. 
 The discontent, however, beginning to gather, had its principal 
 source and origin outside Ireland. The millions of emigrants 
 since 1846 had formed a new Ireland in the far West; they 
 had never forgiven the British Government for extruding them, 
 as they thought, from their homes, nor yet the evictions of a 
 terrible time ; and they had become a formidable power in the 
 United States, incensed against England and Irish landlords. 
 The exiles and their descendants were in close contact with 
 the Irish peasantry in numberless ways ; their communications 
 became every year more frequent; and the feelings they 
 treasured passed by degrees, to some extent, into the hearts of 
 the people which remained seated on the soil of Ireland, and 
 especially of the Catholic masses. Hundreds of Irish Americans
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 347 
 
 preached to their kinsfolk hatred of England and of the Irish 
 landed gentry ; rebellious and socialistic ideas, as regards the 
 land especially, were widely diffused. These influences were 
 almost dormant for years ; their existence was not suspected by 
 British statesmen ; they did not even become strongly manifest 
 in the petty rising which marks the close of this period. But 
 they had attracted the notice of keen-eyed observers as early 
 as 1864-65; and unquestionably they supplied potent elements 
 to the revolutionary and anarchic agrarian outbreak of 1879-80 
 and 1886-7. 
 
 We may glance back at this point of time at the intellectual 
 growth and progress of Ireland since the later years of the 
 eighteenth century. The Established Church, we have said, 
 has produced some great divines; we may refer to Magee, 
 O'Brien, Fitzgerald, Salmon ; the Catholic Irish Church, too, 
 has had illustrious names, Doyle, Murray, Russell, and several 
 others. The Irish Bench and Bar has shown a noble succes- 
 sion of advocates and lawyers of the first order; real orators, 
 from Curran to Plunket, Sheil and Whiteside; great jurists, 
 Saurin, Perrin, Lefroy ; and O'Connell, easily supreme in the 
 field of politics. In Literature and Philosophy there have 
 been no " lights of the world " compared to Swift, to Berkeley, 
 to Burke, but in either sphere we find writers of rare gifts and 
 excellence. Sterne may fitly be called the Irish Rousseau; 
 Moore is the first of Irish lyrical poets, filled in the highest 
 degree with the Celtic genius ; Davis approaches him, and had 
 a stronger intellect ; Archer Butler, McCullagh, Brinkley, Ball, 
 Butt, held high places in the domain of thought. In History, 
 Lecky and Bryce rank among the first historians of the English 
 tongue, whose works on Ireland should be prized by their 
 countrymen; Mahan, the best living authority on naval warfare, 
 is believed to be of Irish descent. Science has also placed 
 many great Irishmen on her roll ; the mind of Ireland during 
 this period has been especially rich in fiction. Of these
 
 348 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 writers, beside the author otjatie Eyre, Maria Edgevvorth is by 
 far the greatest ; inferior to Jane Austen in delicacy of touch, 
 she has more breadth and knowledge of mankind ; but her 
 distinctive merit and its value is immense is that she has 
 drawn incomparable sketches of the life and manners of Irish 
 society in its higher grades. The distinction in letters re- 
 ferred to before, between Protestant and Catholic Ireland, has 
 continued down to the present time; it reflects the still 
 existing divisions of race and faith ; we see this very clearly in 
 Miss Edgeworth's novels, happiest in their description of the 
 upper class in Ireland, and in those of Banim and Carleton, 
 which bring before us the feelings and thoughts of the Irish 
 peasant. The mind of Catholic Ireland still turns as before to 
 a great extent to the past, and in this province it has done 
 great things; O'Donovan, O'Curry, Sullivan, and many others, 
 have explored Irish antiquities with extraordinary research. 
 Ireland has had few remarkable painters and architects ; but 
 she has given the world more than one renowned sculptor ; and 
 in the histrionic, the handmaid of the dramatic art, Miss 
 O'Neill was the most perfect Juliet of her day. Yet, in spite 
 of this fine record of the works of the intellect, the state of 
 education in Ireland is still backward. The University of 
 Dublin, indeed, has long ago blotted out the obsolete reproach 
 of the "Silent Sister"; she has among her sons writers of 
 high merit. But the standard of education in Ireland, we 
 repeat, is to this day low, compared with that of England 
 or Scotland. 
 
 The elements of trouble which had been gathering beneath 
 the surface in Ireland for a long time, came at last to a head 
 in an abortive outbreak. Societies, called by the old Celtic 
 name of Fenian, had been formed in the United States by 
 degrees; they were composed of Irish emigrants and their 
 sons ; they had endeavoured to propagate in Ireland with a 
 definite aim and with organised means the rebellious doctrines
 
 From 1829 to 1868. 
 
 referred to. The end of the American Civil War, through 
 which Irish soldiers were sent adrift with no occupation, in 
 many thousands, gave a great impulse to these conspiracies ; 
 and a movement was set on foot which had as its object an 
 armed rising in Ireland and a confiscation of the land. The 
 Confederates in the United States combined in large numbers; 
 considerable sums of money were raised; the plans of the 
 leaders were to make a descent on Ireland with the officers and 
 staff of a military force, to call on the peasantry to assist them 
 in the field, and to divide the estates of the gentry among the 
 " Fenian army." Agents were despatched to Ireland to effect 
 their projects ; some thousands perhaps of the youth of the 
 towns, and of reckless, landless, and broken men were enrolled 
 in the musters of the Fenian levies; and dexterous attempts 
 were made to debauch British regiments and secretly to procure 
 supplies. The movement, however, proved a sorry failure, 
 almost as impotent as that of 1848. The Irish priesthood 
 denounced Fenianism as wicked anarchy ; the occupiers of the 
 soil, ready enough to join in a cry for reduced rents and 
 improved tenures, feared a revolution which might have 
 deprived them of their farms; self-interest kept them aloof 
 from it. A few Irish-American soldiers landed in Ireland in 
 the first months of 1867; but they found no force, except on 
 paper, to command; they were either arrested or allowed to 
 escape ; and three or four petty bands, which made an attempt 
 to rise, were dissipated by the Constabulary without the loss of 
 blood. Two or three of the leaders were tried and punished; 
 but the whole affair was over in a very short time, if trouble 
 was still latent beneath the surface of things. Some outrages, 
 however, took place in England, the expiring efforts of 
 Fenianism in great towns ; and these, like flashes of lightning 
 in a serene sky, turned the minds of Englishmen to the 
 state of Ireland, which, they had believed, had been for years 
 at peace. Mr Gladstone took up the subject with characteristic
 
 350 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 energy; he came into power after the General Election of 
 1868 ; and he entered on the path of reform for Ireland, which 
 he has ever since followed wherever it has led. 
 
 The ensuing period was one of immense change in Ireland, 
 political, social and economic ; it is not comprised in this brief 
 narrative. History will have to pronounce hereafter on the 
 nature and tendencies of the policy since adopted or proposed 
 in Irish affairs. 
 
 It remains for us, however, to say a few words on the general 
 condition of Ireland since the Union. The hopes of Pitt have 
 not been fully realised ; Ireland is not wholly one in heart with 
 Great Britain ; she has not made the material progress which 
 Pitt expected. The old divisions in her social structure con- 
 tinue ; Catholic and Protestant Ireland remain apart, separated 
 by profound distinctions of race and faith. If Protestant 
 Ireland is loyal to the State and the Union, and so 
 is the Irish Catholic upper class, a large part of Catholic 
 Ireland is not; it is not bound to England in genuine 
 sympathy. Ireland is still infinitely behind Great Britain 
 in all that constitutes civilised life; she is still the weak and 
 distorted member of the Three Kingdoms. And it would be 
 vain to deny that legislation and administration for Ireland 
 have been, sometimes, ill conceived; that more than one 
 measure passed by the Imperial Parliament had done real, nay, 
 great mischief, and that the system pursued at the Castle has 
 been, in some respects, mistaken; above all, it must be ad- 
 mitted, that several Irish reforms, of supreme importance, have 
 been deferred, and, especially, have been often too late. Irish 
 interests have been repeatedly postponed to give place to 
 English and Scotch questions; Ireland has been made the 
 stalking-horse of British party ; and the great majority of 
 British statesmen have found it very difficult to understand 
 Ireland, to minister to her wants, to comprehend her ideas. If 
 the occupiers of the Irish soil have obtained immense advan-
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 351 
 
 tages, the Irish landed gentry have been unjustly treated and 
 reduced to a state of social impotence ; the representation of 
 Ireland is very bad; public opinion, in Ireland, is feeble, 
 unsound, unhealthy. Yet, notwithstanding these undoubted 
 drawbacks, the Union, and the system of government that has 
 been a part of it, have been attended by immense and far 
 overbalancing good. Most of the grievances of the Ireland of 
 the past have been removed ; the few that remain will soon 
 disappear ; Ireland has made an extraordinary advance in 
 wealth; however it may be ascribed to the events of 1846-7, the 
 condition of the mass of the population shows an improvement, 
 which, sixty years ago, would have been thought impossible. 
 Nor has real moral and social progress been wanting; the 
 rebellious Ulster of 1793 is, in its Teutonic parts, devoted to 
 England ; all Protestant Ireland, the Catholic gentry, an over- 
 whelming majority of the professional and commercial classes, 
 in a word, the wealth, the education and the thought of Ireland, 
 with rare exceptions, befriend the Union, and are deeply 
 attached to the British connection ; the demand for " Repeal," 
 or, for the same thing, " Home Rule," as the events of many 
 years have proved, has no real hold on the Irish masses; even the 
 peasant occupiers of the Irish soil, after the enormous benefits 
 that have been lavished on them, appear disposed to rest and 
 be thankful, spite of the appeals of lay and sacerdotal dema- 
 gogues. But the most decisive proof of the good which the 
 Union has done, is that through the many troubles of well-nigh 
 a century, it has succeeded in making the law administered and 
 obeyed in Ireland in a way never known before; that it has 
 kept Protestant ascendency down, and made Catholic subjec- 
 tion a thing of the past; that it has maintained a salutary 
 restraint on warring Irish factions ; that, if it has not effaced 
 the ills of distinctions of race and faith, it has checked the 
 worst animosities which grew out from them. In these im- 
 portant respects the contrast presented by the Ireland of
 
 352 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 1790-95, and the Ireland of 1890-95 must strike every well- 
 informed enquirer. 
 
 In considering this subject we must recollect, besides, what 
 the condition of Ireland was before Pitt's great measure. 
 Undoubtedly the Union had defects in itself, and was ac- 
 complished by means that must be deplored, and also at an 
 unpropitious time ; undoubtedly it has been, in some degree, a 
 failure. But those who cry it down because it has not 
 transformed the Ireland of 1800 into a social paradise, and 
 made the desert blossom like a rose, appear to forget, if they 
 ever knew, that the Ireland of that day was a wreck of civil 
 war, to a great extent in a half-barbarous state, above all 
 bleeding from the wounds of a horrible conflict of race and 
 faith, which had effaced civilisation ere it was grown up, 
 and had aroused the worst hatreds and strife of the past. 
 These facts must be taken into account; they reasonably 
 explain why, in some respects, the Union has not effected all 
 that was "hoped from it. Circumstance, too, has told against 
 the Union over and over again ; it has been denounced as the 
 cause of ills which in no sense can be ascribed to it. To refer 
 only to two instances, the Tory reaction against the French 
 Revolution, and the disputes of the Catholics about the veto, 
 retarded Emancipation much more than the Union or anything 
 pertaining to it ; and the Irish Land Question would probably 
 have been settled long ago but for the accident of the fall of 
 Peel's Government, and, in some degree, the events of the 
 Famine. 
 
 It would be an invidious, nay, an impossible task to attempt 
 to adjust the balance of right and wrong between England and 
 Ireland through long centuries. But England owes a large debt 
 to Ireland, without reference to considerations like these. We 
 have alluded to some of the great men of Catholic Ireland, who 
 won renown for her in foreign lands; unhappily, but for no faults 
 of their own, they were for the most part resolute, if most
 
 x.] From 1829 to 1868. 353 
 
 honourable foes of England. But Catholic Ireland has, for some 
 time past, seen better days ; hundreds of her sons have risen to 
 eminence in our Imperial state; thousands have fought and 
 conquered in the battles of England. "Where were the aliens 
 at Waterloo?" was the just retort of an Irish orator to a vulgar 
 sneer; in War, in Letters, in all the arts of Peace, the aliens have 
 shed glory on the British name. Nor should Englishmen forget 
 the great deeds of Protestant Ireland ; Burke remains the first 
 of our political thinkers; Eyre Coote, Canning, the two 
 Lawrences, and Dufferin stand high among the founders or 
 governors of our Indian Empire; Arthur Wellesley, one of the 
 "English in Ireland," was born an Irishman; Wolseley and 
 Roberts, the great living soldiers of the British army, are 
 Irishmen, in no doubtful sense. Yet we should set aside distinc- 
 tion of race in looking back at all that Ireland has done for 
 England; and it should be added that, probably, the Celtic 
 Irish genius has been a much more powerful, if a subtle element, 
 in giving beauty and grace to the English intellect, and even 
 in fashioning its best works, than is suspected by the great mass 
 of Englishmen. For these, not to speak of many other reasons, 
 England is bound generously to discharge a debt which Ireland 
 has a just right to demand. 
 
 In following the course of Irish History, until we reached 
 the close of the seventeenth century, we have pointed out how 
 much that was most unfortunate may be ascribed to circum- 
 stances, and to what we call accident. The same remark 
 applies to Irish History down to this day. How different might 
 its course have been, had William III, following the traditions 
 of the House of Nassau, secured religious liberty to the Irish 
 Catholic, and been true to his word after the fall of Limerick ; 
 had Pitt, before the Union, been as firm of purpose as he had 
 been on other occasions ; had Catholic emancipation been 
 accomplished in 1825, not in 1829 ! These considerations, we 
 repeat, do not excuse acts of injustice or a policy of folly or 
 
 M. i. 23
 
 354 Ireland. [CHAP. x. 
 
 wrong; but they should diminish the bitterness of evil memories; 
 they should lead us to judge events with a calm and sane 
 mind ; while they give a mournful interest to Irish History, 
 they should teach the lesson of charity and good will. What- 
 ever may be the policy pursued towards Ireland, time must 
 elapse before the deep wounds of the past can be completely 
 healed, before the old and bad distinctions can be smoothed 
 away; before there can be a real Union of Hearts with England, 
 not the false shibboleth of the thoughtless partisan, but the 
 genuine reconciliation of two still divided peoples. But, while 
 the historical student looking back on the past cannot hope 
 this consummation to be close at hand, he may show how it 
 can be brought more near; above all he may indicate the true 
 moral to be drawn from an impartial survey of the sad but 
 most instructive tale of the affairs of Ireland.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE PERIOD OF REFORM, 18681905. 
 
 THE Fenian conspiracy came as a sharp awakening to 
 Englishmen. For twenty years Ireland had almost entirely 
 slipped out of their calculations. The constant stream of 
 emigration that followed the great Famine seemed, even to 
 clear-sighted men, to have provided a better solution of the 
 Irish problem than any that human wit could have devised. 
 As emigrant-ship after emigrant-ship left the country, and the 
 population, which in 1841 had amounted to over eight millions, 
 sank to little more than four, it seemed as if the lot of those 
 who remained must necessarily improve. Those who thought 
 so had forgotten that, of the thousands who had been forced 
 to quit the country of their birth, there was hardly a man who 
 was not consumed by a fierce hatred of England and an 
 uncontrollable longing for revenge. But it was easier to 
 harbour such feelings than to give practical expression to them. 
 England was strong enough to defy any open attack ; and, 
 with the capture of James Stephens and the collapse of an 
 armed rising in the south of Ireland, the whole Fenian move- 
 ment appeared to have come to an ignominious end. The 
 attack on Clerkenwell gaol and the "murder" of police-sergeant 
 Brett in Manchester destroyed this fond illusion. Fenianism, 
 it was evident, was not dead ; its methods only had changed. 
 From open warfare it had passed to secret conspiracy far 
 more difficult to combat. 
 
 232
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Would it never be possible to pacify Ireland ? Was it true, 
 as Irishmen constantly asserted, that Englishmen could not 
 govern Ireland? The question troubled many thoughtful 
 minds in England. There was no lack of good will towards 
 Ireland ; the difficulty was rather to diagnose her disease. 
 So far as the problem of government was concerned, English 
 statesmanship always seemed to end in a sort of cul-de-sac. 
 The attempt to implant English civilisation by means of 
 English colonists had failed. The Union itself, instead of 
 bringing the two countries nearer to each other, had merely 
 furnished Irishmen with an additional grievance. The question 
 was what course to pursue, what remedy to adopt. Looking 
 at the problem fairly and squarely, with a desire to understand 
 it, Mr Gladstone, whose influence with the majority of his 
 countrymen was at the time greater than that enjoyed by any 
 other statesman, came to the conclusion that the grievances 
 complained of by Irishmen might be grouped under three 
 heads religion, the land, and education. For one thing it 
 was quite certain that the Church of Ireland occupied an 
 anomalous position in a country the majority of whose 
 inhabitants professed another religion. Secondly, there could 
 be no question that there must be something radically wrong 
 with a system of land tenure when a bad harvest resulted in 
 the ejection from their holdings of thousands of individuals 
 dependent for their subsistence on the cultivation of the soil. 
 Finally, it could not be disputed that in the matter of education 
 Ireland stood greatly behind the rest of the United Kingdom. 
 
 The general election of 1868, by placing the Liberal party 
 in power with a substantial majority of 112, furnished Mr 
 Gladstone with the opportunity he sought of solving the Irish 
 problem. Addressing himself at once to the task he had 
 undertaken, he submitted to Parliament early in 1869 a Bill 
 for the disestablishment of the Irish Church. As we have said, 
 the Church of Ireland occupied an anomalous position. It
 
 XL] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 357 
 
 was not the church of the great majority of Irishmen, whose 
 fidelity to Rome had successfully stood the tests of persecution 
 and proselytism. It was not even the church of the Scottish 
 settlers in Ulster, who clung with stubborn tenacity to their 
 Presbyterian form of church government. It was merely the 
 church of what was opprobriously called the "English garrison." 
 But it possessed all the prestige and privileges of a national 
 church. Its wealth was enormous, and out of all proportion 
 to its spiritual requirements. Moreover its integrity was 
 specially guaranteed by the Act of Union. In a word, it 
 represented the ecclesiastical side of the English supremacy in 
 Ireland. It was, as its enemies said, an alien church. That 
 its pretensions were regarded with jealousy by the Roman 
 Catholic hierarchy may be admitted; but that its presence 
 constituted any such grievance to Irishmen that its removal 
 would inspire them with gratitude was extremely doubtful. To 
 Mr Gladstone, however, and those who thought with him, its 
 disestablishment and disendowment were a matter of pressing 
 necessity, if ever the government of Ireland was to be placed 
 on a satisfactory footing; and on July 26, 1869, the Bill 
 received the royal assent. Whether the legislature had taken a 
 wise step, or whether it had furnished, as many thought, a lever 
 for the destruction of the English power in Ireland, time alone 
 could decide. But, in carrying the measure into effect, great 
 care was taken to safeguard all vested interests ; and it is 
 generally admitted that, except for its loss of prestige, the Irish 
 Church has gained in usefulness by the change. 
 
 Having settled the question of the Church, Mr Gladstone 
 proceeded to attack the land problem. We have seen how, in 
 consequence of the confiscations and plantations of the i6th 
 and 1 7th centuries, the land of Ireland had passed almost 
 entirely out of the hands of the native Irish. It had proved 
 impossible to eject them altogether ; but from the position of 
 free tenants, possessing certain definite rights in the soil, they
 
 358 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 had sunk to that of mere tenants at will. The agricultural 
 prosperity that followed the war with France, and the political 
 privileges conferred by the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, had 
 cooperated in bringing about an enormous subdivision of the 
 land. In 1841 it was calculated that there were at least 
 64,839 holdings of not more than one acre in extent; 310,436 
 holdings ranging from one to five acres, and 252,799 holdings 
 of from five to fifteen acres. This meant that there were, at 
 the lowest estimate, not fewer than 3,000,000 persons depen- 
 dent for their subsistence almost entirely on potatoes and 
 a scanty provision of oats. The Famine and subsequent 
 emigration led to a great reduction in the number of these 
 small holdings, especially of those averaging from one to five 
 acres, which in 1864 had fallen to 82,036, and to a correspond- 
 ing increase in the number of larger holdings from fifteen acres 
 upwards. This was no doubt a good thing so far as the 
 country was concerned ; but it did not greatly affect the position 
 of the Irish farmer. 
 
 Except in Ulster, where, owing to the peculiar conditions 
 of the plantation in the reign of James I, a custom had grown 
 up of compensating the out-going tenant for any capital he had 
 invested in his holding, the Irish farmer possessed no rights in 
 the soil cultivated by him. He might drain the land, plant 
 hedges, erect farm-buildings ; but, on failure to pay his rent or 
 at the simple pleasure of his landlord, he could be evicted, and 
 all his improvements relapsed to the owners of the land. The 
 injustice of the system, quite apart from the fact that it placed 
 a premium on idleness and slovenly farming, was apparent. 
 The Bill which Mr Gladstone submitted to Parliament in 
 Feb. 1870 was designed chiefly to remedy this state of affairs. 
 His legislation, to put it briefly, aimed at the following objects, 
 (i) to give a legal sanction to the system of tenant-right 
 prevailing in Ulster wherever it existed ; (2) to promote 
 throughout the country the creation of leases for a period of
 
 XL] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 359 
 
 thirty-one years ; (3) to secure the Irish tenant in the undis- 
 turbed possession of his holding so long as he paid a reasonable 
 or government-valuation rent. Even with the addition of the 
 "Bright clauses," whereby the tenant was enabled, with the 
 support of the State, to become the owner of his holding, the 
 Bill was in no sense a revolutionary measure. It did not even 
 meet the wishes of the tenants for what were called the Three 
 F's a fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free sale. It aimed 
 simply at redressing an intolerable state of affairs, in which the 
 tenant was the mere slave of his landlord, and assimilating the 
 tenure of land in Ireland to that in England. In a word, it 
 established a partnership between landlord and tenant in the 
 ownership of the soil. It did not prove, as Mr Gladstone 
 confidently hoped it would, a " final settlement " of the land 
 question ; but it was undoubtedly an efficient measure of relief. 
 Despite the objections taken to it as an encroachment on the 
 right of free contract, it was on the whole favourably received 
 both by landlords and tenants, and became law in 1870. 
 
 In his attempt to solve the question of higher education 
 Mr Gladstone was less successful. The Irish, whether of the 
 Roman Catholic, Anglican, or Presbyterian confession,' are a 
 strongly religious people. Mr Gladstone unfortunately over- 
 looked this fact. His point of view was practically that of Sir 
 Robert Peel before him. He knew that religious differences 
 ran high in Ireland, and he was above all anxious to avoid 
 fomenting them. The Bill he submitted to Parliament early 
 in 1873 proposed to incorporate Trinity College, Dublin, the 
 Queen's Colleges of Cork and Belfast, the Catholic University, 
 and Magee College at Derry, as affiliated colleges in the one 
 University of Dublin. Each college was to retain its special 
 characteristics as an educational body and its own staff of 
 teachers ; but in examinations for degrees and in the curriculum 
 of the University itself, theology, philosophy and modern 
 history (as subjects leading to contention) were to be excluded.
 
 360 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 The offer of secular education did not meet the wishes of the 
 Irish people; and, the measure being rejected on its second 
 reading by the House of Commons, Mr Gladstone shortly 
 afterwards resigned office to Mr Disraeli (1874). 
 
 Mr Gladstone's well-intentioned and partially successful 
 attempt to remove the grounds of Irish discontent had not 
 solved the Irish problem. On the contrary it had, by justifying 
 the complaint of English misrule, given an incentive to that 
 form of political belief which is summed up in the one word 
 Fenianism. In itself, Fenianism was nothing new. It merely 
 expressed the policy of liberating Ireland from the yoke of 
 England by forcible means. Its spirit had been potent in the 
 counsels of the Confederation of Kilkenny, of the "Patriot 
 Parliament," of the United Irishmen, and of the Young Ireland 
 party. But it received a great impetus from, or, if we may so 
 express it, a philosophical justification in, the doctrine of 
 nationalities which began to dominate political thought about 
 the middle of the nineteenth century. Home Rule, an 
 expression that came into vogue in the early seventies, was a 
 union of these two principles, in other words a philosophical 
 Fenianism. The question, whether the government of Ireland 
 had been conducive to the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number of its inhabitants, admitted of only one answer. The 
 logic of the corollary then let Irishmen govern themselves 
 seemed irrefutable. 
 
 The first apostle of the new movement was Isaac Butt. 
 Butt was not a Fenian like James Stephens. He was a lawyer 
 of strong conservative instincts ; but, as counsel for the Fenian 
 prisoners, he had learned to see things from their point of view, 
 and he had convinced himself that, however mistaken they 
 were in their methods, they themselves were actuated by 
 unselfish and patriotic motives. He himself was inspired by 
 no hatred of England. His belief was that Englishmen, even 
 when influenced by the best motives, had failed to govern
 
 XT.] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 361 
 
 Ireland to the satisfaction of Irishmen. It was only necessary, 
 he thought, to convince them by argument of their failure in 
 order to induce them to change their system and allow 
 Irishmen to govern themselves. It was a quixotic idea, and 
 there is little cause for wonder that under his guidance the 
 movement made little progress. The House of Commons 
 listened with respectful attention to his arguments and 
 immediately passed on to the order of the day. A " Home 
 Rule League," founded in 1872, and its affiliated association 
 the " Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain," met at 
 stated intervals and passed resolutions in favour of national 
 autonomy, a reform of the land laws and of municipal govern- 
 ment; but their proceedings were regarded with languid 
 interest or with open scorn by the Fenians. As time went on, 
 the hopelessness of Butt's methods became apparent. The 
 fact was that the interest recently displayed by Englishmen for 
 Ireland had evaporated ; and it was useless to try to convince 
 them of the reasonableness of Home Rule. 
 
 So at least it seemed to Joseph Biggar, M.P. for county 
 Cavan ; and, in his resentment at the indifference displayed by 
 the House of Commons to Irish affairs, he conceived the idea 
 of obstructing the business of the Empire. If Englishmen 
 would not legislate for Ireland, he was determined they should 
 not legislate for themselves. Help came to him from an 
 unexpected quarter. During one of those academic debates 
 on Home Rule with which Butt annually regaled the House, a 
 reference was made by the Chief Secretary for Ireland to the 
 "Manchester murderers." "No! No!" suddenly interrupted a 
 voice in accents of suppressed passion, " I shall never believe 
 that any murder was committed at Manchester." The voice 
 was that of Charles Stewart Parnell, junior member for county 
 Meath. His exclamation, though drowned in a storm of angry 
 protest, attracted attention in Ireland. Here at last was a man 
 who dared to defy English opinion and give open expression to
 
 362 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 what thousands of Irishmen thought. Henceforth he was a 
 marked man. For the nonce, however, he contented himself 
 with supporting Mr Biggar. Other Irish members lent their 
 assistance, and soon the policy of parliamentary obstruction 
 was in full swing. 
 
 The feeling of amusement with which the House at first 
 regarded the attempt to paralyse public business soon changed 
 to one of indignation when its efficacy was felt. Not only 
 were all contentious measures barred as a matter of course ; 
 but even in the case of such usually undisputed Bills as the 
 Mutiny Bill seventeen divisions were forced. Butt himself 
 regarded the new tactics with disapproval, partly because they 
 seemed to him undignified, partly because he thought they 
 were calculated to damage the cause of Home Rule, by 
 alienating the sympathy of the British public. He was 
 persuaded to administer a sharp rebuke to his unruly followers; 
 but it was soon to appear that, so far as his own authority was 
 concerned, he had been guilty of a fatal blunder. 
 
 Nothing, in fact, had given greater satisfaction in Ireland 
 than the defiant attitude adopted by Parnell and Biggar in 
 regard to English opinion ; and Butt's reprimand was regarded 
 as nothing short of treason to the cause. During the parlia- 
 mentary recess in August 1877, a Home Rule meeting was 
 held at Dublin to consider the state of affairs. The meeting 
 was entirely in sympathy with the new movement ; and, when 
 Parnell, in referring to the attack made on him and Biggar for 
 their unparliamentary conduct, expressed his absolute indiffer- 
 ence to the English Parliament and its wounded dignity, his 
 words were greeted with a storm of applause. The echo was 
 taken up in England ; and, at the annual meeting of the Home 
 Rule Confederation in Liverpool a few months later, Parnell 
 was elected President in place of Butt. 
 
 But Parnell, if he was firmly convinced that it was only in 
 Parliament that the battle of Home Rule could be brought to
 
 xi.] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 363 
 
 a successful issue, saw clearly enough that external pressure 
 was of essential importance in forcing Englishmen to abandon 
 their attitude of indifference to Ireland. Had it not been for 
 the shot into the police van at Manchester the Land Act of 
 1870 would never, he declared, have been passed. His 
 scarcely veiled appeal to physical force as a factor in the 
 settlement of the Irish question won him much sympathy in 
 Fenian circles, and brought him into contact with Michael 
 Davitt. Davitt was a confirmed Fenian, but he was more a 
 social reformer than a politician. The son of a Mayo peasant, 
 he knew by bitter personal experience what eviction meant to 
 men of his class. As a mere boy he had played his part in the 
 Fenian conspiracy, and had paid the penalty for his political 
 belief by a long imprisonment in Dartmoor gaol. He was a 
 man of studious habits, and, pondering over the Irish problem 
 during his years of confinement, he had become convinced of 
 the truth of Lalor's doctrine that the political regeneration of 
 Ireland could only be accomplished by means of an agrarian 
 revolution. The possession of the soil lay, in his opinion, at 
 the bottom of the Irish problem. The Irish peasant, he knew, 
 cared for nothing so much as he did for his little plot of ground 
 and the associations connected with it. Could the possession of 
 the soil be made the lever to the political question, the national 
 problem would be solved. In 1878 Davitt was restored to 
 freedom on a ticket-of-leave ; and among those who met 
 together to welcome him on his return to Ireland was Parnell. 
 In Parnell he thought he had discovered a man of his own way 
 of thinking, and shortly afterwards he sailed for America on a 
 lecturing tour with the object of enlisting the active sympathy 
 of the Fenian leaders there in Parnell's plan of parliamentary 
 agitation. 
 
 The situation was ripe for the experiment. Ireland, after 
 enjoying a period of almost unexampled prosperity, was again 
 threatened with famine. It was useless to expect assistance
 
 364 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 either from the Conservatives in power or from Mr Gladstone, 
 who was still firmly convinced that further land legislation was 
 not only unnecessary but even undesirable. When Davitt 
 returned from America, early in 1879, evictions'had once more 
 come to be of daily occurrence In order to ward off the 
 threatened calamity, Tenants' Defence Associations had been 
 formed, and meetings were being held in the disturbed districts 
 to discuss the situation. At Davitt*s invitation, Parnell was 
 present at a meeting at Westport in June. It was incumbent 
 on the leader of the Irish parliamentary party to make up his 
 mind as to what course he intended to pursue. Owing to 
 unforeseen causes, and perhaps little to his liking, the agrarian 
 question had been pushed into the foreground of politics. As 
 a landlord himself, he belonged to the best-hated class in the 
 country; and he knew that every word he spoke would be 
 severely criticised both by friend and foe. But it was no time 
 to hesitate; and, throwing to the winds whatever scruples he 
 may have felt, he advised his hearers, at whatever cost, to keep 
 a fast grip on their homesteads and lands. The words had 
 been spoken; the die had been cast; and Parnell stood 
 irretrievably committed to agrarian reform. The doctrine that 
 Lalor had preached and Davitt had advocated was to be put 
 in practice. The social and political movements had joined 
 their forces. 
 
 A month or two later there was a great meeting of 
 nationalists and land-reformers at Dublin. The meeting 
 formally adopted the principles of what was called the " New 
 Departure," and, in order to give force to them, passed a 
 resolution for the establishment of an Irish National Land 
 League. Parnell was chosen President ; and, at the invitation 
 of the meeting, he undertook to visit America " for the purpose 
 of obtaining assistance from our exiled fellow-countrymen." 
 The visit, though it did not result (as Davitt had hoped) in a 
 complete understanding between Parnell and the chiefs of the
 
 XL] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 365 
 
 Clan-na-Gael, as the American branch of the Fenian association 
 was called, was financially and personally a great success. In 
 the freer atmosphere of the Republic, Parnell made no attempt 
 to conceal the fact that his object was to break the connexion 
 between Ireland and England; but in general he spoke with 
 moderation. The tone of some of his meetings was, however, 
 distinctly hostile to England. On one occasion a member of 
 the audience strode on to the platform and, handing Parnell 
 twenty-five dollars, said, " Here, Mr Parnell, are twenty-five 
 dollars : five for bread and twenty for lead." 
 
 The visit was brought to a sudden close by the news that 
 Lord Beaconsfield had dissolved Parliament. Hastening back 
 to Ireland to take his part in the general election, Parnell was 
 returned for three constituencies. He elected to sit for Cork 
 ciiy. Meanwhile the situation had grown extremely critical. 
 The harvest of 1879 was tne worst that had occurred since 1848. 
 Inability to pay the November rents had been followed, as a 
 matter of course, by evictions on a large scale, and evictions by 
 agrarian outrages. The newly-founded Land League had not 
 been an idle spectator of the conflict. Meetings were held, 
 local branches founded, violent speeches uttered, and every 
 encouragement given to tenants to keep a fast grip on their 
 holdings. The general election of 1880 placed the Liberal 
 party once more in power. When Parliament met at the end 
 of April, the attention of Government was immediately called 
 to the state of Ireland. The necessity of further legislation was 
 reluctantly admitted by Mr Gladstone ; and a royal commission, 
 known as the Bessborough Commission, was appointed to 
 inquire into the working of the Land Act of 1870. Pending 
 its report, and in order to meet the exceptional circumstances 
 of the situation, a Compensation for Disturbances Bill was 
 submitted to Parliament. The measure passed the House of 
 Commons, but was rejected by the Lords ; and, as a result, the 
 agrarian war continued with increased violence.
 
 366 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 The harvest prospects of 1880 were good; but, as the 
 summer drew to a close, the signs of disorder grew. Almost 
 every day the public press brought the news of some fresh 
 outrage of landlords shot at or cattle maimed. There was no 
 question that the Land League was rapidly gaining the upper 
 hand and establishing itself as a sort of imperium in imperio. 
 It became dangerous to disobey its commands. American 
 agencies too were at work , and newspapers openly advocating 
 assassination as a political weapon found their way into the 
 country, meeting in many instances with only too eager readers. 
 To violence was added moral intimidation. Speaking at Ennis 
 in September, Parnell advised his hearers to have no dealings 
 with those who refused to obey the mandates of the Land 
 League, and to avoid them on the highway and in the chapel 
 as they would a plague-stricken person. His advice found 
 instant obedience ; and the system, from the name of its first 
 important victim, Captain Boycott, added a new word of 
 terrible significance to the language. 
 
 The desire of the Government had been to rule without 
 resorting to coercion ; but the country was rapidly passing out 
 of control. An attempt to prosecute Parnell and the leaders 
 of the Land League for intimidation failed ; and, under pressure 
 of public opinion in England, Ministers saw themselves com- 
 pelled to abandon their attitude of neutrality. Accordingly, 
 when Parliament met in January 1881, the Chief Secretary, 
 W E. Forster, introduced a Bill for the protection of life and 
 property in Ireland. The Bill was fiercely opposed by the 
 Parnellites. Never indeed had obstruction gone to such 
 lengths as it did on this occasion. Night after night for weeks 
 together the battle raged, till at last, after an unbroken sitting 
 of forty-one hours, the debate was brought to a sudden 
 conclusion by the intervention of the Speaker. His action was 
 challenged as unconstitutional and led to a change in the rules 
 of procedure, which afforded opportunity for further " scenes,"
 
 xi,] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 367 
 
 ending on one occasion in the forcible ejection of the entire 
 Parnellite party. In the end the Bill for the protection of 
 person and property became law. It was followed shortly 
 afterwards by a Peace Preservation Act. These measures 
 greatly strengthened the arm of the executive ; and feeling that 
 enough had been done to vindicate the authority of the law, 
 Mr Gladstone at once submitted a new measure of land 
 legislation to the House. 
 
 Despite the efforts made to represent it as a mere extension 
 of the principles of the Act of 1870, rendered necessary by the 
 rejection of the Compensation for Disturbances Bill, the new 
 Bill involved really an abandonment of those principles in 
 favour of the programme of the old Tenant-Right League with 
 its demand for Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure, and Free Sale. 
 Its cardinal feature was the establishment of a Land Court to 
 regulate rents as between landlord and tenant. The Bill did 
 not, as it is sometimes argued, abolish the right of contract; 
 but it prevented the landlord from dictating the terms of that 
 contract, by enabling the tenant to appeal to the Court for a 
 decision as to what, in his case, constituted a Fair Rent. This 
 was a great step in the direction of the recognition of the claim 
 of the tenant to be treated as co-partner in the ownership of 
 the soil. On the other hand it was objected against the Bill, 
 first, that it did not proceed to the establishment of a peasant 
 proprietary ; secondly, that in its adjustment of rents, it was not 
 retrospective, excluding from its benefits those who, for one 
 reason or another, had fallen in arrears with their rent ; and 
 thirdly, that the attitude of the Land Court in the matter of 
 what constituted a Fair Rent was uncertain. The Bill en- 
 countered great opposition from the Conservatives ; but, after 
 being nearly wrecked in the House of Lords, it received the 
 royal assent on August 22, 1881. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Land Act of 1881 bore, as its 
 enemies asserted, the aspect of a concession to the forces of
 
 368 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 lawlessness as represented by the Land League. On the other 
 hand it might be pleaded that the necessity for legislation had 
 been sufficiently justified by the report of the Bessborough 
 Commission. To Mr Gladstone it seemed to strike at the root 
 of the land difficulty. It was a concession, and entitled him to 
 the gratitude of the Irish farmer. His indignation was there- 
 fore very great when, instead of the joyful acceptance he 
 expected, he found his measure received with indifference, 
 almost with hostility. The fact was that Parnell found himself 
 in rather an awkward position. The Land Act had far 
 exceeded his expectations. At the same time it did not go the 
 length of establishing a peasant proprietary; and for this 
 reason it could only be regarded as a partial solution of the 
 land question. To have rejected it would have been madness; 
 but that was no reason to express satisfaction with it, or to 
 suspend the agitation when agitation might have a salutary 
 influence on the Land Court Commissioners in determining 
 what was a Fair Rent. The Act, he declared, must be 
 tested. 
 
 This attitude angered Mr Gladstone, who rather hastily 
 assumed that his real object was to arrest its operation. To 
 prevent this, he took the hazardous step of locking up Parnell 
 and several of his colleagues in Kilmainham gaol as "suspects" 
 (Oct. 1881). The Land League replied with a manifesto calling 
 on the Irish tenantry to pay no rent until their leaders were 
 liberated. Government retaliated by suppressing the League. 
 But its organisation was transferred to Paris ; and, during the 
 winter, agrarian outrages, instead of diminishing, grew in 
 numbers and ferocity. Worse than this, it had come to the 
 knowledge of the police that a body of individuals, acting 
 under American influence, had established themselves in 
 Dublin with the avowed purpose of " removing all tyrants from 
 the country " by assassination. 
 
 Once more Government seemed to have got into the
 
 XT.] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 369 
 
 inevitable cul-de-sac. True, the Chief Secretary was full of 
 hope, and spoke sanguinely of the ultimate triumph of law and 
 order. But to his colleagues the situation appeared extremely 
 doubtful. The gaols were crowded with "suspects"; and the 
 consciences of Ministers were ill at ease at the thought of 
 governing the country in defiance of Liberal principles. Force, 
 they were constantly being reminded, was no remedy. The 
 country was against them ; and there seemed nothing for it but 
 to beat a retreat and come to terms with Parnell. The 
 " uncrowned king " showed a willingness to treat ; and, through 
 the intervention of Mr Chamberlain, a compromise or under- 
 standing was arrived at, whereby it was tacitly agreed that, on 
 his liberation from gaol and the concession of his demand that 
 the Land Act should be made retrospective, Parnell would use 
 his influence to slow down the agitation. To this transaction 
 Mr Forster refused to be a party, and immediately handed in 
 his resignation (May 1882). It was worse than folly, in his 
 opinion, to trust Parnell. With Earl Spencer, who had 
 recently succeeded Earl Cowper as Lord Lieutenant, he made 
 no question of his ability to crush the League. No doubt, 
 from his standpoint, the so-called "Treaty of Kilmainham" 
 was an ignominious surrender to Parnell ; but, unless coercion 
 was to become a permanent system of government, it is hard 
 to see what choice Ministers had. It was mortifying to have 
 to confess failure, where the intention had been so good ; but 
 there was nothing for it but to tack about and try another 
 course. The attempt at a "new departure" was resolved on; 
 and on May 6 Forster's successor Lord Frederick Cavendish 
 landed at Dublin as the messenger of peace. 
 
 An hour or two later, as he and the Permanent Under- 
 secretary, T. H. Burke, were crossing the Phoenix Park, they 
 were set upon by a body of miscreants and murdered in open 
 day. When the wicked and dastardly deed became known, a 
 feeling of consternation and horror seized the nation. The cup 
 
 M. I. 24
 
 37 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 of conciliation had been dashed from its lips. What would 
 happen ? Would Government be strong enough to resist the 
 cry for revenge that arose throughout the length and breadth of 
 England, or would coercion once more become the order of 
 the day? A strongly-worded manifesto, signed by Parnell, 
 Dillon, and Davitt, had appeared, denouncing "the cowardly 
 and unprovoked assassination." Would it suffice to clear the 
 party from the guilt of the crime it reprobated ? Unfortunately 
 Englishmen were in no humour to be generous. They recalled 
 to mind Forster's words of warning; and, before the body of 
 the murdered statesman had been laid to rest, the consent of 
 Parliament was asked to a Crimes Bill of unprecedented 
 severity. For three years Ireland was to be placed under 
 police rule, and the constitution practically suspended. No 
 wonder Irishmen resented the attempt to punish the nation for 
 the crime of a handful of miscreants. Night after night Parnell 
 and his colleagues exhausted the resources of obstruction to 
 prevent the measure becoming law. Their opposition was 
 unavailing. They were ejected in a body from the House ; 
 and on July 12 the Crimes Bill received the royal assent. But, 
 by this time, cooler counsels had begun to prevail. It was 
 recognized that the murders, however much they were to be 
 deplored, had not really affected the situation. Ireland, it was 
 felt, had been sufficiently punished ; the time had come to pour 
 the oil of healing in her wounds ; and exactly a month after 
 the passing of the Crimes Act a measure dealing with arrears 
 of rent after the manner proposed by Parnell became law. 
 
 The next three years passed away in comparative quiet. 
 An attempt was made to resuscitate the Land League under 
 the more comprehensive title of the National League; but 
 Government kept a close eye on its proceedings and afforded 
 it little opportunity for agitation. Boycotting was still ram- 
 pant; but coercion firmly administered led to a great diminution 
 in acts of open violence. Ever and anon some atrocious crime
 
 XL] The Period of Reform, 18681905. 371 
 
 came as a reminder that beneath the apparently tranquil 
 surface the fires of discontent still smouldered. There was 
 no mistaking the situation. Ireland was quiet not because she 
 was happy but because she could not move. A national 
 testimonial to Parnell, attaining the dimensions of nearly 
 .38,000, was a token of the unabated confidence of the Irish 
 in the probity of their leader and of the unsubdued spirit of the 
 nation ; as the cool, not to say hostile, reception accorded to 
 the Prince and Princess of Wales on the occasion of their visit 
 to Ireland in 1 885 was a testimony to their hatred of everything 
 English. 
 
 As the period assigned for the operation of the Crimes Act 
 drew to a close, the question of its renewal seriously occupied 
 the attention of the Cabinet. Opinion on the subject was 
 divided. The inconsistency of governing by coercion and at 
 the same time including Ireland in the benefits of the County 
 Franchise Extension Act, while a Land Purchase scheme was 
 also under consideration, needed no proof. Besides, on merely 
 party grounds, it was desirable to conciliate the Irish vote. On 
 the other hand, the efficacy of the Crimes Act in restoring 
 order and the danger of too suddenly relaxing control were 
 undeniable. The question was solved by Mr Gladstone's 
 determination to ask for a renewal of its chief clauses; but, 
 before the matter could be brought to the test, he was defeated 
 on a side-issue and compelled to resign. 
 
 Pending an appeal to the nation, Lord Salisbury consented 
 to carry on the government; but, being in a minority in the 
 House of Commons, it was essential for the Conservatives to 
 retain the Irish vote. There was no question of a compact 
 between them and the Parnellites ; but it was tacitly assumed 
 on both sides that there was to be an end of coercion. The 
 appointment of Lord Carnarvon, who was known to favour the 
 concession of a large measure of local autonomy to Ireland, 
 strengthened this feeling; and, on publicly entering Dublin, 
 
 24. 2
 
 3/2 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 the new viceroy was received with every token of public favour. 
 Shortly afterwards he had, at his own request, an interview with 
 Mr Parnell. What precisely was said at that interview is, as 
 usually happens in the absence of witnesses, a disputed question. 
 But it is certain that the subject of Home Rule, in one form or 
 another, was mooted; and it is equally certain that the im- 
 pression left on ParnelPs mind by the interview was that the 
 establishment of a national legislature on College Green was 
 within measurable distance. The impression became almost a 
 certainty when a Bill was submitted to Parliament authorising 
 the creation of a fund of ^5, 000,000 for the purpose of 
 enabling tenants on estates whose owners were willing to sell 
 to become the proprietors of their holdings. The measure, 
 known as the Ashbourne Act, did not however pass without 
 arousing a feeling of apprehension amongst Conservatives lest 
 the principles of the party were being sacrificed to the exigencies 
 of the hour. The Irish vote, it was felt, might be purchased at 
 too dear a rate. The Act itself suspiciously resembled a bribe; 
 and warning voices were raised to the effect that conciliation 
 had gone far enough. It was well known that the question of 
 Home Rule was seriously occupying Mr Gladstone's attention; 
 and Mr Parnell's confident predictions as to the near approach 
 of legislative independence were far from reassuring to those 
 who had the interests of the Union at heart. 
 
 The situation was one of great uncertainty. Neither Lord 
 Salisbury nor Mr Gladstone was willing to commit himself to 
 any definite statement ; but a half-promise on the part of the 
 former to consider any practical scheme of Home Rule with 
 an open mind eventually turned the balance in his favour ; and 
 at the general election the Irish vote in Great Britain was by 
 Parnell's command given solid for the Conservatives. The 
 result did not much alter the situation. Combined with the 
 eighty-six Home Rulers returned by Ireland, the Conservatives 
 possessed a majority of ten votes ; and on this ground Govern-
 
 XL] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 373 
 
 ment refused to resign. It appeared as if matters would 
 continue to drift. But by this time it had become known that 
 Mr Gladstone was prepared to attack the Home Rule problem ; 
 and, the feeling of dissatisfaction among Conservatives having 
 ripened almost to revolt, it was resolved to revert to the 
 traditional policy of the party. Lord Carnarvon was recalled ; 
 and, when Parliament met on January 21, 1886, the Chief 
 Secretary, W. H. Smith, announced that exceptional legislation, 
 meaning a renewal of coercion, was necessary for the main- 
 tenance of law and order in Ireland. Parnell immediately 
 transferred his vote to the side of the Opposition ; and, 
 Government being defeated on a side-issue, Mr Gladstone 
 returned to office. 
 
 The position of the Liberal leader was not an easy one. 
 He had appealed to the electorate to return him with a majority 
 sufficiently large to settle the Irish question independently of 
 the Nationalists. The general election had not answered his 
 expectations in this respect ; and when, despite his scanty 
 majority, he announced his intention to give effect to the 
 constitutionally expressed desire of the Irish people for a 
 national legislature to deal with Irish as distinguished from 
 Imperial affairs, several of his old colleagues, Bright, Harting- 
 ton, James, and Goschen, declined to follow him. Nevertheless 
 he succeeded in forming a fairly strong, if not very compact, 
 ministry. But his troubles had only begun ; for, on making 
 known the nature of his proposals to the Cabinet, Mr Chamber- 
 lain and Sir George Trevelyan at once handed in their 
 resignations. Nothing daunted, however, by their desertion, 
 Mr Gladstone on April 8, 1886, submitted his Home Rule Bill 
 to Parliament. 
 
 The Bill provided for the establishment of a 'statutory' 
 Parliament to sit in Dublin, and to legislate for Ireland under 
 certain restrictions deemed necessary for the preservation of 
 the unity of the Empire and the adequate protection of the
 
 374 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 unionist minority. It was to consist of two orders one of 
 103 members representing the nobility and propertied class 
 elected on a rather high suffrage, the other of 204 ordinarily 
 elected members. Both orders were to sit and vote together, 
 but either could demand a separate vote; in which case, 
 however, the concurrence of both orders was required to an act 
 of legislation. The contribution of Ireland to the general 
 charges of the Empire was fixed at one-fourteenth ; and, as 
 security for its payment, the customs and excise duties were 
 impounded. But, unquestionably, the most important clause 
 in the Bill, and that which gave rise to the greatest divergence 
 of opinion, was the proposed exclusion of the Irish members 
 from the Parliament at Westminster. The measure of Home 
 Rule was accompanied by a Land Purchase Bill, creating 
 ^50,000,000 three per cent, stock, to provide a fund to buy 
 out all landlords who were willing to sell, with the object of 
 establishing a peasant proprietary. The double measure was 
 accepted by Parnell in the name of " all the leaders of national 
 feeling both in Ireland and America " as a final settlement ; but 
 it was defeated on its second reading on June 7, 1886, by 
 343 votes to 313. 
 
 Parliament was immediately dissolved, and a fresh appeal 
 made to the country. So far as Great Britain was concerned, 
 the verdict was one of unequivocal condemnation of Mr 
 Gladstone's plan. Lord Salisbury returned to power, and 
 affairs drifted back into their old channel. The rejection of 
 Home Rule had of course caused great dissatisfaction in 
 Ireland; but the difficulty confronting the new Government 
 was at first rather of an agrarian than a political character. 
 Once more, as in 1879, there had been a great fall in the price 
 of agricultural produce ; and, as the autumn drew on, it became 
 very doubtful whether the judicial rents falling due in Novem- 
 ber could in many instances be paid. When Parliament met, 
 Parnell drew attention to the subject; and on September 10
 
 XL] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 375 
 
 he introduced a Bill to effect a reduction of judicial rents. 
 The measure was, however, rejected ; and once more Ireland 
 found herself in the throes of an agrarian struggle recalling the 
 worst days of the Land League. This time the agitation took 
 the form of what was called the Plan of Campaign. 
 
 Briefly stated, the Plan of Campaign was an agreement 
 entered into by the tenants on any estate where the rents were 
 regarded as excessive, to offer the landlord or his agent a 
 certain sum as a settlement in full of the rent due to him. In 
 the event of its rejection, the money was to be lodged with a 
 trustworthy person and used for the purposes of the struggle. 
 It was no doubt an illegal combination ; but the fact that it 
 was found necessary to put it in operation on comparatively few 
 estates, and that, before a year elapsed, Government passed a 
 measure to effect a reduction of rents, may be pleaded as an 
 excuse in the circumstances. Illegal, however, it was ; and no 
 Government could consent tamely to be defied by any self- 
 constituted association, however excusable its objects, the more 
 so as, whenever an eviction took place, it was treated as a 
 political event, and every effort to prosecute was defeated by 
 the refusal of juries to convict on the clearest evidence. 
 Moved by these considerations, Government determined to 
 resort once more to coercion ; and, shortly after the Easter 
 recess, Mr Balfour, who had succeeded W. H. Smith as Chief 
 Secretary, submitted a Crimes Bill to Parliament, possessing 
 the novel feature of permanence and designed to confer 
 summary jurisdiction on the resident magistracy in any pro- 
 claimed district. The Bill was hotly contested by the Irish 
 members and their allies the Gladstonian Liberals; but 
 eventually on July 18, 1887, it became law. 
 
 The passage of the Bill had been greatly assisted by the 
 publication in the "Times" of a series of articles entitled 
 "Parnellism and Crime." On the eve of its second reading 
 there appeared in the columns of that paper a letter, purporting
 
 376 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 to be a facsimile of one written by Parnell shortly after the 
 Phoenix Park murders, excusing his condemnation of them on 
 the score of expediency. The letter, as was afterwards proved, 
 was a forgery ; but at the time no one ventured to question its 
 authenticity. Its publication greatly strengthened the hands of 
 Government in its efforts to suppress the League, and furnished 
 Mr Balfour with an effective reply to the sneers and criticisms 
 of those who ventured to condemn his "atrocious tyranny." 
 For a time the air was thick with the tumult of the struggle of 
 evictions followed by boycotting and agrarian outrages, the 
 suppression of public meetings, and the imprisonment of 
 prominent members of Parliament Gradually, however, as, in 
 consequence of the investigations of a Special Commission 
 appointed by Parliament to inquire into the working of the 
 national movement, it came to light that the worst charges 
 preferred against its leaders were either exaggerated or false, 
 and in particular that the letter just referred to was, after all, a 
 forger}', a great change came over public opinion. Gladstonians 
 were of course overjoyed to find that their confidence in their 
 allies had not been misplaced ; and even in strong Conservative 
 circles it was felt that some reparation was due to Parnell and 
 his colleagues for the injustice done them. 
 
 There was, indeed, no intention of giving way on the main 
 point of Home Rule ; but it was fully recognized that Ireland 
 had on the whole been badly treated. For one thing she was 
 very poor; no attempt had been made to develop her resources; 
 and, however useful and necessary coercion might be in 
 restoring law and order, something more, it was felt, was 
 needed if the seeds of discontent were to be permanently 
 eradicated. The feeling found expression in several acts of 
 remedial legislation. Reference has already been made to 
 the Land Act of 1887, which gave effect to the demand for a 
 revision of judicial rents and extended the benefits of the Land 
 Act of 1 88 1 to leaseholders. This was followed two years later
 
 XL] Tlie Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 377 
 
 by an Act, on the lines of the Ashbourne Act, creating a fund 
 of ^30,000,000 to increase the facilities for peasants pur- 
 chasing their holdings in the case of landlords being willing to 
 sell, and at the same time providing for the establishment of a 
 Congested Districts Board. The labours of the Board were 
 greatly assisted by a Light Railways Act extending communica- 
 tion to the thickly-populated and poverty-stricken districts of 
 Connaught and western Donegal. All these measures were 
 attended with beneficial results, and did much to efface the 
 memory of the coercive measures which had marked the 
 beginning of Mr Balfour's administration. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, a great misfortune had befallen the 
 Nationalist party. Hardly had their leader won his great 
 victory in the court of Special Commission when he was forced 
 to cut a sorry figure as co-respondent in the divorce suit of 
 O'Shea v. O'Shea and Parnell. The social scandal created a 
 great sensation, but there was at first a general desire to treat 
 Parnell with consideration ; and, in the belief that the storm 
 would soon blow over, he was unanimously elected chairman of 
 the party by his colleagues. Unfortunately he mistook this 
 expression of confidence in his ability as a condonation of his 
 offence ; and, when an intimation reached him that it would 
 be wiser for him to retire at least for a time from public life, he 
 replied by expressing his intention " to stick to his guns." In 
 view of the rising indignation amongst the Nonconformists, 
 this determination placed Mr Gladstone in a very awkward 
 position, and led to a threat on his part to abandon the cause 
 of Home Rule. The threat took effect; and, the Catholic 
 Bishops of Ireland having by this time openly expressed their 
 condemnation of his conduct, Parnell suddenly found himself 
 deserted by the bulk of his followers. For several months he 
 struggled with all the energy of despair to recover his authority; 
 but his day was over, and, succumbing to his exertions, he died 
 of inflammation of the lungs on October 6, 1891.
 
 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 Thus passed away one of the most remarkable Irishmen of 
 the century. It is difficult to judge him fairly. In the short 
 space in which he held power he had done more to transform 
 the face of Ireland than either Grattan or O'Connell. His 
 methods were equivocal, his latter days full of horror ; but, if 
 the lot of the Irish peasant is to-day an easier one than it was 
 fifty years ago, it is mainly to him that the thanks are due. 
 There are few elements in his character to admire ; but he was 
 a strong man and a consummate politician. His death left a 
 great void in the political world ; but it is questionable whether 
 it had any real effect on the issue of Home Rule. His 
 treatment of the question had removed it from the sphere of 
 academic discussion into that of practical politics. The matter 
 had been taken up in all seriousness by Mr Gladstone ; and 
 the faith of a great party had been pledged to confer the 
 benefits of a national legislature on Ireland. 
 
 Recalled to power in 1892, with a majority, including 
 the Irish contingent, of forty-six, Mr Gladstone some months 
 after Parnell's death once more submitted a scheme of Home 
 Rule to Parliament. The Bill, though following the main lines 
 of that of 1886, differed in several important points from its 
 predecessor. This time there was to be no exclusion of the 
 Irish members from the Imperial Parliament ; the objectionable 
 "tribute" to the Imperial treasury was to be abandoned, and 
 the solution of the land problem left to the Irish Parliament. 
 Instead of the two orders sitting and voting together, there was 
 to be a Legislative Council consisting of 48 members, and a 
 Legislative Assembly of 103, the former to have a temporary 
 veto on all acts of the more popularly constituted body. The 
 Bill passed the House of Commons on September i, 1893, by 
 a majority of thirty-four; but it was incontinently rejected by 
 the House of Lords a week later on its first reading by 419 
 votes to 41. Mr Gladstone, it is said, was prepared to dissolve 
 and once more appeal to the country ; but he yielded to the
 
 XL] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 379 
 
 remonstrances of his colleagues, and, having made up his mind 
 to retire, he handed over the reins of government to Lord 
 Rosebery, who retained office till the general election in 1895 
 once more placed the Conservatives in power. 
 
 Home Rule still remains a " plank " in the Liberal platform; 
 but since its unceremonious rejection in 1893 it has slipped 
 into the background of politics. Several circumstances have 
 cooperated to this result. First of all, it had been made clear 
 that England and Scotland were absolutely opposed to any 
 scheme which went to impair the integrity of the Union ; and it 
 was very unlikely that, where Mr Gladstone had failed, another 
 statesman would be successful. This consideration was not 
 without its effect on Irishmen. They themselves were tired of 
 the long struggle, and were only anxious to sit down and reap 
 the fruits of the victories they had already won. The ideal of 
 a national legislature could wait, must indeed wait so long as 
 Parnellites and anti-Parnellites were busy tearing each other to 
 pieces in internecine conflict. The situation thus created was 
 not lost on the Conservatives in power. Home Rule might 
 not be dead ; but the opportunity of " killing it by kindness " 
 had been given them. Henceforward conciliation and not 
 coercion was to be the order of the day. Ireland was poor ; 
 she had still many grievances agrarian, social and educational. 
 These were to be removed, and the country was to be helped 
 forward on the path of prosperity. As her prosperity increased 
 and Ireland became connected with Great Britain in the 
 participation of benefits as well as of burdens, the desire for 
 separation, it was hoped and confidently predicted, would 
 disappear. In pursuance of this policy, the Chief Secretary, 
 Mr Gerald Balfour, in April 1896 submitted a fresh Land Bill 
 to Parliament for the gradual and voluntary expropriation of 
 Irish landlords. The measure proved a severe strain on the 
 loyalty of the Government's most devoted followers, by whom 
 it was condemned as a piece of hasty and unwise legislation
 
 380 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 involving the surrender of the entire landlord interest in 
 Ireland. But there was in truth no going back on the 
 legislation of recent years; the halcyon days of Irish land- 
 lordism had passed away for ever ; and before the close of the 
 session the Bill received the royal assent. The report (1896) 
 of the Childers Commission, appointed to inquire into the 
 financial aspects of the Union, to the effect that for a long 
 series of years Ireland had been overtaxed, seemed to justify 
 generous treatment; and in 1898 a Local Government Act was 
 passed extending to Ireland the same degree of local autonomy 
 as was enjoyed by England. 
 
 Meanwhile Government had been greatly helped in its 
 endeavour to kill Home Rule by kindness by the individual 
 efforts of Irishmen of different views in politics. We have 
 remarked that the rejection of Mr Gladstone's Home Rule Bill 
 of 1893 and the dissensions in the Nationalist party had been 
 followed by a sudden relaxation in political agitation. The 
 energy hitherto directed to the acquisition of a national 
 legislature was diverted into new channels, partly literary, partly 
 industrial. In some respects the new movement was a revival 
 of the aims and ideals of the Young Ireland party in the early 
 forties. Its motto " Ireland a nation " was practically the same. 
 On the other hand it was no mere revival, but had its origin in 
 the needs and aspirations of a new generation seeking for 
 inspiration in the traditions of the past. Its object was the 
 regeneration of Ireland. As we have said it had a two-fold 
 aspect a literary and an industrial. Already in 1895 l ^ e 
 exertions of the Gaelic League, established a few years 
 previously, to preserve the Irish language and to promote the 
 study of Celtic literature, had been attended with great success. 
 Since that time, thanks to the energy of its President, Dr 
 Douglas Hyde, himself a Celtic scholar of European fame, 
 several other societies in Ireland, England and America have 
 sprung into existence for the cultivation of Irish history and
 
 XL] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 381 
 
 literature. The movement, despite certain eccentricities at- 
 tending it, has unquestionably strengthened national feeling ; 
 but it is still doubtful whether its object of reviving Irish 
 as the language of the nation will be attained, or whether, if 
 attained, it will conduce either to the happiness of the Irish 
 people or the welfare of the state. At present its chief success 
 consists in the stimulus it has given to the cultivation of a 
 pseudo-Celtic style of poetry very beautiful, no doubt, but as 
 far removed from the real thing as the twentieth is from the 
 second century of which that of Mr W. Butler Yeats is 
 perhaps the best representative. 
 
 Hardly less important than the literary revival, and much 
 more concrete in its results, has been the revival of Irish 
 industries. The movement began in an invitation extended 
 by Mr (now Sir) Horace Plunkett in 1895 to a11 sections of 
 politicians to meet together "to consider the means, outside 
 politics, by which the material prosperity of Ireland might be 
 stimulated." Though regarded at the time with scepticism, the 
 invitation resulted in the establishment of an Irish Agricultural 
 Society. The efforts of the Society to promote better methods 
 of farming by the formation of cooperative dairy-farms, to 
 foster cottage-industries, and to extricate the peasant from the 
 clutches of the " Gombeen man " by a system of small-credit 
 banks were attended with marked success, and led to the 
 establishment by Government of a permanent Board of 
 Agriculture. 
 
 Gradually the cloud of depression that had so long hung 
 over the country seemed to be lifting. Unfortunately in 1898 
 there was an almost complete failure of the potato crop, 
 attended by great distress in the congested districts in the west. 
 It was the old story over again of inability to pay rents followed 
 by evictions ; of peasants driven off the land to make room for 
 cattle. All the good of the last few years seemed to have been 
 swept away in an hour ; and once more Government saw itself
 
 382 Ireland. [CHAP. 
 
 confronted by a hostile organisation in the shape of the United 
 Irish League. Notwithstanding the prospect of a good harvest, 
 the next year witnessed a great expansion in the operations of 
 the League. Its object, at first confined to the protection of 
 tenants menaced by eviction and the extension of their 
 holdings by the acquisition of grazing lands, developed gradually 
 into a settled policy for the voluntary and, if necessary, 
 compulsory expropriation of Irish landlords. Several eminent 
 Unionists gave in their adhesion to the movement; and a 
 fresh agrarian dispute, attended by boycotting and acts of 
 physical violence, having broken out on the estate of Lord de 
 Freyne in county Sligo, in consequence of a general reduction 
 of rents on the neighbouring Dillon property, recently pur- 
 chased by the Congested Districts Board, Government was 
 compelled to resort to the Crimes Act of 1887, in order to 
 restore order in those parts. But coercion was a thing of the 
 past ; and a Convention of Irish landowners and representa- 
 tives of the Irish parliamentary party, sitting at Dublin in 
 December 1902, having declared in favour of the total abolition 
 of dual ownership by the process of voluntary sale, the Chief 
 Secretary, Mr Wyndham, on March 25, 1903, submitted a 
 Bill to Parliament to create a fund of ^100,000,000 for the 
 purchase of saleable estates at the rate of ^5,000,000 annually. 
 The Bill, which became law in August, was certainly an 
 heroic attempt to settle the land question. Whether it would 
 be successful or merely prove a step to compulsory sale 
 remained to be seen. Regarded as part of the process of 
 killing Home Rule by kindness, there was no doubt much to 
 be said in its favour. On the other hand, it meant a weakening 
 of the English interest in Ireland almost as fatal in its con- 
 sequences as Home Rule itself. The feeling that it might be 
 attended with one or other of these results caused it to be 
 received in Ireland with considerable apprehension by extreme 
 men on both sides. It is too soon to say to which side the
 
 XL] The Period of Reform, 1868 1905. 383 
 
 balance will ultimately incline, or whether the policy of 
 conciliation as conceived by Government will lead to the long- 
 sought goal of pacification. Recent events seem to show that 
 the good effects predicted for the Bill have not been entirely 
 realized. Agrarian agitation in the form of cattle-driving 
 accompanied by boycotting is still existent; and the "Sinn 
 Fein" propaganda, if it has not as yet received much official 
 support, is a testimony to the vitality of the aspiration for 
 national independence. On the whole, however, Irish land- 
 lords have shown a laudable desire to accommodate themselves 
 to circumstances, and to make the best of a bad job. The 
 lesson of the last forty years has not been altogether lost on 
 them. They know that they have little to expect from either 
 a Conservative or a Liberal government. With self-reliance 
 may come salvation ; but the day of their power as an English 
 garrison is over for ever. The chapter that opened with the 
 plantation of Leix and Offaly has been closed. The question 
 is whether the whole fabric of the English dominion in Ireland, 
 dating from the first invasion under Henry II, has not thereby 
 been shaken to its basis.
 
 NOTES BY MR DUNLOP. 
 
 CHAPTER I. p. r. We are still in the dark as to the earliest 
 (pre-Milesian) inhabitants of Ireland. Better, perhaps, than the 
 four-fold division given in the text, certainly more interesting 
 ethnologically, is Duald MacFirbis' three-fold division of a dark- 
 haired, fair-haired, and brown-haired race (cf. Hyde, Lit. Hist, of 
 Ireland, p. 563). 
 
 p. 2. Cymro, a Welshman, pi. Cymry, has no etymological 
 connection with Cimbri and still less with Cimmerii (cf. Rhys, 
 Celtic Britain). 
 
 p. 3. The distinction drawn in the text between the Druids of 
 Britain and those of Ireland must be received with caution. The 
 subject is obscure (cf. De Jubainville, Les Druides, and S. Reinach, 
 Orpheus). 
 
 p. 4. The progress of Christianity in Ireland was, as might be 
 expected, very slow. Druidism only disappeared about 560, after 
 Tara had been abandoned as a royal residence. 
 
 pp. 9 12. The text will be better understood if the reader 
 bears in mind that the political, as distinguished from the social 
 unit of the tribal system was the "tuath," originally populus or 
 tribe, but afterwards coming to signify the district occupied by the 
 "tuath." When several of these "tuaths," of which there were 184 
 in Ireland, were joined together under one chief or king, they 
 formed a " mor-tuath " or great tuath. Above the king of a " mor- 
 tuath " came the provincial king. Over the five provincial kings 
 stood the "ard-ri," or high-king. The subordinate chieftain of the 
 king of a " mor-tuath " was called his " urriagh," from " ur-ri," i.e. 
 under-king. What division of lands (arable) existed was limited 
 to the " fine," or sept (the social unit), on the death of one of its 
 male members. Trie division was perhaps more theoretical than 
 real ; but it preserved the notion of community in land, and was 
 for this reason objectionable to English lawyers like Sir John 
 Davies.
 
 Notes by Mr Dunlop 3 8 5 
 
 ^ p. 13. The charges of immorality brought against the Irish by 
 English writers of the i 7 th century are largely due to a miscon- 
 ception of the Celtic customs of marriage, concubinage and divorce 
 (cf. Gmnel, Breton Laws, and the Cain Law of Social Connections 
 in Ancient Laws of Ireland, Vol. n). 
 
 p. 16. In addition to the Annals of the Four Masters, edited 
 by John O'Donovan in 7 vols. 1851, the following, comprising 
 practically the whole of the annalistic literature of Ireland extant* 
 have been published, viz. : Annals of Loch Ce, 2 vols., ed! 
 W. M. Hennessy : Chronicon Scotorum, ed. Hennessy : Annals of 
 Clonmacnoise, ed. Rev. Denis Murphy : Annals of Ulster, 4 vols., 
 ed. Hennessy and Murphy : Annals of Tigernach, ed. Whitley 
 Stokes in Revue Celtique, Vols. XVI and xvn. 
 
 The "Irish epic" alluded to in the text is evidently the Tain Bo 
 Cualnge. It is not a poem, though it contains passages in verse. 
 A fair notion of its contents may be obtained from Miss Eleanor 
 Hull's The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature (1898). A 
 complete German translation, with an admirable introduction, by 
 Ernst Windisch, was published in 1905. 
 
 p. 1 8. The characteristic of Irish music is not so much its 
 sweet sadness as its sudden transition from gaiety to melancholy 
 a feature it has in common with Slavonic music. As for the round 
 towers, there can be no question that they are Celtic work, though 
 we may have to look for their origin to Syria and Asia Minor. 
 
 p. 19. It is true that the Irish have always shown more 
 respect for men than for measures ; but Sir John Davies (a not 
 too favourable witness) regarded them as very amenable to law 
 when justly administered (Hist. Tracts, z&. 1787, pp. 197, 201, 213). 
 
 p. 22. The statement in the text opens up perhaps a rather too 
 extensive view of the commercial relations with England prior to 
 the Anglo-Norman invasion. William of Malmesbury, to whom it 
 may be traced, says, in reference to a threat on the part of Henry I 
 to place an embargo on vessels trading with Ireland, as a means 
 of lowering Murrough O'Brien's pride : " For what would Ireland 
 be worth if no commodities were to be conveyed thither by sea 
 from England ? So starved of every kind of useful produce is the 
 soil outside the cities, from the penury and ignorance of its 
 cultivators, with its wild and squalid multitude of Irish occupants. 
 
 M. I.
 
 386 Ireland. 
 
 But the English and French people who reside in the market 
 cities for the purpose of carrying on business maintain a more 
 civilized kind of life." The embargo was in retaliation for the 
 protection afforded by O'Brien to Arnulf de Montgomery. Arnulf 
 married O'Brien's daughter; but he died on the day after his 
 wedding (cf. Diet. Nat. Biog., s. v. Roger). 
 
 CHAPTER II. p. 28. We have to distinguish three sieges of 
 Dublin : the first ending in the capture of the city by Strongbow 
 in Sept. 1170, the second about Whitsuntide 1171 by Roderick, 
 and the third shortly afterwards, by Hasculf. 
 
 p. 30. The statement that parts of Leinster were "shired" by 
 Henry II must be received with caution. It is probably traceable 
 to Harris' notes to Ware's Antiquities, ch. 5. Even for the usually 
 accepted view ascribing the first shiring of Ireland into twelve 
 counties to John we have only Sir John Davies' authority. See on 
 the whole subject, and especially on the distinction between 
 counties and counties palatine, Litton Falkiner's Illustrations of 
 Irish History, Pt I, ch. 4. Though we have no direct evidence of 
 colonisation following in the wake of the invasion, signs that such 
 actually occurred are not wanting (cf. Bonn's Englische Kolonisation 
 in Irland, \, pp. 83 9). 
 
 p. 32. John is credited with having built castles at Tibraghny, 
 Ardfinnan and Lismore. Trim Castle was built by Hugh de Lacy, 
 first lord of Meath, "of whose English Castles," say the Four 
 Masters, ill, p. 71, "all Meath from the Shannon to the sea was 
 full" (cf. Girald. Camb. Expugnatio, n, ch. 21). 
 
 pp. 32, 33. The use of the phrase " English Pale " before quite 
 the end of the i4th century is misleading (cf. Hardiman's Statute 
 of Kilkenny, Intro.). We have to distinguish four periods in the 
 history of the Anglo-Norman colony in Ireland, viz. (i) of in- 
 vasion, 1169 72, (2) of extension, 1172 1216, (3) of consolidation, 
 1216 1318, (4) of decline, 1318 1494. By the end of John's reign 
 nearly the whole of Leinster and Munster, the greater part of 
 Connaught, and a considerable part of north-east Ulster, were in 
 the hands of the English invaders. Nothing, in fact, is more 
 remarkable than the rapidity with which they made themselves 
 masters of the most fertile parts of the island ; and where they 
 came they remained, thrusting their roots deep into the soil of
 
 Notes by Mr Dunlop. 387 
 
 their adopted country. A glance at Mr Orpen's map in Poole's 
 Historical Alias, Plate 30, will show that the castles they erected 
 were of strategic importance. 
 
 p. 36. Among the causes that led to the decline of the 
 Anglo-Norman colony, the invasion of Ireland by Edward Bruce 
 (1315 1 8) holds a first place. The effort to drive out the Scots, 
 though successful, strained the resources of the colonists to 
 breaking point. The French wars of Edward III and his 
 successors completed the mischief. All that we know of Donald 
 O'Neill serves to show that he was a mere puppet in the hands of 
 Bruce, a sort of Irish John Balliol. 
 
 p. 54. Instead of the phrase "new Englishry," it would be 
 better perhaps to use some such expression as bureaucracy or 
 official element as contrasted with the colonial. 
 
 p. 55. The question addressed by St Brigid to the angel was 
 "Of what Christian land were most souls damned?" Whereupon 
 the angel showed her a land in the west part of the world, etc. (cf. 
 State Papers, Henry VIII, II, p. 11). 
 
 CHAPTER IV. p. 84. It should be remembered that Sir 
 Anthony St Leger was thrice Lord Deputy, viz. 1540 8, when he 
 was succeeded by Sir Edward Bellingham, who died in 1549; 
 1550 i, when he was replaced by Sir James Croft; and finally 
 from 1553 6. 
 
 p. 90. The ecclesiastical changes are thus summed up by 
 Mant, Hist, of the Church of Ireland, I, p. 264 : 
 
 " ist, King Henry held the ecclesiastical supremacy, with the 
 first fruits and twentieths of all benefices ; at the same time he 
 maintained seven sacraments, with obits and masses for the living 
 and the dead. Then, 2ndly, King Edward abolished the mass ; 
 authorized the Book of Common Prayer, and the consecration of 
 the bread and wine, in the English tongue ; and established only 
 two sacraments. 3rdly, Queen Mary brought everything back 
 again to a conformity with the Church of Rome, and to obedience 
 to the Papal authority. And now, 4thly, Queen Elizabeth again 
 abolished the Pope's supremacy ; reserved the twentieths and first 
 fruits to herself and her successors ; put down the mass \ and for a 
 general uniformity of worship in her dominions, as well in England 
 
 252
 
 388 Ireland. 
 
 as in Ireland, she established the Book of Common Prayer, and 
 forbade the use of Popish ceremonies." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. p. 225. Colonel Tottenham was M.P. for 
 New Ross. He was in the country when the question of supply 
 was discussed, and hearing that a vote was to be taken sooner 
 than had been expected he mounted his horse, rode sixty miles, 
 and disregarding the protests of the horror-stricken sergeant-at- 
 arms, burst into the well-dressed House in his dirty top-boots and 
 mud-stained riding suit. His vote turned the scales against 
 government; and from that time "Tottenham in his boots" became 
 synonymous with patriotism. The incident throws considerable 
 light on the social customs of the day. 
 
 pp. 243 4. The names of Geoffrey Keating, Colgan, Ussher, 
 Peter Wadding, and Sir James Ware, should not be omitted from 
 any list of historical writers who flourished in the I7th and i8th 
 centuries ; nor those of Peter Walsh, John Lynch, Archbishop 
 King, and Charles Leslie, from the list of polemical writers. In 
 fact, the revival of literary activity in the I7th century is one of the 
 most notable facts in the history of the period. Warner, however, 
 was an Englishman ; and Hutcheson, though a native of Armagh, 
 is chiefly connected with Glasgow. See Hyde's Literary History 
 for the Jacobite poetry of the early i8th century, ch. xliii.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 [Works especially suitable as an introduction to the subject are 
 indicated by an asterisk. The works included in square 
 brackets have been added by Mr Dunlop.] 
 
 I. 
 
 For the period before the Anglo-Norman Conquest. 
 
 The Annals of the Four Masters; the narrative goes down 
 to the seventeenth century. O'Curry's Manners and Customs oj 
 the Ancient Irish. O'Curry's Lectures on the Manuscript Materials 
 of Irish History. The Senchus Mor and The Book of Aitill, with 
 the Prefaces. Maine's Early History of Institutions, a most 
 admirable work. Early Christian Architecture, by Miss Stokes. 
 Petrie's Tara. Petrie's Round Towers of Ireland. Keane's Towers 
 and Temples of Ancient Ireland. Brenan's Ecclesiastical History 
 of Ireland ; the narrative goes down to 1829. Keatinge's History 
 of Ireland, ed. O'Mahony. The Story of Burnt Nial, translated 
 by Dasent. Joyce's Short History of Ireland ; the narrative goes 
 down to the seventeenth century. Moore's History of Ireland '; 
 the narrative goes down to 1 646. Irish History and Irish Character, 
 by Goldwin Smith, a singularly brilliant and able, but not always 
 just, essay. The Story of the Irish Nation, by the Hon. Emily 
 Lawless ; a sketch of Ireland from the earliest to the present 
 time. McGee's Popular History of Ireland; the narrative goes 
 down to 1829. 
 
 [Additional Authorities and Information : Wakeman's Hand- 
 Book of Irish Antiquities, ed. Cooke ; Annals of Ireland (see note 
 to p. 16) ; Whitley Stokes' Tripartite Life of St Patrick ; Bury's 
 Life of St Patrick ; Adamnan's Life of St Columba, ed. Reeves ; 
 Healy's Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars ; * Hyde's Literary
 
 390 Ireland. 
 
 History of Ireland; Todd's Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill; 
 Haliday's Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin ; Lanigan's Ecclesi- 
 astical History; * George Stokes' Ireland and the Celtic Church ; 
 * Joyce's Social History of Ancient Ireland; Bunting's Ancient 
 Music of Ireland ; Lady Ferguson's Irish before the Conquest^ 
 
 II. 
 
 For the period between the Anglo-Norman Conquest and the 
 Irish Administration of Sir Edward Poynings. 
 
 The Irish Statutes from 1310 to 1495 ; most of these have not 
 been published, and are known only by their titles. The Irish 
 Magna Carta will be found in the Appendix to Leland's History ', 
 Vol. I. The Statute of Kilkenny, edited by James Hardiman ; 
 this is the best existing account of Ireland in the feudal age; 
 the Notes are of special value. Calendar of Documents relating 
 to Ireland in the Public Record Office, 1171 1307, edited by 
 H. S. Sweetman. The Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, especially 
 the Topographia Hibernica, and the Expugnatio Hibernica (Opera, 
 Vol. v, Rolls Series). Sir John Davies' Discoverie why Ireland 
 was never entirely subdued; extremely valuable, but full of the 
 spirit of a Tudor and an English lawyer. Spenser's View of the 
 State of Ireland, Ware's Annals. Gilbert's Viceroys. Finglas' 
 Breviate, apud Harris' Hibernica. Campion's History of Ireland. 
 Leland's History of Ireland ; this is, on the whole, the best modern 
 authority for this period ; the work contains most of the important 
 references ; the narrative goes down to the Treaty of Limerick. 
 Plowden's History of Ireland from the Reign of Henry II ; 
 the narrative goes down to the Union. Froude's English in 
 Ireland ; this must be called a bad book ; the narrative goes 
 down to the Union. Froude's History of England, Vol. II, 
 Chapter 8. Mant's History of the Irish Church. Hallam's Con- 
 stitutional History, Vol. ill, Chapter on Ireland ; the narrative 
 goes down to the reign of George III. Ball's Irish Legislative 
 Systems, a very valuable treatise; it goes down to the Union. 
 The O 1 Conors of Connaught, by the O'Conor Don ; very valuable 
 and interesting. 
 
 [Additional Authorities: Orpen's Song of Dermot and the
 
 Bibliography. 391 
 
 Earl; Pembridge's Annals, apud Camden's Britannia (called also 
 Graces Annals, ed. Butler, Irish Archaeol. Soc.) ; Annals of Clyn, 
 ed. Bowling and Sir James Ware ; Irish Annals (Four Masters, 
 Loch CVut sup.); Berry's Statutes and Ordinances of the Parliament 
 of Ireland; King's Primer of the Church of Ireland; Brenan's 
 Ecclesiastical History ; * Richey's Short History of the Irish 
 People; * Stokes' Ireland and the Anglo-Norman Church.'] 
 
 III. 
 
 For the period between the Administration of Sir Edward 
 Poynings and the death of Henry VIII. 
 
 The Irish Statutes, 1495 to 1543. For the results and working 
 of the celebrated Act known as Poynings' Law, reference should 
 be made to the Irish Parliamentary Debates, and especially to 
 Flood's Speeches, to Hallam's Constitutional History, Vol. ill, on 
 Ireland, and to Ball's Irish Legislative Systems. State Papers 
 of the reign of Henry VIII, Vols. II ill. Calendar of Irish 
 State Papers, ed. Hamilton, Vol. I. Calendar of Carew MSS. 
 Vol. I, and Book of Howth, ed. Brewer and Bullen ; the series 
 extends from 1515 to 1624 and is of the greatest value and 
 importance. Holinshed's Chronicles of Ireland. Cox' History 
 of Ireland. Leland has collected numerous authorities in this 
 part of his History, Vol. II, Book ill, Chapters 5, 6, 7, which may 
 be referred to. The works of Ware and Harris, ante, and Archbishop 
 Ussher on the Reformation should be studied. Froude's History 
 of England, Vol. II, Chapter 8, ante, and Vol. iv, Chapter 14, 
 and the authorities cited. Ball's Reformed Church in Ireland; an 
 excellent review of the institutions of the Irish Anglican Church ; 
 the narrative goes down to the period of Disestablishment. The 
 Lives of the Earls of Kildare, by the Marquis of Kildare; very 
 interesting and well informed ; the work goes down to the close 
 of the eighteenth century. * Richey's Short History of the Irish 
 People. 
 
 [Additional Authorities : Ware's Annals of Ireland, Hen. VII. . . 
 Elizabeth (very useful for the reign of Henry VII) ; Annals of the 
 Four Masters and of Loch C<f; Letters of Henry VII, ed. Gairdner
 
 392 Ireland. 
 
 (Rolls Series) ; Sir Richard Edgcomb's Voyage into Ireland, and 
 Baron Finglas' Breviate, apud Harris' Hibernica ; Stanihurst's 
 Description of Ireland, apud Holinshed's Chronicles, Vol. n ; 
 Hore and Graves' Social State of Ireland; * Bagwell's Ireland 
 under the Tudors ; Bellesheim's Geschichte der katholischen Kirche 
 in Irland^\ 
 
 IV. 
 
 For the period between the death of Henry VI11 and the 
 end of the reign of Elizabeth. 
 
 The Irish Statutes, 1 5 56 1 586. Calendar of Irish State Papers 
 relating to the reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, edited 
 by Hamilton, ante. The Carew Papers as ante, Uavies and 
 Spencer, ante, are of special value for this period. Authorities 
 collected in Leland's History, Vol. n, Book in, Chapter 8 ; 
 Book IV, Chapters I, 2, 3, 4, 5 ; the principal of these are 
 Camden, Stanihurst, Hooker, Ware, Fynes Moryson, Cox. Collins' 
 Sydney State Papers. Rawlinson's Life of Sir John Perrott. 
 O'Sullivan's History of Catholic Ireland. Carte's Introduction to 
 the Life of Ormond. Leland's narrative may also be read with 
 profit throughout his whole work. Froude's History of England, 
 Vol. V, Chapter 28 ; Vol. vill (2 of the reign of Elizabeth), 
 Chapters 7, 1 1 ; Vol. X (4 of the reign of Elizabeth), Chapter 24 ; 
 Vol. XI (5 of the reign of Elizabeth), Chapter 27. The authorities 
 collected by Mr Froude are very numerous ; his research is 
 admirable, the brilliancy of his style is well known. But he is 
 very inaccurate, and his animus against the Irish Celtic race has 
 repeatedly distorted his judgment. Lecky's History of 'England in 
 the Eighteenth Century, Vol. II, Chapter 6, pp. 92 seqq. This 
 great work is by many degrees the best account of Ireland from 
 the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth to the Union. The pages 
 here referred to are only preliminary to the narrative, which does 
 not fully open until its proper date. The numerous authorities are 
 contained in the Notes. The Irish chapters have been published 
 as a separate work. The Calendar of the Ancient Records of 
 Dublin, by John T. Gilbert, published by the authority of the
 
 Bibliography. 393 
 
 Municipal Council , this important work at present extends from 
 the earliest times to the end of the seventeenth century, and will 
 be continued. Richey's Lectures, ante, and Short History. The 
 O'Conors of Connaught, by the O'Conor Don, ante, is very 
 valuable for the whole Tudor period. 
 
 [Additional Authorities : Acts of the Privy Council in Ireland 
 (Hist. MSS. Comm. I5th Kept. App. Pt iii) ; Shirley's Original 
 Letters and Papers; Hogan's Ibernia Ignatiana; Brady's State 
 Papers concerning the hish Church; Moran's Spicilegium Osso- 
 riense ; Annals of the Four Masters ; Hooker's Life of Sir Peter 
 Carew, ed. Maclean ; MacCarthy's Life of Florence MacCarthy 
 Reagh ; O'Clery's Life of Hiigh O'Donnell, ed. Murphy ; Captain 
 Cuellar's Adventures in Connacht and Ulster, 1588; Froude's 
 Spanish Story of the Armada; Hill's MacDonnells of Antrim; 
 Groves' Titular Archbishops of Ireland; Fynes Mory son's Iti- 
 nerary, Pt ii ; Stafford's Pacata Hibernia; * Bagwell's Ireland 
 under the Tudors ; Curry's Civil Wars of Ireland ; Cambridge 
 Modern History, in, Ch. 18 ; * O'Connor's Elizabethan Ireland.} 
 
 V. 
 
 For the period between the end of the reign of Elizabeth 
 and the Restoration. 
 
 The Irish Statutes, 16121630. Calendar of State Papers 
 relating to Ireland in the reign of James I, edited by C. W. 
 Russell, D.D., and John P. Prendergast. The Irish State Trials 
 contained in Cobbett and Howell's Collection, A.D. 1163 1820, and 
 in the New Series, 18201848. The trial of Connor Lord Maguire 
 in 1645 is worth reading. An Historical Account of the Plantation 
 of Ulster, 16081620, by the Rev. George Hill. This book is 
 written in an anti-English spirit, but is very learned and full of 
 information ; the authorities collected are numerous and valuable ; 
 the work contains Pynnar's Survey, made soon after the Plantation. 
 History of Land Tenure in Ireland, by Dr Sigerson, able and 
 useful. Calendar of Carew Papers, ante ; the series ends in 1624. 
 * Carte's Life of Orrnond, most important. Stra/ord's Letters, 
 ed. Knowier. Straffbrds Trial, Rushworth. Bernard's Life of
 
 394 Ireland. 
 
 Ussher. Lord Castlehaven's Memoirs. Borlase's History of the 
 Rebellion. Warner's History of the Rebellion and Civil War in 
 Ireland^ very valuable as regards the alleged massacre in 1641. 
 Curry's Historical Account of the Civil Wars in Ireland, very 
 valuable for the same reason, and unjustly condemned by Hallam. 
 Clarendon's History of the Rebellion (the Irish chapters) ; these 
 are chiefly remarkable as showing the dislike and contempt felt 
 towards Ireland and the Irish by the Stuarts and the Royalist 
 party in England. Lord Clanricarde's Memoirs, very valuable. 
 Carlyle's Letters of Oliver Cromwell, edited by S. C. Lomas 
 (the Irish letters) ; Mr Carlyle's views as to Ireland and the 
 Irish people require no comment. Leland's History, Book IV, 
 Chapters 6, 7, 8 ; Book v, Chapters i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ; Book vi, 
 Chapters I, 2, and the authorities collected ; this is, on the whole, 
 a fair and judicious narrative. Lecky's History as ante, Vol. 1 1, 
 Chapter 6, pp. 100 174 ; the evidence as to the alleged massacre 
 of 1641 is very ably summed up and judged. Gardiner's History 
 of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the 
 Civil War (the Irish chapters); Gardiner's History of the Great 
 Civil War (the Irish chapters), see especially Vol. I, Chapters 6, 
 il; Vol. II, Chapters 27, 37,44; Gardiner's History of the Com- 
 monwealth and Protectorate, Vol. I (the Irish chapters), see 
 especially Chapters 4, 5, 6 ; the authorities in these learned and 
 judicious histories are numerous. The Cromivellian Settlement of 
 Ireland, by John P. Prendergast ; written in an anti-English spirit, 
 but extremely learned, and rich in original and useful information. 
 The Life of Sir William Petty, by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice; very 
 instructive and interesting. The Introduction to " The Patriot 
 Parliament" of Thomas Davis, by Sir C. G. Duffy. The Irish 
 Ballads of Davis and Duffy, to be found in a volume called The 
 Spirit of the Nation, are admirable, and should be studied. 
 Beside the above references, passages will be found in Burke's 
 Irish writings relating to the confiscations of the period of James I, 
 Charles I, and Cromwell, and to the alleged massacre of 1641, 
 which are marked by his keen insight and deep political wisdom. 
 They deserve attention and careful thought. Reid's Presbyterian 
 Church in Ireland. 
 
 [Additional Aiithorities ; Calendar of Irish State Papers
 
 Bibliography. 39- 
 
 (162560), ed. Mahaffy; Sir John Davies' Historical Tracts; 
 Harrison's Scot in Ulster ; Townshend's Life and Letters of the 
 Great Earl of Cork; Lismore Papers, 2 Series, ed. Grosart ; 
 Rushworth's Historical Collections ; Nalson's Impartial Collection 
 of affairs of State ; Ormond MSS., ed. Gilbert and Litton Falkiner 
 (Hist. MSS. Comm.) ; Hickson's Irish Massacres; Gilbert's 
 History of the Confederation ; Temple's Irish Rebellion ; Clan- 
 ricarde's Memoirs and Letters ; Gilbert's Contemporary History ; 
 Scobell's Acts and Ordinances ; Clogy's Life of Bishop Bedell ; 
 Ludlow's Memoirs, ed. Firth; Murphy's Cromwell in Ireland; 
 Cox' Hibernia Anglicana ; Cambridge Modern History, iv, 
 Ch. 18; * Bag well's Ireland under the Stuarts; Bonn's Englische 
 Kolonisation in Irland.] 
 
 VI. 
 
 For the period between the Restoration and the Capitulation 
 of Limerick. 
 
 The Irish Statutes, 1660 1692. The principal Acts passed by 
 King James' Irish Parliament, of 1689, will be found in Davis' 
 Patriot Parliament, ante. The Irish State Trials ; that of Arch- 
 bishop Plunkett is the most important for this period ; the charge 
 of Chief Justice Keating is valuable, as showing the character of 
 Irish agrarian disorder in 1689 91. The Manuscripts of the 
 Marquis of Ormonde (Historical Manuscripts Commission). Carte's 
 Life of Ormond, ante. Sir William Petty's Political Anatomy of 
 Ireland, very valuable. Lord Clarendon's Letters when Lord 
 Lieutenant. King's State of the Protestants of Ireland. Walker's 
 Diary of the Siege of Derry. Memoires Intdits de Dumont de 
 Bostaquet, very interesting. Story's Impartial History of the War 
 in Ireland and the Continuation. O'Kelly's Macaricc Exddiutn. 
 The Abbe MacGeoghegan's History of Ireland. Memoires de 
 Berwick. Leland's History, Book vi, and the authorities; the 
 work, as said before, ends at the Treaty of Limerick. *Macaulay's 
 History of England (the Irish chapters), Vol. iv, Chapter 12 ; 
 Vol. v, Chapters 1416; Vol. vi, Chapter 17, and the authorities. 
 It would be superfluous to refer to the learning and the splendour
 
 396 Ireland. 
 
 of Macaulay's narrative ; but there are some errors in his Irish 
 chapters, especially in his point of view; and his account of King 
 James' Irish Parliament is very deceptive. Lecky's History of 
 England, ante, Vol. II, Chapter 6, pp. 174 196 ; the refutation of 
 Macaulay is admirable. * The Patriot Parliament, by Thomas 
 Davis, ante, very valuable. Lord Wolseley's Life of Marlborough, 
 Vol. II, Chapters 62 67 ; this is by far the best account of 
 Marlborough's Campaign in Ireland. 
 
 {Additional Authorities: Calendar of Irish State Papers, ed. 
 Mahaffy (in progress) ; * Carte's Life of Ormond; Orrery's State 
 Letters ; Walsh's Hist, of the Remonstrance ; Essex' Letters ; 
 Essex Papers, ed. Airy (Camden Soc.) ; Moran's Life of Arch- 
 bishop Plunkett; Gilbert's Jacobite Narrative; Dwyer's Siege of 
 Derry ; Dalrymple's Memoirs ; D'Avaux' Ne"gociations en Irlande ; 
 Calendar of Domestic State Papers (William III), ed. Hardy, 
 Vols. I in ; Harris' Life of King William III; *T. Davis' 
 Patriot Parliament, ed. Duffy; Todhunter's Life of Sarsfield; 
 Wight's Hist, of the Quakers in Ireland; Cambridge Modern 
 History, v, Ch. 10 (3) ; Klopp's Fall des Hauses Stuart.] 
 
 VII. 
 
 For the period of the Penal Laws in Ireland, and up to the 
 Revolution of 1782. 
 
 The Irish Statutes, 16921782-3 ; see also the English 
 Declaratory Act of 6 George I, Chapter 5, repealed in 1782, and 
 the Renunciation Act of 23 George III, Chapter 28. The Irish 
 State Trials ; the only one of importance is that relating to the 
 proceedings in Annesley and Sherlock, 1719, which involved the 
 question of the Appellate Jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords. 
 The Irish Parliamentary Debates ; parts of these have been re- 
 ported towards the close of this period. 'Conor's History of the 
 Irish Catholics. Curry's State of the Irish Catholics. Vincent 
 Scully on The Penal Laws. Howard's Popery Cases. Burke's 
 Tracts on the Popery Laws, a mere sketch, but very valuable. 
 O'Callaghan's History of the Irish Brigade. The Last Colonel of 
 tfa Irish Brigade ; this is a short biography of Count O'Connell,
 
 Bibliography. 397 
 
 an uncle of Dnniel O'Connell. Interesting details about this 
 distinguished soldier will be found in General Thie'bault's Memoirs. 
 Primate Boulter's Letters. Swift's Tracts on Ireland. Berkeley's 
 Tracts on Ireland. Burke's writings on Ireland ; all valuable in 
 the highest degree. Molyneux' Case of Ireland. Monk Mason's 
 Authority and Constitution of the Irish Parliament. Hutchinson's 
 Commercial Restraints, ed. Carroll ; very valuable. Caldwell's 
 Restraints on the Trade of Ireland. Lord Mountmorres' History 
 of the Irish Parliament. Campbell's Philosophical Survey of the 
 South of Ireland. Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland, 1776 1778, 
 ed. Hunt; most instructive, interesting and important. Sir George 
 C. Lewis on Irish Disturbances ; philosophic and excellent ; the 
 narrative goes down to 1836. Flood's Life and Speeches. Grattan's 
 Life and Speeches. Hardy's Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont. 
 Barrington's Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation. O'Leary's Tracts. 
 Llrlande, Sociale, Politique, et Religieuse, by Gustave de 
 Beaumont ; very able and full of admirable research and thought, 
 but ruled by the ideas of a French doctrinaire, and not just to the 
 Irish landed gentry. O'Flanagan's Lives of the Irish Chancellors ; 
 a learned and interesting work ; the narrative goes down to the 
 Chancellorship of Lord Plunket. *Lecky's History, ante (the Irish 
 chapters), Vol. II, Chapter 7 ; Vol. IV, Chapters 16, 17 ; for the 
 general reader nothing more is required ; the authorities are 
 collected ; the refutation of Mr Froude is excellent. Froude's 
 Two Chiefs of Dunboy is a brilliant romance, that illustrates from 
 the point of view of the author the political and social life of this 
 period, or rather of the first part of it, remarkably well. Ireland 
 from the Siege of Limerick to the present time, by John Mitchell ; 
 written in the spirit of an Irish rebel of 1848, but containing some 
 valuable information ; the narrative goes down to 1851. Two 
 Centuries of Irish History, 1691 i87o;edited by James Bryce, M.P.; 
 written in the spirit of Radical English Home Rule, but a very 
 valuable resume of events, well worth reading. 
 
 \AdditionalAuthorities: Harris' Life of William III '; Mant's 
 Hist, of the Church of Ireland, Vol. 1 1, valuable for Archbishop 
 King's correspondence ; Madden's Reflections for the Gentlemen of 
 Ireland ; Ball's Legislative Systems ; Parnell's Hist, of the Penal 
 Laws ; O'Conor's Military Hist, of the Irish Nation ; Prior's List
 
 398 Ireland. 
 
 of Absentees; Newenham's Statistical and Historical Inquiry; 
 Murray's Commercial Relations between England and Ireland; 
 Craik's Life of Sruift ; Berkeley's Life and Works, ed. Frazer ; 
 Smiles' Huguenots in England and Ireland; The Patriot Mis- 
 cellany ; Seward's Collectanea Politica ; Baratariana ; Hunt's Irish 
 Parliament, 1775 ; Caldwell's Debates on the affairs of Ireland; 
 Dunlop's Life of Henry Grattan ; T. McNevin's Volunteers of 
 1782; *Froude's English in Ireland.] 
 
 VIII. 
 For the period from the Revolution 0/1782 to the Union. 
 
 The Irish Statutes, 1782 1800; the Act of Union, in the 
 Irish Parliament, is 39, 40 George III, Chapter 67. The Irish 
 State Trials ; these are very numerous for this period ; that of 
 Theobald Wolfe Tone possesses the most historical interest. The 
 Irish Parliamentary Debates; these are well reported from 1781 
 to 1797 ; there is then a hiatus until the Debates on the Union. 
 These are very remarkable ; see especially the speeches of 
 Castlereagh and Clare, of Grattan, Foster, Saurin, and Plunket. 
 The Lives and Speeches of Flood and Grattan, ante. The Speeches 
 of Curran, wonderful specimens of advocacy. Burke's Correspond- 
 ence ; letters on Ireland down to his death, very important and 
 valuable. The Auckland Correspondence. The Life of Theobald 
 Wolfe Tone. The Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone ; the Diary 
 is very valuable and interesting. The Cornwallis Correspondence, 
 most important and instructive, but not just to the old Irish 
 gentry. The Castlereagh Correspondence, also most important, 
 especially on the subject of the Union. The Colchester Papers 
 and Diary. Buckingham's Courts and Cabinets of George III. 
 Madden's United Irishmen, full of research and of valuable in- 
 formation. Memoirs of Miles Byrne, very interesting. Holt's 
 Memoirs of the Rebellion. Musgrave's Rebellions in Ireland, 
 written in the evil Orange spirit. Maxwell's History of the Re- 
 bellion. Gordon's History of the Rebellion of 1 798 ; by far the 
 fairest and best account. Hay's History of the Rebellion in 
 Wexford. Stanhope's Life of Pitt. Pitt's Speeches ; that on the 
 Union should be studied, and so should the Debates, on this
 
 Bibliography. 399 
 
 subject, in the British Parliament. Pitt, by Lord Rosebery. Pitt, 
 by Goldwin Smith, in Three English Statesmen. Brougham's 
 Statesmen of the Reign of George III. Moore's Life of Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald. W. J. McNevin's Pieces of Irish History. 
 Plowden's History of Ireland after the Union ; the narrative goes 
 down to 1810, and expresses the views of a loyal, but disappointed 
 Irish Catholic. Massey's History of England (the Irish chapters), 
 Vol. II, Chapters 24 26; Vol. IV, Chapter 38; written from the 
 point of view of an English Whig. Newenham's State of Ireland. 
 Killen's Continuation of Reids History of the Irish Presbyterians. 
 Ingram's History of the Irish Union ; a piece of elaborate 
 paradox, to prove that the Union was not, in any sense, carried by 
 corruption. Lecky's History as ante (the Irish chapters), Vol. VI, 
 Chapters 24, 25 ; Vols. VII and vill ; the extra volumes are, 
 perhaps, the most important and valuable parts of this great work. 
 The correspondence between the Ministry in England and the 
 Irish Government, and the confidential reports sent to the Castle, 
 from all parts of Ireland, during the troubled years, from 1792 to 
 1800, have been collected from original sources, and are most 
 instructive and interesting. All available authorities are collected 
 with the most praiseworthy industry. 
 
 IX. 
 
 For the period between the Union and Catholic Emancipation. 
 
 The Statutes of the United Parliament (Ireland), 18011829. 
 The Irish State Trials ; these are also numerous for this period ; 
 the most remarkable is that of Robert Emmett ; several of these 
 trials illustrate the extraordinary powers of O'Connell at the Bar. 
 The Parliamentary Debates (Ireland) ; see especially the speeches 
 on Irish affairs of Pitt, Fox, Grattan, Canning, Castlereagh, Lord 
 Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, Peel, Plunket. The Cornwallis 
 Correspondence, ante. The Castlereagh Correspondence, ante. The 
 Colchester Papers and Diary, ante. The Supplementary Despatches 
 of Arthur, Duke of Wellington ; the papers on Ireland in 1807-8, 
 and again in 1828-30, are of special value. Sir Robert Peel, 178 
 1827, from his private correspondence, edited by Charles Stuart
 
 4OO Ireland. 
 
 Parker ; this work contains all the correspondence of Peel on 
 Ireland when Chief Secretary. Reports of Parliamentary Com- 
 mittees on Irish Incomes, Expenditure and Taxation, 1815 1864. 
 Evidence on the state of Ireland taken before Parliamentary 
 Committees in 1825 ; extremely important and instructive. Baron 
 Fletcher's Charge to the Grand Jury of Wexford in 1814; a 
 remarkable deliverance on the state of Ireland, severely condemned 
 by Peel. Stanhope's Pitt, ante. Plowden's History, ante. Lewis 
 on Irish Disturbances, ante. An Account of Ireland, by Edward 
 Wakefield ; a work of great research and value, and an admirable 
 exposition of the social and economic condition of Ireland in 1812. 
 The Life of Canning, by Stapleton. Memoirs and Correspondence 
 of Richard Marquis Wellesley, by Pearce. The Life of Plunket, by 
 D. R. Plunket. O'Connell' s Life and Speeches, by John O'Connell. 
 Life of O'Connell, by Miss Cusack. Life of O'Connell (Statesmen 
 Series], by J. A. Hamilton. Ireland and the Irish, by Daniel 
 O'Connell ; a book quite unworthy of O'Connell. Wyse's History 
 of the Catholic Association. Peel and O'Connell, by Shaw Lefevre ; 
 written from the English Radical point of view, but well informed 
 and able. Life and Times of Lord Cloncurry, including his personal 
 recollections ; very interesting. Ireland, Past and Present, by J. W. 
 Croker. Ireland since the Union, by J. H. McCarthy. Peel, by 
 Goldwin Smith in the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; very able, but 
 too eulogistic. Lecky's Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland; 
 rather immature in thought, but very able and eloquent ; the 
 series comprises Swift, Flood, Grattan and O'Connell ; the sketch 
 of O'Connell is perhaps the best. 
 
 X. 
 
 For the period between 1829 and 1868. 
 
 The Statutes of the United Parliament (Ireland). The Irish 
 State Trials; the regular series goes down to 1848, and is being 
 continued ; much the most important of these trials is that of 
 O'Connell in 1843-4 ; the trials of Smith O'Brien and the other 
 participators in the movement of 1848 are not without interest; 
 the trials of some of the Fenian prisoners of 1867-8 have been
 
 Bibliography. 401 
 
 separately published. The Parliamentary Debates (Ireland) ; see 
 especially the speeches of the Duke of Wellington and of Lord Grey, 
 Brougham, Lyndhurst, Melbourne, and Lansdowne in the House of 
 Lords, and of Peel, Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Disraeli, 
 O'Connell, Smith O'Brien, Sheil, Cobden, Bright and Mr Gladstone 
 in the House of Commons. The Supplementary Despatches of the 
 Duke of Wellington, ante ; many of the papers on Ireland during 
 this period are important. Sir George Nicholls' Report on the 
 Irish Poor Law ; very important. The Report of the Devon 
 Commission and the Evidence ; of the greatest possible value on 
 the subject of the Irish Land. The Parliamentary Reports of 
 Committees and Commissions on Irish affairs during this period 
 are extremely numerous ; the reader can only be referred to them. 
 Selections from the Speeches and Despatches of Earl Russell 
 (Ireland). Recollections and Suggestions of Earl Russell. Clon- 
 curry's Personal Recollections, ante ; these are very valuable for 
 part of this period. The Life of Thomas Druinmond, by McLennan. 
 Memoirs of Earl Spencer {Lord Althorp}, by Le Marchant. The 
 Life of Lord Melbourne. The Memoir of Lord Hatherton. Report 
 of the Parliamentary Committee of the Loyal National Repeal 
 Association ; well worth reading. Essays on Repeal of the Union; 
 awarded prizes by the Loyal National Repeal Association. The 
 Nation Newspaper, 1842 1848; most interesting, as showing the 
 views of the Young Ireland party. The Spirit of the Nation ; a 
 collection of Irish Ballads, some very beautiful, written in the 
 same sense. The Irish Crisis (Edinburgh Review, Vol. 87, 1848), 
 by Sir Charles Trevelyan ; an able and fair account of the 
 Famine of 1845-6, written from the point of view of an English 
 Whig. A History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847, by the Rev. 
 John O'Rourke, P.P. ; written from the point of view of an Irish 
 Catholic priest. The Irish Landlord since the Revolution, by the 
 Rev. Patrick Lavelle ; illustrating the animosity felt against some 
 Irish landlords since the Famine. Irish Emigration and the 
 Tenure of Irish Land, by Lord Dufferin ; well worth reading. 
 Policy of England towards Ireland, by Charles Greville. Journals, 
 Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland, by Nassau Senior ; 
 the views o. a moderate Whig, between 1850 and 1860. Young 
 Ireland, by Charles Gavan Duffy ; very valuable and interesting. 
 
 M. I. 26
 
 402 Ireland. 
 
 New Ireland, by A. M. Sullivan. The Life of Lord Palmerston, 
 by Sir H. L. Bulwer ; contains some passages referring to Ireland 
 that may be read with advantage. The Irish Land, by Isaac 
 Butt. Ireland in 1868, by Gerald Fitzgibbon. Fifty Years of 
 Concessions to Ireland, and Irish Wrongs and English Remedies, 
 by Barry O'Brien ; these works are written in an anti-English 
 spirit, but may be read with profit. Walpole's History of England. 
 Moles worth's History of England, 1830 1870. The Reign of 
 Queen Victoria, by Sir Rowland Blennerhassett ; the parts of this 
 work that relate to Ireland are interesting and valuable. 
 
 XI. 
 
 For the period 18681905. 
 
 [The Annual Register, 1868 1906; Ball's Reformed Church 
 of Ireland (1537 1889); Godkin's Ireland and her Churches; 
 Murphy's Ireland: Industrial, Political and Social; Butt's Irish 
 People and the Irish Land; Caird's Irish Land Question ; Lord 
 Dufferin's Irish Emigration and the Tenure of Land in Ireland; 
 O'Brien's Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland; O'Leary's Recol- 
 lections of Fenians and Fenianism ; Blennerhassett's Ireland from 
 1837 to 1887, in T. H. Ward's Reign of Victoria ; Locker Lampson's 
 State of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century ; John Bright's Letters 
 on Home Rule ; Dicey's England's Case against Home Rule ; 
 Wemyss Reid's Life of W. E. Forster ; O'Brien's Life of Parnell ; 
 O'Connor's The Parnell Movement; Hurlbert's Ireland under 
 Coercion ; Bagenal's The American- Irish and their influence on 
 Irish Politics ; W. O'Connor Morris' Ireland, 1798 1898; Report 
 of the Proceedings of the Special Commission ; Morley's Life of 
 Gladstone ; Kennedy's Hist, of the Irish Protest against over- 
 taxation; Davitt's Fall of Feudalism in Ireland; Lady Gregory's 
 Ideals in Ireland; Gwynn's To-day and to-morrow in Ireland; 
 Plunkett's Ireland in the New Century ; Krans' William Bullet- 
 Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival^
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abercromby, General, 313 
 
 Aghrim, Battle of, 191 
 
 Agricola, 2 
 
 Agriculture, Board of, 381 
 
 Allen, Bog of, 41, 113 
 
 American War, The, 234 
 
 Anglican Church in Ireland, The, 
 104, 1 16, 117, 130, 132, 136, 
 214, 215, 226, 318, 320, 321, 
 353 ; Act for Disestablishment of, 
 
 356, 357 
 
 Anjou, Henry of, Henry II, 23, 29, 31 
 Annals of the Four Masters, 16 
 Annals, Irish, 15 
 Ascendency, Protestant, in Ireland, 
 
 130, 168, 173, 174, 206, 224, 
 
 35. 3!3' 3H. 353 
 Ashbourne Act, 372 
 Aston, Sir Arthur, 150 
 Athenry, Battle of, 34 
 Athlone, 152, 161 
 Attainder, Great Act of, in 1689, 184 
 
 Baker, at Derry, 181 
 
 Balfour, Mr, Chief Secretary, 375, 
 
 376 
 
 Ball, a distinguished Irishman, 347 
 Baltinglass, Lord, 102 
 Banim, Irish Novelist, 347 
 Bantry, Landing at, 269 
 Bedell, Archbishop, 214 
 Belfast, 218, 260 
 Bellahoe, Battle of, 78 
 Bellingham, Sir Edward, Deputy, 
 
 86, 87 
 
 Benburb, Battle of, 145 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 172, ii'J, i> 
 
 226, 231, 243 
 
 Berkeley, Lord, Viceroy, 173 
 Berwick, Duke of, bastard of James 
 
 II, 186 
 
 Bessborough Commission, 365, 368 
 Biggar, Joseph, 361, 362 
 Bingham, President of Connaught, 
 
 III 
 
 Black Friday, 33 
 Black Rent, 55 
 Blount, Charles, Lord Mountjoy, 
 
 112, 114, 123 
 
 Boleyn, Anne, 70 
 Bonaghts and Cosherings, 48 
 Bonaparte, 161 
 
 Borlase, John, Lord Justice, 137 
 Boulter, Archbishop, 214 
 Boycott, Captain, 366 
 Boyne, Battle of, 187 
 Breakspeare, Nicholas, Pope Adrian, 
 
 25, 48, 76 
 
 Brehon Laws, 14, 50, 51 
 Brehon Lawyers, 14, 50, 53, 123 
 Brian, King of Ireland, 21 
 Brigade, The Irish, 207, 290 
 Brinkley, a distinguished Irishman, 
 
 347 
 
 Browne, Archbishop, 76 
 Browne, Bishop, 214 
 Browne, General, 207 
 Bruce, Edward, 34 
 Bryce, eminent Irish Historian, 347 
 Buckinghamshire, Lord, Viceroy, 
 
 *37 
 
 Burgh, Hussey, 237 
 Burke, Edmund, 129, 236, 339, 
 
 244. 353 
 
 Burke, T. H., Permanent Under- 
 secretary, 369
 
 404 
 
 Index. 
 
 Bushe, 283 
 
 Butler, Archer, a distinguished 
 
 Irishman, 347 
 Butlers, The, 35, 38, 40, 43, 44. 
 
 57, 69, 71, 78 
 Butt, a distinguished Irishman, 
 
 347 36o> 36i, 362 
 
 Caesar, 19, 20 
 Caldwell, Sir James, 144 
 Camden, Lord, Viceroy, 266, 272, 
 
 275 
 
 Canning, 297, 353 
 Carew, Sir Peter, 98 
 Carleton, 348 
 
 Carlisle, Lord, Viceroy, 238 
 Carnarvon, Lord, Viceroy, 371, 
 
 372, 373 
 Carolan, 18 
 Cashel, Synod of, 29 
 Castlereagh, 281, 283, 293, 297 
 Cathal of the Red Hand, 34 
 Catherine, Queen, 70 
 Catholic Association, 307, 308, 
 
 311; Church in Ireland, 131, 
 
 215, 226; Committee, 261, 296; 
 
 Convention, 265 ; Emancipation, 
 
 279, 284, 297, 312, 353; Question, 
 
 293, 294, 295, 296, 298, 306 
 Catholicism set up in Ireland, 87 
 Cavendish, Lord Frederick, Chief 
 
 Secretary, 369 
 Cecil, 93 
 
 Ceile, The, 10, 47, 126 
 Celtic, The ancient, Irish Church, 
 
 6, 7, 12, 48, 49, 74, 75 
 Celtic Irish genius, The, 353 
 Celtic Land, The, 45 
 Celts, passim 
 
 Charlemont, Lord, 236, 243, 255 
 Charles I, 134, 137, 142, 143 
 Charles the Great, 32 
 Charles II, 148, 152, 157, 164, 
 
 165, 166 
 
 Charles V, 70, 77 
 Childers Commission, 380 
 Church in England, The, 68 
 Church of the Pale, 48, 49, 74, 75, 
 
 91, 105, 116 
 
 Clanricarde, Earl of, 80, 142 
 Clans, The Irish, i 
 Clarendon, 156, 165 
 Clarendon, Viceroy, 176 
 Clonmel, Siege of, 151 
 Clontarf, Battle of, 21 
 Cnocktue, Battle of, 64 
 Cogan, Miles de, 28 
 Commissioners, Irish,of Henry VIII, 
 
 80 
 Compensation for Disturbances Bill, 
 
 365 
 
 Confederation of Catholics in Ire- 
 land, 141, 143 
 
 Congested Districts Board, 377 
 Conn of the Hundred Battles, 3 
 Constabulary, The Irish, 304, 326 
 Coote, Eyre, 353 
 Cormvallis, Viceroy, 275, 276, 277, 
 
 282, 293 
 
 Corporate Reform in Ireland, 326 
 Coyne and Livery, 10, 43 
 Crimes Acts, 370, 371, 375 
 Cromer, Archbishop, 76 
 Cromwell, Henry, 157 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 148, 149, 150, 
 
 'Si. 153' 154, 156, 158, 247 
 Cromwell, Thomas, 74, 76 
 Crosses, The Ancient Irish, 18 
 Curran, Irish orator, 347 
 Curry, Irish Historian, 244 
 
 Daer Stock Tenants, 10, 126 
 
 Danes in Ireland, 20 
 
 D'Aquila, Don Juan, 113 
 
 Davis, Thomas, 330, 347 
 
 Davitt, Michael, 363, 364, 370 
 
 Debt of Ireland, 299 
 
 De Burgh, work of, on Irish 
 Dominicans, 244 
 
 De Burghs, The, 33, 35, 64, 79 
 
 Declaration of Legislative Inde- 
 pendence of Ireland, 240 
 
 De Courcies, The, 46 
 
 Derrnod, King of Leinster, 26, 27, 28 
 
 Derry, 128, 179, 180, 181, 182; 
 Bishop of, 255 
 
 Desmond, Gerald, The Last Earl 
 of, 97, 101, 104
 
 Index. 
 
 405 
 
 Desmond, The Geraldines of, 43, 
 
 44. 45- 54; 57. 63, 64, 73 
 Desmond, Sir John of, 99 
 Devereux, Walter, Earl of Essex, 98 
 Devon Commission, The, 332, 333 
 Dowdal, Primate, 85 
 Doyle, a distinguished Irishman, 
 
 349 
 
 Drogheda, Synod of, 25; massacre 
 
 at, 150 
 
 Drummond, Thomas, 324, 325 
 Dublin, 28, 30, 41, 71, 149, 172, 
 
 185, 187, 188, 218 
 Dufferin, Lord, 353 
 Duffy, C. G., 330 
 Dundalk, rout of, 34 ; town of, 
 
 4f, 185 
 Dungannon, The Volunteer Meeting 
 
 at, 239 ; The Baron of, 91 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria, great Irish 
 
 Novelist, 348 
 
 Education Bill, Irish, 359, 360 
 Edward I, 36 
 Edward III, 37 
 Edward VI, 84, 86 
 Election, The Clare, 310 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 89, 99, 112, 115 
 Emmett, Robert, 290 
 Encumbered Estates Acts, 341, 
 
 342, 345 
 
 England, passim 
 
 Englishry, The, passim 
 
 Enniskillen, 179, 182 
 
 Eric, The, 14, 50 
 
 Essex, The Earl of, 112, 175 
 
 Established Church, The, see An- 
 glican Church in Ireland 
 
 Eva, Daughter of Dermod, 28 
 
 Eyre, Jane, Charlotte Bronte, the 
 author of, 348 
 
 F's, The Three, 359, 3 6 7 
 Famine in Ireland in 1/40-1, 338, 
 note; in 1822, 301; in 1845-6, 
 
 33 6 . 337. 338. 339 
 Felim the Lawgiver, 3 
 Fenian Outbreak, The, 348, 349 
 Feredach the Just, 3 
 
 Firbolgs, The, i 
 
 Fitzgerald, Irish Divine of emi- 
 nence, 347 
 Fitzgerald, Edward, Lord, 267, 290, 
 
 291 
 
 Fitzgerald, Maurice, 26 
 Fitzgerald, Vesey, 310, 311 
 Fitzgibbon, John, Earl of Clare, 
 
 2 59> 265, 266, 272, 273, 276, 
 
 279, 280, 283 
 
 Fitzmaurice, James, 99, 100, 101 
 Fitzstephen, Robert, 26, 27 
 Fitzwilliam, Sir William, Deputy, 
 
 1 08 
 Fitzwilliam, Lord, Viceroy, 26s, 
 
 266 
 
 Flood, Henry, 232, 239, 243, 255 
 Fomorians, The, r 
 Forster, W. E., Chief Secretary, 
 
 366, 369 
 
 Foster, The Irish Speaker, 283 
 Fox, Charles, 239, 293 
 Fuidhir Tenants, 10, 48 
 
 Gaelic League, 380 
 
 Gal way, 46, 152 
 
 Gavelkind, Irish, 9, ir, 51, 124, 
 
 '25 
 
 Gaveston, Viceroy, 37 
 George II, 230 
 George III, 229, 231, 253 
 George IV, 306 
 Geraldines, The, 35, 38, 40, 44, 
 
 70, 71, 100, ior, 102, 273, note 
 Ginkle, General, 190, 191, 193 
 Gladstone.W. E., 356, 357, 358, 359, 
 
 360, 367, 368, 37 r, 372, 373, 
 
 374> 378 
 
 Glamorgan, Lord, dealings of, with 
 Charles I and the Irish Con- 
 federates, 144 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 244 
 Graces, The, 134, 135. '37 
 Grattan, Henry, 212, 224, 237. 
 239, 240, 241, 243, 24 s - *53> 
 257, 276, 283, 293, 297, 306, 311 
 Grenville, Lord, 293 
 Grey Administration, 317, 3y,
 
 406 
 
 Index. 
 
 Grey, Lord de Wilton, 103 
 Grey, Lord Leonard, 72, 73, 78 
 Gros, Raymond Le, 28 
 Grouchy, General, at Bantry, 269 
 
 Harcourt, Lord, Viceroy, 233, 234 
 llasculf, 28 
 
 Ileber, son of Milesius, i 
 Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I, 
 
 H7 
 
 Henry III, 36 
 Henry VII, 54, 57 
 Henry VIII, 65, 67, 68, 73. ?6, 
 
 78, 81 
 
 Heremon, son of Milesius, 2 
 Hoche, General, 269 
 Home Rule, 360, 361, 362, 372, 
 
 373. 374. 376, 378, 379- 38 
 Houghers, The, 228 
 Humbert, General, 276 
 Hutcheson, Francis, 244 
 Hutchinson, Hely, 233, 244 
 Hyde, Douglas, 380 
 Hy-Niall, The, 4, 5, 6, 21, 77, 95 
 
 Inchiquin, Lord, 141, 147, 151, 
 177 
 
 Injured Lady, Swift's History of, 
 
 220 
 Interest, The English and Irish, in 
 
 Ireland, 38, 62, 8r, 132, 167, 
 
 i ii, 225, 325 
 
 Invasions, Danish, of Ireland, 20 
 Ir, son of Milesius, 2 
 Ireland, passim 
 
 Irish, The, an Aryan Community, 2 
 Irish Agricultural Sociely, 381 
 Irish National Land League, 364, 
 
 365, 366, 368 
 Irishry, The, passim 
 
 James I, 31, 32 
 
 James II, 174, 175, 178, 185 
 
 John, King, 31, 32 
 
 Jones, Michael, 147 
 
 Kildare, Gerald, Eighth Earl, the 
 Great, 57, 58, 63, 64, 65 ; 
 Gerald, the Ninth Ear), 65, 66, 
 
 6 9> 7. 73 ; Thomas, Silken, the 
 Tenth Earl, 70, 71, 72; Gerald, 
 the Eleventh Earl, 73, 88, 94, 
 102 
 
 Kildare, The House of, Heads of 
 the Geraldines, 42 
 
 Kilkenny, Confederation of Catho- 
 lics at, 141 ; Siege of, by Crom- 
 well, 150; Statute of, 39, 60 
 
 King, Archbishop, 214 
 
 Kingston, Lord, 179 
 
 Kinsale, Siege and Battle of, 114, 
 190 
 
 Kirke, at Derry, 182 
 
 Lacy, General, 207 
 
 Lalor, John Finton, 340, 3^3, 364 
 
 Land, The Anglo-Norman, 43 
 
 Land Act, Irish, of 1870, 357, 358, 
 359; of 1881, 367, 368, 369; of 
 '887, 372; of 1889, 377; of 
 1896, 379, 380; of 1903, 382 
 
 Land and Landed System of Ireland, 
 10, u, 12, 125, 203, 217, 227, 
 300, 302, 332, 333, 334 
 
 Land Purchase Bill, 374 
 
 Lauzun, General, 190 
 
 Lawrences, the two, 353 
 
 Laws, Early, of Ireland', see Brehon 
 Laws and Brehon Lawyers 
 
 Lecky, eminent Irish Historian, 347 
 
 Lefroy, Irish jurist, 347 
 
 Leinster, The Duke of, 236 
 
 Leix, 45, 86, 87, 88, 112 
 
 Leland, Irish Historian, 244 
 
 Letters, The Drapier, by Swift, 
 219, 220 
 
 Light Railways Act, 377 
 
 Limerick, Siege of, 189, 190; 
 Treaty of, 193, 194, 202 
 
 Lionel, Duke of Clarence, 37 
 
 Local Government Act, 380 
 
 Londonderry, see Derry 
 
 Lord of Ireland, original title of 
 King 01 England in Ireland, 76 
 
 Louis XIV, i So 
 
 Lucas, Charles, 230 
 
 Ludlow, 157 
 
 Lundy, 180
 
 Index, 
 
 407 
 
 McCullagh, distinguished Irish- 
 man, 347 
 
 MacGeoghegan, 244 
 
 McGilpatrick, 80 
 
 MacMurrough, Art, 34 
 
 Magee, eminent Irish Divine, Arch- 
 bishop, 347 
 
 Maguire, General, 207 
 
 Mahan, eminent writer on naval 
 warfare, 347 
 
 Malone, Anthony, 217, 222, 226 
 
 Marlborough, 190 
 
 Maryborough, 88 
 
 Massacre, alleged, of 1641, 138 
 
 Maynooth Castle, 72 ; College, 
 
 37. 331 
 Melbourne Ministry, The, 313, 
 
 3 2 5> 3 2 7 
 
 Milesian Settlement, The, 2 
 Molesworth, Lord, 244 
 Molyneux, William, 218 
 Monarchy, The Irish, 8 
 Monk, 157 
 
 Monroe, General, 145 
 Montesquieu, 247 
 Moore, 17, 347 
 
 Morpeth, Lord, Chief Secretary, 324 
 Mountjoy, Lord, Viceroy, 114, 123 
 Mulgrave, Lord, Viceroy, 324 
 Murray, eminent Irish Divine, 
 
 Archbishop, 347 
 
 Napoleon, 20, 274, 290, 291, 294 
 National Education in Ireland, 
 
 321, 322, 323 
 
 Niall of the Nine Hostages, 4 
 Northumberland, Earl of, 84 
 Nugent, Field Marshal, 207 
 
 Oakboys, The, 228 
 
 O'Brien, Chief of Thomond, 79; 
 eminent Irish Divine, 347 ; 
 Smith, 340 
 
 O'Byrne, Tribe of, 98 
 
 O'Carroll, Irish chief, 69 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 282, 294, 295, 
 296, 304, 306, 308, 310, 311, 
 3'3. 3i7 3i8, 319- 3*3, 32/' 
 328, 3 2 9> 33. 338, 339' 34 
 
 O'Connor, Chief of Offaley, 69 
 O'Connor, The tribe of Offaley, 
 
 86, 89, ua 
 O'Connor, Brian, Chief of tribe, 
 
 73. 77. 86, 88, 89 
 O'Connor, Mary, wife of Brian, 
 
 half sister of Surrey's fair Geral- 
 
 dine, 73 
 
 O'Conor, Aedh, 34 
 O'Conor, Charles, eminent Irish 
 
 antiquary, 244 
 O'Conor Don, the, his work on 
 
 the O'Conors of Connaught, 8 
 O'Conor, Roderick, last Monarch 
 
 of Celtic Ireland, 22, 26, 27, 
 
 29 
 
 O'Conor Turlogh, " King with op- 
 position," 22 
 
 Octennial Bill, The Irish, 232 
 O'Donnell, Chief and tribe of, 92, 
 
 93, 94, 109, no, in, 113 
 O'Donnell, Chief, made Earl of 
 
 Tyrconnell, 123 
 O'Donovan, eminent Irish writer, 
 
 348 
 Offaley, now the King's County, 
 
 45, 65, 84, 87, 88, 112, 206 
 O' Moore, Chief and tribe of, 86 
 O'Moore, Roger, 137 
 O'Neill, Chief and tribe of, 4, 57, 
 
 63, 109 
 O'Neill, Conn, Earl of Tyrone, 
 
 77, 78, 79, 9' 
 O'Neill, Donald, 34 
 O'Neill, Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, 
 
 108, 109, no, in, 112, 113, 
 
 114, 123, 126 
 O'Neill, Hugh, defends Clonmel 
 
 and Limerick, 151, 152 
 O'Neill, Owen Roe, 140, 145, 146, 
 
 147, '"48 
 
 O'Neill, Fhelim, 138 
 
 O'Neill, Shane, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 
 
 O'Neill, Miss, famous Irish actress, 
 348 
 
 Orangeism and Orange societies, 
 268, 292, 297, 309, 311, 324 
 
 Organisation of ancient Irish so- 
 ciety, 10, n, J a
 
 408 
 
 Index. 
 
 Ormond, Lords and Earls of, 44, 
 
 45. 54. 6 3. 99. I0 3 
 
 Ormond, Earl of and Duke, Vice- 
 roy, 144, 146, 147, 148, 151, 
 152, 165, 170, 172 
 
 O'Ruarc, Chief, 26 
 
 O'Shea v. O'Shea and Parnell, 377 
 
 O'Sullivan, eminent Irish writer, 
 348 
 
 O'Toole, Tribe of, 98 
 
 Oviedo, Matthew de, Papal Envoy, 
 101, 103 
 
 Pale, The Irish, 30, 32, 37, 40, 41, 
 
 42, 47. 50. 53' 55, 9 1 ' 9 8 "5 
 
 Parliament, The English and Bri- 
 tish, 55, 137, 201, 211, 237, 
 241 ; The Imperial or United, 
 293, 3 r 3> 3 r 45 The Long, 137, 
 139, 184; The Irish, 41, 53, 60, 
 79, 90, 97, 107, 132, 166, 200, 
 212, 224, 225, 231, 233, 234, 
 239, 254, 255, 262, 263, 279; 
 Irish, of 1689, 183 
 
 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 361, 362, 
 3 6 3, 364. 365, 3 66 > 3 6 8, 3 6 9> 
 37, 371, 37 2 , 373, 374, 376, 
 377, 378 
 
 Parsons, William, Lord justice, 137 
 
 Patrick, Saint, 4 
 
 Peace of 1646, 145 
 
 Peace Preservation Act, 367 
 
 Peel, 304, 305, 312, 314, 321, 327, 
 
 329, 33, 33', 337 
 Pelham, stern soldier in Desmond 
 
 War, 103 
 Penal Code, The Irish, 203, 204, 
 
 205, 207, 209 
 Perrin, Irish Jurist, 377 
 Perrott, Sir John, Deputy, 100, 
 
 1 06, 1 08 
 
 Petty, Dr, 155, 175, 247 
 Philipstown, 88 
 Phoenix Park murders, 369, 370, 
 
 376 
 
 Pitt, the first, 229 
 Pitt, the second, 253, 258, 266, 
 
 277, 278, 279, 280, 28r, 25^5 
 
 285, 286, 293, 353 
 
 Plan of Campaign, 375 
 Plantation of Ulster,' The, 127, 128 
 Plunket, Irish orator and statesman, 
 
 283, 306 
 
 Plunkett, Oliver, 173 
 Plunkett, Sir Horace, 381 
 Poetry, Ancient Irish, 16 
 Pole, Reginald, 88 
 Poor Law for Ireland, 327 
 Popes connected with Irish affairs, 
 
 25, 48, 63, 77, 88, 97, lor, 276 
 Portland, Duke of, 239, 240 
 Poynings, Sir Edward, Deputy, 
 
 58, 60, 61 
 Poynings' Law, 61, 97, 135, 167, 
 
 185, 213, 238, 239, 240, 241 
 Presbyterian, The, Church in Ire- 
 land, 298 
 
 Presbyterians, Irish, 212 
 Presidents in Ireland, 97 
 Preston, General, 140, 146 
 Protection of Person and Property 
 Bill, 366, 367 
 
 Queen Victoria, visit to Ireland in 
 
 1849, 341 
 
 Queen's Colleges, 331, 359 
 Querist, The, by Berkeley, 221 
 
 Rebellion of 1798, 274, 275, 276 
 Reform Bill of Flood, 256 
 Reform of 1832, Irish, 317 
 Reformation in Ireland, 74, 84, 
 
 85, 9 
 
 Regency Question in 1789, 256 
 Relaxation of the Penal Code, 242, 
 
 243 
 
 Renunciation Act, The, 253 
 Repeal of the Union movement, 
 
 317, 328, 329 
 Restrictions on Irish commerce, 
 
 172, 2ii 
 Revolution, The French, effects of, 
 
 on Ireland, 259, 261 
 Revolution of 1782, 242, 2^7 
 Richard II, 37 
 Richelieu, 161 
 Rinuccini, Papal Nuncio, 145, 146, 
 
 147, 148
 
 Index, 
 
 409 
 
 Rising of 1641, 138 
 
 Roberts, Lord, 353 
 
 Round Towers, The Irish, 18 
 
 Russell, eminent Irish Divine, 347 
 
 Russell, Lord John, 337 
 
 Saer Stock Tenants, The, 10, 126 
 St Leger, Deputy, Sir Anthony, 
 
 80, 8 4 
 
 St Ruth, General, 191, 192 
 Salisbury, John of, 25 
 Salisbury, Lord, 371, 372, 374 
 Salmon, eminent Irish Divine, 347 
 Sanders, Papal Envoy, 101, 103 
 Sarsfield, General Patrick, 186, 
 
 189, 191, 192 
 
 Saurin, Irish Jurist, 283, 347 
 Schomberg, 185, 186, 187, 191 
 Schools, The Charter, 223; The 
 
 National, 322 
 Septs, The Irish, 1 1 
 Settlement, Acts of, 168, 174, 183 
 Settlement of 1782, The, 250 
 Shell, Irish orator, 347 
 Short View of Ireland, by Swift, 220 
 Sidney, Sir Henry, Deputy, 92, 
 
 97> 100 
 
 Sidney, Lord, Viceroy, 201, 232 
 Simple Repeal, 253 
 Skeffington, Deputy, 69, 72 
 Smerwick, Massacre at, 103 
 Smith, Adam, 247 
 Smith, W. H., Chief Secretary, 
 
 373 
 
 Somerset, Protector, 84 
 Stanley, Mr, Chief Secretary, 317 
 Steelboys, The, 228 
 Stephens, James, 355, 360 
 Sterne, Laurence, 347 
 Stone, Archbishop, 214, 226 
 Strafford, Viceroy, 135, 136, 137 
 Strongbow, 27, 30 
 Stuart, Mary, 93, 100 
 Subjection, Catholic, 139, 161, 
 
 169, 174, 224, 353 
 Sullivan, eminent Irish antiquary, 
 
 348 
 
 Supremacy, Oath of, 90, 131 
 Surrey, Lord Deputy, 66, 67, 68 
 
 Sussex, Thomas Radcliff, Lord 
 
 Viceroy, 88, 92 
 
 Swift, 172, 214, 217, 219, 243 
 Synge, Archbishop, 214 
 
 Tanist Succession, 9, 51, 124, 125 
 Tenant Right, Irish, 344 
 Tilly, General, 161 
 Tirlogh, Lenagh, 96, 109 
 Tithe in Ireland, 215, 257, 318, 
 
 325 
 
 Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 260, 261, 
 268, 277 
 
 Townshend , George, Lord, Viceroy, 
 232 
 
 Tribes, The Irish, u, 12 
 
 Trinity College, The University of 
 Dublin, 117, 171, 245, 331, 359 
 
 Tuatha-na-Danaans, 2 
 
 Tudor, Mary, 87 
 
 Tyrconnell, Earl of, see O'Donnell 
 
 Tyrconnell, Richard Talbot, Com- 
 mander in Chief and Deputy in 
 Ireland, 176, 177, 183, 192 
 
 Undertakers, The, in Ireland, 106, 
 
 127, 225 
 Union, Cromwell precursor of, 157, 
 
 229, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 
 
 284, 289, 314, 327 
 Union of Hearts with England, a 
 
 real, 354 
 
 United Irish League, 382 
 United Irishmen, The, 260, 261, 
 
 262, 266, 267, 270, 275 
 
 Veto, The, 294, 306, 307 
 Viceroys of Ireland, passim, and 
 
 see under names set lorth 
 Victoria, see Queen Victoria 
 Volunteers, The Irish, 237, 239, 255 
 
 Walker, at siege of Deny, 181 
 Warner, value of his history, 2.14 
 Waterford, 27, 28, 151 
 Waterloo, Battle of, 291 
 Wellesley, Sir Arthur, 304, 353 
 Wellesley, Lord, Viceroy, 310 
 Wellington, Duke of, 31*
 
 4io Index, 
 
 Wexford, 26, 28 ; massacre at, 150 Wolsey, Cardinal, 66, 69, 70 
 
 Whiteboy Movement, The Irish, Wyndham, Mr, Chief Secretary, 382 
 
 228, 229, 302, 318, 338 
 
 Whiteside, Irish orator, 347 Yeats, W. Butler, 381 
 
 William III, 178, 180, 186, 188, Yellow Ford, Battle of, in 
 
 189, 201, 353 York, Duke of, 165 
 
 Wings, The, 309 Young, Arthur, 224, 228 
 
 Wolseley, Lord, 183, 353 Young Ireland Party, 330 
 
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 27. An Essay on Western Civilization in its Eco- 
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 English History for Upper Forms. Age 1418. 
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 English History for Lower Forms. Age 1215. 
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 SELECT HISTORICAL WORKS 
 
 (Arranged in alphabetical order of authors names} 
 The English Puritans. By JOHN BROWN, D.D Cloth, 
 
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 History of Scotland to the Present Time. By P. HUME 
 
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 Count St Paul's Journal of the Seven Years' War. 
 
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 traits and 65 maps and plans. 6%s. net. 
 
 The Growth of English Industry and Commerce 
 
 during the Early and Middle Ages. By W. CUNNINGHAM, D.D., 
 Fellow of the British Academy, Hon. Fellow of Gonville and Caius 
 College, and Fellow of Trinity College, Archdeacon of Ely. Demy 
 8vo. Fifth edition. iis. 6d. net. 
 
 The Growth of English Industry and Commerce 
 
 in Modern Times. By the Ven. W. CUNNINGHAM, D.D., F.B.A., 
 etc. Fourth edition revised. Demy 8vo. Two parts. (i) The 
 Mercantile System, los. net. (2) Laissez Faire. 7-r. 6d. net. 
 
 The Industrial Revolution. By the Ven. W. CUNNING- 
 HAM, D.D., F.B.A. , etc. Demy 8vo. 5^. net. 
 
 Wales and the Wars of the Roses. By H. T. EVANS, 
 
 M.A. Demy 8vo. With 3 maps. 
 
 Military History. By the Hon. J. W. FORTESCUE. Cloth, 
 
 is. net. Leather, is. 6ii. net. 
 
 History of the Life and Reign of Richard III, to 
 
 which is added the Story of Perkin Warbeck from original documents. 
 By JAMES GAIRDNER, C.B., LL.D. New and enlarged (dition. 
 Crown 8vo. With two portraits. 8.?. 6d. 
 
 China and the Manchus. By Prof. H. A. GILES, LL.D. 
 
 Cloth, is. net. Leather, is. 6d. net. 
 
 Annals of Politics and Culture, 14921899. By 
 
 G. P. GOOCH, M.A. With an Introductory Note by Lord Acton. 
 Demy 8vo. 7^. 6d. net. 
 
 Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century, 
 
 delivered at the Cambridge University Extension Summer Meeting, 
 August, 1902. Edited by F. A. KIRKPATRICK, M.A. Crown 8vo. 
 4.r. 6d. net.
 
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 The Evolution of New Japan. By Prof. J. H. LONG- 
 FORD. Cloth, is. net. Leather, is. (>d. net. 
 
 Bannockburn. By JOHN E. MORRIS, D.Litt. Fcap. 410. 
 
 With 8 plates and i maps. 5*. net. 
 
 The Constitutional History of England. A Course of 
 
 Lectures delivered by F. W. MAITLAND, LL.D. Demy 8vo. us. 6d. 
 
 The Early History of the House of Savoy, 10OO-1233. 
 
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 Ancient India from the Earliest Times to the First Century 
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 The Origins of the War. By J. HOLLAND ROSE, Litt.D. 
 
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 The Growth of British Policy. An Historical Essay. 
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 The Puritans in Power. By G. B-. TATHAM, M.A. 
 
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 Personal and Party Government. A Chapter in the 
 
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 Lord Chatham and the Whig Opposition. By D. A. 
 
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