DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Limerick. Cf)e ^torp of tbe Jl5ation0. IRELAND. THE STORY OF THE NATIONS. Large Crown 8vo, Cloth, Illustrated, 6s. The Volumes are also kept in the following Special Bindings : Half Persian, cloth sides, gilt top ; Full calf, half extra, marbled edges ; Tree calf, gilt edges, gold roll inside, full gilt hack. 1. ROME. By Arthuh Gilman, M.A. 2. THE JEWS. By Prof. J. K. Hosmer. 3. GERMANY. By Rev. S. Baring-Gould, M.A. 4. CARTHAGE. By Prof. Alfred J. Church. 5. ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. By Prof. J. P. Mahaffy. 6. THE MOORS IN SPAIN. By Stanley Lane Poole. 7. ANCIENT EGYPT. By Prol. George Rawlinson. 8. HUNGARY. By Prof. Armi- nius Vamb^ry. 9. THE SARACENS. By Arthur Gilman, M.A. 10. IRELAND. By the Hon. Emily Lawless. 11. CHALDEA. By Z^naide A. Ragozin. 12. THE GOTHS. By Henry Bradley. 13. ASSYRIA. By Z^NA'iDE A. Ragozin. 14. TURKEY. By Stanley Lane¬ Poole. 15. HOLLAND. By Prof. J. E. Thorold Rogers. 16. MEDLEVAL FRANCE. By Gustave Masson. 17 PERSIA. By S. G. W. Ben¬ jamin. 18. PHCENICIA. By Prof. Geo. Rawlinson. 19. MEDIA. By Z^na'ide A. Ragozin. 20. THE HANSA TOWNS. By Helen Zimmern. 21. EARLY BRITAIN. By Piof. Alfred J. Church. 22. THE BARBARY CORSAIRS. By Stanley Lane-Poole. 23. RUSSIA. By W. R. Mor- FILL, M.A. 24. THE JEWS UNDER THE ROMANS. By W. Douglas Morrison. 25. SCOTLAND. By John Mac¬ kintosh, LL.D. 26. SWITZERLAND. By Mrs. Lina Lug and R. Stead. 27. MEXICO. By Susan Hale. 28. PORTUGAL. By H. Morse Stephens. 29. THE NORMANS. By Sarah Orne Jewett. 30. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 1 By C. W. C. Oman. j 31. SICILY: Phoenician, Greek | and Roman. By the late i Prof. E. A. Freeman. j 32. THE TUSCAN REPUB- 1 Lies. By Bella Duffy. j London : T. FISHER UNWIN, Paternoster Square, E.C. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Duke University Libraries - https://archive.ofg/details/ireland01 lawl HOLY ISLAND, LOUGH DERG. (From a paintinsby Watkins.^ IRELAN D THE HON«le. EMILY LAWLESS AUTHOR OF “llUKKlbH: A STUDY,’’ ETC. iy/7'// SOA//:: AVD/yVONS A’)' MRS. ARTHUR BRONSON EIFTH EDITION ilonSojt T . IH S H E R U N W I N PATERNOSTER SQUARE NP:W YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS MDCCCXCII Entered at Stationers’ Hall By T. FISHER UNWIN. Copyright by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887 (For the United States of America). The KARL OF DUFFEKIN, K.P., F.R.S., &c.. Viceroy ok India. Sgeul na II-Eireann DON EiREANNACH AS KIU. 7 "' V’ I - r-m: •/ ' . ■■' •'■ . ; ■• - *v • - \ -r'i r ■M "2 fi :-rJ 7-' -K <' >) PREFACE. Irish history is a long, dark road, with many blind alleys, many sudden turnings, many unaccountably crooked portions ; a road which, if it has a few sign¬ posts to guide us, bristles with threatening notices, now upon the one side and now upon the other, the very ground underfoot being often full of unsuspected perils threatening to hurt the unwary. To the genuine explorer, flushed with justified self- confidence, well equipped for the journey, and in¬ different to scratches or bruises, one may suppose this to be rather an allurement than otherwise, as he spurs along, lance at rest, and sword on side. To the less well-equipped traveller, who has no pretensions to the name of explorer at all, no particular courage to boast of, and whose only ambition is to make the way a little plainer for some one travelling along it for the first time, it is decidedly a serious impediment, so much so as almost to scare such a one from attempting the rdle of guide even in the slightest and least responsible capacity. X PREFACE. Another and perhaps even more formidable ob¬ jection occurs. A history beset with such distracting problems, bristling with such thorny controversies, a history, above all, which has so much bearing upon that portion of history which has still to be born, ought, it may be said, to be approached in the gravest and most authoritative fashion possible, or else not approached at all. This is too true, and that so slight a summary as this can put forward no claim to authority of any sort is evident enough. National “ stories,” however, no less than histories, gain a gravity, it must be remembered, and even at times a solemnity from their subject apart altogether from their treatment. A good reader will read a great deal more into them than the mere bald words con¬ vey. The lights and shadows of a great or a tragic past play over their easy surface, giving it a depth and solidity to which it could otherwise lay no claim. Tf the present attempt disposes any one to study at first hand one of the strangest and most perplexing chapters of human history and national destiny, its author for one will be more than content. CONTENTS. Primeval Ireland ... Early mifjrations, l—The great ice age, 3 — Northern character of the fauna and flora of Ireland, 3 — First inhabitants, 6 — Formorian, Firbolgs, Tuatha-da-Danaans, 6—Battle of Moy- tura Cong, 7-9—The Scoto-Celtic invasion, 9—Annals and annalists, how far credible? 9-12. II. The Legends and Legend-Makers . . The legends, 13—Their archaic character, 14—The pursuit of GillaDacker and his horse, 14-18—The ollamhs, 19—Positions of the bards or ollamhs in Primitive Ireland, 19-21. III. Pre-Christian Ireland .22 Early Celtic law, 24—The Senchus Mor and Book of Aicill, 25—-Laws of inheritance, 26-28—Narrow conception of patriotism, 'to-31. Xll CONTENTS. PAGB IV. Si'. Patrick the Missionary ..... 32-37 St. Patrick’s birth, 33—Capture, slavery, and escape, 33—Ills return to Ireland, 33—Arrives at Tara, 34—Visits Connaught and Ulster, 34, 35—Early Irish missionaries and their enthu¬ siasm for the work, 35-37. V. 1'he First Irish Monasteries . . . 38-41 “ The Tribes of the Saints,” 38—Small oratories in the West, 39, 40—Plan of monastic life, 40—Ready acceptance of Christianity, 41. VI. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN ChURCH . . 42-49 Birth of Columba, 42—His journey to Iona, 42 — Ilis character and humanity, 43—Conversion of Saxon England, 44—Schism between Western Church and Papacy, 45—Synod of Whitby, 46—The Irish Church at home, 47-49. VII. The Northern Scourge ..... 50-59 Ireland divided into five kingdoms, 50—The Ard-Reagh, 52— Arrival of Vikings, 53—Thorgist or Turgesius? 55—Later Viking invaders, 56—The round towers, 56-58—Dublin founded, 58—-Hatred between the two races, 59. VHI. Brian of the Tribute ..... 60-70 Two deliverers, 60—Defeat of the Vikings at Sulcost, 6i— Brian becomes king of Munster, 63—Seizes Cashel, 63—Over¬ comes Malachy, 63—Becomes king of Ireland, 64—Celtic theory of loyalty, 64—Fresh Viking invasion, 66—Battle of Cloniarf, 67-69—Death of Brian Born, 69. CONTENTS. Xlll IX. From Brian to Strongbow . . . 7 i -75 Result of Brian Boru’s death, 71—Chaos returns, 71—Struggle for the succession, 73—Roderick O’Connor, last native king of Ireland, 75. X. The Anglo-Norman Invasion . , . . 76-89 First group of knightly invaders, 76—Their relationship, 76— Giraldus Cambrensis, 78—Motives for invasion, 79—Papal sanction, 81—Dermot McMurrough, 81—He enlists recruits, 82—Arrival of Robert FitzStephen, 83—Wexford, Ossory, and Kilkenny captured, 84-86—Arrival of Strongbow, 86— Struggle with Hasculph the Dane and John the Mad, 87— Danes defeated, 87—Dublin besieged, 88—Strongbow defeats Roderick O’Connor, goes to Wexford, and embarks at Water¬ ford, 88—Meets the king, 88—Arrival of Henry IL, 89. XI. Henry II. in Ireland ..... 90-92 Large military forces of Henry, 90—The chiefs s ibmit and do homage, 90, 91—Irish theory of Ard-Reagh or Over-Lord, 91 —Henry in Dublin, 92—Synod at Cashel, 92—Henry recalled to England, 92. XH. Effects of the Anglo-Norman Invasion . 93-97 Effect of Henry’s stay in Ireland, 93—His large schemes, 94—• Their practical failure, 95—Rapacity of adventurers, 96—Con¬ trast between Irish and their conquerors, 96—Civil war from the outset, 96-97. XIII. John in Ireland.98-100 John’s first visit, 98—His insolence and misconduct, 98—Re¬ called in disgrace, 98—Second visit as king, 99—His energy, 99—Overruns Meath and Ulster, 99—Returns to England, 99—Effect of his visit, 100. XIV CONTENTS. PAGB XIV. The Lords Palatine ..... 101-106 The Geraldines, loi—Their possessions in Ireland, 102—The five palatinates, 103—The heirs of Strongbow, 103—The De Burghs, 104—The Butlers, 105—Importance of the great territorial owners in Ireland, 105, 106. XV. Edward Bruce in Ireland . . . 107-112 Want of landmarks in Irish history, 107—Edward the I.’s reign, 107—Battle of Bannockburn, 108—Its effect on Ireland, 108—Scotch invasion under Edward Bruce, 108—Ravages and famine caused by him, 109—The colonists regain courage : Battle of Dundalk, no—Edward Bruce killed, no—Result of the Scotch invasion, in, 112. XVI. The Statute of Kilkenny .... 113-118 Reign of Edward III., 113—A lost opportunity, 114—Duke of Clarence sent to Ireland, 114—Parliament at Kilkenny, 115—Statute of Kilkenny, 115—Its objects, 116—Two Ire¬ lands, 116—Weakness resorts to cruelty, 117—Effects of the statute, 118. XVII. Richard II. in Ireland ..... 119-124 Richard the II.’s two visits to Ireland, 119—Utter dis¬ organization of the country, 119-120—The chieftains submit and come in, 120—“Sir Art” McMurrough, 120—Richard leaves, and Art McMurrough breaks out again, 121—Earl of March killed, 121—Richard returns, 122—Attacks Art McMurrough, 122—Failure of attack, 122—Recalled to Eng¬ land, 123—His defeat and death, 123—Confusion redoubles, 124. CONTENTS. XV XVIII. The Deepest Depths.125-131 Monotony of Irish history, 125—State of Ireland during the Wars of the Roses, 126—Pillage, carnage, and rapine, 126, 127—The seaport towns, 128 — Richard Duke of York in Ireland, 128—His conciliatory policy, 129—Battle ofTowton, 129—The Kildares grow in power, 130—Geroit Mor, 130— His character, 131. XIX. The Kildares in the Ascendant . . 132-143 Effect of the battle of Bosworth, 132—Kildare still in power, 132—Lambert Simnel in Ireland, 132—Crowned in Dublin, 134— Battle of Stoke, 135—Henry VH. pardons the rebels, 135— Irish peers summoned to Court, 136—Perkin Warbeck in Ireland, 137—Quarrels between the Kildares and Ormonds, 138—Sir Edward Poynings, 138—Kildare’s trial and acquital, 140—Restored to power, 141—Battle of Knocktow, 142, 143. XX. Fall of the House of Kildare . . . 144-150 Rise of Wolsey to power, 144—Resolves to destroy the Geraldines, 144—Geroit Mor succeeded by his son, 145—Earl of Surrey sent as viceroy, 145—Kildare restored to power, 146 —Summoned to London and imprisoned, 146—Again restored and again imprisoned, 147 — Situation changed, 147—Revolt of Silken Thomas, 147—Seizes Dublin, 148 — Archbishop Allen murdered, 148—Sir William Skeffington to Ireland, 148 —Kildare dies in prison, 149—“ The Pardon of Maynooth,” 149—Silken Thomas surrenders, and is executed, 150. XXL The Act of Supremacy ..... 151-155 Lord Leonard Grey deputy, 151—Accused of treason, re¬ called and executed, 152—Act of Supremacy proposed, 152— Opposition of clergy, 152 — Suppression of the abbeys, 153— XVI CONTENTS. Great Parliament summoned in Dublin, 153 — Meeting of hereditary enemies, 154—Conciliatory measures, 154—Henry VIII. proclaimed king of Ireland and head of the Church, 155. XXII. The New Departure.156-160 A halcyon period, 156—O’Neill, O’Brien, and Macwilliam of Clanricarde at Greenwich,- 157 —Receive their peerages, 157—Attempt at establishing Protestantism in Ireland, 158— Vehemently resisted, 158—The destruction of the relics, 159— Archbishop Dowdal, 159—The effect of the new departure, 159—The Irish problem receives fresh complications, 160. XXIII. The First Plantations.161-163 Mary becomes quee i, 161—Religious struggle postponed, 161 — Fercal Leix and Offaly colonized, 162—Sense of insecurity awakened, 162—No Irish Protestant martyrs, 163—Commis¬ sion of Dean Cole, 163—Its failure, 163—Death of Mary, 163. XXIV. Wars against Shane O’Neill . . . 164-173 Elizabeth becomes queen, 164—Effect of change on Ireland, 165— Shane O’Neill, 165—Plis description, habits, qualities, 166— His campaign against Sussex, 167—Defeats Sussex, 167— Plis visit to Court, 168—Returns to Ireland, 169—Supreme in the North, 169—His attack on the Scots, 170—Sir Henry Sidney marches into Ulster, 171—The disaster at Derry, 171 —Shane encounters the O’Donnells, 172—Is defeated, 172— Applies to the Scots, 172—Is slain, 173. XXV. Between two Storms ..... 174-180 Sir Hemy Sidney Lord-deputy, 174—A lull, 174—Sidney’s policy and proceedings, 176—Prov'ncial presidciits appointed, CONTENTS. XVii 176—Arrest of Desmond, 177—Sir Peter Carew, 178—His violence, 178 — Rebellion in the South, 178—Sir James Fitz- maurice, 179—Relations between him and Sir John Perrot, 179—He surrenders, and sails for France, 180. XXVI. The Desmond Rebellion .... 181-192 An abortive tragedy, 181—.State of the Desmond Palatinate, 183—Sir James Fitzmaurice in France and Spain, 183—Nicholas Saunders appointed legate, 184—Stukeley’s expedition, 184 —Fitzmaurice lands in Kerry, 184—Desmond vacillates, 185 —Death of Sir James Fitzmaurice, 1S7—Concerted attack of Ormond and Pelham, 188—Horrible destruction of life, 188 —Arrival of Spaniards at Smerwick, 189—Lord Grey de Wilton, 189—Defeat of English troops at Glenmalure, 190 —Attack of and slaughter of Spaniards at Smerwick, 190— Wholesale executions, 191—Death of the Earl of Desmond and extinction of his house, 192. XXVII. Between two more Storms .... 193-202 State of Munster, 193—The new plantations, 194 — Perrot’s administration, 195 —Tyrlough Luinagh, 195—Sir William Filzwilliam, 197—Executions without trial, 198—Alarm of northern proprietors, 198 — Earl of Tyrone, 199 — Character of early loyalty, 200 — Causes of dissatisfaction, 201 — Quarrel with Bagnall, 201—Preparations for a rising, 201, 202. XXVHL Battle of the Yellow Ford . . . 203--.201 The Northern Blackwater, 203—Attack of Blackwater Fort by Tyrone, 203 — Death of the deputy. Lord Borough, 203 — Bagnall advances from Dublin, 204 — Battle of the Yellow Ford, 205—Defeat and death of Bagnall, 205—Retreat of the English troops, 205 — The rising becomes general, 205. XVlll CONTENTS. XXIX. The Essex Failure.206-210 Essex appointed Lord-Lieutenant, 206—Arrival in Ireland, 208—Mistakes and disasters, 208—Death of Sir Conyers Clif¬ ford ill the Curlews. 209—Essex advances north, 209—Holds a conference with Tyrone, 209—Agrees to an armistice, 209— Anger of the Queen, 210—Essex suddenly leaves Ireland, 210. XXX. End of the Tyrone War .... 211-219 Mountjoy appointed deputy, 211—Contrast between him and Essex, 213—Reasons for Mountjoy’s greater success, 213— Conquest by starvation, 214—Success of method, 214— Arrival of Spanish forces at Kinsale : Mountjoy and Carew marched south and invests Kinsale, 215—Attack of Mountjoy by Tyrone, 218—Failure of attack, 218—Surrender of Spaniards, 218—Surrender of Tyrone, 219. XXXI. The Flight of the Earls .... 220-225 The last chieftain rising against England, 220—Condition of affairs at close of war, 221—Tyrone’s position impossible, 221— Reported plot, 222—Tyrone and Tyrconnel take flight, 222— Confiscation of their territory, 223—Sir John Davis, 224 —The Ulster Settlement, 224, 225. XXXII. The First Contested Election . . . 226-228 Parliament summoned, 226—Anxiety of government to secure a Protestant majority, 226—Contested election, 227—Narrow Protestant majority, 227—Furious quarrel over election of Speaker, 228—Parliament dissolved, 228—The king appealed to, 228—Attainder of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, 228—Reversal of statute of Killcimny, 228. CONTENTS. XIX PAGE XXXIII. Old and New Owners ..... 229-231 Further plantations, 229—The Connaught landowners, 230— Their positions, 231—Charles I.’s accession and how it affected Ireland, 231—Lord Falkland appointed viceroy, 231 —Succeeded by Wentworth, 231. XXXIV. Strafford .... ... 232—239 Arrival of Wentworth in Ireland, 232—Ilis methods and theory, 232—Dissolves parliament, 234—Goes to Connaught, 234—Galway jury fined and imprisoned, 230—Ilis eccle¬ siastical policy, 237—His Irish army, 238—Return to England, 238—Attainder, trial, and death, 239. XXXV. ’Forty-one .. 240-245 Confusion and disorder, 240—Strafford’s army disbanded, but still in the country, 241—Plot to seize Dublin Castle, 241— Plot transpires, 242—.Sir Phelim O’Neill seizes Charlemont, 243—Attack upon the Protestant settlers, 243—Barbarities and counter barbarities, 244. XXXVI. The Waters Spread ..... 246-250 The rising at first local, 246—Attitude of the Pale gentry, 249 —They resolve to join the rising, 247—Disorganization of the northern insurgents, 248—Incapacity of Sir Phelim O’Neill, 248—Arrival of Owen Roe O’Neill and Preston, 249—Meeting of delegates at Kilkenny, 249—Charles decides upon a coup de mam, 250. XXXVII. Civil War.251-256 Effect of the Ulster massacres on England, 251—An agrarian rather than religious rising, 252 — The Confederates’ terms. XX CONTENTS. 253—Glamorgan sent to Ireland, 254—^The secret treaty transpires, 254—Arrival of Rinucini, 255—Battle of Benturb, 255—Ormond surrenders Dublin to the Parliament, 256. XXXVIII. The Confusion Deepens. . . . 257-260 Total confusion of aims and parties, 258—The “ poor Panther” Inchiquin, 258—Alliance between Jones and Owen Roe O’Neill, 259—Ormond advances upon Dublin, 259— Battle of Baggotrath and defeat of the Royalists, 260— Arrival of Cromwell, 260. XXXIX. Cromwell in Ireland. 261-265 Cromwell’s mission, 261—Assault of Drogheda, and slaughter of its garrison, 261—Wexford garrison slaughtered, 262— Cromwell’s discipline, 263—^The “ country sickness,” 263— Confusion in the Royalist camp, 264—Signature of the Scotch covenant by the king, 284—Final surrender of O’Neill and the Irish army, 265. XL. Cromwell’s Methods ..... 266-272 Loss of life during the eight years of war, 266—Punishment of the vanquished, 267—Executions, 267—Wholesale scheme of eviction, 268—The New Owners, 269—“The Burren,” 270 —Sale of women to the West Indian plantations, 270—Dis¬ satisfaction amongst the soldiers and debenture holders, 271—• Irish Cromwellians, 272. XLI. The Act of Settlement.273-276 The Restoration, 273—Henry Cromwell, 273—Coote and Broghill, 273—Court of claims established in Dublin, 275— Prolonged dispute, 276—Final settlement, 276—Condition of Irish Roman Catholics at close of the struggle, 276. CONTENTS. XLII. Oppression and Counter Oppression . . 277-283 Effects of the Restoration upon the Ulster Presbyterians, 277— A new Act of Uniformity, 277—Exodus of Presbyterians from Ireland, 278—The Popish plot, 279—Insane panic, 279— Execution of Archbishop Plunkett, 279—Sudden reversal of the tide, 280—Tyrconnel sent as viceroy, 280—Terror of Protestant settlers, 281—William of Orange in England, 282 —James II. arrives in Ireland, 283. XLIII. William and James in Ireland . . 284-293 Popular enthusiasm for James, 284—Struggle between his English and Irish adherents, 285—James advances to London¬ derry, 285—Siege of Londonderry, 286—Its garrison relieved, 286—Debasing the coinage, 286—Reversal of the Act of Settlement, 287—Bill of Attainder, 287—Arrival of William III., 288—Battle of the Boyne, 289—Flight of James, 289— First siege of Limerick, 291—Athlone captured by Ginkel, 292—Battle of Aughrim, 293, 294. XLIV. The Treaty of Limerick .... 295-298 Sarsfield refuses to surrender, 295—Second siege of Limerick, 295—The Limerick treaty, 296—Its exact purport, 296—The military treaty, 297—Departure of the exiles, 298. XLV. The Penal Code ...... 299-306 A new century and new fortunes, 299—Mr. Lecky’s “ Eigh¬ teenth Century,” 300—Reversal of all the recent Acts, 300— The Penal Code, 301—Burke’s description of it, 302—How evaded, 303—Its effects upon Protestants and Catholics, 304-306. XLVI. The Commercial Code .... 307-310 The “ Protestant Ascendency,” 307—England’s jealousy of XX n CONTENTS. her Colonists, 308—Act passed prohibiting export of Irish woollen goods, 309—Effects of the Act upon Ireland, 309— Smuggling on an immense scale, 309—Collapse of industry, 310—Strained relations, 310. XLVII. iVIOLYNEUX AND SwiFT .... 3II-319 The “Ingenious Molyneux,” 311—Irish naturalists, 312— Molyneux’s “ Case of Ireland,” 313—Effect of its publication, 315—Death of Molyneux, 315—Dean Swift, 315—His posi¬ tion in Irish politics, 315—The “ Drapier Letters,” 317— Their line of attack, 318—Effect on popular opinion, 318— Wood’s halfpence suspended, 318. XLVIII. Henry Flood ...... 320-327 Forty dull years, 320—Parliamentary abuses, 322—Charles Lucas, 322—Flood enters Parliament, 323—His struggle with the Government, 325—Lord Townsend recalled, 325—Flood accepts office, 326—Effect of that acceptance, 326—Rejoins the Liberal side, 326—Tries to outbid Grattan, 326—Failure and end, 327. XLIX. Henry Grattan .328-333 Unanimity of opinion about Grattan, 328—His character, 328 —Enters Parliament, 330—The “Declaration of Rights,” 330—Carried by the Irish Parliament, 330—Declaratory Act of George I. repealed, 331—A spell of prosperity, 331—Rocks ahead, 332—Disaster following disaster, 332—Grattan and the Union, 332—Grattan’s death, 333. L. The Irish Volunteers .... 334-340 Revolt of the American Colonies, 334—Its effect on Ireland, 334—Disastrous condition of the country, 335—Volunteer movement begun in Belfast, 336—Rapid popularity, 336—Its effect upon politics, 338—Free Trade, 338—Declaratory Act repealed, 338—The Volunteers disband, 340. CONTENTS. Xxiii LI. PAGE Danger Signals . . 341-346 Reform the crying necessity of the hour. 341—CorrupM'on steadily increasing, 341—Attempt to obtain free imp>ortation of goods to England, 342—Its failure, 342—Disturbed state of the country, 344—Its causes, 344—“White boys,” “Oak boys,” and “Steel boys,” 344, 345—Faction war in the North, 345—Orange lodges, 345—“ Society of United Irishmen,” 346 —The one hope for the future, 346. LIE The Fitzwilliam Disappointment . . 347-353 General desire for Catholic Emancipation, 347—Lord Shef¬ field’s evidence, 347—The Catholic delegates received by the king, 349—Lord Fitzwilliam sent as Lord-Lieutenant, 350— Popular enthusiasm, 350—Recalled, 351—Result of his recall, 352, 353 - LIII. 'Ninety-eight. 354-366 Wolfe Tone, his character and autobiography, 354—The other leaders of the rebellion, 354—England and France at war, 355—Hoche’s descent, 355—Panic, 357—Habeas Corpus Act suspended, 357—Misconduct of soldiers, 359—Arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 361—Outbreak of the rebellion, 361 — The rising in Wexford, 362—Bagenal Harvey, 363—Arklow, New Ross, and Vinegar Hill, 363—Suppression of the rebel¬ lion, 364—Final incidents, 365—Death of Wolfe Tone, 366. LIV. The Union.. . 367-376 State of Ireland after the rebellion, 367, 368 —Pitt resolved to pass the Union, 370—Inducements offered, 370—Dis¬ crepancy of statements upon the subject, 371—Bribery or not bribery? 372—Lord Cornwallis and Lord Castlereagh, 373 —The Union carried, 375. xxiv Contents. O’Connell and Catholic Emancipation . 377-389 The Union not followed by union, 277—The Emmett out¬ break, 377—-Young Daniel O’Connell, 379—The new Catholic Association, 380—The Clare election, 381—Catholic Relief Bill carried, 381—The “Incarnation of a people,” 383— Repeal, 384—The O’Connell gatherings, 386—The meeting proclaimed at Clontarf, 387—Prosecution and condemnation of O’Connell, 387—Released on appeal, 387—Never regained his power, 388—Despondency and death, 388, 389. LVI. “Young Ireland”. 390-395 “The Nation,” 390—Sir C. Gavan Duffy, 390 — Thomas Davis, 390—Smith O’Brien, 391—Effect of O’Connell’s death on the “Young Ireland” party, 392—James Lalor, 393—His influence on Mitchell, 393—The “ United Irishmen ” news¬ paper started, 394—Arrest and transportation of Mitchell, 394 —The end of the “Young Ireland ” movement, 395. LVII. The Famine.396-402 First symptoms of the potato disease, 396—The fatal night, 396—Beginning of Famine, 397—Rapid mortality, 397—Mr. Forster’s reports, 398—Relief works, 399—Soup kitchens, 399 —Failure of preventive measures, 399—Famine followed by ruin, 400—Clearances and Emigration, 401—Emigrant ships, 401—Permanent effects of the Famine on Ireland, 402. LVUI. The Latest Development .... 403-416 Encumbered Estates Act, 403—Tenant League of North and South, 403—The “Brass Band,” 404—A lull, 404—The Phoenix organization, 404—The Fenian “scare,” 405—Rescue of Fenian prisoners at Manchester, 405—The Clerkenwell explosion, 406—The Irish Church Act, 406, 407—The Irish CONTENTS. XXV Land Act of 1870, 407—Failure of Irish Education Act, and retirement of the Liberals, 408—Mr. Butt and Mr. Parnell, 408—The Land League established, 409—Return of the Liberals to power, 409—The Irish Land Act of 1881, 410— Arrest and release of I.and League Leaders, 411—Murders in the Phoenix Park, 411—James Carey, 412—His death, 412— The agrarian struggle, 413—Home Rule, 414—Its eventual destiny, 414—The untravelled Future, 416. LIX. Conclusion . . , , . 417—419 Irish heroes, 417—Causes of their want of popularity, 418— Irish versus Scotch heroes, 418—“ Prince Posterity,” 419. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. [Nearly all the archseological illustrations in this volume are from “ The Early Christian Architecture of Ireland,” by Miss M. Stokes, who has kindly allowed them to be reproduced. The portraits are chiefly from engravings, &c., kept in the Prints Room of the British Museum.] PAGE HOLY ISLAND, LOUGH DERG .... Frontispiece MAP OF IRELAND IN REIGN OF HENRY Vil. . . .133 CROSS IN CEMETERY OF TEMPUL BRECCAN ... 39 WEST CROSS, MONASTERBOICE ...... 48 DOORWAY OF MAGHERA CHURCH . , . . . - SI KILBANNON TOWER ........ 54 KELLS ROUND TOWER. 57 BASE OF TUAM CROSS ..62 DOORWAY OF KILLESHIN CHURCH ..... 65 INTERIOR OF CORMAC’S CHAPEL (CASHEL) ... 72 WEST FRONT OF ST. CRONAN’S CHURCH .... 77 WEST DOORWAY OF FRESHFORD CHURCH . . . 80 SIR HENRY SIDNEY (PORTRAIT OF) . 175 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxvii PAGE ASKEATON CASTLE . . ... c . 182 CATHERINE, THE “ OLD ” COUNTESS OF DESMOND . 186 SIR JOHN PERROT (PORTRAIT OF).I96 CAHIR CASTLE (iN 1 599).207 CAPTURE OF THE EARL OF ORMOND BY THE O’MORES . 2 12 IRELAND IN THE REIGN OF JAMES 1 . 2 l 6 THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD, 1 64 1 . 233 ARCHBISHOP USSHER (PORTRAIT OF) ... . 236 JAMES, DUKE OF ORMOND (PORTRAIT OF) . . . 259 HENRY CROMWELL (PORTRAIT OF).274 “tiger” ROCHE.. . 305 DEAN SWIFT (PORTRAIT OF).316 PHILIP, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD (PORTRAIT OF) . .321 RIGHT HON. HENRY FLOOD (PORTRAIT OF) . . . 324 RIGHT HON. HENRY GRATTAN, M.P. (PORTRAIT OF) . 329 JAMES CAULFIELD, EARL OF CHARLEMONT (PORTRAIT OF) 337 RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE (PORTRAIT OF) . . 343 THE EARL OF MOIRA (“ A MAN OF IMPORTANCE”) . 348 RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE (SKETCH FROM LIFE) . 353 THEOBALD WOLFE TONE (PORTRAIT OF) ■ . . . 356 LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD (PORTRAIT OF) . . . 360 THE FOUR COURTS, DUBLIN . .... 369 MARQUIS CORNWALLIS (PORTRAIT OF) .... 374 ROBERT EMMETT (PORTRAIT OF).378 DANIEL O’CONNELL, M.P. (SKETCH OF) .... 383 xxviil LIST OP ILLUSTRAflOPrS, LESSER ILLUSTRATIONS (at end of chapters). PAGE CROMLECH ON HOWTH.* 12 MOUTH OF SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER AT DOWTH . . 31 ST. KEVIN’S CHURCH.4I CORMAC’S CHAPEL AND ROUND TOWER .... 70 ROUND TOWER AT DEVENISH. 75 SOUTH WINDOW OF ST. CAEMIN’S CHURCH ... 89 FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT. 97 TRIM CASTLE.. . .112 FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT . . . 131 AND 150 INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS) . . 160 ST. PATRICK’S BELL . . . , . . . •173 INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KFLLS) . . 202 CINERARY URN. 210 TARA BROOCH.219 DOORWAY OF ST. CAEMIN’S CHURCH .... 225 SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK’S BELL.239 ST. COLUMBA’S ORATORY.265 INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS) . . 294 TARA BROOCH.366 CRYPT OF CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL . t t . 376 THE STORY OF IRELAND. I. PRIMEVAL IRELAND. “ It seems to be certain,” says the Abbe McGec- ghchan, “ that Ireland continued uninhabited from the Creation to the Deluge.” With this assurance to help us on our onward way I may venture to supple¬ ment it by saying that little is known about the first, or even about the second, third, and fourth suc¬ cession of settlers in Ireland. At what precise period what is known as the Scoto-Celtic branch of the great Aryan stock broke away from its parent tree, by what route its migrants travelled, in what degree of con¬ sanguinity it stood to the equally Celtic race or races of Britain, what sort of people inhabited Ireland previous to the first Aryan invasion—all this is in the last degree uncertain, though that it was inhabited by some race or races outside the limits of that greatest of human groups seems from ethnological evidence to be perfectly clear. When first it dawns upon us through that thick 2 2 PRIMEVAL IRELAND. daikness which hangs about the birth of all countries —whatever their destiny—it was a densely wooded and scantily peopled island “ lying a-loose,” as old Campion, the Elizabethan historian, tells us, “ upon the West Ocean,” though his further assertion that “ in shape it resembleth an egg, plain on the sides, and not reaching forth to the sea in nooks and elbows of Land as Brittaine doeth ”—cannot be said to be quite geographically accurate—the last part of the description referring evidently to the east coast, the only one with which, like most of his country¬ men, he was at that time familiar. Geographically, then, and topographically it was no doubt in much the same state as the greater part of it remained up to the middle or end of the six¬ teenth century, a wild, tangled, roadless land, that is to say, shaggy with forests, abounding in streams, abounding, too, in lakes—far more, doubtless, than at present, drainage and other causes having greatly reduced their number—with rivers bearing the never- failing tribute of the skies to the sea, yet not so thoroughly as to hinder enormous districts from re¬ maining in a swamped and saturated condition, given up to the bogs, which even at the present time are said to cover nearly one-sixth of its surface. This superfluity of bogs seems always in earlier times to have been expeditiously set down by all historians and agriculturists as part of the general depravity of the Irish native, who had allowed his good lands,—doubtless for his own mischievous plea¬ sure—to run to waste; bogs being then supposed to differ from other lands only so far as they were made GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 3 "waste and barren by superfluous moisture.” About the middle of last century it began to be perceived that this view of the matter was somewhat inade¬ quate ; the theory then prevailing being that bogs owed their origin not to water alone, but to the destruction of woods, whose remains are found im¬ bedded in them—a view which held good for another fifty or sixty years, until it was in its turn effectually disposed of by the report of the Bogs Commission in l8lo, when it was proved once for all that it was to the growth of sphagnums and other peat-producing mosses they were in the main due—a view which has never since been called in question. A great deal, however, had happened to Ireland before the bogs began to grow on it at all. It had—to speak only of some of its later vicissitudes—been twice at least united to England, and through it with what we now know as the continent of Europe, and twice severed from it again. It had been expo.sed to a cold so intense as to bleach off all life from its surface, utterly depriving it of vegetation, and grinding the mountains down to that scraped bun-like outline which so many of them still retain ; had covered the whole country, highlands and lowlands alike, with a dense overtoppling cap of snow, towering often thou¬ sands of feet above the present height of the moun¬ tains, from which “central silence ” the glaciers crept sleepily down the ravines and valleys, eating their way steadily seaward, and leaving behind them moraines to mark their passage, leaving also longi¬ tudinal scratches, cut, as a diamond cuts gla.ss, upon the rocks, as may be seen by any one who takes 4 PRIMEVAL IRELAND. the trouble of looking for them ; finally reaching the sea in a vast sloping plateau which pushed its course steadily onward until its further advanee was overborne by the buoyancy of the salt water, the ends breaking off, as the Greenland glaciers do to¬ day, into huge floating icebergs, which butted against one another, jammed up all the smaller bays and fiords; were carried in again and again on the rising tide ; rolled hither and thither like so many colossal ninepins ; played, in short, all the old rough- and-tumble Arctic games through many a cold and dismal century, finally melting away as the milder weather began slowly to return, leaving Ireland a very lamentable-looking island indeed, not unlike one of those deplorable islands scattered along the shores of Greenland and upon the edges of Baffin’s Bay—treeless, grassless, brown and scalded, wearing everywhere over its surface the marks of that great ice-plough which had lacerated its sides so long. There seems to be good geological evidence that the land connection between Ireland and Scotland continued to a considerably later period than between it and England, to which, and as far as can be seen to no other possible cause is to be attributed two very striking characteristics of its fauna, namely, its excessive meagreness and its strikingly northern character. Not only does it come far short of the already meagre English fauna, but all the distinctively southern species are the ones missing, though there is nothing in the climate to account for the fact. The Irish hare, for instance, is not the ordinary brown hare of England, but the “ blue ” or Arctic hare of FAUNA AND FLORA. 5 Scotch mountains, the same which still further to the north becomes white in winter, a habit which, owing to the milder Irish winters, it has apparently shaken off. It would be pleasant to linger here a little over this point of distribution—so fruitful of suggestion as to the early history of the planet we occupy. To speculate as to the curious contradictions, or apparent contradictions, to be found even within so narrow an area as that of Ireland. What, for instance, has brought a group of South European plants to the shores of Kerry and Connemara, which plants are not to be found in England, even in Cornwall, which one would have thought must surely have arrested them first } Why, when neither the common toad nor frog is indigenous in Ireland (for the latter, though common enough now, was only introduced at the beginning of last century) a comparatively rare little toad, the Natterjack, should be found in one corner of Kerry to all appearances indigenously? All these questions, however, belong to quite another sort of book, and to a much larger survey of the field than there is time here to embark upon, so there is nothing for it but to turn one’s back resolutely upon the tempting sin of discursiveness, or we shall find our¬ selves belated before our real journey is even begun. The first people, then, of whose existence in Ireland we can be said to know anything are commonly asserted to have been of Turanian origin, and are known as “Formorians.” As far as we can gather, they were a dark, low-browed, stunted race, although, 6 PRIMEVAL IRELAND. oddly enough, the word Formorian in early Irish legend is always used as synonymous with the word giant. They were, at any rate, a race of utterly savage hunters and fishermen, ignorant of metal, of pottery, possibly even of the use of fire ; using the stone hammers or hatchets of which vast numbers remain in Ireland to this day, and specimens of which may be seen in every museum. How long they held possession no one can tell, although Irish philologists believe several local Irish names to date from this almost inconceivably remote epoch. Perhaps if we think of the Lapps of the present day, and picture them wandering about the country, catching the hares and rabbits in nooses, burrowing in the earth or amongst rocks, and being, not impossibly, looked down on with scorn by the great Irish elk which still stalked majestically over the hills ; rearing ugly little altars to dim, formless gods; trembling at every sudden gust, and seeing demon faces in every bush and brake, it will give us a fairly good notion of what these very earliest inhabitants of Ireland were probably like. Next followed a Belgic colony, known as the Firbolgs, who overran the country, and appear to have been of a somewhat higher ethnological grade, although, like the Formorians, short, dark, and swarthy. Doubtless the latter were not entirely exterminated to make way for the Firbolgs, any more than the Firbolgs to make way for the Danaans, Milesians, and other successive races ; such wholesale exter¬ minations being, in fact, very rare, especially in a country which like Ireland seems specially laid out THE FIRBOLGS. 7 by kindly nature for the protection of a weaker race struggling in the grip of a stronger one. After the Firbolgs, though I should be sorry to be obliged to say how long after, fresh and more important tribes of invaders began to appear. The first of these were the Tuatha-da-Danaans, who arrived under the leadership of their king Nuad, and took possession of the east of the country. These Tuatha-da-Danaans are believed to have been large, blue-eyed people of Scandinavian origin, kinsmen and possibly ancestors of those Norsemen or “ Danes ” who in years to come were destined to work such woe and havoc upon the island. Many battles took place between these Danaans and the earlier Firbolgic settlers —the native owners as no doubt they felt themselves of the country. One of the best substantiated of these, not, indeed, by history or even tradition, but by a more solid testimony, that of the stone remains left on the spot, prove, at any rate, that so>ne long-sustained battle was at some remote period fought on the spot. This is the famous pre-historic battle of Moytura, rather the Southern Moytura, for there were two ; the other, situated not far from the present town of Sligo, retaining “the largest collection of pre-historic remains,” says Dr. Petrie, “ in any region in the world with the exception of Carnac.” This second battle of Moytura was fought upon the plain of Cong, which is washed by the waters of Lough Mask and Lougli Corrib, close to where the long monotonous midland plain of Ireland becomes broken, changes into that region of high mountains and low-lying valleys, now PRIMEVAL IRELAND. called Connemara, but which In earlier days was always known as lar Connaught. It is a wild scene even now, not very mueh less so than it must have been when this old and half- mythical Battle of the West was fought and won. A grey plain, “ stone-roughened like the graveyard of dead hosts,” broken into grassy ridges, and starred at intervals with pools, repeating the larger glitter of the lake hard by. Over the whole surface of this tumbled plain rise, at intervals, great masses of rock, some natural, but others artificially up-tilted—crom¬ lechs and dolmens, menhirs and cairns—whitened by lichen scrawls, giving them often in uncertain light the effect of so many undecipherable inscriptions, written in a long-forgotten tongue. From the position of the battle-field it has been made out to their own satisfaction by those who have studied it on the spot, that the Firbolgs must have taken up a fortified position upon the hill called Ben- levi ; a good strategic position unquestionably, having behind it the whole of the Mayo mountains into which to retreat in case of defeat. The Danaans, on the other hand, advancing from the plains of Meath, took up their station upon the hill known as Knockmaa,^ standing by itself about five miles from the present town of Tuam, on the top of which stands a great cairn, believed to have been in existence even then—a legacy of some yet earlier and more primitive race which inhabited the country, and, therefore, possibly the oldest record of humanity to-day extant in Ireland. Three days the battle is said to have raged with ' Now Castle Hacket Hill. BATTLE OF MOYTUkA. 9 varying fortunes, in the course of which the Danaan king Nuad lost his arm, a loss which was repaired, we are told, by the famous artificer Credue or Cerd, who made him a silver one, and as “Nuad of the Silver Hand ” he figures conspicuously in early Irish history. In spite of this, and of the death of a number of their fighting-men, the stars fought for the Tuatha-da- Danaans, who were strong men and cunning, workers in metal, and great fighters, so that at last they utterly made an end of their antagonists, occupying the whole country, and holding it, say the annalists for a hundred and ninety and six years—building earth and stone forts, many of which exist to this day, but what their end was no man can tell you, save that they, too, were, in their turn, conquered by the Milesians or “Scoti,”who next overran the country, giving to it their own name of Scotia, by which name it was known down to the end of the twelfth century, and driving the earlier settlers before them, who there¬ upon lied to the hills, and took refuge in the forests, whence they emerged, doubtless, with unpleasant effect upon their conquerors, as another defeated race did upon their conquerors in later days. As regards the early doings of these Scoti, al¬ though nearer to us in point of time, their history is, if anything, rather more vague than that of their predecessors. The source for the greater part of it is to be found in the early part of a work known as the “Annals of the Four Masters,” a compilation put together in the sixteenth cen¬ tury, from documents no longer existing. Were names, indeed, all that were wanting to give substan- 10 PRIMEVAL IRELAND. tiality there are enough and to spare, the beginning of every Irish history positively bristling with them. Leland, for instance, who published his three sturdy tomes in the year 1773, and who is still one of our chief authorities on the subject, speaks of Ireland as having “ engendered one hundred and seventy one monarchs, all of the same house and lineage ; with sixty-eight kings, and two queens of Great Brittain and Ireland all sprung equally from her loins.” We read in his pages of the famous brethren Heber and Heremon, sons of Milesius, who divided the island between them; of Ollamh Fodla, celebrated as a healer of feuds and protector of learning, who drew the priests and bards together into a triennial assembly at Tara, in Meath ; of Kimbaoth, who is praised by the annalists for having advanced learning and kept the peace. The times of peace had not ab¬ solutely arrived however, for he was not long after murdered, and wild confusion and wholesale slaughter ensued. Another Milesian prince, Thuathal, shortly afterwards returned from North Britain, and, assisted by a body of Pictish soldiers, defeated the rebels, restored order, and re-established the seat of his monarchy in Meath. As a specimen of the sort of stories current in history of this kind, Leland relates at considerable length the account of the insult offered to this Thuathal by the provincial king of Leinster. “The king,” he tells us, “had married the daughter of Thuathal, but conceiving a violent passion for her sister, pretended that his wife had died, and demanded and obtained her sister in marriage. The two ladies met in the MYTHS. II royal house of Leinster. Astonishment and sorrow put an end to their lives ! ” The offender not long afterwards was invaded by his justly indignant father-in-law, and his province only preserved from desolation on condition of paying a heavy tribute, “ as a perpetual memorial of the resentment of Thuathal and of the offence committed by the king of Leinster.” Another special favourite of the annalists is Cormac O’Conn, whose reign they place about the year 250, and over whose doings they wax eloquent, dwell¬ ing upon the splendour of his court, the heroism of his warlike sons, the beauty of his ten fair daughters, the doings of his famous militia, the Fenni or Fenians, and especially of his illustrious general Finn, or Fingal, the hero of the legends, and father of the poet Ossian —a warrior whom we shall meet with again in the next chapter. And now, it will perhaps be asked, what is one in sober seriousness to say to all this All that one can say is that these talcs are not to be taken as history in any rigid sense of the word, but must for the most part be regarded as mere hints, caught from chaos, and coming down through a hundred broken mediums ; scraps of adventures told around camp fires ; oral traditions; rude songs handed from father to son, and altering more or less with each new teller. The early history of Ireland is in this respect much like the early history of all other countries. We have the same semi-mythical aggregations, grown up around some small kernel of reality, but so changed, swollen, distorted, that it is difficult to distinguish the true 12 PRIMEVAL IRELAND. from the false; becoming vaguer and vaguer too as the mists of time and sentiment gather more and more thickly around them, until at last we seem to be swimming dimly in a “ moony vapour,” which allows no dull peaks of reality to pierce through it at all. “There were giants in those days,” is a continually recurring assertion, characteristic of all ancient annals, and of these with the rest. CROMLECH ON HOWTH. II. THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS. Better far than such historic shams—cardboard castles with little or no substance behind them—are the real legends. These put forward no obtrusive preten¬ sions to accuracy, and for that very reason are far truer in that larger sense in which all the genuine and spontaneous outgrowth of a country form part and parcel of its history. Some of the best of these have been excellently translated by Mr. Joyce, whose “Celtic Romances” ought to be in the hands of every one, from the boy of twelve upwards, who aspires to know anything of the inner history of Ireland; to understand, that is to say, that curiously recurrent note of poetry and pathos which breaks continually through all the dull hard prose of the surface. A note often lost in unmitigated din and discord, yet none the less re-emerging, age after age, and century after century, and always when it does so lending its own charm to a record, which, without some such alleviations, would be almost too grim and disheartening in its unrelieved and unresulting misery to be voluntarily approached at all. Although as they now stand none appear to be of 14 THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS. earlier date than the ninth or tenth century, these stories all breathe the very breath of a primitive world. An air of remote pagan antiquity hangs over them, and as we read we seem gradually to realize an Ireland as unlike the one we know now as if, like the magic island of Buz, it had sunk under the waves and been lost. Take, for instance—for space will not allow of more than a sample—the story of “The Pursuit of Gilla Dacker and his Horse,” not by any means one of the best, yet characteristic enough. In it we learn that from Beltane, the ist of May—the great Celtic festival of the sun—to Sanim, the ist of November, the chiefs and Fenni hunted each day with their hounds through the forests and over the plains, while from Sanim to Beltane they lived in the “ Betas,” or houses of hospitality, or feasted high with Finn McCumal, son of Cumal, grandson of Trenmore O’Baskin, whose palace stood upon the summit of the hill of Allen, a hill now crowned with a meaningless modern obelisk, covering the site of the old historic rath, a familiar object to thousands who have looked up at it from the Curraghof Kildare, certainly with no thought in their minds of Finn McCumal or his vanished warriors. The tale tells how one day, after hunting on the Plains of Cliach, the Fenni sat down to rest upon the hill of Colkilla, their hunting tents being pitched upon a level spot near the summit. How presently, afar off over the plain at their feet, they saw one of the con¬ quered race of earlier inhabitants, a “ Formorlan ” of huge size and repulsive ugliness coming towards them, leading his horse by the halter, an animal larger, it THE STORY OF THE GILLA DACKER. 15 seems, than six ordinary horses, but broken down and knock-kneed, with jaws that stuck out far in advance of its head. How the heroes, idling pleasantly about in the sunshine, laughed aloud at the uncouth "foreigner ” and his ugly raw-boned beast, “ covered with tangled scraggy hair of a sooty black.” How he came before the king and, having made obeisance, told him that his name was the Gilla Dacker, and then and there took service with him for a year, desiring at the same time that special care should be paid to his horse, and the best food given it, and care taken that it did not stray, whereat the heroes laughed again, the horse standing like a thing carved in wood and unable apparently to move a leg. No sooner, however, was it loosed, and the halter cast off, than it rushed amongst the other horses, kicking and lashing, and seizing them with its teeth till not one escaped. Seeing which, the Fenni rose up in high wrath, and one of them seized the Gilla Backer’s horse by the halter and tried to draw it away, but again it became like a rock, and refu.sed to stir. Then he mounted its back and flogged it, but still it remained like a stone. Then, one after the other, thirteen more of the heroes mounted, but still it stirred not. The very instant, however, that its master, the Gilla Dacker rose up angrily to depart, the old horse went too, with the fourteen heroes still upon his back, whereat the Fenni raised fresh shouts of laughter. But the Gilla Dacker, after he had walked a little way, looked back, and seeing that his horse was following, stood for a moment to tuck up his skirts. “ Then, all at once changing his 1 6 THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS. pace, he set out with long strides ; and if you know what the speed of a swallow is, flying across a mountain-side, or the fairy wind of a March day sweeping over the plains, then you can understand Gilla Dacker, as he ran down the hillside towards the south-west. Neither was the horse behindhand in the race, for, though he carried a heavy load, he galloped like the wind after his master, plunging and bounding forward with as much freedom as if he had nothing at all on his back.” Finn and his warriors left behind on the hill stared awhile, and then resolved to go to Ben Edar, now Howth, there to seek for a ship to follow after Gilla Dacker and his horse, and the fourteen heroes. And on their way they met two bright-faced youths wearing mantles of scarlet silk, fastened by brooches of gold, who, saluting the king, told him their names were Foltlebar and Feradach, and that they were the sons of the king of Innia, and each possessed an art, and that as they walked they had disputed whose art was the greater. “And my art,” said Feradach, “ is this. If at any time a company of warriors need a ship, give me only my joiner’s axe and my crann-tavall,^ and I am able to provide a ship without delay. The only thing I ask them to do is this —to cover their heads close and keep them covered, while I give the crann-tavall three blows of my axe. Then I tell them to uncover their heads, and lo, there lies the ship in harbour, ready to sail ! ” The Foltlebar spoke and said, “ This, O king, is the art I profess: On land I can track the wild duck over ' A sling for projecting stones, strung rather like a cross-bow. THE STORY OF THE GILLA DACKER. I 7 nine ridges and nine glens, and follow her without being once thrown out, till I drop upon her in her nest. And I can follow up a track on sea quite as well as on land, if I have a good ship and crew.” And Finn replied, “ You are the very men I want ; and now I take you both into my service. Though our own trackmen, the Clan Naim, are good, yet we now need some one still more skilful to follow the Gilla Dacker through unknown seas.” To the.se unknown seas they went, starting from Ben Edar, and sailed away we.st for many days over the Atlantic, seeing many strange sights and passing many unknown islands. But at last the ship stopped short in front of an island with vast rocky cliffs towering high above their heads as steep as a sheet of glass, at which the heroes gazed amazed and baffled, not knowing what to do next. But Dermot O’Dynor —called also Dermot of the Bright-face—undertook to climb it, for of all the Fenni he was the most learned in Druidical enchantments, having been early taught the secret of fairy lore by Mananan Mac Lir, who ruled over the Inis Manan or Land of Promise. Dermot accordingly took leave of his friends and climbed the great cliff, and when he reached the top he found that it was flat and covered with tall green grass, as is often the case in these desolate wind¬ blown Atlantic islets. And in the very centre he found a well with a tall pillar stone beside it, and beside the pillar stone a drinking-horn chased with gold. And he took up the drinking-horn to drink, being thirsty, but the instant he touched the brim with his lips, lo ! a great Wizard Champion armed 3 iS THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS, to the teeth, sprang up out of the earth, whereupon he and Dermot O’Dynor fought together beside the well the livelong day until the dusk fell. But the moment the dusk fell, the wizard champion sprang with a great bound into the middle of the well, and so disappeared, leaving Dermot standing there much astonished at what had befallen him. And the next day the same thing happened, and the next, and the next. But on the fourth day, Dermot watched his foe narrowly, and when the dusk came on, and he saw that he was about to spring into the well, he flung his arms tightly about him, and the wizard champion struggled to get free, but Dermot held him, and at length they both fell together into the well, deeper and deeper to the very bottom of the earth, and there was nothing to be seen but dim shadows, and nothing to be heard but vague confused sounds like the roaring of waves. At length there came a glimmering of light, and all at once bright day broke suddenly around them, and they came out at the other side of the earth, and found themselves in Tir-fa-ton, the land under the sea, where the flowers bloom all the year round, and no man has ever so much as heard the word Death. What happened there ; how Dermot O’Dynor met the other heroes, and how the fourteen Fenni who had been carried off were at last recaptured, would be too long to tell. Unlike most of these legends all comes right in the end ; Gilla Dacker and his ugly horse disappear suddenly into space, and neither Finn himself nor any of his warriors ever see them again. THE BARDS. 19 It is impossible, I think, to read this, and to an even greater degree some of the other stories, which have been translated by Mr. Joyce and others, without per¬ ceiving how thoroughly impregnated with old-world and mythological sentiment they are. An air of all but fabulous antiquity pervades them, greater perhaps than pervades the legends of any other north Euro¬ pean people. We seem transplanted to a world of the most primitive type conceivable ; a world of myth and of fable, of direct Nature interpretations, of mythology, in short, pure and simple. Even those stories which are known to be of later origin e.xhibit to a greater or less degree the same character ; one which has come down to them doubtless from earlier half-forgotten tales, of which they are merely the final and most modern outcome. When, too, we turn from the legends themselves to the legend-makers, everything that we know of the position of the bards {pilainhs or Scnnacliics) carries out the same idea. In the earliest times they were not merely the singers and story-tellers of their race, but to a great degree they bore a religious or semi- religious character. Like the Brehons or judges they were the directors and guides of the others, but they possessed in addition a peculiarly Druidical character of sanctity, as the inheritors and interpreters of a revelation confided to them alone. A power the more formidable because no one, probably, had ever ventured to define its exact character. The Head bard or Ollamh, in the estimation of his tribesmen, stood next in importance to the chieftain or king—higher, indeed, in some respects ; for whereas 20 THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS. to slay a king might, or might not be criminal, to slay an Ollamh entailed both outlawing in this life and a vaguer, but not the less terrible, supernatural penalty in another. Occasionally, as in the case of the Ollamh Fodhla, by whom the halls of Tara are reputed to have been built, the king was himself the bard, and so combined both offices, but this appears to have been rare. Even as late as the sixteenth century, refusal of praise from a bard was held to confer a far deeper and more abiding stigma upon a man than blame from any other lips. If they, “ the bards,” says an Eliza¬ bethan writer, “ say ought in dispraise, the gentleman, especially the meere Irish, stand in great awe.’ It is eas}^, I think, to see this is merely the sur¬ vival of some far more potent power wielded in earlier times. In pre-Christian days especially, the penalty attaching to the curse of a Bard was understood to carry with it a sort of natural anathema, not unlike the priestly anathema of later times. Indeed there was one singular, and, as far as I am aware, unique power possessed by the Irish Bards, which goes beyond any priestly or papal anathema, and which was known as the Clann DicJiin, a truly awful malediction, by means of which the Ollamh, if offended or injured, could pronounce a spell against the very land of his injurer ; which spell once pronounced that land would produce no crop of any kind, neither could living creature graze upon it, neither was it possible even to walk over it without peril, and so it continued until the wrong, whatever it was, had been repented, and the curse of the Ollamh was lifted off from the land again. THE CLANN DICHIN. 21 Is it to be wondered at that men, endowed wit*'- such powers of blessing or banning, possessed of such mystic communion with the then utterly unknown powers of nature, should have exercised an all but unlimited influence over the minds of their countrymen, especially at a time when the powers of evil were still supposed to stalk the earth in all their native malignity, and no light of any revelation had broken through the thick dim roof overhead ? Few races of which the world has ever heard are as imaginative as that of the Celt, and at this time the imagination of every Celt must have been largely exercised in the direction of the malevolent and the terrible. Even now, after fourteen hundred years of Christianity, the Connaught or Kerry peasant still hears the shriek of his early gods in the sob of the waves or the howling of the autumn storms. Fish demons gleam out of the sides of the mountains, and the black bog-holes are the haunts of slimy monsters of inconceivable horror. Even the less directly baneful spirits such as Finvarragh, king of the fairies, who haunts the stony slopes of Knockmaa, and all the endless variety of dii niinores, the cluricans, banshees, fetches who peopled the primitive forests, and still hop and mow about their ruined homes, were far more likely to injure than to benefit unless approached in exactly the right manner, and with the properly uttered conjurations. The Unknown is always the Terrible; and the more vivid an untaught imagination is, the more certain it is to conjure up e.xactly the things which alarm it most, and which it least likes t;o have to believe in. Ill TRE-CIIRISTIAN IRELAND. Getting out of this earliest and foggiest period, whose only memorials are the stones which still cumber the ground, or those subtler traces of occupation of which philology keeps the key,and pushing aside a long and uncounted crowd of kings, with names as uncertain as their deeds, pushing aside, too, the legends and coming to hard fact, we must picture Ireland still covered for the most part with pathless forests, but here and there cleared and settled after a rude fashion by rough cattle-owning tribes, who herded their own cattle and “ lifted ” their neighbour’s quite in the approved fashion of the Scotch Highlanders up to a century and a half ago. Upon the whole, we may fairly conclude that matters were ameliorating more or less ; that the wolves were being killed, the woods cleared—not as yet in the ferocious wholesale fashion of later days—that a little rudimentary agriculture showed perhaps here and there in sheltered places. Sheep and goats grazed then as now over the hills, and herds of cattle began to cover the Lowlands. The men, too, were possibly beginning to grow a trifle less like two-legged beasts of prey SLAVERY. 23 though still rough as the very wolves they hunted ; bare-legged, wild-eyed hunter-herdsmen with—who can doubt it ?—flocks of children trooping vociferously at their heels. Of the daily life, habits, dress, religion of these people—the direct ancestors of four-fifths of the pre¬ sent inhabitants of Ireland—we know unfortunately exceedingly little. It is not even certain, whether human sacrifices did or did not form—as they certainly did in Celtic Britain—part of that religion, though there is some evidence that it did, in which case prisoners taken in battle, or slaves, were probably the victims. That a considerable amount of slavery existed in early Celtic Ireland is certain, though as to the rules by which it was regulated, as of almost every other detail of the life, we know little or nothing. At the time of the Anglo-Norman conquest Ireland was said to be full of English slaves carried off in raids along the coast, and these filibustering expedi¬ tions undoubtedly began in very early times. St. Patrick himself was thus carried off, and the annalists tell us that in the third century Cormac Mac Art ravaged the whole western coast of Britain, and brought away “ great stores of slaves and treasures.” To how late a period, too, the earlier conquered races of Ireland, such as the Formorians, continued as a distinct race from their Milesian conquerors, and whether they existed as a slave class, or, as seems more probable, as mere outcasts and vagabonds out of the pale of humanity, liable like the “Tory ” of many centuries later, to be killed whenever caught; all these PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND. 24 are matters on which we have unfortunately only the vaguest hints to guide us. The whole texture of society must have been loose and irregular to a degree that it is diffieult for us now to coneeive, without central organization or social cement of any kind. In one respect—that of the treatment of his women—the Irish Celt seems to have always stood in favourable contrast to most of the other rude races which then covered the north of Europe, but as regards the rest there was probably little difference. Fighting was the one aim of life. Not to have washed his spear in an adversary’s gore, was a reproach which would have been felt by a full- grown tribesman to have carried with it the deepest and most lasting ignominy. The very women were not in early times exempt from war service, nay, probably would have scorned to be so. They fought beside their husbands, and slew or got slain with as reckless a courage as the men, and it was not until the time of St. Columba, late in the sixth century, that a law was passed ordering them to remain in their homes—a fact which alone speaks volumes both for the vigour and the undying pugnacity of the race. While, on the one hand, we can hardly thus exaggerate the rudeness of this life, we must be careful, on the other, of concluding that these people were simple barbarians, incapable of discriminating right from wrong. Men, even the wildest, rarely indeed live entirely without some law to guide them, and certainly it was so in Ireland. A rule was growing up and becoming theoretically at any rate, established, many of the provisions of which startle us by the ANCIENT IRISH LAW. 25 curious modernness of their tone, so oddly do they contrast with what we know of the condition of civi¬ lization or non-civilization then existing. Although this ancient Irish law was not drawn up until long after the introduction of Christianity, it seems best to speak of it here, as, though modified by the stricter Christian rule, it in the main depended for such authority as it possessed upon traditions existing long before ; traditions regarded indeed by Celtic scholars as tracing their origin beyond the arrival of the first Celt in Ireland, outcomes and sur¬ vivals, that is to say, of yet earlier Aryan rule, showing points of resemblance with the equally Aryan laws of India, a matter of great interest, carrying our thoughts back along the history of humanity to a time when those differences which seem now the most inherent and vital were as yet undreamt of, and not one of the great nations of the modern world were as much as born. The two chief books in which this law is contained, the “Book of Aicill” and the “ Senchus-Mor,” have only comparatively recently been translated and made available for English readers. The law as there laid down was drawn up and administered by the Brehons, who were the judges and the law-makers of the people, and whose decision was appealed to in all matters of dispute. The most serious flaw of the system—a very serious one it will be seen—was that, owing to the scattered and tribal existence prevailing, there was no strong central rule behind the Brehon, as. there is behind the modern judge, ready and able to enforce his decrees. At bottom, force. 26 PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND. it must not be forgotten, is the sanction of all law, and there was no available force of any kind then, nor for many a long day afterwards, in Ireland. It was, no doubt, owing chiefly to this defective weakness that a system of fines rather than punish¬ ments grew up, one which in later times caused much scandal to English legal writers. In such a society crime in fact was hardly recognizable except in the form of an injury inflicted upon some person or persons. An offence against the State there could not be, simply be¬ cause there was no State to be offended. Everything, from murder down to the smallest and most acciden¬ tal injury, was compensated for by “ erics ” or fines. The amount of these fines was decided upon by the Brehon, who kept an extraordinary number of ima¬ ginary rulings, descending into the most minute par¬ ticulars, such as what fine was to be paid in the case of one person’s cat stealing milk from another person’s house, what fine in the case of one woman’s bees stinging another woman, a careful distinction being preserved in this case between the case in which the sting did or did not draw blood ! Even in the matter of fines it does not seem clear how the penalty was to be enforced where the person on whom it was inflicted refused to submit and where there was no one at hand to coerce him successfully. As regards ownership of land early Irish law is very peculiar, and requires to be carefully studied. Primogeniture, regarded by all English lawyers trained under the feudal system as the very basis of inheri¬ tance, was simply unknown. Even in the case of the chieftain his rights belonged only to himself, and ANCIENT IRISH LAW. 27 before his death a re-election took place, when some other of the same blood, not necessarily his eldest son, or even his son at all, but a brother, first cousin, uncle, or whoever stood highest in the estimation of the clan, was nominated as “Tanist” or successor, and received promises of support from the rest. Elizabethan writers mention a stone which was placed upon a hill or mound having the shape of a foot cut on it, supposed to be that of the first chief or ancestor of the race, “ upon which stone the Tanist placing his foot, took oath to maintain all ancient customs inviolably, and to give up the succession peaceably to his Tanist in due time.” The object of securing a Tanist during the lifetime of the chief was to hinder its falling to a minor, or some one unfit to take up the chieftainship, and this continued to prevail for centuries after the Anglo- Norman invasion, and was even adopted by many owners of English descent who had become “ meere Irish,” as the phrase ran, or “degenerate English.” “The childe being oftentimes left in nonage,” says Campion, “ could never defend his patrimony, but by the time he grow to a competent age and have buried an uncle or two, he also taketh his turn,” a custom which, as he adds, “ breedeth among them continual warres.” The entire land belonged to the clan, and was held theoretically in common, and a redistribution made on the death of each owner, though it seems doubtful whether so very inconvenient an arrange¬ ment could practically have been adhered to. All sons, illegitimate as well as legitimate, shared and 28 PRE-CHRISriAN IRELAND. shared alike, holding the property between them in undivided ownership. It was less the actual land than the amount of grazing it afforded which con¬ stituted its value. Even to this day a man, especially in the West of Ireland, will tell you that he has “the grass of three cows,” or “ the grass of six cows,” as the case may be. It is curious that the most distinct ancient rules concerning the excessive extortion of rent are, as has been shown by Sir Henry Maine, to be found in the “ Senchus Mor.” Under its regulations three rents are enumerated—namely, the rack rent to be extorted from one of a strange tribe; the fair rent from one of the same tribe; and the stipulated rent to be paid equally to either. The Irish clan or sept was a very loose, and in many cases irregular, structure, embracing even those who were practically undistinguishable from slaves, yet from none of these could any but a fair or customary rent be demanded. It was only when those who by no fiction could be supposed to belong to the clan sought for land that the best price attainable might be extorted and insisted upon. In so primitive a state of society such persons wei'e almost sure to be outcasts, thrown upon the world either by the breaking up of other clans or by their own misdoings. A man of this class was generally what was known as a “ Fuidhar ” or “ broken man,” and answered in some respects to the slave or the serf of the early English village community. Like him he seems to have been his lord’s or chiefs chattel, c^nd if killed or injured the fine or “ eric ” was paid THE FAMILY, 29 not to his own family, but to his master. Such men were usually settled by the chief upon the unap¬ propriated tribal lands over which his own authority tended to increase. This P'uidhar class from the first seem to have been very numerous, and de¬ pending as they did absolutely upon the chief, there grew up by degrees that class of armed retainers— kerns and galloglasses, they were called in later times—who surrounded every important chief, whether of English or Irish descent, and were by them quar¬ tered forcibly in war time upon others, and so there grew up that system of “coyne and livery,” or forced entertainment for horse and men, which is to be met with again and again throughout Irish history, and which undoubtedly was one of the greatest curses of the country, tending more perhaps than any other single cause to keep its people at the lowest possible condition of starvation and misery. No system of representation seems ever to have prevailed in Ireland. That idea is, in fact, almost purely Teutonic, and seems never to have sprung up spontaneously amongst any Celtic people. The family v.'as the real root. Every head of a family ruled his own household, and submitted in his turn to the rule of his chief Blood-relationship, including fosterage, was the only real and binding union; that larger con¬ nection known as the clan or sept, having the smaller one of the family for its basis, as was the case also amongst the clans of the Scotch highlands. Theo¬ retically, all members of a clan, high and low alike, were held to be the descendants of a common ancestor, and in this way to have a real and direct claim upon 30 PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND. one another. If a man was not in some degree akin to another he was no better than a beast, and might be killed like one without compunction whenever occasion arose. Everything thus began and centred around the tribe or sept. The whole theory of life was purely local. The bare right of existence extended only a few miles from your own door, to the men who bore the same name as yourself. Beyond that nothing was sacred; neither age nor sex, neither life nor goods, not even in later times the churches themselves. Like his cousin of the Scotch Highlands, the Irish tribesman’s life was one perpetual carnival of fighting, burning, raiding, plundering, and he who plundered oftenest was the finest hero. All this must be steadily borne in mind as it enables us to understand, as nothing else will, that almost insane joy in and lust for fighting, that marked inability to settle down to orderly life which runs through all Irish history from the beginning almost to the very end. Patriotism, too, it must be remembered, is in the first instance only an idea, and the narrowest of local jealousies may be, and often are, forms merely of the same impulse. To men living in one of these small isolated communities, each under the rule of its own petty chieftain, it was natural and perhaps inevitable that the sense of connection with those outside their own community should have been remarkably slight, and of nationality, as we understand the word, quite non-existent. Their own little circle of hills and valleys, their own forests and pasturage was their TRIBAL LIFE. 31 world, the only one practically of which they had any cognizance. To its scattered inhabitants of that day little Ireland must have seemed a region of incalculable extent, filled with enemies to kdll or to be killed by ; a region in which a man might wander from sunrise to sunset yet never reach the end, nay, for days together without coming to a second sea. As Greece to a Greek of one of its smaller states it seemed vast simply because he had never in his own person explored its limits. MOUTH OK SF.rULCHRAT CHAMBER AT DOWTH, NEW GRANGE. IV. ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY. But a new element was about to appear upon the troubled stage, and a new figure, one whose doings, however liberally we may diseount the more purely supernatural part of them, strikes us even now as little short of miraculous. There are plenty of heathen countries still ; plenty of missionaries too ; but a missionary at whose word an entire island—a heathen country given up, it must be remembered, to exceedingly heathen practices—resigns its own creed, and that missionary, too, no king, no warrior, but a mere unarmed stranger, without power to enforce one of the decrees he proclaimed so authoritatively, is a phenomenon which we should find some little difficulty now, or, indeed, at any time, in paralleling. In one respect St. Patrick was less fortunate than his equally illustrious successor, Columba, since he found no contemporary, or nearly contemporary chronicler, to write his story ; the consequence being that it has become so overgrown with pious myths, so tangled and matted with portents and miracles, that it is often difficult for us to see any real substance or outline below them at all. HIS EARLY LIFE. 33 What little direct knowledge we have is derived from a famous Irish manuscript known as “The Book of Armagh,” which contains, amongst other things, a Confession and an Epistle, believed by some authori¬ ties to have been actually written by St. Patrick him¬ self, which was copied as it now stands by a monkish scribe early in the eighth century. It also contains a life of the saint from which the accounts of his later historians have been chiefly drawn. According to the account now generally accepted he was born about the year 390, though as this would make him well over a hundred at the time of his death, perhaps 400 would be the safest date ; was a native, not as formerly believed of Gaul, but of Dum¬ barton upon the Clyde, whence he got carried off to Ireland in a filibustering raid, became the slave of one Milcho, an inferior chieftain, and herded his master’s sheep upon the Slemish mountains in Antrim. Seven or eight years later he escaped, got back to Britain, was ordained, afterwards went to Gaul, and, according to one account, to Italy. But the thought of the country of his captivity seems to have remained upon his mind and to have haunted his sleeping and waking thoughts. The unborn children of the pagan island seemed to stretch our their hands for help to him. At last the inward impulse grew too strong to be resisted, and accompanied by a few fol¬ lowers, he set foot first on the coast of Wicklow where another missionary, Paladius, had before attempted vainly to land, and being badly received there, took boat again, and landed finally at the entrance of Strangford Lough. 4 34 ST. PATRICK THE MiSSIONARy. From this point he made his way on foot to Meath, where the king Laoghaire was holding a pagan festival, and stopped to keep Easter on the hill of Slane where he lit a fire. This fire being seen from the hill of Tara aroused great anger, as no lights were by law allowed to be shown before the king’s beacon was lit. Laoghaire accordingly sent to know the meaning of this in¬ solence and to have St. Patrick brought before him. St. Patrick’s chronicler, Maccumacthenius (one could wish that he had been contented with a shorter name !), tells that as the saint drew nigh to Tara, many prodigies took place. The earth shook, darkness fell, and certain of the magicians who opposed him were seized and tossed into the air. One prodigy certainly took place, for he seems to have won converts from the first. A large number appear to have been gained upon the spot, and before long the greater part of Meath had accepted the new creed, although its king, Laoghaire himself remained a sturdy pagan until his death. From Tara St. Patrick went to Connaught, a province to which he seems to have been drawn from the first, and there spent eight years, founding many churches and monasteries. There also he as¬ cended Croagh Patrick, the tail sugar-loaf mountain which stands over the waters of Clew Bay, and up to the summit of which hundreds of pilgrims still annually climb in his honour. From Connaught he next turned his steps to Ulster visited Antrim and Armagh, and laid the foundations of the future cathedral and bishopric in the latter place. Wherever he went converts seem to have come THE NEW REVOLUTION. 35 in to him in crowds. Even the Bards, who had most to lose by the innovation, appear to have been in many cases drawn over. They and the chiefs gained, the rest followed unhesitatingly ; whole clans were baptized at a time. Never was spiritual conquest so astonishingly complete ! The tale of St. Patrick’s doings ; of his many triumphs ; his few failures ; of the boy Benignus his first Irish disciple ; of his wrestling upon Mount Cruachan ; of King Eochaidh ; of the Bard Ossian, and his dialogues with the apostle, all this has been excellently rendered into verse byMr. Aubrey de Vere, whose “ Legends of St. Patrick ” seem to the present writer by no means so well known as they ought to be. The second poem in the series, “ The Disbeliel of Milcho,” especially is one of great beauty, full of wild poetic gleams, and touches which breathe the very breath of an Irish landscape. Poetry is indeed the medium best suited for the Patrician history. The whole tale of the saint’s achievements in Ireland is one of those in which history seems to lose its own sober colouring, to become luminous and half magical, to take on all the rosy hues of a myth. The best proof of the effect of the new reve¬ lation is to be found in that extraordinary burst of enthusiasm which marked the next few centuries. The passion for conversion, for missionary labour of all sorts, seems to have swept like a torrent over the island, arousing to its best and highest point that Celtic enthusiasm and which has never, unhap¬ pily, found such noble e.xcrcise since. Irish mis¬ sionaries flung themselves upon the dogged might 36 ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY. of heathenism, and grappled with it in a death struggle. Amongst the Piets of the Highlands, amongst the fierce Friscians of the Northern seas, beside the Lake of Constance, where the church of St. Gall still preserves the name of another Irish saint, in the Black Forest, at Schaffhausen, at Wiirtzburg, through¬ out, in fact, all Germany and North Italy, they were ubiquitous. Wherever they went their own red-hot fervour seems to have melted every obstacle; wher¬ ever they went victory seems to have crowned their zeal.I Discounting as much as you choose everything that seems to partake of pious exaggeration, there can be no doubt that the period which followed the Christianizing of Ireland was one of those shining epochs of spiritual and also to a great degree intellec¬ tual enthusiasm rare indeed in the history of the world. Men’s hearts, lull of newly - won fervour, burned to hand on the torch in their turn to others. They went out by thousands, and they beckoned in their converts by tens of thousands. Irish hospitality —a quality which has happily escaped the tooth of criticism—broke out then with a vengeance, and extended its hands to half a continent. From Gaul, from Britain, from Germany, from dozens of scattered places throughout the wide dominions of Charlemagne, the students came ; were kept, as Bede expressly tells us, free of cost in the Irish monasteries, and drew their first inspirations in the Irish schools. Even now, after the lapse of all these ' For an account of Irish missionaries in Germany, see Mr. Baring- Goulcl’s “ Germany,” in this series, p. 46. CELTIC CHRISTIANITY. 37 centuries, many of the places whence they came still reverberate faintly with the memory of that time. Before plunging into that weltering tangle of confusion which makes up what we call Irish history, one may be forgiven for lingering a little at this point, even at the risk of some slight over-balance of proportion. With so dark a road before us, it seems good to remember that the energies of Irishmen were not, as seems sometimes to be concluded, always and of necessity directed to injuring themselves or tor¬ menting their rulers! Neither was this period by any means a short one. It was no mere “flash in the pan;” no “ small pot soon hot” enthusiasm, but a steady flame which burned undimmed for centuries. “ During the seventh and eighth centuries, and part of the ninth,” says Mr. Goldwin Smith, not certainly a prejudiced writer, “ Ireland played a really great part in European history.” “ The new religious houses,” says Mr. Green in his Short History," looked for their ecclesiastical traditions, not to Rome, but to Ireland, and quoted for their guidance the instructions not of Gregory, but of Columba.” “For a time,” he adds, “ it seemed as if the course of the world’s history was to be changed, as if that older Celtic race which the Roman and German had swept before them, had turned to the moral conquest of their con¬ querors, as if Celtic and not Latin Christianity was to mould the destinies of the Church of the West.” V. THE FIRST IRISH MONASTERIES. At home during the same period the chief events were the founding of monasteries, and the settling down of monastic communities, every such monastery becoming the protector and teacher of the little Christian community in its vicinity, educating its own sons, and sending them out as a bee sends its swarms, to settle upon new ground, and to fertilize the flowers of distant harvest fields. At one time, “ The Tribes of the Saints ” seem to have increased to such an extent that they threa¬ tened to absorb all others. In West Ireland especially, little hermitages sprung up in companies of dozens and hundreds, all over the rock-strewn wastes, and along the sad shores of the Atlantic, dotting them¬ selves like sea gulls upon barren points of rock, or upon sandy wastes which would barely have sufficed, one might think, to feed a goat. We see their re¬ mains still—so tiny, yet so enduring—in the Isles of Arran ; upon a dozen rocky points all round the bleak edges of Connemara ; in the wild mountain glens of the Burren—set often with an admirable selection of site, in some sloping dell with, perhaps. 40 THE FIRST IRISH MONASTERIES. a Stream slipping lightly by and hurrying to lose itself in the ground, always with a well or spring brimming freshly over—an object still of reverence to the neighbouring peasants. Thanks to the innate stability of their material, thanks, too, to the super¬ abundance of stone in these regions, which makes them no temptation to the despoiler, they remain, roofless but otherwise pretty much as they were. We can look back across a dozen centuries with hardly the change of a detail. In these little western monasteries each cell stood as a rule by itself, containing—one would say very tightly containing—a single inmate. In other places, large buildings, however, were erected, and great numbers of monks lived together. Some of these larger communities are stated to have actually con¬ tained several thousand brethren, and though this sounds like an exaggeration, there can be no doubt that they were enormously populous. The native mode of existence lent itself, in fact, very readily to the arrange¬ ment. It was merely the clan or sept re-organized upon a religi.')us footing. “Les premieres grands monasteres de rirclande,” says M. de Montalembert in his “ Moines d’Occident,” “ ne furent done autre chose a vrai dire qui des clans., reorganises sous une forme religieuse.” New clans, that is to say, cut out of the old ones, their fealty simply transferred from a chief to an abbot, who was almost invariably in the first instance of chieftain blood. “ Le prince, en se faisant moine, devenait naturellement abb^, et restait ainsi dans la vie monastique, ce qu’il avait etd dans la vie «eculiere le chef de sa race et de son clan.” EASY PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 4I There was thus nothing to jar with that sense of continuity, that inborn love of the past, of old ways, old habits, old modes of thought which made and still makes an Irishman—be he never so pronounced a republican—the deepest at heart of Conservatives. Whereas every later change of faith which has been endeavoured to be forced upon the country has met with a steady and undeviating resistance, Christianity, the greatest change of all, seems to have brought with it from the first no sense of dislocation. It as¬ similated itself quietly, and as it were naturally, with what it found. Under the prudent guidance of its first propagators, it simply gathered to itself all the earlier objects of belief, and with merely the change of a name, sanctified and turned them to its own uses. VI. ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH. About fifty years after the death of St. Patrick a new missionary arose, one who was destined to carry the work which he had begun yet further, to become indeed the founder of what for centuries was the real metropolis and centre of Western Christendom. In 521 A.D., St. Columba was born in Donegal, of the royal race, say the annalists, of Hy-Nial—of the royal race, at any rate, of the great workers, doers, and thinkers all the world over. In 565, forty-four years later, he left Ireland with twelve companions (the apostolic number), and started on his memor¬ able journey to Scotland, a date of immeasurable importance in the history of Western Christianity. In that dense fog which hangs over these early times—thick enough to try even the most penetra¬ ting eyesight—there is a curious and indescribable pleasure in coming upon so definite, so living, so breathing a figure as that of St. Columba. In writing the early history of Ireland, one of the greatest difficulties which the historian — great or small — has to encounter is to be found in that curious un¬ reality, that tantalizing sense of illusiveness and inde- CHARACTER OF ST. COLUMDA. 43 finiteness which seems to envelope every figure whose name crops up on his pages. Even four hundred years later the name of a really great prince and warrior like Brian Boru, or Boruma, awakens no particular sense of reality, nay as often as not is met by a smile of incredulity. The existence of St. Columba no one, however, has been found rash enough to dispute ! His, in fact, is one of those essentially self-lit figures which seem to shed some of their own light upon every other they come in contact with, even accidentally. Across the waste of centuries we see him almost as he appeared to his contemporaries. There is something friendly— as it were, next-door-neighbourly—about the man. If we land to-day on Iona, or stand in any of the little chapels in Donegal which bear his name, his presence seems as real and tangible to us as that of Tasso at Ferrara or Petrarch at Avignon. In spite of that thick —one is inclined to say rank—growth of miracles which at times confuse Adamnan’s fine portrait of his hero—cover it thick as lichens some monumental slab of marble—we can still recognize his real lineaments underneath. His great natural gifts; his abounding energy; his characteristically Irish love for his native soil ; for the beloved “ oaks of Derry.” We see him in his goings out and his comings in ; we know his faults ; his fiery Celtic temper, swift to wrath, swift to forgive when the moment of anger is over. Above all, we feel the charm of his abounding humanity. Like Sterne’s Uncle Toby there seems to have been something about St. Columba which “ eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him,” and 44 ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH. no one apparently ever refused to respond to that appeal. One thing it is important hereto have clearly before the mind, as it is very apt to be overlooked. At the time of St. Columba’s ministry, England, which during the lifetime of St. Patrick had been Roman and Christian, had now under the iron flail of its Saxon conquerors lapsed back into Paganism. Ireland, therefore, which for a while had made a part of Christendom, had been broken short off by the heathen conquest of Britain. It was now a small, isolated fragment of Christendom, with a great mass of heathenism between. We can easily imagine what a stimulus to all the eager enthusiasts of the Faith the consciousness of this neighbourhood must have been; how keen the desire to rush to the assault and to replace the Cross where it had been before. That assault was not, however, begun by Ire¬ land ; it was begun, as every one knows, by St. Augustine, a Roman priest, sent by Pope Gregory, who landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, in the year 597—thirty-two years after St. Columba left Ireland. If the South of England owes its conversion to Rome, Northern England owes its conversion to Ireland, through the Irish colony at Iona. Oswald, the king of Northumbria, had himself taken refuge in Iona in his youth, and when sum¬ moned to reign he at once called in the Irish mission¬ aries, acting himself, we are told, as their interpreter. His whole reign was one continuous struggle with heathenism, and although at his death it triumphed for a time, in the end the faith and energies of the mis- CONTROVERSIES WITH ROME. 45 sionarics carried all before them. After the final defeat of the Mercians, under their king Penda, at Winvvoed, in 655, the struggle was practically over. Northern and Southern England were alike once more Christian. One of the chief agents in this result was the Irish monk Aidan, who had fixed his seat in the little peninsula of Lindisfarne, and from whose monastery, as from another Iona, missionaries poured over the North of England. At Lichfield, Whitby, and many other places religious houses sprang up, all owing their allegiance to Lindisfarne, and through it to Iona and Ireland. In this very fervour there lay the seeds of a new trouble. A serious schism arose between Western Christendom and the Papacy. Rome, whether spiritually or temporally, was a name which rever¬ berated with less awe-inspiring sound in the ears of Irishmen (even Irish Churchmen) than, probably, in those of any other people at that time on the globe. They had never come under the tremendous sway of its material power, and until centuries after this period—when political and, so to speak, accidental causes drove them into its arms—its spiritual power remained to them a thing apart, a foreign clement to which they gave at most a reluctant half adhesion. P'rom this it came about that early in the history of the Western Church serious divisions sprang up between it and the other churches, already being fast welded together into a coherent body under the yoke and discipline of Rome. The points in dispute do not strike us now of any very vital im- 46 ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH. portance. They were not matters of creed at all, merely of external rule and discipline. A vehement controversy as to the proper form of the tonsure, another as to the correct day for Easter, raged for more than a century with much heat on either side ; those churches which owed their allegiance to Iona clinging to the Irish methods, those who adhered to Rome vindicating its supreme and paramount authority. At the Synod of Whitby, held in 664, these points of dispute came to a crisis, and were adjudicated upon by Oswin, king of Northumbria ; Bishop Colman, Aidan’s successor at Holy Island, maintaining the authority of Columba ; Wilfrid, a Saxon priest who had been to Rome, that of St. Peter. Oswin’s own leaning seems at first to have been towards the former, but when he heard of the great pretensions of the Roman saint he was staggered. “ St. Peter, you say, holds the keys of heaven and hell ? ” he inquired thoughtfully, “ have they also been given then to St. Columba ? ” It was owned with some reluctance that the Irish saint had been less favoured. “ Then I give my verdict for St. Peter,” said Oswin, “lest when I reach the gate of heaven I find it shut, and the porter refuse to open to me.” This sounds prudent, but scarcely serious ; it seems, however, to have been regarded as serious enough by the Irish monks. The Synod broke up. Colman, with his Irish brethren, and a few English ones who threw in their lot with them, forsook Lindisfarne, and sailed away for Ireland. From that moment the rift between them and their English brethren grew steadily wider, and was never afterwards thoroughly healed. THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE IRISH CHURCH. 47 It does not, however, seem to have affected the position of the Irish Church at home, nor yet to have diminished the number of its foreign converts. Safe in its isolation, it continued to go on in its own way with little regard to the rest of Christendom, al¬ though in respect to the points chiefly in dispute it after a while submitted to the Roman decision. Armagh was the principal spiritual centre, but there were other places, now tiny villages, barely known by name to the tourist, which were then centres of learning, and recognized as such, not alone in Ireland itself, but throughout Europe. Clonard, Tallaght Clonmacnois ; Slane in Meath, where Dagobert II. one of the kings of France, was educated ; Kildare, where the sacred fire—not lamp—of St. Bridget was kept burning for centuries, all are places whose names fill a considerable space in the fierce dialectical con¬ troversy of that fiery theological age.^ This period of growth slipped all too quickly away, but it has never been forgotten. It was the golden time to which men looked wistfully back when growing trouble and discord, attack from without, and dissen¬ sion from within, had torn in pieces the unhappy island which had shone like a beacon through Europe only to become its byword. The Norsemen had not yet struck prow on Irish strand, and the period between the Synod of Whitby and their appearance seems to have been really one of steady moral and intellectual growth. Heathenism no doubt still lurked in obscure places ; indeed traces of it may with no ' For an excellent account of early Irish monastic life see “ Ireland, and the Celtic Church,” by Professor G. Stokes. INDUSTRIES OF THE MONKS. 49 great difficulty still be discovered in Ireland, but it did not hinder the light from spreading fast under the stimulus which it had received from its first founders. The love of letters, too, sprang up with the religion of a book, and the copying of manuscripts became a passion. As in Italy and elsewhere, so too in Ireland, the monks were the painters, the illuminators, the archi¬ tects, carvers, gilders, and book-binders of their time. While outside the monastery walls the fighters were making their neighbours’ lives a burden to them, and beyond the Irish Sea the whole world as then known was being shaken to pieces and reconstructed, the monk sat placidly inside at his work, producing chalices, crosiers, gold and silver vessels for the churches, carving crosses, inditing manuscripts filled with the most marvellously dexterous ornament; works, which, in spite of the havoc wrought by an almost unbroken series of devastations which have poured over the doomed island, still survive to form the treasure of its people. We can have very little human sympathy, very little love for what is noble and admirable, if—whatever our creeds or our politics —we fail, as we look back across that weary waste which separates us from them, to extend our sym¬ pathy and admiration to these early workers—pio¬ neers in a truly national undertaking which has found only too few imitators since. 5 VII. THE NORTHERN SCOURGE. While from the fifth to the eighth century the work of the Irish Church was thus yearly increasing, spreading its net wider and wider, and numbering its converts by thousands, not much good can be reported of the secular history of Ireland during the same period. It is for the most part a confused chronicle of small feuds, jealousies, raids, skirmishes, retali¬ ations, hardly amounting to the dignity of war, but certainly as distinctly the antipodes of peace. The tribal system, which in its earlier stages has been already explained, had to some degree begun to change its character. The struggles between the different septs or clans had grown into a struggle between a number of great chieftains, under whose rule the lesser ones had come to range themselves upon all important occasions. As early as the introduction of Christianity Ireland was already divided into four such aggregations of tribes—kingdoms they are commonly called—answer¬ ing pretty nearly to the present four provinces, with the addition of Meath, which was the appanage of the house of Ulster, and included West Meath, Long- DOORWAY OF MAOUF.RA CHURCH, I.ONDONDERRY. (/'>w« a drawing by George Petrie, LL.D.) 52 THE NORTHERN SCOURGE. ford, and a fragment of the King’s County. Of the other four provinces, Connaught acknowledged the rule of the O’Connors, Munster that of the O’Briens, Leinster of the McMurroughs, and Ulster of the O’Neills, who were also in theory over-kings, or, as the native word was, Ard-Reaghs of the entire island- Considering what a stout fighting race they proved in later ages—fighting often when submission would have been the wiser policy—it is curious that in early days these O’Neills or Hy-Nials seem to have been but a supine race. For centuries they were titular kings of Ireland, yet during all that time they seem never to have tried to transform their faint, shadowy sceptre into a real and active one. Malachy or Melachlin, the rival of Brian Boru, seems to have been the most energetic of the race, yet he allowed the sceptre to be plucked from his hands with an ease which, judging by the imperfect light shed by the chroniclers over the transaction, seems to be almost unaccountable. It is difficult to say how far that light, for which the Irish monasteries were then celebrated, extended to the people of the island at large. With one ex¬ ception, little that can be called cultivation is, it must be owned, discoverable, indeed long centuries after this Irish chieftains we know were innocent of the power of signing their own names. That exception was in the case of music, which seems to have been loved and studied from the first. As far back as we can see him the Irish Celt was celebrated for his love of music. In one of the earliest extant annals a Cmzt, or stringed harp, is described as be- IRISH MUSIC. 53 longing to the Dashda, or Druid chieftain. It was square in form, and possessed powers wholly or partly miraculous. One of its strings, we are told, moved people to tears, another to laughter. A harp in Trinity College, known as the harp of Brian Boru, is said to be the oldest in Europe, and has thirty strings. This instrument has been the subject of many controversies. O’Curry doubts it having belonged to Brian Boru, and gives his reasons for believing that it was among the treasures of Westminster when Henry VIII. came to the throne in 1509, and that it suggested the placing of the harp in the arms of Ireland, and on the “ harp grotes,” a coinage of the period. However this may be we cannot doubt that music had early wrought itself into the very texture and fabric of Irish life ; airs and words, wedded closely together, travelling down from mouth to mouth for countless generations. Every little valley and district may be said to have had its own tra¬ ditional melodies, and the tunes with which Moore sixty years ago was delighting critical audiences had been floating unheeded and disregarded about the country for centuries. The last ten years of the eighth century were very bad ones for Ireland. Then for the first time the black Viking ships were to be seen sweeping shore- wards over the low grey waves of the Irish Channel, laden with Piets, Danes, and Norsemen, “ people,” says an old historian, “ from their very cradles dis- sentious. Land Leapers, merciless, soure, and hardie.” They descended upon Ireland like locusts, and where- ever they came ruin, misery, and disaster followed. KILBANNOX TOWER. (From a drawing by George Petrie, DESTRUCTION OF THE OHURCHES. 55 Their first descent appears to have been upon an island, probably that of . Lambay, near the mouth of what is now Dublin harbour. Returning a few years later, sixty of their ships, according to the Irish annalists, entered the Boyne, and sixty more the Liffy. These last were under the command of a leader who figures in the annals as Turgesius, whose identity has never been made very clear, but who appears to be the same person known to Norwegian historians as Thorkels or Thorgist. Whatever his name he was undoubtedly a bad scourge to Ireland. Landing in Ulster, he burned the cathedral of Armagh, drove out St. Patrick’s successors, slaughtered the monks, took possession of the whole east coast, and marching into the centre of the island, established himself in a strong position near Athlone. Beyond all other Land Leapers, this Thorgist, or Turgesius, seems to have hated the churches. Not content with burning them, and killing all priests and monks he could find, his wife, we are told, took possession of the High Altar at Clonmacnois, and used it as a throne from which to give audience, or to utter prophecies and incantations. He also ex¬ acted a tribute of “ nose money,” which if not paid entailed the forfeit of the feature it was called after. At last three or four of the tribes united by despair rose against him, and he was seized and slain ; an event about which several versions are given, but the most authentic seems to be that he was taken by stratagem and drowned in Lough Owel, near Mul¬ lingar, in or about the year 845. 56 THE NORTHERN SCOURGE. He was not, unfortunately, the last of the Land Leapers! More and more they came, sweeping in from the north, and all seem to have made direct for the plunder of the monasteries, into which the piety of centuries had gathered most of the valuables of the country. The famous round towers, or “Clocthech” of Ireland, have been credited with a hundred fantastic origins, but are now known not to date from earlier than about the eighth or ninth cen¬ tury, are always found in connection with churches or monasteries, and were unquestionably used as defences against these northern invaders. At the first sight of their unholy prows, rising like water snakes above the waves, all the defenceless inmates and refugees all the church plate and valuables, and all sickly or aged brothers were hurried into these monastic keeps ; the doors—set at a height of from ten to twenty feet above the ground—securely closed, the ladders drawn up, food supplies having been no doubt already laid in, and a state of siege began. It is a pity that the annalists, who tell us so many things we neither care to hear nor much believe in, should have left us no record of any assault of the Northmen against one of these redoubtable towers. Even at the present day they would, without ammunition, be remarkably difficult nuts to crack ; indeed, it is hard to see how their assault could have been successfully attempted, save by the slow process of starvation, or possibly by fires kindled immediately below the entrance, and so by degrees smoking out their inmates. If any one ever succeeded in getting into them, we KELLS ROUND TOWER. {From a drawing by George Petrie, LL.D.) 58 THE NORTHERN SCOURGE. may be sure the Land Leapers did ! Before long they appear to have gathered nearly the whole spoil of the country into the towns, which they built and fortified for themselves at intervals along the coast. Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Wexford, and Dublin, all owe their origin in the first instance to the Northmen ; indeed it is a curious fact that Dublin can never be said, save for very short periods to have belonged to the Irish at all. It was first the capital of their northern invaders, and afterwards that, of course, of the English Government. Three whole centuries the Danish power lasted, and internecine war raged, a war during which almost every trace of earlier civilizing influences, all those milder habits and ways of thought, which Chris¬ tianity had brought in and fostered, perished well- nigh utterly. The ferocity of the invaders communi¬ cated itself to the invaded, and the whole history is one confused and continual chronicle of horrors and barbarities. An important diftinction must be made at this point between the effects of the Northern invasion in Eng¬ land and in Ireland. In the former the invaders and natives became after a while more or less assimilated, and, under Canute, an orderly government, composed of both nationalities, was, we know, established. In Ireland this was never the case. The reason, doubt¬ less, is to be found in the far closer similarity of race in the former case than the latter. In Ireland the “ Danes,” as they are popularly called, were always strangers, heathen tyrants, hated and despised op¬ pressors, who retorted this scorn and hatred in the RAIDS OF THE NORTHMEN. 59 fullest possible measure upon their antagonists. From the moment of their appearance down to the last we hear of them—as long, in fact, as the Danes of the seaport towns retained any traces of their northern origin—so long they continued to be the deadly foes of the rest of the island. Even where the Northmen accepted Christianity, it does not appear to have had any strikingly ame¬ liorating effect. Thus we read that Godfrid, son of Sitric, embraced Christianity in 948, and in the very next year we discover that he plundered and burnt all the churches in East Meath, killing over a hundred people who had taken refuge in them, and carrying off a quantity of captives. Land-leaping, too, con¬ tinued in full force. “ The godless hosts of pagans swarming o’er the Northern Sea,” continued to arrive in fresh and fresh numbers from their inexhaustible Scandinavian breeding grounds—from Norway, from Sweden, from Denmark, even, it is said, from Ice¬ land. The eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries are, in fact, the great period all over Europe for the incursions of the Northmen—high noon, so to speak, for those fierce and roving sons of plunder,—“ People,” says an old historian quaintly, “ desperate in attempting the conquest of other Realmes, being very sure to finde warmer dwellings anywhere than in their own homes.” VIII. BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE. At last a time came for their oppression to be cut short in Ireland. Two valiant defenders sprang almost simultaneously into note. One of these was Malachy, or Melachlin, the Ard-Reagh and head of the O’Neills, the same Malachy celebrated by Moore as having “ worn the collar of gold which he won from the proud invader.” The other, Brian Boroimhe, commonly known to English writers as Brian Boru, a chieftain of the royal Dalcassian race of O’Brien, and the most important figure by far in Irish native history, but one which, like all others, has got so fogged and dimmed by prejudice and misstatement, that to many people his name seems hardly to convey any sense of reality at all. Poor Brian Boru ! If he could have guessed that he would have come to be regarded, even by some who ought to know better, as a sort of giant Cormoran or Eat-’em-alive-oh ! a being out of a fairy tale, whom nobody is expected to take seriously; nay, as a symbol, as often as not, for ridiculous and in¬ flated pretension. No one in his own day doubted his existence ; no one thought of laughing at his SLAUGHTER OF THE DANES. 6l name. Had they done so, their laughter would have come to a remarkably summary conclusion ! Brian Boroimhe, Boruma, or Boru—his name is written in all three ways—was not only a real man, but he was, what was more important, a real king, and not a mere simulacrum or walking shadow of one, like most of those who bore the name in Ireland. For once, for the only time as far as its native history is concerned, there was some one at the helm who knew how to rule, and who, moreover, did rule. His proceedings were not, it must be owned, invariably regulated upon any very strict rule of equity. He meant to be supreme, and to do so it was necessary to wrest the power from the O’Neills upon the one hand, and from the Danes on the other, and this he pro¬ ceeded with the shortest possible delay to do. He had a hard struggle at first. Munster had been overrun by the Danes of Limerick, who had defeated his brother, Mahon, king of Munster, and forced him to pay tribute. Brian himself, scorning to submit to the tyrants, had taken to the mountains with a small band of followers. Issuing from this retreat, he with some difficulty induced his brother once more to confront the aggressors. An important battle was fought at Sulcost, near Limerick, in the year 968, in which the Danes were defeated, and fled back in confusion to their walls, the Munster men, under Brian, following fast at their heels, and entering at the same time. The Danish town was seized, the fighting men were put to the sword, the remainder fled or were enslaved. Mahon being some years afterwards slain, not by BASE OF TUAM CROSS. DEFEAT OF MAE ACHY. 63 the Danes, but by certain treacherous Molloys and O’Donovans, who had joined themselves with him, Brian succeeded to the sovereignty of Munster, and shortly afterwards seized upon the throne of Cashel, which, upon the alternate system then prevailing, was at that time reigned over by one of the Euganian house of Desmond. Having avenged his brother’s murder upon the O’Donovans, he next proceeded to overrun Leinster, rapidly subdued Ossory, and began to stretch out his hands towards the sovereignty of the island. In the meantime the over-king, Malachy, had de¬ feated the Danes at the battle of Tara, and was con¬ sequently in high honour, stronger apparently then any of his predecessors had been. In spite of this Brian by degrees prevailed. With doubtful patriotism he left the Danes for a while unpursued, attacked Meath, overran and wasted Connaught, and returning suddenly burnt the royal stronghold of Tara. After a long and wearisome struggle, Malachy yielded, and allowed Brian to become Ard-Reagh in his place, retaining only his own ancestral dominions of Meath. He seems to have been a placable, easy-going man, “ loving,” say the annalists, “ to ride a horse that had never been handled or ridden,” and caring more for this than for the cares of the State. After this, Brian made what may be called a royal progress through the country, receiving the sub¬ mission of the chiefs and inferior kings, and forcing them to acknowledge his authority. In speaking of him as king of Ireland, which in a sense he un¬ doubtedly was, we must be careful of letting our 64 BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE. imaginations carry us into any exaggerated idea of what is meant by that word. His name, “ Brian of the Tribute,” is our safest guide, and enables us to understand what was the position of even the greatest and most successful king under the Celtic system. It was the exact opposite of the feudal one, and this difference proved the source in years to come of an enormous amount of misconception, and of fierce accusations of falsehood and treachery flung pro¬ fusely from both sides. The position of the over¬ king or Ard-Reagh was more nearly allied to that of the early French suzerain or the German emperor. He could call upon his vassal or tributary kings to aid him in war times or in any sudden emergency, but, as regards their internal arrangements—the government, misgovernment, or non-government of their several sub-kingdoms—they were free to act as they pleased, and he was not understood to have any formal jurisdiction. For all that Brian was an unmistakable king, and proved himself to be one. He defeated the Danes again and again, reducing even those inveterate disturbers of the peace to a forced quiescence; entered Dublin, and remained there some time, taking, say the annalists, “ hostages and treasure.” By the year 1002 Ireland had a master, one whose influence made itself felt over its whole surface. For twelve years at least out of its distracted history the country knew the blessings of peace. Broken by defeat the Danish dwellers of the seaport towns began to turn their energies to the milder and more pacific activi¬ ties of trade. The ruined monasteries were getting 6 DOORWAY OF KILLESHIN CHURCH, CO. CARLOW. {From a Photograph.') 66 BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE. rebuilt ; prosperity was beginning to glimmer faintly upon the island ; the chiefs, cowed into submission, abstained from raiding, or confined their raids to discreeter limits. Fortresses were being built, roads made, and bridges repaired in three at least of the provinces. Another twenty years of Brian’s rule and the whole future history of Ireland might have been a different one. It was not to be however. The king was now old, and the work that he had begun, and which, had he been followed ’oy a successor like himself, might have been accomplished, was destined to crumble like a half-built house. The Danes began to stir again. A rebellion had sprung up in Leinster, the coast-line of which was strong-holded at several points with Danish towns. This rebellion they not only aided with their own strength, but further appealed for assistance to their kinsmen in Northumbria, Man, the Orkneys, and elsewhere, who responded by sending a large force under Brodar, a Viking, and Sigurd Earl of Orkney to their aid. This force Brian gathered all his energies to oppose, With his own Munster clansmen, aided by all the fighting men of Meath and Connaught, with his five sons and with his old rival. King Malachy of Meath, fighting under his banner, he marched down to the strand of Clontarf, which stretches from the north of Dublin to the out-jutting promontory of Howth, and there, upon Good Friday, 1014, he en¬ countered his Leinster rebels and the Viking host of invaders, ten thousand strong it is said, and a great battle was fought, a battle which, beginning before THE DEFEAT OF THE VIKINGS, 67 the da\vn, lasted till the sun was bcgfinning to sink. To understand the real importance of this battle, we must first fully realize to ourselves what a very old quarrel this was. P'or three long weary centuries Ireland had been lying bound and broken under the heel of her pagan oppressors, and only with great difficulty and partially had escaped within the last fifteen or sixteen years. Every wrong, outrage, and ignominy that could be inflicted by one people upon another had been inflicted and would most assuredly be inflicted again were this battle, now about to be fought, lost. Nor upon the other side were the motives much less strong. The Danes of Dublin under Sitric stood fiercely at bay. Although their town was still their own, all the rest of the island had escaped from the grasp of their race. Whatever Christianity they may occasionally have assumed was all thrown to the winds upon this great occasion. The far-famed pagan battle flag, the Raven Standard, was unfurled, and floated freely over the host. The War-arrow had been industriously sent round to all the neigh¬ bouring shores, peopled largely at that time with men of Norse blood. As the fleet swept south it had gathered in contingents from every island along the Scotch coast, upon which Viking settlements had been established. Manx men, too, and men from the Scan¬ dinavian settlements of Anglesea, Danes under Carle Canuteson, representatives, in fact, of all the old fight- ing pagan blood were there, and all gathered together to a battle at once of races and of creeds. 68 BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE. On the Irish side the command had been given by Brian to Morrogh, his eldest son, who fifteen years before had aided his father in gaining a great victory over these same Dublin Danes at a place called Glenmama, not far from Dunlaven. The old king himself abstained from taking any part in the battle. Perhaps because he wished his son—who already had been appointed his successor—to have all the glory and so to fix himself yet more deeply in the hearts of his future subjects ; perhaps because he felt that his strength might not have carried him through the day ; perhaps—the annalists say this is the reason— because the day being Good Friday he preferred praying for his cause rather than fighting for it. Whatever the reason it is certain that he remained in his tent, which was pitched on this occasion not far from the edge of the great woods which then covered all the rising ground to the north-west of Dublin, beginning at the bank of the river Liffy. The onset was not long delayed. The Vikings under Sigurd and Brodar fought as only Vikings could fight. Like all battles of that period it resolved itself chiefly into a succession of single combats, which raged all over the field, extending, it is said, for over two miles along the strand. The Danish women, and the men left to guard the town, crowded the roofs, remaining all day to watch the fight. Sigurd of Orkney was killed in single combat by Thorlogh, the son of Morrogh, and grandson of Brian ; Armud and several of the other Vikings fell by the hand of Morrogh, but in the end the father and son were DEATH OF BRIAN. 6g both slain, although the latter survived long enough to witness the triumph of his own side. Late in the afternoon the Northmen broke and fled ; some to their ships, some into the town, some into the open country beyond. Amongst the latter Brodar, the Viking, made for the great woods, and in so doing passed close to where the tent of the king had been fixed. The attendants left to guard Brian had by this time one by one slipped away to join the fight, and the old man was almost alone, and kneeling, it is said, at the moment on a rug in the front of his tent. The sun was low, but the slanting beams fell upon his bent head and long white beard. One of Brodar’s followers perceived him and pointed him out to his leader, saying that it was the king. “ King, that is no king, that is a monk, a shaveling ! ” retorted the Viking. “ It is not, it is Brian himself,’ was the answer. Then Brodar caught his axe and rushed upon Brian Taken unawares the king nevertheless rallied his strength which in his day had been greater than that of any man of his time, and still only half risen from his knees he smote the Viking a blow across the legs with his sword. The other thereupon lifted his battle- axe, and smote the king upon his head, cleaving it down to the chin, then fled to the woods, but was caught the next day and hacked into pieces by some of the infuriated Irish. So fell Brian in the very moment of victory, and when the combined league of all his foes had fallen before him. When the news reached Armagh, the bishop and his clergy came south as far as Swords, 70 BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE in Meath, where they met the corpse of the king and carried it back to Armagh, where he was buried, say the annalists, “ in a new tomb ” with much weep¬ ing and lamentation. CORMAC’S CHAPFX AND ROUND TOWER, ROCK OF CASHEL. .1 , FROM BRIAN TO STRONGBOW. Whatever lamentations were uttered on this occasion were certainly not uncalled for, for a greater disaster has rarely befallen any country or people. Were proof wanted—which it hardly is—of that notorious ill-luck which has dogged the history of Ireland from the very beginning, it would be difficult to find a better one than the result of this same famous battle of Clontarf. Here was a really great victory, a victory the reverberation of which rang through the whole Scandinavian world, rejoicing Malcolm of Scotland, who without himself striking a blow, saw his enemies lying scotched at his feet, so scotched in fact, that after the defeat of Clontarf they never again became a serious peril. Yet as regards Ireland itself what was the result } The result was that all those ligaments of order which were beginning slowly to wind themselves round it, were violently snapped and scattered to the four winds. As long as Brian’s grasp was over it Ireland was a real kingdom, with limitations it is true, but still with a recognized centre, and steadily growing power of combined and concerted action. At his INTERIOR OF cORMAc’s CHAPEL, CASHEL. {From a Drawhig by Miss M. Stokes.) STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVEREIGNTY. 73 death the whole body politic was once more broken up, and resolved itself into its old anarchic elements again. It would have been better far for the country had Brian been defeated, so that he, his son Morrogh, or any capable heir had survived, better for it indeed had he never ruled at all if this was to be end. By his successful usurpation the hereditary principle—always a weak one in Ireland—was broken down. The one chance of a settled central government was thus at an end. Every petty chief and princeling all over the island felt himself capable of emulating the achievements of Brian. It was one of those cases which success and only success justifies. Ireland was pining, as it had always pined, as it continued ever afterwards to pine, for a settled government ; for a strong central rule of some sort. The race of Hy.-Nial had been titular kings for centuries, but they had never held the sovereignty in anything but name. Pushing their claims aside, and gathering all power into his own hands Brian had acted upon a small stage the part of Charlemagne centuries earlier upon a large one. He had succeeded, and in his success lay his justification. With his death, however, the whole edifice which he had raised crumbled away, and anarchy poured in after it like a torrent. A struggle set in at once for the sovereignty, which ended by not one of Brian’s sons but the deposed King Malachy being set upon the throne. Like his greater rival he was however by this time a very old man. His spirit had been broken, and though the Danes had been too thoroughly beaten to stir, other elements of disorder 74 FROM BRIAN TO STRONGDOW. abounded. Risings broke out in two of the provinces at once, and at his death the confusion became con¬ founded. As a native rhyme runs : “After Malachy, son of Donald, Each man ruled his own tribe. But no man ruled Erin.” Henceforward throughout the rather more than a century and a half which intervened between the battle of Clontarf and the Norman invasion, Ireland remained a helpless waterlogged vessel, with an unruly crew, without rudder or compass, above all, without a captain. The house of O’Brien again pushed its way to the front, but none of Brian’s descendants who survived the day of Clontarf seem to have shown a trace even of his capacity. A fierce feud broke out shortly after between Donchad, his son, and Turlough, one of his grandsons, and each successively caught at the helm, but neither suc¬ ceeding in obtaining the sovereignty of the entire island. After the last-named followed Murhertach also of the Dalcassian house, at whose death the rule once more swung round to the house of Hy.-Nial and Donald O’Lochlin reigned nominally until his death in 1121. Next the O’Connors, of Connaught, took a turn at the sovereignty, and seized possession of Cashel which since its capture by Brian Boroimhe had been the exclusive appanage of the Dalcassians. Another O’Lochlin, of the house of O’Neill, then appears prominently in the fray, and by 1156, seems to have succeeded in seizing the over-lordship of the island, and so the talc goes on—a wearisome one. A NEW STAGE. 75 unrelieved by even a transitory gleam of order or prosperity. At last it becomes almost a relief when we reach the name of Roderick O’Connor, and know that before his death fresh actors will have entered upon the scene, and that the confused and baffling history of Ireland will, at all events, have entered upon a perfectly new stage. X. THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION The invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans differs in several respects from other invasions and conquests, not the least singular feature about it being that nearly the whole of that famous band of knightly adventurers who took part in it, and to whose audacity it was in the first instance due, were more or less closely related to one another, either as brothers, nephews, uncles, or cousins. The connecting link between these variously - named relations was one Nesta, princess of South Wales, daughter of a Welsh king. Rice ap Tudor, a heroine whose adventures are of a sufficiently striking, not to say startling, character. By dint of a succession of alliances, some regular, others highly irregular, she became the ances¬ tress of nearly all the great Anglo-Norman families in Ireland. Of these the Fitzgeralds, Carews, Barrys, and Cogans, are descended from her first husband, Gerald of Windsor. Robert FitzStephen, who plays, as will presently be seen, a prominent part in the conquest, was the son of her second husband, Stephen, the Castlelan of Abertivy, while Robert and Meiler Fitz- Henry, of whom we shall also hear, are said to have WEST FRONT OF ST. CRONAN’S CHURCH, ROSCREA. {From a Photograph.) 78 THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION. been the sons of no less a person than King Henry I. of England. Conspicuous amongst this- band of knights and adventurers was one who was himself no knight, but a priest and the self-appointed chronicler of the rest, Gerald de Barri—better known as Gerald of Wales, or Giraldus Cambrensis, who was the grandson of Nesta, through her daughter Angareta. Giraldus is one of those writers whom, to tell the truth, we like a great deal better than they deserve. He is prejudiced to the point of perversity, and gullible almost to sublimity, uncritical even for an eminently uncritical age, accepting and retailing any and every monstrous invention, the more readily apparently in proportion to its monstrosity. For all that—despite his prejudices, despite even his often deliberate per¬ version of the truth, it is difficult to avoid a certain kindliness for him. To the literary student he is indeed a captivating figure. With his half-Welsh, half- Norman blood ; with the nimble, excitable, distinctly Celtic vein constantly discernible in him ; with a love of fighting which could hardly have been exceeded by the doughtiest of the knights, his cousins and brothers ; with a pen that seems to fly like an arrow across the page ; with a conceit which knows neither stint nor limit, he is the most entertaining, the most vividly alive of chroniclers; no historian certainly in any rigid sense of the word, but the first, as he was also unques¬ tionably the chief and prince of war correspondents. Whether we like him or not, we at any rate cannot dispense with him, seeing that nearly everything we know of the Ireland of the Conquest, we know from GIRALDUS—THE IRISH CHURCH. 79 those marvellous pages of his, which, if often ex¬ asperating, are at any rate never dull. In them, as in a mirror, we see how, when, and where the wdiole plan of the campaign was laid ; who took part in it ; what they said, did, projected; their very motives and thoughts—the whole thing stands out fresh and alive as if it had happened yesterday. There was no lack of motives, any of which would have been temptation enough for invasion. To the pious it took on the alluring guise of a Crusade. The Irish Church, which had obtained such glowing fame in its early days, had long since, as we have seen, grown into very bad repute with Rome. Despite that halo of early sanctity, she was held to be seri¬ ously tainted with heresy. She allowed bishops to be irregularly multiplied, and consecrated, contrary to the Roman rule, by one bishop only; tithes and firstfruits were not collected with any regularity; above all, the collection of Peter’s pence, being the sum of one penny due from every household, was always scandalously in arrears, nay, often no attempt was made to collect it at all. She did many wrong things, but it may shrewdly be suspected that this was one of the very worst of them. It is not a little edifying at this juncture to find the Danes of Dublin amongst those who were enlisted upon the orthodox side. Cut off by mutual hatred rather than theological differences from the Church of Ireland, they had for some time back been regularly applying to Canterbury for their supply of priests. These priests upon being sent over painted the condition of Irish heterodoxy in tints of the deepest black for their own WEST DOORWAY OF FRESHFORD CHURCH, CO. KILKENNY. (From a Photograph.) DERMOT MCMVRROVGU. . 8l Countrymen. Even before this there had been grave complaints. Lanfranc, Anselm, St. Bernard of Clair- vaux, all had had their theological ire aroused against the Irish recusants. Many of the Irish ecclesiastics themselves seem to have desired that closer union with Rome, which could only be brought about by bringing Ireland under the power of a sworn son of the Church. Henry II.—little as that most secular- minded of monarchs cared probably for the more purely theological question—was fully alive to its value as supporting his own claims. He obtained from Pope Hadrian IV. (the Englishman Brake- speare), a Bull sanctioning and approving of the con¬ quest of Ireland as prompted by “ the ardour of faith and love of religion,” in which Bull he is desired to enter the island and therein execute “ whatever shall pertain to the honour of God, and the welfare of the land.” Fourteen years elapsed before the enterprise thus warmly commended was carried into effect. The story of Dermot McMurrough, king of Leinster, and his part in the invasion, has often been told, and does not, I think, need dwelling upon at any great length. He was a brutal, violent-tempered savage, detested in his own country, and especially by his unfortunate subjects in Leinster. How he foully wronged the honour of O’Rorke, a chieftain of Connaught; how, for this and other offences, he was upon the accession of Roderick O’Connor driven away from Ireland ; how he fled to England to do homage to Henry, and seek his protection ; how, finding him gone to Aquitaine, he followed him there, and in return for his vows of 7 8^ THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION. allegiance received letters authorizing the king’s ^tbjects to enlist if they choose for the Irish service ; how armed with these he went to Wales, and there succeeded in recruiting a band of mixed Norman and Norman-Welsh adventurers—all this is recorded at large .in the histories. Of the recruits thus enlisted, the most important was Robert de Clair, Earl of Pembroke and Chep¬ stow, nicknamed by his contemporaries, Strongbow, whom Dermot met at Bristol, and won over by a double bribe—the hand, namely, of his daughter Eva, and the succession to the sovereignty of Leinster —a succession which, upon the Irish mode of election, he had, it may be observed, no shadow of right to dispose of. Giraldus, who seems to have been himself in Wales at the time, speaks sentimentally of the unfor¬ tunate exile, and describes him inhaling the scent of his beloved country from the Welsh coast, and feasting his eyes tenderly upon his own land : “ Although the distance,” he more prosaically adds, “ being very great, it was difficult to distinguish mountains from clouds.” As a matter of fact, Dermot McMurrough, we may be sure, was not the person to do anything of the sort. He was simply hungry—as a wild beast or a savage is hungry—for revenge, and would have plunged into any number of perjuries, or have bound himself to give away any amount of property he had no right to dispose of in order to get it. He could safely trust, too, he knew, to the ignorance of his new allies as to what was or was not a legal transfer in Ireland. His purpose achieved, “ inflamed,” says Giraldus, ASSAULT ON WEXFORD. 83 “with the desire to see his native land,” but really the better to concoct his plans, he returned home, landing a little south of Arklow Head, and arriving at Ferns, where he was hospitably entertained during the winter by its bishop. The following spring, in the month of May, the first instalment of the invaders arrived under Robert FitzStephen, a small fleet of Welsh boats landing them in a creek of the bay of Bannow, where a chasm between the rocks was long known as “ FitzStephen’s stride.” Here they were met by Donald McMurrough, son of Dermot, and ten days later drew up under the walls of Wexford, having so far encountered no opposition. In this old Danish town a stout fight was made. The townsfolk, no longer Vikings but simple traders, did what they could in their own defence. They burnt their suburbs, consisting doubtless of rude wooden huts ; shut the gates, and upon the first two assaults drove back the assailants. So violently were they repelled, “that they withdrew,” Giraldus tells us, “ in all great haste from the walls.” His own younger brother, Robert de Barri, was amongst the wounded, a great stone falling upon his helmet and tumbling him headlong into one of the ditches, from the effects of which blow, that careful historian informs us incidentally, “ Sixteen years later all his jaw teeth fell out! ” Next morning, after mass, they renewed the as¬ sault; this time with more circumspection. Now there were at that time, as it happened, two bishops in the town, who devoted their energies to endeavouring 84 THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION. to induce the citizens to make peace. In this at¬ tempt they were successful, more successful than might have been expected with men descended from the old Land Leapers. Wexford opened its gates, its townsmen submitting to Dermot, who thereupon pre¬ sented the town to his allies, FitzStephen, true to his Norman instincts, proceeding forthwith to build a castle upon the rock of Carneg, at the narrowest point of the river Slaney, the first of that large crop of castles which subsequently sprang up upon Irish soil. The next sharers of the struggle were the wild Ossory clans, who gathered to the defence of their territory under Donough McPatrick, an old and especially hated enemy of Dermot’s. The latter had now three thousand men at his back, in addition to his Welsh and Norman allies. The Ossory men fought, as Giraldus admits, with furious valour, but upon rashly venturing out of their own forests into the open, were charged by FitzStephen, whose horse¬ men defeated them, killing a great number, over two hundred heads being collected and laid at the feet of Dermot, who, “ turning them over, one by one, to recognize them, lifted his hands to heaven in excess of joy, and with a loud voice returned thanks to God most High.” So pious was Dermot! After this, finding that the country at large was beginning to take some note of their proceedings, the invaders fel back upon Ferns, which they forti¬ fied according to the science of the age under the superintendence of Robert FitzStephen. Roderick O’Connor, the Ard-Reagh, was by this time not unnaturally beginning to get alarmed, and had DECISION OF STRONGBOW. 85 gathered his men together against the invaders. The winter, however, was now at hand, and a temporary peace was accordingly patched up ; Leinster being restored to Dermot on condition of his acknowledging the over-lordship of Roderick. Giraldus recounts at much length the speeches made upon both sides on this occasion ; the martial addresses to the troops, the many classical and flowery quotations, which last he is good enough to bestow upon the unlucky Roderick no less than upon his own allies. Seeing, probably, that all were alike imaginary, it is hardly necessary to delay to record them. The next to arrive upon the scene was Maurice Fitzgerald, half brother of Robert FitzStephen and uncle of Giraldus. Strongbow meanwhile was still upon the eastern side of the channel awaiting the return of his uncle, Hervey de Montmorency, whom he had sent over to report upon the condition of affairs. Even after Hervey’s return bringing with him a favourable report, he had still the king’s per¬ mission to gain. Early in 1170 he again sought Henry and this time received an ambiguous reply, which, however, he chose to interpret in his own favour. He sent back Hervey to Ireland, accom¬ panied by Raymond Fitzgerald, surnamed Le Gros, and a score of knights with some seventy archers. These, landing in Kilkenny, entrenched themselves, and being shortly afterwards attacked by the Danes of Waterford, defeated them with great slaughter, seizing a number of prisoners. Over these prisoners a dispute arose; Raymond was for sparing theii lives, Hervey de Montmorency for slaying. The 86 THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION. eloquence of the latter prevailed, “The citizens,” says Giraldus, “as men condemned, had their limbs broken and were cast headlong into the sea and so drowned.” Shortly after this satisfactory beginning, Strongbow himself appeared with reinforcements. He attacked Waterford, which was taken after a short but furious resistance, and the united forces of Dermot and the Earl marched into the town, where the marriage of the latter with Eva, Dermot’s daughter, was cele¬ brated, as Maclise has represented it in his picture, amid lowering smoke and heaps of the dead and dying. Dermot was now on the top of the wave. With his English allies and his own followers he had a con¬ siderable force around him. Guiding the latter through the Wicklow mountains, which they would probably have hardly got through unaided, he de¬ scended with them upon Dublin, and despite the efforts of St. Lawrence O’Toole, its archbishop, to effect a pacific arrangement, the town was taken by assault. The principal Danes, with Hasculph, their Danish governor, escaped to their ships and sailed hastily away for the Orkneys. Meath was the next point to be attacked. O’Rorke the old foe of Dermot, who held it for King Roderick, was defeated ; whereupon, in defiance of his previous promises, Dermot threw off all disguise and pro¬ claimed himself king of Ireland, upon which Rode¬ rick, as the only retaliation left in his power, slew Dermot’s son who had been deposited in his hands as hostage. SIEGE OF DUBLIN BY THE IRISH. 87 It was now Strongbow’s aim to hasten back and place his new lordship at the feet of his sovereign, already angry and jealous at such unlooked for and uncountenanced successes. He was not able however to do so at once. Hasculph the Dane returned suddenly with sixty ships, and a large force under a noted Berserker of the day, known as John the Mad, “ warriors,” says Giraldus, “ armed in Danish fashion, having long breast-plates and shirts of mail, their shields round and bound about with iron. They were iron-hearted,” he says, “ as well as iron-armed men.” In spite of their arms and their hearts, he is able triumphantly to proclaim their defeat. MilodeCogan, the Norman governor of Dublin, fell upon his as¬ sailants suddenly. John the Mad was slain, as were also nearly all the Berserkers. Hasculph was brought back in triumph, and promptly beheaded by the con¬ querors. He was hardly dead before a new assailant, Godred, king of Man, appeared with thirty ships at the mouth of the Liffey. Roderick, in the meanwhile, had col¬ lected men from every part of Ireland, with the excep¬ tion of the north which stood aloof from him, and now laid siege to Dublin by land, helped by St. Law¬ rence its patriotic archbishop. Strongbow was thus shut in with foes behind and before, and the like dis¬ aster had befallen Robert FitzStephen, who was at this time closely besieged in his own new castle at Wexford. Dermot their chief native ally had recently died. There seemed for a while a reasonable chance that the invaders would be driven back and pushed bodily into the sea. 88 THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION. Discipline and science however again prevailed. The besieged, excited both by their own danger and that of their friends in the south, made a desperate sally. The Irish army kept no watch, and was abso¬ lutely undrilled. A panic set in. The besiegers fled, leaving behind them their stores of provisions, and the conquerors thereupon marched away in triumph to the relief of FitzStephen. Here they were less successful. By force, or according to Giraldus, by a pretended tale of the destruction of all the other in¬ vaders, the Wexford men seized possession of him and the other English, and had them flung into a dungeon. Finding that Strongbow and the rest were not de¬ stroyed, but that on the contrary they were marching down on them, the Wexford men set fire to their own town and departed to an island in the harbour, carry¬ ing their prisoner with them and threatening if pursued to cut off his head. Foiled in this attempt, Strongbow hastened to Waterford, took boat there, and flew to meet the king, whom he encountered near Gloucester with a large army. Henry’s greeting was a wrathful one. His anger and jealousy had been thoroughly aroused. -Not unwarrantably. But for his promptness his headstrong subjects—several of them it must be re¬ membered of his own dominant blood—would have been perfectly capable of attempting to carve out a ki ngdom for themselves at his very gates. Happily Strongbow had found the task too large for his unaided energies, and, as we have seen, had barely escaped annihilation. He was ready, therefore, to accept any terms which his sovereign chose to impose. His sub- LANDING OF HENRY II. IN IRELAND. 89 mission appears to have disarmed the king. He al¬ lowed himself to be pacified, and after a while they returned to Ireland together. Henry H. landed at Waterford in the month of October, 1171. XI. HENRY II. IN IRELAND. This was practically the end of the struggle. The king had four thousand men-at-arms at his back, of whom no less than four hundred were knights. In addition his ships contained vast stores of provisions, a variety of war devices never before seen in Ireland, artizans for building bridges and making roads—a whole war train, in short. Such a display of force was felt to be irresistible. The chieftains one after the other came in and made their submission. Dermot Mc¬ Carthy, lord of Desmond and Cork, was the first to do homage, followed by Donald O’Brien, Prince of Thomond ; while another Donald, chieftain of Ossory, rapidly followed suit. The men of Wexford ap¬ peared, leading their prisoner with them by a chain, and presenting him as an offering to his master, who, first rating him soundly for his unauthorized proceed¬ ings, ordered him to be chained to another prisoner and shut up in Reginald’s tower. Later, soothed by his own triumph, or touched, as Giraldus tells us, with compassion for a brave man, he, at the intercession of some of his courtiers, forgave and restored him to his possessions, reserving, however, the town of Wexford for himself. SUBMISSION OF THE IRISH. gi From Wexford Henry marched to Dublin, having first visited Tipperary and Waterford. The Danes at once submitted and swore allegiance; so also did O’Carrol of Argial, O’Rorke of Brefny, and all the minor chieftains of Leinster; Roderick O’Connor still stood at bay behind the Shannon, and the north also remained aloof and hostile, but all the other chieftains, great and small, professed themselves willing to be¬ come tributaries of the king of England. The idea of an Ard-Reagh, or Over-lord, was no new one, as we have seen, to any of them. Theoretically they had always acknowledged one, although, practi¬ cally, he had rarely exercised any authority save over his own immediate subjects. Their feeling about Henry was doubtless the same. They were as willing to swear fealty to him as to Roderick O’Connor, more so in fact, seeing that he was stronger than Roderick, but that was all. To Henry and to his successors this recognition carried with it all the complicated dependence of feudalism, which in England meant that his land and everything else which a man pos¬ sessed was his only so long as he did service for it to the king. To these new Irish subjects, who had never heard of feudalism, it entailed nothing of the sort. They regarded it as a mere vague promise of adhesion, binding them at most to a general muster or “hosting” under his arms in case of war or some common peril. This was an initial misconception, which continued, as will be seen, to be a deeper and deeper source of confusion as the years went on. In the meanwhile Henry was established in Dublin, where he kept Christmas in high state, occupying a 92 HENRY II. IN IRELAND. palace built in the native fashion of painted wicker¬ work, set up just outside the walls. Here he enter¬ tained the chiefs, who were naturally astonished at the splendour of his entertainments. “ They learnt,” Giraldus observes with satisfaction, “ to eat cranes ”— does this mean herons ?—“ a species of food which they had previously loathed ; ” and, in general, were suitably impressed with the greatness and glory of the con¬ queror. The bishops were most of them already warmly in his favour, and at a synod shortly afterwards held at Cashel, at which all the Irish clergy were repre¬ sented, the Church of Ireland was solemnly declared to be finally united to that of England, and it was laid down that, “as by Divine Providence Ireland has re¬ ceived her lord and king from England, so she should also submit to a reformation from the same source.” The weather that winter was so rough that hardly a ship could cross the channel, and Henry in his new kingdom found himself practically cut off from his old one. About the middle of Lent, the wind veering at last to the east, ships arrived from England and Aquitaine, bearers of very ill news to the king. Two legates were on their way, sent by the Pope, to inquire into the murder of Becket, and armed in case of an unsatisfactory reply with all the terrors of an interdict. Henry hastily made over the government of Ireland to Hugo de Lacy, whom he placed in Dublin as his representative, and sailed from Wexford upon Easter Monday. He never again revisited his new dominions, where many of the lessons inculcated by him—in¬ cluding possibly the delights of eating cranes—were destined before long to be forgotten. XII. EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION. Henry had been only six months in Ireland, but he had accomplished much—more certainly than any other English ruler ever accomplished afterwards within the same time. He had divided the ceded districts into counties ; had appointed sheriffs for them ; had set up three Law Courts—Bench, Pleas, and Exchequer ; had arranged for the going on circuit by judges ; and had established his own character for orthodoxy, and acquitted himself of his obligations to the papacy by freeing all church property from the exactions of the chiefs, and rigidly enforcing the payment of tithes. In a still more important point—that about which he was evidently himself most tenacious—his success was even more complete. He once for all put a stop to all danger of an independent lordship by forcing those who had already received grants of land from the native chiefs to surrender them into his hands, and to receive them back direct from himself, according to the ordinary terms of feudal tenure. That he had larger and more statesmanlike views for the new dependency than he was ever able to 94 EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION. carry out there can be no question. As early as 1177 he appointed his youngest son John king of Ireland, and seems to have fully formed the intention of sending him over as a permanent governor or viceroy, a purpose which the misconduct of that youthful Rehoboam, as Giraldus calls him, v/as chiefly instru¬ mental in foiling. It is curious to hear this question of a royal viceroy and a permanent royal residence in Ireland coming to the front so very early in the history of English rule there. That the experiment, if fairly tried, and tried with a man of the calibre of Henry himself, might have made the whole difference in the future of Ireland, we cannot, I think, reasonably doubt. Any government, indeed, so that it was central, so that it gathered itself into a single hand and took its im¬ press from a single mind, would have been better a thousand times than the miserable condition of half¬ conquest, half-rule, whole anarchy and confusion which set in and continued with hardly a break. This is one reason more why it is so much to be regretted that Ireland, save for a few years, had never any real king or central government of her own. Had this been the case, even if she had been eventually conquered by England—as would likely enough have been the case—the result of that conquest would have been different. There would have been some one recognized point of government and organization, and the struggle would have been more violent and probably more successful at first, but less chronic and less eternally renewed in the long run. As it was, all the conditions were at their very worst. No native ruler LACK OF UNITY AMONG THE IRISH. 95 of the calibre of a Brian Boru could ever again hope to unite all Ireland under him, since long before he arrived at that point his enemies would have called in the aid of the new colonists, who would have fallen upon and annihilated him, though after doing so they would have been as little able to govern the country for themselves as before. This also explains what is often set down as the inexplicable want of patriotism shown by the native Irish in not combining more resolutely together against their assailants. It is true that they did not do so, but the fact is not referred to the right cause. An Englishman of the time of the Heptarchy had, il at all, little more patriotism, and hardly more sense of common country. He was a Wessex man, or a Northumbrian, or a man of the North or the East Angles, rather than an Englishman. So too in Ireland. As a people the Irish of that day can hardly be said to have had any corporate existence. They were O’Briens, or O’Neils, or O’Connors, or O’Fla- herties, and that no doubt in their own eyes appeared to be quite nationality enough. Unfortunately both for the country and for his own successors, Henry had no time to carry out his plans, and all that he had begun to organize fell away into disorder again after his departure. “ That inconstant sea-nymph,” says Sir John Davis, “whom the Pope had wedded to him with a ring,” remained obedient only as long as her new lord was present, and once his back was turned she reverted to her own ways again. The crowd of Norman and Welsh adven¬ turers who now filled the country were each and 96 EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASIOl^. all intent upon ascertaining how much of that country they could seize upon and appropriate for themselves. There were many gallant men amongst them, but there was not one apparently who had the faintest trace of what is meant by public spirit. Occupied only by their own interests, and struggling solely for their own share of the spoil, they could never really hold the country, and even those parts which they did get into their hands lapsed back after a while into the old condition again. The result was that the fighting never ended. The new colonists built castles and lived shut up in them, ruling their own immediate retainers with an odd mixture of Brehon and Norman law. When they issued forth they appeared clad from head to foot in steel, ravaging the country more like foreign mercenaries than peaceful settlers. The natives, driven to bay and dispossessed of their lands, fought too, not in armour, but, like the Berserkers of old, in their shirts, with the addition at most of a rude leather helmet, more often onl}^ with their hair matted into a sort of cap on their foreheads in the fashion known as the “ gebbe,” that “ rascally gebbe ” to which Spenser and other Elizabethan writers ob¬ ject so strongly. By way of defence they now and then threw up a rude stockade of earth or stone modifications of the primitive rath, more often they made no defence, or merely twisted a jungle of boughs along the pathways to break the advance of their more heavily armed foes. The ideas of the two races were as dissimilar as their weapons. The instinct of the one was to conquer a country and TACTICS OF THE HOKMANS AND THE IRISH. 97 subdue it to their own uses ; the instinct of the other was to trust to the country itself, and depend upon its natural features, its forests, morasses, and so forth for security. The one was irresistible in attack, the other, as his conqueror soon learnt to his cost, practi¬ cally invincible in defence, returning doggedly again and again, and a hundred times over to the ground from which he seemed at first to have been so easily and so effectually driven off. All these peculiarities, which for ages continued to mark the struggle between the two races now brought face to face in a death struggle, are just as marked and just as strikingly conspicuous in the first twenty years which followed the invasion as they are during the succeeding half-dozen centuries. 8 XIIL JOHN IN IRELAND. Henry had gone, and the best hopes of the new dependency departed with him never to return again. Fourteen years later he despatched his son John, then a youth of nineteen, with a train of courtiers, and amongst them our friend Giraldus, who appeared to have been sent over in some sort of tutorial or secretarial capacity. The expedition was a disastrous failure. The chiefs flocked to Waterford to do honour to their king’s son. The courtiers, encouraged by their inso¬ lent young master, scoffed at the dress, and mockingly plucked the long beards of the tributaries. Furious and smarting under the insult they withdrew, hostile every man of them now to the death. The news spread ; the more distant and important of the chieftains declined to appear. John and his courtiers gave themselves up to rioting and misconduct of various kinds. All hopes of conciliation were at an end. A successful confederation was formed amongst the Irish, and the English were for a while driven bodily out of Munster. John returned to England at the end of eight months, recalled in hot haste and high displeasure by his father, SUCCESS OF JOHN. 99 Twenty-five years later he came back again, this time as king, with a motley army of mercenaries gathered to crush the two brothers De Lacy, who for the moment dominated all Ireland — the one, Hugo, being Earl of Ulster, and Viceroy ; the other, Walter, Lord of the Palatinate of Meath. Among his many vices John had not at least that of indolence to be laid to his charge! He marched direct from Waterford to Trim, the headquarters of the De Lacys, seized the castle, moved on next day to Kells, thence proceeded by rapid stages to Dun¬ dalk, Carlingford, Downpatrick, and Carrickfergus Hugo de Lacy fled in dismay to Scotland. The chief¬ tains of Connaught and Thomond joined their forces with those of the king; even the hitherto indomitable O’Neil made a proffer of submission. Leaving a gar¬ rison at Carrickfergus, John marched back by Down¬ patrick and Drogheda, re-entered Meath, visited Duleek, slept a night at Kells, and so back to Dublin, where he was met by nearly every Anglo- Norman baron, each and all eager to exhibit their own loyalty. His next care was to divide their ter¬ ritory into counties ; to bind them over to supply soldiers when called upon to do so by the viceroy, and to arrange for the muster of troops in Dublin. Then away he went again to England. He had been in the country exactly sixty-si.x days. Unpleasant man and detestable king as he was, John had no slight share of the governing powers of his race, and even his short stay in Ireland did some good, enough to show what might have been done had a better man, and one in a little less !U ^ loa yO//^ IN IRELAND. desperate hurry, remained to hold the reins. He had proved that, however they might ape the partj the barons were not as a matter of fact the ab solute lords of Ireland ; that they had a master beyond the sea ; one who, if aroused, could make the boldest of them shake in his coat of mail. The lesson was not as well learnt as it ought to have been, but it was better at least than if it had not been learnt at all. At that age and in its then condition a strong ruler—native if possible, if not, foreign—was by far the best hope for Ireland. Such a ruler, if only for his own sake, would have had the genuine interests of the country at heart. He might have tyrannized himself, but the little tyrants would have been kept at bay. Few countries—and certainly Ireland was not one of the exceptions—were at that time ripe for what we now mean by free institutions. Free¬ dom meant the freedom of a strong government, one that was not at the beck of accident, and was not perpetually changing from one hand to another. The English people found this out for themselves centuries later during the terrible anarchy which resulted from the Wars of the Roses, and of their own accord put themselves under the brutal, but on the whole patriotic, yoke of the Tudors. In Ireland the petty masters unfortunately were always near ; the great one was beyond the sea and not so easily to be got at! There was no unity ; no pretence of even-handed justice, no one to step between the op¬ pressed and the oppressor. And the result of all this is still to be seen written as in letters of brass upon the face of the country and woven into the very texture of the character of its people. • THE LORDS RALATINE. The jealousy shown by Henry and his sons to¬ wards the earliest invaders of Ireland is doubtless the reason why Giraldus—for a courtier and an eccle¬ siastic upon his promotion—is so remarkably explicit upon their royal failings. The Geraldines especially seem to have been the objects of this not very unnatural jealousy, and the Geraldines arc, on the other hand, to Giraldus himself, objects of an almost superstitious worship. His pen never wearies of expatiating upon their valour, fame, beauty, and innumerable graces, laying stress especially — and in this he is certainly borne out by the facts—upon the great advantage which men trained in the Welsh wars, and used all their lives to skirmishing in the lightest order, had over those who had had no pre¬ vious experience of the very peculiar warfare neces¬ sary in Ireland. “ Who,” he cries with a burst of enthusiasm, “ first penetrated into the heart of the enemy’s country ? The Geraldines ! Who have kept it in submission ? The Geraldines ! Who struck most terror into the enemy ? The Geraldines ! Against whom are the shafts of malice chiefly directed ? The 102 THE LORDS PALATINE. Geraldines \ Oh that they had found a prince who could have appreciated their distinguished worth! How tranquil, how peaceful would then have been the state of Ireland under their administration !” Ex^en their indignant chronicler admits however that the Geraldines did not do so very badly for themselves! Maurice Fitzgerald, the eldest of the brothers, became the ancestor both of the Earls of Kildare and Desmond ; William, the younger, ob¬ tained an immense grant of land in Kerry from the McCarthys, indeed as time went on the lordship of the Desmond Fitzgeralds grew larger and larger, until it covered nearly as much ground as many a small European kingdom. Nor was this all. The White Knight, the Knight of Glyn, and the Knight of Kerry were all three Fitzgeralds, all descended from the same root, and all owned large tracts of country. The position of the Geraldines of Kildare was even more important, on account of their close- proximity to Dublin. In later times their great keep at Maynooth dominated the whole Pale, while their followers swarmed everywhere, each man with a G. embroidered upon his breast in token of his allegi¬ ance. By the beginning of the sixteenth century their power had reached to, perhaps, the highest point ever attained in these islands by any subject. Whoever might be called the Viceroy in Ireland it was the Earl of Kildare who practically governed the country. Originally there were three Palatinates—Leinster granted to Strongbow, Meath to De Lacy, and Ulster to De Courcy. To these two more were afterwards added, namely, Ormond and Desmond. The power of THE FIVE PALATINATES. 103 the Lord Palatine was all but absolute. He had his own Palatinate court, with its judges, sheriffs, and coroners. He could build fortified towns, and endow them with charters. He could create as many knights as he thought fit, a privilege of which they seem fully to have availed themselves, since we learn that Richard, Earl of Ulster, created no less than thirty-three upon a single occasion. For all practical purposes the Palatinates were thus simply petty kingdoms or prin¬ cipalities, independent in everything but the name. Strongbow, the greatest of all the territorial barons, left no son to inherit his estates, only a daughter, who married William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. Through her his estates passed to five heiresses, who married five great nobles, namely, Warrenne, Mount- chesny, De Vesci, De Braosa, and Gloucester. Strong- bow’s Palatinate of Leinster was thus split up into five smaller Palatinate.s. As none of the new owners moreover chose to live in Ireland, and their revenues were merely drawn away to Ifngland, the estates were after awhile very properly declared forfeited, and went to the Crown. Thus the one who of all the adven¬ turers had cherished the largest and most ambitious hopes in the end left no enduring mark at all in Ireland. Connaught — despite a treaty drawn up between Henry I. and Cathal O’Connor, its native king—was granted by John to William EitzAldelm de Burgh and his son Richard, on much the same terms as Ulster had been already granted to DcCourcy, on the under¬ standing, that is to say, that if he could ha might win it by the sword. De Courcy failed, but the Do Burghs were wilier and more successful. Carefully 104 THE LORDS PALATINE. fostering a strife which shortly after broke out be¬ tween the two rival princes of the house of O’Connor and watching from the fortress they had built for themselves at Athlone, upon the Shannon, they seized an opportunity when both combatants were exhausted to pounce upon the country, and wrest the greater part of it away from their grasp. They also drove away the clan of O’Flaherty—owners from time im¬ memorial of the region known as Moy Seola, to the east of the bay of Galway—and forced them back across Lough Corrib, where they took refuge amongst the mountains of far Connaught, descending continu¬ ally in later times in fierce hordes, and wreaking their vengeance upon the town of Galway, which had been founded by the De Burghs at the mouth of the river which carries the waters of Lough Corrib to the sea. To this day the whole of this region of Moy Seola and the eastern shores of Lough Corrib may be seen to be thickly peppered over with ruined De Burgh castles, monuments of some four or five centuries of uninterrupted fighting. At one time the De Burghs were by far the largest landowners in Ireland. Not only did the}^ possess an immense tract of Connaught, but by the marriage of Richard de Burgh’s son to Maud, daughter of Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, they became the nominal owners of nearly all Ulster to boot. It never was more, however, than a nominal ownership, the clutch of the O’Neills and O’Donnels being found practic¬ ally impossible to unloose, so that all the De Burghs could be said to hold were the southern borders of what are now the counties of Down, Monaghan, and f THE BURKES AND THE ORMONDS I05 Antrim. When, too, William, the third Earl of Ul¬ ster, was murdered in 1333, his possessions passed to his daughter and heiress, a child of two years old. A baby girl’s inheritance was not likely, as may be imagined, to be regarded at that date as particularly sacred. Ulster was at once retaken by the O’Neills and O’Connels. Two of the Burkes, or De Burghs, Ulick and Edmund, seized Connaught and divided it between them, becoming in due time the ancestors, the one of the Mayos, the other of the Clanricardes. Another of the great houses was that of the Or- monds, descended from Theobald Walter, a nephew of Thomas a Becket, who was created hereditary cup¬ bearer or butler to Henry II. Theobald Walter received grants of land in Tipperary and Kilkenny, as well as at Arklow, and in 1391 Kilkenny Castle was sold to his descendant the Earl of Ormond by the heirs of Strongbow. The Ormonds’ most marked characteristic is that from the beginning to the end of their career they remained, with hardly an e.xcep- tion, loyal adherents of the English Crown. Their most important representative was the “great duke” as he was called, James, Duke of Ormond, who bore an important part in the civil wars of Charles I., and is perhaps the most distinguished representative of all these great Norman Irish houses, unless indeed one of the greatest names in the whole range of English political history—that of Edmund Burke—is to be added to the list, as perhaps in fairness it ought Troublesome as it is to keep these different houses in the memory, it is hopeless to attempt without doing so to understand anything of the history of I06 THE LORDS PALATINE. Ireland. In England where the ruling power was vested first in the sovereign and later in the Parliament, the landowners, however large their possessions, rarely- attained to more than a local importance, save of course when one of them chanced to rise to eminence as a soldier or a statesman. In Ireland the parliament, throughout nearly the whole of its separate existence, was little more than a name, irregularly summoned, and until the middle of the sixteenth century, repre¬ senting only one small corner of the country. The kings never came ; the viceroys came and went in a continually changing succession; practically, therefore, the great territorial barons constituted the backbone of the country—so far as it could be said to have had any backbone at all. They made war with the native chiefs, or else made alliances with them and married their daughters. They raided one another’s proper¬ ties, slew one another’s kerns, and carried one another away prisoner. Sometimes their independent action went even further than this. The battle of Knocktow, of which we shall hear in due time, arose because the Earl of Kildare’s daughter had quarrelled with her husband, the Earl of Clanricarde, and her father chose to espouse her quarrel. Two large armies were collected, nearly all the lords of the Pale and their followers being upon one side, under the banner of Kildare, a vast and undisciplined horde of natives under Clanricarde upon the other, and the slaughter is said to have exceeded 8,000. Parental affection is a very attractive quality, but when it swells to such dimensions as these it becomes formidable for the peace of a country ! XV. EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND. One of the greatest difficulties to be faced in the study of Irish history, no matter upon what scale, is to discover any reasonable method of dividing our space. The habit of distributing all historical affairs into reigns is often misleading enough even in Eng¬ land ; in Ireland it becomes simply ridiculous. What difference can any one suppose it made to the great bulk of the people of that country whether a Henry, whom they had never seen, had been succeeded by an h'dward they had never seen, or an Edward by a Henry ? No two sovereigns could have been less alike in character or aims than Henry HI. and Edward I., yet when we fix our eyes upon Ireland the difference is to all intents and purposes imperceptible. That, though he never visited the country, Edward I., like his great-grandfather, had large schemes for the benefit of Ireland is certain. Practically, however^ his schemes never came to anything, and the chief effect of his reign was that the country was so largely drawn upon for men and money for the support of his wars elsewhere as greatly to weaken the already feeble power of the Government, the result being that Io8 EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND. at the first touch of serious trouble it all but fell to pieces. Very serious trouble indeed came in the reign of the second Edward. The battle of Bannockburn— the greatest disaster which ever befel the English during their Scotch wars — had almost as marked an effect on Ireland as on Scotland. All the ele¬ ments of disaffection at once began to boil and bubble. The O’Neills — ever ready for a fray, and the nearest in point of distance to Scotland— promptly made overtures to the Bruces, and Edward Bruce, the victorious king’s brother, was despatched at the head of a large army, and landing in 1315 near Carrickfergus was at once joined by the O’Neills, and war proclaimed. The first to confront these new allies was Richard de Burgh, the “ Red Earl ” of Ulster, who was twice defeated by them and driven back on Dublin. The viceroy. Sir Edmund Butler, was the next encoun¬ tered, and he also was defeated at a battle near Ardscul, whereupon the whole country rose like one man. Fedlim O’Connor, the young king of Con¬ naught, the hereditary chieftain of Thomond, and a host of smaller chieftains of Connaught, Munster, and Meath, flew to arms. Even the De Lacys and several of the other Norman colonists threw in their lot with the invaders. Edward Bruce gained another victory at Kells, and having wasted the country round about, destroying the property of the colonists and slaughtering all whom he could find, he returned to Carrickfergus, where he was met by his brother. King Robert, and together they crossed Ireland, de- RAVAGES OF THE SCOTS. log scending as far south as Cashel, and burning, pillag¬ ing, and destroying wherever they went. In 1316 the younger Bruce was crowned king at Dundalk. Such was the panic they created, and so utterly disunited were the colonists, that for a time they carried all before them. It is plain that Edward Bruce—who on one side was descended both from Strongbow and Dermot McMurrough—fully hoped to have cut out a kingdom for himself with his sword, as others of his blood had hoped and intended before him. Ilis own excesses, however, went far to prevent that. So frightfully did he devastate the country, and so horrible was the famine which he created, that many even of his own army perished from it or from the pestilence which followed. Ilis Irish allies fell away in dismay. English and Irish annalists, unani¬ mous for once, alike exclaim in horror over his deeds. Clyn, the Franciscan historian, tells us how he burned and plundered the churches. The annals of Lough Ce say that “ no such period for famine or destruction of men” ever occurred, and that people “used then to eat one another throughout Erin.” “ They, the Scots,” says the poet Spenser, writing centuries later, “ utterly consumed and wasted whatsoever was before left un- spoyled so that of all towns, castles, forts, bridges, and habitations they left not a stick standing, nor yet any people remayning, for those few which yet survived fledde from their fury further into the English Pale that now is. Thus was all that goodly country utterly laid waste.” Such insane destruction brought its own punish¬ ment. The colonists began to recover from their no EDWARD^BRUCE IN IRELAND. dismay. Ormonds, Kildares, and Desmonds be¬ stirred themselves to collect troops. The O’Connors, who with all their tribe had risen in arms, had been utterly defeated at Athenry, where the young king Fedlim and no less than 10,000 of his followers are said to have been left dead. Roger Mortimer, the new viceroy, was re-organizing the government in Dublin. The clergy, stimulated by a Papal mandate, had all now turned against the invader. Robert Bruce had some time previously been recalled to Scotland, and Sir John de Bermingham, the victor of Athenry, pushing northward at the head of 15,000 chosen troops, met the younger Bruce at Dundalk. The combat was hot, short, and decisive. The Scots were defeated, Edward Bruce himself killed, and his head struck off and sent to London. The rest hastened back to Scotland with as little delay as possible. The Scotch invasion was over. It was over, but its effects remained. From one end of Ireland to the other there was disaffection, anger, revolt. England had proved too weak or too negligent to interfere at the right time and in the right way, and although successful in the end she could not turn back the tide. There was a general feeling of disbelief in the reality of her government. A semi-national feeling had sprung up which tem¬ porarily united colonists and natives in a bond of self-defence. Norman nobles and native Irish chief¬ tains threw in their lot together. The English yeo¬ man class, which had begun to get established in Leinster and Munster, had been all but utterly destroyed by Edward Bruce, and the remnant now rilE ENGLISH BECOME IRISH. ii: left the country in despair. The great English lords, with the exception of Ormond and Kildare, from this out took Irish names and adopted Irish dress and fashions. The two De Burghs, as already stated, seized upon the Connaught possessions of their cousin, and divided them, taking the one Galway and the other Mayo, and calling themselves McWilliam Eighter and McWilliam Oughter, or the Nether and the Further Burkes. So too with nearly all the rest. Bcrmingham of Athenry, in spite of his late famous victory over the Irish, did the same, calling himself McYorris ; FitzMaurice of Lixnaw became McMaurice; FitzUrse of Louth, McMahon; and so on through a whole list. Nor is it difficult to understand the motives which led to these changes. The position of an Irish chieftain—with his practically limitless powers of life and death, his wild retinue of retainers whose only law was the will of their chief — offered an irre¬ sistible temptation to men of their type, and had many more charms than the narrow and uninteresting role of liegeman to a king whom they never saw, and the obeying of whose behests brought them harm rather than good. England had shown only too plainly that she had no power to protect her Irish colonists, of what use therefore, it was asked, for them to call themselves any longer English ? The great majority from that moment ceased to do so. Save within the “ five obedient shires” which came to be known as the English Pale, “ the king’s writ no longer ran.” The native Irish swarmed back from the moun¬ tains and forests, and repossessed themselves of the II2 THE LORDS PALATINE. lands from which they had been driven. No serious attempts were made to re-establish the authority of the law over three-fourths of the island. Within a century and a half of the so-called conquest, save within one small and continually narrowing area, Ireland had ceased even nominally to belong to England TRIM CASTLE ON THE BOYNE, XVI. THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY. It was not to be expected, however, that the largei country would for very shame let her possessions thus slip from her grasp without an effort to retain them, certainly not when a ruler of the calibre of an Edward III. came to the helm. Had his energies been able to concentrate themselves upon Ireland the stream which was setting dead against loyalty might even then have been turned back. The royal interest would have risen to the top of faction, as it did in England, and would have curbed the growing and dangerous power of the barons. That magic which surrounds the word king might—who can say that it would not? —have awakened a sentiment at once of patriotism and loyalty. Chimerical as it may sound even to suppose such a thing, there seems no valid reason why it might not have been. No people admittedly are more intensely loyal by nature than the native Irish. By their fail¬ ings no less than their virtues they are extraordinarily susceptible to a personal influence, and that devotion which they so often showed towards their own chiefs might with very little trouble have been awakened in Q ri 4 THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY. favour of a king. It is one of the most deplorable of the many deplorable facts which stud the history of Ireland that no opening for the growth of such sentiment was ever once piesented—certainly not in such a form that it would have been humanly possible for it to be embraced. Edward III. had now his chance. Unfortunately he was too busy to avail himself of it. He had too many irons in the fire to trouble himself much about Ireland. If it furnished him with a supply of fighting menclean - limbed, sinewy fellows who could run all day without a sign of fatigue, live on a handful of meal, and for a lodging feel luxurious with an armful of hay and the sheltered side of a stone—it was pretty much all he wanted. The light-armed Irish troop did great things at Crecy, but they were never used at home. That Half-hold, which was the ruin of Ireland, and which was to go on being its ruin for many and many a century, was never more conspicuous than during the nominal rule of the strongest and ablest of all the Angevin kings. Something, however, for very shame he did do. In 1361 all absentee landowners, already amounting to no less than sixty-three, including the heads of several of the great abbeys, were summoned to Westminster and ordered to provide an army to accompany Lionel, Duke of Clarence, whom he had decided upon sending over to Ireland as viceroy. Clarence was the king’s third son, and had married the only daughter and heiress of William de Burgh (mentioned a little way back as a baby heiress), and through his wife had become Earl of Ulster and the TWO SEPARATE IRELANDS. II5 nominal lord of an enormous tract of the country stretching from the Bay of Galway nearly up to the coast of Donegal. Most of this had, however, already, as we have seen, been lost. The two rebel Burkes had got possession of the Galway portion, the O’Neills, O’Connors, and other chiefs had repossessed themselves of the North. So completely indeed was the latter lost that Ulster—nominally the patrimony of the Duchess of Clarence—is not even alluded to by her husband as part of the country over which his government could attempt to lay claim. ‘The chief event of this visit was the summoning of a Parliament at Kilkenny, a Parliament made memor¬ able ever after by the passing of what is still known as the Statute of Kilkenny.^ This Statute, although it produced little effect at the time, is an e.xtremely im¬ portant one to understand, as it enables us to realize the state to which the country had then got, and ex¬ plains, moreover, a good deal that would otherwise be obscure or confusing in the after history of Ireland. Two distinct and separate set of rules are here drawn up for two distinct and separate Irelands. One is for the English Ireland, which then included about the area of ten counties, though it afterwards shrank to four and a few towns ; the other is for the Ireland of the Irish and rebellious English, which included the rest of the island ; the object being, not as might be supposed at first sight, to unite these two closer together, but to keep them as far apart as possible ; to prevent them, in fact, if possible, from ever uniting. ' 40 Edward III., Irish Statutes. Il6 THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY. A great many provisions are laid down by this Act, all bearing the same aim. Marriage and fosterage between the English and Irish are forbidden, and declared to be high treason. So, too, is the supply of all horses, weapons, or goods of any sort to the Irish ; monks of Irish birth are not to be admitted into any English monastery, nor yet Irish priests into any English preferment. The Irish dress and the Irish mode of riding are both punishable. War with the natives is inculcated as a duty binding upon all good colonists. None of the Irish, except a certain number of families known as the “ Five Bloods ” {Quinque sanquines), are to be allowed to plead at any English court, and the killing of an Irishman is not to be reckoned as a crime. In addition to this, speaking the language of the country is made penal. Any one mixing with the English, and known to be guilty of this offence, is to lose his lands (if he has any), and his body to be lodged in one of the strong places of the king until he learns to repent and amend. The original words of this part of the Act are worth quoting. They run as follows : “ Si nul Engleys ou Irroies entre eux memes encontre e’est ordinance et de cei soit atteint soint sez terrez e tenez s’il eit seizez en les maines son Seignours immediate, tanque q’il veigne a un des places nostre Seignour le Roy, et trove sufficient seurtee de prendre et user le lang Englais.” One would like—merely as a matter of curiosity—to know what appliances for the study of that not easiest of languages were provided, and before what tribunal THE ENACTMENTS OF DESPAIR. 117 the.'itudent had to prove his proficiency in it. Wher, too, we remember that English was still, to a great degree, tabooed in England itself; that the official and familiar language of the Normans was French, that French of which the Statutes of Kilkenny are themselves a specimen, the difficulty of keeping within the law at this point must, it will be owned, have been considerable. “In all this it is manifest,” says Sir John Davis, “that such as had the government of Ireland did indeed intend to make a perpetual enmity between the English and the Iri.bh, pretending that the English should in the end root out the Irish ; which, the English not being able to do, caused a perpetual war between the two nations, which continued four hundred and odd years, and would have lasted unto the world’s end, if in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the Irish had not been broken and conquered by the sword.” It is easy to see that the very ferocity—as it seems to us the utter and inconceivable ferocity — of these enactments is in the main a proof of the pitiable and deplorable weakness of those who passed them, and to this weakness we must look for their excuse, so far as they admitted of excuse at all. Weakness, especially weakness in high places, is apt to fall back upon cruelty to supply false strength, and a government that found itself face to face with an entire country in arms, absolutely antagonistic to and defiant of its authority, may easily have felt itself driven by sheer despair into some such false and futile exhibitions of power. The chief sufferers by these statutes were not the inhabitants of the wilder districts, who, for the Il8 THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY. most part, escaped out of reach of its provisions, beyond that narrow area where the Dublin judges travelled their little rounds, and who were governed still—when governed at all —by the Brehon laws and Brehon judges, much as in the days of Brian Boru. The real victims were the unhappy settlers of the Pale and such natives as had thrown in their lot with them, and who were robbed and harassed alike by those without and those within. The feudal s)’stem was one that always bore hardly upon the poor, and in Ireland the feudal system was at its very worst. There was no central authority ; no one to interpose between the baronage and the tillers of the soil ; and that state of things which in England only existed during comparatively short periods, and under excep¬ tionally weak rulers, in Ireland was continuous and chronic. The consequence was that men escaped more and more out of this intolerable tyranny into the com¬ parative freedom which lay beyond ; forgot that they had ever been English; allowed their beards, in defiance of regulations, to grow ; pulled their hair down into a “gibbes” upon their foreheads; adopted fosterage, gossipage, and all the other pleasant contraband Irish customs ; married Irish wives, and became, to all intents and purposes. Irishmen. The English power had no more dangerous enemies in the days that were to come than these men of English descent, whose fathers had come over to found a new kingdom for her upon the western side of St. George’s Channel. XVII. RICHARD II. IN IRELAND. Richard the Second’s reign is a more defi¬ nite epoch for the Irish historian than many more striking ones, for the simple reason of two visits having been paid by him to Ireland. The first of these was in 1394, when he landed at Waterford with 30,000 archers and 40,000 men at arms, an immense army for that age, and for Ireland it was held an irresis¬ tible one. It was certainly high time for some steps to be taken. In all directions the interests of the colonists were going to the wall. Not only in Ulster, Munster, and Connaught, but even in the East of Ireland, the natives were fast repossessing themselves of all the lands from which they had been driven. A great chieftain. Art McMurrough, had made himself master of the greater part of Leinster, and only by a humili¬ ating use of “ Black Rent,” could he be kept at bay. The towns were in a miserable state ; Limerick, Cork, Waterford had all again and again been attacked, and could with difficulty defend themselves. The Wicklow tribes swarmed down to the very walls of Dublin, and carried the cattleoff from under the noses of the citizens. £20 RICHARD II. IN IRELAND. The judges’ rounds were getting yearly shorter and shorter. The very deputy could hardly ride half-a- dozen miles from the castle gates without danger of being set upon, captured, and carried off for ransom. Richard flattered himself that he had only to appear to conquer. He was keen to achieve some military glory, and Ireland seemed an easy field to win it upon. Like many another before and after him, he found the task harder than it seemed. The great chiefs came in readily enough ; O’Connors, O’Briens, O’Neills,even the turbulent McMurrough himself, some seventy-five of them in all. The king entertained them sumptuously, as Henry H. had entertained their an¬ cestors two centuries before. They engaged to be loyal, and to answer for the loyalty of their dependants —with some mental reservations we must conclude. In return for this submission the king knighted the four chiefs just named, a somewhat incongruous piece of courtc.sy it must be owned. Shortly after his knighthood. Art McMurrough, “ Sir Art,” was thrown into prison on suspicion. He was released before long, but the release failed to wipe out the affront, and the angry chief retired, nursing fierce vengeance, to his forests. Richard remained in Ireland nine months, dining which he achieved nothing, and departed leaving the government in the hands of his heir-presump¬ tive, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the grandson of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and, therefore, in right ol his mother, Earl of Ulster, and the nominal owner ot an immense territory, covering nearly a third of the ART MCMURROUGH. I2I island, barely one acre of which, however, remained in his hands. The king had not been gone long before Art McMurrough rose again. The young deputy was in Wicklow, endeavouring to carry out a projected colony. Hearing of this outbreak, he hastened into Meath. An encounter took place near Kells. Art McMurrough, at the head of his own men, aided by some wild levies of O’Tooles and O’Nolans, com¬ pletely defeated the royal army, and after the battle the heir of the English Crown was found amongst the slain. This Art McMurrough, or Art Kavangh, as he is sometimes called, was a man of very much more for¬ midable stamp than most of the nameless freebooters, native or Norman, who filled the country. His fashion of making his onset seems to have been tremendous. Under him thewild horsemen and “naked knaves,” armed only with skeans and darts, sent terror into the breast of their armour-clad antagonists. One of the few early illustrations of Irish history extant represents him as charging at breakneck pace down a hill. We are told that “ he rode a horse without a saddle or housing, which was so fine and good that it cost him four hundred cows. In coming down the hill it galloped so hard that in my opinion,” says a con¬ temporary writer, “ I never in all my life saw hare, deer, sheep, or other animal, I declare to you for a certainty, run with such speed. In his right hand he bore a great dart, which he cast with much skill.” ^ No wonder that such a rider, upon such a horse, should ' “ Metrical History of the Deposition of Richard II.” 122 RICHARD II. IN IRELAND. have struck terror into the very souls of the colonists, and induced them to comply with any demands, how¬ ever rapacious and humiliating, rather than have to meet him face to face in the field. The news of McMurrough’s victory and of the death of his heir brought Richard back again to Ireland. He returned in hot wrath resolved this time to crush the delinquents. At home everything seemed safe. John of Gaunt was recently dead ; Henry of Lancaster still in exile; the Percys had been driven over the border into Scotland. All his enemies seemed to be crushed or extinguished. With an army nearly as large as before, and with vast supplies of stores and arms, he landed at Waterford in 1399. This time Art McMurrough quietly awaited his coming in a wood not far from the landing-place. He had only 3,000 men about him, so prudently declined to be drawn from that safe retreat of the assailed. The king and his army sat down on the outskirts of the wood. It was July, but the weather was despe¬ rately wet. The ground was in a swamp, the rain incessant; there was nothing but green oats for the horses. The whole army suffered from damp and exposure. Some labourers were hastily collected, and an attempt made to cut down the wood. This, too, as might be expected, proved a failure, and Richard, in disgust and vexation, broke up his camp, and with great difficulty, dragging his unwieldy army after him, fell back upon Dublin. The Leinster chief was not slow to avail himself of the situation. He now took a high hand, and demanded to be put in possession of certain lands he claimed RICHARD'S RETURN TO ENGLAND. 123 through his wife, as well as to retain his chieftaincy. A treaty was set on foot, varied by the despatch of a flying column to scour his country. In the middle of the negotiation startling news arrived. Henry of Lancaster had landed at Ravenspur, and all Englar.d was in arms. The king set off to return, but bad weather and misleading counsel kejat him another sixteen days on Irish soil. It was a fatal sixteen days. When he reached Milford Haven it was to find the roads blocked, and to be met by the news that all was lost. The army of Welshmen, gathered by Salis¬ bury, had dispersed, finding that the king did not arrive. His own army of 30,000 men caught the panic,and melted equally rapidly. He tried to negotiate with his cousin, but too late. At Chester he fell into the hands of the victor, and, within a few weeks after leaving Ireland, had passed to a prison, and from there to a grave. He was the last English king to set foot upon its soil until nearly exactly three centuries later, when two rivals met to try conclusions upon the same blood-stained arena. From this our matters grew from bad to worse. Little or no attempt was made to enforce the law save within the ever-narrowing boundary of what about this time came to be known as the Pale. Outside, Ireland grew to be more and more the Ireland of the natives. Art McMurrough ruled over his own country triumphantly till his death, and levied tribute right and left with even-handed imparti¬ ality upon his neighbours. “ Black Rent,” indeed, began to take the form of a regularly recognized tribute ; O’Neill receiving ^40 a year from the 124 RICHARD II. IN IRELAND. county of Louth, O'Connor of Offaly, £Go from the county of Meath, and others in like proportion. In despair of any assistance from England some of the colonists formed themselves into a fraternity which they called the “ Brotherhood of St. George,” consisting of some thirteen gentlemen of the Pale with a hundred archers and a handful of horsemen under them. The Irish Government continued to pass Act after Act, each more and more ferocious as it became more and more ineffective. Colonists were now empowered to take and behead any natives whom they found marauding, or whom they even suspected of any such intention. All friendly dealing with natives was to be punished as felony. All who failed to shave their upper lip at least once a fortnight were to be imprisoned and their goods seized. Englishmen who married Irish women were to be accounted guilty of high treason, and hung, drawn, and quartered at the convenience of the viceroy. Sudi feeble ferocity tells its own tale. Like some angry shrew the un¬ happy executive was getting louder and shriller the less its denunciations were attended to. XVIII. THE DEEPEST DEPTHS. The most salient fact in Irish history is perhaps its monotony. If that statement is a bull it is one that must be forgiven for the sake of the truth it con¬ veys. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, we seem to go swimming slowly and wearily on through a vague sea of confusion and disorder ; of brutal deeds and yet more brutal retali¬ ations ; of misgovernment and anarchy; of a confusion so penetrating and all-persuasive that the mind fairly refuses to grapple with it. Even killing—exciting as an incident—becomes monotonous when it is con¬ tinued ad infinitum, 7 \.x\ 6 . no other occurrence overcomes to vary its tediousness. Campion the Elizabethan historian, whose few pages are a perfect magazine of verbal quaintness, apologizes in the preface to his “lovyng reader, for that from the time of Cambrensis to that of Henry VIII.” he is obliged to make short work of his intcrmediable periods; “ because that nothing is therein orderly written, and that the same is time beyond any man’s memory, wherefore I scramble forward with such records as could be sought up, and am enforced to be the briefer.” 126 THE DEEPEST DEPTHS. “ Scrambling forward ” is, indeed, exactly what de¬ scribes the process. We, too, must be content “ to be the briefer,” and to “ scramble forward ” across these intermediate and comparatively eventless periods in order to reach what lies beyond. The age of the Wars of the Roses is one of great gloom and con¬ fusion in England ; in Ireland it is an all but com¬ plete blank. What intermittent interest in its affairs had been awakened on the other side of the channel had all but wholly died away in that pro¬ tracted struggle. That its condition was miserable, almost beyond conception, is all that we know for certain. In England, although civil war was raging, and the baronage were energetically slaughtering one another, the mass of the people seem for the most part to have gone unscathed. The townsfolk were undisturbed ; the law was protected ; the law officers went their rounds ; there seems even to have been little general rapine and pillage. The Church, still at its full strength, watched jealously over its own rights and over the rights of those whom it pro¬ tected. In Ireland, although there was nothing that approached to the dignity of civil war, the condition of the country seems to have been one of uninterrupted and almost universal carnage, pillage, and rapine. The baronage of the Pale raided upon the rest of the country, and the rest of the country raided upon the Pale. Even amongst churchmen it was much the same. Although there was no religious dissension, and heresy was unknown, the jealousy between the churchmen of the two rival races, seems to have been as deep as between the laymen, and their hatred of one THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 127 another probably even greater. As has been seen in a former chapter, no priest or monk of Irish blood was ever admitted into an English living or monastery, and the rule appears to have been quite equally applicable the other way. The means, too, for keeping these discordant ele¬ ments in check were ludicrously inefficient. The whole military establishment during the greater part of this century consisted of some 80 archers, and about 40 “ spears ; ” the whole revenue amounted to a few hundred pounds per annum. The Parliament was a small and irregular body of barons and knights of the shires, with a few burgesses, unwillingly summoned from the towns, and a certain number of bishops and abbots, the latter, owing to the disturbed state of the country, being generally represented by their proctors. It was summoned at long intervals, and met some¬ times in Dublin, sometimes in Drogheda, at other times in Kilkenny, as occasion suggested. Even when it did meet legislation was rarely attempted, and its office was confined mainly to the voting of subsidies. The country simply drifted at its own pleasure down the road to ruin, and by the time the battle of Bosworth was fought, the deej^est depths of anarchy had probably been sounded. The seaport towns alone kept up some little semblance of order and self-government, and seem to have shown some slight capacity for self-defence. In 1412, Waterford distinguished itself by the spirited defence of its walls against the O’Driscolls, a piratical clan of West Cork, and the following year sent a ship intp the enemy’s stronghold of Baltimore, whose crew 128 THE DEEPEST DEPTHS. seized upon the chief himself, his three brothers, his son, his uncle, and his wife, and carried them off in triumph to Waterford, a feat which the annals of the town commemorate with laudable pride. Dublin, too, showed a similar spirit, and fitted out some small v'essels which it sent on a marauding expedition to Scotland, in reward for which its chief magistrate, who had up to that time been a Provost, was invested with the title of Mayor. “ The king granted them license,” says Camden, “to choose every year a Mayor and two baliffs.” Also that its Mayor “ should have a gilt sword carried before him for ever.” Several eminent figures appear amongst the “ruck of empty names ” which fill up the list of fif¬ teenth-century Irish viceroys. Most of these were mere birds of passage, who made a few experiments at government — conciliatory or the reverse, as the case might be—and so departed again. Sir John Talbot, the scourge of France, and antagonist of the Maid of Orleans, was one of these. From all ac¬ counts he seems to have quite kept up his character in Ireland. The native writers speak of him as a second Herod. The colonist detested him for his exactions, while his soldiery were a scourge to every district they were quartered upon. He rebuilt the bridge of Athy, however, and fortified it so as to defend that portion of the Pale, and succeeded in keeping the O’Moores, O’Byrnes, and the rest of the native marauders to some degree at bay. In 1449, Richard, Duke of York, was sent to Ireland upon a sort of honorary exile. He took the oppo¬ site tack of conciliation. Although Ormond was a RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK. I2g prominent member of the Lancastrian party, he at once made gracious overtures to him. Desmond, too, he won over by his courtesy, and upon the birth of his son George—afterwards the luckless Duke of Clarence—the rival carls acted as joint sponsors, and when, in 1451, he left Ireland, he appointed Ormond his deputy and representative. Nine years later he came back, this time as a fugi¬ tive. The popularity which he had already won stood him then in good stead. Seizing upon the govern¬ ment, he held it in the teeth of the king and Parlia¬ ment for more than a year. The news of the battle of Northampton tempted him to England. His son, the Earl of March, had been victorious, and Henry VI. was a prisoner. He was not destined, however, to profit by the success of his own side. In a temporary Lancastrian triumph he was outnum¬ bered, and killed by the troops of Queen Margaret at Wakefield. His Irish popularity descended to his son. A considerable number of Irish Yorkist partisans, led by the Earl of Kildare, fought beside the latter at the decisive and sanguinary battle of Towton, at which battle the rival Earl of Ormond, leader of the Irish Lancastrians, was taken prisoner, beheaded by the victors, and all his property attained, a blow from which the Butlers were long in recovering. No other great Irish house suffered seriously. In England the older baronage were all but utterly swept away by the Wars of the Roses, only a few here and there surviving its carnage. In Ireland it was not so. A certain number of Anglo-Norman names disappear 10 130 THE DEEPEST DEPTHS. at this point from its annals, but the greater num¬ ber of those with which the reader has become familiar continue to be found in their now long- established homes. The Desmonds and De Burghs still reigned undisputed and unchallenged over their several remote lordships. Ulster, indeed, had long since become wholly Irish, but within the Pale the minor barons of Norman descent—Fingals, Gorman- stons, Dunsanys, Trimbelstons and others—remained where their Norman fathers had established them¬ selves, and where their descendants for the most part may be found still. The house of Kildare had grown in strength during the temporary collapse of its rival, and from this out for nearly a century towers high over every other Irish house. The Duke of York was the last royal viceroy who actually held the sword. Others, though nominated, never came over, and in their absence the Kildares remained omnipo¬ tent, generally as deputies, and even when that office was for a while confided to other hands, their power was hardly diminished. Only the barren title of Lord- Lieutenant was withheld, and was as a rule bestowed upon some royal personage, several times upon child¬ ren, once in the case of Edward IV.’s son upon an actual infant in arms. In 1480, Gerald, eighth Earl of Kildare, called by his own following, Geroit Mor, or Gerald the Great, became deputy, and, from that time forward under five successive kings, and during a period of 33 years, he “ reigned ” with hardly an interval until his death in 1513. Geroit Mor is perhaps the most important chief GEROIT MOR. I3I governor who ruled Ireland upon thorough-going Irish principles. “ A mighty man of stature, full of honour and courage.” Stanihurst describes him as being “A knight in valour;” and “princely and religious in his words and judgments ” is the flatter¬ ing report of the “ Annals of the Four Masters.” “ His name awed his enemies more than his army,’’ says Camden. “ The olde earle being soone hotte and soone cold was of the Englishe well beloved,” is another report. “In hys warres hee used a retchlesse (reckless) kynde of diligence, or headye careless- nesse,” is a less strong commendation, but probably not less true. He was a gallant man unquestionably, and as far as can be seen an honest and a well-intentioned one, but his policy was a purely personal, or at most a provincial, one. As for the interests of the country at large they seem hardly to have come within his ken. That fashion of looking at the matter had now so long been the established rule that it had probably ceased indeed to be regarded as a failing. XIX. THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT, When the Battleof Bosworth brought the adherents of the Red Rose back to triumph, Gerald Mor was still Lord-deputy. He was not deposed, however, on that account, although the Butlers were at once rein¬ stated in their own property, and Sir Thomas Butler was created Earl of Ormond. According to a pre¬ cedent now prevailing for several reigns, the. Lord- Lieutenancy was conferred upon the Duke of Bed¬ ford, the king’s uncle, Kildare continuing, however, practically to exercise all the functions of govern¬ ment as his deputy. A dangerous plot, started by the discomfited Yorkist faction, broke out in Ireland in 1487. An impostor, named Lambert Simnel, was sent by the Duchess of Burgundy, and trained to simulate the son of Clarence who, it will be remembered, had been born in Ireland, and whose son was therefore supposed to have a special claim on that country. Two thou¬ sand German mercenaries were sent with him to support his pretensions. This Lambert Simnel seems to have been a youth of some talent, and to have filled his ugly im- London, T.Fisher Vntvin. [54 kildares in the ascendant. poster's role with as much grace as it admitted of Bacon, in his history of the reign, tells us that “ he was a comely youth, not without some extra¬ ordinary dignity of grace and aspect.” The fashion in which he retailed his sufferings, pleaded his youth, and appealed to the proverbial generosity of the Irish people, to protect a hapless prince, robbed of his throne and his birthright, seems to have produced an immense effect. Kildare, there is reason to suspect, was privy to the plot; but of others there is no reason to think this, and with a single exception'— that of the Earl of Howth—all the lords of the Pale and many of the bishops, including the Archbishop of Dublin, seem to have welcomed the lad—he was only fifteen—with the utmost enthusiasm, an enthusiasm which Henry’s production of the real son of Clarence had no effect at all in diminishing. Lambert Simnel was conducted in high state to Dublin, and there crowned in the presence of the Earl of Kildare, the chancellor, and other State officers. The crown used for the purpose was taken off the head of a statue of The Virgin in St. Mary’s Abbey, and—a quainter piece of ceremonial still—the youth¬ ful monarch was, after the ceremony, hoisted upon the shoulders of the tallest man in Ireland, “ Great Darcy of Flatten,” and, in this position, promenaded through the streets of Dublin so as to be seen by the people, after which he was taken back in triumph to the castle. His triumph was not, however, long-lived. Em¬ boldened by this preliminary success, his partizans took him across the sea and landed with a considerable DEFEAT OF SIMNEL. 135 force at Fondray, in Lancashire, the principal leaders on this occasion being the Earl of Lincoln, Thomas Fitzgerald, brother to the Earl of Kildare, Lord Lovell, and Martin Schwartz, the commander of the German forces. The enthusiasm that was expected to break out on their arrival failed however to come off. “ Their snowballs,” as Bacon puts it, “ did not gather as they went.” A battle was fought at Stoke, at which 4,000 of the rebels fell, including Thomas Fitz¬ gerald, the Earl of Lincoln, and the German general Martin Schwartz, while Lambert Simnel with his tutor, Simon the priest, fell into the king’s hands, who spared their lives, and appointed the former to the office of turnspit, an office which he held for a number of years, being eventually promoted to that of falconer, and as guardian of the king’s hawks he lived and died. He was not the only culprit whom Henry was willing to pardon. Clemency indeed was his strong point, and he extended it without stint again and again to his Irish rebels. He despatched Sir Richard Edgecombe, a member of the royal househokh shortly afterwards upon a mission of conciliation to Ireland. The royal pardon was to be extended to Kildare and the rest of the insurgents on condition of their submission. Kildare’s pride stood out for a while against submission on any conditions, but the Royal Commissioner was firm, and the terms, easy ones it must be owned, were at last accepted, and an oath of allegiance sworn to. Kildare, theieapon, was con¬ firmed in his deputyship, and .Sir Richard Edgecombe 136 THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT. having first partaken of “much excellent good cheere” at the earl’s castle at Maynooth, returned peaceably to England. The Irish primate, one of the few ecclesiastics who had refused to support the impostor, was then, as it happened, in London, and placed strongly before the king the impolicy of continuing Kildare in office. Apparently his remonstrance had its effect, for Henry issued a summons to the deputy and all the Irish nobility to attend at Court, one which was obeyed with hardly an exception. A dramatic turn is given to this visit by the fact that Lambert Simnel, the recently crowned king, was promoted for the occasion to serve wine at dinner to his late Irish subjects. The poor scullion did his office with what grace he might, but no one, it is said, would touch the wine until it came to the turn of the Earl of Howth, the one Irish peer, as we have seen, who had declined to accept the impostor in his heyday of success. “Nay, but bring me the cup if the wine be good,” quoth he, being a merry gentleman, “ and I shall drink it both for its sake and mine own, and for thee also as thou art, so I leave thee, a poor innocent ! ” Howth, whose speech is recorded by his own family chronicler, received three hundred pounds as a reward for his loyalty, the rest returned as they came, lucky, they must have felt under the circumstances, in returning at all. Simnel was not the last Yorkist impostor who found credit and an asylum in Ireland. Peterkin, or Perkin Warbeck was the next whom the inde¬ fatigable Duchess of Burgundy started on the same PERKIN WARBECK. 137 stage and upon the same errand. This time the prince supposed to be personated was the youngest son of Edward IV., one of the two princes murdered in the tower. He is also occasionally spoken of as a son of Clarence, and sometimes as an illegitimate son of Richard III.—any royal personage, in fact, whose age happened to suit. In spite of the slight ambiguity which overhung his princely origin, he was received with high honour in Cork, and having appealed to the Earls of Desmond and Kildare, was accepted by the former with open arms. “You Irish would crown apes!” Henry afterwards said, not indeed unwar¬ rantably. This time Kildare was more cautious, though his brother, Sir James Fitzgerald, warmly espoused the cause of the impostor. Perkin War- beck remained in Ireland about a year, when he was invited to France and, for a while, became the centre of the disaffected Yorkists there. He was a very poor specimen of the genus impostor, and seems even to have been destitute of the commonplace quality ot courage. In spite of the unusual prudence displayed by him on this occasion, Kildare was, in 1497, removed from the deputy.ship, which was for a time vested in Walter Fitzsimons, Archbishop of Dublin, a declared enemy of the Geraldines. Sir James Ormond who represented his brother, the earl, was appointed Lord Treasurer in place of the Baron of Portlester, Kildare’s uncle, who had held the office for thirty-eight years. Fresh quarrels thereupon broke out between the Butlers and the rival house, and each harassed the lands of the other in the usual approved style. A meeting was 138 THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT. at last arranged to take place in St. Patrick’s Cathe¬ dral between the two leaders, but a riot breaking out Sir James barred himself up in alarm in the Chapter House. Kildare arriving at the door with offers of peace, a hole had to be cut to enable the two to com¬ municate. Sir James fearing treachery declined to put out his hand, whereupon Kildare boldly thrust in his, and the rivals shook hands. The door was then opened ; they embraced, and for a while peace was patched up. The door, with the hole still in it, was extant up to the other day. The quarrels between these two great houses were interminable, and kept the whole Pale and the greater part of Ireland in eternal hot water. Their war- cries of “ Crom-a-Boo” and “ Butler-a-Boo ” filled the very air, and had to be solemnly prohibited a few years later by special Act of Parliament. By 1494 the complaints against Kildare had grown so loud and so long that the king resolved upon a new experiment, that of sending over an Englishman to fill the post, and Sir Edward Poynings was pitched upon as the most suitable for the purpose. He arrived accompanied by a force of a thousand men-at-arms, and five or six English lawyers, who were appointed to fill the places of chancellor^ treasurer, and other offices from which the present occupiers, most of whom had been concerned either in the Warbeck or Simnel rising, were to be ejected. It was at a parliament summoned at Drogheda^ whither this new deputy had gone to quell a northern rising, that the famous statute known as Poynings’ Act was passed, long a rock of offence, and even POYNINGS* ACT—KILDARE IN ENGLAND. I39 still a prominent feature in Irish political contro¬ versy. Many of the statutes passed by this Parliament— such as the one just mentioned forbidding war cries, others forbidding the levying of private forces, for¬ bidding the “ country’s curse ” Coyne and livery, and other habitual exactions were undoubtedly necessary and called for by the circumstances of the case. The only ones now remembered however are the following. First, that no parliament should be sum¬ moned by the deputy’s authority without the king’s special license for that purpose. Secondly, that all English statutes should henceforward be regarded as binding upon Ireland ; and thirdly, that all Acts referring to Ireland must be submitted first to the king and Privy Council, and that, when returned by them, the Irish Parliament should have no power to modify them further. This, as will be seen, practically reduced the latter to a mere court for registering laws already passed elsewhere, passed too often without the smallest regard to the special require¬ ments of the country. A condition of subserviency from which it only escaped again for a short time during the palmy days of the eighteenth century. By this same parliament Kildare was attained— rather late in the day—on the ground of conspiracy, and sent prisoner to London. He lay a year in prison, and was then brought to trial, and allowed to plead his own cause in the king’s presence. The audacity, frank humour, and ready repartee of his great Irish subject seems to have made a favourable impression upon Henry, who must himself have had 140 THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT. more sense of humour than English historians give us any impression of. One of the principal charges against the earl was that he had burned the church at Cashel. According to the account given in the Book of Howth he readily admitted the charge, but declared positively that he would never have thought of doing so had he not been solemnly assured that the archbishop was at the time inside it. The auda¬ city of this defence is not a little heightened by the fact that the archbishop in question was at the moment sitting in court and listening to it. Advised by the king to provide himself with a good counsel, “ By St. Bride ”—his favourite oath—said he “ I know well the fellow I would have, yea, and the best in England, too 1 ” Asked who that might be. “ Marry, the king himself.” The note of comedy struck at the beginning of the trial lasted to the end. The earl’s ready wit seems to have dumfounded his accusers, who were not unnaturally indignant at so unlooked for a result. “ All Ireland,” they swore solemnly, “ could not govern the Earl of Kildare.’ “ So it appears,” said Henry. “ Then let the Earl ol Kildare govern all Ireland.” Whether the account given by Irish historians of this famous trial is to be accepted literally or not, the result, at any rate, was conclusive. The king seems to have felt, that Kildare was less dangerous as sheep-dog —even though a head-strong one—than as wolf, even a wolf in a cage. He released him and restored him to his command. Prince Henry, according to custom, becoming nominally Lord-Lieutenant, with Kildare as deputy under him. The earl’s wife had lately died, RETURN OF KILDARE TO IRELAND. I4I and before leaving England he strengthened himself against troubles to come by marrying Elizabeth St. John, the king’s cousin, and having left his son Gerald behind as hostage for his good behaviour, sailed merrily home to Ireland. Perkin Warbeck meanwhile had made another foray upon Munster, where he was supported by Desmond, and repulsed with no little ignominy by the townsfolk of Waterford ; after which he again departed and was seen no more upon that stage. Kildare—whose own attainder was not reversed until after his arrival in Ireland—presided over a parlia¬ ment, one of whose first acts was to attaint Lord Barrymore and the other Munster gentlemen for their share in this rising. He also visited Cork and Kin- sale, leaving a garrison behind him ; rebuilt several towns in Leinster which had been ruined in a succes¬ sion of raids ; garrisoned the borders of the Pale with new castles, and for the first time in its history brought ordnance into Ireland, which he employed in the siege of Belrath Castle. A factor destined to work a revolution upon Irish traditional modes of warfare, and upon none with more fatal effect than upon the house of Fitzgerald itself. That Kildare’s authority, even during this latter period of his government was wholly exercised in the cause of tranquility it would be certainly rash to assert. At the same time it may be doubted whether any better choice was open to the king—short of some very drastic policy indeed. That he used his great authority to overthrow his own enemies and to aggrandize his own house goes almost without saying 142 THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT. The titular sovereignty of the king could hope to count for little beside the real sovereignty of the earl, and the house of Kildare naturally loomed far larger and more imposingly in Ireland than the house of Tudor. Despotism in some form was the only practical and possible government, and Earl Gerald was all but despotic within the Pale, and even outside it was at any rate stronger than any other single individual. The Desmond Geraldines lived remote, the Butlers, who came next to the Geraldines in importance, held Kilkenny, Carlow, and Tipperary, but were cut off from Dublin by the wild mountains of Wicklow, and the wilder tribes of O’Tooles, and O’Brynes who held them. They were only able to approach it through Kildare, and Kildare was the head-quarters of the Geraldines. One of Earl Gerald’s last, and, upon the whole, his most remarkable achievement was that famous expedi¬ tion which ended in the battle of Knocktow already alluded to in an earlier chapter, in which a large num¬ ber of the lords of the Pale, aided by the native allies of the deputy, took part. In this case there was hardly a pretence that the expedition was undertaken in the king’s service. It was a family quarrel pure and simple, between the deputy and his son-in-law McWilliam, of Clanricarde. The native account tells us that the latter’s wife “ was not so used as the earl (her father) could be pleased with,” whereupon “he swore to be revenged upon this Irishman and all his partakers.” The notion of a Fitzgerald stigma¬ tizing a De Burgh as an Irishman is delightful, and eminently characteristic of the sort of wild confusion BATTLE OF KNOCKTOW. 143 prevailing on the subject. The whole story indeed is so excellent, and is told by the narrator with so much spirit, that it were pity to curtail it, and as it stands it would be too long for these pages. The result was that Clanricarde and his Irish allies were defeated with frightful slaughter, between seven and eight thousand men, according to the victors, having been left dead upon the field! Galway, previously held by Clanricarde, was re-occupied, and the deputy and his allies returned in triumph to Dublin, whence the archbishop was despatched in hot haste to explain matters to the king. A slight incident which took place at the end of this battle is too characteristic to omit. “ We have done one good work,” observed Lord Gorman- ston, one of the Lords of the Pale, confidentially to the Lord-deputy. “ And if we now do the other we shall do well.” Asked by the latter what he meant, he replied, “ We have for the most part killed our enemies, if we do the like with all the Irishmen that we have with us it were a good deed.” ^ Happily for his good fame Kildare seems to have been able to resist the tempting suggestion, and the allies parted on this occasion to all appearances on friendly terms. Book of Ilowth. XX. FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE. The battle of Knocktow was fought five years before the death of Henry VII. Of those five years and of the earlier ones of the new reign little of any vital importance remains to be recorded in Ireland. With the rise of Wolsey to power how¬ ever a new era set in. The great cardinal was the sworn enemy of the Geraldines. He saw in them the most formidable obstacle to the royal power in that country. The theory that the Kildares were the only people who could carry on the government had by this time become firmly established. No one in Ireland could stand against the earl, and when the earl was out of Ireland the whole island was in an uproar. The confusion too between Kildare in his proper person, and Kildare as the king’s Viceroy was, it must be owned, a perennial one, and upon more than one occasion had all but brought the govern¬ ment to an absolute standstill. Geroit Mor had died in 1513 of a wound received in a campaign with the O’Carrolls close to his own castle of Kilkea, but almost as a matter of course his son Gerald had succeeded him as Viceroy and carried on PLAN OF THE EARL OF SURREY. 145 the government in much the same fashion ; had made raids on the O’Moores and O’Reillys and others of the “ king’s Irish enemies,” and been rewarded with grants upon the lands which he had captured from the rebels. The state of the Pale was terrible. “ Coyne and livery,” it was declared, had eaten up the people. The sea, too, swarmed with pirates, who descended all but unchecked upon the coast and carried off men and women to slavery. Many complaints were made of the deputy, and by 1520 these had grown so loud and long that Henry resolved upon a change, and like his predecessor determined to send an English governor, one upon whom he could himself rely. The choice fell upon the Earl of Surrey, son of the conqueror of Flodden. Surrey’s survey of the field soon convinced him to his own satisfaction that no half measures was likely to be of any avail. The plan proposed by him had certainly the merit of being sufficiently sweeping. Ireland was to be entirely reconquered. District was to be taken after district, and fortresses to be built to hold them according as they were conquered. The occupation was thus to be pushed steadily on until the whole country sub¬ mitted, after which it was to be largely repopulated by English colonists. The idea was a large one, and would have taken a large permanent army to carry out. The loss too of life would have been appalling, though not, it was represented to the king, greater than was annually squandered in an interminable succession of petty v/ars. Probably the e.xpense was the real hin¬ drance. At any rate Surrey’s plan was put aside for II 146 FALL OF THF house OE KILDArE. the time being, and not long afterwards at his own urgent prayer he was allowed to lay down his uneasy honours and return to England. Meanwhile Earl Gerald the younger had been rapidly gaining favour at Court, had accompanied Henry to France, and like his father before him, had wooed and won an English bride. Like his father, too, he possessed that winning charm which had for generations characterized his house. Quick¬ witted and genial, with the bright manner and cour¬ teous ease of high-bred gentlemen, such—even on the showing of those who had no love for them—was the habitual bearing of these Leinster Geraldines. The end was that Kildare after a while was allowed to return to Ireland, and upon Surrey’s departure, and after a brief and very unsuccessful tenure of office by Sir Pierce Butler, the deputyship was re¬ stored to him. Three years later he was again summoned, and this time, on Wolsey’s urgent advice, thrown into the Tower. Heavy accusations had been made against him, the most formidable of which was that he had used the king’s ordnance to strengthen his own castle of Maynooth. The Ormonds and the cardinal were bent upon his ruin. The earl, however, faced his accusers boldly ; met even the great cardinal himself in a war of words, and proved to be more than his equal. Once again he was acquitted and restored to Ireland, and after a while the deputyship was restored to him, John Allen, a former chaplain of Wolsey’s, being however appointed Archbishop of Dublin, and Chancellor, with private orders to keep a DEATH OF KILDARE. 147 watch upon Kildare, and to report his proceedings to the English Council. Yet a third time in 1534 he was summoned, and now the case was more serious. The whole situa¬ tion had in fact in the meanwhile utterly changed, Henry was now in the thick of his great struggle with Rome. With excommunication hanging over his head, Ireland had suddenly become a formid¬ able peril. Fears were entertained of a Spanish descent upon its coast. One of the emperor’s chaplains was known to be intriguing with the Earl of Desmond. Cromwell’s iron hand too was over the realm and speedily made itself felt in Ireland. Kildare was once more thrown into the Tower, from which this time he was never destined to emerge. He was ill already of a wound received the previous year, and the confinement and trouble of mind—which before long became acute—brought his life to a close. His son Thomas — generally known as Silken Thomas from the splendour of his clothes—had been rashly appointed vice-deputy by his father before his departure. In the month of August, a report reached Ireland that the earl had been executed, and the whole house of Geraldine was forthwith thrown into the wildest convulsions of fury at the intelligence. Young Lord Thomas — he was only at the time twenty-one—hot-tempered, undisciplined, and brimful of the pride of his race—at once flew to arms. His first act was to renounce his allegiance to England. Galloping up to the Council with a hundred and fifty Geraldines at his heels, he seized the Sword of State, marched into the council-room, and addressing 148 FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE. the Council in his capacity of Vice-deputy, poured forth a speech full of boyish fanfaronade and bravado. “ Henceforth,” said he, “I am none of Henry’s deputy! I am his foe! I have more mind to meet him in the field, than to serve him in office.” With other words to the like effect he rendered up the Sword, and once more springing upon his horse, galloped out of Dublin. He was back again before long, this time with intent to seize the town. There was little or no defence. Ormond was away; the walls were decayed; ordnance was short—a good deal of it, the Geraldine enemies said, had been already removed to May- nooth. White, the commander, threw himself into the castle ; the gates were opened ; Lord Thomas cantered in and took possession of the town, the garrison remaining placidly looking on. Worse was to come. Allen, the archbishop, and the great enemy of the Fitzgeralds made an attempt to escape to England, but was caught and savagely murdered by some of the Geraldine adherents upon the sea coast near Clontarf. When the news of these proceedings—especially of the last named— reached England, the sensation naturally was immense. Henry hastily despatched Sir William Skeffington with a considerable force to restore order, but his coming was long delayed, and when he did arrive his opera¬ tions were feeble in the extreme. Ormond had marched rapidly up from the south, and almost singlehanded defended the interests of government; Even after his arrival Skeffington, who was old, cautious, and enfeebled by bad health, remained for CAPTURE OF MAYNOOTII BY THE ENGLISH. I49 months shut up in Dublin doing nothing, the followers of Lord Thomas wasting the country at pleasure, and burning the towns of Trim and Dunboyne, not many miles from its walls. The Earl of Kildare had meanwhile died in prison, broken-hearted at the news of this ill-starred rising, in which he doubtless foresaw the ruin of his house. It was not until the month of March, eight months after his arrival in Ireland, that Sir William ventured to leave Dublin, and advance to the attack of Maynooth Castle, the great Leinster stronghold and Paladium of the Geraldines. Young Kildare, as he now was, was away in the south, but managed to throw some additional men into the castle, which was already strongly fortified, and believed in Ireland to be impregnable. The siege train imported by the deputy shortly dispelled that illusion. Whether, as is asserted, treachery from within aided the result or not, the end was not long delayed. After a few days Skeffington’s cannons made a formidable breach in the walls. The English soldiery rushed in. The defenders threw down their arms and begged mercy, and a long row of them, including the Dean of Kildare and another priest who happened to be in the castle at the time were speedily hanging in front of its walls. “ The Pardon of Maynooth ” was from that day forth a well-known Irish equivalent for the gallows! This was the end of the rebellion. The destruction of Maynooth Castle seems to have struck a cold chill to the very hearts of the Geraldines. For a while, Earl Thomas and his brother-in-law, the chief of thq 150 FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE. O’Connors, tried vainly to sustain the spirits of their followers. The rising seems to have melted away almost of its own accord, and within a few months the young leader himself surrendered to Lord Leonard Grey, the English commander, upon the understand¬ ing that his life was to be spared. Lord Leonard was his near relative, and therefore no doubt willing, as far as was compatible with safety to himself, to do the best he could for his kinsman. Whether a promise was formally given, or whether as was afterwards asserted “comfortable words were spoken to Thomas to allure him to yield ” the situation was considered too grave for any mere fanciful consideration of honour to stand in the way. Lord Thomas was not executed upon the spot, but he was thrown into prison, and a year later with five of his uncles, two of whom at least had had no share whatever in the raising, he was hanged at Tyburn. Of all the great house of the Leinster Geraldines only a boy of twelve years old survived this hecatomb. XX I, THE ACT OF SUPREMACY. In spite of his feeble health and feebler energies, Sir William Skeffington was continued Lord-deputy until his death, which took place not many months after the fall of Maynooth—“ A good man of war, but not quick enough for Ireland ”—seems to have been the verdict of his contemporaries upon him. lie was succeeded by Lord Leonard Grey, against whom no such charge could be made. His energy seems to have been immense. He loved, we are told, to be “ever in the saddle.” Such was the rapidity of his movements, and such the terror they inspired that for a while a sort of awe-struck tranquillity prevailed. He overran Cork ; broke down the castles of the Larrys and Munster Geraldines; destroyed the famous bridge over the Shannon across which the O’Briens of Clare had been in the habit of descending from time imme¬ morial upon the Pale, and after these various achieve¬ ments returned triumphantly to Dublin. His Geraldine connection proved however his ruin. He was accused of favouring the adherents of their fallen house, and even of conniving at the escape of its last legitimate heir ; of playing “ Bo Peep ” with 153 THE ACT OF SUPREMACY. him, as Stanihurst, the historian puts it. Ormond and the deputy were never friends, and Ormond had won—not undeservedly—great weight in the councils of Henry. “ My Lord-deputy,” Lord Butler, Or¬ mond’s son had declared, “ is the Earl of Kildare born over again.” Luttrell, on the other hand, de¬ clared that “ Ormond hated Grey worse than he had hated Kildare.” All agreed that Lord Leonard was difficult to work with. He seems to have been a well- intentioned man, a hard worker, and a keen soldier, but neither subtle enough nor conciliatory enough for his place. He was accused of treasonable practices, and a list of formidable charges made against him. At his own request he. was summoned to court to answer these. To a good many he pleaded guilty—half in contempt as it would seem— and threw himself upon the mercy of the king. No mercy however followed. Like many another “ well- meaning English official” of the period, his life ended upon the scaffold. A more astute and cautious man. Sir Anthony St. Leger, next took the helm in Ireland. His task was chiefly one of diplom.acy, and he carried it out with much address. In 1537 a parliament had been sum¬ moned in Dublin for the purpose of carrying out the Act of Supremacy. To this proposal the lay members seem to have been perfectly indifferent, but, as was to be expected, the clergy stood firmer. So resolute were they in their opposition that the parliament had to be prorogued, and upon its re-assembling, a Bill was hastily forced through by the Privy Council, declaring that the proctors, who had long represented the clergy CONFISCATION OF THE MONASTERIES. I53 in the Lower House, had henceforward no place in the Legislature. The Act of Supremacy was then passed : thirteen abbeys were immediately suppressed, and the firstfruits made over to the king in place of the Pope. The foundation of the new edifice was felt to have been securely laid. This was followed five years later by another Act, by which the property of over four hundred religious houses was confiscated. That the arguments which applied forcibly enough in many cases for the con¬ fiscations of religious houses in England had no application in Ireland, was a circumstance which was not allowed to count. In England, the monasteries were rich ; in Ireland, they were, for the most part, very poor ; in England, they absorbed the revenues of the parishes ; in Ireland, the monks as a rule served the parishes themselves : in England, popular condem¬ nation had to a great degree already forestalled the legal enactment; in Ireland, nothing of the sort had ever been thought of: in England, the monks were as a rule distinctly behind the higher orders of laity in education ; in Ireland, they were practically the only educators. These however were details. Uni¬ formity was desirable. The monasteries were doomed, and before long means were found to enlist most of the Irish landowners, Celts no less than Normans, in favour of the despoliation. At a great parliament summoned in Dublin in 1540, all the Irish lords of English descent, and a large muster of native chieftains were for the first time in history assembled together under one roof. O’Tooles and O’Byrnes from their wild Wick- 154 THE ACT OF SUPREMACY. low mountains ; the McMurroughs from Carlow, the O’Connor, the O’Dunn, the O’Moore ; the terrible McGillapatrick from his forests of Upper Ossory— all the great O’s and Macs in fact of Ireland were called together to meet the Butlers, the Desmonds, the Barrys, the Fitzmaurices—their hereditary enemies now for four long centuries. One house alone was not represented, and that the greatest of them all. The sun of the Kildares had set for a while, and the only surviving member of it was a boy, hiding in holes and corners, and trusting for the bare life to the fealty of his clansmen. Nothing that could reconcile the chiefs to the new religious departure was omitted upon this occasion. Their new-found loyalty was to be handsomely re¬ warded with a share of the Church spoil. Nor did they show the smallest reluctance, it must be said, to meet the king’s good dispositions half way. The principal Church lands in Galway were made over to McWilliam, the head of the Burkes ; O’Brien received the abbey lands in Thomond ; other chiefs received similar benefices according to their degree, while a plentiful shower of less substantial, but still appreciated favours followed. The turbulent Mc¬ Gillapatrick of Ossory was to be converted into the decorous-sounding Lord Upper Ossory. For Con O’Neill as soon as he chose to come in, the Earldom of Tyrone was waiting. McWilliam Burke of Galway was to become Earl of Clanricarde ; O’Brien of Clare, Earl of Thomond and Baron of Inchiquin. Parlia¬ mentary robes, and golden chains ; a house in Dublin for each chief during the sitting of Parliament—these DISTRIBUTION OF CHURCH LANDS. 155 were only a portion of the good things offered by the deputy on the part of his master. Could man or monarch do more ? In a general interchange of civilities the “King’s Irish enemies ” combined with their hereditary foes to proclaim him no longer Lord, but King of Ireland—“ Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England and Ireland on earth the Supreme Head.” LVL-:. XXII. THE NEW DETARTURE. So far so good. Despite a few trifling clouds which overhung the horizon, the latter years of Henry VIII.’s life and the short reign of his successor may claim to count among the comparatively halcyon periods of Irish history. The agreement with the landowners worked well, and no serious fears of any purpose to expel them from their lands had as yet been awakened. Henry’s policy was upon the whole steadily concilia¬ tory. Tyrant as he was, he could be just when his temper was not roused, and he kept his word loyally in this case. To be just and firm, and to give time for those hitherto untried varieties of government to work, was at once the most merciful and most politic course that could be pursued. Unfortunately for the destinies of Ireland, unfortunately for the future com¬ fort of her rulers, there was too little patience to persevere in that direction. The Government desired to eat their loaf before there was fairly time for the corn to sprout. The seed of conciliation had hardly begun to grow before it was plucked hastily up by the roots again. The plantations of Mary’s reign, and the still larger operations carried on in that of her NEW IRISH PEERS. 157 sister, awakened a deep-seated feeling of distrust, a rooted belief in the law as a mysterious and incom¬ prehensible instrument invented solely for the per¬ petration of injustice, a belief which is certainly not wholly extinguished even in our own day. For the present, however, “sober ways, politic shifts, and amicable persuasions ” were the rule. Chief after chief accepted the indenture which made him owner in fee simple under the king of his tribal lands. These indentures, it is true, were in themselves unjust, but then it was not as it happened a form of injustice that affected them unpleasantly. Con O’Neill, Murrough O’Brien, McWilliam of Clanricarde, all visited Greenwich in the summer of 1543, and all received their peerages direct from the king’s own hands. The first named, as became his importance, was received with special honour, and received the title of Earl of Tyrone, with the second title of Baron of Dungannon for any son whom he liked to name. The son whom he did name—apparently in a fit of inadvert¬ ence—was one Matthew, who is confidently asserted to have not been his son at all, but the son of a black¬ smith, and who in any case was not legitimate. An odd choice, destined, as will be seen, to lead to a good deal of bloodshed later on. One or two of the new peers were even per¬ suaded to send over their heirs to be brought up at the English Court, according to a gracious hint from the king. Young Barnabie FitzPatrick, heir to the new barony of Upper Ossory, was one of these, and the descendant of a long line of turbulent Me Gillapatricks, grew up there into a douce-mannered 158 THE NEW DEPARTURE. English-seemin" youth, the especial friend and chosen companion of the mild young prince. While civil strife was thus settling down, religious strife unfortunately was only beginning to awaken. The question of supremacy had passed over as we have seen in perfect tranquillity ; it was a very dif¬ ferent matter when it came to a question of doctrine. Unlike England, Ireland had never been touched by religious controversy. The native Church and the Church of the Pale were sharply separated from one another it is true, but it was by blood, language, and mutual jealousies, not by creed, doctrine, or discipline. As regards these points they were all but absolutely identical. The attempt to change their common faith was instantly and vehemently resisted by both alike- Could a Luther or a John Knox have arrived, with all the fervour of their popular eloquence, the case might possibly have been different. No Knox or Luther however, showed the slightest symptom of appearing, indeed hardly an attempt was made to supply doctrines to the new converts. The few English divines that did come knew no Irish, those who listened to them knew no English. The native priests were silent and suspicious. A general pause of astonishment and consternation prevailed. The order for the destruction of relics broke this silence, and sent a passionate thrill of opposition through all breasts, lay as well as clerical. When the venerated remains of the golden days of the Irish Church were collected together and publicly destroyed, especially when the staff of St. Patrick, the famous Baculum Cristatum, part of which was OUTBREAK OF RELIGIOUS STRIFE. 159 believed to have actually touched the hands of the Saviour, was burnt in Dublin in the market-place, a spasm of shocked dismay ran through the whole island. Men who would have been scandalized by no other form of violence were horror-stricken at this. Differences of creed were so little under¬ stood that a widespread belief that a new era of paganism was about to be inaugurated sprang up all over Ireland. To this belief the friars, who, though driven from their cloisters, were still numerous, lent their support, as did the Jesuits, who now for the first time began to arrive in some numbers. Even the acceptance of the supremacy began to be rebelled against now that it was clearly seen what it was lead¬ ing to. An order to read the new English liturgy was met with sullen resistance—“Now shall every illiterate fellow read mass ! ” cried Archbishop Dowdal of Armagh, in hot wrath and indignation. Brown, the Archbishop of Dublin, was an ardent reformer, so also was the Bishop of Meath, but to the mass of their brethren they simply appeared to be heretics. A proposal was made to translate the Prayer-book into Irish, but it was never carried into effect, indeed, even in the next century when Bishop Bedell pro¬ posed to undertake the task he received little en¬ couragement. The attempt to force Protestantism upon the country produced one, and only one, important result. It broke down those long-standing barriers which had hitherto separated Irishmen of different blood and lineage, and united them like one man against the Crown. When the common faith was touched the i6o The new departure. common sense of brotherhood was kindled. “ The English and Irish,” Archbishop Brown wrote in despair to Cromwell, “both oppose your lordship’s orders, and begin to lay aside their own quarrels.” Such a result might be desirable in itself, but it certainly came in the form least likely to prove propitious for the future tranquillity of the country. Even those towns whose loyalty had hitherto stood above suspicion received the order to dismantle their churches and destroy all “ pictures and Bopish fancies ” with sullen dislike and hostility. Galway, Kilkenny, Waterford, each and all protested openly. The Irish problem— not so very easy of solution before—had suddenly received a new element of confusion. One that was destined to prove a greater difficulty than all the rest put together. XXIII. THE FIRST TLANTATIONS. With Mary’s accession the religious struggle was for a while postponed. Some feeble attempts were even made to recover the Church property, but too many people’s Interests were concerned for much to be done in that direction. Dowdal, Archbishop of Armagh, who had been deprived, was restored to his primacy. Archbishop Brown and the other confor¬ ming bishops were deprived. So also were all married clergy, of whom there seem to have been but few ; otherwise there was no great difference. As far as the right of exercising her supremacy' was concerned, Mary relished Papal interference nearly as little as did her father. Although the religious struggle was thus for a time postponed, the other vital Irish point—the possession of the land—now began to be pressed with new vigour. P'ercal, Leix, and Offaly, belonging to the fierce tribes of the O’Moores, O’Dempseys, O’Connors, and O’Carrols, lay upon the Kildare frontier of the Pale, and had long been a standing menace to their more peaceful neighbours. It was now determined that this tract should be added to the still limited 12 i 62 THE FIRST PLANTATIONS. area of shire land. The chiefs, it is true, had been indentured by Henry, but since then there had been outbreaks of the usual sort, and it was considered by the Government that nowhere could the longed-for experiment of a plantation be tried with greater advantage. There was little or no resistance. The chiefs, taken by surprise, submitted. The English force sent against them, under the command of Sir Edward Bellingham, was irresistible. O’Moore and O’Connor were seized and sent prisoners to England. Dangen, which had so often resisted the soldiers of the Pale was taken. The tribesmen whose fathers had fed their cattle from time immemorial upon the un¬ fenced pastures of the plains were driven off, and took refuge in the forests, which still covered most of the centre of Ireland. The more profitable land was then leased by the Crown to English colonists —Cosbies, Barringtons, Pigotts, Bowens, and others. Leix and a portion of Offaly were called Queen’s County, in compliment to the queen, the remainder King’s County, in compliment to Philip. Dangen at the same time becoming Phillipstown, and Campa Maryborough. The experiment was regarded as eminently successful, and congratulations passed be¬ tween the deputy and the English Council, but it awakened a deep-seated sense of insecurity and ill-usage, which argued poorly for the tranquillity of the future. Of the rest of Mary’s reign little needs to be here recorded. That indelible brand of blood which it has left on English history was all but unfelt in Ireland. DEATH OF MARY. 163 There had been few Protestant converts, and those few were not apparently emulous of martyrdom. No Smithfield fires were lighted in Dublin, indeed it is a curious fact that in the whole course of Irish history—so prodigal of other horrors—no single exe¬ cution for heresy is, it is said, recorded. A story is found in the Ware Papers, and supported by the authority of Archbishop Usher, which, if true, shows that this reproach to Irish Protestantism—if indeed it is a reproach—was once nearly avoided. The story runs that one Cole, Dean of St. Paul’s, was despatched by Mary with a special commission to “lash the heretics of Ireland.” That Cole slept on his way at an inn in Chester, the landlady of which happened to have a brother, a Protestant then living in Dublin. This woman, hearing him boast of his commi.ssion, watched her opportunity, and stole the commission out of his cloak-bag, substituting for it a pack of cards. Cole unsuspiciously pursued his way, and presenting himself authoritatively before the deputy, declared his business and opened his bag. There, in place of the commission against the heretics, lay the pack of cards with the knave of clubs uppermost! The story goes on to say that the dean raged in discomfited fury, but that the deputy, though himself a Roman Catholic, took the matter easily. “ Let us have another commission,” he said, “ and meanwhile we will shuffle the cards.” The cards were effectual!)' shuffled, for before any further steps could be taken Mary had died. XXIV. WARS AGAINST SHANE O’NEILL. UrON the 17th of November, 1558, Mary died, and upon the afternoon of the same day Elizabeth was proclaimed queen. A new reign is always accounted a new starting-point, and in this case the traditional method of dividing history is certainly no misleader. The old queen had been narrow, dull-witted, bigoted ; an unhappy woman, a miserable wife, plagued with sickness, plagued, above all, with a conscience whose mission seems to have been to distort everything that came under its cognizance. A woman even whose good qualities—and she had several—only seemed to push her further and further down the path of disaster. The new queen was twenty-six years old. Old enough, therefore, to have realized what life meant, young enough to have almost illimitable possibilities still unrevealed to her. No pampered royal heiress, either, for whom the world of hard facts had no reality, and the silken shams of a Court constituted the only standpoint, but one who had already with steady eyes looked danger and disaster in the face and knew them for what they were. With a realm TROUBLES IN THE NORTH. 165 under her hand strong already, and destined before her death to grow stronger still ; with a spirit too, strong enough and large enough for her realm ; stronger perhaps in spite of her many littlenesses than that of any of the men she ruled over. And Ireland } How was it affected by this change of rulers ? At nrst fairly well. The early months of the new reign were marked by a policy of conciliation. Protestantism was of course, re-established, but there was no eagerness to press the Act of Conformity with any severity, and Mass was still said nearly every¬ where except in the Pale. As usual, troubles began in the North. Henry VI 11 ., it will be remembered, had granted the hereditary lands of Tyrone to Con O’Neill, with remainder to Matthew, the new Baron of Dungannon, whereas lands in Ulster, as elsewhere in Ireland, had always hitherto, by the law of Tanistry, been vested in the tribe, who claimed the right to select whichever of their late chiefs’ sons they themselves thought fit. This right they now proceeded to exercise. Matthew, if he was Con’s son at all, which was doubtful, was unquestionably illegitimate, and, therefore, by English as well as Irish law, wrongfully put in the place. On the other hand, a younger son Shane— called affectionately “ Shane the Proud ” by his clans¬ men—was unquestionably legitimate, and what was of much more importance, was already the idol of every fighting O’Neill from Lough Imyle to the banks of the Blackwater. Shane is one of those Irish heroes —rather perhaps Ulster heroes, for his aspirations were hardly national i66 AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL. —whom it is extremely difficult to mete out justice to with a perfectly even hand. He was unquestionably three-fourths of a savage—that fact we must begin in honesty by admitting—at the same time, he was a very brilliant, and, even in many respects attractive, savage. His letters, though suffering like those of some other distinguished authors from being trans¬ lated, are full of touches of fiery eloquence, mixed with bombast and the wildest and most monstrously inflated self-pretension. His habits certainly were not commendable. He habitually drank, and it is also said ate a great deal more than was good for him. He ill-used his unlucky prisoners. He divorced one wife to marry another, and was eager to have a third in the lifetime of the second, making proposals at the same time to the deputy for the hand of his sister, and again and again petitioning the queen to provide him with some “ English gentlewoman of noble blood, meet for my vocation, so that by her good civility and bring¬ ing up the country would become civil.” In spite however of these and a few other lapses from the received modern code of morals and decorum, Shane c the Proud is an attractive figure in his way, and we follow his fortunes with an interest which more estimable heroes fail sometimes to awaken. The Baron of Dungannon was in the meantime dead, having been slain in a scuffle with his half- brother’s followers—some said by his half-brother’s own hand—previous to his father’s death. His son, however, who was still a boy, was safe in England, and now appealed through his relations to the Government, and Sir Henry Sidney, who in Lord DEFEAT OF SUSSEX BY SHANE. l6y Sussex’s absence was in command, marched from Dublin to support the English candidate. At a meeting which took place at Dundalk Shane seems however to have convinced Sidney to some degree of the justice of his claim, and hostilities were delayed until the matter could be reported to the queen. Upon Sussex’s return from England they broke out again. Shane, however, had by this time con¬ siderably strengthened his position. Not only had he firmly established himself in the allegiance of his own tribe, but had found allies and assistants outside it. There had of late been a steady migration of Scotch islanders into the North of Ireland, “ Redshanks ” as they were familarly called, and a body of these, got together by Shane and kept as a body-guard, enabled him to act with unusual rapidity and decision. Upon Sussex attempting to detach two chieftains, O’Reilly of Brefny and O’Donnell of Tyrconnel, who owed him allegiance, Shane flew into Brefny and Tyr¬ connel, completely overawed the two waverers, and carried off Calvagh O’Donnell with his wife, who was a sister-in-law of the Earl of Argyle. The following summer he encountered Sussex himself and defeated him, sending his army flying terror-stricken back upon Armagh. This feat established him as the hero of the North. No army which Sussex could again gather together could be induced to risk the fate of its predecessor. The deputy was a poor soldier, feeble and vacillating in the field. He was no match for his fiery assailant; and after an attempt to get over the difficulty by suborning one Neil Grey to make away with the too successful i68 against shane o^neilL. Shane, he was reduced to the necessity of coming to terms. An agreement was entered into with the assistance of the Earl of Kildare, by which Shane agreed to present himself at the English Court, and there, if he could, to make good his claims in person before the queen. Eew scenes are more picturesque, or stand out more vividly before our imagination than this visit of the turbulent Ulster chieftain to the capital of his un¬ known sovereign. As he came striding down the London streets on his way to the Palace, the citizens ran to their doors to stare at the redoubtable Irish rebel with his trainof gallowglasses at his heels —huge bareheaded fellows clad in saffron shirts, their huge naked axes swung over their shoulders, their long hair streaming behind them, their great hairy mantles dangling nearly to their heels. So attended, and in such order, Shane presented himself before the queen, amid a buzz, as may be imagined, of courtly astonishment. Elizabeth seems to have been equal to the situation. She motioned Shane, who had prostrated himself, clansman fashion upon the floor, to rise, “check’d with a glance the circle’s smile,’’ eyeing as she did so, not without characteristic appreciation, the redoubtable thews and sinews of this the most formidable of her vassals. Her appreciation, equally characteristically, did not hinder her from taking advantage of a flaw in his safe-conduct to keep Shane fuming at her Court until he had agreed to her own terms. When at last he was allowed to return home it was with a sort of compromise of his claim. He was not to call himself THE RULE OF SHANE. l6cj Earl of Tyrone—a distinction to which, in truth, he seems to have attached little importance—but he was allowed to be still the O’Neill, with the addi¬ tional title of “Captain of Tyrone.” To which the wits of the Court added— “Shane O’Neill, Lord of the North of Ireland ; Cousin of St. Patrick. Friend of the Queen of England ; Enemy of all the world besides.’’ Shane and his gallowglasses went home, and for some two years he and the Irish Government left one another comparatively alone. He was supreme now in the North, and ruled his own subjects at his own pleasure and according to his own rude fashion. Sussex made another attempt not long after to poi.son him in a gift of wine, which all but killed him and his entire household, which still included the unhappy “ Countess ” and her yet more unhappy husband Calvagh O’Donnell, whom Shane kept securely ironed in a cell at the bottom of his castle. The incident did not add to his confidence in the Queen’s Govern¬ ment, or incline him to trust himself again in their hands, which, all things considered, was hardly sur¬ prising. That in his own wild way Shane kept the North in order even his enemies admitted. While the East and West of Ireland were distracted with feuds, and in the South Ormond and Desmond were wasting one another’s country with unprecedented ferocity. Ulster was comparatively peaceable and prosperous. Chiefs who made themselves objectionable to Shane felt the weight of his arm, but that perhaps had not a 170 WARS AGAINST SHANE O^NEILL. little to say to this tranquillity. Mr. Froude—uo ex¬ aggerated admirer of Irish heroes—tells us apropos of this time, “In O’Neill’s county alone in Ireland were peasants prosperous, or life and property safe,” though he certainly adds that their prosperity flourished largely upon the spoils collected by them from the rest of the country. That Shane himself believed that he had so far kept his word with Elizabeth is pretty evident, for in a letter to her written in his usual inflated style about the notorious Sir Thomas Stukeley, he entreats that she will pardon the latter “ for his sake and in the name of the services which he had himself rendered to England.” Whether Elizabeth, or still more Sidney, were equally convinced of those services is an open question. Shane’s career however was rapidly running to a close. In 1565 he made a sudden and unexpected descent upon the Scots in Antrim, where, after a fierce combat, an immense number of the latter were slaughtered, a feat for which he again had the audacity to write to Elizabeth and assure her that it was all done in her service. Afterwards he made a descent on Connaught, driving back with him into his own country over 4000 head of cattle which he had captured. His game, however, was nearly at an end. Sir Henry Sidney was now back in Ireland, this time with the express purpose of crushing the rebel, and had marched into Ulster with a con¬ siderable force for that purpose. Shane, nevertheless, still showed a determined front. He struck up an alliance with Argyle, and wrote to France for ENERGY OF SIDNEY. 171 instant aid to hold Ulster against Elizabeth, nay, in spite of his recent achievement, he seems to have even hoped to win the Scotch settlers over to his side. Sidney however was this time in earnest, and was a man of very different calibre from Sussex, in whom Shane had previously found so easy an antagonist- He marched right across Ulster, and entered Tyrcon- nel ; reinstated the O’Donnells who had been driven thence by Shane ; continued his march to Sligo, and from there to Connaught, leaving Colonel Randolph and the O’Donnells to hold the North and finish the work which he had begun. Randolph’s camp was pitched at Derry—not then the protegee of London, nor yet famed in story, but a mere insignificant hamlet, consisting of an old castle and a disused graveyard. It was this latter site that the unlucky English commander selected for his camp, with, as might be expected, the most disas¬ trous results. Fever broke out, the water proved to be poisonous, and in a short time half the force were dead or dying, Randolph himself being amongst the former. An e.xplosion which occurred in a magazine finished the disaster, and the scared sur¬ vivors escaped in dismay to Carrickfergus. Local superstition long told tales of the fiery portents and miracles by which the heretic soldiery were driven from the sacred precincts which their presence had pointed. With that odd strain of greatness which ran through her, Elizabeth seems to have accepted this disaster well, and wrote “comfortable words” to Sidney upon the subject. For the time being, however, the attack 172 AGAINST SHANE o'NEILL. upon Shane devolved of necessity wholly upon his native foes. Aided by good fortune they proved for once more than a match for him. Encouraged by the disaster of the Derry garrison, Shane made a hasty advance into Tyrconnel, and crossed with a consider¬ able force over the ford of Lough Swilly, near Letter- kenny. He found the O’Donnells, though fewer in number than his own forces, established in a strong position upon the other side. From this position he tried to drive them by force, but the O’Donnells were prepared, and Shane’s troops coming on in disorder were beaten back upon the river. The tide had in the meantime risen, and there was therefore no escape. Penned between the flood and the O’Donnells, over 3000 of his men perished, many by drowning, but the greater number being hacked to death upon the strand. Shane himself narrowly escaped with his life by another ford." The Hero of the North was now a broken man. Such a disaster was not to be retrieved. The English troops were again coming rapidly up. The victorious O’Donnells held all the country behind him. A French descent, even if it had come, would hardly have saved him now. In this extremity a desperate plan occurred to him. Followed by a few horsemen, and accompanied by the unhappy “Countess” who had so long shared his curious fortunes, he rode off to the camp of the Scotch settlers in Antrim, there to throw himself on their mercy and implore their support. It was an insane move. He was received with seeming courtesy, and a banquet spread in his MURDER OF SHANE. 173 honour. Lowering looks however were bent upon him from every side of the table. Captain Pierce, an English officer, had been busy the day before stirring up the smouldering embers of anger. Suddenly a taunt was flung out by one of the guests at the discomfited hero. Shane—forgetting perhaps where he was—sprang up to revenge it. A dozen swords and skeans blazed out upon him, and he fell, pierced by three or four of his entertainers at once. His body was then tossed into an old ruined chapel hard by, where the next day his head was hacked off by Captain Pierce, and carried to Sidney, who sent it to be spiked upon Dublin Castle. It was but too characteristic an end of an eminently characteristic career. Sr. J'AlKlCK'ii UELl,. XXV. BETWEEN TWO STORMS. By 1566 Sir Henry Sidney became Lord-deputy, not now in the room of another, but fully appointed.’ With the possible exception of Sir John Perrot, he was certainly the ablest of all the viceroys to whom Elizabeth committed power in Ireland. Unlike others he had the advantage, too, of having served first in the country in subordinate capacities, and so earning his experience. He even seems to have been fairly popular, which, considering the nature of some of his proceedings, throws a somewhat sinister light, it must be owned, upon those of his successors and predecessors. After the death and defeat ot Shane the Proud a lull took place, and the new deputy took the oppor¬ tunity of making a progress through the south and west of the island, which he reports to be all terribly wasted by war. Many districts, he says, “ had but one- twentieth part of their former population.” Galway, worn out by incessant attacks, could scarcely defend her walls. Athenry had but four respectable house¬ holders left, who “sadly presenting the rusty keys of their once famous town, confessed themselves unable to defend it.” SIR HENRY SIDNEY, LORD-DEPUTY FROM 1565 TO I587. {From an engraviii^ by Hardhig.) 176 BETWEEN TWO STORMS. Sidney was one of the first to relinquish what had hitherto been the favourite and traditional policy of all English governors, that, namely, of playing one great lord or chieftain against another, and to attempt the larger task of putting down and punish¬ ing all signs of insubordination especially in the great. In this respect he was the political parent of Strafford, who acted the same part sixty years later. He had not—any more than his great successor—to reproach himself either with feebleness in the execution of his policy. The number of military executions that mark his progress seem to have startled his own coadjutors, and even to have evoked some slight remonstrance from Elizabeth herself. “ Down they go at every corner! ” the Lord-deputy writes at this time triumphantly in an account of his own proceed¬ ings, “ and down, God willing, they shall go.” A plan for appointing presidents of provinces had been a favourite with the late deputy, Sussex, and was now revived. Sir Edward Litton, one of the judges of the Queen’s Bench, was appointed to the province of Connaught—a miserably poor appoint¬ ment as it turned out ; Sir John Perrot a little later to Munster ; Leinster for the present the deputy reserved for himself. This done he returned, first pausing to arrest the Earl of Desmond and carrying him and his brother captive to Dublin and eventually to London, where according to the queen’s orders he was to be brought in order that she might adjudicate herself in the quarrel between him and Ormond. The two earls—they were stepson and stepfather by the way—had for years been at fierce feud, a feud MILITARY COLONIES. 177 whicli had desolated the greater part of the South of Ireland. It was a question of titles and ownership, and therefore exclusively one for the lawyers. The queen, however, was resolv'ed that it should be de¬ cided in Ormond’s favour. Ormond was “sib to the Boleyns ; ” Ormond had been the playmate of “ that sainted young Solomon, King Edward,” and Ormond therefore, it was quite clear, must know whether the lands were his own or not. Against the present Desmond nothing worse was charged than that he had enforced what he considered his palatinate rights in the old, high-handed, time- immemorial fashion. His father, however, had been in league with Spain, and he himself was held to be contumacious, and had never been on good terms with any of the deputies. On this occasion he had, however, surrendered himself voluntarily to Sidney. Nevertheless, upon his arrival he was kept a close prisoner, and upon attempting, sometime afterwards,to escape, was seized, and only received his life on condition of surren¬ dering the whole of his ancestral estates to the Crown, a surrender which happened to fit in very con¬ veniently with a plan upon which the attention of the English Council was at that time turned. The expenses of Ireland were desperately heavy, and Elizabeth’s frugal soul was bent upon some plan for their reduction. A scheme for reducing the cost of police duty by means of a system of military colonies had long been a favourite one, and an oppor¬ tunity now occurred for turning it into practice. A number of men of family, chiefly from Devonshire 1,1 178 BETWEEN TWO STORMS. and Somersetshire, undertook to migrate in a body to Ireland, taking with them their own farm ser¬ vants, their farm implements, and everything neces¬ sary for the work of colonization. The leader of these men was Sir Peter Carcw, who held a shadowy claim over a vast tract of territory, dating from the reign of Henry II., a claim which, however, had been effectually disposed of by the lawyers. The scheme as it was first proposed was a truly gigantic one. A line was to be drawn from Limerick to Cork, and everything south of that line was to be given over to the adventurers. As for the natives, they said, they would undertake to settle with them. All they re¬ quired was the queen’s permission. Everything else they could do for themselves. So heroic a measure was not to be put in force at once. As far as Carew’s claims went, he took the matter, however, into his own hands by forcibly ex¬ pelling the occupiers of the lands in question, and putting his own retainers into them. As fortune would have it, amongst the first lands thus laid hold of were some belonging to the Butlers, brothers of Lord Ormond, and therefore probably the only Irish landowners whose cry for justice was pretty certain just then to be heard in high quarters. Horrible tales of the atrocities committed by Carew and his band were reported by Sir Edward Butler, who upon his side was not slow to commit retaliations of the same sort. A spasm of anger, and a wild dread of coming contingencies flew through the whole South of Ire¬ land. Sir James P'itzmaurice, cousin of the Earl of Desmond, broke into open rebellion ; so did also both PACIFICATION OF ORMOND. 179 the younger Butlers. Ormond himself, who was In I'higland, was as angry as the fiercest, and informed Cecil in plain terms that “ if the lands of good sub¬ jects were not to be safe, he for one would be a good subject no longer.” It was no part of the policy of the Government to alienate the one man in Ireland upon whose loyalty they could depend at a pinch. By the personal efforts of the queen his wrath was at last pacified, and he agreed to accept her earnest assurance that towards him at least no injury was intended. This done, he induced his brothers to withdraw from the alliance, while Sir Henry Sidney, sword in hand, went into Munster and carried out the work of pacification in the usual fashion, burning villages, destroying the harvest, driving off cattle, blowing up castles, and hanging their garrisons in strings over the battlements. After which he marched to Connaught, leaving Sir Humphrey Gilbert behind him to keep order in the south. For more than two years Sir James Fitzmauricc continued to hold out in his rocky fastness amongst the Galtesc mountains. A sort of grim humour pervades the relations between him and Sir John I’errot, the new President of Munster. Perrot had boasted upon his arrival that he would soon “ hunt that fox out of his hole.” The fo.x, however, showed a disposition to take the part of .the lion, sallying out unexpectedly, ravaging the entire district, burning Kilmallock, and returning again to his mountains before he could be interfered with. The following yearhe marched intoUIster, and on his way home burnt Athlone, the P'nglish garrison there looking help- l8o BETWEEN TWO STORMS. lessly on ; joined the two Mac-an-Earlas as they were called, the sons of Lord Clanricarde, and assisted them to lay waste Galway, and so returned triumphantly across the Shannon to Tipperary. Once Perrot all but made an end of him, but his soldiers took that convenient opportunity of mutinying, and so baulked their leader of his prey. Another time, in despair of bringing the matter to any conclusion, the president proposed that it should be decided by single combat between them, a proposal which Fitz- maurice prudently resisted on the ground that though Perrot’s place could no doubt readily be supplied, his own was less easy to fill, and that therefore for his followers’ sake he must decline. At last the long game of hide-and-seek was brought to an end by Sir James offering to submit, to which Perrot agreeing, he took the required oaths in the church of Kilmallock, the scene of his former ravages, and kissed the president’s sword in token of his regret for “ the said most mischievous part.” This farce gravely gone through, he sailed for France, and Munster for a while was at peace. It was only a temporary/ luU though. The Desmond power was still too towering to be left alone, and both its defenders and the Government knew that they were merely indulging in a little breathing time before the final struggle. XXVi. THE DESMOND REBELLION. The tale of the great Desmond rebellion which ended only with the ruin of that house, and with the slaughter or starvation of thousands of its unhai^py adherents, is one of those abortive tragedies of which the whole history of Ireland is full. Our pity for the victims’ doom, and our indignation for the cold-blooded cruelty with which that doom was carried out, is mingled with a reluctant realization of the fact that the state of things which preceded it was practically impossible, that it had become an anomaly, and that as such it was bound either to change or to perish. From the twelfth century onwards, the Desmond Geraldines had been lords, as has been seen, of a vast tract of Ireland, covering the greater part of Munster. Earlier and perhaps more completely than any of the other great Norman houses, they had become Irish chieftains rather than English subjects, and the opening of Elizabeth’s reign found them still what for centuries past they had been, and with their power, within their own limits, little if at all curtailed. The Desmond ASK.EATON CASTLE, THE PROPERTY OF THE EARLS OF DESMOND. [From ttu " Pacata HiterniaP of Sir G. Carew.) t^REPARATIONS FOR THE STRUGGLE. 183 of the day had still his own judges or Brehons, by whose judgment he professed to rule. He had still his own palatinate courts ; he still collected his dues by force, driving away his clansmen’s cattle, and distraining those who resisted him. Only a few years before this time, during an expedition of the kind, he and Ormond had encountered one another in the open field at Affane, upon the Southern Blackwater, each side flying their banners, and shouting their war cries as if no queen’s represen¬ tative had ever been seen or heard of. Such a state of things, it was plain, could not go on indefinitely, would not indeed have gone on as long but for the confusion and disorder in which the coun¬ try had always been plunged, and especially the want of all settled communication. The palatinate of Ormond, it is true, was theoretically in much the same state, but then Ormond was a keener sighted and a wiser man than Desmond, and knew when the times demanded redress. He had of late even made some effort to abolish the abominable system of “ coyne and livery,” although, as he himself frankly admits, he was forced to impose it again in another form not long afterwards. Sir James meanwhile had left Ireland, and at every Catholic Court in Europe was busily pleading for aid towards a crusade against England. Failing in France, he appealed to Philip of Spain. Philip, however, at the moment was not prepared to break with Elizabeth, whereupon Fitzmaurice, undeterred by failure, pre¬ sented himself next before the Pope. Here he was more successful, and preparations for the collection of 184 DESMOND REBELLION. a considerable force was at once set on foot, a pro¬ minent English refugee, Dr. Nicolas Saunders, being appointed to accompany it as legate. Saunders, who had distinguished himself not long before by a violent personal attack against Elizabeth, threw himself heart and soul into the enterprise, and in a letter to Philip pointed out all the advantages that were to be won by it to the Catholic cause. “Men,” he assured him, “ were not needed.” Guns, powder, a little money, and a ship or two with stores from Spain, and the whole country would soon be at his feet. Although absurdly ignorant, as his own letters prove, of a country of which he had once been nominally king, Philip knew rather more probably about the circumstance of the case than Saunders, and he met these insinuating suggestions coldly. A fleet in the end was fitted out and sent from Civita Vecchia, under the command of an English adventurer Stuke- ley, the same Stukeley in whose favour we saw Shane O’Neill appealing to Elizabeth. Though it started for Ireland it never arrived there. Touching at Lisbon, Stukeley was easily persuaded to give up his first scheme, and to join Sebastian, king of Portugal, in a buccaneering expedition to Morocco, and at the battle of Alcansar both he and Sebastian with the greater part of their men were killed. Fitzmaurice meanwhile had gone to Spain by land, and had there embarked for Ireland, accompanied by his wife, two children, Saunders, the legate, Allen, an Irish priest, a small party of Italians and Spaniards, and a few English refugees, and bringing with them LANDING OF DESMOND. 185 a banner especially consecrated by the Pope for this service. d'heir landing-place was Dingle, and from there ■ they crossed to Smervvick, where they fortified the small island peninsula of Oilen-an-Oir, or “ Gold Island,” where they were joined by John and James Fitzgerald, brothers of the Earl of Desmond, and by a party of two hundred O’Flaherties from lar Con¬ naught, who, however, speedily left again. But Desmond still vacillated helplessly. Now that the time had come he could not make up his mind what to do, or with whom to side. He was evidentl)’ cowed. His three imprisonments lay heavily upon his soul. He knew the power of England better too than most of his adherents, and shrank from measuring his own strength against it. What he did not realize was that it was too late now to go back. He had stood out for what he considered his own rights when it would have been more politic to have submitted, and now he wanted to submit when it was only too plain to all who could read the signs of the times that the storm was already upon him, and that no humility or late-found loyalty could avail to avert that doom which hung over his house. If Desmond himself was slow to rise, the whole South of Ireland was in a state of wild tumult and excitement when the news of the actual arrival of P'itzmaurice and the legate became known. Nor in the south alone. In Connaught and the Pale the excitement was very little less. Kildare, like Desmond, held back fearing the personal consequences of rebellion, but all the younger lords of the Pale were eager to throw in their lot with CATHERINE, THE “ OLD ” COUNTESS OF DESMOND. (Reputed to have been killed at the age of 120 by a fall from a cherry tree.) {From the Burne Collection^ DEATH OF FITZMAURICE. 187 Fitzmaurlce. Alone amongst the Irishmen of his day, he possessed all the necessary qualifications of a leader. He had already for years successfully resisted the English. He was known to be a man of great courage and tenacity, and his reputation as a general stood deservedly high in the opinion of all his countrymen. That extraordinary good fortune, however, which has so often befallen England at awkward moments, and never more conspicuously than during the closing years of the sixteenth century, did not fail now. Eitzmaurice started for Connaught to encourage the insurrection which had been fast ripening there under the brutal rule of Sir Nicolas Malby, its governor. A trumpery quarrel had recently broken out between the Desmonds and the Mayo Bourkes, and this insignificant affair sealed the fate of what at one moment promised to be the most formidable rebellion which had ever assailed the English power in Ireland. At a place called Barrington’s Bridge, not far from Limerick, where the little river Muckern or Mulkearn was then crossed by a ford, Fitz- maurice was set upon by the Bourkes. Only a few followers were with him at the time, and in turning to expostulate with one of his assailants, he was killed by a pistol shot, and fell from his horse. This was upon the i8th of August, 1579. From that moment the Desmond rising was doomed. Desmond meanwhile still sat vacillating in his own castle of Askeaton, neither joining the rising, nor yet exerting himself vigorously to put it down. Malby, who had newly arrived from Connaught, took i88 THE DESMOND REBELLION. steps to hasten his decision. Ordering the earl to come to him, and the latter still hesitating, he marched against Askeaton, utterly destroyed the town up to the walls of the castle, burning everything in the neighbourhood, including the abbey and the tombs of the Desmonds, the castle itself only escaping through the lack of ammunition. This hint seems to have sufficed. Desmond was at last convinced that the time for temporizing was over. He rose, and all Munster rose with him. Ormond was still in London, and hurried over to find all in disorder. Drury had lately died, and the only other English com¬ mander, Malby, was crippled for want of men, and had been obliged to retreat into Connaught. The new deputy. Sir William Pelham, had just arrived, and he and Ormond now proceeded to make a concerted attack. Advancing in two separate columns they destroyed everything which came in their way ; men, women, children, infants, the old, the blind, the sick all alike were mercilessly slaughtered ; not a roof, how¬ ever humble, was spared ; not a living creature that crossed their path survived to tell the tale. Lady P'itzmauricc and her two little children seem to have been amongst the number of these nameless and un¬ counted victims, for they were never heard of again. From Adare and Askeaton to the extreme limits of Kerry, everythmg perishable was destroyed. The two commanders met one another at Tralee, and from this point carried on their raid in unison, and returned, to Askeaton and Cork, leaving the whole country a desert behind them. There was little or no resistance. The Desmond clansmen were not soldiers ; they were HELP FROM SPAIN. 189 unarmed, or armed only with spears and skeans. They had just lost their only leader. They could do nothing but sullenly watch the progress of the English forces. Desmond, his two brothers, and the legate were already fugitives. The rising seemed to be all but crushed, when a new incident occurred to spur it into a momentary vitality. Four Spanish vessels, containing 800 men, chiefly Italians, had managed to pass unperceived by the English admiral, Winter’s, fleet, and to land at Smerwick, where they established themselves in Fitz- maurice’s dismantled fort. They found everything in confusion. They had brought large supplies of arms for their Irish allies, but there were apparently no Irish allies to give them to. The legate and Desmond had first to be found, and now that arms had come, the Munster tribesmen had for the most part been killed or dispersed. Ormond and Pelham’s terrible raid had done its work, and the heart of the rising was broken. The Pale, however, had now caught the fire, and though Kildare, its natural leader, still hung back, Lord Baltinglass and some of the bolder spirits flew to arms, and threw themselves into the Wicklow highlands where they joined their forces with those of the O’Byrnes, and were presently joined by Sir John of Desmond and a handful of Fitzgeralds. Lord Grey de Wilton had by this time arrived in Ireland as deputy. Utterly inexperienced in Irish wars, he despised and underrated the capabilities of those opposed to him, and refused peremptorily to listen to the advice of more experienced men. Hastening south, his advanced guard was caught by Baltinglass igo THE DESMOND REBELLION. and the other insurgents in the valley of GlenmalurO. A well-directed fire was poured into the defile ; the English troops broke, and tried to flee, and were shot down in numbers amongst the rocks. Lord Grey had no time to retrieve this disaster. Leaving the Pale tc the mercy of the successful rebels, he hastened south, and arrived in Kerry before Smerwick fort. Amongst the small band of officers who accompanied him on this occasion were Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, both then young men, and both of them all but unknown to fame. The English admiral. Winter, with his fleet had long been delayed by bad weather. When at length it arrived, cannon were landed and laid in position upon the sand hills. Next day the siege com¬ menced. There was heavy firing on both sides, but the fort was soon found to be untenable. The garrison thereupon offered to capitulate, and an uncondi¬ tional surrender was demanded. There being no alter¬ native, these terms were accepted. Lord Grey there¬ upon “ put in certain bands,” under the command of Captain Raleigh. “The Spaniard,” says Spenser, who was an eye-witness of the whole scene, “ did absolutely yield himself, and the fort, and all therein, and only asked mercy.” This, “ it was not thought good,” he adds, “to show them.” They were accordingly all slaughtered in cold blood, a few women and priests who were with them hanged, the officers being reserved for ransom. “There was no other way,” Spenser observes in conclusion, “ but to make that end of them as thus was done.” ^ ' “View of the State of Ireland,” pp. 5, ii. DESMOND A FUGITIVE. igl This piece of work satisfactorily finished, Grey returned rapidly to Dublin to crush the Leinster insurgents. Kildare and Delvin, though they had kept themselves clear of the rebellion, were arrested and thrown into prison. Small bands of troopers were sent into the Wicklow mountains to hunt out the insurgents. Baltinglass escaped to the Con¬ tinent, but the two Eustaces his brothers, with Garrot O’Toole, were caught, killed, and their heads sent to Dublin. Clanricarde’s two sons, the Mac-an- Earlas, were out in the Connemara mountains and could not be got at; but Malby again overran their country, burning houses and slaughtering wdthout mercy. In Dublin, the Anglo-Irishmen of the Pale were being brought to trial for treason, and hung or beheaded in batches. Kildare w'as sent to England to die in the Tower. With the exception of the North, which on this occasion had kept quiet, the whole country had become one great reeking shambles ; what sword and rope and torch had spared, famine came in to complete. The Earl of Desmond was now a houseless fugitive, hunted like a wolf or mad dog through the valleys and over the mountains of his own ancestral “ king¬ dom.” His brothers had already fallen. Sir John Fitzgerald had been killed near Cork, and his body hung head downwards, by Raleigh’s order, upon the bridge of the river Lee. The other brother. Sir James, had met with a similar fate. Saunders, the legate, had died of cold and exposure. Desmond alone escaped, time after time, and month after month. Hunted, des¬ perate, in want of the bare necessities of life, he was still ig2 THE DESMOND REBELLION. in his own e3''es the Desmond, ancestral owner of nearly a hundred miles of territory. Never in his most suc¬ cessful period a man of any particular strength of character, sheer pride seems to have upheld him now. He scorned to make terms with his hated enemy, Ormond. If he jdelded to any one, he sent word, it would be only to the queen herself in person. He was not given the chance. Hunted over the Slievemish mountains, with the price of .1^1,000 on his head, one by one the trusty companions who had clung to him so faithfully were taken and killed. His own course could inevitably be but a short one. News reached the English captain at Castlemain one night that the prey was not far off. A dozen English soldiers stole up the stream in the grey of the morning. The cabin where the Desmond lay was surrounded, the door broken in, and the earl stabbed before there was time for him to spring from his bed. The tragedy had now been played out to the bitterest end. As formerly with the Leinster Geraldines, so now with the Mun¬ ster ones, of the direct heirs of the house only a single child was left, a feeble boy, afterwards known by the significant title of the “ Tower Earl,” with the extinguishing of whose sickly tenure of life the very name of Desmond ceases to appear upon the page of Irish history XXVII. BETWEEN TWO MORE STORM.S. Two great risings against Elizabeth’s power in Ireland had thus been met and suppressed. A third and a still more formidable one was yet to come. The interval was filled with renewed efforts at colonization upon a yet larger scale than before. Munster, which at the beginning of the Desmond rising had been accounted the most fertile province in Ireland, was now little better than a desert. Not once or twice’ but many times the harvest had been burnt and de¬ stroyed, and great as had been the slaughter, numerous as were the executions, they had been far eclipsed by the multitude of those who had died of sheer famine. Spenser’s evidence upon this point has been often quoted, but no other words will bring the picture before us in the same simple, awful vividness ; nor must it be forgotten that the man who tells it was under no temptation to exaggerate having himself been a sharer in the deeds which had produced so sickening a calamity. “They were brought to such wretchedness,” he says, “ that any stony heart would rue the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens, they 14 194 BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS. 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. They did eat the dead carrions, where they did find them, yea and one another soon after, in as much as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves ; and if they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they thronged as to a feast.” To replace this older population, thus starved, slaughtered, made away with by sword and pestilence with new colonists was the scheme of the hour. Desmond’s vast estate, covering nearly six hundred thousand Irish acres, not counting waste land, had all been declared forfeit to the Crown. This and a con¬ siderable portion of territory also forfeit in Leinster was now offered to English colonists upon the most advantageous terms. No rent was to be paid at first, and for ten years the undertakers were to be allowed to send their exports duty free. Many eminent names figure in the long list ot these “ undertakers ” ; amongst them Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Wareham St. Leger, Edmund Spenser himself. Sir Thomas Norris, and others, all of whom received grants of different portions. But “the greater,” says Leland, “their rank and consequence, the more were they emboldened to neglect the terms of their grant.” Instead of com¬ pleting their stipulated number of tenantry, the same persons often were admitted as tenants to different undertakers, and in the same seniory sometimes served at once as freeholder, leaseholder, and copy- FAILURE OF COLONIZATION SCHEME. I95 holder, so as to fill up the necessary number of each denomination. The whole scheme of colonization proved, in short, a miserable failure. English farmers and labourers declined to come over in sufficient numbers. Those that did come left again in despair after a time. The dispossessed owners hung about, and raided the goods of the settlers whenever opportunity offered. The exasperation on both sides increased as years went on ; the intruders becoming fewer and more tyrannical, the natives rapidly growing more numerous and more desperate. It was plain that the struggle would break out again at the first chance which offered itself. That occasion arose not in Munster itself, but at the opposite end of the island. In Ulster the great southern rising had produced singularly little excite¬ ment. The chiefs for the most part had remained aloof, and to a great degree, loyal. The O’Don¬ nells, who had been reinstated it will be remem¬ bered in their own territory by Sidney, kept the peace. Sir John Perrot, who after the departure of Grey became Lord-deputy, seems in spite of his severity to have won confidence. Old Tyrlough Luinagh who had been elected O’Neill at the death of Shane, .seems even to have felt a personal attachment for him, which is .humorously shown by his con¬ senting on several occasions to appear at his court in English attire, habiliments which the Irish, like the the Scotch chiefs, objected to strongly as tending to make them ridiculous. “ Prythee at least, my lord,” he is reported to have said on one of these occasions, “ let my chaplain attend me in his Irish fitzwilliam's search for treasure, igy mantle, that so your English rabble may be directed from my uncouth figure and laugh at him.” Perrot, however, had now fallen under the royal displeasure ; had been recalled and sent to the Tower, a common enough climax in those days to years spent in the arduous Irish service. His place was taken in 1588 by Sir William Fitzwilliam, who had held it nearly thirty years earlier. Fitzwilliam was a man of very inferior calibre to Perrot. Avari¬ cious by nature he had been highly dissatisfied with the poor rewards which his former services had ob¬ tained. Upon making some remonstrance to that effect he had been told that the “ position of an Irish Lord-deputy was an honourable one and should challenge no reward.” Upon this hint he seems now to have acted. Since the Lord-deputy was not to be better rewarded, the Lord-deputy, he apparently con¬ cluded,had better help himself The Spanish Armada had been destroyed a few years back, and ships be¬ longing to it had been strewed in dismal wreck all along the North, South, and West coasts of Ireland. It was believed that much gold had been hidden away by the wretched survivors, and fired with the hope of laying his own hands upon this treasure. Sir William first issued a permission for searching, and then started himself upon the search. He marched into Ulster in the dead of winter, at considerable cost to the State, and with absolutely no result. Either, as was most likely, there was no treasure, or the treasure had been well hidden. Furious at this disappointment he ar¬ rested two upon his own showing of the most loyal and law-abiding landowners in Ulster, Sir Owen ig8 BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS. McToole and Sir John O’Dogherty; dragged them back to Dublin with him, flung them into the castle, and demanded a large sum for their liberation. This was a high-handed proceeding in all conscience, but there was worse to come ; it seemed as if the new deputy had laid himself out for the task of in¬ flaming Ulster to the highest possible pitch of exaspe¬ ration, and so of once more awakening the scarce extin¬ guished flames of civil war. McMahon, the chief of Monaghan, had surrendered his lands, held previously by tanistry, and had received a new grant of them under the broad seal of England, to himself and his heirs male, and failing such heirs to his brother Hugh. At his death Hugh went to Dublin and re¬ quested to be put into possession of his inheritance. This Fitzwilliam agreed to, and returned with him to Monaghan, apparently for the purpose. Hardly had he arrived there, however, before he trumped up an accusation to the effect that Hugh McMahon had collected rents two years previously by force— the only method, it may be said in passing, by which in those unsettled parts of the country rents ever were collected at all. It was not an offence by law being committed outside the shire, and he was therefore tried for it by court-martial. He was brought before a jury of private soldiers, condemned, and executed in two days. His estate was thereupon broken up, the greater part of it being divided between Sir Henry Bag- nail, three or four English officers, and some Dublin lawyers, the Crown reserving for itself a quit rent. Little wonder if the other Ulster landowners felt that their turn would come next, and that no loyalty coulc] THE EARL OF TYRONE. igg assure a man’s safety so long as he had anything to lose that was worth the taking. At this time the natural leader of the province was not Tyrlough Luinagh, who though called the O’Neill was an old man and failing fast. The real leader was Hugh O’Neill, son of Matthew the first Baron of Dungannon, who had been killed, it will be remem¬ bered, by Shane O’Neill, by whose connivance Hugh’s elder brother had also, it was believed, been made away with. Hugh had been educated in England, had been much at Court, and had found favour with Elizabeth, who had confirmed him in the title of Earl of Tyrone which had been originally granted to his grandfather. Tyrone was the very antipodes of Shane, the last great O’Neill leader. He was much more, in fact, of an English politician and courtier than an Irish chieftain He had served in the English army ; had fought with credit under Grey in Munster, and was intimately acquainted with all the leading Englishmen of the day. Even his religion, unlike that of most Irish Catholics of the day, seems to have sat but lightly upon him. Captain Lee, an English officer, quar¬ tered in Ulster, in a very interesting letter to the queen written about this time, assures her confiden¬ tially that, although a Roman Catholic, he “ is less dangerously or hurtfully so than some of the greatest in the English Pale,” for that when he accompanied the Lord-deputy to church “ he will stay and hear a sermon ; ” whereas they “ when they have reached the church door depart as if they were wild cats.” He adds, as a further recommendation, that by way of 200 BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS. domestic chaplain he has at present but “ one little cub of an English priest.” Lord Essex in still plainer terms told Tyrone himself when he was posing as the champion of Catholicism : “ Dost thoti talk of a free exercise of religion ! Why thou carest as little for religion as my horse.” Such a man was little likely to rush blindly into a rebellion in which he had much to lose and little to gain. He knew, as few Irishmen knew, the strength of England. He knew something also of Spain, and of what had come of trusting for help in that direction. Hitherto, therefore, his influence had been steadily thrown upon the side of order. He had more than once assisted the deputy to put down risings in the north, and, on the Avhole, had borne his part loyally as a dutiful subject of the queen. Now, however, he had come to a point where the ways branched. He had to choose his future course, and there were many causes pushing him all but irresistibly into an attitude of rebellion. One of these was the arbitrary arrest of his brother-in-law Hugh O’Donnell, called Red Hugh, who had been induced to come on board a Government vessel by means of a friendly invitation, and had been then and there seized, flung under hatches, and carried off as a hostage to Dublin Castle, from which, after years of imprisonment, he had managed to escape by stealth in the dead of winter, and arrived half dead of cold and exposure in his own country, where his treatment had aroused the bitterest and most implac¬ able hostility in the breast of all the clan. A more directly personal affair, and the one that probably REVOLT OF TYRONE. 201 more than any other single cause pushed Tyrone over the frontiers of rebellion, was the following. Upon the death of his wife he had fallen in love with Bagnall, the Lord-Marshall’s, sister, and had asked for her hand. This Bagnall, for some reason, refused, whereupon Tyrone, having already won the lady’s heart, carried her off, and they were married, an act which the marshall never forgave. From that moment he became his implacable enemy, made use of his position to ply the queen and Council with accusations against his brother- in-law, and when Tyrone replied to those charges the answers were intercepted. It took some time to undermine Elizabeth’s confidence in the earl, having previously had many proofs of his loyalty. It took some time, too, to induce Tyrone himself to go in the direction in which every event seemed now to be pushing him. Once, however, his mind was made up and his retreat cut off, he set to work at his prepa¬ rations upon a scale which soon showed the Govern¬ ment that they had this time no fiery half-savage Shane, no incapable vacillating Desmond to deal with. An alliance with the O’Donnells and the other chiefs of the north was his first step. He was by no means to be contented however with a merely provincial rising. He despatched messages to Connaught, and enlisted the Burkes in the affair ; also the O’Connor of Sligo, the McDermot and other western chiefs. In Wicklow the O’Byrnes, always ready for a fray, agreed to join the revolt, with all that was left of the tribes of Leix and Offaly. These, with the Kava- -.1 202 BET]VEEN TWO MORE STORMS. naghs and others, united to form a solemn union binding themselves to stand or fall together. To Spain Tyrone sent letters urging the necessity of an immediate despatch of troops. With the Pope he also put himself into communication, and the ris¬ ing was openly and avowedly declared to be a Catholic one. Just at this juncture old Tyrlough Luinagh died, and Tyrone forthwith assumed the soul-stirring name of “ The O’Neill ” for himself. Let the Spanish allies only arrive in time and the rule of England it was confidently declared would shortly in Ireland be a thing of the past. XXVIII. BATTLE OF THE YELLOW FORD. The northern river Blackwater—there are at least three Blackwaters in Ireland—forms the southern boundary of the county Tyrone, which takes a suc¬ cession of deep loops or elbows in order to follow its windings. At the end of the sixteenth century and for centuries previously it had marked the boundary of the territory of the chiefs or princes of Tyrone, and here, therefore, it was that the struggle between the earl and the queen’s troops advancing from Dublin was necessarily fought out. A good deal of desultory fighting took place at first, without any marked result upon either side. Tyrone got possession of the English fort which commanded the passage of the river, but it was in turn snatched from him by the lately arrived deputy. Lord Borough, who, however, was so severely wounded in the affray that he had to fall back upon Newry, where he not long afterwards died. Ireland was thus for the moment without a governor, and when after a temporary armistice, which Tyrone spun out as long as possible in hopes of his Spanish allies appearing, hostilities recommenced, the command de- 204 BATTLE OF THE YELLOW FORD. volved upon his brother-in-law and chief enemy, Sir Henry Bagnall. Bagnall had between four and five thousand men under him, Tyrone having about the same number, or a little less. A few years previously a very small body of English troops had been able, as we have seen, to put to flight fully three times their own number of Irish. In the last dozen years circum¬ stances however had in this respect very materially changed. The Desmond followers had been for the most part armed only with skeans and spears, much as their ancestors had been under Brian Boru. One English soldier armed with a gun could put to flight a dozen such assailants as easily as a sportsman a dozen wolves. Tyrone’s men, on the other hand, were almost as well armed as their antagonists. Some of these arms had come from Spain, others had been purchased at high prices from the English soldiery, others again from dealers in Dublin and elsewhere. Man to man, and with equal arms, the Ulster men were fully equal to their assailants, as they were now about to prove. In August, 1598, Bagnall advancing from the south found Tyrone engaged in a renewed attack upon the fort of Blackwater, which he had invested, and was endeavouring to reduce by famine. At the advance of Bagnall he withdrew however to a strong position a few miles from the fort, and there awaited attack. The battle was not long delayed. The bitter personal hatred which animated the two leaders seems to have communicated itself to the men, and the struggle was unprecedently fierce and bloody. In Defeat of bagnalL. 205 the thick of the engagement Bagnall, lifting his beaver for a moment to get air, was shot through the forehead and fell. His fall was followed by the com¬ plete rout of his army. Fifteen hundred soldiers and thirteen officers were killed, thirty-four flags taken, and all the artillery, ammunition, and pro¬ visions fell into the victor’s hands. The fort im¬ mediately surrendered, and the remains of the royal army fled in confusion to Armagh, which shortly abandoning, they again fled south, not attempting to re-form until they took refuge at last in Dundalk. Such an event as this could have but one result. All the wavererswere decided, and all determined to throw in their lot with the victor. The talisman of success is of more vital importance to an Irish army than probably to any other, not because the courage of its soldiers is less, but because their imagination is greater, and more easily worked upon. A soldier is probably better without too much imagi¬ nation. If the auguries are unfavourable he in¬ stinctively augments, and exaggerates them tenfold. Now, however, all the auguries were favourable. Hope stood high. The Catholic cause had never before showed so favourably. From Malin Head to Cape Clear all Ireland was in a wild buzz of excite¬ ment, and every fighting kern and gallowglass clutched his pike with a sense of coming triumph. XXIX. THE ESSEX FAILURE. Elizabeth was now nearly seventy years of age, and this was her third war in Ireland. Nevertheless, she and her Council girded themselves resolutely to the struggle. There could at least be no half-hearted measure now ; no petty pleas of economy; no pe¬ nurious doling out of men and money. No one, not even the queen herself, could reasonably question the gravity of the crisis. The next person to appear upon the scene is Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, whose brilliant mercurial figure flashes for a moment across the wild and troubled stage of Ireland, only the next to vanish like some Will-o’-the-wisp into an abyss of darkness and disaster. At that moment his fame as a soldier stood as high if not higher than that of any of his cotemporaries. If Raleigh or Sidney had more military genius, if his old rival. Sir Henry Norris, was a more capable general, the young earl had eclipsed all others in mere dash and brilliancy, and within the last few years had dazzled the eyes of the whole nation by the success of his famous feat in Spain, “ The most CAHIR CASTLE, TIPPERARY, TAKEN BY THE EARL OF ESSEX IN 1599. • {Froin i/ie “ Pacata Hibernia.") THE ESSEX EAILURE. 2 oS brilliant exploit,” sa.ys Lord Macaulay, “achieved by English arms upon the Continent, between Agin- court and Blenheim.” Essex was now summoned to the queen and given the supreme command in Ireland, with orders to pro¬ ceed at once to the reduction of Tyrone. An army of 20,000 infantry and 1,300 horse were placed under him, and the title of Lord-Lieutenant conferred, which had not been granted to any one under royal blood for centuries. He started with a brilliant train, including a number of well-born volunteers, who gladly offered their services to the popular favourite, and landed in Dublin early in the month of April, 1599. His disasters seem to have dated from the very moment of his setting foot on Irish soil. Contrary to orders, he had appointed his relative, the Earl of Southampton, to the command of the horse, an ap¬ pointment which even after peremptory orders from the queen he declined to cancel. He went south when he was eagerly expected to go north. Spent a whole fortnight in taking the single castle of Cahir ; lingered about the Limerick woods in pursuit of a nephew of the late Desmond, derisively known as the “ Sugane Earl,” or “ Earl of Straw,” who in the absence of the young heir had collected the remnants of the Desmond followers about him, and was in league with Tyrone. A few weeks later a party of English soldiers were surprised by the O’Byrnes in Wicklow, and fled shamefully ; while almost at the same moment-—by a misfortune which was certainly no fault of Essex’s, but which went to swell the list of his disasters—Sir ARMISTICE WITH TYRONE. 209 Conyers Clifford, the gallant governor of Connaught, was defeated by the O’Donnells in a skirmish among the Curlew mountains, and both he and Sir Alexander Ratcliffe, the second in command, left dead upon the field. Essex’s very virtues and better qualities, in fact, were all against him in this fatal service. His natural chivalrousness, his keen perception of in¬ justice, a certain elevation of mind which debarred him from taking the stereotyped English official view of the intricate Irish problem ; an indepen¬ dence of vulgar motives which made him prone to see two sides of a question—even where his own in¬ terests required that he should see but one—all these were against him ; all tended to make him seem vacillating and ineffective ; all helped to bring about that failure which has made his six months of com¬ mand in Ireland the opprobrium ever since of his¬ torians. Even when, after more than one furiously reproachful letter from the queen, and after his army had been re¬ cruited by an additional force of two thousand men, he at last started for the north, nothing of any impor¬ tance happened. He and Tyrone held an amicable and unwitnessed conference at a ford of the little river Lagan, at which the enemies of the viceroy did not scruple afterwards to assert that treason had been coneocted. What, at any rate, is certain is that Essex agreed to an armistice, which, with so overwhelm¬ ing a force at his own disposal, naturally awakened no little anger and astonishment. Tyrone’s personal courtesy evidently produced a strong effect upon the 15 210 THE ESSEX FAILURE. other earl. They were old acquaintances, and Tyrone was no doubt able to place his case in strong relief. Essex, too, had that generosity of mind which made him inconveniently open to expostulation, and he knew probably well enough that the wrongs of which Tyrone complained were far from imaginary ones. Another and a yet more furious letter from the queen startled him for his own safety. Availing himself of a permission he had brought with him to return should occasion seem to require it, he left the command in the hands of subordinates, flew to Dublin, and em¬ barked immediately for England. What befel him upon his arrival is familiar to every school child, and the relation of it must not be allowed to divert us from following the further course of events in Ireland XXX. END OF THE TYRONE REBELLION, A VERY different man from the chivalrous and quixotic Essex now took the reins. Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, had expected to be sent to Ireland when Essex had suddenly been appointed with ampler powers and a more extended consequence, and the disappointment had caused him to follow the course of that ill-starred favourite with ill-con¬ cealed jealousy to its tragic end. Mountjoy was himself a man of cold, clear-sighted, self-seeking temperament. In almost all English histories dealing with this period his steadiness and solid unshowy qualities are contrasted with Essex’s flightiness and failure, to the natural disadvantage of the latter. This, however, is not perhaps quite the last word upon the matter, and it is only fair to Essex that this should be realized. No master hand has as yet made this special portion of Irish history his own. When he does so—if the keen edge of his perceptions, that is to say, has not been dimmed by too strong an earlier prepossession —we shall perhaps learn that the admitted failure of Essex, so disastrous to himself, was more honour¬ able than the admitted and the well-rewarded success CAPTURE OF THE EARL OF ORMOND BY THE O’MORES. {From the " Pacata Hibernia" oj Sir G. Carew.) I. Ormond and his followers ; 2. Rebel horse and foot ; 3. Rebels eoncealed in woods ; 4. Bogs. SUCCESS OF MOUNfyOY. 2I3 of Mountjoy. The situation, as every English leader soon found, was one that admitted of no possible fellowship between two alternatives, success and pity ; between the commonest and most elementary dictates of humanity, and the approval of the queen and her Council. There was but one method by which a success could be assured, and this was the method which Mountjoy now pushed relentlessly, and from which Essex’s more sensitively attuned nature evidently shrank. The enemies it was neces¬ sary to annihilate were not so much Tyrone’s soldiers, as the poor, the feeble, the helpless, the old, the women, and the little children. Eamine—oddly called by Edward III. the “ gentlest of war’s hand¬ maids ”—was here the only certain, perhaps the only possible agent. By it, and by it alone, the germs of insurrection could be stamped out and blighted as it were at their very birth. There was no further shrinking either from its application. Mountjoy established military stations at different points in the north, and proceeded to demolish everything that lay between them. With a deliberation which left little to be desired he made his soldiers destroy every living speck of green that was to be seen, burn every roof, and slaughter every beast which could not be conveniently driven into camp. With the aid of Sir George Carew, who enthusiastically endorsed his policy, and has left us a minute account of their proceedings, they swept the country before them. The English columns moved steadily from point to point, establishing them¬ selves wherever they went, in strongly fortified out- 214 END OF THE TYRONE REBELLION. posts, from which points flying detachments were sent to ravage all the intermediate districts. The ground was burnt to the very sod ; all harvest utterly cleared away ; starvation in its most grisly forms again began to stalk the land ; the people perished by tens of thou¬ sands, and the tales told by eye-witnesses of what they themselves had seen at this time are too sickening to be allowed needlessly to blacken these pages. As a policy nothing, however, could be more bril¬ liantly successful. At the arrival of Mountjoy the English power in Ireland was at about the lowest ebb it ever reached under the Tudors. Ormond, the Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, had recently been taken captive by the O’Mores in Leinster, by whom he was held for an enormous ransom. Success, with all its glittering train, seemed to have gone bodily over to Tyrone. There was hardly a town in the whole island that remained in the hands of the Deputy. Before Mountjoy left all this was simply reversed. Not only had the royal power regained everything that had been snatched from it, but from sea to sea it stood upon a far firmer and stronger basis than it had ever done before. Gradually, as the area over which the power of the Deputy and his able assistant grew wider and wider, that of the Tyrone fell away and faded. “ The con¬ sequence of an Irish chieftain above all others,” observes Leland most weightily, “ depended upon opinion.” A true success, that is to say, of which the gleaming plumes and trophies were not immediately visible, would have been far more disastrous than a real failure which could have been gilded over with a ARRIVAL OF SPANIARDS. 215 little delusive gleam of triumph. There were no gleams, real or imaginary, now. Tyrone was fast coming to the end of his resources. Surrender or starvation were staring him with ugly insistence in the face. The war, in fact, was on the point of dying out from sheer exhaustion, when a new element came to infuse momentary courage into the breasts of the insurgents. Fifty Spanish ships, with Don Juan d’Aguilar and three thousand soldiers on board, sailed into Kinsale harbour, where they proceeded to dis¬ embark and to occupy the town. The instant the news of this landing reached Mountjoy, he, with characteristic vigour, hurried south with every soldier he could collect, so as to cut off the new arrivals before their allies had time to appear. Not a moment was lost. The Spaniards had landed on the 20th of September, 1601, and by the 23rd the first English soldiers appeared before the town, and before the end of the month Mountjoy and Carew had concentrated every man they had in Ireland around Kinsale. Tyrone and O’Donnell also hurried south, but their progress was slower, and when they arrived they found their allies closely besieged on all sides. Taking advantage of a frost, which had made the bogs pas¬ sable, O’Donnell stole round the English forces and joined another party of Spaniards who had just effected a landing at Castlehaven. All Kerry was now up in arms, under two local chiefs, O’Sullivan Beare and O’Driscoll. The struggle had resolved itself into the question which side could hold out longest. The English had the command of the sea, but were the IRELAND IN THE REIGN OF JAMES I. {From the " Pacata FUbernia" of Sir G. Carew.) 2i8 end of the TYRONE REBELLION. Spanish fleet to return their position would become to the last degree perilous. The game for Tyrone to play was clearly a waiting one. The Spaniards in Kinsale were weary however of their position, and urged him to try and surprise the English camp. Reluctantly, and against his own judgment, he con¬ sented. The surprise failed utterly. Information of it had already reached Carew. The English were under arms, and after a short struggle Tyrone’s men gave way. Twelve hundred were killed, and the rest fled in disorder. The Spaniards thereupon surrendered Kinsale, and were allowed to re-embark for Spain ; many of the Irish, including O’Donnell, accompanying them. This was practically the end. Tyrone retreated to the north, collecting the remnants of his army as he went. Carew went south to wreak a summary ven¬ geance upon O’Sullivan Beare, and the other Kerry insurgents, while Mountjoy, following in the wake of Tyrone, hemmed him gradually further and further north, repeating at the same time that wasting process which had already been only too brilliantly successful. Tyrone had wit enough to see that the game was played out. On the other hand, Mountjoy was eager to bring the war to an end before the queen’s death, now hourly expected. Terms were accordingly come to. The earl made his submission, and agreed to relinquish the title of O’Neill, and to abjure for ever all alliances with foreign powers or with any of the enemies of the Crown. In return he was to receive a full pardon for himself and his followers, and all his titles and lands were to be confirmed to him. SUBMISSION OF TYRONE. 2ig Two days after this the queen’s death was an¬ nounced. We are told that Tyrone, upon hearing of it, burst into a flood of tears. As he had been in arms against her up toa vv^eek before, it can scarcely have been a source of very poignant anguish. Probably he felt that had he guessed the imminence of the event he might have made better terms. XXXI. THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS. This was the last serious attempt on the part of any individual Irish chieftain to rise against the power of England. The next rebellion of which we shall hear arose from perfectly different causes, and was general rather than individual, grew indeed before its conclusion to the larger and more imposing dimen¬ sions of a civil war. In one respect this six years’ struggle was less pro¬ ductive of results than either of the two previous ones. At the end of it, Tyrone was still Tyrone; still the first of Irish subjects; his earldom and his ances¬ tral possessions were still his. Nay, on crossing a few months later to England, and presenting himself to the English Court, he was graciously received by the new king, and seemed at first to stand in all respects as if no rebellion had been planned by him, or so nearly carried to a successful issue. This state of things was a source, as may readily be conceived, of boundless rage to every English officer and official who had taken part in the late campaign. To see “that damnable rebel Tyrone” apparently in high honour caused them to rage and gna.sh their Tyrone's enemies. 221 teeth. “ How did I labour,” cries one of them, “ for that knave’s destruction ! I adventured perils by sea and land ; went near to starving; eat horseflesh in Munster, and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those who did hazard their lives to destroy him !” Sheriffs, judges, commissioners, all the new officials who now began to hurry to the north, shared in this sentiment, and all had their eyes set in wrathful animosity upon Tyrone, all were bent in finding him out in some new treason. That after all that had happened he should end his days in peace and honour was not inconceivable merely, but revolting. He himself complained about this time that he could not “drink a full carouse of sack but the State in a few hours was advertised thereof.” It was, in fact,an impos¬ sible situation. Tyrone was now sixty-two, and would have been willing enough therefore, in all probability, to rest and be thankful. It was impossible, he found, for him to do so. He was harassed by spies, plunged into litigation with regard to his seignorial rights, and whatever case was tried the lawyers invariably found for his antagonists. Rory O’Donnell, a brother of Red Hugh,who had been created Earl of Tyrconnel by James, was in a like case. Both were regarded with detestation by every official in Ireland ; both had not long before had a price set on their heads ; both, it was resolved by all in authority, would, sooner or later, therefore, begin to rebel again. Whether they did so or not has never been satis¬ factorily decided. The evidence on the whole goes to prove that they did not. The air, however, was thick 222 THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS. iust then with plots, and in 1607, a mysterious and anonymous document, of which Lord Howth was reported to be the author, was found in the Dublin Council Chamber, which hinted darkly at conspira¬ cies and perils of various kinds to the State, in which conspiracies Tyrone, it was equally darkly hinted, was in some manner or other involved. It was rather a poor plot, still it served its turn. Tyrone received warning from his friends abroad that he was about to be arrested, and so serious was the peril deemed that a vessel was specially sent by them to bring him away in safety. He at once communi¬ cated with Tyrconnel, and after a short consultation the two Earls with their families resolved to take advantage of the opportunity and depart at once. This at the time, and indeed generally, has been construed into a proof of their guilt. It may have been so, but, on the other hand, it may just as well not have been. Had their innocence been purer than alabaster or whiter than the driven snow they were probably well advised under existing circum¬ stances in not remaining to take their trial. Right or wrong, with good reason or without good reason, they went, and after various wanderings reached Rome, where they were received with no little honour. Heither, however, long survived their exile. Tyrconnel died the following year, and Tyrone some eight years later, a sad, blind, broken-hearted man. Nothing could have been more convenient for the Government than this departure. Under the circum¬ stances, it meant, of course, a forfeiture of all their FORFEITURE OF THE EARL'S ESTATES. 223 estates. Had the extent of territory which personally belonged to the two exiles alone been confiscated, the proceeding, no doubt, would have been per¬ fectly legitimate. Whatever had led to it, the fact of their flight and consequent renouncement of allegiance was undeniable, and the loss of their estates followed almost as a matter of course. A far more sweeping measure than this, however, was resolved upon. The lawyers, under the direction of the Dublin Government, so contrived matters as to make the area forfeited by the two earls cover no less a space than six entire counties, all of which were escheated to the Crown, regardless of the rights of a vast number of smaller tenants and sub-proprietors against whom no plea of rebellion, recently at all events could be urged ; a piece of injustice destined, as will be seen, to bear tragic fruit a generation later. The plan upon which this new plantation was carried out was projected with the utmost care by the lawyers, the Irish Government, and the king himself. The former plantations in Munster were an acknow¬ ledged failure, the reason assigned being the huge size of the grants made to the undertakers. Many of these resided in England, and merely drew their rents, allowing Irish tenants to occupy the land. This mistake was now to be avoided. Only tracts that could be managed by a resident owner were to be granted, and from these the natives were to be entirely drawn. “ As well,” it was gravely stated, “ for their greater security, as to preserve the purity of the English language.” The better to ensure this important result mar- 224 THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS. riages were strictly forbidden between the native Irish and the settlers, and in order to avoid that ever-formidable danger the former were ordered to remove themselves and their belongings bodily into certain reserved lands set apart for them. The person who took the most prominent part in this undertaking was the well-known Sir John Davis, a distinguished lawyer and writer, who has himself left us a minute account of his own and his colleagues’ proceedings. That those proceedings should have aroused some slight excitement and dismay amongst the dispossessed owners was not, perhaps, astonishing, even to those engaged in it. In some instances, the proprietors even went the length of bringing lawyers from Dublin, to prove that their estates could not legally be forfeited through the attainder of the earls, and to plead, more¬ over, the king’s recent proclamation which undertook to secure to the inhabitants their possessions. In reply to this. Sir John Davis and the other commissioners issued another proclamation. We published,” he says, “ by proclamation in each county, what lands were to be granted to British undertakers, what to servitors, and what to natives, to the end that the natives should remove from the precincts allotted to the Britons, whereupon a clear plantation is to be made of English and Scottish without Irish.” With regard to the rights of the king he is still more em¬ phatic. “ Not only,” he says, “his Majesty may take this course lawfully, but he is bound in conscience to do so.” These arguments,and probably still more the evident NOT UNSATISFIED IN REASON. 225 uselessness of any resistance, seem to have had their effect. The discomfited owners submitted sullenly, and withdrew to the tracts allotted to them. In Sir John Davis’ own neat and incisive words, “ The natives seemed not unsatisfied in reason, though they remained in their passions discontented, being grieved to leave their possessions to strangers, which they had so long after their manner enjoyed.” 16 XXXII. THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION. In 1613, it was resolved by the Government to summon an Irish Parliament, for the purpose of giving legality to their recent proceedings in Ulster, and also to pass an Act of formal attainder upon the two exiled earls. The great difficulty felt by the executive was how to secure an adequate Protestant majority. Even after the recent large introduction of Protestants the great mass of the freeholders, and nearly all the burgesses in the towns were still Roman Catholics. In the Upper House, indeed, the nineteen Protestant bishops and five temporal lords who were Protestant, made matters safe. The House of Commons, therefore, was the rub. Carew and Sir John Davis set their wits energetically to this problem. The new towns, or rather agricultural forts, in Ulster were all con¬ verted into Corporations, and each given the power of returning two members. The Pale and the Lein¬ ster towns, though loyal, were nearly all Catholic. In the west, except at Athlone, there was “ no hope,” the president reported, “of any Protestants.” From some of the other garrison towns better things were THE SPEAKER—PROTESTANT OR CATHOLIC. 227 hoped for, still there was not a little alarm on the part of the Government that the numbers might still come short. On the other side the Catholics were equally alive to the situation, and equally keen to secure a triumph. A belief prevailed, too, all over Ireland, that the object of summoning this Parliament was to carry out some sweeping act of confiscation, and this naturally added to the excitement. For the first time in Irish history a genuinely contested election took place. Both parties strained every nerve, both felt their future interests to depend upon the struggle. When at last all the members were collected it was found that the Government had a majority, though a narrow one, of twenty-four. Barely, however, had Parliament assem¬ bled, before a violent quarrel broke out over the elec¬ tion of a speaker ; the Catholic party denouncing the irregularity by means of which many of the elections had been carried, and refusing therefore to consider themselves bound by the decision of the majority. Sir John Davis had been elected speaker by the suppor¬ ters of the Government, but, during the absence of the latter in the division lobby, the recusants placed their own man. Sir John Eve'rard, in the chair, and upon the return of the others a hot scuffle ensued be¬ tween the supporters of the two Sir Johns, each side vehemently supporting the claims of its own candidate. In the end, “Mr. Treasurer and Mr. Marshall, two gentlemen of the best quality,” according to a “ Pro¬ testant declaration ” sent to England of the whole occurrence, “ took Sir John Davis by the arms, and lifting him from the ground, placed him in the chair 228 THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION. upon Sir John Everard’s lap, requiring the latter to come forth of the chair ; which, he obstinately re¬ fusing, Mr. Treasurer, the Master of the Ordinance, and others, whose places were next the chair, laid their hands gently upon him, and removed him out of the chair, and placed Sir John Davis therein.” The gravity with which we are assured of the gentle¬ ness of these proceedings is delightful. The recusants, with Sir John Everard at their head, departed we are further told “ in most contentious manner ” out of the House. Being asked why they did not return, they replied that “ Those within the House are no House, and the Speaker is no Speaker; but we are the House, and Sir John Everard is our Speaker.” ^ Not being able to be otherwise settled, the quarrel was at last referred to the king, and representa¬ tives of both sides went to England to plead their cause. In the end twelve of the new elections were found to have been so illegally carried that they had perforce to be cancelled, but Sir John Davis was at the same time confirmed in the Speakership. After this delay the House at last got to work. A formal Act of attainder was passed upon Tyrone, Tyrconnel, and some of the other Ulster landowners. Every portion of Ireland was next made into shireland, and the last remnants of the Brehon law abolished. Upon the other hand, the statutes of Kilkenny was at length and finally repealed. Henceforth English and Irish were alike to be admitted to plead their own cause in the courts of law. ' Lodges, “ Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica,” pp. 410-411. XXXIII. OLD AND NEW OWNERS. The zeal for Irish colonization had by no means subsided after the Ulster settlement had been estab¬ lished ; on the contrary, it was the favourite panacea of the hour, especially in the eyes of the king himself After one such resounding success, why, it was asked, not extend so evident a blessing to the rest of Ireland ? “A commission to inquire into defective titles” was set on foot, whose duty it was to collect evidence as to the condition of estates, and to inquire into the titles of owners. The pipe rolls in Dublin and the patents, kept in the Tower of London were alike eagerly ran¬ sacked, and title flaws found to be discoverable with the most delightful facility. There was a strong feeling too about this time in England that something good was to be made of Ireland. When tens of thousands of acres were to be had almost for the asking, who could be so slow or so mean-spirited as to hang back from doing so. Something like a regular stampede of men ambi¬ tious to call themselves undertakers, began to cross over from the larger to the smaller island. Nor was the Government anxious to check this spirited 230 old and New owners. impulse. In Wexford alone over 60,000 acres had been discovered by the lawyers to belong to the king, and of these a large portion were now settled with English undertakers. In Longford, Leitrim, Wicklow, and many other parts of Leinster, it was the same. Even where the older proprietors were not dispossessed heavy fines were levied in return for fresh grants. No proof of recent surrender or former agreement was allowed to count, and so in¬ geniously was the whole scheme carried out, and so inextricable was the jungle of legal technicalities in which it was involved, that what in reality was often sheer confiscations sounded like the most equitable of judicial arrangements. The case of the Connaught landowners is particu¬ larly characteristic, and as space dwindles rapidly, may serve as an example of the rest. Nearly all the Connaught gentry, native and Norman alike, had surrendered their estates either to Elizabeth or to her father, and had received them back again upon new terms. Legal transfer, however, was so little understood, and the times were so rough and wild, that few had received patents, and title-deeds were all but unknown. In James I.’s reign this omission was rectified and patents duly made out, for which the landowners paid a sum little short of ;^^30,ooo, equal to nearly ;^300,000 at the present day. These new patents, however, by an oversight of the clerks in Chancery, were neglected to be enrolled, and upon this plea fresh ones were called for, and fresh fees had to be paid by the landowners. Further it was announced that owing to the omission — one over Disappointment of the catholics. 231 which the owners, it is clear, had no control—all the titles had become defective, and all the lands had lapsed to the Crown. The other three provinces having by this time received plantations, the Connaught landowners were naturally not slow to perceive the use that might be made of so awkward a technical flaw To appeal against the manifest injustice of the decision was of little avail, but a good round sum of money into the king’s own hands was known to rarely come amiss. They agreed accordingly to offer him the same sum that would have fallen to his share had the plantations been carried out. This was accepted and another ;{'io,000 paid, and the evil day thus for a while, but only, as will be seen, for a while averted. Charles’s accession awakened a good many hopes in Ireland, the Catholic party especially flattering themselves that a king who was himself married to one of their faith would be likely to show some favour to his Catholic subjects. In this they found their mistake, and an attempt to open a Catholic college in Dublin was speedily put down by force. In other directions a certain amount of leniency was, however, extended to recusants, and Lord Falkland, who a few years before had succeeded Sir Oliver St. John as deputy, was a man of conspicuous moderation and tolerance. In 1629, however, he resigned, worn out like so many others before and after him by the diffi¬ culties with which he had to contend, and not long afterwards a man of very different temperament and widely different theories of government came to assume the reins. XXXIV STRAFFORD. In 1632, Wentworth—better known as Strafford— arrived in Ireland, prepared to carry out his motto of “ Thorough.” Only three years before, he had been one of the foremost orators in the struggle for the Petition of Right. The dagger of Fenton had turned him from an impassioned patriot and constitu¬ tionalist into a vehement upholder of absolutism. His revolt had been little more than a mask for his hostility to the hated favourite Buckingham, and when Buckingham’s murder cleared the path to his ambition, Wentworth passed, apparently without a struggle, from the zealous champion of liberty to the yet more zealous champion of despotic rule. He arrived in Ireland as to a conquered country, and proceeded promptly to act upon that under¬ standing. His chief aim was to show that a parlia¬ ment, properly managed, could be made not a menace, but a tool in the hand of the king. With this end he summoned an Irish one immediately upon his arrival, and so managed the elections that Protestants and Catholics should nearly equally balance one another. Upon its assembling, he ordered IHOIIAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD, 164I 234 STRAFFORD. peremptorily that a subsidy of ;^’ioo,ooo, to cover the debts to the Crown, should be voted. There would, he announced, be a second session, during which certain long-deferred “graces” and other demands would be considered. The sum was obediently voted, but the second session never came. The parliament was abruptly dissolved by the deputy, and did not meet again for nearly four years. The Connaught landlords were the next whom he took in hand. We have seen in the last chapter that they had recently paid a large sum to the Crown, in order to ward off the dangers of a plantation. This did not satisfy Wentworth. Their titles were again called into question. He swept down in person into the province, with the commissioners of plantations at his heels; discovered, to his own complete satisfac¬ tion, that all the titles of all the five western counties were defective, and that, as a natural consequence, all lapsed to the Crown. The juries of Mayo, Sligo, and Roscommon were overawed into submission, but the Galway jury were obstinate, and refused to dis¬ possess the proprietors. Wentworth thereupon took them back with him to Dublin, summoned them before the Court of the Castle Chamber, where they were sentenced to pay a fine of .£"4,000 each, and the sheriff ;£iooo, and to remain in prison until they had done so. The unfortunate sheriff died in prison. Lord Clanricarde, the principal Galway landlord, died also shortly afterwards, of anxiety and mortification. The others submitted, and were let off by the trium¬ phant deputy with the surrender, in some cases, of large portions of their estates, in others of heavy fines. Ills IRON RULE. ^35 By these means, and others too long to enter into here, he contrived to raise the annual Irish revenue to a surplus of £60,000, with part of which he proceeded to set on foot and equip an army for the king of 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse, ready to be marched at a moment’s notice. This part of the programme was intended as a menace less against Ireland than England. Charles was to be absolute in both islands, and, to be so, his Irish subjects were to help him to coerce his English ones. Let us, however, be just. Strafford was a born tyrant—worse, he was the champion of an absolutism of the most odious type conceivable, one which, if successful, would have been a death-blow to English liberty. But he was also a born ruler. No petty tyrants flourished under his sway. His hand was like iron upon the plunderers, the pluralists, the fraudulent officials, gorged with their ill-gotten booty What he did, too, he did well. If he struck, he could also protect. He ruthlessly suppressed the infant woollen trade, believing that it might in time come to be a rival to the English one, but he was the founder of the linen trade, and imported Flemish weavers to teach it, and the best flax-seed to sow in the fields. He cleared the sea of the pirates who swarmed along the coasts, and had recently burnt the houses and carried off the inhabitants of several villages. The king’s authority once secured he was anxious to secure to the mass of the people, Catholic as well as Protestant, a just and impartial administration of the law. No one in Ireland, he was resolved, should tyrannize except himself .JACOBUS USSERIUS, ARCHIEPISCOPUS ARMACHANUS TOTIUS HlBERNIit PRIMAS n^uuicoc o(.i/ What follows ? What is its future destined to be } Will it vanish away, will it pass into new phases, or will some form of it even¬ tually receive the sanction of the nation These are Sphinx questions, which one may be excused from endeavouring to answer, seeing that the strongest and most far-reaching heads are at this moment intent upon them—not, so far as can be seen, with any strikingly successful result. The Future is a deep mine, and we have not yet struck a spade into it. In every controversy, no matter how fierce the waves, how thick the air with contending asser¬ tions, there is almost always, however, some fact, or some few facts, which seem to rise like rocks out of the turmoil, and obstinately refuse to be washed away. The chief of these, in this case, is the geographical position, or rather juxtaposition, of HOME RULE. 415 the two islands. Set before a stranger to the whole Irish problem—if so favoured an individual exists upon the habitable globe—a map of the British islands, and ask him whether it seems to him inevit¬ able that they should remain for ever united, and we can scarcely doubt that his reply would be in the affirmative. This being so, we have at least it will be said one fact, one sea-rock high above the reach of waves or spray. But Irishmen have been declared by a great and certainly not an unfavourable critic— Mr. Matthew Arnold—to be “ eternal rebels against the despotism of fact.” If this is so—and who upon the Irish side of the channel can wholly and abso¬ lutely deny the assertion —then our one poor standing- point is plucked from under our feet, and we are all abroad upon the waves again. Will Home Rule or would Home Rule, it has been asked, recognize this fact as one of the immutable ones, or would it sooner or later incline to think that with a little determina¬ tion, a little manipulation, the so-called fact would politely cease to be a fact at all ? It is difficult to say, and until an answer is definitely received it does not perhaps argue any specially sloth-like clinging to the known in preference to the unknown to admit that there is for ordinary minds some slight craning at the fence, some not altogether unnatural alarm as to the ground that is to be found on the other side of it. “Well, how do you feel about Home Rule now that it seems to be really coming ? ” some one inquired last spring, of an humble but life-long Nationalist. “ ’Deed, sir, to tell the truth, I feel as if I’d been calling for the moon all me life and was told 4 I 6 the latest development. it was coming down this evening into me back gar¬ den ! ” was the answer. It is not until a great change is actually on top of us, till the gulf yawns big and black under our very eyes, that we fully realize what it means or what it may come to mean. The old state of things, we then begin to say to our¬ selves, was very inconvenient, very trying to all our tempers and patience, but at least we knew the worst of it. Of the untravelled future we know nothing. It fronts us, with hands folded, smiling blankly. It may be better than we expect, but, on the other hand, it may be worse, and in ways, too, which as yet we hardly foresee. Whatever else Home Rule would, could, or should be, one thing friends and foes alike may agree to admit, and that is that it will mark an entirely new departure—a departure so new that no illustration drawn from the last century, or from any other historical period, is of much avail in enabling us to picture it to ourselves. It will be no resumption, no continuation of anything that has gone before, but a perfectly fresh beginning. A beginning, it may be asked, of what ? LX. CONCLUSION. “Concluded not completed,” is the verdict ol Carlyle upon one of his earlier studies, and “ con¬ cluded not completed,” conscience is certainly apt to mutter at the close of so necessarily inadequate a summary as this. Much of this inadequacy, it may fairly be confessed, is individual, yet a certain amount is also inherent in the very nature of the task itself. In no respect does this inadequacy press with a more penitential weight than in the case of those heroes whose names spring up at intervals along our pages, but which are hardly named before the grim neces¬ sities of the case force us onwards, and the hero and his doings are left behind. Irish heroes, for one reason or another, have come off, it must be owned, but poorly before the bar of history. Either their deeds having been told by those in whose eyes they found a meagre kind¬ ness, or else by others who, with the best intentions possible, have so inflated the hero’s bulk, so pared away his merely human frailties, that little reality remains, and his bare name is as much as even a well-informed reader pretends to be acquainted 28 4x8 CONCLUSION. with. Comparing them with what are certainly their nearest parallels—the heroes and semi-heroes of Scotch history—the contrast strikes one in an instant, yet there is no reason in the nature of things that this should be. Putting aside those whose names have got somewhat obscured by the mists of the past, and putting aside those nearer to us who stand upon what is still regarded as debatable ground, there are no lack of Irish names which should be as familiar to the ear as those of any Bruce or Douglas of them all. The names of Tyrone, of James Fitzmaurice, of Owen Roe O’Neill, and of Sarsfield, to take only a few and almost at random, are all those of gallant men, struggling against dire odds, in causes which, whether they happen to fit in with our particular sym¬ pathies or not, were to them objects of the purest, most genuine enthusiasm. Yet which of these, with the doubtful exception of the last, can be said to have yet received anything like a fair meed of apprecia¬ tion ? To live again in the memory of those who come after them may not be—let us sincerely hope that it is not—essential to the happiness of those who are gone, but it is at least a tribute which the living ought to be called upon to pay, and to pay moreover ungrudgingly as they hope to have it paid to them in their turn. Glancing with this thought in our minds along that lengthened chronicle here so hastily over-run, many names and many strangely-chequered destinies rise up one by one before us ; come as it were to judgment, to where we, sitting in state as “ Prince Posterity,” survey the varied field, and judge them as in our CONCLUSION. 419 wisdom we think fit, assigning to this one praise, to that one blame, to another a judicious admixture of praise and blame combined. Not, however, it is to be hoped, forgetting that our place in the same panorama waits for another audience, and that the turn of this generation has still to come. AUTHORITIES. Aclamnan, “Life of St. Columba” (trails.). Arnold (Matthew), “ On the Study of Celtic Literature.” Bagwell, “ Ireland under the Tudors.” Barrington (Sir Jonah), ‘‘ Personal Recollections,” “ Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation.” Brewer, “ Introduction to the Carew Calendar of State Papers.” Bright (Rt. Hon. J.), “ Speeches.” Burke (Edmund), “ Tracts on the Popery Laws,” “ Speeches and Letters.” Carlyle, “ Letters and Speeches of Cromwell.” Carew, “ Pacata Hibernia.” Cloncurry, “ Life and Times of Lord Cloncurry.” Clogy, “ Life and Times of Bishop Bedell.” Cornwallis Correspondence. Croker (Rt. Hon. W.), “ Irish, Past and Present.” Davis (Thomas), “ Literary and Historical Essays.” Davies (Sir John), “A Discoverie of the True Causes why Ireland was never Subdued.” Dennis, “ Industrial Ireland.” Domenach (Abbe), “ Larerte Erinn.” Dymock (John), “A Treatise on Ireland.” Duffy (Sir Charles Gavin), “ Four Years of Irish History.” Essex, “ Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of.” 42 ^ AVTHORiTtES. Froude (J. A.), “History of England,” “The English in Ireland.” Giraldus Cambrensis, “ Conquest of Ireland,” Edited by J. Diinock, Master of the Rolls Series, 1867 ; “Topography of Ireland,” Edited by J. Dimock, Master of the Rolls Series, 1867. Green, “ History of the English People.” Grattan, “ Life and Speeches of Rt. Hon. Henry Grattan.” Halliday, “ Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin.” Hennessy (Sir Pope), “Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland.” Hardiman, “ History of Galway.” Howth (Book of), from O’Flaherty’s “ lar Connaught.” Joyce, “Celtic Romances.” Kildare (Marquis of), “ The Earls of Kildare.’ Lodge, “Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica.” Lecky, “ History of England in the Eighteenth Century,” and “ Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland.” Leland, “ History of Ireland.” Maine (Sir H.), “ Early History of Institutions,” “ Village Communities, East and West.” Max Muller’s Lectures. M’Gee (T. Darcy), “ History of Ireland.” McGeoghegan, “ History of Ireland.” Mitchell (John), “ History of Ireland.” Montalembert, “ Monks of the West.” Murphy (Rev. Denis), “ Cromwell in Ireland.” Madden, “History of Irish Periodical Literature,” McCarthy (Justin), “ History of Our Own Times,” O’Connor (T. P.), “The Parnell Movement.” O’Flaherty, “ lar Connaught.” Petty (Sir W.), “ Political Anatomy of Ireland.” Petrie (Dr.), “ Round Towers of Ireland.” AUTHORITIES. 423 Prendergast, “Tory War in Ulster,” “The Cromwellian Settle¬ ments.” Richey (A. G.), “ Lectures on the History of Ireland.” Smith (Goldwin), “ Irish History and Irish Character.” Spenser (Edmund), “View of the State of Ireland.” Stokes (Miss), “Early Christian Architecture of Ireland.” Stokes (Professor George), “ Ireland and the Celtic Church.” Tone (Wolfe), “ Autobiography.” Vere de (Aubrey), “ Queen Meave and other Legends of the Heroic Age,” and “ Legends of St. Patrick.” Walpole, “ Kingdom of Ireland.” Webb (Alfred), “Compendium of Irish Biography.” Wilde (Sir W.), “ Lough Corrib,” and “ The Boyne and the Blackwater.” Young (Arthur), “ Tour in Ireland.” INDEX. A Abercromby, Sir Ralph, 359 Act of Supremacy, 152 Act of Uniformity, 278 Adamnan, 43 Adare, 188 Affane, battle of, 183 Aidan (Saint) and Irish monk, 45 Alcansar, battle of, 184 Allen, an Irish priest, 184 Allen, hill of, 14 Allen, John, Archbishop of Dub¬ lin, 146 Allen, the Fenian prisoner, 406 Andrews, Dean of Limerick, 237 Angareta, mother of Giraldus, 78 Angelsea, settlement of, 67 Anglo-Norman invasion, 76 Annals of Lough C^, 109 Anselm (Saint), Archbishop of Canterbury, 81 Arctic hare, the, 4 Ard-Reagh, or Over-king, 91 Ardscul, battle of, 108 Arklow Head, 93 Armagh, Book of, 33 Armagh, cathedral of, burnt by Thorgist, 55 Armdu, a Viking, 68 Arran, isles of, 38 Art McMurrough, or Art Kava- nagh, 119; master of Leinster, 119; has recourse to Black- rent, 123; entertained by Richard II., 120; knighted, 120; thrown into prison, 120; released, 120; he hastens to Meath, 121 ; defeats the royal army, I2l ; he again meets Richard 11 . in battle, t2i ; ■victorious, 123 Ascendency, the Protestant, 307 Ashton, Sir Arthur, a royalist officer, 261 Askeaton, castle of, 187; de¬ stroyed, 188 Association, Loyal National Re¬ peal, 386 Attainder, Bill of, drawn and passed, 287 Athenry, battle of, no; en¬ feebled state, 175 Athlone, fortress of, 104, 292 Athy, bridge of, 128 Aughrim, battle of, 293 Augustine (Saint), 44 D’Aguilar, Don Juan, 215 D’Avaux, Count, envoy to James II., 283 B Bactilu 7 n Cristatum, cr Staff of St. Patrick, 158 Baggotrath, battle of, 260 Bagnall, Sir Henry, 198; Tyrone marries his sister, 201; becomes his enemy, 201 ; he marches against Tyrone, 204 ; he is shot, 205 ; his army defeated, 205 ; fort of Blackwater surrendered, 205 426 INDEX. Ballinasloe, town of, 293 Baltimore, stronghold of pirates, 127 Baltinglass, Lord, 189 Bannockburn, battle of, 108 ; its effects on Ireland, 108 Bannow, bay of, or “FitzStephen’s stride,” 83 Barnabie FitzPatrick, 157 Barries descendants of Nesta, 76 Barri, Robert de, 83 Barrington’s Bridge, 107 Barrymore, Lord, 141 Beare O’Sullivan, 215 Bedell, bishop of Kilmore, 245 Beltane, Celtic festival of istMay, M Belgic, colony of, 6 Bellingham, Sir Edward, 162 Belrath, castle of, 141 Ben Edar, now Howth, 17 Benignus, first disciple of St. Patrick, 35 Benturb, battle of, 255 Bermingham, Sir John de, victor of Athenry, no, in Beresford, Chief Commissioner of Customs, 351 Bernard, Saint, of Clairvaux, 81 Betas, Celtic houses of hospitality, 14 Black-rent, use of, 119, 123, 129 Black water river, 183 ; battle of, 203 Blaney, Mr., member for Mona¬ ghan, 243 Book of Aicill, Aryan law, 25 Book of Armagh, 33 Book of Flowth, the, 140 Borough, Lord, deputy, 203 Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh, 304, 340 Boyle, primate, 280 Boyne, battle of the, 288 Bramhall, primate, 277 “ Brass Band,” 403 Brehons, judges or law makers, 19, 25 Brian Boru, or Boruma, 60, 61 ; he defeats the Danes, 61 ; seizes throne of Cashel, 63 ; over-runs Leinster, 63 ; subdues Ossory, 63 ; attacks Meath, 63 ; burns the stronghold of Tara, 63 ; becomes Ard-Reagh in Mala- chy’s place, 63; he is called Brian of the Tribute, 64; he becomes master of Ireland, 64 ; his victory at Clontarf, 66 ; he marches against Brodar, 68, 69 ; is killed, 69; mourned and buried, 69, 70. Bridget (Saint), 47 ; sacred fire of, 47 Brodar, a Viking, 66; killed Brian, 67 Brown, Archbishop of Meath, 159; deprived, 161 Bruce, Edward, in Ireland, 107 ; battle of Bannockburn, 108 ; its effects, 108; Bruce lands at Carrickfergus, 108; defeats Richard de Burgh, 108 ; defeats Sir Edmund Butler at Ardscul, 108 ; victorious at Kells, 108 ; meets his brother, 108; is crowned king, 109 ; devastates the country, 109 ; defeated and killed at Dunkalk, 110 Bruce, King Robert of Scotland, 108 Burren, district of the, in North Clare, 269 Burgh, Sir William FitzAldelm de, 103 Burgundy, Duchess of, 132, 136 Burke, Edmund, 330 Burke, Mr. Thomas, murder of, 411 C Calvagh O’Donnell, 167 Camden, Lord (Lord-Lieutenant), 359. Campion, historian, the, 125 Carew, Sir George, 213, 215, 218, 226 Carew, Sir Peter, 178 ; his atroci¬ ties, 178 Carey, James, the informer, 412 Carhampton, Lord, 358 TNDBX. 427 Carle Canuteson, 67 Carlow, 154 Carneg, rock of, 84 Carnot, 355 Catholic Confederacy, 249 Catholic Relief Bill carried,'381 Cashel, Synod of, 92 Castlehaven, 215 Castlereagh, Lord, Chief Secre¬ tary, 370 Caulfield, Lord, Governor of Charlemont, 243 Cavan, Lord, 365 Cavendish, Lord Frederick, murdered, 411 Cerd or Nuad of “the Silver hand,” 9 Charlemont, Lord, 330 Charles L, accession, 231 ; he sends Strafford to Ireland, 231, 235- 238 ; his death, 279 Chester Castle, attack on, pro¬ jected, 405 Chesterfield, Lord, Lord-Lieu¬ tenant, 344 Claims, Court of, 275 Clan Naim, 17 Clann Dichin, a malediction, 20 Clanricarde, Earl of, 105 Clarence, Lionel, Duke of, 114 Cliach, plains of, 14 Clocthech, round towers of, 56 Clogher, Bishop of, 241 Clonard, town of, 47 Clonmacnois, high altar at, 47 Clonmel, 262 Clontarf, battle of, 71, 74 ; strand of, 66 Clyn, Franciscan historian, 109 Cole, Dean of St. Paul’s, story of, 163 Cole, Sir William, Governor of Enniskillen, 243 Coleraine, 243 Colkilla, hill of, 14 Colman, Bishop, 46 Columba (Saint), born, 43 ; his character, 42, 43; he leaves Ireland, 43 ; visits Scotland, 43 ; and Iona, 44 Connaught, landowner’s case of, 230 Connaught, treaty of, 103 Connemara, anciently lar Con¬ naught, 8 Conciliation Hall, 386 Confederates, Young Irelanders, 395 Con O’Neill (Earl of Tyrone) 154 Cong, plains of, 7 Conyers, Clifford, Sir, Governor o.' Connaught, 209 Cooke, Under-Secretary of State, 351 Coote, Sir Charles, 244, 246, 273 Cork, town of, 119 Cormac, MacArt, 23 Cormac O’Conn, King, ii Cornwallis, Marquis, Lord-Lieu¬ tenant, 365 Corrib Lough, 104 Cowper, Lord, 411 “ Coyne and livery,” 183 Croagh Patrick, mountain of, 34 Crofty, hill of, 247 Crom a Boo, war cry of the Fitz¬ geralds, 138 Cromwell, Henry, Lord-Lieu tenant, 76 Cromwell in Ireland, 261 ; he takes Drogheda, 261 ; Wex¬ ford,262 ; Kilkenny,262 ; Clon¬ mel, 262; his army sickens, 263 ; Ireland under his rule, 264; the struggle continues, 264; Limerick and Galway yield at last, 264 ; close of civil war, 265 ; his methods, 266 ; Catholic evictions, 267 ; his treatment of Sir Phelim O’Neill, Lord Mayo, and Lord Mus kerry, 267 ; his death, 272 Clint, or stringed harp, 52 Cruachan, mountain of, 35 Curragh of Kildare, 14 D Danaans, tribe of, 8 Danes, 53 Danes, Dublin, 67 428 INDEX. Danes of Limerick, 58-61 Dangen, ancient name of Phillips- town, 162 Dashda, or Druid chieftain, 53 Davis, John, Sir, 95-117; he is elected Speaker, 227 ; quarrel which followed, 227, 228 Davis, Thomas (poet), 290 Davitt, Michael, Mr., 409 Declaration ot Rights by Grattan, 320 Declaratory, Act of George I., 322 “Defenders,” Association of, 345 Delvin, Lord, 191 Dermot McMurrough, King of Leinster, 83 Derry, town of, 171 Desmond, Earl of, taken to Lon¬ don, 176 ; vacillates about re¬ belling, 185; his death, 192 Desmond-Sugane or Straw, Earl of, 200 Dillon, Mr., 391 Donald, Chief of Ossory, 90 Donegal, chapels in, 43 Donore, hill of, 280 Douchad, son of O’Brien, 74 Dowdal, Archbishop of Armagh, 159 Downpatrick, town of, 99 Drapier Papers by Swift, 317 Drogheda, Parliament of, 138 Drogheda, taken by Cromwell, 261 Dublin Castle, 240 ; plot to seize it, 241 ; frustrated, 242 Dublin, Philosophical Association of, 311 Dublin, Society of, 311 Duffy, Sir Charles Gavin, 390 Dundalk, battle of, no Dungannon, Matthew, Baron of, 165 Dunsany, Lord, 247 E Edgecombe, Sir Edward, 135 Edward, I., 107 Edward II., 108 ; Battle of Ban¬ nockburn, 108 Edward III., 113; he summons landowners, 114 ; appoints Lionel, Duke of Clarence, vice¬ roy, 114; Statute of Kilkenny is passed, 115 Elizabeth, Queen, 165 ; entertains Shane O’Neill at Court, 68; account of his visit, 168; Ireland during her reign, 171-172 Emmett, Robert, 376 Emmett, Thomas Addis, 354 Encumbered Estate Court, 400 Enniskillen, town of, 247 Eochaidli king, tale of, 35 Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of, 206; take the command in Ireland, 208 ; proceeds against Tyrone, 208; his disasters, 208; takes Cahir Castle, 208 ; meets Lugane Earl, 208; meets Ty¬ rone at Lagan, 209 ; returns to England, 210 Eva, daughter of Dermot, 86 Everard, Sir John, 227, 228 F Falkland, Lord, 231 Famine, the first symptoms of, 396 ; great distress, 397 ; Mr. Forster reports, 397; Relief Act passed, 399; the ruin which followed it, 400; after effects, 403 Fedlim O’Connor, king of Con¬ naught, 108 Fenian prisoners, rescue of, at Manchester, 405 Fenian rising, 401 Fenni or Fenians, ii Fercal, tribes of, 161 Ferns, town of, 83 Finn, McCumal, 14 Finn or Fingal, father of Ossian, 11 Finnvarragh, king of the fairies, 21 Firbolgs, race of, 6 Fitton, Sir Edward, 176 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 354-359 Fitzgerald, Maurice, 83 INDEX. 429 Fitzgerald, Mr., member for Clare, 380 Fitzgerald, Raymond (le Gros), 85 Fitzgerald, Sir James, 191 Fitzgerald, Sir John, 191 FitzHenry, Robert and Meiler, sons of Nesta, 76 Fitzmaurice, Lady, 188 Fitzmaurice of'^Lexnaw, iii Fitzmaurice, Sir James, 178; breaks into rebellion, 178; re¬ lations between him and Sir James Perrot, 179; burns Kil- mallock 179; marches into Ulster, 179; burns Athlone, 179; joins the Mac-an-Earlas, 180 ; lays Galway waste, 180 ; crosses the Shannon, 180 ; sur¬ renders and takes the required oaths at Kilmallock, 180 ; sails to France, 180; returns, 184; his death, 187 FitzSimons, Walter, Archbishop of Dublin, 137 FitzStephen, Robert, 83 FitzUrse of Louth, in Fitzwilliam, Lord, Lord-Lieu¬ tenant, 349-350 Fitzwilliam, Sir William, Lord- deputy, 199 Flood, Rt. Hon. Henry, 323 Foltbar and Feradach, Legends, 16 Formorians, race of, 5 Forster, Mr. W. E., 397 Forty-shilling Freeholders, Bill of, 349 “ Four Masters,” the annals of the, 9 Foyle, Lough, 165 Freevian's Jotinial, 322 Fuidhar, or “ broken man,” 28 G Gall (Saint), 36 Galway, bay and town of, 104 Galway, Jury of, 247 George, Duke of Clarence, 129 Gerald de Barri, Gerald of Wales, or Giraldus Cambrensis, 78; grandson of Nesta, 78 ; priest and chronicler, 78; his cha¬ racter as a writer, 78 Gerald, 8th Earl of Ivildare, son of Geroit Mor, 130 Gerald of \Vindsor, husband to Nesta, 76 Geraldines, loi; Giraldus’ opinion of them, loi ; ancestors of Earls Kildare and Desmond, 102; important position, 102; their keep at Maynooth, 102 ; power in Ireland, 102; Geroit Mor, or Gerald the Great, 7th Earl of Kildare, 130 Gilbert, Sir Humphry, 179 Gilla Dacker and his horse, legend of, 14 Ginkel, Dutch general of Wil¬ liam HE, 291 Gladstone, Mr. W. E., 406 ; dis¬ established the Irish Church, 406; introduced Irish Land Act of 1870, 407; of 1881, 409; imprisoned members of Land League, 411; proposed measure of Home Rule of 1886, 414 Glenmama near Dunlaven, 68 Godred, King of Man, 87 Gormanstown, Lord, 249 Granard, Lord Justice, 280 Grattan, Henry, 328 ; his loyalty and patriotism, 328 ; he enters Parliament, 330; his eloquence, 330; Declaration of Rights, 330; retires into private life, 332; protests against the Union, 332; member of English Par¬ liament, 332; his death and burial, 333 “ Great Darcy of Platten,” 132 Gregory, Pope, 44 Grey, de Wilton, Lord-depuiy, 189 Grey, Leonard, Lord, Deputy, 151. 152 Griffiths, Sir Richard, Irish geo¬ logist, 312 130 INDEX. H Habeas Corpus Act, 351 Hadrian IV., Pope, 81 Hamilton, Sir Richard, 282 Harcourt, Lord, 325 Hardi, French General, 365 Harvey, Bagenal, United Irishman and general of the rebels, 363 Hasculph, Danish Governor, 86- 87 Hatton, Sir Christopher, ‘‘an Undertaker,” 194 Heber and Heremon, sons of Milesius, 10 Iloadly, Archbishop of Armagh, 320 Hoche, General, 355 Hoche, vessel called the, 365 Home Rule, the question of, 44 Howth, Earl of, 134, 136 Humbert, French general, 364 Hy-Nial, or royal house of O’Neil, 42, 52 I lar Connaught, mountains of, 104 Ireland, Primeval, l ; its early vicissitudes, 3 ; South European plants in, 5 ; early history of, 5-11; its legends, 13-21; Celtic Ireland, 23 ; early laws of, 26- 29 ; St. Patrick’s visit to, 32 ; the Northern scourge of, 50; invasion by Anglo-Normans, 76; King John in, 98-100; invasion of, by Edward Bruce, 107; Richard II. visits to, 119; attempt to force Protestantism upon, 158-160; Molyneux’s, “The case of,” &c., 313; Union of Great Britain and Ireland, 367-376 Ireland, the future of, 413 “ Ireland, Young,” party, 390- 395 Irish Catholic Association, 407 Irish Celts, 25 Irish Church, disestablishment of, 409 Irish Education Act, 408 Irish elk, 4 Irish export of woollen goods for¬ bidden, 309 Irish famine, 396-403 Irish hare, 4 Irish heroes, 418 Irish Land Act, 407 Irish volunteers, 336-340 Inchiquin, Lord, 256 Iona, 44 J James 11 . recalls Lord Ormond, 280; restores Catholics to office, 280 ; his treatment of Protes¬ tants, 281-282 ; his flight to France, 282 ; arrives in Ireland, 283 ; his reception, 284; be¬ sieges Londonderry, 285; goes to Dublin, 286 ; is defeated at the battle of the Boyne, 288 ; his flight, 289 John, the Mad Berserker-warrior, 87 . , Jones, Michael, Colonel, 259 Jones, Paul, pirate, 326 Joyce’s, Mr., “ Celtic Romances,” 13 K Kelts, battle of, 99 Keogh, Judge, 403 Kerry, defence of, 215 Kerry, plants and animals in, 5 Kildare, Dean of, 149 Kildare, house of, 102 ; earls of, 130, 134, 150; “Silken Thomas,” 147 ; vice-deputy, 147 ; renounces allegiance to England, 147 ; takes Dublin, 148; burns Trim and Dunboyne, 149; is defeated, 150; im¬ prisoned and hanged, 150 Kilkea, castle of, 144 Kilkenny, castle of, 105 Kilkenny, statutes of, 115 Killala, Bishop of, 365 Kilmallock burnt, 179; church of, 179 I Kimbaoth, prince of Milesia, lo INDEX. 431 King’s County, 52 Kinsale, harbour of, 215 Knights of Glyn, 102 ; of Kerry, 102 Knockma, a hill of, 8 Knocktow, battle of, 144; cause of, 106 L I-acy, Hugo cle, viceroy of Henry II., 92 Lagan, ford of, 209 Lalor, James, 393 Lambay, stand of, 55 Lambert, Simnel, 331 ; received in Dublin and crowned, 134; defeated at Stoke, 135 ; taken prisoner and appointed turn¬ spit, 13s Land League, the, 409 Land Lepers, 53, 59 Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canter¬ bury, 81 Langan, Comte de, 288 Laoghaire, King of Meath, 34 Larkin, Fenian hanged, 406 Lecky’s, Mr., “History of the Eighteenth Century,” 300 Lee, Captain, 199 Leix, town of, 161 Leland the historian, 10 Liffy river, 87 Lilibullero, anti-Catholic song, . 2 ^ 3 . Limerick, articles of, 295 Limerick, first siege of, 291 Limerick, treaty of, 295 Limerick, wood and town of, 117 Lindsfarne. peninsula of, 45 Londonderry, siege of, 2S5 Lovell, Lord, 135 Lucas, Charles, 323 Luinagh Tyrlough, 195 Lundy, governor of Londonderry, 28s M Mac-an-Earlas, sons of Clanri- carde, 191 Macarthy, Colonel, 288 McCarthy, Dermot, 90 Maccumactheneus, St. Patrick’s chronicler, 34 Magan, betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 361 Maguire, Lord, 241 Mahon, King of Munster, 61 Malachy or Melachin,Ard-Reagh, 52 Maiby, Sir Nicolas, governor ol Connaught, 187 Mananan MacLir, Legend o( Gilla Dacker, 17 Marshall, William, Earl of Pern ■ broke, 103 Maryboroughanciently Campa, 162 Mary, Queen of England, 163 ; her death, 164 Maynooth, castle of, 102 Mayo, Lord, 267 Mayo mountains, 8 Maxwell, Colonel, 362 McGeoghan, Abbe, historian, i McGillapatrick, Lord of Upper Ossoy, 168 McHugh, 191 McMahon, Hugh, chief of Mona¬ ghan, 192 McMurrough, Dermot, King of Leinster, 83, 241 McMurrough, son of Dermot, 83 McToole, Sir Owen, 197 McWilliam, Burke of Galway, 154 McWilliam Lighter, and Mc¬ William Oughter, the Nether and Further Burkes, 111 McWilliam of Clanricarde, 142 Meagher, 391 Meath, plains of, 8 Mila de Cogan, Norman governor of Dublin, 87 Milcho chieftain, 3 Milesians or Scoti, 9, 10 Mitchell, John, 391 Molyneux, Thomas, Dr., 311 Molyneux, William, the “In¬ genious Molyneux,” 311 Montalembert, M. de,40 Montmorency, Henry de, 85 432 INDEX, Mortimer, Roger, viceroy, no Mountgarrett, Lord, 249 Mountjoy, Charles Blount, 211 ; his character, 211; establishes military stations, 213 ; de¬ feats by starvation, 213; defeats Tyrone and the Spanish fleet, 218 Moytura, prehistoric battle of the southern, 7 Muckern, or Mulkearn noi, 187 Mullingar, town of, 292 Munroe, General, 255 Murhertach, house of, 74 Murphy, Father John, 362 Murphy, Father Michael, 304 N iValioit, The, newspaper, 390 Neil Grey, 167 Newtown Butler, battle of, 288 Norris, General Sir Henry, 206 Norris, Sir Thomas, 194 Norsmen, or Northmen, or Danes, 7, 53-56 Northern Star, newspaper, 358 Nuad, King of the Tuatha-da- Danaans, 7-9 O “ Oakboys,” Society of the, 345 O’Brian, Prince of Thomond, 90 O’Brien, race of, 60 O’Brien, Smith, 391 O’Brien, the Fenian, 406 O’Byrnes, 128 O’Carroll of Argial, 91 O'Connell, Daniel, makes his first speech, 379 ; his energy, 379 ; sets on foot the Irish Catholic Association, 379 ; carries Catho¬ lic rent, 380; contests the county of Clare, 381 ; his character, 382; his efforts to procure repeal, 385 ; his en¬ mity to secret societies, 385; founds the Loyal National Repeal Association, 386; his I prosecution, 387 ; found guilty and imprisoned, 387 ; his last appearance and death, 3S9 O’Connell, John, 391 O’Connor, Roderick, the Ard- Reagh, 75, 84-91 O’Connors of Connaught, 74 Octennial Bill, the, 325 O’Curry, 53 O’Dogherty, Sir John, 198 O’Donnel, Calvagh, 167 O’Donnel, of Tyrconnel, 167 O’Donnell, Plugh, or Red Hugh, 200. O’Donnell, murder of Carey, 412 O’Donnell, Rory, 221 O’Donovans, 63 O’Driscoll’s piratical clan of 'West Cork, 27 O’Dynor, Dermot, or Dermot of the Bright Face, 17 O’Flaherty, Edmund, 403 Oilen-an-Oir, or Gold Island, 185 Ollamhs or Sennachies, head bards, 19 O’Lochlin of House of O’Neill, 74 O’Moore, Rory or Roger, 241 O’Neill, Owen, 248 O’Neill, Shane, called the Froud, 165; his character, 166; his eloquence, habits, and morals, 166 ; his encounter with Sussex, 167 ; his visit to the English Gourt, 168; receives title of Captain of Tyrone, 169; re¬ turns to Ireland, 169 ; Sussex attempt to poison him, 169; his descent on the Scots, 170, and on Connaught, 170; his last disaster and death, 172, 173 O'Neill, Sir Phelim, 241 O’Neills, or Ply-Nials, 60-74 Orange Lodges, institution of, 345 O’Reilly of Brefny, 167 O’Rorke, chieftain of Connaught, O’Rorke of Brefny, chieftain of Leinster, 91 INDEX. 433 Ormond, house of, 105-128 Ossian, poet and bard, 11-35 Ossory, clan of, 84 Oswald, King of Northumbria, 44 Oswin, King of Northumbria, 46 O’Toole, Carrot, 191 O’Toole, St. Lawrence, Arch¬ bishop of Dublin, 86 Oulart, hill of, 362 Owel, Lough, near Mullingar, 55 P Paladius, missionary, 33 Parnell, Mr., 411 Parnell, Sir John, 371 Parsons, Sir William, 242 Patrick (Saint), his birth, 33 ; lands in Ireland, 33 ; visits to Meath and to Connaught, Antrim, and Armagh, 34; legends of, by Mr. Aubrey de Vere, 35 “ Peep of Day Boys,” Society of, 345 Pelham, Sir William, Lord-deputy, 188 Penal Code, the, 300 Perkin Warbeck, 136, 137 Perrot, Sir John, 176-179 Peter’s Pence, collection of, 79 Petrie, Ceorge, LL.D., 7 Petty, Sir William, his survey of Ireland, 271 Philip II., King of Spain, 183 Phcenix organization, 404 Phoenix Park tr.agedy, 411 Piets, 53 Pierce, Captain, 173 Plunkett, Dr., Archbishop of Dublin, 279 Portland, Duke of, 350 Poynings’ Act, 138 Poynings’ Act repealed, 287 Poynings, Sir Edward, 148 Preston, Colonel, 249 Protection of Life and Property Bill, 409 29 R Raleigh, Sir Walter, 190-191 Rents, Black, 17, 123 Rents, Fair Rent and Free Sale, 410 Rents, Rack, 28 Rents, Stipulated, 28 Ribbon Association, 385 Richard 11 . lands at Waterford, 119; his meeting with Art McMurrough, 119; entertains the chiefs, 120; receives their oaths of allegiance, I20 ; returns to Ireland, 122; encounters Art McMurrough, 122 ; leaves Ire¬ land, 123 Rupert, Prince, 259; his arrival at Kinsale, 259 S Sadleirs, John and James, 403 Sanim Celtic Festival (November 1st), 14 Sarsfield, Patrick, 280 .Saunders, Pope’s Legate, 184 Schomberg, Duke of, 288 Schwartz, Martin, Dutch Ceneral, 135 Scoti, tribes of the, 9 Scullobogue, barn of, 363 Sebastian, King of Portugal, killed at the battle of Alcansar, 184 Senchus Mor, ancient law-book, 25, 28 Shannon, Lord, 322 Shannon, river, 91 Shiel, Richard Lalor, 379 Sidney, Henry, Sir, 174; be¬ comes Lord-deputy, 174; ap¬ points presidents in the pro¬ vinces, 176 ; his scheme for reducing expenses, 177 ; his visits to Munster and Con¬ naught, 179 Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, 66 Silvermine hills of Tipperary, 291 Simon, priest and tutor to Lam bert Simnel, 135 434 INDEX. Sitric, a Viking, 67 Skeffington, Sir William, 148 Slemish mountains, 33 Sligo, town of, 254 Smerwick, town of, 185 Somerset, Edward Earl of Gla¬ morgan, 254 South European Plants in Ireland, 5 Southern Moytura, 7 Spanish Armada, 197 Spenser, Edmund, poet, 190 Stanihurst, historian, the, 131 Steel boys. Society of, 345 St. John, Sir Oliver, deputy, 231 St. Leger, Sir Wareham, “Under¬ taker,” 194 St. Ruth, General, 292 Stephen, Head Fenian centre, 405 Stokes, battle of, 135 Stokes, Miss Margaret, 312 Stone, Archbishop of Armagh, 320 Strafford, Wentworth, in Ireland, 232; orders subsidy of;i^ 100,000, 234; he overawes the juries, 234; his character, 235 ; his suppression of the woollen trade, 235 ; founds the linen trade, 235; clears the sea of pirates, 235 ; sets a Court ot High Commission to work, 237 ; his treatment of Archbishop Ussher, 237 ; his account of his dealings with Convocation, 237 ; his return to England, 239 ; tried for treason, condemned, and executed, 239 ; effect of his death in Ireland, 239 Strangford Lough, 33 Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, 82 ; his marriage with Eva, 86 ; takes Waterford, 86; is besieged in Dublin, 87 ; flees to Water¬ ford, 88; thence to England, 88; meets Henry, 88; and returns to Ireland, 89 Stukeley, Thomas, Sir, 170, 184 Sulcost, battle of, 6l Surrey, Earl of, deputy, 145 Swift, Jonathan, Dean of St. Patrick’s, 315 ; his character, 315; his Drapier Papers, 317; his attack on Wood’s patent, 315 ; his popularity, 319 Swords in Meath, 247 T Talbot, Richard, Earl of Tyrcon- nel, 208 Tanist laws of succession, 27 Tara in Meath, 63 ; battle of, 63 Tenant League Confederation, 403 Tenure, Fixity of, 410 Thomond, Lady, 303 Thomond, Lord, 247 Tower, the “Tower E.arl ” of Desmond, 192 Townshend, Lord, 325 Towton, battle of, 129 Tuam, Archbishop of, 254 Tuatha-da-Danaans, race of, 7 Turgesius or Thorgist, 55 Turlough, grandson of Brian, 82 Tyrconnel, Lady, 289 Tyrconnel, Richard, Earl of, 280 Tyrconnel, Rory O’Donnell, Earl of, 221 Tyrone, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of, 199 ; receives his title from Elizabeth, 199 ; contrasted with Shane, 199; his religious views, 200 ; arbitrary arrest of his brother-in-law, 200 ; marries Bagnall’s sister, 201 ; prepares for rebellion, 202 ; assumes the title of the O’Neill, 202; is victorious over Bagnall, 205 ; meets Essex at Lagan, 209; struggle with Mountjoy, 214; he hurries south to meet the Spaniards, 215 ; encounters Mountjoy and is defeated, 218 ; reported plot against England, 220 ; flies the country, 221 ; dies in exile, 222 U Union, Pitt’s plan of, 268 Union, the, 367 INDEX. 435 United Irishftien newspaper, 394 United Irishmen, the Society of, 386 Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, 163 ; treatment of by Strafford, 237 V Vere, Aubrey de, Mr., Legends of St. Patrick, 35 Vinegar Hill, 363 Volunteers, Irish, the, 334-340 W Ware Papers, 163 Waterford, town of, 262 ; defence of, 86; Danes of, 85 ; Richard II. lands at, 122 Wexford, town of, 83 ; castle of, 87 ; siege by Cromwell, 262 Whitby, Synod of, 46 Whiteboys, outrages of, 342-344 Wicklow, landing of St. Patrick in, 33 William of Orange in Ireland, 288 ; he lands at Carrickfergus, 288; meets James’s army, is victorious at the battle of the Boyne, 289 ; offers free pardon, 290 ; besieges Limerick, 291 ; his evidence about the treaty of Limerick, 296 Willoughby, Sir Francis, Governor of Dublin, 246 Winter, Admiral, 187 Wolfe, Tone, 354 ; leader 01 United Irishmen, 354; meets Lord Edward Fitzgerald in Paris, 355 ; his scheme of de¬ scent, 355 ; descent fails, 357 ; a fresh attempt, 358; again fails, 361 ; is arrested on board the Hoche, 361 ; condemned and dies in prison, 366 Wood, patentee of halfpence, 317 Y Yellow Ford, battle of the, 203 “Young Ireland,” party of, 388, 390 UNWIN BROTHtVS, THE GRESHAM ERE-SS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON . . iiy '■■' '■■ . . ' .. - - ■ • . ■ ^ ! ' f / ',; -JW ^ 0, t; . .i p< K