Irish Legends

The trustworthy history of Ireland emerges from a long period of dim legend and of vague traditions. We know nothing, as a matter of fact, of the earliest races which inhabited the island, and very little of the successive invasions, which, coming from various parts of the world, swept over and conquered it. Like the legends of most other long-settled countries, the legends of Ireland abound with stories of heroism and romance, of the conflicts of giants, of the presence of fairies, soothsayers, and magicians, of knightly prowess, chivalry, and love. The ancient Irish bards, whose legendary tales, like those of the bards of Wales, have to some extent been preserved, tell of wonderful feats, of mighty wars, of kingly rivalries, and of rude, barbaric customs. They relate how one Lady Caesar reigned in Erin before the Deluge; and how, after that event, Erin was ruled by Partholan, a near descendant of Japhet.

They relate how this Partholan was a savage monster, who had killed his father and mother from greed of power; and how the race of Partholan was swept from the earth, to the last man, by a terrible pestilence. After Partholan's colony, Ireland was occupied by the Nemedhians, so called from their chief, Nemedh, who came from the borders of the Black Sea. Nemedh is said to have built forts, and cleared lands in the island. He engaged in fierce wars with hordes of Negro sea-rovers, who came from Africa, and were called Formosians.

The Formosians, who were the third race to invade Ireland, at last overcame the Nemedhians, and possessed the land. The Nemedhians fled, and scattered to different parts of Europe. A little later some of the Nemedhians, called Firbolgs, returned to Ireland under five brothers as their chiefs, dispossessed in turn the Formosians, and divided the island into five kingdoms. These made the fourth conquest of Ireland.

But the Firbolgs were not allowed, according to the legends, to remain long undisturbed. Another branch of the Nemedhian race, called the Tuatha de Danans, were the next conquerors. These are described as a race of magicians and warriors, who had settled in Greece, whence they now came to conquer their former country. In the decisive battle which was fought between the Firbolgs and the Tuatha, the Firbolg king was killed, and was buried on the shore of Sligo. It is an Irish tradition that his grave is still to be seen, and that the waves have never been known to wash over it. The king of the Tuatha, in the same battle, lost his right hand; and, as his subjects would not have a ruler without a right hand, a silver hand was made for him by one of his skilled artificers. The Tuatha, the legends tell us, were endowed with supernatural powers. They could work many wonders. They could silence the furious winds. They could heal the sick, forge metals, cast magical spells over their enemies, and could even restore the dead to life.

The Tuatha, according to the traditions, held their own in Ireland through a long period. They were often unsuccessfully assailed by the fierce black Formosians, whom the Firbolgs had ousted. But great as was their prowess, the Tuatha also were doomed to defeat and extinction. The various races of the Nemedhians are believed to have been of Turanian origin, and to have originally come from the interior of Africa. But now Ireland was invaded by a very different race of men. This last race was clearly of Aryan blood, akin to the other Aryan races who swept over and occupied nearly the whole of Europe. The Nemedhians were probably small of stature, and dark of complexion. But the new race was comprised of men who were robust, tall, and fair. The particular branch of the Aryans which found its way to Ireland is variously named in history as "Gaels," "Milesians," and "Scots;" but the name by which they are most commonly known is that of the "Celts." They invaded Ireland under the lead of the sons of Milesius, who had some time before been their chief.

The Celts came, some across the Irish Sea from Britain, but mostly from the shores of Spain, and are believed to have been the descendants of Phoenicians who had established themselves in those lands. They found it no easy task to overcome the Tuatha, who clung obstinately to their island realm. The Tuatha put forth all their power of sorcery to repel and destroy the invaders. They enveloped the Celtic ships in dense fogs, the legends say; they raised terrific storms to clash them on the rocks; they summoned "spirits from the vasty deep" to bring destruction upon them. But at last the Celtic hordes gained a foothold on the coast. Gradually they drove the valiant Tuatha into the gorges of the hills, and finally they obtained sway over the whole island. The two sons of Milesius, Heber and Heremon, divided their conquest between them. But in course of time Heber overcame Heremon, and assumed the sole sovereignty.

For a very long period the Tuatha continued to harass the new masters of Ireland. But after a while they became absorbed, and lost their distinctive traits; and the dominion of the Celts became complete. The Celtic was the fifth and last successful invasion of Ireland, according to the ancient traditions. They became the prevailing race in the island for all time. It was they who formed the character of the Irish as a people, as they have always been since. The Irish of to-day are overwhelmingly Celtic in blood. Their language, customs, and traditions are to be traced to a Celtic origin. The Celts not only absorbed the Tuatha, and the remains of previous races, but they later absorbed the races which from time to time gained some foothold on the island; just as, in England, the Saxons first replaced the Britons, and then absorbed in turn the Danes and the Normans.

How long the Celts had populated Ireland before authentic history begins, there is no means of knowing. The legends tell of one hundred and eighteen kings, ruling in succession over their turbulent people, and engaging in frequent conflicts to maintain themselves; of rebellions of royal sons against their fathers; of a queen named Meave, who was the daughter of a fairy, and who lived a hundred years, and was continually waging bloody wars; of the fair Deirdri, who, by her beauty, brought many woes upon Erin; of the fierce race of Feni and their chief, Finn, surrounded by his shaggy warriors, his bards and poets, his clowns and champions; of invasions by Norman sea-rovers, who were driven back by the valiant Irish; of the loves and treacheries of princes, the magic spells of sorcerers, and the terrible feuds and revenges of rival chiefs.

Whatever credit may be given to these legendary tales, it seems certain that, before the time of Christ, Ireland had good harbors, traded with the busy forts of the Mediterranean, and was the home of a people brave and not wholly barbarous. The Irish, with little doubt, were strong enough at times to attack the Roman strongholds in Britain and in Gaul. The Romans, on the other hand, never attempted the conquest of Ireland; nor was Ireland ever conquered, after its settlement by the Celts, until, many centuries after that settlement, it was subdued by English arms.

The Ancient Irish

We can only guess, from the dim legends which have been described, what may have been the character, institutions, and customs of the successive races who preceded the Celts in the occupation of Ireland. But we do know what many of the institutions and customs of the Celts were, at the time that authentic history finds them in possession of the island. Over all the people was set the "arch-king," whom they called the "Ard-Righ." The successor of this arch-king was chosen by the people during the arch-king's lifetime, and was called the "roydamna." The roydamna was selected from the arch-king's family, and was usually, though by no means always, his eldest son. There were several causes for which a prince might be excluded from the throne. One of these was physical deformity. A prince who had lost a hand, who was blind, or hump-backed,-could not succeed to the crown. If, after his accession, the arch-king became in any way deformed, he was deposed.

Under the arch-king were a number of princes or chiefs, who divided the government of the various parts of the island between them. These were called "righ," or "kings." Their successors, like those of the arch-kings, were elected by the people from their families, and were called "tanists." One and all of these "righ" were subject to the arch-king's authority. The provinces ruled over by the righ were again subdivided into tribes or clans, which the Irish called "septs."

Each sept comprised a group of families, living in the same neighborhood; and each sept had its popularly elected chief. So, too, each family included in the sept had its chief or head, who owed allegiance to the chief of the sept. Under him, however, the head of the family had absolute power over its several members. Each tribe had its established domain, which its members cultivated, and upon which it dwelt. This domain was divided up, and its various portions were devoted to certain purposes. A part of it was used by all the members of the tribe in common, who cultivated it, pastured their horses, pigs, sheep, and cows upon it, and took their fuel from it. Another part served for the habitations of the tribe, and yet a third part was provided for the use or pleasure of the chief. A portion of the tribal domain, moreover, was occupied by nobles, who had secured it by their prowess, or by services to the tribe or king.

There was no such thing among the ancient Irish as a law of primogeniture; that is, a law, such as long prevailed among the English, which provided that the eldest son of a family should inherit all the lands of his father. When an Irishman died, all his sons took an equal share of the lands he left. This was called the custom of "gavelkind." If a family became extinct, its lands were taken by the tribe and redivided. But little cultivating of the land was done by the ancient Irish. Their main source of support was cattle; and, among cattle, cows were raised to the largest extent. Indeed, the cow played a curious part in the laws and business relations of the Irish. If a man was fined for breaking the laws, he was condemned to pay over so many cows. Land, too, was measured according to its capacity to feed a greater or less number of cows. The Irish also raised a great many pigs, and some horses and sheep.

The ancient Irish usually dwelt in small clusters of dwellings, which were commonly built either upon the islands of the lakes, or upon hills. Around the settlement was erected a thick wall of earth and stone, for purposes of defense; and a fort was also constructed in the center of the settlement, in which the chief of the Sept lived. Sometimes these defenses were of great strength, the walls being twelve or fourteen feet thick. The huts themselves were built of wood or wattles, fifteen or twenty feet long; while the chiefs had much larger dwellings, some of which were built with no little skill and knowledge of architecture. The ancient Irish appear to have had a rude system of writing, by making notches in wood, and sometimes in stone. At a very early period, too, they sent their native ores, and sold slaves, to the seaport towns of the Mediterranean. They are also known to have had much skill in the making of weapons, and in the working of precious metals. These arts they perhaps derived from their Phoenician ancestors.

Some of the laws of the ancient Irish have happily come down to us, and present a curious view of their ideas and customs. They do not seem to have made any clear distinction between what we call crimes, and what we look upon merely as civil injuries. Whether a man committed a theft, or an assault, or only a trespass upon land, his punishment was a fine, to be paid in cows. If the criminal could not pay his fine, it was paid by his family; and, when this was the case, the criminal lost his civil rights, and his share in the common land. Fines were imposed for injuries to women, theft, murder, receiving stolen goods, and swindling, which we call crimes; and also for trespass, slander, negligence, and the failure to pay debts, which we regard, less seriously, as civil wrongs.

In one respect, the ancient Irish laws were much in advance of those of most primitive peoples. The husband and wife were put on a footing of perfect equality as to their rights in the land. The wife had as much to say, in the disposal of the land, as her husband. The old Irish laws, moreover, commanded the people to receive hospitably all comers. They also made rules as to the clothing which each social rank should wear.

DRUID SACRIFICES

The religion of the ancient Irish, like that of the ancient Britons and Gauls, was that known to us as Druidism, and was no doubt derived from the East. The priests of this religion were called Druids, and the worship of fire was one of its main features. The Druids were "priests of the sun." There is some reason to believe that, in the groves where they conducted the rites of their faith, they were in the habit of offering up sacrifices of men and women, on great stone altars erected for the purpose. The chief god was Crom, who was called the god of fire. There were also other gods, who were the special deities of the bards, the champions, the sailors, and the workers in metal. Groves were dedicated to the worship of these gods, which was conducted in the open air. As for the Druids themselves, both the priests and the priestesses, they were held sacred, and revered above all others among the ancient Irish. On all public occasions, they held the place of honor near the king. They consecrated the weapons of the warriors; they dictated whether there should be peace or war; the best products of the earth, and of the artificers, were devoted to their use.

All the principal officers of the Irish realm were chosen from among the Druids. The chief of these officers were the priests, who served at the altars; the Brehons, who were men of learning, and by their wisdom settled all quarrels and disputes, and interpreted and executed the laws; and the Bards, whose task it was to write the histories of events, and to sing the exploits of princes. Below these three higher officers, were the royal doctors, stewards, knights or champions, and the armorers. The farmers were an inferior rank; and the millers, weavers, shepherds, and farm-laborers were, for the most part, slaves, who had been captured in war, or had been bought from the Britons.

In various parts of Ireland are to be seen strange round towers, the origin and use of which can only be conjectured. It is believed by some writers that they were erected by the Druids. Others think that they were built by petty chiefs of clans, who formed a special rank, or caste, among the early Irish.

It was in ancient times, too,—though how ancient, no one knows,—that Ireland was divided into the four great provinces which still retain their boundaries and names. Indeed, there was of old, in eastern Ireland, a fifth province, called Meath. This province was the domain of the arch-king, where he had his residence and held his court. Its people were free from all taxation except such as was imposed by the sovereign. It held a sort of neutral position among the other provinces, and was endowed with special privileges. Its territory is now included in the two counties of Meath and Westmeath. The four other provinces—Ulster, Leinster, Connaught, and Munster—had, geographically, very much the same boundaries that they have to-day. Such, in brief, was the pagan Ireland, which, in the first half of the fifth century, the famous St. Patrick came to win from its idolatries, and convert to Christianity.

Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick is the first great and distinct figure in the authentic history of Ireland. The story of his life is interesting; and the results of the good work that he did, in bringing the entire Irish people within the civilizing fold of Christianity, remained for ages after he himself had been laid in the grave. Patrick was a Gaul, and was born and brought up in the seaside town which we now call Boulogne, in France. There he was born, probably at the beginning of the fifth century (400). His father was a well-to-do citizen, and Patrick was no doubt fairly educated in his boyhood. But when he was sixteen years old, his country was invaded by the warlike Irish king Nial. Patrick himself was captured, carried over to Ireland, and, as befell all prisoners of war in those rude clays, was sold into slavery. His master was a great Irish chief named Milcho, in the county of Antrim. During the seven years that he was a slave, Patrick tended his master's sheep on the Antrim hills.

When Patrick was twenty-three, he succeeded in making his escape. He ran away, hid himself in a vessel, and thus got safely back to Gaul. He now became a Christian priest, and was soon known for the fervor with which he performed the duties of his sacred office. He resided for a while at Tours, and then repaired to Rome, where he rose high in favor at the Papal court. All the while, his mind was filled with thoughts of the pagan land where he had spent his youth in servitude. He remembered with horror the hideous rites of which he had been a witness,—the cruel human sacrifices, the idolatrous worship of the sun and of fire, the severity of the rule of the Druids, and the ignorance and abasement of the people. His heart longed to raise them out of their degraded condition, and to bring them into the light of the Christian faith. As he dwelt continually upon these thoughts, he began to be visited by strange dreams, and then by startling visions. It seemed to him as if God were thus commanding him to leave his work in Rome, to go and convert the Irish.

At last he had a vision which decided him. He thought that an angel came to him in his dreams, holding a scroll on which was plainly written, "The voice of the Irish." At the same time, he seemed to hear the wailing and groans of the benighted people. Despite all the dangers which threatened him, Patrick finally resolved to go and preach in the land of his former captivity. He made known his resolution to Pope Celestine, who gave him authority to convert the Irish. More than twenty years had elapsed since his escape from slavery. Patrick was now a middle-aged man, robust of frame, brave of heart, and fervid of spirit. It is not known in what year he arrived, with a few fellow-priests, off the Irish coast; but it is certain that it was in the first half of the fifth century. He attempted to land on the shores of Wicklow, on the eastern coast, south of the spot where Dublin now stands. But the fierce Irish had heard of his coming, and assailed his vessel from the shore with a storm of missiles.

He then sailed northward, and succeeded in landing on the coast of Antrim, the county in which he had lived as a slave. With his little group of missionaries, Patrick began his preaching at a place called Saul. He held his meetings in a barn, where he caused a rude altar to be erected, and where he exhorted the natives who could be induced to enter to abandon Druidism and embrace Christianity. But Patrick's zeal outstripped the first results of his mission. He was impatient to make conversions on a wider field, and on a larger scale. So he bravely resolved to appear before the arch-king Leoghaire himself, surrounded though he might be by his warriors and priests. So sure was Patrick of the truth of his teaching, and so ardent was he in its cause, that he did not despair of success, even in such a presence.

It happened that the arch-king was about to hold a joyous festival in honor of his birthday, on the royal hill of Tara. There would be a vast gathering of princes, champions, priests, and bards from every part of the island; and the historic hill would swarm with the fierce soldiery of the barbaric court. There would be solemn religious rites attended by ghastly human sacrifices. This celebration was to take place, Patrick learned, on the day before Easter. Inspired by a bold resolve, Patrick bade adieu to his little flock at Saul, embarked on his ship, and landed at the mouth of the Boyne. From thence he proceeded directly across the great plain that spreads out between the Boyne and the hill of Tara. He was only attended by a few Irish-men, whom he had recently converted. He stayed one night at the house of a kindly chief, whom, with all his family, Patrick persuaded to accept the Christian faith. On the third day of his journey, the Saint beheld, in the distance, the edifices and lofty trees which crowned the royal eminence. Above them all rose the king's palace and his banqueting-hall, now decorated for the birthday festival.

But no fires were lit on the massive Druid altars on the hill, nor anywhere in the country roundabout. For the arch-priest had ordained that, at a given moment, they should all be lit in honor of the monarch. Patrick, however, deliberately disobeyed this command. He lit his fire before his camp, on the slope opposite Tara. No sooner slid the pagan hosts perceive what they regarded as an act of audacious treason and sacrilege, than they rushed over to Patrick's camp, seized him and his companions, and dragged them into the presence of the arch-king and his courtiers and priests, who were gathered in a large open space. Patrick remained undaunted in the midst of his angry enemies. One of the chiefs, acting according to the polite custom of the Irish, offered him a seat; and he sat down. Then he was commanded to say why he had committed such an outrage against the religion of the land.

Patrick felt that his opportunity had come. Inspired rather than frightened by the scene, by the historic spot on which he stood, and by the multitude of fierce and glowering faces which surrounded him, he nerved himself for a supreme effort of eloquence. He spent but a few words in justifying his act of lighting the fire. Soon, he was boldly showing the barbaric concourse the cruelty, the falsity, and the absurdity of their faith. They listened in spellbound wonder. Then, with all the fervor of his soul, he told them the story of Christ; of his miracles; the wise, good, humane, lessons which he taught; and the church which he had founded on the earth. Rude as were the spirits he addressed, the minds and hearts of many of them were touched by his glowing words. Their wrath subsided. They looked at each other, and murmured. When Patrick had finished, a hubbub of confused voices arose.

Forthwith nobles, priests, and warriors began to argue eagerly with each other. Some boldly took the part of the Christian; others hotly opposed him; many wavered in their faith. Then a wonderful thing happened. The daughters of the arch-king Leoghaire declared themselves converted. Several great princes and chiefs followed their example. At last, the arch-Druid himself, the head of the entire pagan church of Ireland, embraced the new faith. Patrick hastened to baptize his new converts; and presently great numbers of the chief men of Ireland, including many Druid priests, came to the baptism, and were thus received into the Christian church. The arch-king, though he did not receive Christianity, shielded Patrick from violence, put him under his own protection, and assigned the Saint the castle of Trim, not far distant from Tara, as his residence. Thither Patrick repaired, to continue without ceasing the great and good work which he had undertaken, and which had been so auspiciously begun.

It is no wonder that Druidism, with its long hold upon the Irish, died hard. For many years, Patrick's struggles against it were bitter and constant. Plots were concocted by Druid priests to murder him as he journeyed in lonely places. The priests denounced him from their altars, and made sport of his actions. The bards took up the cause of the old faith, and poured out songs of indignation. Some of the chiefs forbade him their territories. But Patrick gradually won over a host of ardent Irish disciples. His converts constantly increased; and his influence spread from Tara to Armagh in the north, and to Cashel in the south. Then the Druids sought refuge in the forests and in the islands off the coast, where they could still perform their pagan rites unmolested. As fast as he had converted a district, Patrick established missions in it, caused monasteries to be erected, and left native priests to conduct the church services, and to continue his work. He himself went continually from place to place, visiting these missions; and in the later years of his life, although he usually journeyed on foot, he was attended by a numerous retinue. In this retinue were bell-ringers, chamberlains, cooks, workers in metals, brewers, smiths, and embroiderers, as well as priests and monks.

Patrick did not lay violent hands on the ancient customs of the Irish. So far as he could consistently with his sacred mission, he left the traditions of the people untouched. He kept the pagan holidays as Christian holidays. But he reformed the old laws, making them more enlightened and humane, and removing from them everything which recognized or protected the Druid faith. He led the Irish gently, and by gradual steps, to a higher social as well as religious state. Patrick undoubtedly lived to a very advanced age. He was probably over ninety, when, in the monastery of Saul, erected on the very spot where the old barn in which he had first preached in Ireland stood, he quietly passed away. He had done a vast and noble work; and his last hours were gladdened with a holy joy, at the thought that he had led a whole nation into the Christian fold. He was laid, with all pomp and reverence, in the church at Armagh, and has ever since been revered by the Irish as their great apostle. To this day they celebrate the supposed anniversary of his death as their principal national holiday.

Christian Ireland

The good work of St. Patrick was vigorously continued, after his death, by his disciples and successors. In the course of time Ireland was dotted with churches, monasteries, and schools. Pieces of land were set apart by the various tribes for the maintenance of the religious establishments; and this land remained in their possession. The abbot of a monastery became a sort of lord of the manor, to whom his tenants owed fealty; and, as in the case of the chiefs of tribes, the successor of the abbot, who was called the "co-arb," was chosen, during the abbot's life-time, by the monks and the men of the tribe. Each monastery had attached to it, moreover, a number of smaller missions, scattered here and there, over which it had control, and which paid tribute to it for its support. Bishops, moreover, were set over the different sees. For a long time, however, the bishops were inferior in authority to the abbots of the monasteries.

For two centuries after the death of St. Patrick, the piety and learning of Ireland were renowned throughout Europe. The Irish monks went forth into Britain, Gaul, and Germany, to convert the heathen of those countries. Ireland came to be known everywhere as "the Isle of Saints." The monks founded monasteries and schools wherever they went. They preached before the great Charlemagne, and were celebrated, even in Rome itself, for their scholarship no less than for their religious fervor. There was a long period, indeed, when Ireland was the foremost nation in Europe, in learning and religious teaching; when, from all parts of Europe, students flocked in hundreds to fill her schools to overflowing, and to learn theology and the arts in her monasteries and convents. As early as in the sixth century, there were famous schools at Armagh and Belfast, at Clonard and Wexford, at Mungret and Mayo. At some of these schools were gathered, at times, as many as five or six thousand students. The students, too, were of many races,—Saxons, Gauls, Picts, and Franks, as well as Irish.

These great schools were, for the most part, free to all; not only free in their instruction, but free in giving board and lodging to the students. The tribes granted them lands, rights of fishery, and mill privileges; and they were allowed to cut as much wood for timber and fuel as they needed.

The monks went about the country asking for funds by which to support the schools; and often princes, nobles, and large-hearted rich women gave them generous endowments. The edifices of the great schools were built in blocks, and formed the streets of a special quarter of the town in which they were situated. They were generally erected on the banks of a river or a lake, and were, for the most part, wooden buildings with shingle roofs, and were spacious in size. The students went forth from these schools, to spread learning and the Christian faith through the most benighted regions of northern and western Europe, and to establish the fame of Ireland as the intellectual center of the world.

The studies pursued at these schools give a striking idea of the height to which Irish scholarship had attained while Britain was still in a state of almost barbaric ignorance. The Irish students were taught not only their own tongue and Latin, which was, as it still is, the language of the church; but they also learned Greek, Hebrew, and the writings of the Greek and Christian philosophers. They studied physics, mathematics, and poetry, and were carefully practiced in music. Neither paper nor printing had been invented; and the books used in the Irish schools were all written by monkish hands on vellum, or parchment. But few such books could have been possessed by the schools. It is probable that the teachers read from them, and expounded the text by lectures. By far the greater number of the students were educated to enter the priesthood; so that a deep religious spirit pervaded the studies, habits, and influences of the schools.

At the same time, scholarship, science, and the arts, as well as religion, were ardently pursued in the tranquil cells and cloisters of the many monasteries which were now thickly scattered through Ireland. The monks, besides pursuing their religious vigils, did a great deal of worldly work. They tilled the fertile lands attached to the monasteries; they tended their cows, sheep, and pigs; they acted as scribes for those who could not write; they worked in wood and in the metals. They made with their own hands the various ornaments which adorned the sanctuaries, and wrote and illuminated the missals used in pious services. They were skillful in architecture, built their own edifices and churches, and devoted themselves with special ardor to music. It is an ancient Irish proverb, that "it is a poor church that has no music." The Irish churches, even in that distant age, were famous for their well-drilled choirs, their stirring hymns, and their instrumental as well as vocal harmonies.

Ireland produced in the sixth and seventh centuries a multitude of holy men, who received the name of "saints," and were renowned through Europe for their piety and learning. They had a great influence over the public affairs, not only of Ireland, but of other countries. They sometimes founded Irish and Christian colonies on foreign soil. The most notable instance of this, perhaps, was the founding of an Irish colony on the island of Iona, off the western coast of Scotland. There is little doubt that many of the people of the Scottish Highlands were descended from Irish colonists, who had established themselves in that country long before St. Patrick's time. There are traces, indeed, of Irish invasions of Scotland, as far back as the middle of the third century. A large and prosperous Irish settlement had been made at the beginning of the sixth century (503), in Argyle, Rosshire, and Perth. But the first systematic attempt to bring about the conversion of the Scottish pagans was that made in the middle of the sixth century by the famous St. Columbkill, who founded the colony on the island of Iona (565).

DEATH OF COLUMBKILL

Next to St. Patrick himself, Columbkill was the most conspicuous Irish figure in those early centuries. He was of royal blood, a bishop of the church, and an accomplished scholar. His temper was sweet and saint-like. He had, moreover, a burning religious zeal, rare courage, poetic talent, and a gift of glowing eloquence. With twelve priests, he repaired to Iona, and built a large monastery. He then set out upon his task of conversion. Columbkill went among the barbarous people in the islands of the Hebrides and the Orkneys, through the mountains of Argyle into northern Britain, and even to the southernmost parts of the island. His success during his long mission of thirty-one years was wonderful. The Pict king was baptized by him, and the lesser Scottish sovereigns received his benediction when they assumed their scepters.

Columbkill's fame and influence thus spread far and wide. His disciples were called "the servants of God." In order that the monks of Iona might pursue their studies and writing of books in entire seclusion, Columbkill made a law that neither any woman nor any cow should be allowed on the island; "for," he said, "where there is a cow, there will be a woman; and, wherever there is a woman, there will be mischief." Columbkill more than once interposed, with his wisdom and his authority, in the affairs of Ireland. He defended the bards, whom one of the kings wished to suppress; he successfully opposed the taxation of his Iona colony; and the Irish priesthood often resorted to him for counsel. Columbkill was over eighty years old when he died. When he rose on the Sunday morning of his death, he said to one of his disciples, cheerfully, "This day is called the day of rest; and such will it be for me, for it will finish my labors." A few hours later, he had quietly passed away. It is said that death came to him as he sat writing some pious sayings on vellum (596).

Early Irish Kings

It has already been stated that Ireland, at an early period, was divided into four great provinces, which we now know as Ulster, Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. The royal domain of Meath, moreover, was set apart from these, serving as the residence and appanage of the arch-king, or sovereign, of all Ireland. Each of the four great provinces was occupied by a separate tribe, and each tribe was ruled by a king of ancient and powerful family.

The reigning family of Ulster were the O'Neils; of Leinster, the Macmurroughs; of Munster, the O'Briens, alternating with the McCarthys; and of Connaught, the O'Connors. All of these names are still very common in Ireland. For several centuries the O'Neils of Ulster wore the arch-regal crown, and held sway over the entire island. Besides these arch-kings and kings, there were in Ireland a multitude of lesser rulers, who divided the various provinces. Among the most noted of these lesser chiefs were the O'Donnels, O'Kanes, O'Haras, O'Doghertys, O'Rourkes, O'Kellys, O'Reillys, O'Malleys, O'Dowds, O'Sullivans, and O'Donoghues,—names which we still often hear.

While the various provinces and tribes were thus governed by chiefs of the same families, the custom of electing them long continued. A majority of two-thirds was required to complete the choice of a king or chief; but it came to be more and more the case that he was chosen from the same family or clan as that of those who had preceded him. The kings were always crowned with much solemnity. The ceremony usually took place on the summit of a high hill. A white wand was given to the new monarch, who was attired in his royal robes, and who took an oath to rule wisely and well. Afterwards he was consecrated in a church, with imposing religious rites. Some of the festivals of the Irish kings, too, were attended by many ancient and hallowed customs. Especially was the festival which took place on the 1st of November noted for its ceremonies and general observance.

Gradually the laws introduced by St. Patrick were adopted by the arch-regal court, and the courts of the four provinces. These laws still enforced the principle of electing the kings and chiefs, but ordained that those chosen must be of noble descent. The kings and chiefs were still bound to each other by the ancient Druidic customs. Fines, taxes, and other payments continued to be estimated, not in money, but in cattle, sheep, horses, slaves, coats of armor, chess-boards, drinking-cups, and other articles in common or frequent use. The quantity of these things which was owed by the tribesmen to their chief, or by the chief to the king, was exactly fixed in each case by the laws. The laws, moreover, minutely described what privileges and powers each ruler might enjoy, and what he was prohibited from doing or receiving. Some of these privileges and restrictions are amusing. For instance, it was ordained that the arch-king must never, on any account, lie abed till the sun rose. On the other hand, it was laid down, that on a certain day,—the 1st of August,—the arch-king might eat fish from the Boyne, fruit from the Isle of Man, and venison from Naas.

The kings of the provinces, in like manner, had curious rights, and were forbidden to do certain things. The king of Leinster, for example, was expressly enjoined not to permit any Druidic ceremony to take place in his territories. To him, on the other hand, was granted the right to partake of the ale of Cullen, and to preside over certain ancient games. The king of Munster could not gather his warriors on the confines of Leinster; but he had the privilege of dwelling, during Lent, at Cashel, without cost to himself. The monarch of Ulster was warned not to drink from a certain fountain, nor to take heed of omens. His privileges were to preside over the festivities of Cooley, to drill his troops on the plains of Louth, and to quarter his soldiers for three nights in Armagh. If a king or prince adhered to the Druidic faith or practices, his tenants were relieved from paying rent to him, and his debtors were released from their debts to him.

The reigns of the early Irish monarchs were marked by many convulsions, by frequent struggles for supremacy, and now and then by assassinations. A long time elapsed after St. Patrick's death before the arch-kings themselves became Christian. Lewy, the son of Leoghaire, is related to have been struck by lightning because of his adherence to the Druidic faith; and, sixty years later, Dermid, who still fostered the Druid priests, and who caused an accused man to be seized on the altar of a Christian church, was solemnly cursed by a Christian bishop, who also pronounced condemnation on him on the hill of Tara (554). No Irish king, it is said, afterwards made Tara his place of abode. The successors of Dermid lived at Tailteen, and on the borders of Lake Ennell. Dermid himself was slain, soon after the bishop's anathema against him, in a furious battle with the king of Ulster.

Among the reigns which intervened between that of Dermid and the period of the invasion of the Danes (556-794), some are conspicuous for the important and thrilling events which took place within their span. Such was the reign of Hugh the Second, who sat upon the Irish throne for the long period of twenty-seven years. It was in this monarch's time that Columbkill established his colony on the Scottish isle of Iona, and that the attempt was made to suppress the ancient rank and power of the bards. King Hugh failed, indeed, to get rid of the bards, but succeeded in restricting many of their old-time privileges. They were forbidden to wander about the country, singing and reciting their poems, or to have companies of servants. Hugh also attempted, in vain, to impose taxes on the colony of Iona. It was during his reign that the Christian priesthood rose to a great height of power in Ireland.

A number of brief reigns followed the death of Hugh the Second. In that of Donald the Second (624-640), the final struggle took place between Druidism and Christianity. A pretender, Congal, Prince of Ulidia, rose to contest the crown of Ulster. Congal rallied under his banners the forces of Druidism in the North, and his cause became that of the ancient religion. He had also as allies numerous bands of Saxons, Scots, and Britons, who crossed the Irish Sea to join him. King Donald gathered his sturdy tribesmen, and went in person to encounter his foe. The royal banners bore upon them the ancient symbols of Irish sovereignty,—red hands and crosses, axes, eagles, and lions. Above the rebel prince floated the bright standard of the Red Branch Knights, displaying a yellow lion on a field of green satin. The rival hosts came into fierce collision on the broad plain of Moira. Donald and the Christian cause were completely victorious. Congal was killed in the battle, his forces were put to flight, and the triumphant king established his power beyond dispute. The battle of Moira was the death-struggle of Druidism in Ireland (637).

After the death of the brave Donald, two brothers, Connall and Kellach, reigned jointly over Ireland; and they, in turn, were succeeded by two brothers, Dermid and Blathmac, who also shared between them the government of the kingdom. The latter were earnest Christians, and ruled wisely and well. In their time the yellow plague ravaged Ireland and was finally fatal to the two kings themselves. The next reign of note was that of Finnacta, a monarch who was called the "Hospitable." It was during his rule, that the Anglo-Saxons, who had long been settled in Britain, made their first formidable invasion of Ireland. Egfrid, king of Northumbria, sent an expedition under Boert, one of his earls, across the Irish Channel. Boert disembarked at the mouth of the Boyne, and spread havoc and desolation through the fertile fields of Meath. But the force he led was not sufficient to attempt a conquest of the island; and so he retired, after seizing the cattle, burning the churches, and killing all the Irish who came in his way.

During the greater part of the eighth century the career of the Irish kingdom was, for the most part, tranquil and uneventful. Of all the kings for a hundred years, only three were killed in battle. Two of them, Flaherty and Nial the Second, gave up the burdens of sovereignty, and like the German emperor, Charles the Fifth, many centuries after, sought tranquility in the cloisters of a monastery. Hugh the Fifth, who succeeded Flaherty, was not only an able warrior, but was a poet of no small merit. He was devoted to the church, and engaged in a fierce war with the Prince of Ulidia, in defense of the rights of the bishop of Armagh. It was in the reign of Donald the Third, Hugh's successor, that learning and religious fervor reached their greatest height in Ireland (750). The longest and most troublous reign of the eighth century was that of Donogh the First, whose rule lasted twenty-one years. The sovereignty of Meath was contested during that period by the family of O'Melaghlin, who were forced at last, however, to yield to Donogh's powers. It was in the last years of Donogh that the first invasion of Ireland by the Danes took place.

The Invasion of the Danes

Ireland had been for nearly three centuries the center of the scholarship, piety, and Christian zeal in the world. She was now doomed to be overrun by a pagan race, and to submit for a long period to a barbarous foreign yoke. In the catastrophe, learning and Christianity were destined to almost disappear from the island, and were not to be revived until after many desperate conflicts. In the course of time, the condition of the Irish had been gradually changing. Tribal customs had begun to disappear. The lands which had once been used by the tribes in common, were becoming absorbed by the chiefs and barons; and the quarrels between the chiefs resulted, here and there, in the conquest of domains which became the property of the victors. It was the dissensions and rival ambitions which grew up among the chiefs, which opened to the Danes the way to descend upon the Irish coast, to carry rapine and murder into the interior, and finally to subjugate the island to their savage rule.

The Danes were a race of hardy, ferocious sea warriors, who came, not only from Denmark (whence they derived their name), but also from Norway and Friesland. For many centuries they had roved the seas, bent on errands of plunder and conquest. They were very skillful navigators, and were unequalled in their warlike courage. Their kinsmen had defeated the legions of Roman emperors, and had sacked and burned Rome itself. Everywhere along the coasts of Northern Europe the coming of the Danes was intensely dreaded. No race could cope with their great, strong ships on the ocean: few could withstand their hot valor on the field of battle.

But Ireland had for centuries escaped the scourge of their attack. Already Britain had long been assailed by the fleets of the Danish Vikings, while the fields and villages along her shores had been devastated by the Danish pirates. Two centuries were yet to elapse, however, before a Danish king would sit upon the British throne. The first invasion of Ireland by these ferocious sea-rovers took place towards the close of the eighth century. At first, they came with their big ships at rare intervals, landing at various points on the eastern coast, building forts, ravaging the country round about, and then departing. But in course of time the Danes and their kinsmen, the Norwegians, found out the dissensions which existed between the Irish rulers, and perceived that Ireland, given over to piety and learning, had neglected the arts of war. Then they flocked across the sea in greater numbers, and with greater frequency. They seized upon Dublin and Wexford on the east, Cork on the south, and Down on the north. They then began to make and fortify settlements, from whence they issued to spread rapine and massacre among the peaceful villages and the quiet monasteries of the interior. The Danes were resolved to conquer the island and to extirpate its people, and to themselves enjoy its fair domain.

The Danes were pagans, like the Saxons who had subjugated Britain. They believed in the gods Odin and Thor, and the goddess Friga; and to these they offered barbarous sacrifices. Their faith was warlike, bloody, and revengeful. Above all things the Danes detested and despised Christianity, which they looked upon as a religion rival to their own, and one, entirely unlike their own, of peace and brotherhood. When, therefore, they found themselves in Ireland, the first objects of their attack were the sacred places of Irish piety. With fierce and rapacious ardor they assailed, sacked, and burned the churches and monasteries. They destroyed the precious books, which had been written with such long and patient care by the monks. They seized the ornaments, the jeweled plate and symbols, the rich clothes and golden chalices which adorned the Christian sanctuaries and the shrines of the Irish saints. They scattered the bones and relics of the saints to the winds. Without mercy, they murdered bishops and priests wherever they could find them. They broke up the colleges and schools, driving the students into exile, and razing to the ground the edifices within which so many thousands had found a scholastic retreat.

The Irish fought desperately against the relentless invaders; but, in the earlier years of the invasion, the Danes were victorious in almost every part of the island. When they had vanquished the Irish, they avenged themselves by the most savage atrocities. The Danish warriors forced themselves into Irish households, and compelled the families to support and serve them. They made the Irish wear their own cast-off clothing, and forbade them to have schools, to learn the art of war, or to hold Christian services. At last, a powerful Danish chieftain named Turges brought Ireland under well-nigh complete subjection. He built strong fortifications at Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, and took up his abode on the green borders of Lough (Lake) Ree, in the heart of Ireland (837). From thence he ruled the Irish with an iron hand. He compelled them to pay heavy taxes: those who refused to pay these taxes had their noses cut off. His soldiers were quartered on the people, and he cruelly punished every attempt to worship according to the Christian faith.

For a long time this Danish despot held his own. In vain did the valiant Irish king, Nial, contest his power. But the capture and imprisonment of the archbishop of Armagh by the Danes aroused the ancient military ardor of the Irish. Nial defeated the Danes on the plain of Moynith; and Turges was not long after taken prisoner by Malachy, king of Westmeath, and was drowned in the waters of Lough Ree. The fortunes of War continued to waver between the Irish and the Danes for many years. The monasteries, churches, and schools were for the most part swept away; the people were impoverished by the almost constant desolation of conflict; and there were times when the Irish seemed ready to yield in sullen despair to their rude conquerors. Now and then an able Irish king would arise, inflict heavy defeats upon the Danes, and revive the sinking spirits of the people. Then fierce rivalries between the princes would breakout afresh; and, amid the fatal divisions of the Irish, the Danes would recover again the ground they had lost.

At last, an ambitious and warlike prince, in the person of Brian, brother of the king of Munster, arose to contend successfully with the savage intruders. Brian was a wise as well as a brave man. He not only fought with brilliant courage, but gave just laws to his subjects. His proud spirit burned to avenge the wrongs which the Irish had so long suffered at the hands of the Danes. He stoutly refused to pay the tribute which the Danes exacted of him, gathered his forces together, and met the Danes in battle at Sulcoit. A desperate battle ensued. In the end the Danes were driven from the field, and hastened to find refuge within the walls of Limerick. The valiant Irish followed them through the gates, and drove them out of the city with great slaughter. Limerick was then plundered and burned, and its Danish inhabitants were reduced to slavery. In the conflict, Mahon, Brian's brother, had been slain by the Danes; and this inspired Brian to continue the war with more fiery vigor than before.

Soon after this defeat of the Danes, Brian became, by his elder brother's death, king of Munster; although, by the law of alternate succession, the throne really belonged to a prince of another family. Brian was no less ambitious than energetic. He now resolved to become the ruler of all Erin. With this end in view, he married a sister of the king of Leinster, and also caused his children to marry into powerful families. He won the affection of the people by restoring monasteries and schools, rebuilding fortresses and bridges, and driving the Danes from the lands which they had seized, and had held by superior force. Thirty years after his victory over the Danes at Limerick, Brian succeeded in expelling Malachy, the king of all Ireland, from his throne, and assumed the crown himself.

But now Brian quarreled bitterly with his brother-in-law, the king of Leinster. He demanded of him a tribute which had long ceased to be exacted. Upon this, the king of Leinster allied himself with the Danes, and with them prepared to oust Brian from the Irish throne.

BRIAN, KING OF MUNSTER, AT THE HEAD OF HIS ARMY.

The sturdy old warrior promptly aroused himself, not only to defend his throne, but also to deal his ancient enemy, the Danes, a tremendous blow. Allied with the Danes were the forces of Leinster, a Norwegian fleet under Sigurd, and fresh recruits from Norway and Denmark. In all, the forces opposed to Brian comprised over twenty thousand men. Brian, on his side, entered upon the conflict with thirty thousand warriors, drawn from Meath, Munster, and Connaught. Five of Brian's sons served as generals under their aged but still vigorous sire. The white-haired monarch himself rode at the head of his soldiers, inspiring them with his own dauntless and unyielding spirit. The hostile forces met in battle at dawn, on Good Friday, at Clontarf (1014). The fight raged with intense, unabating fury throughout the day. The loss, both on the side of the Irish and on that of the Danes, was terrible. The Danes and their allies lost nearly one-half of their army. At dusk, the rout of the foreigners had become complete. The Danes fled before the prowess of Brian's stalwart warriors, and were driven to the coast, and within the walls of Dublin. But the brave Brian did not survive his hard-won victory. As he lay in his tent, some Danes who were hastening from the field discovered and slew him. Four of his sons, moreover, had been killed while fighting valiantly for their country's cause.

The battle of Clontarf forever destroyed the ascendancy of the Danes in Ireland. They never recovered from the blow, and ceased from that time to continue their attempts to gain sway over the entire island. Some of their settlements still remained at various points on the eastern coast; and in process of time the Danes who thus staid in Ireland became Christians, and were absorbed among the native race, or among the English, who afterwards established themselves over the Irish. At the time of the death of Brian, it seemed as if the Irish were about to become undisputed masters of their own land. But soon the country was once more rent by the feuds and rivalries of ambitious princes, and by bitter struggles to seize or hold the royal power. The sad history of civil conflict was again and again repeated, until Ireland lay once more at the mercy of foreign conquerors.

Condition of the Irish People

More than a century and a half elapsed between the defeat of the Danes at Clontarf, and the invasion of Ireland by another branch of the same warlike northern race, the Normans, under "Strongbow." King succeeded king, each having to fight for his crown, and many of them laying down their lives in the fierce civil conflicts.

Malachy the Second, who succeeded Brian as king of Ireland, was the last sovereign for many generations, who held undisputed sway over the whole island. The arch-royal family of O'Neil had long since ceased to be the unquestioned possessors of the Irish crown. In this century and a half of almost perpetual wars, many lofty, heroic figures appear on the scene of Irish history. Brilliant battles are fought; the tide of conflict flows this way and that; the old martial valor of the Irish, whetted by the long struggles with the Danes, has revived, and is often called into play beneath the banners of the royal and rival O'Briens, O'Neils, and O'Connors. During this period the ancient Irish laws and customs, and the code established by St. Patrick, rapidly gave way before the power of nobles and chieftains at the head of submissive clans.

No longer was the land everywhere held in common, for common uses. It had become, to a large degree, the domain of powerful lords, and was cultivated by the serfs, whom these lords had subdued to their service. Slavery continued to be one of the features of Irish society. The slaves were employed in tilling the land, and in the most menial labors. There were three ways in which men and women were reduced to slavery. They were either prisoners taken in war, or were condemned to slavery as a punishment for crime, or were bought in the slave-markets, chiefly those of Britain. It was the custom of the Irish, even at this early period, to hold fairs, or markets, at certain stated places and periods. At these fairs goods were exchanged, many kinds of games amused the people, and the great lords contended with each other in spirited chariot-races.

The principal articles of commerce in which the Irish of this period dealt were slaves, timber (especially Irish oak), and the products of the soil. The mechanic arts seem to have made little progress, and were only followed by the lowest classes. The armorers, who fashioned the weapons and armor of the chiefs and their soldiers, were the most highly regarded of all artisans. The literature of the time was composed, for the most part, of the ancient legends, and the teachings and narratives of the fathers of the church. The race of bards still survived; and the people delighted in the strange tales, which, with the accompaniment of the harp, were sung to them of fairy horses, speaking trees, the influence of the stars on human destiny, and the wonders wrought by giants, ogres, and gnomes. Music, as always, had a great charm for the Irish. Besides the harp, they had trumpets, horns, and bagpipes; and people of every rank prided themselves upon their skill in performing on these instruments. Even as late as the twelfth century, young men came from every part of Europe, to Ireland, to be taught music. The game of chess was a very popular pastime of the Irish of this period. We hear of the chess-boards inlaid with gold and silver, and the finely carved kings and bishops that were used in wealthy Irish households.

In process of time, several great roads had been built in Ireland; so that, at the period of the Anglo-Norman conquest, the island was traversed by highways and crossroads in many directions. Five highways radiated from Tara to different remote points. The great highways were constructed so as to admit the passage of two chariots abreast, and the law ordained that they should be repaired three times a year. When a fair, or a gathering for the playing of the national games, was about to take place, these roads swarmed with a motley multitude of nobles and bishops in chariots, attended by slaves; of the common people in rude attire; and often of foreigners who came to see the sports, and sometimes to contend for the prizes. These occasions were not seldom attended by scenes of violence and even of bloodshed, but otherwise were full of noisy amusements.

Under the barbaric rule of the Danes, not only had the monasteries and schools been well-nigh swept out of Ireland, but the religious fervor of the Irish had been almost quenched. The spirit of the people changed from a love of peace and quiet occupation, to something of the ferocity which marked the Irish of pagan times. The kings and princes became brutal and cruel. The morals of the people suffered a like decline. Marriage was no longer as sacredly regarded as it had once been. Men easily divorced themselves from their wives, and some of the princes took to themselves several wives. Many of the priests themselves had become loose in their habits, and the common people were naturally degraded into following the example of their rulers and religious teachers.

At last, in the twelfth century, the deplorable condition of the Irish church and of Irish morals, aroused the zeal of some holy men, who grieved to see the "Isle of Saints" so far fallen from its former religious glory. St. Bernard, from his bleak monastery in the Alps, sent forth solemn denunciations against the degenerate race; and the Irish "saints"—Celsus, Malachy, and Lawrence—sought to bring about a revival of piety in its midst.

The pope of Rome, too, was resolved that a nation so fervid in its religious zeal should be restored to the fold of the Church. He sent a cardinal, Papiron, to Ireland, to reform the abuses which had crept into the priesthood and the religious houses, and to arouse the Irish to a better life. Papiron went from place to place, creating new bishoprics, enjoining a more strict observance of the sacred rites and practices, and condemning the too common sins of simony, usury, drunkenness, and disregard of the marriage-tie. So it was that on the eve of the Anglo-Norman invasion, the Irish church was restored to something like its former influence and power; that the old religious ardor began to shine again; and that monasteries and churches were replanted where they had been destroyed in the long era of Danish ascendancy and fierce civil wars.

This revival of religion was attended by a similar revival of scholarship and learning. Once more the monasteries became the home of diligent, studious monks, absorbing the lore of nations, copying and illuminating books of parchment with patient toil, compiling histories, and collecting annals. At this period, not a few Irish scholars achieved a fame which has preserved their names to our own day. Two monks, Tiernan O'Broin and Scotus, wrote histories, gave the dates of eclipses, quoted from Greek and Latin writers, and left works of value and authority. The "Four Masters," as they were called, of the abbey of Donegal, left important chronicles of Irish history. Flan of the monastery, another learned monk, added much to the stock of Irish learning; and the teachers of the schools of Lismore and Armagh were long celebrated for the fullness of their learning. Of Lismore at this period, an old British chronicler quaintly wrote: "It is a famous and holy city, half of which is an asylum into which no woman dares enter. But it is full of cells and monasteries, and religious men in great abundance abide there."

Thus Ireland seemed on the point of again becoming a pious and studious land, to which the world might once more look for enlightenment. But the long feuds and wars of rival princes had done their work; and, as in the time of the Danish invasion, had paved the way for another foreign conqueror. Christianity, which had been so nearly extinguished by the Danish worshippers of Odin and Thor, had at least once more taken root; and although Ireland after the twelfth century never regained the religious lead of Europe which she had held in the days of Columbkill, the great mass of her people adhered to the Christian faith, and to the authority of the Roman popes.

The Invasion of the Normans

In the middle of the twelfth century, the first Plantagenet king, Henry the Second, was reigning in England. He was a great grandson of William of Normandy, who had conquered England, and had assumed the English crown a hundred years before. Henry was more Norman than English in character and tastes. The Normans, who had, centuries before, conquered and established themselves in the northern part of France, which was thus called "Normandy," were of the same race as those Danes who had later swept over England and Ireland. They came originally, as did the Danes, from Norway and Denmark; and having subdued Normandy, they had now overcome the English, as the Danes had done before them, and were destined, like the Danes, to extend their invasion to Ireland also. But, unlike the Danes, the Normans were at least Christians; and so, in their conquests, they did not disturb the existing faith of the English or the Irish.

The pope of Rome, in the middle of the twelfth century, was an Englishman, whose family name was Nicholas Breakspeare, and whose papal title was Adrian the Fourth. In those days, the popes claimed the right to dispose, as they pleased, of all the islands of the sea. They were in the habit of granting islands to such kings as they favored; and the kings, armed with the pope's grants, believed that they were justified in seizing upon the islands, and ruling them. Adrian the Fourth, by a solemn "bull," or decree, made over Ireland to Henry the Second of England, and gave him permission to invade, conquer, and hold possession of the island (1155). The pope declared that he did this for the purpose of suppressing vice, planting virtue, and spreading the faith among the Irish. Sixteen years elapsed, however, before Henry availed himself of the pope's authority to invade Ireland.

The reigning king of Ireland at this time was Roderick O'Connor, a brave, but harsh and cruel ruler. Roderick was the last of the Celtic sovereigns of all Ireland. It was with difficulty that he held possession of the royal power. In both Ulster and Munster his authority was disputed and defied by the native princes. He had, moreover, a bitter quarrel with Dermid, Prince of Leinster; and it was this quarrel, which, in its results, brought about the Norman invasion of Ireland. Dermid of Leinster was a coarse and brutal old man, over sixty years of age, but still swayed by violent passions. He was gigantic of stature, stalwart of frame, despotic and overbearing in temper. Among the petty chiefs in Connaught was Tiernan O'Rourke, lord of Brefny, who had a comely wife named Dervorgoil. Dermid persuaded Dervorgoil to desert her husband, and to elope with him. O'Rourke vowed vengeance upon the destroyer of his domestic peace, and appealed for help to Roderick. In this appeal he was joined by Dervorgoil's kinsmen, the powerful family of O'Melaghlin.

Dermid soon found himself confronted by a formidable array of enemies. King Roderick, O'Rourke, and the O'Melaghlins were speedily joined not only by the Danes who were settled in and around Dublin, and whom Dermid had grievously oppressed, but also by many of Dermid's own subjects. In vain did the dissolute old tyrant labor to gather about him an army which could cope with such a host of strong and enraged foes. Then he added a fresh crime to his other misdeeds, and turned traitor to his country. He fled from Ireland, hastened to France, and presented himself before the English king, who was then busy with his wars in Aquitaine. Dermid unblushingly proposed to Henry to lose no time in making use of the pope's authority, given thirteen years before, to possess himself of Ireland; and eagerly offered his aid in accomplishing that end. Henry was not yet ready to enter upon the conquest of Ireland in person; but he gave Dermid a letter which granted permission to his knights and subjects to enlist under the Leinster prince, and to help him in his design of subduing Ireland. In return for this concession, Dermid promptly swore allegiance to the English crown.

Armed with Henry's letter, Dermid repaired to western England and Wales, and soon found some adventurous Norman knights, who, lured by Dermid's lavish promises of lands and plunder, agreed to lead an expedition into Ireland. The chief of these was Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, who, from the strength of his arms, was called "Strongbow." This man was bold, able, and ambitious. He was middle-aged, poor in purse, and had long chafed at the want of an opportunity to show his metal on the battle-field. He was a distant relative of Henry, but Henry had for a long time found no use for his services. Strongbow was at once attracted by Dermid's project. Dermid promised him not only a large domain in Ireland, but also his daughter Eva in marriage and Strongbow conceived the hope of one day himself becoming king of Leinster.

Other Norman nobles and knights, eager to employ their idle arms, joined Dermid and Strongbow. Among them were Maurice Fitzgerald, the ancestor of the Geraldines, who afterwards became very powerful in the Irish districts of Kildare and Desmond; Fitzgerald's half-brother, Robert Fitz-Stephen; the two Fitz-Henrys, illegitimate grandsons of the English Henry the First; Raymond le Gros; and Henry Montmorres. A plan of invasion was soon arranged; and ere long a formidable force of Norman soldiers, well disciplined, skillful with the bow, and amply armed, had been collected. Dermid returned to Ireland, and awaited the coming of his Norman allies. In the late spring (1169), the advance guard of the expedition, under the command of Fitz-Stephen and Montmorres,—in all, about one thousand men—crossed the Irish Channel. The Irish defenders of soil were ill-prepared to cope with the hardy Norman soldiery. Their armor was little protection: their weapons were by no means so effective as those of the Normans.

Fitz-Stephen easily seized Wexford, on the coast, driving its Danish garrison out; and his soldiers ravaged the country roundabout. Then Raymond le Gros crossed the Channel, and assailed Waterford. Strongbow followed with the rest of the Norman army. Waterford was taken, plundered, and fired; and Strongbow was wedded to the princess Eva of Leinster, amid the desolation of the ruined town. Dermid had now joined his allies, and the invaders proceeded to attack Dublin. This town was, for the most part, settled by Danes, who seem to have by this time lost their old-time warlike prowess. At all events, Dublin fell into the hands of the assailants, and was mercilessly sacked by the victorious Normans. From thence they sallied forth to spread desolation through the ancient domain of Meath. The Danes hastily took ship, and found refuge in the Orkney Islands.

Roderick O'Connor, the Irish king, was aroused by these disasters to make a desperate stand against the invaders. Aided by the king of Thomond and the fighting archbishop, Lawrence, Roderick laid siege to Dublin. He entirely failed, however, to dislodge the Normans, and was forced to be content with capturing Wexford from them. A year passed, with varying fortunes to the invaders and the invaded. In the spring Dermid died of a complication of diseases; and Strongbow attempted, in vain, to assert his claim to the throne of Leinster. He suffered a succession of defeats, in the most important of which, that at Thurles, the Normans lost nearly two thousand men. Strongbow was forced to seek safety, with the rest of his army, within the walls of Waterford, where he contented himself with holding sway over the immediate neighborhood of that stronghold.

Events in Ireland had been watched for some time, with growing anxiety, by the English king. He had permitted his knights to enlist under Dermid and Strongbow, and was well content with the prospect of adding Ireland to his dominions. But now Henry began to fear that if the ambitious Strongbow succeeded in conquering the island, he would set himself up as its independent king, and would then altogether renounce his allegiance to the English crown. Accordingly Henry sent word to the Norman knights in Ireland, that they must at once return to England. Perhaps Strongbow and his comrades were not sorry to receive this command; for, when it came, their situation was serious if not desperate. The Irish had at last asserted their superior strength, and the only strongholds left to the Normans were in danger of being taken by the aroused natives. Strongbow, therefore, promptly obeyed the king, crossed over to England, and received the royal pardon.

Henry now resolved that he would put forth all the strength of his English kingdom to subdue Ireland. He was a warlike prince, and greedy of conquest; and he determined to lead his forces in person. An army of four hundred knights and four thousand men-at-arms crossed the channel, being conveyed to the Irish coast by a fleet of two hundred and forty ships. Henry easily effected a landing at Waterford, which still remained in Norman hands (1171). The chiefs of southern Ireland were awed by the display of so imposing an array of well-trained, well-armed, and valiant soldiers. King Roderick was away in the north, engaged in a conflict with the princes of Ulster. The Irish were divided and distracted by the quarrels of rival chiefs. It seemed that no force adequate to cope with the English king could be got together. The power conferred by the pope upon Henry to take Ireland, moreover, checked the patriotism of the Irish clergy, and dampered the ardor of the Irish leaders.

One after another, the princes of southern Ireland gave in their submission to the English monarch. The example was set by McCarthy, king of Cork, who repaired to Waterford, swore allegiance to Henry, and surrendered Cork to a Norman garrison. O'Brien of Thomond, Donchad of Ossory, and O'Phelan of Decies, followed in his wake. Henry made a bloodless march into the interior, planted garrisons at Cashel and Tipperary, and entered Dublin in triumph. The chiefs of Leinster and Munster kept coming in, and accepting the English yoke. Roderick, with little capacity for war on a large scale, was forced to remain sullenly west of the Shannon; but while he made no vigorous attempt to dislodge the English, he never submitted to their rule in Ireland. The heroic chiefs of Ulster, too, the ancient royal race of O'Neil, and the sturdy house of O'Donnel, refused to yield to the invader, and, for centuries after, held out against every effort of the English to subdue them.

The English Settlement of Ireland

Henry the Second celebrated his victory by holding brilliant Christmas festivities in Dub-lin. Gathered about him was a gay array of valiant Norman knights, whose armor and attire dazzled the natives, and who, in their elegance, displayed a marked contrast to the ruder Irish chiefs. Most of the Irish wore, instead of mail, orange-colored and saffron shirts. Instead of long bows, they carried javelins, spears, and battle-axes. Henry soon turned from revels and rejoicings to serious work. He was a very able states-man, as well as an energetic warrior. He set to himself the task of establishing his authority in Ireland. He refused to confirm Strongbow as king of Leinster, and he took away the lands which had been given by Dermid to Strongbow and his companions; giving them back to them, however, as their feudal chief. This was the first step taken by Henry in introducing the feudal system into Ireland.

He then proceeded to plant in the Irish districts over which he held sway, English laws and institutions. He did not require the native Irish, however, to submit to English laws, but allowed the ancient Brehon laws to remain in force among them. The English laws were only imposed on the Normans and English who established themselves in the country. The king appointed marshals, justiciaries, constables, chamberlains, and other officers, to act in Ireland. He divided the portions of the island under his control into counties, and appointed sheriffs to serve in them. He created three great law-courts,—the King's Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer,—corresponding to the courts of the same name in England. He appointed a lord-chief-justice, a chancellor, and a treasurer. He also created the office of viceroy, the holder of which should act as supreme governor of Ireland during the king's absence. He filled all the offices with his own Norman adherents, and put all the military strongholds under the command of Norman soldiers.

Henry knew how important it was to win the submission of the Christian bishops and clergy to his rule. Their hold upon the reverence and affection of the people was a strong one. By conciliating them, he would be strengthening his own power in Ireland. The bishops and clergy were already inclined towards him, out of respect to the papal bull under which he had claimed the right to invade Ireland. Henry summoned an assembly of bishops and priests at Cashel, and declared to them, that henceforth the church-lands should be exempt from confiscation or taxation; that the priesthood should be relieved of certain fines; and that the people should be compelled to pay tithes for the support of the church. A large majority of the bishops and priests thereupon accepted the sovereignty of the English king, and exercised their influence in securing his authority in the island.

But by far the most important acts of Henry in Ireland were those by which he dealt with the lands, and attempted to replace the ancient tenure and division of lands by the feudal system. According to the old Irish custom, the lands had been held by each tribe in common. Then the princes and chiefs had acquired possession of large tracts, which were tilled by the peasantry and the slaves. But still the lands were supposed to be derived, not from a sovereign or prince, but from the tribe as a whole. The feudal system was directly the opposite of this. By the feudal system, all the land of a country was supposed to be owned by the king. He claimed the right to divide it up, and give portions of it, as he pleased, to his knights and courtiers. In return for these grants of land, the knights and courtiers agreed to give military aid, at the head of their retainers, to the king in time of war. So, too, the knights and courtiers divided up the domain thus acquired, and distributed it among their followers, who in their turn agreed to follow their lords to the field whenever summoned. The lands became hereditary in the families which held them, and the military services owed for them became hereditary also.

Henry really had no right, either to the sovereignty of Ireland, or to the disposal of the Irish lands. His claim was founded upon the pope's authority, which had no basis in law. His dominion in Ireland was purely and simply the result of superior physical force. And in order to establish his power, he forcibly imposed the feudal system upon the conquered race. He thus laid the foundation for those land troubles in Ireland which have continued from the time of his invasion down to the present day. He began by taking lands away from the native Irish, and giving them into the hands of Norman and English foreigners. These became the landlords; while the native Irish became their tenants, and the humble tillers of the soil. The descendants of the Normans and English continued to be the owners and masters, and the descendants of the Celtic population continued to be their serfs. In later centuries, more and more lands were taken from the Irish by succeeding English monarchs, and handed over to their English followers, soldiers, and favorites. In this way, in the course of time, grew up the unjust and cruel land-system in Ireland, which survived to our own time.

The whole of the ancient royal domain of Meath, where the kings of all Ireland had reigned so long in power and renown, was given by Henry to the Norman lord, Hugh de Lacy. Ulster was awarded to John de Courcy; but owing to the obstinate resistance of the O'Neils, the O'Donnels, and other sturdy Ulster chiefs, De Courcy never succeeded in getting possession of the province. Cork was given up to Fitz-Stephen and De Cogan, Limerick to De Braosa, Decies to Le Poer, Waterford to De Bohun, Wexford to Fitzgerald and Montmorres, Connaught to Fitz-Aldelm. The city of Dublin was awarded to the English town of Bristol.

The Normans lost no time in making raids to seize the lands thus granted, and planted settlements and forts wherever they could get a foothold. They swarmed through the fertile valleys of the Irish rivers, and established themselves on the broad plains of Louth and Meath. All along the eastern coast the Normans effected lodgements, as the Danes had done centuries before. Thus the new-comers occupied and held the lands awarded to them by the king, by sheer force. Every Irishman who resisted them was condemned as a traitor. No mercy was shown to the native "rebels."

If a tribe whose domain had thus been seized resisted, it was promptly driven from the soil on which it had dwelt from time immemorial. The Irish who remained became peasant tillers of the land which had lately been their own, were forced to pay rent for it, and were subject to being expelled from it at the will or sudden caprice of the new possessors. But, after all, Henry had only succeeded in establishing his actual rule over a small portion of Ireland. He held Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Wexford, and Dublin, and a certain region of country roundabout those places, with his garrisons and soldiery. Outside these limits, his dominion was rather nominal than a reality. The center of English power in Ireland was Dublin, and a certain territory in its neighborhood, comprising the counties of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Louth. This territory came to be known as the "English Pale,"—a name which it retained for a long period. It was over four hundred years, indeed, before the power of the English became permanently established in Ireland, beyond the region described as the Pale.

King Henry only remained in Ireland seven months. He was suddenly called away on a serious errand. Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, had been killed before the altar of his own cathedral by some of Henry's knights. The king, suspected of having connived at the crime, was summoned to explain it to the envoys of the pope, who were in France. He left Strongbow as viceroy, or governor, of Ireland; and Strongbow continued the struggle to subdue the native Irish. The warfare between the Normans and the Irish went on incessantly. Ulster and Connaught held out persistently against the intruders, who often sallied forth from their strongholds in the Pale, only to be driven back before the fiery though undisciplined valor of the Irish. Strongbow's career as viceroy was full of ups and downs. He still asserted his claim to the crown of Ulster but this was stoutly resisted by Donald "the Handsome," son of the late king, Dermid. Strongbow, enraged at this, caused one of Donald's sons, whom he held as a hostage, to be put to death.

Then began a fierce and vindictive struggle between the two claimants to the Leinster throne; and, from this time forth, Strongbow's fortunes began to wane. Donald inflicted a severe defeat upon him; and, in the following year (1174), Strongbow was confronted at Thurles by the army of the arch-king Roderick, allied with a powerful chief, Donald O'Brien. The viceroy was utterly routed, leaving more than a thousand of his Norman warriors dead on the field. He fled within the walls of Dublin with the remnant of his force, to find there that his garrison had been slaughtered by the people. While his condition was thus desperate, Strongbow was suddenly ordered by Henry to join him in France. He soon returned to Ireland, however, with new powers. He made his peace with the powerful family of Geraldine, whom he had alienated from him by his jealousy of them, giving his sister in marriage to Maurice Fitzgerald, the chief of the family.

For a little, the fortunes of war turned in favor of Strongbow. He retook Limerick, strengthened the defenses of Waterford, and probably caused his rival, Donald, to be murdered. But now the sturdy warrior, who had fought so obstinately to subdue the Irish, was attacked by a fatal disorder. His foot became ulcerated, and he lingered in a long and agonizing illness. He died nine years after his first arrival in Ireland and was buried with much pomp, in Christ Church, Dublin (1177). Thus passed away the most redoubtable of Ireland's Norman enemies. The name of Strongbow still recalls to Irish minds the beginning of the seven centuries of English dominion. In the same year died Strongbow's brother-in-law, the brilliant Maurice Fitzgerald, who had so long been his companion in arms. Fitzgerald was the ancestor of a long line of nobles, who became the heads of the two branches of the powerful Geraldine family, the earls of Desmond and Kildare.

Roderick O'Connor, the arch-king of Ireland, had been able to hold his own against the Normans west of the river Shannon, and had even gained some victories over their armies. But he had not been able to attempt their expulsion from Irish soil. He was a brave and patriotic, but unfortunate, prince. He was constantly called upon to fight with the jealous rival chiefs of the north and west. In the hour of his perplexities his own sons turned against him, just as the sons of the English Henry had by this time become their father's foes on the battle-field. Roderick was at last compelled to seek a sort of alliance with the English conqueror. He accordingly sent envoys, among them the devout St. Lawrence, to Henry, and made a treaty with him (1177). This compact was called the treaty of Windsor, because it was signed in that royal town. By its provisions, Henry recognized Roderick as king of all Ireland, outside the places actually held by the English. In return, Roderick acknowledged Henry as his "lord paramount," agreed to pay a certain annual tribute of hides, and stipulated that the chiefs under him should every year present to the English king a certain number of hawks and hounds. But, as a result of the events which ensued, this treaty was never fully carried out.

The Norman Knights

The last years of the arch-king, Roderick O'Connor, were embittered by the hostility and treason of his own sons. His eldest son, Murray, joined hands with the Norman knight, De Cogan, and with him marched through central Ireland, spreading havoc and burning villages as he went. The native tribes fled in dismay before him. But at last, near Tuam, the Irish turned at bay upon their treacherous prince and his Norman ally. Murray was forced to retreat; but it was too late. A host of Irish, led by Murray's own kinsmen, fell upon the allied force, which was soon scattered in every direction. Murray himself was taken, and his eyes were put out as the penalty of his perfidy. Then Roderick's younger son, Conor, was declared to be the heir to the Irish throne. There soon broke out a desperate struggle between the princes of the royal house, which resulted in much slaughter on both sides, but in no decisive triumph for either.

Conor now treated his father, the arch-king, with cruel severity. He at first banished him into southern Ireland, but afterwards allowed him to live on a small farm in the midst of his own clan. Roderick was old and weary of the world. In a short time he retired to a monastery founded by the early Christians at Cong, on Lough Mask. In this monastery, the aged monarch gave himself up to religious exercises, and reflected mournfully on his many misfortunes. He died at the monastery in his eighty-second year (1198), and was quietly buried in the royal tomb of Clonmacnoise. Thus passed away the last prince fully entitled to wear the crown of all Ireland. With Roderick the long line of "ard-righ," or arch-kings, ended. The task of defending Ireland from her formidable Norman foes was too great for Roderick's powers. He was brave and patriotic, but could not cope at once with the rebellions of Irish princes, and the assaults of foreign invaders.

Meanwhile, Strongbow had been succeeded in the command of Ireland by an indolent knight, Fitz Aldelm. But among the Normans who surrounded him was a stalwart noble, full of restless energy. This was John de Courcy, a descendant of kings, as proud as he was valiant. It has already been stated that Dc Courcy had received the province of Ulster as his appanage from the English king. He now resolved to attempt its conquest. Many of his fellow-knights, eager for warfare, and impatient of their idle life at Dublin, joined his standard. De Courcy set forth at the head of a force of five hundred men. He encountered and defeated a native army at Howth, and then marched on Downpatrick. There was an ancient tradition that this town would be captured by a knight who had birds upon his shield, and who rode a white horse. It happened that a bird was on the armorial crest of De Courcy, and De Courcy also appeared on a white horse. The people of Downpatrick, terrified by these omens, speedily submitted; and De Courcy entered the town.

DE COURCY ENTERING DOWNPATRICK

The warfare between the invaders of Ulster and its Irish defenders lasted for several years. Some-times one side, and sometimes the other, triumphed. In course of time, De Courcy acquired a strong hold upon various places on the Ulster coast. He fortified Lecale and the Ardes, built castles on the shores of Strangford Lake, and made some expeditions into the interior. But the greater part of Ulster remained unconquered. The heroic tribe of O'Neil held out sturdily, and to the last resisted De Courcy's attempt to carry his rule over the entire province; while the lesser chiefs, for the while, composed their differences in the face of the danger from a common foe. Even when De Courcy gained a foothold in the interior, he was so constantly harassed by bold bands of the Ulster Irish, that he was often forced to give way, and retire to the seaboard.

The English king, Henry, was especially fond of his youngest son, John,—the same John who afterwards became king of England, and was forced by the barons to sign the "great charter" of his people's liberties. It is thought by some historians that one of Henry's reasons for wishing to conquer Ireland was that he might provide John with a kingdom to himself. John was a youth of eighteen years. He was willful, heartless, and cruel, even at that early age. In spite, however, of his youth and bad qualities, Henry now sent him across St. George's Channel, with the title and powers of "Lord of Ireland." Scarcely had John set foot on the island, before he began to conduct himself in such a way as to inspire the hatred of the Irish, and the contempt even of the English. He was surrounded by a company of dissolute and reckless young nobles, whose society was more congenial to him than was that of the grave statesmen whom his father had sent to advise him.

When John landed at Waterford (1185), he was met by the English archbishop of Dublin, and a large number of knights in costly array. These were attended, also, by some of the chiefs of the Leinster clans who had submitted to the English, and now came to pay homage to their new ruler. These chiefs advanced to meet the prince with grave dignity, in order to give him, according to an old Irish custom, the kiss of peace. John laughed insolently in their faces. He caught hold of their beards, and roughly pulled them, and made sport of their attire. The Leinster chiefs, outraged by this insult, abruptly retired to their homes.

John was scarcely less insulting in his bearing towards the English knights, by whom he presently became as intensely detested as he was by the Irish. He spent his days in reckless pleasures, and thus wasted the time which was to have been spent in military campaigns. He caused a number of castles to be built; but these were assailed by the Irish chiefs, and several of them were captured. The bold Donald O'Brien took the largest castle, that of Ardfinan; while Lismore was also seized by the native bands. John's rule, indeed, was disastrous on every hand; and he was at last reluctantly called back to England by his royal father. A famous, strong-willed English cavalier, Hugh de Lacy, had held for a short time a high place in Ireland,—that of constable,—before John's arrival. He had been recalled by the king, who now sent him back to Ireland again to take the chief command. De Lacy is described by the old writers as being short of stature, deformed, with large, dark, piercing eyes, and forbidding features. He was very covetous of power, as well as of riches. During his previous sojourn in Ireland he had been guilty of many misdeeds, one of which had never been forgotten or forgiven by the Irish. He had enticed Tiernan O'Rourke, lord of West Meath, one of the bravest of the native chiefs, to meet him on a lonely hill for a peaceful conference; and had there caused him to be murdered. Soon after his return to take John's place, he married the daughter of O'Connor, a powerful Irish noble.

De Lacy's violent tyranny soon made him as heartily hated as John had been. He seized and sacked monasteries and churches, and appropriated their wealth to his own use. He took a fancy, among other things, to convert the ancient monastery of Durrow, which had been founded centuries before by the sainted Columbkill, into a castle for his own residence. This was looked upon by the Irish as a desecration of the sacred edifice. One day, as De Lacy was standing on the walls, inspecting the alterations which his workmen were making on the monastery, a daring young Irishman of noble family, named O'Meyey, suddenly attacked him from behind. With one mighty blow of his axe, he completely severed the tyrant's head from his body. O'Meyey fled into the neighboring forest, and safely escaped. The Irish rejoiced at the death of a man who had so cruelly used them, and were glad that the fate to which he had doomed O'Rourke had now befallen him also.

The English king, Henry the Second, died (1189) after a long and brilliant reign, and was succeeded by his warlike son, Richard the First (the "Lion-hearted"). Throughout his brief reign of ten years, Richard was almost continually absent from his kingdom, either at the crusades, or engaged in fighting the French. The English in Ireland were therefore, during that period, left to shift for themselves. Of all the cavaliers who remained on Irish soil, the boldest and most ambitious was De Courcy. He professed to be very pious. He carried about with him certain writings of Columbkill, and took great care to guard and preserve the relics of some of the Irish saints. Yet he did not pause in his attempts to subdue the Irish of Ulster, and also of Connaught, to his sway. In spite, however, of the feuds which so often arose to divide the Irish princes, even De Courcy's prowess slid not avail to greatly extend the limits of his dominion. In a great battle fought in Connaught, De Courcy was routed by an allied force of Irishmen of Connaught, Ulster, and Munster, under the valiant Donald O'Brien, and was forced to retire once more to his eastern strongholds.

For ten years, Ireland was the scene of almost perpetual carnage. Conor, the son of Roderick, the arch-king, was assassinated by his cousins; and the old fires of jealousy and rivalry broke out among the princes with all their former fury. The English allied themselves, now with one chief, now with another, taking advantage of their fierce dissensions as occasion offered. The fortunes of war varied from month to month. The unhappy people were desolated by all these conflicts, yet they sturdily resisted the attempts of the English to possess themselves of the domain. The new landlords, even when they had effected a lodgement, were continually harassed by the inhabitants, and only held their own by the superior force of arms. Whenever an English lord of the soil became weak in defense, the vengeance of the people fell quickly and savagely upon him. Meanwhile, the two different systems of law—the Norman, or English, and the ancient Irish—were put in force side by side, and created endless confusion. In the English Pale, if an Irishman killed an Englishman, his punishment was death. But in those parts of the country where the Brehon, or old Irish, law, prevailed, an Englishman who killed an Irishman, only had to pay a fine. Similar differences ran all through the two codes, that of the Irish being always the more gentle of the two.

Just as the reign of Richard the First was coming to a close, a great Irish hero arose, in the person of Cathal O'Connor. Cathal's life had been a romantic one from his childhood. He was a younger half-brother of the arch-king Roderick, but was illegitimate. He therefore became, when a mere babe, the object of the hatred of the jealous Irish queen. His mother fled with him for refuge in the monasteries, and Cathal spent his boyhood as a farm laborer. One day, when he was reaping wheat in a field, he heard of events which opened the way to his return to his native Connaught. "Farewell, sickle!" he exclaimed, throwing it clown, "now for the sword!" He entered vigorously into the conflict which was raging in Connaught, and displayed a fiery valor which inspired his adherents to heroic deeds. The death of Donald O'Brien, who had fought so obstinately against the English, left Cathal the foremost of Irish warriors. He made alliances with powerful chiefs, and soothed the discords which had doomed Ireland to so many misfortunes. just as the twelfth century was closing, Cathal was able to declare himself king of Connaught, and to maintain his title by a stout defense.

The base and cruel John had now ascended the English throne, and soon made extensive grants of land in Connaught to his English followers. Chief among the knights thus favored were De Courcy and De Burgh. But they could not conquer the territories which John had given them; and, soon after this, De Courcy, who had proved so persistent and redoubtable, disappears altogether from the scenes of his exploits in Ireland. We find, however, the descendants of these early English knights, who contended so stoutly for the possession of Irish land, to this day surviving as nobles and landlords. The descendant of De Courcy is baron Kinsale, who has the privilege of wearing his hat in presence of the English sovereign,—a privilege accorded to an ancestor as the reward of some service to the crown. The Burkes, lords of Clanricarde, spring from the sturdy stock of De Burgh; and both families hold both Irish titles and Irish lands in our own time.

The Bruces in Ireland

About fifteen years after his first sojourn in Ireland, John, now king of England, paid a second visit to that country. But this time he went over, less for the purpose of conquering the Irish, than to curb the too rapidly growing power and independence of the great Norman-English lords. John's acts on this second visit were wiser than those he had committed during his first sojourn in Ireland. He arrived with a large fleet, which is said, by some historians, to have comprised no less than seven hundred vessels; and his first proceeding was to subdue the haughty De Lacys, who had assumed a sort of royal power in Meath.

The De Lacys were soon overcome, and, flying from point to point, at last took refuge in Scotland. Later, however, they came to terms with John, who restored them to their Irish domains upon the payment by them of large tributes. John also made a treaty with the valorous Cathal, king of Connaught, by which the latter was secured in a part, at least, of his patrimony. Cathal fought doughtily against the De Lacys and other English settlers as long as he lived, and died, after a brilliant career, at nearly eighty, in the abbey of Knockmoy.

The only other notable thing which John did during his brief stay in Ireland was to divide Leinster and Munster into the twelve counties which have existed to the present day. Many generations elapsed, after John's departure from Ireland, before an English king again trod her soil. The long reign of Henry the Third, who succeeded John (1216), was mostly taken up with troubled affairs in England, and with conflicts with the Welsh and French. Ireland, therefore, during the greater part of the thirteenth century, was left pretty much to herself.

The English who were settled in Ireland could not count on help from England, but were forced to maintain themselves as best they could by their own unaided resources. The Irish, on the other hand, did not have to fear fresh English attempts at general conquest, but rather that the feuds of their own chiefs would undo them. On each side, indeed, jealousy and dissension prevented the achievement of decisive triumph. The English knights, like the Irish chiefs, were as often found quarrelling and fighting with each other, as combining against the common foe.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this period was the rise of certain great Anglo-Norman (or, as it is more convenient to call them, English) families in Ireland. The power and warlike ability of some of these families produced important results through a long period of time. One of the most eminent of these families was that of Fitzgerald, descended from the Maurice Fitzgerald who had been among the first Norman knights to attempt the conquest of Ireland. This family was known as the Geraldines. The heads of its two leading branches were afterwards famous as the earls of Kildare and Desmond. These two branches of the Geraldines are represented to this day by the Duke of Leinster (descended from the earls of Kildare) and the marquis of Lansdowne (descended from the earls of Desmond). Both branches received from time to time large domains in Ireland, some of which still remain in possession of their successors. Another great family which became powerful in that early time was that of the Butlers, the founder of which family received extensive gifts of land in Kilkenny and Tipperary. The Butlers played a notable part in both Irish and English history in succeeding generations, and were known as the earls and dukes of Ormond.

At first, these English possessors of Irish domains lived to themselves, in the strong, towering castles which they built. These castles were protected by massive walls and towers, moats and bastions. Here the English knight might at least hold his own against the hostile clans who dwelt in his neighborhood; and, on favorable occasion, issue forth with his retainers to punish the depredations of the natives. Thus he protected the farms of his tenants, which lay below the castle-walls. Often he had no slight task in defending the herds and flocks of these tenants, which were a favorite object of pillage by the Irish bands. The English lord held a court in his castle, in which he punished the misdeeds of his tenantry, or settled the quarrels which arose between them. He was rough and cruel towards the Irish, and from the first regarded them as an inferior and conquered race.

The Irish chiefs, in many parts of the country, found themselves forced to submit sullenly to the superior prowess of the English settlers. They were forced to see the most fertile domains held and cultivated by the foreigners, and to be content with the less productive lands in the remoter districts. But there can be no doubt that, while they thus submitted, the Irish, whether chiefs or peasants, fostered a deep-seated hatred of the English, and seized every opportunity to attack them, and to rise in revolt against their rule. When a child or a woman came into possession of lands, the fierce Irish chiefs would seize the domain, and stoutly defend it against assault. But in course of time the English barons, perceiving that they could not hope for aid from England, and becoming accustomed to an isolated life in Ireland, began to mingle more freely with the native Irish. Their customs and manners began to change, and to adapt themselves to those of the natives. They began to receive the Irish into their castles as servants, and to employ them as soldiers in military enterprises. They formed alliances, sometimes, with the Irish chiefs, in their conflicts with their English rivals.

By and by this curious change in the English became very marked. They mingled with the Irish to such an extent that they were fast becoming absorbed by the native race. They allowed their hair to grow long, and wore heavy, sweeping mustaches, like the Irish chiefs. They assumed the Irish costumes, adopted the Irish festivals and amusements, and even, in some cases, allowed themselves to be governed by the ancient Irish laws. They married the daughters of Irish chiefs, and gave to the Irish chiefs their own daughters in wedlock. Even scions of the great family of Desmond took to themselves Irish wives, and in this way encouraged a fusion of the two races. Thus, in many parts of the country, the contentions between the natives and the settlers became less bitter. The English barons desired no longer to be the garrison of the English crown in Ireland, but independent Irish chiefs, with despotic power over their domains. It began to be said in England, that the English in Ireland were getting to be "more Irish than the Irish themselves."

At last the English sovereign became thoroughly alarmed at this state of things. He began to fear lest his power over Ireland should entirely disappear. He was displeased to see the English barons in Ireland acting as if they were its independent lords,—as if they were no longer bound by any allegiance to him as their king. He dreaded the fusion of the two races in Ireland into one, which would resist his rule. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, therefore, the English king, Edward the First, caused his Parliament to make a law, which was intended to revive all the old hatred between the English in Ireland and the natives, and to sever the close social connection which had grown up between them. This law (1295) compelled the barons who had given up their lands to the natives to recover them; decreed that the English owners of Irish land who lived in England should contribute a part of their incomes for maintaining the army; restricted the number of Irish soldiers to be employed by the barons; and forbade the English to wear the Irish dress, and form of beard. But this law did not at once have the desired effect.

The defeat of the English king, Edward the Second, at Bannockburn in Scotland (1314), was a signal for the native Irish to make a desperate attempt to recover their country. The victor at Bannockburn was the heroic Robert Bruce. Bruce was already known to the Irish, as he had once taken refuge among them. The Irish, moreover, had always had sympathy with their kinsmen, the Scots, in their long and obstinate struggle with the English. When the Scots triumphed at Bannockburn, therefore, the Irish not only rejoiced, but resolved in their turn to resist the English.

The great Ulster chief, Donald O'Neil, led the revolt. He sent to Scotland, and invited Edward Bruce, Robert's brother, and no less valiant in war than Robert, to come and head the Irish patriots, Edward Bruce promptly responded to the summons He crossed over from Scotland with a company of hardy Scottish knights and six thousand soldiers. He was speedily joined by O'Neil near Glenarm, and soon after by Felim O'Connor, king of Connaught. At the head of the English forces was the redoubtable De Burgh, Earl of Ulster.

The news of the landing of Bruce spread swiftly through Ireland. O'Donnell, lord of Tyrconnel, took and plundered Sligo, and the country round about that town. The lord of Thomond put himself at the head of his impatient clans, and the lesser chiefs of the south and east hastened to take up arms. The contagion of revolt spread even to some of the English barons themselves. The De Lacys, lords of Meath, joined hands with the native chiefs. A series of obstinate conflicts, with varying fortune, ensued. Edward Bruce was crowned king of Ireland at Dundalk, by the native princes; but he was forced to fight desperately for his new crown, and was doomed at last to defeat and death. He was first forced to retreat into Ulster by the greatly superior army of De Burgh. Then the tide for a while turned. De Burgh was obliged to retreat; and Bruce, with the allied chiefs, swept down through Meath. Robert Bruce came with a large Scottish force, to his brother's succor; and their arms were carried to the very walls of Dublin.

But Robert Bruce was soon compelled to return to defend his own kingdom of Scotland; and, from the time of his departure, Edward's fortunes began to wane. The Geraldines gathered together an army of thirty thousand men. Dublin was put in a state of defense. Sir John de Bermingham, at the head of a well-equipped force, pushed forward to meet Bruce, and confronted him at Dundalk. There a brief but bitter struggle took place. The Irish and their Scottish allies were completely defeated; and the brave Edward Bruce fell dead in the midst of his discomfited warriors. The revolt was at last suppressed. But no aid had come from England to the English barons; and the conflict had, on the whole, been disastrous to English ascendancy. The limits of English rule shrank, and the Irish entered upon many domains which the English deserted. Large numbers of the English farmers left the country altogether. The English barons not only abandoned their allegiance to the English crown, but became more than ever Irish in their habits and tendencies, and even here and there abandoned their Norman for Irish names.

Thus it came about that, early in the reign of Edward the Third, the dominion of the English in Ireland was reduced to much smaller dimensions than it had once held. Ulster had never been wholly conquered. Munster was by no means under the complete control of the Geraldines. Connaught was in a state of insurrection. The English Pale had dwindled to the region immediately around Dublin. The fortified towns, and the domains of the earls of Kildare and Ormond, were nearly all the places outside the Pale which were still securely held by the English. At least one-half of the ancient royal province of Meath was in possession of the Irish chiefs. Edward the Third, like his grandfather, tried, as we shall see in the next chapter, to recover at least the allegiance of the English in Ireland. But he does not seem to have thought it possible to subdue the whole island to his rule. More than a century was yet to elapse before an English monarch would again attempt the con-quest of all Ireland.

Richard the Second in Ireland

Edward the Third made two attempts during his busy reign, to restore the fast-waning power of the English crown in Ireland. He tried to curb the influence and ambition of the great barons, sometimes by throwing them into prison and taking away their estates, and sometimes by according them favors. The Earl of Desmond was kept for more than a year a prisoner in Dublin castle, and a part of his land was taken from him. Desmond resisted the king's designs, and gathered about him so formidable an array of lords and bishops, that Edward, for the while, gave up his efforts in Ireland. Later, however, the English king made a second attempt to restore his sway in Ireland. He filled all the Irish offices with courtiers and favorites whom he sent from London, and declared that no man of Irish birth should hold any office or any military, command in the country. He called the English in Ireland "rebels," and the native Irish "enemies." He then sent one of his sons, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, over to Ireland as viceroy.

Clarence carried matters with a high hand. He showed little respect either to the English or the Irish. He treated one and all with stern severity. He summoned an Irish parliament to meet him at Kilkenny (1367), and caused it to pass a very stringent law. This law much resembled that which had been passed by Edward the First. It forbade, under heavy penalties, marriages between the English colonists and the native Irish. It prohibited the English from acting as foster-parents or as sponsors to Irish children. It declared that every Englishman who wore the Irish dress, or used the Irish language, or adopted Irish customs, should be compelled to give up his lands. It shut Irishmen out of the priesthood and the English monasteries. It proscribed the Irish bards, and forbade the English to receive the bards in their households. By its provisions, Englishmen who wore a long mustache, or rode horseback without saddles after the Irish fashion, were to be severely punished. So, likewise, Englishmen who submitted to the ancient Irish, or Brehon, laws, were condemned to pay heavy fines.

But this harsh law was never carried fully into effect. The king's officers in Ireland were not strong enough to enforce its execution. Edward himself was busy with his wars in France; and at the end of his reign, the native Irish had confined the limits of English occupation within even narrower bounds than before. Richard the Second, who succeeded the third Edward on the English throne, was young and full of ambition. He craved dominion and military fame. Finding that the power of the crown in Ireland was at its lowest ebb, he resolved to make a vigorous effort to increase it. He landed at Waterford at the head of a formidable army, comprising no less than thirty thousand archers and four thousand men-at-arms. This was a very large military force for those days; and it is no wonder that Richard's arrival, with such an array, struck awe into the hearts of even the stoutest Irish chiefs. Richard's purpose was to subdue the native Irish, and to win the allegiance of the English colonists.

The arrival of the fleet at Waterford, the royal galley being conspicuous in its midst with its bright banners and gilded pennons, filled the people with wonder, mingled with terror. With Richard came an imposing array of great English princes and nobles. The king's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March (heir to the throne), lord Thomas Percy, the earls of Nottingham and Rutland, with their brilliant retinues, swelled the royal train. Richard repaired to Waterford cathedral, where mass was performed with stately pomp; and for a week the town witnessed a series of gay and costly festivities. The king sent presents to the neighboring churches, and welcomed the English lords who lived in the country roundabout. Then, with standards flying, he took up his march through Kilkenny towards Dublin. As he advanced, the English lords, and some of the Irish chiefs, joined his army and proceeded with him to the capital.

Richard entered Dublin, whither he summoned the Irish princes and chiefs to come and do him homage. The summons was promptly obeyed, even by the unconquered chiefs of the north. O'Neil, still the most powerful of the Ulster chiefs, O'Brien and O'Connor from the west, and McMurrough of Leinster, attended the royal court, with nearly a hundred others. Richard feasted and flattered them, and in return they swore fealty to his crown. At the same time, he granted an amnesty to the English who had acted as if they were independent of his crown, and made an energetic effort to put the government of Ireland upon a sounder basis. It seemed as if Ireland had at last come completely under the power of the English king. In the midst of his task, however, Richard was compelled to return to London, where the Lollards (followers of Wycliffe, the religious reformer) were creating trouble. He left Ireland, fully persuaded that he had secured his sway over the country. He appointed his cousin, Roger Mortimer, who was also his chosen heir, to act as viceroy.

No sooner was Richard's back turned, however, than the Irish chiefs discarded their allegiance. McMurrough, who was deeply enraged against the English, and was perhaps the most intrepid Irish warrior of his day, broke into open revolt. He defeated Richard's soldiers at Kells, and seized several strongholds. In the course of the conflict, Roger Mortimer himself was killed. Richard heard the news of McMurrough's rising with anger and alarm. He quickly assembled another great army and a fleet, and once more landed in Ireland (1399). McMurrough was not strong enough to meet the king's forces face to face; so he plunged into the forests and bogs, and engaged in an irregular guerilla warfare. In his knowledge of the country, he had a great advantage over the king and his well-trained soldiers. McMurrough's sallies persistently worried and wearied the royal troops, who could nowhere find the Irish, so as to fight them in the open. Hunger added to the distress of the royal troops, and it was with great difficulty that Richard managed to lead his disheartened and diminished force to Dublin. So reduced by hunger were his men, that they "rushed into the sea, as eagerly as they would into their straw."

Events took place in England which probably saved Ireland from a desolating war, and perhaps from complete conquest. Henry of Bolingbroke, Richard's cousin, landed on the English coast, with the avowed intent to depose Richard from the throne. Once more the king was obliged to quit Ireland in all haste; and soon the news came back, that Richard had been taken prisoner, that his crown had been taken from him, and that Bolingbroke was reigning in his place, as Henry the Fourth. Ireland was now left to herself for a long period. Henry the Fourth had as much as he could do to maintain himself upon the throne he had conquered. Henry the Fifth's short reign was almost wholly absorbed by the brilliant war he carried on with the French. The longer reign of his son, Henry the Sixth, was occupied by the bitter and bloody "Wars of the Roses." Again the English colonists were forced to protect themselves, unaided by the mother-country. The Pale, confined to Dublin, and small portions of outlying districts in Louth, Kildare, and Meath, was protected by fortifications. Little English colonies huddled, with fear and trembling, in seaside strong-holds like Waterford and Wexford. Even great nobles like the Earl of Desmond were unable to go far from their domains, lest the native Irish should fall upon them and destroy them.

Thus, during the fifteenth century, the position of the English in Ireland grew ever weaker. Towards its close, the garrison of Dublin and of the Pale had become reduced to less than two hundred regular soldiers, while the government had grown miserably poor. The colonists themselves were forced to combine in voluntary bands, in order to protect their families and homes from the attacks of the native Irish. Now and then, attempts would be made to enforce the law which Clarence had caused to be made at Kilkenny; and, in the reign of Henry the Sixth, even harsher laws than that of Kilkenny, directed against the native Irish, were proclaimed. One of these was, that an Englishman who killed an Irishman who was on the way to or from a pillaging expedition, should be not only acquitted, but paid for the deed. In addition to such laws, the English colonists were permitted to practice a custom which bore very grievously upon the Irish. This was the custom called "coyne and livery." It meant that English soldiers could be quartered free, at any time, in the households of the natives. Thus the peace of Irish homes could be disturbed suddenly by the intrusion of rude foreigners, who tyrannized over the families, occupied the best rooms, consumed the provisions, and stalled their horses in the barns.

Other severe laws, intended to oppress the native Irish and to separate them by as wide a gulf as possible from the English settlers, were passed in the time of Henry the Sixth. Every man who did not shave his upper lip at least once a fortnight, was to be heavily fined and imprisoned. It was declared a crime even to trade with the natives, and the natives who traded with the English were denounced as "enemies of the king." All the Irish, too, who dwelt within the Pale were forced to take English names, speak the English language, wear the English garb, and shave themselves as the English did. But these harsh laws could not always be enforced. The English had as much as they could do to maintain themselves in Ireland at all. So weak did their government become towards the close of the fifteenth century, that they were forced to pay sums of money to the Irish chiefs as a ransom for their safety. This was done, not only by the Pale, but by isolated strongholds like Waterford and Wexford.

The laws made by the English kings, however, brought about one result which they wished. The two races who lived side by side in Ireland became estranged and bitterly hostile to each other. When there was peace between them, it was merely an armed truce. The Irish did not hesitate to plunder the English, and seize upon their lands, whenever and wherever they could. The English, on the other hand, subjected the Irish who fell into their hands to ruthless cruelty. The two peoples would not even worship in the same churches, although their religion was the same. Each race had its own churches and monasteries. The English land-owners built chapels within their domain, in which English or French priests officiated. Whenever the Irish could do so in safety, they attended the ministrations of Irish priests. Yet, in spite of all the dissensions between the two races, we find both Anglo-Irish and native Irish taking part, side by side, in the Wars of the Roses in England. The Geraldines fought for the white rose, or the house of York, and the Ormonds sided with the red rose, or the house of Lancaster; while many other Irish chiefs were to be found, from time to time, among the contending hosts.

In the events which have been narrated in the last five chapters, may be traced the beginning of the condition of things which has made Ireland, for seven centuries, a land of unhappy memories, of almost constant miseries, and of deep and lasting discontent. When the English, by superior force of arms, planted themselves on Irish soil; when they seized upon the fruitful lands of the people; when they replaced the ancient Irish custom of land-holding, by the feudal system; when they substituted English law for the old Brehon law,—they laid the foundation of all the evils which have since befallen Ireland, and of all the tyranny, which, almost down to our own time, marked the English rule over the island. At the close of the fifteenth century, the English colonies seemed on the very verge of extinction. But, early in the sixteenth century, the power of the English crown was once more sternly put forth to subject all Ireland to its authority.

Condition of the Irish People

Irish history, during the period included between the invasion of the Normans, or English, and the close of the Wars of the Roses,—that is, between 1169 and 1485,—takes little account of the common people. We only know of them that they were, to a large degree, peasants, living in wretched huts, tilling the soil, and tending the herds and flocks; reduced, oftentimes, to beggary, and wandering along the roads pleading for alms. It is said that the slave-trade was abolished by a church council at Armagh, towards the close of the twelfth century. But it is probable that the holding of slaves in Ireland, as laborers and domestics, continued for a long period after that time.

In the thirteenth century, there were two classes of farmers in Ireland. One class, called the "biataghs," held the lands they cultivated free of rent, on condition that they lodged and fed travelers, and received the soldiers of the chiefs when they were on the march. The other and lower class was that of the "brooees," who both paid rent and were subject to be called upon for military service. The brooee, moreover, was obliged to keep at least a hundred laborers, and a hundred of every species of domestic animals, on his farm.

Many of the ancient Irish habits and customs still lingered in the fifteenth century. The bards, poets, and minstrels, though they had been persecuted at intervals, and were even forbidden by the English law to enter the houses of the people, retained their hold tenaciously upon the popular affection and veneration. They were favored in many ways by the princes and chiefs. They held seats of honor at the feasts, and received presents, often of great value. One bard, it is related, received from King Brian, as a reward for one of his poems, gold and clothing and twenty cows. Another received "twenty horned cows," and "the blessing of the king of Erin." In course of time, indeed, the bards and poets became more subject to the will of the chiefs than they once had been. But their office continued to be an hereditary one, descending from father to son; and many of them held large estates, and lived lives of dignity and ease. The singing of the bards, and the recitation by the poets of verses celebrating the deeds of heroes, was a conspicuous feature of Irish life even under English rule.

Both the bards and the native judges (Brehons) were still regarded as sacred in their persons. The curse of the bard of Usnagh was believed to have cost Sir John Stanley his life. The murder of a Brehon judge by Irial O'Farrell was avenged, it was said among the people, by the long series of misfortunes which befell the murderer's children.

The bards continued to be under the special protection of the chiefs. An O'Neil, who gave many presents to the bards, and had the largest collection of poems in Ireland, is specially named and praised in the chronicles of his time. The love of learning had never been extinguished among the Irish, even by the repeated ravages of war or the desperate struggles against foreign conquest. Whenever there was a lull in these storms of conflict, Irish scholarship revived. In the thirteenth century the famous Franciscan and Dominican friars, who brought about a great religious revival in England, extended their labors to Ireland also; and at the end of that century, had established fifty or sixty monasteries of their orders in Ireland.

These monasteries became places of asylum to the Irish scholars, whither they could retreat from the turmoil of the civil commotions. They gave to the scholars, moreover, another advantage besides that of studying in safety and quiet. The Dominicans and Franciscans had similar monasteries, which were not less seats of learning than religious houses, scattered through the European cities. A student who had attached himself to one of the monasteries was freely admitted into any of the others. So it was that Irish scholars, sometimes in great numbers, were found pursuing their studies in England, Paris, Naples, and other foreign places. Some of them became very noted for their profound learning. One was a professor at Oxford in the reign of Edward the Second. Another, John Scotus of Down, was famous in the schools of Paris and Cologne for the extent of his scholarly accomplishments. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, there was a large number of Irish students in the Oxford colleges.

The Irish had not lost, in the lapse of time, those attractive traits of hospitality, of respect for women, and of social cheer, which they are known to have possessed even in the remote age of the Druids. These were always, and are still, prominent characteristics of the Irish race. They made freely welcome visitors of all ranks and of every social grade. The freest and most bountiful hospitality marked the homes of the princes and chiefs; and even the lowest class of the Irish lavished such humble good-cheer as they could afford upon their guests. Henry O'Neil is said to have "given every-thing that came into his hands to all manner of men." It is related of one of the great chiefs of the O'Kellys, that he invited all the bards, poets, and even poor people, who chose to come, to abide with him throughout the Christmas holidays; and feasted them every day in quite royal fashion. A rich dame of rank, Margaret O'Carroll, twice a year opened her house to all the bards and poets, both of England and of Ireland, who would accept her lavish hospitalities. A violation of hospitality was always regarded by the Irish as an odious action; and he who showed inhospitality was doomed to the scorn of his neighbors for the rest of his life. The respect of the Irish for women, and their chivalrous protection of them are to be seen in all periods of their career. The wife retained her maiden name, adding to it that of her husband. If she were of equal rank with her husband, she shared his authority equally with him, and he was in no sense her master. The Irish women, indeed, often took part in public affairs; and the names of many of them have come down in history. We find Margaret O'Carroll celebrated, not only for her great hospitality, but for her energy and active piety. She exchanged prisoners in the wars, herself conducting them from place to place, and that "without the knowledge of her husband." She built roads, bridges, and churches, and gave to the churches many books and ornaments.

Another famous Irish dame was Margaret Fitzgerald, wife of the Earl of Ormond. She is said to have been "a lady of such port, that all the estates of the realm couched to her; and so politic, that nothing was thought fully debated without her counsel." When she was dying, and the priest urged her to restore some lands which she had unjustly seized, threatening her with eternal punishment if she refused, she grimly replied, that "it was better that one old woman should burn for eternity, than that the Butlers (earls of Ormond) should be curtailed of their estates."

The Irish chiefs of the fifteenth century usually lived in frame-houses on a well-fortified island, or on some jutting peninsula which projected into a lake, so that the water formed for them a natural defense. Some of the greater chiefs, however, imitated the English lords, and built strong castles of stone, in which they dwelt in a rude sort of state. High walls surrounded these castles, within which were built the stables, as well as cottages for the chief's immediate retinue and servants. Each castle, too, had its open space, or "green." Sometimes this was outside, and sometimes within, the castle walls. The green was often the scene of merry-making, of boisterous pastimes and athletic contests. The Irish, like the English, have always been fond of sturdy out-of-door sports. At stated periods of the year, several clans would gather at one of the castles; and chiefs and vassals would witness, together, the trials of strength which took place on the green between the rival clansmen.

The Irish of the fifteenth century were, perhaps, scarcely less superstitious than were those of the fifth. They were quick to believe in omens, portents, and signs; and many proverbs interpreting the freaks of nature, or happenings among the people, were extant. They believed in ghosts and ghostly legends, and were intensely moved by the weird tales of haunted places, and of strange events, sung to them by the bards. But the superstition of the early Irish rarely showed itself in cruel forms. They did not, like the English, doom supposed witches to barbarous methods of persecution. There seems good reason to believe that the fear and the severe punishment of witchcraft were introduced into Ireland by the English settlers. The first example of such a persecution in Ireland occurred early in the fourteenth century, when Lady Alice Kettel and her son were accused of "black magic." They were, however, found not guilty, and released. In later times, so-called witches were condemned in Ireland, but usually by the English.

Although the religion of the Irish and of the English was the same, the two churches were not united in Ireland. The bishops in the districts still held by the Irish were, as of old, chosen by the election of the clergy. But the Irish church had long submitted to the power of the pope; and, as each bishop was elected, he was careful to receive the pope's sanction before he entered upon the duties of his sacred office. The bishops of those parts of Ireland held by the English, on the other hand, were named by the English sovereigns, who, through several reigns, had denied the right of the pope to appoint or confirm bishops in England. Indeed, the English Parliament had passed severe laws, punishing those priests, who, whether in England or in Ireland, claimed to act under an appointment from the pope. In the border districts, where neither Irish nor English had full control, such as Meath and Louth, there were often two rival bishops, one deriving his office from election by the clergy with the papal sanction, and the other from the appointment of the English crown. The bishops of Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Limerick, were the nominees of the crown; those of Ulster, Connaught, and part of Munster, were the elect of the native clergy. Constant conflicts arose, therefore, between the two churches. Hatreds and jealousies grew up; and, in spite of many attempts to reconcile them, their dissensions long crippled the religious usefulness of both.

Ireland was not only rent, during the fifteenth century, by the conflicts between the two races, but was also the frequent scene of bitter family feuds, and petty wars between clan and clan. Acts of violence, fierce revenges and retaliations, were of very frequent occurrence. The Irishman always carried his battle-axe with him, not only when he traversed the lonely roads, but also when he went to mass, on a hunting expedition, or to a gay festival. He was quick to fight, and fought ferociously. But it must also be said, that assassination and treachery were not conspicuous among the crimes of the Irish at that period. A poisoner, or secret murderer, was looked upon with horror by the people, who treated him as an outcast; while the man who slew his enemy in open fight was held in honor. Some of the punishments imposed upon criminals or enemies, indeed, were barbarously cruel. They were sometimes maimed in limbs, and their eyes were sometimes put out. But, in this respect, the Irishman was neither worse nor better than other races in that dark age.

The Irish Parliament

The Wars of the Roses had come to a close. Henry the Seventh, the first of the strong-willed line of the Tudor sovereigns, sat upon the English throne (1485). By his marriage with Elizabeth of York, he had united the two houses of York and Lancaster, which had so long struggled with each other for supremacy. It seemed as if Henry would have a long and undisputed reign. Ireland had for years been left to herself, so entirely had the attention of the English kings been diverted from her, first by the wars with France, and then by the protracted civil conflict.

Henry was a stern, determined man, who was fully resolved to rule with an iron hand. In the earlier part of his reign, however, he scarcely thought of Ireland. The Earl of Kildare, the head of one of the branches of the powerful Geraldines, was governor of Ireland at the time of Henry's accession; and, although he had been a partisan of the Yorkists, Henry's enemies, Henry allowed Kildare to remain in his office. Kildare, besides being a very powerful lord, had a great deal of influence with the native clans; and, for this reason, the new king thought it wise not to disturb him.

But in no long time an event occurred which drew Henry's attention to Ireland. His enemies sought to make Ireland a point from whence to assail his hold on the English crown. The Yorkist heir to the crown was Edward, Earl of Warwick, who had been kept for some time a close prisoner in the Tower of London. Suddenly an English priest arrived in Dublin, bringing with him a handsome youth with attractive manners, whom he declared to be no other than the Earl of Warwick. Henry's enemies promptly espoused the cause of the pretended Warwick, who was really an impostor, and whose true name was Lambert Simnel. He was the son of an English shoemaker. Nevertheless, the Earl of Kildare himself, and many of the nobles and chiefs in Ireland, both English and Irish, recognized Simnel as the rightful king of England; and Simnel was solemnly crowned in Christ-church cathedral, Dublin, by the bishop of Meath. His partisans, emboldened by this event, lost no time in preparing to make good his claim in England.

The French duchess of Burgundy, who was a bitter foe of Henry, sent a fleet, with two thousand veteran soldiers, to the pretender's aid. The combined forces of French and Irish, with many English Yorkists, in all about eight thousand, landed on the Lancashire coast, and boldly marched into Yorkshire. Thence they moved southward, and were confronted by Henry and his army near Newark. After an obstinate battle, Henry was victorious. The Earl of Lincoln, two of the Geraldines, and Sir Thomas Broughton, on the pretender's side, were killed; and. Lambert Simnel himself was taken prisoner. The king treated his defeated enemies with singular leniency. He pardoned Simnel, who afterwards became a servant in the royal kitchen; and, what is still more strange, he permitted the Earl of Kildare to continue as governor of Ireland in spite of his treason. As for the rest of the survivors of the expedition, they were allowed to go free, no punishment being inflicted upon them.

The failure of Simnel's attempt did not wholly discourage those who wished to drive Henry from the English throne. Five years afterwards, another pretender, Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be the Duke of York, son of Edward the Fourth, and one of the princes who were supposed to have been murdered in the Tower of London, landed in Ireland. He, too, was supported by the duchess of Burgundy, and was also encouraged by the French king. His first visit to Ireland produced no result; but a few years later, after many adventures, he again made his appearance on Irish soil. He was now joined by the great Earl of Desmond of the Geraldine family, and by many of the Irish and English of Cork. He laid siege to Waterford, but was forced to give up the attempt to take that town. Then Desmond deserted him and Warbeck retreated to Scotland. He was at last captured by Henry's adherents, and executed (1499). Desmond sought and obtained the king's pardon, and remained as powerful as ever on his domain. But Kildare, his kinsman, was not let off so easily. He was thrown into prison in England, and his wife died of the terror caused by the fear that he might be executed.

The Irish Parliament had originally comprised an assembly of the lords, bishops, and the principal English landlords, who were summoned to register the king's commands, to consult about the raising of money, and to advise the king concerning the affairs of the island; and its rise had taken place soon after the first intrusion of the English. In the thirteenth century, members, called "knights of the shire," representing the counties, took their seats in Parliament; and towards the close of the same century, "burgesses," representing the towns, were admitted to its sessions. Parliament was summoned to meet by the king's representative in Ireland, sometimes frequently, and sometimes at rare intervals. There was no stated time for it to assemble. It generally met at Dublin; but now and then it was called upon to meet at Kilkenny, or at Drogheda. At some periods, there seem to have been at least two parliaments in Ireland. One, composed of the lords, bishops, and commons of Leinster, met at the same time that another, similarly composed, was sitting in Munster.

For a long time the Irish Parliament had been subject to the powerful influence of the Earl of Kildare and a few other great Anglo-Irish lords. It had by no means been obedient to the English crown. On one occasion, it ventured to choose a viceroy or governor, instead of the one who had been appointed by the king. On another, it declared boldly that Ireland was only bound to obey the laws of the Irish Parliament. It recognized Simnel as the rightful heir to the English crown, and abetted the Geraldines—the earls of Kildare and Desmond—in their rebellions. It gave protection to the plotters against the English king, and to disloyal Englishmen who repaired to Ireland to escape capture and punishment. In the time of Henry the Seventh, the Irish Parliament had somewhat changed its character. There were now two houses, the upper and lower. In the upper house sat the lords, bishops, abbots, and priors. The lower house was composed of the knights of the shire and the burgesses. Thus the Irish Parliament, in its composition, now much resembled that of England.

King Henry was at last fully aroused to the necessity of paying some attention to Ireland. He looked upon Ireland as a part of his dominions, yet neither the English settlers nor the native Irish were loyal to his crown. Twice had Ireland been the starting-points of attempts to drive him from his throne. He therefore sent over Sir Edward Poyning with a thousand soldiers, to restore, if possible, the royal authority. Poyning, like his master the king, was a stern, resolute man. He called together the Irish Parliament, and caused it to reaffirm the Kilkenny law which had been imposed by Clarence more than a century before. One or two of its provisions were, however, omitted. Parliament was also compelled to pass a law, which is known in history as "Poyning's Law," declaring that no Parliament should thenceforth assemble in Ireland, until the measures it intended to pass had been submitted to the king and his council, and had been approved by them. The laws passed by the Irish Parliament, moreover, were to be sent to the English council, the members of which might alter them at pleasure; and, after they had been sent back to Ireland thus amended, they could not be further changed by the Irish houses.

These were not the only measures which the determined Poynings procured from the Irish Parliament. The custom of "coyne and livery," or quartering soldiers in the houses of the people, was forbidden. The land-owners were required to live upon their estates. The freemen of the towns were prohibited from entering the service of the lords; and it was declared treason to instigate the native Irish to war. These were good laws, and were intended to protect the people from the tyranny of the nobles. Poyning, moreover, caused a law to be passed, that the chief officials and judges should hold office at the king's discretion, and not, as before, for life. The effect of Poyning's Law was what the king had intended. The Irish Parliament, often rebellious and never thoroughly loyal, was stripped of all real power, reduced to helplessness, and became merely an assembly to proclaim such laws as England chose that Ireland should have. Poyning demanded one more act of this Parliament before it was dissolved. This was that it should condemn the Earl of Kildare, who had given Henry so much trouble, as a traitor. The pliant houses yielded to the demand, and then separated.

The Earl of Kildare was a very bold, audacious, quick-witted man. He had always held close relations with the native Irish, and had shown himself to be not only an inveterate, but a formidable enemy of the English crown. No sooner, however, did he find himself Henry's prisoner, than he formed a scheme to recover his freedom, and to return to Ireland more powerful than ever. He had been charged, among other things, with having caused the cathedral of Cashel to be set on fire. To this he bluntly replied, in the presence of the king, that he would not have done so, if he had not supposed that the archbishop was inside. The archbishop was a close adherent of the Earl of Ormond, Kildare's bitter rival. Henry was amused at this audacious answer, and told Kildare that he might choose any advocate he chose to plead his cause. "I fear," was Kildare's reply, that your Highness will not permit me to choose the honest man I prefer." The king assured him that he would. "Then," said the earl, "I know no better man to defend me than your Highness's self, nor will I choose any other."

The archbishop of Cashel and the Earl of Ormond, who were present, cried out at this, "All Ireland cannot rule the Earl of Kildare!" Whereupon Henry, who had been completely won by Kildare's boldness, said, "Then shall he rule all Ireland." Kildare was not only pardoned on the spot, but was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and received Elizabeth St. John, cousin of the king, as his second wife. He returned to Dublin armed with almost royal power. And now, completely changing his conduct, he became entirely devoted to the interests of the English crown. His government was stronger than any that Ireland had seen for sixty years. He asserted his authority over the Anglo-Irish barons and the natives alike, and vigorously suppressed all resistance to his will.

In an obstinate conflict with the clan of Burke, Kildare entirely overcame his enemy at the battle of Knockdoe (1504). In the later years of his rule, Kildare seems to have become almost the absolute master of Ireland. He went hither and thither as he pleased in the island, sup-pressed and raised up chiefs, and planted his garrisons in many places where the English had not before secured a foothold. This energetic and unscrupulous lord remained in power as governor of Ireland until his death (1517). He is described by an old writer, as "of tall stature and goodly presence; very liberal and merciful; of strict piety; mild in his government; passionate, but easily appeased." The English colony in Ireland, indeed, produced few abler men, few more brilliant rulers or generals, than Gerald, Earl of Kildare.

Henry the Eighth and Ireland

The rule of the Earl of Kildare marked the turning point in favor of English ascendancy in Ireland. There were to be many and terrible struggles before the English power established full sway over the heroic and patriotic clans throughout the island; but, from the time of Kildare, the chiefs of the ancient families gradually lost more and more their hold upon the country. Thenceforth, victory was to attend the effort of the English to subdue Ireland. When Henry the Seventh died (1509), leaving the throne to his despotic son, Henry the Eighth, the new king was even more firmly resolved than his father had been to fasten the yoke of English government upon the Irish. But, at first, Henry the Eighth was disposed to try mild measures. He declared that, while the power of the crown should be strictly maintained in Ireland, he would also endeavor to win the native chiefs, by bestowing royal favors upon them, and securing them in their domains, and thus gain their allegiance.

But soon a grave obstacle in the way of the fulfillment of Henry's plans arose, in the conduct of the more than ever formidable family of Kildare. The great earl had left a son, Gerald, who was appointed lord-deputy in his place. This new Earl of Kildare was hot-headed and insubordinate. The king could not rely upon his loyalty; and, before he had long been in authority in Ireland, Kildare was charged by his rivals, the family of Ormond, with high treason. Three times was Kildare summoned to England to answer this charge, and three times was he deposed from the lord-deputyship. At last he was thrown into the Tower of London. His son Thomas, a youth of twenty, who, from the elegance of his attire, was called "Silken Thomas," was acting in Ireland, in his place, as vice-deputy. For purposes of his own, Henry caused a rumor to be spread in Ireland that Kildare had been beheaded. This aroused Thomas to a frenzy of grief and rage. Entering the council chamber in St. Mary's abbey, Dublin, at the head of a hundred and forty retainers, he threw his sword of office violently upon the council table, and declared that he renounced his allegiance to the English king.

'SILKEN THOMAS' RENOUNCING HIS ALLEGIANCE TO THE KING.

A struggle forthwith broke out between the impetuous young scion of Kildare and Henry's adherents in Ireland. Henry, prompted by his great minister, Cardinal Wolsey, grimly made up his mind to crush once and for all the power of the restless and untrustworthy Geraldines of Kildare. Thomas of Kildare, on the other hand, declared war to the bitter end against the English. He besieged Dublin, but in vain. He seized the long-time enemy of his house, the archbishop of Cashel, and caused him to be murdered. He appealed to the O'Connors, the O'Mores, and other chiefs, to come to his aid. But the fiery young Geraldine soon met with a fatal check. The castle of Maynooth, supposed to be proof against every assault, was garrisoned by Irish soldiers. It was now vigorously besieged by a well-disciplined English force under Skeffington.

Gunpowder had recently come into use, and the English were armed with guns and artillery. The Irish had still only their ancient weapons,—swords and spears. The result was that the English cannon soon made a breach in the fortress of Maynooth, and that once impregnable stronghold was taken. Young Thomas saw that all was lost, and surrendered his person to the mercies of the English monarch. Henry promised to pardon him; but, as soon as he reached London, Thomas was thrown into the Tower of London, where his father, the Earl of Kildare, had recently died of a broken heart. The extinction of the Geraldines of Kildare was now sternly resolved upon, and this end was to be attained by treachery. The new lord-deputy of Ireland was Lord Leonard Gray, who had married a sister of the late Earl of Kildare. Five of the earl's brothers were living in Ireland. Three of them were loyal to the English crown. Yet it was determined to get rid of them all.

Gray invited his five brothers-in-law to a great banquet, seized them as they sat at table, and caused them to be sent as prisoners to London. The next year all five of the Geraldine brothers and Thomas, their nephew, were hanged, on the charge of high treason, on Tyburn Hill. A younger son of the late earl, however, escaped the fate of his brother and uncles, and in after years was restored to the earldom of Kildare. The effect in Ireland of the execution of the Geraldines was to. greatly increase and extend the power of the crown. Gray was a vigorous ruler, and lost no time in following up his advantage. He successively subdued O'Connor, the Geraldines of Munster, and finally O'Neil. He captured Athlone, the great stronghold of Connaught, and reduced the Burkes to inaction, if not to submission (1535).

Meanwhile, the great movement of religious reformation had begun in England. Henry the Eighth, bent on divorcing his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and marrying Anne Boleyn, had had a rupture with the pope of Rome, who forbade the divorce; and had declared himself to be the only head of the church and clergy in England. He had followed up this bold course by suppressing a large number of monasteries, and taking possession of their houses and lands for the crown. He adopted the same policy towards the Irish monasteries, which he had no fair excuse for doing. The Irish priests and monks had not, like many of those in England, become corrupt, immoral, and neglectful of their pious duties. They still zealously sustained religion and fostered learning. Schools were held within the monastery walls. The monks lodged travelers, were active in charities, and often acted as mediators between rival and quarrelsome chiefs. Their influence among the people was the best and most hopeful feature of Irish life.

But these facts had no influence upon the despotic Henry. Gray, the lord-deputy of Ireland, summoned an Irish Parliament, and demanded that it, too, should declare the English king the supreme head of the church. His demand was strenuously resisted by the bishops and abbots, and by many of the lords; and they succeeded in preventing the declaration from being made (1537). Gray now took an arbitrary course. He caused Parliament to exclude the proctors from the upper House. Henry was then declared the sole head of the Irish Church. More than four hundred monasteries and abbeys were suppressed, and their properties were confiscated to the English crown. If the abbot of one of the suppressed monasteries resisted, he was thrown into prison. The edict was carried out by force. Those abbots and monks who peacefully submitted to it and went quietly away, were granted small sums of money, and, in some cases, annual stipends.

Thus Gray, during the two years of his severe and energetic rule, had not only subdued the Irish Parliament, but the church also, to the power of the crown. Ireland had not been so tranquil, as now, for many generations. Never had she so felt the iron hand of the oppressing race. The English Pale had been enlarged; and its English occupants had been strengthened so that they no longer paid tributes, for their safety's sake, to the outlying Irish clans. Many of the native chiefs had given up the lands that they might be given back to them by the king, in return for their sworn loyalty to the crown; and such chiefs were protected by the lord-deputy and accepted the English instead of the old Brehon law. They could thereby sell their land, compel the tenants to pay rent for it, and bequeath it to their children. The land was no longer, as formerly, the common property of the tribe.

Having thus imposed his authority on the English settlers and on a number of the Irish chiefs, and asserted his ability to maintain his dominion in the land, Henry the Eighth entered upon a course of conciliation. Many of the greater native princes and chiefs still held aloof. St. Leger, who succeeded Gray as lord-deputy, undertook the task of winning them over. In no long time, the king had secured the allegiance of the O'Mores, the O'Connors, the O'Melaghlins, the O'Carrolls, the O'Tooles, and other chiefs of eastern Ireland. he had also conciliated the Earl of Desmond, the head of the Munster branch of the Geraldines, and McWilliam, Earl of Clanricarde,—two great English lords who had been hostile. St. Leger called Parliament together, in which, for the first time in the history of Ireland, English lords and Irish chiefs sat side by side. This Parliament confirmed Henry as the sole head of the Church, and recognized him as "king of Ireland." Before that time, the English kings had always been known as "lords of Ireland."

These acts were followed by a series of brilliant festivities in Dublin. The hilltops glowed with bonfires; the cannon roared from the castle; an amnesty of all prisoners was proclaimed. Henry hastened to bind more closely the allegiance of the chiefs who had come in, by grants of land; and some of the chiefs went to London to witness and be impressed by the splendors of Henry's royal court. Dazzled by these things, some of the princes, who had hitherto held proudly aloof, gave in their submission. Of these the chief were O'Brien, who received his reward by being created Earl of Thomond; O'Donnel of Ulster; and even the haughty O'Neil, who accepted from the king the title of Earl of Tyrone. Henry followed up these submissions by suppressing the monasteries in the districts thus added to his dominion, seizing the church lands, and bestowing them upon the newly conciliated chiefs. He also caused large sums of money to be paid to them, and gave to each loyal chief a house in Dublin, that "they might suck in civility with the air of the court."

After the death of Henry the Eighth (1547), the protector Somerset controlled the affairs of England during the minority of the boy king, Edward the Sixth. He went much farther than Henry had done in trying to force the English people away from their ancient faith; and the same rigorous methods which he employed in England, he applied to Ireland for the same purpose. Not content with the suppression of the monasteries, and the seizing and dividing-up of their lands, Somerset, aided by Cranmer, sought to compel the Irish church to use the new Protestant liturgy, instead of the old Catholic one. The archbishop of Armagh, however, who was at the head of the Irish church, and almost all the priesthood, refused to accept it; while five of the Anglo-Irish bishops submitted. Meanwhile the people, outraged by the violence committed upon the ancient relics,—upon the shrines and tombs, and the abbeys of their-church,—by the soldiers of the lord-deputy, resisted, wherever they could, the imposition of the new faith.

The accession of Mary, a Catholic, to the throne of England, was the signal for a pause in the attempt to revolutionize the Irish church. The bishops who had refused to accept the new liturgy were recalled from exile; those who had accepted it were turned out of their sees, and fled for safety; and the young Earl of Kildare, who had stood stoutly by the ancient faith, was restored to his title and domains.

The Protestant prayer-book was forbidden, and mass was once more said in Ireland's venerable cathedrals. The people were allowed to worship according to the faith to which they clung. The church lands, indeed, which had been taken away, and given to Englishmen, were not restored to their former possessors. On the contrary, Mary continued the practice of granting such lands to her courtiers and favorites. But, for a brief period, the Anglo-Irish and the native clans were allowed to worship according to the old religion in peace.

Shane O'Neil

It was during the long reign of Elizabeth, that that fierce conflict between the rival Catholic and Protestant churches in Ireland began, which endured, almost without pause, down to the nineteenth century. It was also during her reign, that the system of "planting" Ireland with English colonies was deliberately adopted as the policy of the crown and relentlessly pursued. That stern and self-willed queen, inheriting all the despotic traits of her family, was even more resolute and persistent, if possible, than her father had been, in reducing Ireland to absolute political and religious subjection to English rule. But she was destined to experience many obstacles and to undergo many mortifications before she could attain her end. Nor did she ever attain her end completely.

In spite of the submission of so many of the Anglo-Irish and native lords to Henry, patriotism, a fierce clinging to independence, still survived in Ireland. O'Neil, O'Brien, O'Donnel, and other chiefs of ancient lineage, had sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. But many great chiefs, as well as many lesser chiefs and the mass of the tribesmen, were far from subdued to English rule. There were leading men, too, who were not only dissatisfied, but were eager to lead revolts against the English and their Irish allies. Among them were the valiant young sons of O'Neil and O'Donnel. Especially active in his hostility to the recent changes was Shane O'Neil, one of the most striking figures in Irish history.

His elder half-brother, Matthew, who was an illegitimate son of the newly created Earl of Tyrone, had been declared the earl's heir. Shane was naturally outraged that an illegitimate son should be preferred to him, who was the earl's eldest son born in wedlock. But Shane was not influenced by this feeling alone. He showed the same proud spirit of independence which had so long marked the royal race of O'Neil. He was bitterly angry with his father for humbling himself to the English king, and for stooping to accept from him the earldom of Tyrone.

Shane O'Neil resolved to make a desperate attempt to shake off the English yoke. He went among the native Irish, urging them to resist the foreigners. He caused his half-brother, the illegitimate Matthew, to be killed; and he succeeded in drawing his father, the Earl of Tyrone, away from the English side. He then undertook the task of preventing the English settlers from planting themselves in Ulster, and of frightening the Ulster chiefs into submission to his rule. He tried hard to unite the Irish; while Sussex, the lord-lieutenant, tried as hard to sow dissensions among them. O'Neil sent to the French king for aid, but in vain. Meanwhile Sussex gathered a large force with which to crush the bold young rebel of the North. But Shane, at the head of seven thousand determined Irishmen, was not so easily overcome. After a campaign, from which he derived neither advantage nor glory, Sussex resolved to resort to treachery. He hired a man named Gray, for a piece of land, to assassinate Shane; but Gray failed to carry out the plan. Then Sussex sent Shane some poisoned wine, in the hope that he would drink it, and so die. But this attempt also failed.

At this juncture the Earl of Kildare, who was a cousin of Shane O'Neil, and was also friendly to the English power, brought about a cessation of hostilities. Shane was persuaded to go to London and make his peace with the haughty queen. He was promised liberal and generous treatment. He accordingly repaired, with a retinue of Irish soldiers attired in their native costume of saffron shirts, fur jackets, sandaled shoes, and long, curled hair, to the brilliant court of Elizabeth. The Irish chief was graciously received by the queen, who admired the stalwart forms of Shane and his men, and who was not less politic than despotic in her nature. A treaty was soon made between them. Elizabeth acknowledged Shane O'Neil as "Captain of Tyrone;" but she did not yet award him the earldom, which the recent death of his father had left vacant. She also promised that her troops should be withdrawn from a portion of Ulster. Shane, on his side, agreed to set at liberty the chief O'Donnel, whom he held as a prisoner, and to drive out a certain settlement of Scots, which had recently been made on the north-eastern coast of Ireland.

Shane's promise to exterminate this Scottish settlement in order to please the English queen, was an act of sheer treachery; for the Scottish colonists had stood stoutly by him in all his contests with his English foes. It was at their hands, finally, that his ruin came, as a retribution for his treason to them. He returned to Ulster, and there continued his work of subduing the jealous chiefs who still defied his power. He soon showed that he held lightly his pledges to Elizabeth; but so embroiled, at that time, was England with Scotland and the Continental powers, that Elizabeth was forced to conciliate the bold Irish chief by new concessions. She now recognized him as Earl of Tyrone, and gave him all the power that his father had enjoyed. Shane, although he refused to entrust himself again at the English court, received the queen's envoys with lavish hospitality, and concluded with them a new treaty of peace.

His power in Ulster was now greater than it had ever been. One of the first uses that he made of it was to fulfill his promise to extirpate the Scottish settlers. He let loose his fierce soldiers suddenly upon them, and caused them to be ruthlessly killed or driven out. A period of comparative tranquility ensued, during which Shane ruled in Ulster with a strong hand. He refrained from assailing the English of the Pale. Crops were abundantly grown in the province, and lawlessness was severely punished. Two years thus passed, during which Shane's government was vigorous and successful. But, all the while, the English were at heart jealous of his rule; and Shane was in reality quite as hostile to them. The war broke out anew between Ulster and the Pale. Sir Henry Sidney arrived in Ireland, as lord-deputy (1565), to find the conflict fiercely raging. He at once made common cause with those Ulster chiefs who had always hated, and, when they could, had always resisted Shane O'Neil.

Some of Shane's old friends and allies, moreover, notably O'Donnel, Earl of Tyrconnel, perceiving that Shane's cause was fast losing ground, joined his enemies. The bold Ulster chief was at last brought to bay. In his desperation, Shane turned for help and protection to the remnant of that very Scottish colony upon whom he had, to please the English queen, wreaked such savage cruelties. With a few Ulstermen who remained faithful to him, he recklessly threw himself upon the mercy of the Scots. They received him with apparent good-grace, and offered him a refuge from his foes. But, in reality, the Scots, who had lost fathers, brothers, sons, at the hands of Shane's murderous emissaries, had vengeance in their hearts. One day they invited Shane and his retainers to a feast. Barring the doors of the banqueting-room, they fell upon their captives; and Shane and every one of his followers were killed upon the spot.

Shane O'Neil had committed many crimes. He had caused his half-brother to be murdered, and had won away the wife of his father-in-law. He had caused many savage deeds to be committed. But he lived in a rude age, when such crimes were thought far more lightly of than they are now. On the other hand, Shane struggled valiantly, and to the bitter end, against the subjection of Ulster to the foreign power of England. When he had a chance to govern his province, he governed it wisely and well. For these traits, he is still remembered with honor in Ireland. On his death, Ulster lay helpless before English power; for there was no warrior like Shane to take his place. Turlough O'Neil was, indeed, recognized by Elizabeth as the chief of his clan; but the chiefs who had followed Shane's fortunes became the vassals of the English crown, and Turlough's authority in Ulster was only nominal. He, too, was really a vassal of the haughty English queen.

Ireland Under Elizabeth

The fall of Shane O'Neil was followed by prompt and energetic measures by Queen Elizabeth. With her iron will, she resolved to make Ireland Protestant in religion and English in ownership. But from the first, Protestantism meant, in Irish eyes, not only a religion hostile to that to which they had always been wedded, but a mark of English tyranny and ascendancy. In spite of the fact, therefore, that the offices of Ireland were filled by Protestants, and that the way, not only to wealth and power, but even to peace and comfort, was to become a Protestant, the new faith made no progress among the natives, and very little among the old English settlers. Not only the O'Neils and the O'Donnels, but the Desmonds and Kildares, adhered to the Roman creed. It was in Elizabeth's time, and by reason of the acts of her agents, that Protestantism became identified in the Irish mind with the oppressions and miseries of the land; and that sentiment remained rooted in the Irish heart down to recent times.

But while Elizabeth failed to convert the Irish, or even to force them to accept the new faith, her scheme to colonize Ireland with English colonies was carried forward vigorously and with some success. It had already been proposed, in, the time of Henry the Eighth, to plant the Irish soil with English settlements; that is, to oust the native tillers of the land, and replace them by English farmers. But it was not until the suppression of Shane's rebellion that this plan was at-tempted on a large scale. The first plantations, however, were doomed to failure. Two colonies were established in Ulster, on the domains of the O'Neils; but that still fierce and unconquered clan fell upon the colonists, and killed them to a man. Some years later, however, Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, received from the queen a large tract in Antrim (1573).

Devereux was a stern, cruel, resolute man. His district was occupied, to a large extent, by a colony of Scotsmen. He undertook not only to drive them from the soil, but also to get rid of the native clans, who thwarted him at every step. In pursuing these ends, Devereux resorted to murder and treachery without remorse. He enticed Con O'Donnel to a meeting, seized him, and cast him into prison. He invited Brian O'Neil to a banquet. Brian came, with his wife, brother, and a large retinue. Devereux's soldiers fell upon them, and slew them every one. He took Rathlin Island, and massacred, not only the Scottish garrison, but the old men, women, and children. Not less atrocious were the methods by which the attempt was made to plant Munster. Elizabeth gave authority to twenty-seven Englishmen to seize the domains of Cork, Limerick, and Kerry. The chief among these was Sir Peter Carew, a man of brutal temper, who had lost his fortune, and was eager to become rich again. Carew had the pretense of a claim to certain lands in southern Ireland; and these claims he sought to make good by acts of the most barbarous cruelty. He desolated the districts over which he passed, and massacred men, women, and children without mercy.

These savage cruelties, committed by the English intruders, soon aroused some of the Anglo-Irish chiefs to action. The Geraldines put themselves at the head of a revolt, and an appeal for aid was sent to the pope, and to the Spanish king. The leader of the revolt was James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, cousin of the Earl of Desmond; that earl being now a prisoner in London. Fitzgerald was bold, fearless, and hot-blooded. But, in his first attempt to resist the English, his force was too feeble to cope with them. Sir Henry Sidney, who was now lord-deputy of Ireland, was not less cruel than Essex and Carew. He led an army into Munster, which he desolated by fire and sword. Towns and villages were laid waste; and women and children, as well as men, were ruthlessly put to the sword. The Earl of Ormond, the great rival of the Geraldines of the South, cast in his lot with the English; and Fitzgerald was soon forced to take refuge in the mountains of Kerry.

Though shut up for the time in the hilly fastnesses, Fitzgerald was by no means subdued. He soon began to prepare the way for another rebellion. In order to strengthen his cause, he had recourse to England's enemies on the Continent. Foremost among these enemies was Philip, king of Spain; Spain being England's most formidable rival on the seas. The pope, too, whose authority in England had been overthrown by Henry the Eighth, and who had seen the Catholic church replaced by a Protestant church by Elizabeth, might well be inclined to aid a revolt against her undertaken by the Catholic Irish. Fitzgerald went, first to Spain, and then to Rome. Philip would not openly aid the insurgents; but the pope responded to Fitzgerald's appeal, by fitting out a small fleet to go to Ireland. This fleet, however, was put under the command of an unscrupulous Englishman named Stukely; who, instead of sailing to Ireland, used the fleet in piratical cruising in the Mediterranean. But Fitzgerald was not dismayed by this loss. With a few Spanish recruits and some warlike monks, he landed at Snierwick, on the west coast of Ireland, and promptly fortified that place.

A second rebellion, far more obstinate and formidable than that which had been so quickly suppressed by Sir Henry Sidney, now broke out all over Ireland. The hideous cruelties perpetrated by the lord-deputies Fitton and Sidney; the massacres, ravages, and burnings which had marked the conduct of the English "planters;" the bloodthirsty vigor with which it had been attempted to exterminate the native Irish from their ancestral homes, had roused the people of Ulster, Munster, and Connaught to a bitter and burning hatred of their oppressors. The treatment of the Anglo-Irish—the original English settlers—had not been a whit less barbarous. Even the English of the Pale, who had been so long protected and fostered by the crown, had latterly felt the iron hand of tyranny, and were inclined to join their fortunes to those of the insurgents. Bands of the Irish quickly gathered in the great forest of Kilmore, in the county of Limerick, where they were drilled by some Spanish soldiers, and where their supplies were collected; and from thence Fitzgerald sallied forth to kindle resistance in Connaught.

At the very outset of the rebellion, however, the insurgents lost their brave and energetic leader. Fitzmaurice was killed as he attempted to pass the river Muckern. The Earl of Desmond had now been released from his imprisonment. At first he had hesitated whether to take part in the rising. Two of his brothers, Sir John and Sir James, had promptly joined Fitzmaurice's standard; and three thousand of his tenants had entered the rebel ranks. The death of Fitzmaurice was followed by Desmond's tardy adhesion to the Irish cause. He took the command, and forced the English general, Malby, to retreat. He then carried his sway over Munster, took Voughal, and seemed on the high road to decisive victory.

Elizabeth, alarmed at Desmond's progress, sent a new deputy, Sir William Pelham, to Ireland. At the same time, she ordered the Earl of Ormond, always Desmond's rival and enemy, to attack him. Pelham led an army from Dublin, and Ormond set out, at the head of another, from KiIkenny. Joining their forces in the west, the English generals soon checked Desmond, drove him from his stronghold, overran Kerry, and recovered all Munster. Desmond was forced to hide himself in the mountains. The triumph of the English army, as usual, was marked by terrible atrocities. Murder and rapine everywhere attended their advance. They left desolation and utter misery behind them.

The subjection of Munster was not at once followed by the suppression of rebellion in other parts of Ireland. Some of the principal Englishmen of the Pale rose in revolt, and, leaving their homes, hastened to join the rebels in the interior. Chief among these was lord Baltinglass, a strong Catholic. He, with his comrades, effected a junction with Sir John Desmond and the remnant of his force. A new lord-deputy, lord Grey of Wilton, had arrived in Ireland. He hastened forth to meet the troops under Baltinglass, but was caught by the rebels in a narrow defile, in the valley of Glenmalure, where his entire force was exterminated. Among Grey's lieutenants was the cruel Sir Peter Carew, who thus met his death at the hands of the race he had so terribly oppressed. Grey retired to Dublin, and once more marched westward at the head of a fresh army. It is interesting that among those who followed Grey in this new expedition were Sir Walter Raleigh, the famous navigator, and Edmund Spenser, the great poet who wrote the "Faerie Queen."

Grey laid siege to the garrison of Spaniards and Italians who were holding the port of Smerwick, on the west coast, for the rebels, and soon compelled them to surrender. Almost the entire garrison were mercilessly shot. Grey returned in triumph to Dublin, and once more set forth to deal a blow at Baitinglass and his comrades in the south. The rebels were soon defeated; but Baltinglass himself succeeded in escaping to France. The rebellion had now been effectually subdued. It only remained to capture Desmond and his faithful friends, and to wreak vengeance upon the routed rebels. A large number, both of Anglo-Irish and natives, were hanged. One hundred and fifty women and children were put to the sword at Kildimo. Lady Fitzgerald was hanged near her own castle. Every day new victims were given over to slaughter. Among those captured and slain were Desmond's two brothers. The head of Sir John Desmond, one of the brothers, was sent to Dublin, and fixed upon a spike in front of the castle, for all men to see.

Desmond did not escape the fate of his kinsmen and of so many of his adherents. For some time he sallied forth from the hills, at intervals, and led guerilla expeditions to ravage the domains of his enemy, Ormond. But his forces dwindled from week to week, and he was constantly forced to retreat from one valley to another. A price was put upon his head, but the people would not give him up to his foes. At last he found a temporary shelter in the densely wooded mountains in western Kerry. His situation was desperate; for he was not only in daily peril of capture, but hunger constantly tortured his devoted band. Early one morning, some English soldiers discovered his retreat, and rushed in upon his camp. The earl was seized and beheaded on the spot. His head was sent to England, and was placed, by order of Elizabeth, on a high pole on London Bridge. With the death of the earl, the second Desmond rebellion came to an end.

The state of the interior of Ireland, and especially of Munster, which had been the principal scene of the struggle, was now extremely wretched. The rich lands had been desolated. Villages, once thriving and busy, had disappeared, or lay in ruins. The poor people wandered about helplessly, gaunt with famine, or stricken by disease. One Englishman who saw them wrote, that "the people offer themselves, with their wives and children, rather to be slain by the army, than to suffer the famine that now beginneth to pinch them." The poet Spenser said that they looked more like skeletons than human beings; and that, in their hunger, they not only ate dead animals, but human corpses. Queen Elizabeth confiscated the estates of the Earl of Desmond, which comprised more than half a million of acres, and divided them up among Englishmen, who undertook to settle English colonies upon them.

The land in Limerick, Kerry, Cork, and other parts of southern Ireland, was parceled out in estates of from four thousand to twelve thousand acres. These estates were handed over to "undertakers" (as those who agreed to plant colonies were called); and many of the soldiers who had taken part in putting down the rebellion also received tracts of land. A small rent of two and three pence an acre was imposed upon these new occupiers by the crown, after they had been settled on the land six years. The undertakers were allowed to send what they raised on the land into England, free of duty. On the other hand, they were forbidden to take native Irishmen as tenants or laborers; and were compelled to get their tradesmen and artisans—the bakers, butchers, smiths, carpenters, tailors, and so on—from England. Each undertaker was bound, moreover, to establish at least eighty-six English families on his estate. Such, in general, was the plan by which Elizabeth and her ministers hoped to replace the Irish by an English population, and to make of Ireland an English country.

The Revolt of Tyrone

The Irish resisted the occupation of their land by English colonies, just as they resisted, for centuries, every step taken by the English to fasten their rule upon Ireland. The English colonists who attempted to occupy the land found their lives constantly harassed and endangered. The poor Irish, who had been expelled from their homes, and now lived as they could in the bogs or in the woods, formed secret leagues to attack the new-comers. The members of these leagues called themselves "Robin Hoods," after the English highwayman who was so famous in those days. The undertakers, moreover, found it impossible to comply with the conditions on which they had received their lands. They could not find Englishmen, who, in the face of the dangers which threatened them, were willing to become their tenants, and farm the land. English tradesmen and artisans could not be induced to leave their safe homes, and establish themselves in places where they might be robbed, and even killed, by the fierce Robin Hoods.

Thus it was that Elizabeth's harsh scheme for replacing the Irish by an English population, to a certain extent failed of its purpose. The natives were more obstinate in their resistance than she had foreseen. Even massacre and the desolation of the country had not tamed their inveterate hostility to English intrusion. Neither hunger nor nakedness could cow them into submission to the lot imposed upon them. Many of the undertakers gave up their lands in sheer despair. Others, in spite of their pledges, accepted native Irishmen as tenants. Yet rebellion, at least on a large scale, had been crushed. Munster lay in helplessness beneath English arms. In Connaught, some of the most powerful lords, such as the earls of Thomond, the Earl of Clanricarde, and the head of the unruly family of Burke, had refused to join arms with Desmond.

For a while Ireland was quiet, if not pacified, under the rule of the lord-deputy Perrot, who had succeeded lord Grey of Wilton in that office (154). Perrot governed, on the whole, with justice and firmness. But one of his acts was long bitterly remembered in Ireland, and this memory later aided in fanning the flames of another rebellion. He suspected the chief, O'Donnel, of secret hostility to the crown. In order to obtain security for O'Donnel's good behavior, Perrot had recourse to a perfidious stratagem. He invited a young son of O'Donnel, who was called "Red Hugh," two sons of Shane O'Neil, and several of their comrades, to drink some Spanish wine on board a vessel which lay off the shores of Donegal. When they had become tipsy from the wine, Perrot ordered the youths to be disarmed, put in irons, and thus conveyed to Dublin. They were thrown into Dublin castle, where they were kept imprisoned several years. This act aroused the open enmity of O'Donnel, and kindled fierce indignation throughout Ulster.

But Perrot's government, aside from this deed of treachery, was so temperate, that it raised up against him a host of enemies among the English. Every occasion to bring charges against him was eagerly seized by those who wished to get rid of him. At last an incident occurred which gave his enemies the opportunity they sought, by arousing against him Elizabeth's excessive vanity. A native chief named O'Rourke, who was boastful of his hostility to the English, caused a rude effigy of Elizabeth to be made. He tied this effigy to his horse's tail, and rode defiantly about the country, dragging the effigy behind him. For some reason, Perrot made no effort to punish O'Rourke for this audacious insult to the queen. The insult was promptly reported to Elizabeth, and she angrily deposed Perrot. She sent Sir William Fitzwilliam, a bad-tempered, avaricious man, to be lord-deputy in his place; and Fitzwilliam soon unsettled the tranquility and order which Perrot had established in Ireland.

From the first, Fitzwilliam carried matters with a high hand, and used his power with cruel caprice. His greed for money prompted him to commit many tyrannical acts. He threw into prison two Ulster chiefs, McTool and O'Doherty, who had always been faithful to the crown, on a false charge of having concealed some treasure which he was eager to get into his clutches. On an equally false accusation of having used force to collect rents, contrary to law, Fitzwilliam caused Hugh McMahon to be seized, tried by court-martial, and executed, and gave McMahon's lands to English men. The arbitrary acts of Fitzwilliam's agents in Ulster created wide-spread discontent. The cattle were stolen, money was extorted from the chiefs without warrant of law, and even women and children were slaughtered by the ruffians sent to carry out the lord-deputy's orders. When, after governing Ireland for six years, the avaricious Fitzwilliam was at last recalled, he left the country in a state of profound unrest. Red Hugh had escaped from Dublin castle, had returned to his own country, and assumed the lordship of Tyrconnel. He and his clans were ripe for revolt. In Connaught and in Ulster, the people only awaited a signal to rise once more against their oppressors.

There now appeared, as the leader of the Irish patriots, one of the most heroic and famous figures in Irish history. This was Hugh O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone. A descendant of the redoubtable family which had so long given warrior-kings to Ulster and to all Ireland, once more arose to defy the power of the English crown. Hugh O'Neil was the son of that Matthew whom his half-brother, Shane O'Neil, had caused to be killed. But in course of time Hugh had succeeded to the title and estates of Tyrone. In many respects he presented a striking contrast to other Irish chiefs. He had been carefully educated in England. He was an accomplished scholar, a polished courtier, an experienced soldier, a graceful and fine-mannered gentleman. From his youth up, Hugh O'Neil had given his allegiance to the English crown, and had even fought on the English side in Shane's rebellion. He was personally liked by Elizabeth, who had conferred many favors upon him.

Such was the man, so different in many respects from the still rude and untamed chiefs of the Irish clans, who now came forward to champion the cause of his oppressed fellow countrymen. Hugh was the son-in-law of the chief O'Donnel, whose son, Red Hugh, had been so treacherously dealt with by the lord-deputy Perrot. O'Neil had been angered by this treatment of his young brother-in-law, and he had felt a deep resentment at the cruelties and exactions of the English agents in Ulster. He gradually cooled in his loyalty to the crown, but at first he did not openly declare against it. A romantic incident, however, finally completed the breach between O'Neil and the English. His wife had died and he had fallen deeply in love with the sister of Sir Henry Bagnal, the commander of the English forces in Ireland. The young lady had rare beauty and many attractive graces. She ardently responded to Hugh O' Neil's affection. But Sir Henry Bagnal violently opposed the match. O'Neil thereupon eloped with his lady-love, and married her.

Bagnal at once conceived a deadly hatred of O'Neil. He tried by every means to convict him of treasonable acts, and intercepted the letters in which O'Neil defended himself from the charges made against him. O'Neil repaired to London and easily made his peace with Elizabeth. But no sooner had he returned to Ireland than he found that the flames of revolt had already burst forth. Young Red Hugh and the sons of Shane O'Neil had risen in arms; and O'Donnel, the father of Hugh's first wife, exasperated by his wrongs, had inflicted more than one desperate blow on the English forces in Ulster. Hugh O'Neil joined with O'Donnel, and promptly set about forming a great league of Irish chiefs against the English. The O'Rourkes, the McMahons, the Scots, the O'Connors, the O'Kellys, the McDermots, and the O'Byrnes joined the standard of the two great Ulster chiefs. The league appealed to the Catholics to stand by their faith against their Protestant tyrants. It sent emissaries to Spain to apply once more for aid, and it made ready to meet the formidable battalions of England in the field (1595.)

The first campaign of Tyrone's league was attended with such signal success, that Elizabeth became alarmed and tried to make peace with him. Tyrone pretended to come to terms; but his real object was to gain time, until the help which had been promised him by the Spanish king, Philip, should arrive. As soon as three Spanish frigates appeared off the coast of Donegal, Tyrone resumed his military operations. The new lord-deputy, Lord Burgh, was forced to retreat; and, a little later, Tyrone's father-in-law and bitter enemy, Bagnal, was utterly defeated, and himself slain, in a desperate battle on the banks of the Callan. Several forts held by the English surrendered to the Irish insurgents, and Tyrone now found himself the master of nearly the whole of Ulster. Meanwhile the fortunes of war leaned to the side of the Irish in other parts of the island. Connaught, Munster, and even Leinster, the province in which the Pale was situated, were afire with revolt.

Tyrrel, one of Tyrone's bravest lieutenants, drove Sir Thomas Norris, governor of Munster, into Cork. The castles of the Earl of Desmond were seized by the Irish; and a cousin of the earl, who was on Tyrone's side, took his title, and was called, in derision, the "earl of Straw." In no long time the whole of Ireland, outside the small district of the Pale, had come under the sway of Tyrone and his brave comrades. The Irish had fought, not only with valor, but with steadfastness and discipline. They had been well handled by soldiers who had seen something of war on a larger scale. They had had an abundance of food and ammunition. Many of the English troops, on the other hand, were raw recruits; and operating, as they did, in a country unfamiliar and profoundly hostile to them, they met their enemy everywhere at a disadvantage. Ireland seemed, at this moment (1598), entirely lost to England. The Irish, indeed, had all but won their independence.

But the proud spirit of Elizabeth, although she was now aged and physically feeble, was aroused to its old energy by the overwhelming disasters to her arms in Ireland. Her favorite at this time was a brave, handsome, chivalrous courtier, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. He had just performed the brilliant feat of attacking and burning a Spanish fleet in the harbor of Cadiz. Elizabeth appointed Essex lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and entrusted to him a fresh army of twenty-one thousand men, with which to put down Tyrone's revolt. Essex relieved some of the Ulster garrisons, and then marched southward into Munster. But his campaign had no marked result. The Irish troops prudently refused to meet so strong a force in the open field, but continually picked off the English as they marched to and fro. Essex returned to Dublin, with his troops greatly reduced in numbers and dampened in spirits. Meanwhile his lieutenant, Sir Conyers Clifford, had been cut off with half his force by O'Donnel in Connaught.

MEETING OF TYRONE AND ESSEX ON THE BANKS OF THE LAGAN.

Elizabeth was enraged by Essex's want of success. She sent him, however, two thousand fresh troops; and he promptly marched on Ulster. A mysterious event, which has never since been fully explained, now took place. Tyrone, seeing that he was hard pushed, begged for an interview with Essex. The lord-lieutenant granted the request. The great Ulster chief and the gallant English courtier met on the banks of the Lagan. What passed between them is not known; but the result of their meeting was, that Essex agreed to an armistice of six weeks. When the news of this concession by Essex reached England, it produced universal indignation. The queen shared in the anger of her subjects. Essex was loudly accused of treachery. He was abruptly recalled to London. There, soon after, he actually engaged in a conspiracy against the queen, was seized and thrown into the Tower, and, after a brief trial, was beheaded.

The Plantation of Ireland

The task of recovering Ireland from the grasp of the brave Tyrone was now resumed with more vigor than ever. Essex's successor in the government of Ireland was a stern, energetic nobleman, Lord Mountjoy. The first act of this new ruler was to re-organize the shattered and demoralized English troops. He restored rigid discipline to his army, and inflicted the severest punishments on those soldiers who in the least deviated from their duties. As a military chief, Mountjoy was wary and heartless. He refused to be drawn into bogs and forests, where the Irish clans could pick off his men. His plan of conquest was simply to lay waste the country. Wherever he went, he destroyed crops and villages, and thus made a desert. In this way he reduced the greater part of Munster and Connaught to submission.

Tyrone himself was about to despair, when the news reached him that a Spanish fleet of fifty vessels, under Don Juan d'Aquila, had reached Kinsale. The Irish chief promptly marched towards that place with five thousand men, to effect a junction with his allies.

The English under Carew promptly laid siege, both by land and sea, to the Spaniards in Kinsale. Tyrone, having joined O'Donnel, came up, and took up a position which threatened the besieging forces. But now treachery wrought the ruin of the Irish patriots. Tyrone resolved to take the English by surprise and to attack them before they knew his intention. But a traitor from his camp carried the intelligence to Carew. When Tyrone made his assault he found the English ready to receive him. After a desperate fight, he was forced to retreat in confusion. He could no longer stand up against such a disaster, and in the face of an enemy so superior in numbers and discipline. At last the brave Tyrone was forced to submit to Mountjoy, while O'Donnel sought safety in flight across seas. The English avenged the rebellion by the most ruthless cruelties. The country was desolated. Human beings, cattle, crops, were exterminated.

Just after Tyrone had given in his submission, the news reached Ireland, that the iron-souled English queen, Elizabeth, was dead (1603). The Irish were at first rejoiced to hear this; for they had heard that James the First, Elizabeth's successor, was favorable to the Catholics and they hoped that he would defend them in the practice of their faith. But they were destined to be rudely undeceived. James very soon showed that he was resolved, not only to suppress the creed of the native Irish, but to force Protestantism upon them by every means in his power. Not only the native Irish, but the Anglo-Irish of the Pale (the descendants of the original English settlers) were Catholics. The decrees of the new English king bore with equal severity on both. Sir Arthur Chichester, whom James sent to Ireland as lord-deputy, commanded the chief citizens of Dublin to attend the Protestant church; and, when they refused, he threw them all into Dublin castle. A fine was inflicted on all persons who did not go to the Protestant church every Sunday. A person in Ireland who did not take the oath of supremacy, which acknowledged the king as the sole head of the church, could not hold either a military or a civil office. He could not be a magistrate, a judge, a lawyer, or an army officer.

The reign of James was marked by a vigorous renewal of the attempts which had been made by Elizabeth, to colonize all Ireland with Englishmen. The success of this scheme, though by no means complete, was much greater under James than it had been under Elizabeth. James first directed his attention to Ulster. Tyrone and other Ulster chiefs had submitted to the crown. But it was necessary to deprive them of their local power, and, indeed, if possible, to get rid of them altogether. A false charge was made against Tyrone and O'Donnel's son Rory of having formed a plot to kill the lord-deputy, and seize Dublin castle. Tyrone was warned that it was intended to arrest him on this charge. He therefore fled with young O'Donnel to the Continent. He repaired to Rome, where, shattered and blind, he died a few years after. Soon after Tyrone's flight, a feeble revolt broke out in Ulster, which was speedily suppressed, its leaders becoming outcasts. Thus, one by one, the greater Ulster chiefs were disappearing.

The "treason" of the Ulster chiefs afforded James the opportunity, which he eagerly seized, to declare their domains forfeited to the crown; and thus a way was opened for putting into practice a scheme for planting the whole of the northern province with English and Scottish settlers. No less than six counties were confiscated by the king, to be divided up and delivered over to new holders, who would be Protestant and loyal. The king's agents went promptly to work to carry the new plantation into effect. The land of the six counties was carefully surveyed. In all, it was found that between three and four millions of acres of Irish land had come into the hands of the crown by the confiscation of James. This land was parceled out into farms of between one and two thousand acres, and was given over mainly to English and Scottish undertakers on condition that they should pay for it an annual rent of from one to two and a quarter pence per acre. Some of the land, however, was retained for the purpose of supporting the Protestant bishops, churches, and clergy, for towns and forts, and for establishing free schools.

The undertakers to whom the farms were given and the settlers upon the domain were bound by certain other conditions besides that of the payment of rent. They were required to build castles as residences; to divide their land into four larger, and six smaller, farms, and to support eight skilled laborers and their families; to let their lands for no shorter period than twenty-one years; to have the houses built in groups, or villages, in order that the settlements might the better defend themselves; to take the oath of supremacy; and not to receive the native Irish as tenants upon their estates. In addition to the undertakers, several of the great London guilds, or trade associations, took large tracts of land in Ireland, and let it out in the same way that the undertakers did. The land in Ulster was of two kinds,—that which was fertile, and that which was useless for farming or grazing. The good land was called "fat land," and the bad, "lean land." Four-fifths of the land confiscated by James was lean: only about a half a million acres were fat, or fertile. Of course it was the fat land which the undertakers seized, and upon which the new English and Scottish settlements were made.

All that was left for the poor native Irish was the lean land, which comprised bogs, barren moors, and dense forests. Thus great numbers of them became vagrants, beggars, and outlaws. They retired from the rich farms where their ancestors had dwelt and labored for centuries, and saw themselves replaced by foreign intruders, who were protected by all the power of the English crown. Under that protection, the colonists began to thrive. Many Englishmen and Scotsmen, attracted by the fertile domains and the low rents, repaired to Ulster, rented farms of the undertakers, and permanently settled down. Castles and comfortable mansions dotted the country. Towns, villages, mills, schools, bridges, and forts appeared in once lonely and secluded spots. An air of thrift and prosperity began to pervade the province. Yet the scheme was by no means fully successful. The want of laborers on the farms, and the lack of enough English and Scottish tenants to rent them, compelled the undertakers here and there to violate the condition which forbade their receiving the native Irish. Many of the English and Scottish tenants, after remaining a while upon the land, returned to their homes across the channel. When they did so, they sold out the remainder of their leases, and the improvements they had made on the land to natives. Thus arose the custom of "tenant right," which has continued in Ulster to our own day.

Having, as far as he could, carried out his plan of planting Ulster, James turned his attention to the two provinces of Leinster and Connaught. By all sorts of legal subterfuge and trickery, the titles to many of the Leinster estates were declared defective; and these estates, like those of the Ulster chiefs, were confiscated by the crown.

In this wholesale seizure of land, the Anglo-Irish suffered in common with the native chiefs. Nearly half a million acres in Leinster were thus taken from their possessors, given over to English undertakers, and granted for the use of the church and schools. Only a small proportion was returned to those who were called "the more deserving" of the recent holders of the land. Those who were dispossessed in favor of the newcomers became, like their fellow-countrymen of Ulster, wanderers and outlaws in wild places. And now, for the first time, we hear of "agrarian outrages" being committed in Ireland. The expelled proprietors and their adherents retorted upon the intruders by assassination, the maiming of cattle, and the destruction of crops.

The English avenged these agrarian outrages by killing off the vagrant Irish wherever they could lay their hands on them. The lord-deputy St. John declared that he had killed three hundred of the recent land-owners in as many years. "But," he said, "as soon as one sort is cut off, others rise in their places; for the country is so full of the younger sons of gentlemen, who have no means of living, and will not work, that, when they are sought to be punished for disorders they commit in their idleness, they go to the woods, to maintain themselves by the spoil of their quiet neighbors." Thus Leinster, as well as Ulster, was planted with some degree of success; and the result was to add a considerable sum to James's treasury from the rents, fines, and the increased customs duties, arising from the better industrial condition of the country. It remained to plant Connaught. But the landed proprietors of Connaught found a way of averting the doom of their fellow-countrymen of the other three provinces. They knew that what James most wanted was money. So they offered him a large sum for new titles to their land, provided he would not pursue his scheme of planting Connaught. While James was hesitating whether to accept it, he died (1625); and Connaught was saved, at least for a time, from a large settlement of English upon the land.

We must now go back a little, and see how James sought to give legal sanction to his harsh proceedings in Ireland. This could only be done through the Irish Parliament. For a long time, James hesitated about calling that Parliament together. It was necessary, in order that his acts should be approved, that Parliament should comprise a majority of Protestants. But a great majority of those who were entitled to vote for members in Ireland were Roman Catholics. James set his agents to work to so arrange the voting-districts as to secure the election of a majority devoted to the king. This was done by converting mere villages in many of the Protestant districts into boroughs entitled to return members. The king's agents also used every kind of threat and pressure to compel the people to vote as they wished. After a very bitter contest, the new Parliament was chosen, and was found to contain a small majority of Protestant members.

After a noisy struggle over the speakership, Parliament went to work to carry out the king's wishes. It forbade the Catholics to worship according to their faith. It required that every Catholic priest should leave Ireland within forty days, under heavy penalties. It declared that a person who sheltered a priest should be fined forty pounds; that, if he did so a second time, he should be imprisoned and that, for the third offence of this kind, he should suffer death. It passed an act, "attainting" of high treason O'Neil, O'Donnel, and many other Ulster chiefs; and confirmed the confiscations of their lands to the crown. It put all the native Irish under the protection and obligations of the English law. Hitherto, by that law, they had been simply outlaws. It also abolished all the old laws which had forbidden marriage and other social relations between the English and the Irish races. At the end of James's reign, therefore, it may be said that the whole of Ireland was under the physical control of the English scepter.

Condition of the Irish People

In the early part of the seventeenth century, Ireland was occupied by three different classes of men. There were the native Irish, who, as we have seen, had in many instances, and in large numbers, been ousted from the land of which they and their ancestors had been the owners, or which they had tilled as peasants or as laborers for centuries. There were the Anglo-Irish, the descendants of the original Norman or English settlers, who dwelt in the Pale, who had acquired, in various ways, large estates in the country, and who were represented by such great nobles as the earls of Kildare, Desmond, Ormond, and Clanricarde. Lastly, there were the new English and Scottish settlers,—the men who had come as undertakers and colonists to plant the confiscated lands, and who had established large English colonies in Munster, Ulster, and Leinster. Of these classes, the native Irish almost to a man, and a very large majority of the Anglo-Irish, adhered firmly to the Roman Catholic faith; while nearly all of the new English and Scottish settlers were equally devoted to the Protestant creed.

The native Irish, as a people, were not subdued, excepting outwardly and physically, to English rule. They never had accepted that rule in their hearts, and they have never so accepted it since. The wrongs they had endured by the original English intruders had been continued and exceeded by later English sovereigns. The native Irish had to a great degree absorbed the Anglo-Irish, who had become Irish in custom, by marriage and descent, by harmony of interests, and in sympathy and love of country. But, when this had happened, other colonies of new English were thrust upon them by force of arms and gross tyranny; and the later tyrants now held Ireland in their grasp. In the course of the long, almost ceaseless conflicts, the repeated rebellions, and the succeeding devastations by the English conquerors, it is no wonder that the outcast and poverty-stricken natives sank into a semi-savage state. Great numbers of them dwelt in the forests, or in the vast boggy districts of the interior. Comparatively few served the new settlers as laborers and menials, or, in rare instances, held small patches of ground as tenants.

The most profitable property held by the Irish and Anglo-Irish was cattle, and their chief industry was cattle-raising. The old tribal custom of holding land in common still survived here and there in Ireland; and the pastures held by the tribes were used for rearing the herds of cows and the flocks of sheep. The forests were used for the keeping of hogs. In some parts of the country, too, large quantities of oats and barley were grown, not only for food, but also for the making of a strong drink commonly partaken of in those days, called "usquebaugh."

Grain was likewise exported, to some extent, from Ireland to England. The land was ploughed by six horses driven abreast, the ploughs being tied to the horses' tails. One great source of profit, sea and fresh-water fishing, which has since become a lucrative industry in Ireland, was pursued little, if at all, in the sixteenth century. The Irish had very little ready money. Almost all of their trading was done by exchanging one product or article for another, and they usually paid their fines and taxes with cattle or sheep.

The chiefs, both native and Anglo-Irish, lived in a sort of rude, barbaric state. They had large castles, built of rough-hewn stone, supplied with moats and draw-bridges and high donjon towers. These castles stood on islands, or promontories, or on the crests of high hills. Some of them even had the luxury of leaden roofs. In these mansions the chiefs exercised a primitive, but certainly bountiful and hilarious, hospitality. They had their retainers, who sometimes dwelt in huts within the castle-walls; but more often just outside, their huts clustered in a valley, or on the shores of a lake or river. The ancient Irish dress was still retained by many of the chiefs. It consisted usually of a saffron-colored shirt, over which a tunic with wide-flowing sleeves, and sometimes a fur cloak, was worn.

The Irish farmers and tenants, and the Anglo-Irish of the same rank, lived in a far humbler and ruder fashion than the chiefs. A few, perhaps, were sufficiently well-to-do to enjoy the comfort of clay cottages, with roofs made of rafters, wherein they dwelt, sheltered, at least, from the frequent rains. But a large majority of the farmers lived ill little hamlets of small cabins, built on islands, in order that they might be protected from the assaults of enemies. A hole in the roof sufficed for a chimney. The cabin had no other furniture than heaps of straw laid about in the corners on the unpaved ground. Their garments were of wool or flax, spun by their wives and daughters; and their ordinary food was oaten or barley cakes, cheese, milk, and butter. Only the wealthier farmers could afford an occasional chicken, rabbit, or piece of beef. At their meals, they sat upon the ground in their cabins, around the fire built in the center, which had been built to cook the food. They ate with their fingers; and, with the free use of usquebaugh, their meal was soon concluded.

As for the lowest class of the Irish,—those who had almost no property, and almost no occupation,—their state at the beginning of the seventeenth century was wretched beyond conception. They were half-starved. Often they were found wandering about absolutely naked, with no shelter except the trees of the forest. Sometimes they lived in miserable hovels, sleeping side by side with the sheep and pigs, and barely living on milk and curds and diseased meat. These poor creatures, expelled with the rest from the fat lands, died by thousands in the remote and barren places whither they fled for refuge. Sometimes they formed desperate marauding bands, and, maddened by hunger, fiercely attacked the thriving settlements of the English. The English destroyed them like vermin wherever they could. All the Irish high-roads were infested by men, women, and children in the last stages of want, who begged piteously of the passers-by, to be often answered with a shot, or a thrust from a pike.

It was towards the close of Elizabeth's reign that the famous university, Trinity College, was founded by that queen in Dublin (1593). It is said that this university owed its existence to the suggestion of the great and wise English philosopher, Lord Bacon. He proposed to Elizabeth that the Bible, liturgy, and catechism of the English church should be translated and spread in the Irish language; and this was one of the main purposes for which Trinity College was founded. It was, of course, as it has been ever since, a Protestant institution. No Catholics were, on any account, admitted, either to a share in its government, to its body of instructors, or to its classes of students. The spot where the ancient monastery of All Hallows stood was granted by Dublin for the building of the university. Elizabeth made generous grants of the lands which had been taken from the abbeys to support it; and, to these grants, James added still others of lands derived from the confiscations in Ulster. Many of the Protestants in Ireland subscribed generously to the funds of the university, and some English army officers presented it with a library.

When Trinity College had got fairly under way, the idea of printing the religious books in Irish was carried out. The casting of Irish type was begun; and the first book ever printed in the Irish tongue was the Protestant catechism, issued in the first year of the seventeenth century by the university press. The New Testament was translated into Irish, and was first published three years later (1603). The Old Testament did not appear until towards the close of the seventeenth century. Trinity College, under the fostering care of the crown, grew rapidly, and soon became wealthy and flourishing. It was intended as a bulwark of Protestantism in Ireland. Its influence was exerted to attempt the conversion of the people. But in this effort it did not achieve much success. The Irish clung to the Catholic faith through every persecution and persuasion, and a vast majority of them adhere to it to this day.

The older institutions of learning in Ireland, which had once spread the light of knowledge and the inspiration of religion through Europe, had been extinguished, or had decayed and died out, amid the long-continued civil convulsions. Only one Catholic college of any importance survived. This was the college of St. Nicholas at Galway. In the reign of James, this institution is said to have contained thirteen hundred Catholic and native scholars. Under James's harsh rule of Ireland, the college of St. Nicholas was abruptly closed, because its head, a courageous priest named John Lynch, would not desert his faith and accept that of the church of England. The Irish Catholics of the better class were now compelled to send their children to the continent to be educated; and large numbers, for a while, attended the famous schools of France and Germany. But even this was not long permitted. By a decree of the lord-deputy Chichester (1610), all Irish parents who had sent their children to foreign schools were ordered to call them back to Ireland within a year. Heavy penalties of fine and imprisonment were inflicted upon those who disobeyed this tyrannical command.

The reign of Elizabeth, noted for the great number of brilliant English writers who adorned it, was also marked by many good Irish historians and poets. Almost all of these, however, wrote their works in Latin. The most celebrated Irish writers of the reign were Richard Stanihurst, whose verses are still, to some degree, remembered; Lombard and Usher, the Catholic and Protestant archbishops; O'Sullivan, O'Meara, and White. The ancient order of bards, too, still survived. Their poems, relating the deeds of heroes, or breathing pious thoughts on the chief events of biblical history, won the praises of the great English poet, Edmund Spenser, who dwelt for some time in Ire-land. The bard Owen Ward followed Tyrone when he fled from Ireland, and wrote odes at Rome in praise of Tyrone's military prowess. But the bards were regarded with a jealous eye by the English masters of the country; for it was thought that their glowing verses kept alive the spirit of rebellion, and the desire for national freedom, among the native Irish. Edicts were therefore issued against them and many of them were forced to seek flight or to abandon their ancient calling.

Wentworth's Iron Pule

The accession of Charles the First as king of England (1625) aroused in the oppressed Irish the hope of gentler treatment from their masters. It was supposed that Charles regarded the Catholics with more favor than his father had done and would therefore establish a greater toleration of worship throughout his realm. But before very long both the English and the Irish learned, to their grief, that no faith could be reposed in Charles's wisdom or sincerity Like his father before him, and his two sons after him, Charles made fair promises, only to break them when it was not convenient to keep them.

James had left the royal treasury in an almost bankrupt condition, and Charles's first and sorest need was money. In order to replenish his purse, he was ready to adopt any means, gentle or severe; and he looked to Ireland to contribute large supplies to his treasury. His first step was to make solemn promises to give the Irish landlords good titles to their properties, and to relax the severe laws by which the Irish were oppressed.

Many of the Irish lords and gentlemen hastened to seize the opportunity which the king's necessities seemed to leave open to them. They sent a deputation to him, who agreed to furnish him with £120,000, if he would grant them certain concessions. The principal concessions, which were called "graces," were, that good titles should be given to the land-owners in Connaught, the only one of the four provinces which had not as yet been planted; that the occupation of a domain for sixty years should give its owner a perfect title, which could not be disturbed; that Catholics who took simply an oath of civil allegiance, and not the oath of supremacy, should be allowed to practice as lawyers in the courts; that taxes should not be levied with the aid of soldiers; that felons should not be allowed to testify so as to endanger the liberty of Irish subjects; and that an Irish Parliament should be held to confirm these demands. Charles readily assented to these graces, and the Irish lords implicitly relied on his royal word. They were speedily to find out that it was valueless.

They promptly paid one-third of the sum which they had promised to the king: the other two-thirds were to be paid in the ensuing two years. The lord-deputy of Ireland at this time was lord Falkland, a man of lenient and generous nature, who afterwards played a leading part in the English Civil war. But Falkland was compelled by the king to play a trick upon the Irish. In accordance with the graces, he called together an Irish Parliament to confirm the concessions promised by Charles. But now came the first of Charles's many acts of perfidy towards Ireland. In the summoning of Parliament, certain legal requirements were purposely neglected; so that when the Houses met, they were declared to be an illegal Parliament, whose acts were null and void. They therefore dissolved and no attempt was made by Falkland to call together a new and legal body. Soon after this, Falkland was recalled to England because he was too tolerant towards the Catholics.

A new and much sterner master was soon afterwards imposed upon Ireland. This was Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards more famous as the Earl of Strafford. Wentworth was a most fit instrument to carry out the wishes of a tyrant. Bold, eloquent, iron-willed, haughty, unscrupulous, despotic in character, defiant of obstacle, he went to Ireland to achieve certain ends and stopped at no cruelty or deception in order to accomplish them. He had belonged to the party which in England opposed the king, but the king won him over by a title and high office. Wentworth declared that his method was to be "thorough," in ruling both the church and the civil affairs. He took up his residence in Dublin castle, where he displayed much state, being attended by a large bodyguard, and bearing himself with arrogant pride. He first demanded of the Irish privy council a large grant of money for the king, promising that, if it were given, he would summon an Irish Parliament.

To the letter of this promise Wentworth adhered. The Irish Houses were summoned, but the lord deputy took good care that the election of members should result as he wished. He resolved that the House of Commons should be nearly balanced between the Protestants and Catholics, so that he might play off one against the other; while a small body of his special adherents could turn any vote one way or the other, as he desired. When Parliament met, Wentworth, after dictating who should preside as its speaker, announced that there must be two sessions held. The first session was to be "for the crown," and the other "for the country." In the first session, the subject of granting money to the king would be considered; in the second, the graces, which had been so long delayed, would be taken up. Parliament was really in Wentworth's power, and was forced to consent to this arrangement. In the first session, accordingly, subsidies to the amount of £270,000 were voted to the king.

Some months after, the second session was held. But now Wentworth showed the utter bad faith of both his royal master and himself. He coolly told Parliament that the graces must not be passed, and, by adroitly setting the Protestants and Catholics by the ears, procured a vote by which the graces were abandoned.

Wentworth had now wrung from Parliament a large sum of money, which Charles most of all wanted. He proceeded to carry out his scheme to be "thorough," with the same prompt and imperious vigor. The Protestant church in Ireland had fallen into a state of distress and poverty. Many of its lands and other resources had been taken away under one or another pretext. Its edifices had in many places been abandoned, and had fallen into decay. Good men could not be persuaded to serve as clergymen. The pay of the clergy had fallen to a very low figure. Wentworth was determined that all this should be changed, and that the church in Ireland should be built up anew. He caused the dilapidated churches to be repaired. He compelled those who had taken church-lands to restore them. He made grants to the clergy from the lands held by the crown. In one instance, he extorted from the Earl of Cork a domain worth £2,030 a year, which the earl had audaciously taken away from the college of Youghal and the diocese of Waterford. The lord-deputy's hand fell as sternly upon the recent English comers to Ireland, as upon the older settlers and the natives.

The next task which Wentworth undertook was to get his grasp upon the estates of Connaught. The landlords of that province had thus far escaped by paying liberal sums of money into the royal treasury. They now suffered the same gross injustice which had been inflicted on the landlords of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster. The titles to the lands of Connaught were called in question. Wentworth caused suits to be brought against them on behalf of the king. Cunning lawyers were employed to find flaws in these titles. Juries were packed and threatened, that they might slavishly decide the cases brought before them in the king's favor. In some places, however, the juries proved obstinate. When this happened, the jurymen were heavily fined, and, in some instances, thrown into prison. Thus the estates of the Earl of Clanricarde and of other large proprietors were declared to be forfeited. In the end the land-owners found Wentworth's methods too stern and unrelenting, and gave way in despair.

But Wentworth did not have time to carry out the scheme of planting Connaught with English colonies, as the other provinces had been planted. The greater part of the lands, therefore, were allowed to remain in the hands of the former owners. But these owners had to pay heavily for the privilege of keeping what was justly their own. Some of them were forced to surrender a part of their property to the church, in order to keep the rest. Others paid very large fines that they might remain undisturbed. Many even of the English Protestants who had recently settled in Ireland felt the stress of Wentworth's tyranny. Lord Wilmot, one of the new nobles, was deprived of a part of his estates. Lord Loftus, one of the lords justices, and the son of a Protestant bishop, was expelled from his office for opposing the haughty lord-deputy's will; and Sir Piers Crosby, an equally loyal Protestant, was for a similar reason driven from the privy council.

But Charles was now in great trouble at home in England. His arbitrary conduct was being opposed by a powerful and constantly growing party. His attempt to raise ship-money without consent of his Parliament was being vigorously resisted. All things foreshadowed the coming of a great civil conflict. The Scots had risen in open revolt. Charles saw that no time was to be lost in defending his crown. He summoned Wentworth to London, received his report, created him Earl of Strafford, and sent him back to Ireland with the higher powers of lord-lieutenant. Wentworth at once proceeded to collect the Irish army, which he had raised to the number of nine thousand, and had caused to be well drilled and well provided, for the purpose of invading Scotland. He summoned an Irish Parliament, which, obedient to his will, voted a large sum for the king's use. But while Wentworth was making these preparations, Charles made peace with the Scots; and his energetic measures became of no avail.

Wentworth returned to England, to be soon after impeached by the famous "Long Parliament," convicted, and beheaded for high treason. He left behind him in Ireland a hated memory. In some respects, he had been an able ruler. He maintained order in the island, and caused the laws to be impartially enforced. He did all he could to foster the linen trade, which, indeed, he established in Ireland, by importing weavers from Flanders, encouraging the growth of flax, and causing mills to be erected. But, on the other hand, he stamped out the woolen trade, which he found to be a growing industry which might in time rival that of England. He went to Ireland, as he declared, to make the king "the most absolute potentate in Christendom," and had sought to carry out his purpose with grim vigor and perseverance. The Irish therefore, as well as the resident English, were rejoiced at his fall, and were glad to hear that he had died on the scaffold; for no one had ever done more than he to fasten the odious rule of England upon Ireland.

The Ten Years' Rebellion

The long period of almost unbroken oppression and cruelty through which the Irish had passed since the accession of Elizabeth, had now prepared the way for another desperate revolt against English rule. The massacres and desolation of the unhappy island by Elizabeth's agents; the pitiless confiscations of estates, followed by the planting of the land by James; the brutal persecution of the religion of the vast majority, by both; and, more recently, the imperious tyranny of Wentworth,—had planted in the breasts of the Irish a deep-seated hatred of their English masters. Nor was it the native Irish alone who harbored this enduring hostility. It was shared also by the descendants of the first English settlers,—those whom we have called, to distinguish them from the natives, the Anglo-Irish. They, too, were Catholics, and had suffered for their faith in common with their Celtic neighbors. They, too, had been deprived of their fair domains, and had seen their relatives and friends put mercilessly to the sword. Only an opportunity was wanting to set the whole island in a blaze of rebellion.

This opportunity seemed to come with the political storm which had lately arisen in England. Charles and his Parliament had reached an open, bitter, and lasting quarrel The Puritans, the Independents, the Scottish Presbyterians, were resolved to resist Charles's usurpation of powers which did not belong to the crown; and Charles was equally determined not to yield. After his failure to seize five of the leading members of Parliament, Charles had left London; and now England was on the very verge of civil war (1641). Wentworth had meanwhile been succeeded in the government of Ireland by two Lords justices, Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlase. Both of these men leaned to the side of Parliament as against the king, and they were both wanting in firmness and vigor of conduct. The characters and the desires of these new rulers of Ireland enabled the revolt to grow more formidable than if they had been resolute, and loyal to Charles's crown.

In the course of the long and unhappy years of Ireland's oppression, large numbers of Irishmen had left their native country, and had enlisted in the armies of foreign nations. Among them were many sons of the old Irish chiefs, as well as members of the long-settled Anglo-Irish families. They had served, often with conspicuous valor, on many fields, under the banners of Spain and France. Thus a multitude of Irishmen of military experience were on the continent, prepared, at the ripe moment, to carry the aid of their skillful arms to their own land. Two of the most noted of these Irish soldiers were Hugh O'Neil, the son of the brave Tyrone, and Rory O'More. Hugh O'Neil was killed at Brussels, while on his way to Ireland. But it always seemed that, when Ireland needed a valiant leader and a strong arm, the ancient royal house of O'Neil was ready to supply them. Phelim O'Neil, a nephew of Tyrone, and a man of harsh and savage nature, took his cousin's place, as one of the Irish rebel chiefs. Rory O'More, however, was the leading spirit of the revolt, which had been carefully planned, and was now to burst forth with great violence, and to last, with scarcely a pause, for the long period of ten years.

Rory O'More was an Irish gentleman of old family. He was tall and handsome in person. His manners were free and attractive. He had displayed, as a soldier in the Spanish army, a courage and skill in warfare which won him much renown. He was a sincere and ardent patriot. So beloved and trusted was he by the Irish, that it was a common saying that the Irish rested their faith on "God, the Virgin, and Rory O'More." O'More soon drew to him a devoted band of Irish lords, gentlemen, and soldiers. To his standard came McGuires and O'Neils, O'Reillys and McMahons, Dillons and O'Byrnes. Second among the leaders of the revolt was the brutal Phelim O'Neil. The plan of the revolt was soon decided upon, and was twofold. It was agreed that an attempt should be made to seize Dublin castle by surprise, and that, at the same time, a general rising should be made throughout the province of Ulster. O'More took command of the forces which were to be directed against the castle, and Phelim O'Neil was entrusted with the task of kindling rebellion in northern Ireland.

The attempt upon the castle failed. A traitor in O'More's camp betrayed the plan to the lords justices. The latter had thus far made no effort to quench the rebellion, though they knew it was about to break out. It is probable, indeed, that the lords justices wished to see a revolt, so that the lands of the leading rebels might be confiscated, in which case they hoped to receive their share. But they were forced to defend Dublin castle. Sufficient troops were hastily gathered, several leading rebels were arrested in Dublin, and O'More and his adherents were forced to abandon their project. Phelim O'Neil, on the other hand, completely succeeded in his efforts in Ulster. The news soon arrived in Dublin that the whole province was in arms. In no long time, O'Neil was at the head of thirty thousand men. The greater part of this force was composed of those Irish who had been driven off the land, who had subsisted miserably in the bogs and woods, and who had thus become vagrants and outlaws. They were, indeed, a mob of desperate, ill-conditioned men, for the most part armed only with knives and pitchforks, but who burned to avenge themselves upon the English intruders in the land.

The war in Ulster at once assumed a horrible, barbarous character. On both sides the most hideous cruelties were committed. Which side began the awful series of massacres which took place, cannot now be definitely decided. Two massacres occurred at nearly the same time. The English fell upon the unprotected Irish at Island Magee and included in their slaughter the aged, the sick, women, and little children. Phelim O'Neil, who was promptly joined by many of the old Ulster chiefs, spread a not less ruthless havoc through Tyrone. He attacked the English settlements, plundered and burned their houses, stripped men, women, and children, and, in the dead of winter, drove them naked into the woods and bogs and along the cheerless roads; and in some places mercilessly mutilated and hanged them.

Many of the poor creatures, expelled from their homes, died of cold and starvation as they were attempting to reach a place of safety. Failing to capture Enniskillen and Lisburn, O'Neil became savage with rage, and wreaked his fury upon every English village and town in his way. The entire English and Scottish inhabitants of three parishes were murdered. The town of Newry and the cathedral of Armagh were burned to the ground. Sometimes women and children were burned alive in the houses in which they had sought refuge.

But there were, happily, brighter sides to the picture. In some places the Catholic priests, at the risk of their lives, sheltered and fed the English fugitives, and aided them in their flight. Some of the Irish chiefs, too, although leaders in the rebellion, treated the English with true Christian gentleness. O'Reilly, who had headed the revolt in Cavan, did not kill any of the English, even in battle. He took the settlers prisoners, but had them escorted in safety to Dublin by some of his own soldiers. In many cases, too, the native Irish, though poor, and suffering grievously from the wrongs inflicted on them by the English, afforded protection and nourishment to the settlers as they fled from their homes. It is supposed that the number of persons slaughtered by Phelim O'Neil, and the other chiefs who followed his brutal example, was between four and five thousand; and that eight thousand died from cold and hunger. Great numbers of the fugitives from Ulster flocked, naked, cold, and starving, into Dublin, bringing with them the horrible tale of the burnings, massacres, and desolation they had left behind. But soon the lords deputies drove these fugitives, though loyal, out of Dublin; and, thus reduced to extremity, many of them joined hands with the rebels.

The revolt in Ireland soon assumed a twofold character. It had been begun by native Irish chiefs and their adherents. But now a revolt, quite separate from that of the native Irish, sprang up among the Anglo-Irish. The two did not unite their forces, or pursue a common plan of campaign. Each had its own separate aims, projects, and movements. The native Irish wished to achieve the entire and absolute independence of their country. The larger number of the Anglo-Irish did not desire separation from England. They still professed to be loyal to the crown. They only made war, they declared, upon the king's representatives and agents. They simply demanded freedom of worship, and security in their estates. They fought for their altars and their homes. On the other hand, the English and Scots who comprised the officials, officers, and soldiers in Ireland, were divided into two parties, between whom the breach became wider and wider every day. There was the party which supported the king in his struggle with Parliament; and there was the party which sustained Parliament against the king. Of the latter party were the lords justices.

The Earl of Ormond, a friend of the king, was put in command of the forces in Ireland. One of the curious entanglements of the rebellion was that Charles, in his desperation, wished to conciliate the rebels, in order that he might withdraw his troops for use against the Puritans in England. On the other hand, the lords justices, who wished for an excuse to confiscate the land, were listless in their attempts to put down the rebellion. The rising gradually spread from Ulster to Munster, and to Connaught, and finally into the English Pale itself. Seven lords of the Pale, with one thousand men of good station, held a conference with Rory O'More and his chiefs on Crofty Hill; and, soon after, the entire Pale was honeycombed with revolt.

At the close of the year (1641), the whole country, excepting Dublin and a few of the seaport and garrisoned towns, was covered by the rebellion. But Phelim O'Neil had not only practiced the most barbarous atrocities, for which he had been severely censured by the Catholic synod of Armagh, but had also shown much lack of capacity in war. The Irish chiefs accordingly appealed earnestly to Owen Roe O'Neil, Phelim's cousin, who was then in Flanders, to come over and take command of the insurgent army. Owen O'Neil, or, as he was familiarly called, "Red Owen," was a famous soldier, and a chivalrous, large-hearted, honest man. Soon after his arrival in Ireland, a wonderful change took place in the Irish forces. The wild levies of Phelim were transformed into sturdy, well-disciplined battalions. Re-enforcements kept coming from the continent; and, at about the same time, another soldier of mark, Colonel Preston, accompanied by five hundred military officers and a large quantity of stores, set out from the Pale to join the Anglo-Irish revolt at Wexford. Up to this time, the native Irish on the one hand, and the Anglo, Irish on the other, had fought the English separately. The time had now come for them to join in common action.

A great convention, composed of members from every part of Ireland, was summoned by the Ulster Catholics, and met at Kilkenny (October, (1642). It contained the Catholic lords, a large number of Catholic bishops and priests, and over two hundred lay delegates. This convention invested the executive power in a committee, consisting of six members from each of the four provinces. It divided the army into four divisions. To Red Hugh was given the command in Ulster. Gerald Barry received that of Munster, Colonel Preston that of Leinster, and Sir John Burke that of Connaught. The convention also created a high court, and made provision for its sessions, and appointed lesser judges and magistrates for the several counties. A great seal was devised, and the convention even took measures to coin Irish money. Thus an Irish government seemed to be established. Yet the convention, while thus taking energetic measures to organize civil war, declared that the war was not to be waged against the king, but against the Puritans, and in defense of the Roman-Catholic faith.

Cromwell's Iron Hand

In spite of the strong alliance between the two sections of the Irish, there was but little severe fighting done anywhere in Ireland. King Charles, sorely pressed by his Puritan enemies in England, and learning that his army in Ireland was in a miserable state, was anxious to come to terms with the "confederates," as the combined Irish were called. At last his agents succeeded in persuading. them to make a truce of a year (1643). The lords deputies, who were favorable to Parliament, and their adherents, were removed from office; and Ormond, who was created a marquis, was appointed lord-lieutenant. A few months after, the truce was extended to two years longer. Each party continued to occupy the places in which the truce found it. The confederates agreed to give Charles 230,000, and to supply him with some troops for service in Scotland.

Soon after the trace had been concluded, however, serious dissensions broke out between the confederates themselves. One party, headed by Red Owen, still wished to break from England altogether, and to strike for Irish independence. The other party, composed mostly of the Anglo-Irish, desired to come to terms with the king, after securing freedom of worship and the peaceful possession of their lands. An envoy of the pope, Rinucini, came to Ireland, and gave his influence to the party which wished to make Ireland entirely free.

At the conclusion of the truce (1646), the conflict broke out anew. Red Owen inflicted a severe defeat upon Munroe, the Scottish general, at Benburb; and later, being joined by Preston, he marched on Dublin. The defenses of the city were weak; and news had reached Ormond, who was in command, that Charles had been surrendered by the Scots to Parliament. Many of the Puritan vessels were now cruising in St. George's Channel. Ormond declared that the royal cause was wholly lost. Meanwhile the two Irish generals, Red Owen and Preston, quarreled bitterly; and, fearing defeat, they raised the siege of Dublin. Ormond knew that to hold out any longer for the king would be futile. He therefore gave Dublin up to the friends of Parliament, and took refuge in France. The parliamentary forces promptly took the field to suppress the rebellion. Preston was defeated with a heavy loss at Dungan Hill, and soon after the Irish forces were again badly beaten at Mallow. The cause of the rebellion was fast losing ground.

The moderate, or Anglo-Irish, party once more made terms with the royalists, and turned against O'Neil and the friends of Irish independence. The royal cause was utterly defeated in England. It was resolved to make a last desperate stand for the king on Irish soil. Ormond returned from France; and Prince Rupert, the king's nephew, arrived at the port of Kinsale with sixteen men-of-war. A treaty of peace was concluded between the royalists and the Anglo-Irish under Preston (1649). Soon after the news that Charles had been beheaded reached Ireland. Ormond at once proclaimed the young king as Charles the Second. Three parties now contended for the upper hand in Ireland,—the champions of Irish freedom under O'Neil, the parliamentary or Puritan party, and the royalists allied with the Anglo-Irish. The latter party was also joined by the Ulster Scots, who were Presbyterians; for the Presbyterians in Scotland and England had now quarreled with the Puritans. At first the fortunes of war leaned to the side of the royalists and their confederates, Inchiquin took Drogheda, and Ormond laid siege to Dublin. It looked very much as if the Puritans would soon lose altogether their hold on Ireland.

At this serious moment, the English Parliament resolved that a most vigorous effort should be made, without delay, to crush out the Irish revolt. With this end in view, the most famous and most victorious general of the parliamentary armies, Oliver Cromwell, was chosen lord-lieutenant and general-in-chief of the English troops in Ireland. Cromwell had at his disposal a remarkable army. He had organized the parliamentary troops into one of the most effective military forces which had ever fought in Europe. With his sturdy Ironsides," as they were called, he had marched from triumph t > triumph, and had finally crushed the royal power at the battle of Naseby. It was the best portion of this formidable army which he now led to Ireland. The Ironsides were deeply religious, as well as heroic in battle; and Cromwell proposed not only to conquer, but to convert, the Irish. He carried the Bible in one hand, the sword in the other. With him went his stern son-in-law Ireton, his indolent son Henry, and the fanatical Puritan Ludlow.

Cromwell entered Dublin at the head of twelve thousand Ironsides. They were well equipped and well provisioned, and were supplied with Bibles, as well as with the deadly weapons of war. The royalists still held the strong hold of Drogheda, and Cromwell's first blow was struck at that place. Drogheda soon fell beneath the irresistible attack of the Ironsides. Cromwell had promised the garrison their lives; but no sooner did he find himself in possession of the town, than he put to the sword, not the garrison alone, but the inhabitants, even to the women and children. hive days were spent in this cruel and hideous massacre. It was by such barbarous methods that Cromwell resolved to stamp out rebellion in Ireland. The frightful carnage of Drogheda was soon succeeded by similar scenes at Wexford. The castle of Wexford was betrayed into Cromwell's hands; the guns of the fortifications were turned upon the devoted town; the garrison was mercilessly slaughtered in the streets; some of the townspeople, who tried to escape in boats, were drowned; and Wexford was given up to merciless pillage and outrage. It is said that two thousand of the garrison fell victims to the fury of the Ironsides.

The gallant Red Owen was now dead. The two Irish parties, which had joined to resist the English, had been rent asunder. The almost unparalleled atrocities of Cromwell created a wild panic of dread throughout Ireland. As the grim leader of the Iron-sides advanced through the country, the strongholds of the patriots and royalists fell easily into his hands. Cromwell, with all his cruelty, was strictly honest in his dealings. He paid for the supplies which the country folk brought to him, and thus his army was well fed and well clothed wherever it marched. Within a year he had dealt a death-blow at the resistance of the Irish. He returned to England to fight the Scots, leaving his son Henry as lord-lieutenant, and Ireton as commanding-general. The last stand made by the baffled and defeated Irish was in the western part of the island. There they still held out obstinately. Ireton, like Cromwell, was cruel and pitiless. Murder and desolation attended his every triumph. At last, with the fall of Galway (1652), the ten-years' revolt came to an end, and all Ireland lay once more bound hand and foot at England's feet.

Cromwell resolved to make the most of his conquest of the subject island. He proposed to reap the full fruits of his victory. He was determined that the Irish should never have a chance to rise again. At first, he even considered a plan for sweeping the entire Irish race from the face of the earth, and to re-people the island entirely with English and Scots. But this seemed, even to his grim soul, too barbarous a remedy.

The measures which he did take were stern and severe. Phelim O'Neil, Lord Mayo, and other leaders of the revolt were executed. At the same time a vast scheme of removing nearly the whole body of the Irish from the fruitful provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, into the inclement and far less fertile province of Connaught, was vigorously carried out. Not only the common people were thus transferred, but the lords, land-owners, and men of good family; not only the native Irish, but the Anglo-Irish also. Pieces of land in Connaught were given to the exiles. A date was fixed, before which every family must remove from its home, and repair to the place allotted to it in Connaught. It was decreed that the men should precede their families to their new and dismal homes; and, when they had built huts for them, the old men, women, children, cattle, and household goods were to follow.

Those of the Irish who failed to obey these harsh decrees were condemned to be executed. Not only this. They were forbidden to go into the city of Galway, or to approach within four miles of the sea on one side, or within two miles of the river Shannon on the other, on pain of death. The wretched, desolate regions of Connaught were soon swarming with the Irish, suffering and sometimes dying of cold and hunger. They found it no easy task even to get possession of the lands which had been allotted to them. It was only, often, by paying money to Cromwell's soldiers, that they were allowed to occupy their miserable patches. Then, in the spring (1654), one of the saddest spectacles ever seen on earth was witnessed in Ireland. Long trains of old men, invalids, women, children, ill-clad and gaunt with hunger, trudged wearily westward along the muddy roads, amid storms of rain and hail. Whole communities of the Irish thus abandoned their ancient homes, and reached their new abodes to live in dreadful want upon almost barren lands, or to die, as very many did, of unendurable hardships. The three provinces of Ulster, Munster, and Leinster were all but stripped of their Irish and Anglo-Irish population; and the Irish race was pent up, as in a huge prison, between the Shannon and the ocean.

THE IRISH EXPELLED TO CONNAUGHT.

Meanwhile, the soldiers who had taken part, either as patriots or under the royalist banners, were rigorously dealt with. The higher officers were sent into exile and deprived of two-thirds of their property. The lesser officers and soldiers were forced to give up what lands they had and to accept far less fertile lands in Connaught. Many of the soldiers resorted to the bogs and woods, where they became outlaws and robbers. These were called "Tories," which meant in Irish, "freebooters;" and this is the origin of the English word "Tory." But by far the greater number of the Irish soldiers went to the continent, where they enlisted in the French or Spanish army. It is said that more than forty thousand took this course. Meanwhile, an atrocious act was committed by Cromwell's agents. Seven thousand Irish women and children were seized, put on board ships, and sent to the West Indies. The boys were sold as slaves to the west-Indian planters, and the women and girls were destined to even a baser and more cruel end. Thus the way was prepared for a new plantation of Ireland by English colonists.

Cromwell's Settlement of Ireland

Cromwell and his agents did their cruel work in Ireland thoroughly. Not only were the country districts of the three fertile provinces cleared of their inhabitants, but the fortified and sea-coast towns were treated in the same way. The once prosperous, thriving ports ceased to be busy with trade, or crowded with shipping. The Irish merchants of Cork, Waterford, Galway, and other sea-coast towns, abandoned them and transferred their business to foreign countries. The emporiums of Kilkenny and Tipperary were deserted and the market-towns of the interior were silent and desolate. All was now ready to replant the provinces with new settlers, and so, if possible, to make an English country of Ireland. Surveyors were sent through the provinces to make measurements of the deserted domains. Agents visited them to deckle upon their value, put a price on them, and divide them off into new allotments. All the towns, certain of the church domains, and the four counties of Dublin, Cork, Carlow, and Kildare, were set off, to be held for the benefit of the government. The rest was disposed of to new English settlers; some of whom were now called, not as formerly, undertakers, but, from their having lent or "adventured" money to the king, "adventurers."

There were two classes of men to whom Cromwell felt himself indebted. He had received large advances of money, and the adventurers who had thus become his creditors demanded liberal grants of Irish land in payment. But still more was Cromwell indebted to his soldiers, who had not only completed for him the conquest of Ireland, but had not received their pay. It was with the grim Ironsides, mainly, that he resolved to plant the island. To the adventurers, who had advanced some £360,000, were given up the halves of ten counties in Ulster, Leinster, and Munster; while the arrears of the soldiers' pay, amounting to £1,500,000, were satisfied by the other halves of these counties, and eight other counties in addition. The land was divided up into parcels; and the regiments, one after another, drew lots for the choice of location. Then the men of the regiments again drew lots, to see which should have the privilege of selecting his own plot in the district devoted to his regiment. After the lands had thus been divided off, each regiment was marched upon its domains and disbanded; and the men took possession, one by one, of their pieces of land.

It took several years to complete this new settlement of Ireland. Meanwhile many of the soldiers to whom lots were given were glad to sell them out for small sums, either to their officers, who desired larger estates, or to the land-brokers who soon swarmed through the country. When Cromwell's plan had been fully carried out, the land of Ireland was found to be divided up as follows. In all, there were about ten millions of Irish acres in the island. Of these, the native Irish occupied about three millions, for the most part in the unfruitful province of Connaught. The Protestant church held about three hundred thousand acres. The planters, established by Elizabeth and James, had some two millions of acres; and over five millions of acres—at least one-half the island—had been seized by Cromwell, and handed over to his adherents. But the new settlers were not to be allowed to till their just-acquired possessions in any greater peace than the old settlers.

Many of the ousted Irish, some of whom were of good family and had been even rich and titled, refused to leave their native neighborhood, and began to lead a wild life in the woods and bogs. These Tories did not let the intruders rest. They made raids upon the fields, and destroyed the ripening grain and potatoes. They seized and drove away the cattle, sheep, and pigs. In many places, the settlers were tormented out of their wits by these hardy outlaws.

Nor were the Irish outlaws the only enemies of the settlers. Large numbers of Catholic priests still infested the country, though they were all under sentence of banishment. They were resolved at all hazards to keep alive their religion among the persecuted race; and, always in danger of death itself, they led their pious services in whatever out-of-the-way place they could secretly gather their poverty-stricken flocks together. They were mercilessly hunted down; and, when they were arrested, they were forthwith sent beyond seas, or put to death without so much as a trial. Another plague which worried the settlers was the wolves, which continually prowled about the settlements, devoured the sheep, and endangered the lives of the farmers. "We have now three burdensome beasts to destroy," said one who lived at that time; the first is a wolf, the second a priest, and the third a Tory." A price was set upon the head of each of these "burdensome beasts." The head of a priest or a wolf was worth five pounds, while that of a Tory was worth twenty pounds.

But after all these pains had been taken to subdue and suppress the Irish race, Cromwell's vast and harsh project was far from being completely successful. The national spirit of the Irish still resisted extermination. In no long time, the same process of the absorption of the intruding race by the native race which had always taken place before, again occurred. The settled English soldiers, though forbidden, under heavy penalties, to mingle and connect themselves with the native Irish, began to have dealings with them, to accept Irishmen as tenants, servants, and laborers, and to marry Irish girls. It is said that, within forty years after Cromwell's plantation of the three provinces, many children of the settlers could not speak a word of English; that all of their habits, traits, and sympathies were entirely Irish. Here and there the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish got back, by marriage or purchase, estates in the districts from which their fathers had been expelled. Thus it was that even the stern Ironsides became more and more Irish as years passed.

The restoration of the English monarchy in the person of Charles the Second (1660) aroused the hopes of two of the oppressed classes in Ireland. The royalists, who had stood stoutly by Charles the First, and who had suffered persecution, the seizure of their lands, and exile at the hands of Cromwell and his Puritan agents, hoped that the new king would reward them for their loyalty. They expected to get back their estates, and to be restored to their old power in Ireland. The Roman Catholic Irish, moreover, had learned that Charles the Second was favorably inclined to the members of their faith. They, too, looked forward to being protected in the exercise of their religion, and to having their lands given back to them. So confident, indeed, were the persecuted Irish of the royal favor, that as soon as they heard that the new king was seated on his throne, some of them rashly attempted to recover their lands by force. At the same time the Catholics besought Charles to return their estates to them, agreeing to pay the Cromwellian settlers a certain proportion of the rents for two years. But both the royalists and the Catholics were doomed to bitter disappointment.

Charles the Second, like all the Stuart kings of England, was faithless, and could not be trusted. He disregarded whatever obligations were distasteful to him, or were contrary to what he thought his own interests. He now resolved to conciliate, as far as he could, his father's old enemies, and to leave in the lurch his father's old friends. He made a pretense, indeed, of doing justice to the Irish who had been harshly and illegally deprived of their property. He caused a court to be established in Dublin (1663), to which all who claimed to have been unlawfully dispossessed of their lands might resort, and present their claims. It was declared that those who were innocent of having rebelled against English rule should have their estates restored to them. The Protestants took alarm at this, and a plot was soon formed to seize Dublin castle. But it soon turned out that the Protestants had little cause for alarm. All sorts of restrictions were put upon the new court; and every kind of legal device and trickery was used to reduce the successful claimants to as small a number as possible.

The Irish Parliament had met, two years before, for the first time tor twenty years. The House of Commons had contained a large majority of the Cromwellians, and a measure which confirmed the new settlers in their lands had been passed. Upon this act the Cromwellians rested their case. There existed, therefore, a bitter conflict between the law of Parliament, and the decisions of the court in favor of innocent claimants. So grave did the situation become, that the king at last insisted on a compromise. The Cromwellian settlers gave up one-third of the lands which they had obtained by the confiscations, and thus much was restored to the royalists; and the court which had been set up to satisfy the claims was abolished. But even now, the Irish Roman Catholics only held one-half the amount of land which they had held at the outbreak of the ten years' rebellion. They still owned but one-third of the island. The foreigner and the Protestant still held the other two-thirds. Of the seven millions of good, or "fat," acres in Ireland, the Protestants possessed five millions.

One of Charles the Second's first acts in regard to Ireland, was to restore to its old power the English church. The Episcopal bishops and clergy were restored to the sees and parishes, and the Puritan and Presbyterian ministers were summarily ejected. In many cases, they were fined, imprisoned, and banished for refusing to obey the new "act of uniformity." At the same time, Charles was really partial to the Catholics, and ordered his agents in Ireland to treat them gently. Under such protection, the priests and monks, who had been driven from their parishes, and in many cases from the island, by the Cromwellians, began to appear again, to hold their religious services, and to establish Catholic schools. The Catholics, indeed, now enjoyed a larger degree of freedom of worship than they had had for fifty years. The Presbyterians and Puritans in Ireland were now the only sects which felt the repressive hand of power.

The Orange and the Green

Just as the Irish Catholics were beginning to enjoy some degree of toleration, an event took place in England, which for a while seemed likely to overwhelm the Catholics of both countries with disaster. This was the infamous plot of Titus Oates, who pretended to have discovered a Catholic conspiracy to kill the king, the Duke of York, and others, and to seize on the government (1678). Oates also declared that this conspiracy extended to Ireland, that all the Protestants in Ireland were to be massacred, and that a French fleet was about to arrive in Irish ports. The whole story was afterwards proved to be, an atrocious lie, invented by Oates. But, for a time, it aroused an intense fear and anger among the English Protestants; and, both in England and in Ireland, the Catholics were bitterly persecuted. The Irish Catholics were disarmed; all the Catholic bishops and priests were ordered to quit the island; heavy penalties were threatened against soldiers who attended Catholic services; and the Catholics in the large towns were compelled to go outside the walls.

But after a while the panic of the Protestants subsided. It was found that Oates's plot was a fable, and that many innocent Catholics had suffered death and other miseries from the hasty anger of the people. Then the Irish Catholics returned to a tolerable state of religious freedom; and once more the priests flocked back, to say mass, and dwell among their flocks. The death of Charles the Second (1685) was followed by the accession to the English throne of a Roman Catholic, in the person of James the Second. James was the first avowed Catholic who had sat on the throne since queen Mary. His accession was therefore hailed with joy by the Irish Catholics, although time soon proved that it was a great misfortune to them. James speedily showed that he meant to establish Catholic ascendancy, both in England and Ireland. Although he appointed a Protestant, Lord Clarendon, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he selected a violent Catholic, Richard Talbot (who is better known in history by his title of Earl of Tyrconnel), to command the Irish army.

James began to carry out his plans by replacing Protestant by Catholic officers in the army. Then, contrary to law, he appointed Catholic judges, privy councilors, and magistrates; and the charters of the Irish cities and towns were so altered as to admit Catholics to the offices from which they had hitherto been excluded. The Irish Catholics took courage from these acts. They asked the king to abolish the "act of Settlement," under which the Cromwellian settlers had been confirmed in their estates; and the Irish Tories, or outlaws, became emboldened, and made savage raids upon the English colonists, murdering, burning, and pillaging wherever they appeared. The Irish tenants refused to pay their rents; and throughout the country the Protestants, fearing a terrible retribution for the wrongs to which the Irish had been long subjected, fled for safety within the walled towns. Clarendon, the Protestant lord-lieutenant, was recalled; and the power in Ireland was given to the fanatical Catholic, Tyrconnel. The Protestants saw that worse than had happened was yet to come to them. Tyrconnel was known to be inveterately hostile to them, and to be sternly bent on restoring the upper hand to the Catholics. They therefore fled in thousands from Ireland, and it seemed certain that the Catholics were soon to become all-powerful there.

But events in England now put an entirely different face upon the affairs of both islands. James had become thoroughly detested by the enormous majority of his English subjects. His tyrannical and illegal acts had at length worn out the loyalty, even of the Tory party, who had always before stood by him. A plot was formed to dethrone him, and to place William, prince of Orange, and his wife Mary, daughter of James, on the throne. The revolution was quickly and completely accomplished. William landed in England, marched to London without fighting a battle, and took possession of the throne (1688). James fled from the palace of his fathers, seeking refuge in France. William was the champion of Protestantism in Europe, and his accession carried dismay to the Catholics throughout England and Ireland. But Tyrconnel was made of stern stuff, and, even after the flight of James, was not ready to yield Ireland up to the new king without a struggle. He promptly raised a voluntary force of nearly one hundred thousand Irish Catholics, and sent word to James that he proposed to hold out in his favor. Meanwhile many of the Protestants in the north of Ireland, seeing that they were not strong enough to meet Tyrconnel in the open field, hastened to seek safety within the walled strongholds of Londonderry and Enniskillen. There they awaited their fate with grim and determined courage.

The exiled James resolved to fight to recover his crown, on Irish soil. There was still a strong party in England and Scotland, which remained loyal to him. He thought that if he could make a successful stand in Ireland, his friends across the channel might yet rally, and drive the prince of Orange from the throne. James accordingly set sail for Ireland. With him went a fleet of twenty three vessels, in which was stored a large quantity of arms and ammunition, and which carried one hundred French officers and twelve hundred Irish exiles, and £112,000 in money. He was aided and encouraged in his expedition by Louis the Fourteenth, the French king, who, as the Catholic leader in Europe, was the mortal enemy of William of Orange. James, attended by his two illegitimate sons, the Duke of Berwick and the prior Fitz James, landed in Kinsale harbor (March 12, 1689), and advanced, greeted along his route by the fervid enthusiasm of the Irish, to Cork and thence to Dublin. As soon as he reached the capital, he summoned an Irish Parliament, which met two months later.

Both the Houses of this Parliament contained an overwhelming majority of Catholics, and two-thirds of the Commons were Anglo-Irish. Such a Parliament was likely to support James, and also to take care that the rights of Ireland should be secured in the event of James's return to the English throne. The law known as Poyning's Act, which required that all Irish measures must first be submitted to and approved by the English council, was promptly repealed. Religious liberty was decreed. Safeguards for Irish trade were adopted. Above all, the Act of Settlement, securing the Cromwellians in their lands, was abolished; and it was declared that all Catholics who had been land-owners before 1641 should recover their estates. Having thus satisfied the demands made by the Irish, Parliament proceeded to make a grant of £40,000 a month to the king, with which to carry on his war. The last act of this Parliament was to attaint over two thousand men of high treason. These were, mostly, men who had either left Ireland, or had gone over to William of Orange. Meanwhile the struggle between the Irish adherents of James, and those of the Prince of Orange, was going vigorously on. The place to which all eyes were turned was Londonderry, where the Protestants were holding out obstinately against their assailants. James himself repaired thither with some troops, and the governor of Londonderry decided to yield up the town. But the people would not permit this. They deposed the governor by force, and chose a clergyman named Walker in his place.

Still, the siege reduced the town to desperate straits; and it would have surrendered, had not aid from England opportunely arrived by sea. The siege of Londonderry was thus raised, and the Irish retreated (July, 1659). The campaign lingered listlessly through the autumn and winter. General Schomberg, a distinguished officer devoted to William, went to Ireland with four thousand men. But in both camps there was a great deal of misery. The Irish troops were ill-equipped, ill-fed, and unaccustomed to war; and the French soldiers did not get on well with them. On the other hand, the English under Schomberg suffered sorely from illness contracted in the damp regions where they were encamped, and died by hundreds.

In the early summer (1690), William of Orange, who had become impatient at the lack of the success of his troops in Ireland, landed at Carrickfergus with a disciplined army of forty thousand men. Meanwhile a French force of five thousand men, commanded by the famous Count de Lauzun, arrived to lend aid to James. It was evident that the fate of one English king or the other must soon be decided once for all on Irish soil.

The Treaty of Limerick

William of Orange, with his large and well-appointed army, marched promptly southward to confront his rival. The hostile forces met on the banks of the river Boyne. William's force, besides being far better trained and equipped, was also somewhat larger than that of James. Thirty-six thousand soldiers, comprising men of several nations, fought under William for what was regarded as the Protestant cause; while thirty thousand Irish and French supported the exiled Stuart. William, moreover, had forty cannon, while James had only twelve. On the other hand, James held the southern bank of the Boyne, and William was forced to lead his men across the river in the face of the Irish fire. The struggle was desperate and prolonged. The Irish fought with lion-like valor against superior odds. William himself most gallantly advanced into the river at the head of his men, while James witnessed the struggle from a safe distance. Although wounded, the new English king remained, throughout the battle, in the front of his forces. At last the Irish gave way, retreating by steady ranks. But the cowardly James, as soon as he saw that the battle had gone against him, hastily deserted his faithful soldiers, galloped off to Dublin, and was the first of the fugitives to enter its walls. The next morning he took ship for France (1690).

THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE.

The battle of the Boyne decided the fate of Ireland. It was the turning-point in the bitter struggle between the Irish and their foreign masters; between the Irish Catholics and Protestants; and between William of Orange and James the Second for the possession of the English throne. But, while it made the contest a hopeless one for the Irish, it did not bring the war to an immediate end. Under the valiant and fervent Sarsfield, the Irish continued a desperate, though hopeless, resistance. After the battle of the Boyne, Drogheda and Dublin fell into William's hands; but the Irish retired to the strongholds of Connaught and Munster, resolved to make an obstinate stand. Sarsfield, though now deserted by a large portion of his French allies, took up his position, with ten thousand Irish, at Limerick. William of Orange arrived before the town, and laid siege to it. Sarsfield, by a daring maneuver, intercepted and destroyed William's siege train. Then the English made a furious assault upon the town, and even entered at a breach they had made in its walls. But they were met with such sturdy bravery by its Irish defenders, that William, after a hot struggle of four days, was compelled to fall back defeated, and to give up taking Limerick until the following year.

The next stand of the Irish was made at Aughrim in the middle of the following summer (July, 1691). They were under the command of a French general, St. Ruth; and seemed on the point of winning a complete victory when St. Ruth was killed. This fatality deprived the Irish of their confidence, and they were driven from the field. Limerick and Galway now alone held out. Galway yielded to the English after the defeat at Aughrim, and the Irish garrison marched away to join their comrades at Limerick. Limerick was speedily again invested by the English troops. The only hope remaining to the Irish was that a French fleet with re-enforcements, which had been promised, would arrive in time to raise the siege. While they were anxiously awaiting this hoped-for succor, the besiegers captured the island upon which a part of Limerick stands. The brave Sarsfield was so discouraged by this event, that he resolved to come to terms with the enemy. Ginkel, the English general, agreed to a truce of three days. This period was occupied by negotiations for concluding a peace. Both sides were anxious that the war should come to a close. The Irish were nearly at the end of their resources, and had given up hope of the French fleet. King William was eager to withdraw his troops from Ireland, and to use them in his contest with France. The result of the negotiations was the treaty of Limerick.

By this famous treaty, concessions were made on both sides. King William agreed that the Catholics should have freedom of worship, and that an Irish Parliament should be called together to secure them in that freedom. He granted pardon to those who had defended the cause of James, on condition that they should take an oath of allegiance to William and Mary. Catholics were relieved from taking the oath of supremacy; that is, the oath acknowledging William and Mary as the supreme heads of the church. They were also allowed to keep the estates which they now held, to pursue such avocations as they pleased, and to carry arms. On the other hand, the Cromwellian colonists were confirmed in the possession of the estates they held at the time of the treaty. As for the Irish army, it was agreed that the soldiers should be permitted to choose between enlisting in William's service, and going abroad and entering the armies of foreign powers.

Scarcely was the ink dry on this treaty, when the French fleet, which the Irish had so anxiously awaited, showed its sails in the river Shannon. On board the fleet were three thousand soldiers and ten thousand muskets, with stores and ammunition. But Sarsfield was the soul of honor. He had signed the treaty, and it was too late to honorably retreat. He might now have turned round and, with the newly arrived Frenchmen, have defied Ginkel and the English. But he resisted the temptation, and stood manfully by his word. And now the Irish soldiers were called upon to make their choice between the English army and exile. They were drawn up outside Limerick; in all, twenty-three thousand. A certain point was designated, and the battalions were marched towards it. Those who preferred William's service turned off as they reached the point; those who wished to go abroad marched straight on. Almost three thousand turned aside to join the English army; the other twenty thousand, by marching forward, declared for exile.

In no long time these self-banished Irish soldiers were put on board ships and carried to France. The greater part of them enlisted in the French army, and were followed into the French ranks, from time to time, by others of their compatriots. In many a hard-fought battle afterwards, often against the English, the Irish legions fought under the French banners with heroic bravery. A great deal of Ireland's best blood had thus left the island. The Irish who remained were soon destined to be rudely awakened from their dream of peace and liberty.

The treaty of Limerick was treated by the English as if it did not exist. Many of its articles were perfidiously violated. The agreement to allow the Catholics freedom of worship was broken, by the imposition on members of Parliament of an oath, which compelled them to deny some of the most vital articles of their creed. So it was that Catholics were excluded from the Irish Parliament. Then an attack was once more made upon the lands still held by the Catholic Irish. More than a million Irish acres were confiscated, and were made over to the crown. A fourth part of this land, indeed, was restored by William to the Irish owners. A large portion of the rest he distributed to his friends and favorites.

But the Irish owners were not to be allowed to hold in peace the small amounts of land which William returned to them. The English Parliament passed a law by which the restored estates were again confiscated, and were sold at auction the money paid for them being added to the English treasury. Thus the Catholic owners, at the beginning of the century, though they still comprised nearly five-sixths of the population of Ireland, held less than one-seventh of the land. At this period, too, the condition of Ireland was, in some respects, as wretched and hopeless as it had ever been. In many parts of the country the planting of the land had been given up, and the people had resorted to the raising of cows, sheep, and pigs. Thus the population had become less industrious and thrifty. The importation of cattle from Ireland into England had then been forbidden, and this had reduced a large portion of the people to dire poverty. On the other hand, the linen and woolen industries had been encouraged in Ireland, and had given prosperity to some of the larger towns.

The wars had spread desolation far and wide through the country. Base coin had been forced by king James upon the Irish. The Tory outlaws continued their depredations upon the English settlements. The cattle of the English were mutilated, their barns were burned, and their houses were plundered. Still, the Protestants in Ireland were now supported by the strong arm of the crown.

The Irish Parliament was comprised solely of Protestants, and was in all things submissive to English power. All the officials in Ireland were Protestants. The Protestants, moreover, held six-sevenths of the Irish soil. But even these safeguards of Protestant ascendancy did not satisfy the English masters of Ireland. It once more appeared to be the resolute purpose of the English to suppress altogether the Catholic religion, and to deprive the Catholic Irish entirely of the land. This purpose was revealed in the infamous "Penal Laws," which were now sternly imposed upon the unhappy race.

The Penal Laws

During the reigns of William the Third and Anne, a number of very cruel laws were passed, which were gross violations of the treaty of Limerick and which bore with terrible severity upon the Irish, and especially upon the Irish Catholics. These are famous, or rather infamous, in history as the "Penal Laws." Their purpose was to reduce the Catholics of Ireland to perpetual helplessness and ignorance. It was intended by these means to put and hold the Irish under complete subjection. The penal laws must be briefly described, for many of the miseries which Ireland has suffered since may be traced back to them. They were passed, partly by the English Parliament, and partly by the Irish Parliament, the latter body being composed entirely of Protestants, and being completely devoted to the interests of the English crown.

First, the oaths of allegiance to England, and of "abjuration," were required, not only of all the Irish bishops, but of every member of Parliament, every man who held a civil or military post, every officer or instructor of the university of Dublin, every schoolmaster, every professor, and every lawyer. The oath of abjuration practically rejected the creed of the Catholic church, and hence could not be taken by any true Catholic. All Catholics, therefore, were excluded from the avocations which have been named.

Heavy penalties followed the breaking of these laws. A Catholic who dared to keep a school, even in a private house, was condemned to a heavy fine, or to be imprisoned for three months. No Catholic could send his child abroad to be educated. If he did, he was condemned to forfeit all his worldly goods. Any man, by informing the authorities of the breaking of this law, was entitled to receive half the property taken from the man who broke it. The accused man was not supposed to be innocent until he was found guilty, but was obliged to prove his innocence. All Catholic bishops, monks, friars, and priests, except three thousand priests who were "registered," and thus allowed to perform their sacred functions, were banished from Ireland. If any who were thus banished returned, they were condemned to be "hanged, drawn, and quartered." Whoever delivered up a bishop who had thus dared to come back to Ireland after being exiled, received a reward of fifty pounds. The reward for capturing and delivering up an unregistered priest was twenty pounds, and for a Catholic who was found teaching school, ten pounds.

An important part of the infamous penal laws, indeed, was its system of rewards to those who betrayed the persons at whom the law was aimed, and the inducements held out to those who abjured Catholicism and became Protestants. A Catholic priest who turned Protestant was entitled to receive a pension of twenty pounds a year. Every Catholic who owned land was compelled to leave it, in equal shares, to all his sons. But if the eldest son became a Protestant, the whole estate was given over to him. It was further provided that no Catholic could buy any land; nor could any Catholic lease a farm for a longer period than thirty-one years. If a farm leased by a Catholic yielded a third more than the rent, any Protestant who discovered the fact could turn him out and take possession of his farm. No Catholic was allowed to own a horse of a higher value than five pounds; if he did, any Protestant, by offering him five pounds, might take the horse. No Catholic was permitted to keep more than two apprentices, except in the linen-trade. 'Whoever persuaded a Protestant to become a Catholic was condemned to imprisonment for life. No Catholic could become the guardian of a child, or the executor of an estate. If a Catholic child turned Protestant, he could compel his father to give up to him one-third of his income.

The penal laws bore heavily, not only upon the religion, but upon the social condition of the great mass of the Irish people. All Catholics were forbidden to keep arms and ammunition in their houses. The magistrates had the power to enter the homes of Catholics, at any hour of the clay or night, to search for arms; and, if any were discovered, the master of the house was condemned to pay a fine of thirty pounds for the first offence, and to imprisonment for life for the second. This law, however, was not enforced against certain lords and officers who were included in the Limerick treaty. These were allowed to keep one gun, one pistol, and one sword each. Catholic gentlemen were forbidden to go more than five miles away from their houses without the written permission of the magistrates. Marriage between Catholics and Protestants was sternly forbidden under heavy penalties. A Protestant woman who married a Catholic was condemned to forfeit her property to her next Protestant heir. A priest or clergyman who married a Protestant to a Catholic was condemned to a fine of twenty pounds, and imprisonment for a year. A Protestant man who married a Catholic woman was deprived of the right to sit in Parliament, or to hold any office, unless his wife turned Protestant within twelve months.

The Irish Catholics were excluded by the penal code from the practice of law. All lawyers in Ireland were obliged to take the oath of abjuration, which repudiated the Catholic creed. Every lawyer was forced to educate his children as Protestants. A lawyer who disobeyed this requirement was condemned to pay a fine of two hundred pounds. Any person might call upon a lawyer to take the oath; and, if the lawyer refused, the person so calling upon him received half the fine the lawyer had to pay. No Catholic could serve on a grand jury, and no lawyer could hire a Catholic as a clerk. As time advanced, the penal laws were made more and more severe. Those of King William's reign were harsh and cruel, but those passed in the reign of Anne were yet more rigorous. It was now declared that no Catholic could receive an estate either by gift or inheritance. An estate which fell by descent to a Catholic was given over to the next Protestant heir. Catholics, moreover, were now for the first time excluded from the right to vote at elections. Five-sixths of the Irish people were thus deprived of a voice in choosing members of Parliament, who were now elected solely by the Protestant minority of one-sixth.

So completely, indeed, did the tyrannical penal laws shut out the Irish Catholics from the privileges of citizenship, from religious freedom, from social well-being, and from the hope of prosperity, that an English judge declared that "the law did not suppose the existence of any such person as an Irish Roman Catholic; nor could they even breathe without the connivance of the government." But the penal laws were not the only ones which were imposed with relentless cruelty upon the Irish. Not only were the English resolved to deprive the Irish of their land, and to extinguish the religion to which a vast majority of the Irish ardently clung; but they were equally resolved to crush out of Ireland all the industries by which they might live. England had become a great manufacturing and commercial country. She was determined that the Irish manufacturers and ship-owners should not enter into competition with those of England. A series of laws was therefore passed, which at first restricted Irish industry and commerce to narrow limits, and later suppressed them altogether.

Ireland had already been forbidden to introduce her cattle, pigs, butter, and cheese into England; and, as a result, a large number of Irish farms had ceased to produce these, and had turned their lands into pastures for the raising of sheep. It was not long before Ireland provided the best wool grown in the world. Many woolen-mills were established in Ulster, and the making of woolen goods soon promised to bring prosperity to the northern province. But the woolen industry was also a large one in England. It would not do to let it thrive in Ireland, lest the Irish manufacture should injure the English. So the Irish were forbidden to send any raw wool or woolen cloth to any foreign land, or to any English colony. They could only send these articles to England. Thus a fatal blow was struck at the Irish industry; and the mill-owners, sheep-raisers, and weavers were reduced to misery and want: This hardship fell with especial severity, not upon the native Irish Catholic, but the Protestant English of Ulster, who had always been loyal to the crown.

Another terrible blow to Irish industry was the suppression of her ship-building trade. Irish oak had long been famous for its excellence as a material for building ships. Ireland had, too, many good harbors. But her ship-building rivaled that of the English. It was therefore declared that Ireland must use only English-built ships, and that she must not trade, in any way, with any country but England. All articles sent from or to Ireland must pass through England. Even the linen industry, for which Ireland was peculiarly adapted, since flax of the first quality could be grown there, was hampered and crippled by English selfishness and jealousy; so that, in the course of time, the efforts of the Irish, deprived of the greater part of their soil, to cherish such industries as she was capable of making successful, were paralyzed by the outrageous laws imposed upon them by their English masters. The result was that Ire-land became, more than ever, the abode of terrible want, of starvation, nakedness, vagabondage, and desperate lawlessness. Poverty, idleness, and despair reigned everywhere throughout the unhappy land.

Ireland Prostrate

The picture of Ireland in the first half of the eighteenth century is a most gloomy one. Ireland lay bound hand and foot beneath the rule of her English master. There remained, indeed, in that period, but one ray of hope for the clown-trodden land. This was in the unsubdued national spirit of its people. The tyranny and misfortunes of centuries had not crushed out the peculiar traits which marked the Irish character. Love of country and of home, a desperate clinging to the soil of their island, ardent devotion to their faith,—qualities which survived every oppression,—saved the Irish from national extinction, and baffled every stubborn effort of English power to subdue them. A race less strong in its national traits must have yielded to the weight of that power, as it was felt in Ireland in the reigns of Anne and the first two Georges. Almost all the land was in the hands of the English. The laws were made by the Protestant Parliament, which was elected solely by Protestant votes, and was the creature of the English crown; and the laws thus made were executed solely by Protestant officials. The church of the small minority was sustained by the forced contributions of the majority. The church of the majority was persecuted, and, as far as possible, suppressed by the penal laws.

One great evil in Ireland was the fact, that many of the large owners of the land perpetually absented themselves from their estates. They lived abroad, in England or on the continent, enjoying the luxuries which were supported by the rents paid by the poor Irish peasants. These men were called "absentees;" and "absenteeism" has long been the cause of a great many of the miseries which the Irish have suffered. The absentees had agents on their Irish estates, who ground down the tenants remorselessly. They compelled them to pay high rents, and, if they were unable to pay these rents, turned them out of their plots without mercy. Thus a large part of the money earned by Irish toil went out of the country, and was spent by the absentees in foreign lands. This naturally made Ireland ever poorer and poorer. After a while, the law which forbade the Irish to import cattle, pork, butter, and cheese, into England, was repealed. But this, as it proved, only added to the distress of the country. It took a far smaller number of men to raise cattle, than to till the soil. So it happened that thousands of the Irish were deprived of employment, and were thrust out upon the roads to starve and die.

Driven by hunger and want to fierce despair, the Irish began to form themselves into secret bands, and to attack those who had robbed them of the chance to work, and doomed their children to the horrors of famine. These bands were known as "Whiteboys." They continued to commit desperate acts for many years. They began by mutilating, maiming, and killing the cattle belonging to the land-owners. This was because it was the revival of cattle-raising which had driven them from the soil. Sometimes the air, for miles around, would resound, in the dead of night, with the frenzied cries of the poor cows, which had been wounded by the Whiteboys, and were dying in agony. Then the Whiteboys committed crimes yet more savage. They hid behind hedges, or on the edges of the woods, and shot down landlords and herdsmen as they passed along the highway. They burned cow-sheds, sheep-pens, and even the dwellings of the well-to-do. All the while the peasants, who sympathized with the Whiteboys, sheltered them in their huts, and aided them to escape from their pursuers. Very severe laws were passed against the Whiteboys; and when any of them were captured, they were promptly hung. But in spite of this, the Whiteboys long maintained a reign of terror, especially in southern Ireland.

Other secret societies sprang up, from time to time, among the desperate and wretched Irish. In Ulster, a society called "Oakboys "(because they wore sprigs of oak on their coats), resisted the law which compelled everybody to work six days in the year, without pay, on repairing the public roads. The poor had been compelled to obey this law, while the rich and well-to-do had been released from the labor it imposed. The Oakboys refused to do any more work on the roads, until the prosperous farmers were also compelled to do their share. Another society was that of the "heart-of-steel Boys," who stoutly refused to pay the money which some of the landlords demanded for renewing land leases which had expired. About the same period,—in the reign of George the First,—an event took place which for once united all Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, rich and poor, in stubborn resistance to oppression. An Englishman, named William Wood, received a patent from the crown to coin a large quantity of debased copper half-pence and farthings, for use in Ireland. These debased coins were to be forced upon the Irish, who were to be compelled to accept them as good money. The whole island rose against the imposition; and so obstinate was this resistance that the king was obliged to withdraw Wood's patent (1722).

This "copper war," as it was called, marks the beginning of a new era in Irish history. The most famous and able Irishman of the day was Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick's. He is best known as Dean Swift. He was one of the most forcible and brilliant writers of his age. In spite of his many faults, and his high position in the English church, Dean Swift felt a great sympathy for his down-trodden, poverty-stricken, discontented country. Already he had vigorously denounced the laws by which England had tried to crush out Irish industry. He had boldly advised the Irish "to burn everything English except the coal." He said to them, "By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your own country, you are, and ought to be, as free a people as your brethren in England." Swift took an active part in the copper war. He gathered about him a group of Irishmen who were as hostile as himself to the tyrannical laws under which Ireland suffered. The triumph of the Irish over "Wood's half-pence," gained, as it was, not by rebellion, but by the union of all the people in a vigorous agitation, showed that they were more likely to secure the righting of their wrongs by agitation than by violence. Thus, under the inspiration of Dean Swift, a new method of resisting English power was discovered; and, for the first time, a succession of Irish agitators arose. Out of the copper war, there came into existence a new political party, called the "Patriot party." The Patriot party has continued to exist, in some form, from that time to this; and has never wholly ceased to agitate for the recovery of Irish rights.

Meanwhile the cruel tyranny under which Ireland suffered was followed by two important results. The poverty to which many of the Irish were reduced caused a large emigration of Irishmen to North America. Those who thus resolved to leave their ancestral land for new homes across the ocean comprised not only native Irish, but also a large number of the Scottish Presbyterians who had settled in Ulster, and of descendants of the early English settlers in eastern Ireland. The emigration of the Irish to America has continued ever since. In the early part of the reign of George the Second, the Irish had begun to cross the Atlantic by thousands. In one year (1729) more than five thousand Irish arrived at Philadelphia. In later years, the Irish swarmed across the ocean to find new homes in the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, New York, and New England. They thus became citizens of the colonies, which, in due time, rose in arms against English rule; and among the patriots of the American revolution were to be found many of the sons of the Irish whom English tyranny had driven, forty years before, from their native land.

The result of the laws which sought to suppress wool-growing, woolen manufactures, and other Irish industries, was, that smuggling began to be practiced on a large scale along the Irish coast. The many harbors and inlets of the western and southern Irish shores afforded excellent chances for this illegal traffic, and could not easily be watched and guarded by the English cruisers. The French needed wool, and Irish wool was to be had cheaper than any other. So great quantities of wool were smuggled off to France; and, in return, the smuggling vessels brought back French wines, brandy, and other articles. Often priests, also, were secretly introduced by these vessels into Ireland. The smugglers carried on their trade in safety; for the whole population of the coast concealed, aided, and abetted them. The officers of the law could not find them; or if, perchance, they did, the smugglers were rescued, or, if brought to trial, were acquitted by friendly juries. So it was that the Irish were taught, by the gross tyranny with which they were treated, to evade and defy the laws under which they lived.

Condition of the Irish People

During the greater part of the eighteenth century, the great mass of the Irish suffered constantly, and at times desperately, tinder the operation of the cruel penal laws. The Irish Catholics were treated by their English masters as "enemies." They were shut out from the ownership of land. They were forbidden to enter upon avenues of manufacture, trade, and commerce. They were forced to support, by the payment of tithes, the church of the small Protestant minority, and also to sustain their own priesthood. Their only chance of education lay in deserting their faith. The charter schools were established to make Protestants of poor Catholic children. The landlords were protected by the law and its officers in ruling their tenants with an iron hand; nor was there any bond of sympathy between the oppressed tenants and the oppressing landlords. The tenants believed that their only way to resist landlord tyranny was by secret conspiracy and violence. Even the Irish Protestants suffered so desperately under the laws which crushed out the industries of Ulster, that they were reduced to utter poverty; to escape which, they resorted by thousands to emigration to foreign lands. It is said that, in the middle of the century, twelve thousand Protestants emigrated from Ireland every year.

Famine recurred inevitably among a population so pent up and restricted in its opportunities to labor for existence. Towards the middle of the century (1739-40), the misery of the people in many parts of Ireland was extreme from want of food. The roads were covered with the dead and the dying. Malignant fevers laid whole villages waste. "Whole thousands in a barony," wrote a Protestant clergyman of the period, "have perished; some of hunger, and others of disorders occasioned by unnatural, unwholesome, and putrid diet." It is believed that more than three hundred thousand persons died in Ireland in two years from famine, and the diseases which followed in its train. One great evil, at this very period of utter wretchedness among the poorer Irish, was that many of the Irish landlords absented themselves entirely from the country. The money wrung in rents from the poverty-stricken tenants was spent, not in Ireland, where it might in some degree, at least, have relieved the prevalent distress, but in London, Paris, and other places abroad. The money thus drawn from Ireland to go into foreign pockets amounted some-times to over a million pounds a year.

The poor Irish rapidly fell into the condition of living in wretched mud hovels, where, with scanty clothing and yet more scanty food, they dwelt rather like beasts than human beings. At the same time, the good farming lands, in many parts of the country, were turned into pastures for the rearing of herds and flocks, because the tenants could not afford to enrich and till the soil. The result of this was to produce a crop of wanderers and beggars, who only worked fitfully, and during a large part of the year depended on alms for subsistence. Habits of idleness, of contempt of law, and of crime, naturally sprang from such a condition of things. Beggary easily develops into theft, and theft into robbery and murder. Irish beggars sometimes maimed or blinded their own children, in order to make them objects of pity, and thus of charity. Workhouses were established by the government, to which persons found begging were committed, and wherein they were compelled to work; but the inveterate aversion of even the poorest Irish to the workhouses rendered them of little use in limiting the evil of vagabondage.

The habits of the middle and higher classes in Ireland during the eighteenth century were reckless and extravagant. They lorded it over the lower classes, often with pitiless severity; and were themselves, to a large degree, given over to dissipation and self-indulgence. This was especially the case with the smaller landlords and gentlemen. Drunkenness was habitual among large numbers of them. Dueling was practiced as a settled custom. Horse-racing, cock-fighting, gambling, the sports of the field and forest were more ardently pursued in Ireland than in England. On the other hand, the lavish and generous hospitality for which the Irish were famous from the earliest times, was still a marked feature of Irish society. The Irish gentleman, indeed, lived often in a plain and unsightly, and sometimes in a dilapidated, mansion. He did not spend his money on architectural ornament, or even on domestic convenience. But within his unadorned walls the entertainment of his guests was profuse and prolonged. It is said that, in the dwelling of one Connaught nobleman, the slaughtered ox was hung up whole, and the hungry servitor supplied himself with his dole of flesh sliced from off the carcass." This lord, "from an early dinner to the hour of rest, never left his chair; nor did the claret wine ever quit his table."

The vice of absenteeism on the part of the Irish landlords, produced a large number of middle-men, who acted as agents to the landlords. These, with the smaller landlords, formed a class largely given over to dissolute and reckless habits. "They sublet their lands in rack rents," says Lecky; "kept miserable packs of half-starved hounds, wandered from fair to fair, and from race to race, in laced coats, gambling, fighting, drinking, swearing, and sporting; parading everywhere their contempt for honest labor, and giving a tone of recklessness to every society in which they moved." These were the men who ground down the tenants most pitilessly, who turned with deaf ear from the most heart-rending tales of destitution and starvation, and who gave to the classes below them the example of the worst vices with which Ireland was afflicted. Their brutal example taught the ignorant that "idleness and extravagance were noble things, and that parsimony, order, and industry were degrading to a gentleman."

Happily, there is a brighter side to the picture of Irish life in the eighteenth century. Side by side with the abject wretchedness and slavery of the many, with the headlong dissipation of the middle class, there existed much intellectual activity and an energetic public spirit. In the early part of the century, many Irishmen became eminent in literature. The greatest name among these was that of Jonathan Swift. Bishop Berkeley was another whose works are still honored and remembered. Archbishop Icing, provost Browne, Parnell the poet, Skelton, Hutcheson, Brooke, were among the Irish writers of distinction. Later in the century a brilliant galaxy of Irish authors appeared in Lawrence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Societies devoted to philosophy, literature, and art, flourished in Ireland.

The most notable of these were the Dublin Philosophical Society, founded in the latter part of the preceding century; the Physico-Historical Society; and, most important of all, the Dublin Society (1731). The object of the Dublin Society was "to improve husbandry, manufactures, and other useful arts." Lord Chesterfield said of it, that "it did more good to Ireland, with regard to arts and industry, than all the laws that could have been formed."

In the last half of the century, the Dublin Society did a good work in devoting itself to fostering the ornamental arts in Ireland. The country had already produced several portrait painters of merit, and a school of engraving was established in Dublin. An academy of art was founded, and exhibitions of paintings were annually held at the capital. Some improvements in architectural adornment were carried to a higher perfection in Ireland than in any other country. Later in the century, an Irishman, James Barry, rose to the highest grade of eminence as a historical painter. Intellectual discussion was active and earnest among the scholarly circles of Ireland for many years. Men of learning engaged in controversies on theology, political economy, political reform, industrial theories, and social conditions, by means, principally, of pamphlets. Prominent among these were Berkeley, Madden, Prior, Lord Molesworth, Edward Synge, and archbishop Boulter. The most earnest of these discussions were those which related to the position of the two churches in Ireland.

As the century wore on, the bitterness of feeling early and middle parts of the century became less prevalent towards its close. Drunkenness was less universal, and dueling was ceasing to be a regular custom among the choleric squires. No people ever clung more tenaciously to their old homes, traditions, customs, religious beliefs, and affections; and in spite of oppressions and miseries which had endured for centuries, the Irish remained in the eighteenth century, what, indeed, they are in the nineteenth, a singularly light-hearted, cheerful, imaginative race. Tyranny had failed to quench not only their national spirit, but the joyousness and gayety of their natures.

Some of the large towns of Ireland vied, in the eighteenth century, in population and varied activities, with the towns of England. Dublin was the second town in Great Britain and Ireland, in the number of its inhabitants. At one period its population was somewhat over a hundred thousand (1750). It is said that its St. Stephen's Green was the largest public square in Europe. Dublin had broad quays, several fine public buildings, a flourishing university, and some elegant residences. The castle in which the lord-lieutenant held his court was often the scene of brilliant levees and banquets. The theatres, public gardens, and music-halls were filled with pleasure-loving crowds. Handel's "Messiah "was first produced in Dublin; and Garrick there played "Hamlet" for the first time. Among the larger Irish towns, Cork had a population of sixty thousand, and Limerick over twenty thousand. The county towns next in importance were Waterford, Kilkenny, and Galway. Upon all of these towns, indeed, rested the blight of the penal laws, and of those laws which from time to time had imposed restrictions on Irish trade and commerce. Yet, in the eighteenth century, each of them presented some features of thrift, which proved that the business capacity of Irishmen, under greater freedom, would have created wealth and prosperity.

The Irish Patriots

The political history of Ireland during the eighteenth century relates largely to the efforts of Irish patriots to obtain for their country some degree of political freedom. The Irish Parliament, composed as it was entirely of Protestants, and chosen by Protestant voters only, still remained entirely subject to English power. Poyning's Act, which had been passed centuries before, and by which every Irish measure had to be submitted to the English privy council, before it could even be considered in the Irish Parliament, still remained in force. To it was added another law, in the early part of the reign of George the First, by which it was declared that the English Parliament had power to make laws for the Irish people (1720). The Irish patriots wished to get rid of these restrictions; to obtain for the Irish Parliament the real power to make laws for Ireland without English interference; and to so reform the Irish Parliament itself, that it would better represent the Irish people.

Among the many grievances under which the Irish suffered, was the fact that large sums were taken from the Irish revenues, and given as pensions to the favorites, illegitimate children, and mistresses of the English kings. Ireland was poverty-stricken. Her trade and manufactures had, to a large extent, been crushed out by English selfishness: her woolen industry had been similarly crippled. Yet the taxes wrung from Irish toil were thus given to worthless people, who enjoyed the incomes thus derived in idle luxury. At one period (1733) the amount of pensions drawn from the Irish revenues amounted to seventy thousand pounds a year. Another abuse was the "charter schools," which were established throughout the country for the purpose of educating poor Catholic children to become Protestants. These schools were at first free: they then became boarding-schools, in which the poor children were starved and neglected, and which became merely a source of income to their managers.

The Irish patriots were, for the most part, Protestants, who devoted themselves to the removal of the unjust laws by which Ireland was burdened. They formed a political party which acted in Parliament in opposition to the government. The founders of this party were Dean Swift and a group of Irishmen who acted with him. The chief feature of their action, as has been said, was that, instead of trying to obtain for Ireland her rights by conspiracy and rebellion, they aimed to achieve that end by discussion and agitation in the public press, and within the walls of Parliament. They hoped to win their cause by peaceable and orderly methods. They were at first a small party, but they grew formidable in the flight of years. Some of the patriots proved corrupt, and were bribed by the English government with pensions and offices, to desert the cause of their country and turn against it. But in spite of such desertions, the party thrived and, in the end, prevailed. One of the earliest and most active of the patriots was Charles Lucas, a chemist in Dublin, who established the "Freeman's Journal," in which he vigorously advocated the right of the Irish to rule themselves. Lucas became a member of Parliament, and was long the leader of the little group of twenty-eight patriots who were battling, in the Irish House of Commons, for their country's liberties.

But in time there arose two leaders of the patriot party who were far above all the others in eloquence, energy, and fervor, and whose genius added great strength to the cause they had at heart. These were Henry Flood and Henry Grattan. Flood came of a good Protestant family, was well educated, and was endowed to a rare degree with the gift of oratory. He was brilliant and ambitious, and for some years led the patriots with a spirit and ardor which made him the idol of the people. He entered the Irish Parliament, where he attacked the tyrannical lord-justice, archbishop Stone, with fearless vigor, and persuaded the House to declare that it alone had the right to decide upon measures for taxing the people and spending the revenue. Side by side with Lucas, Burgh, Daly, and other patriots, Flood struggled, in the new Irish Parliament (which was chosen upon the accession of George the Third, 1760), to correct some of the abuses which existed in Ireland. The Irish Parliament had before had an indefinite life, and had only been called together once in two years. It had not been dissolved so long as its conduct suited the English king. But now, by the efforts of the patriots, a law was passed that the existence of an Irish Parliament should be limited to eight years. The patriots also succeeded in reducing the amount of the odious pension-list, and in doing away with some of the penal laws.

Flood's ambition, however, was not satisfied with leading the patriots. In an evil hour for his own fame, he accepted the office of vice-treasurer from the government. It is said that his reason for doing this was that he might the more effectively aid the patriot cause. But the result of his acceptance of the office was that he lost all influence with his former friends, and was looked upon by them as a traitor to Ireland. His place as chief of the patriots, however, was soon filled by a greater man than he. Of all Irishmen of the eighteenth century, the figure of Henry Grattan stands foremost and unapproached. Eloquent, pure, resolute, full of the most ardent and unflinching patriotism, the champion both of the Protestant patriots and of his oppressed Catholic fellow-countrymen; endowed, moreover, with brilliant talents as a legislator, debater, and statesman, Henry Grattan was, above all men, fitted to lead in the hard struggle for the liberation of Ireland. Grattan entered the Irish House of Commons, for the first time, at the early age of twenty-five (1775). It was a critical moment alike in Irish, English, and American history. The American Revolution was on the point of breaking out; and it was the events which speedily grew out of the American revolution which gave Ireland, under Grattan's leadership, her long-awaited chance to secure parliamentary independence.

Flood and Grattan had been friends, and had worked together in the patriot cause. But when Flood accepted an office, an open and bitter quarrel took place between them, and Grattan took Flood's place at the head of the patriot party. When the American Revolution broke out, the English government demanded that a force of four thousand troops should be raised in Ireland, and sent out to fight the American colonists. Grattan, who sympathized deeply with the Americans, opposed this with all the resources of his eloquence; but the troops were raised and sent in spite of his opposition. It was not long, however, before events occurred which enabled Grattan to resist English power with effect. The defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga (1777), and the alliance of France with the American colonies, completely changed the face of affairs. The immediate result of these events was to produce a great deal of distress in both Ireland and England. Thousands of laborers were deprived of work, and the taxes needed to carry on the war lay heavily upon the people.

Then there arose a new danger. The coasts and ports of Ireland were threatened by French cruisers, and by the depredations of the redoubtable American buccaneer, John Paul Jones. The defenses of the coast and ports were miserably weak. Belfast was protected by a little band of sixty soldiers. The peril of invasion and rapine inspired the Irish to raise a large force of "Volunteers," to protect the island from its assailants. Both Protestants and Catholics, without distinction of race or faith, swarmed into the ranks of this organization. The Orangeman of Ulster found himself side by side with the peasant of Connaught.

In every town and county, bodies of volunteers were quickly raised, drilled, and armed. Among the active organizers of the body were not only the leading patriots, like Grattan and Burgh, but also nobles, like the Duke of Leinster, the Earl of Charlemont, and the Earl of Bristol. In no long time the Irish Volunteers amounted to sixty thousand well-armed men, commanded by the patriotic Earl of Charlemont. They were provided with two hundred cannon, and soon formed a well-disciplined. army. In the face of such a force as this, the peril from French cruisers and American privateers vanished. But now Grattan had, in the Volunteers, a powerful instrument for extorting concessions from the English crown. The Volunteers were one and all fervent patriots. They were an armed and organized mass of men, who were resolved to obtain their country's rights. Thus supported, Grattan entered promptly upon the execution of his designs. He first demanded that Ireland should have the right to trade in perfect freedom with the colonies. The government, overawed by the Volunteers, yielded to the demand. Then Grattan took a bolder and far more important step. He proposed in the Irish House of Commons, that "the king, lords, and commons were the only powers competent to pass laws for Ireland." This meant that thenceforth the English Parliament should have no right to make any laws for Ireland, or in any way change the laws passed by the Irish Parliament. It was, in fact, a proposal to repeal the Act of George the First, which had made the English Parliament supreme in the making of Irish laws.

The formidable organized power of the Volunteers enabled Grattan, within a year, to achieve his great triumph, and to obtain a free and independent Parliament for the Irish. England was still involved in the American war, which was crippling her resources, and depriving her of the military strength which would be necessary to put down the Volunteers, and so recover her grasp upon Ireland. Grattan's bill was passed, and England was compelled to give full powers to the Irish Parliament (1782). But great as this triumph was, it was not yet complete. The Irish Parliament still consisted of Protestants only, and was elected by Protestants only. The Irish Catholics, although they comprised nearly five-sixths of the population, could neither sit as members nor vote for members. Yet it was a very important step to get rid of the English power of legislating for Ireland, and of dictating what laws the Irish Parliament should pass.

The Free Parliament

An Irish Parliament, with full power to make laws for Ireland, and freed at last from English control, now met in Dublin (1783). Its first important act was to consider a measure of parliamentary reform. The Irish House of Commons was not only defective in that it consisted of and was elected solely by Protestants. Of its three hundred members, at least one hundred were chosen by the influence or the direct orders of the great landlords. It was thus, to a large degree, subject to the will of the aristocracy. As soon, therefore, as the new and free Parliament had assembled, some of its leading spirits proposed that these defects in the House should be remedied, that the Catholics should be admitted to the suffrage, and that the influence of the landlords in the selection of members should be curtailed.

Grattan was still the most conspicuous figure in the House. His genius and eloquence were still unrivalled. Flood was also a member; and, in spite of his holding an office under the crown, was, curiously enough, more earnest in his zeal for reform than his great rival. Among the other patriots, the Earl of Charlemont and the Earl of Bristol (the latter of whom was also the Protestant bishop of Derry) were eminent. Each of these four—Grattan, Flood, Charlemont, and Bristol—was the leader of a party by itself. Grattan wished not only to reform the House of Commons, and admit the Catholics to the right to vote, but he desired to show gratitude to and confidence in the good faith of England, by disbanding the Volunteers. Flood was an advocate of reform, but opposed Catholic suffrage, and was eager that the Volunteers should continue in existence. Charlemont favored the disbandment, but was hostile to Catholic suffrage. Bristol was in favor of keeping the Volunteers, and granting the vote to the Catholics. After a bitter contest, the House of Commons refused to pass the reform bill, although it was loudly demanded by the people. The Volunteers were soon after disbanded and dispersed. But they gave place to another patriotic society, which was destined to play a notable part in the following years. This was the society of the "United Irishmen." It was composed of men from all parts of Ireland, Protestant and Catholic. Its objects were to secure a complete reform of the House of Commons, to unite Irishmen of all creeds and political beliefs in harmony and patriotic action, to get rid of the feuds and dissensions which divided Irishmen, and to make more secure and ample the liberties which Ireland had already won.

At the head of the United Irishmen were two Protestants, Hamilton Rowan and James Tandy. Its leading spirit was Wolfe Tone, a courageous and enthusiastic young lawyer. Grattan held aloof from the movement; but it extended very rapidly throughout Ireland, and soon became, as the Volunteers had been, a formidable force. At first the United Irishmen professed loyalty to the English crown. They declared that they only intended to carry on a peaceful agitation to obtain further reforms. But in course of time, events took place which led the society to inspire a revolt, with a view to achieving the complete independence of Ireland. During the first few years after the Irish Parliament became free, Ireland appeared to be entering upon a career of unheard-of prosperity. Trade revived, and the cities and chief towns assumed the aspect of active business and thrift. The state of things in the country districts did not, however, greatly improve; and so great did the disturbances become, that the Irish Parliament was forced to pass a severe "coercion" law, for the purpose of maintaining order.

Several serious contentions, moreover, arose between England and Ireland. There were disputes as to the conditions of Irish trade; and when George the Third became insane, and it was proposed to make his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, regent of the kingdom, the Irish took sides with the prince, and against Pitt, who was then prime minister. This aroused Pitt's hostility, and was one of the causes which led him later to destroy the Irish Parliament altogether. But the Irish Parliament, during its brief existence, adopted some enlightened and tolerant measures. Grattan succeeded in carrying a bill to allow Catholics to practice as lawyers; and a little later he secured to Catholics the right to vote for members of Parliament (1793). An agitation now sprang up to obtain for the Catholics the right also to sit in Parliament, and to hold civil and military offices. Even Pitt, who had never been friendly to Ireland, seemed inclined to yield to this demand. He sent Earl Fitzwilliam, an enlightened and liberal statesman, to Dublin as lord-lieutenant: and the Irish were encouraged to believe that full political rights would at last be allowed to the Catholics.

Their hopes were frustrated by the obstinacy of George the Third. He utterly refused to consent that the Irish Catholics should have the rights they demanded. This compelled Pitt to once more change his policy. He recalled the liberal Fitzwilliam, and appointed Clare, an avowed enemy of the Irish reform, in his place. Then, by bribery and corruption, Pitt induced the Irish Parliament to reject the bill which removed the restrictions upon the Catholics. The patriotic Grattan did not yet wholly despair. Once more he brought a reform bill into the Irish House of Commons, and was most eloquently aided by the young Irish orator, John Philputt Curran (1797). But this last heroic attempt to save Ireland from anarchy or renewed slavery was not successful. The Irish Parliament was corrupt, and had now become the mere tool of Pitt and the English influence. The failure to reform it, and make it representative of the whole people, had brought about this wretched condition of affairs. Grattan in despair retired from taking further part in public life, and left Ireland to the leadership of more fiery spirits.

The final defeat of all reform, the failure of the Catholics to obtain their political rights, the now complete subservience of the Irish Parliament to the will of Pitt, caused the society of United Irishmen to make an entire change of attitude. Their gatherings became secret. Their adherents were busily armed and drilled in out-of-the-way places. They were joined by many men of ability, rank, and influence, who had hitherto held aloof from it. Prominent among these new recruits were Thomas Addis Emmet, a brilliant lawyer; Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a brother of the then Duke of Leinster; and Arthur O'Connor, a member of the Irish House of Commons. The French revolution had inspired the United Irishmen with a longing and a desire to throw off the British yoke, as the French had got rid of their kings and nobles. France, more-over, was now at war with England; and the leaders of the impending Irish revolt believed that French arms and money would come to their aid when the signal for open rebellion was given.

Wolfe Tone was, from the first, the most active and energetic of the leaders of the United Irishmen. His operations, and those of the society, were made known to Pitt by the spies whom he had sent to Ireland; and Tone was forced to fly. He crossed the Atlantic to the United States. But he had by no means given up the cause of his country. He soon returned over the ocean to France, and there pleaded eloquently for assistance on behalf of the Irish. Meanwhile the more disaffected parts of Ireland were put under martial law; the militiamen, under English command, were quartered in the houses of the Catholics, and committed many robberies and gross cruelties; and the Irish were once more becoming desperate to revenge themselves upon their foreign masters. The French, yielding to Tone's entreaties, supplied him with a fleet, ten thousand soldiers, and a large quantity of stores, arms, and ammunition. But now the elements intervened to dash the hopes of the Irish patriots. As the friendly French ships approached the Irish coast, a great wind-storm arose. The fleet was scattered, and for weeks floated helplessly about, unable to effect a landing; and at last, in despair, returned to France. But the bold spirit of Wolfe Tone was still undespairing. He was resolved to struggle for Irish liberty to the last.

The Insurrection of Ninety-Eight

The failure of the French expedition did not put an end to the revolt of the United Irishmen. Wolfe Tone next resorted to Holland, which country, like France, was then hostile to England. A large force was collected, and a Dutch squadron was made ready to sail for Ireland. But now, again, a series of high gales swept over the German Ocean and the English Channel, and the ships lay helpless in their harbor. When at last they sallied forth, they were easily taken by the English admiral Duncan. The failure of the attempts to procure foreign help threw the United Irishmen upon their own resources. They might have become disheartened, had it not been that the cruelties and severities of the English officials and soldiers in Ireland kept the spirit of resistance aflame. The whole island was honey-combed with English spies, and with base Irishmen, who, for offices and money, were eager to betray their patriot fellow-countrymen. There were traitors in the very meetings of the United Irishmen, who hastened away from those meetings to reveal what had been done, to the English authorities in Dublin castle.

Many of the leading patriots were seized and thrown into prison. They were tried before packed juries, who were sometimes plied with drink, in order that they might bring in verdicts against the accused. Martial law was proclaimed in the counties where the insurgents were most numerous and formidable. The counties of Kildare and Wexford were sternly subjected to this law. Irishmen were condemned to death upon the evidence of paid spies and traitors, and upon the conviction of corrupted juries. The English troops in Ireland were guilty of barbarous atrocities.

When the humane Sir Ralph Abercrombie took command of the army in Ireland, he wrote back to England that "houses have been burned, men murdered, others half hanged. A young lady has been carried off by a detachment of dragoons; and, in the room where she was, an officer was shot through the thigh. These are but a few of the enormities which have disgraced us of late; were the whole to be collected, what a picture it would present! Within these twelve months, every crime, every cruelty, that could be committed by Cossacks or Calmucks has been committed here."

Abercrombie tried to put a stop to the outrages committed by the soldiers, and to restore discipline and obedience to the English troops. But the violent enemies of Ireland, aided by Earl Camden, the lord-lieutenant, were too strong for him; and he was forced to give over his command to General Lake. This general was stern and severe; and winked at, if he did not sanction, the cruelties which his soldiers committed upon the Irish. The poor peasants, many of whom were wholly guiltless of rebellion, were flogged and shot, or their wretched huts were burned over their heads. Men were subjected to barbarous tortures, to compel them to betray the design's and hiding-places of the patriots.

If any man ventured to wear a sprig of green, the Irish color, he was subjected to persecution and violence: even women, for this act, were insulted and infamously treated. It was the custom of the United Irishmen to have their hair cropped close to their heads. If any man, therefore, was found with his hair cut short, the brutal British soldiers would cover his head with pitch, and put a paper cap thereon, which could not be removed without tearing the scalp.

All these things incensed the Irish, and drove them by thousands into the ranks of the United Irishmen. The chiefs of the society resolved upon a general rising throughout the country. But the government spies were not idle. A meeting of the Irish leaders in Dublin was betrayed by an informer, and surprised by a posse of soldiers from the castle; and fourteen of them were captured. Soon after, Thomas Addis Emmet, Sampson, and McNevin were taken. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was still at large, and was all the more resolved, after the arrest of his colleagues, to kindle an insurrection. But he, too, was soon betrayed. The lord-lieutenant was informed that Fitzgerald was concealed in the house of a certain feather-merchant. A party of soldiers was at once sent to seize him. When they entered his room, the brave patriot sprang upon them with a long dagger. He was desperately wounded, however, and was dragged away to prison, where he died of his wounds in a few days.

CAPTURE OF FITZGERALD.

The revolt was deprived of its gallant and able leaders; yet, in many places, the rising took place as had been planned. The scattered companies of soldiers and militia-men, spread through the country as garrisons, were assailed by the fierce, undisciplined United Irishmen. In some places the companies were overcome, and their posts occupied by the insurgents. Then followed scenes of savage carnage and destruction, visited by the victors upon the soldiers, and upon the partisans of England, in the districts round about. In other places the English troops held their own, and the insurgents were driven off with savage slaughter. Martial law was proclaimed in Dublin; and this saved the capital from a rising of the United Irishmen within its limits.

The insurrection was the most obstinate and the most prolonged in the county of Wexford. It held out there after Ulster and Meath had been reduced to complete subjection by the English troops. At first the Wexford rebels won some notable victories. They defeated the militia at Oulart, took Ferns, where they burned the Protestant bishop's palace; and, gathering strength as they advanced, at last entered the town of Wexford itself.

In no long time the entire country, with the exception of the towns of Duncannon and New Ross, was in the rebels' hands. They desperately attacked New Ross, but without success. Some of the wildest of the rebel spirits wreaked their vengeance upon a party of Protestant men and women who were collected for safety in a house and barn in the neighbor-hood. Many of these were shot, or killed with pikes; the rest were burned in the barn where they were huddled together. This atrocious act was done without the knowledge of Harvey, the commander of the insurgents; who, when he heard of it, denounced it with warm indignation. He was soon after succeeded in the command by a warlike priest, Father Philip Roche. Some minor successes emboldened the insurgents to advance northward. Thirty thousand of these marched on Arklow, which was held by a strong English garrison.

At the head of these insurgents was Father Michael Murphy. They attacked the defenses of the town with furious valor. At one time the rebels seemed on the point of victory; but, in the midst of the fray, Murphy fell, fatally wounded. His men, disheartened by this event, slowly and sadly withdrew, and the English remained masters of the town. The battle of Arklow was the turning-point of the insurrection.

The Irish now retired to two camps,—one on the hill of Lacken, and the other on Vinegar hill, near Enniscorthy. There they remained inactive, sending foraging parties through the neighboring districts to collect provisions, and awaiting a favorable moment for resuming the offensive. But that moment never came. Heavy re-enforcements soon arrived from England, and the English generals resolved to at once advance upon the rebels in their camps. At the head of the English was the relentless General Lake. The Irish, under Roche, when they heard of the advance of the English, retreated from Lacken hill, and succeeded in reaching Wexford in safety. The other Irish stronghold near Vinegar hill remained. The English troops closed in upon it. They drove the Irish, who fought with desperate but useless courage, out of Enniscorthy up the hill. A terrible battle ensued. At last the Irish were forced to evacuate the hill, and to seek refuge, like their comrades of the Lacken camp, in Wexford (June 2I, I798).

Already the position of the Irish at Wexford had been attacked; and, when the news of the defeat at Vinegar hill arrived, the Irish abandoned the town. The various Irish forces now retired into the interior, and were broken up into marauding bands. The vengeance of the English upon the defeated Irish was swift and terrible. The soldiers and militia vied with each other in the excess of their atrocities. A hospital containing a number of wounded Irish was burned with its inmates. Parties of militiamen rode about the country shooting all, even women, whom they chanced to meet. The houses were robbed of all articles of value. Court martials sat in the towns, and those whom they condemned were hurried in batches to execution. Many of the leaders of the revolt were hung in Dublin. Among those who thus suffered were Roche, Kelly, Murphy, and Harvey. Others were mercilessly flogged with the cat-o'-nine-tails. Hundreds of perfectly innocent persons were subjected to the brutal violence of the triumphant English.

The Union of the Parliaments

The last event of the insurrection was the arrival of a small French fleet off the Irish coast (October, 1798). On board one of the ships was the unconquerable Wolfe Tone, whose spirit had not been subdued even by the crushing defeats of Vinegar Hill and Wexford. The French fleet was encountered by some English men-of-war, and an obstinate sea-fight ensued. The Hoche, the ship which carried Tone, coped gallantly with four English frigates at once. The result of the battle, however, was the utter defeat of the invading fleet. Tone was taken prisoner, and attempted to pass himself off as a French officer. But he was soon recognized, and carried captive to Dublin. He was condemned to be hung. But his proud soul revolted from a death so disgraceful, and he cut his throat in his cell. The last spark of the insurrection went out with Tone's heroic life. The United Irishmen ceased to exist, and in every part of the island submission was made to the English power.

Meanwhile William Pitt, the English prime minister, had made up his mind that the time had come to execute a design which had for some time occupied his thoughts. This was, to abolish the Irish Parliament altogether, to make the British Parliament the sole law-making body for the three kingdoms, and to give Ireland the right to send members to the British Houses of Lords and Commons. His decision was undoubtedly hastened by the great insurrection which had now been so bloodily subdued. But his object could only be carried out by consent of the Irish Parliament itself. The Irish Parliament must be persuaded to take its own life, since no act of the British Parliament alone could bind it or destroy it. With a view to carrying out his purpose, Pitt recalled Lord Camden, who had been lord-lieutenant through the insurrection, and who was lacking in energy, and appointed in his place the marquis Cornwallis (the same who hail surrendered to Washington at Yorktown). Lord Castlereagh, a selfish and ambitious Irishman, was named as Cornwallis's chief secretary; and Lord Clare, who was a resolute supporter of Pitt's plan, was continued in the office of Irish lord-chancellor.

Cornwallis was not only an able, but a kind-hearted and justly disposed man. He revolted from the brutal methods by which vengeance had been visited upon the conquered Irish. He hated the floggings, the burnings, the plundering, the wholesale executions, which were going on in Ireland. He resolved upon a milder course. He proclaimed that all rebels, except the leaders, who would take the oath of allegiance and submit to the government, should be protected. He caused an act of amnesty to be passed, which gave pardon to the great mass of those who had been in insurrection. He restored, as far as possible, order and discipline among the English troops in Ireland; and resolutely put a stop to the acts of violence in which the English soldiers had been reveling. So lenient and humane, indeed, was the rule of Cornwallis, that he roused the easily-evoked gratitude of the Irish people, who cried out, "God bless you!" as he passed through the Dublin streets.

The project of William Pitt to get rid of the Irish Parliament, and to make the British Parliament the sole legislative body for the three kingdoms, aroused intense opposition in Ireland. Protestants and Catholics, peers and landowners, tradesmen, farmers, and peasants alike, protested against it. It would reduce the power of the nobility; it would ruin trade; it would bind Ireland hand and foot to England; it would take away the last vestiges of Irish independence. These were among the reasons urged by Irishmen of both faiths, and of every social rank, against the "union." On the other hand, Pitt promised that, if the union were achieved, the Irish Catholics should not only have the vote, but should be "emancipated," that is, should be admitted as members of Parliament, and should have the right to hold military and civil offices. The chief reason which he gave for the union was, that it would secure England from an invasion of the French by way of Ireland; but this reason he urged to obtain English, and not Irish, support to his design.

Cornwallis, the lord-lieutenant, Clare, the lord-chancellor, and Castlereagh, the chief secretary of Ireland, were the three agents upon whom Pitt relied to induce the Irish Parliament to give up its existence, and to assent to the legislative union. Cornwallis hated the work thus committed to him, but undertook it because he was convinced that the union was necessary to the power of the British empire. His two colleagues were less scrupulous, and entered upon their task with eager energy. The method by which the Irish Parliament was to be extinguished, was one of sheer bribery and corruption. The union was to be obtained by downright force and fraud. No means, however bad, were to be left untried to compel or induce the Irish members in both Houses to agree to it. What removal from office, threats, the grant of peerages, could not do, Irish money was to be freely spent in doing.

Never did the officials of a great nation descend to methods more base to reach the end they had in view. The wish of the overwhelming majority of the Irish people, who ardently longed to retain what liberties they had, was to be overcome by pandering to the fears and the avarice of their representatives. The first attempt to bring about the union, however, failed. The Irish Parliament was summoned (Jan. 22, 1799); and in the "speech from the throne," delivered at the opening of its session, the project of the union was vaguely mentioned. This at once aroused its patriotic opponents. A long and tempestuous debate followed. Among the ardent speakers against the measure was sir John Parnell,—a name destined to be identified, in later years, with a far more formidable struggle in behalf of Irish liberty.

At last a vote was taken, and the project of union was defeated by five majority. For a while it seemed as if Pitt's plan would fail; and there was great rejoicing among the Irish patriots everywhere. But now began the vigorous application of fraud, force, and corruption. Those officials who were opposed to the union were turned out of their places. A large number of the boroughs, which chose members to the Irish Parliament, were in reality owned by noblemen and great land-owners; and the seats had long been purchased and sold for money. Castlereagh agreed to buy out these owners of seats, and to pay for each seat the sum of £15,000.

In this way, no less than eighty-five seats were bought by the government, at a cost of £1,950,000; and this sum was charged upon the Irish revenue. One nobleman, the marquis of Ely, received £45,000 for the six boroughs he owned; and another, the Marquis of Downshire, received £52,000 for his seven. Twenty-two opponents of the union were bribed by English titles of nobility; twenty-two more were raised in rank in the Irish peerage; and many were rewarded for betraying their country, and favoring the union, by judgeships, offices, pensions, and army commissions. Even some of the bishops and clergy, both Protestant and Catholic, were bribed by rectorships, stipends, and other appointments. The Protestant church was persuaded by the promise that it should be established forever as the state church of Ireland. The way being thus prepared, the Irish Parliament was once more called together (January, 1800), and the subject of the union was once more promptly brought before it.

For a long time, little had been heard or seen of Henry Grattan, the eloquent patriot who had secured the independence of the Irish Parliament eight years before. He had held aloof from the United Irishmen, and had taken no part in the great insurrection. He had become broken in health, and had nearly passed out of the minds of men. But now, at this great crisis in Ireland's history, when the liberties for which he had successfully fought were about to be wrested from her, Grattan once more appeared upon the scene. A seat in the House of Commons was secured for him at Wicklow. Feeble with illness, the great patriot dragged himself into the House to make a last appeal for his unhappy country. He was too weak to stand, and so spoke sitting in his chair. As he went on, his voice gradually gathered strength, and he poured forth his vehement sentences with all his wonted fire.

But Grattan's fervid eloquence was of no avail. After a series of hot debates, and after vote after vote had shown that the unionists were in a large majority, the bill abolishing the Irish Parliament, and merging it in that of Great Britain, was adopted by the Irish House of Commons by a vote of one hundred and fifty-three to eighty-eight. It soon after passed the Irish House of Lords, was signed by the king, and thereby became a law. Thus the Irish Parliament ceased to exist. It had never truly represented the Irish people, but only the Protestant and English minority in Ireland. In its later years, it had become very corrupt and inefficient. Its final act was base and treacherous. Yet patriotic Irishmen mourned to see it become extinct, since it had been the only feeble barrier against complete English ascendancy.

The most important conditions of the union of the two Parliaments into one, were as follows. Ireland now sent one hundred members to the British House of Commons. In the British House of Lords, Ireland was represented by four bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and by twenty-eight peers, elected for life by the whole body of Irish peers. The number of Irish members of the Commons has since been increased to one hundred and three. The Protestant-Episcopal church was established as the state church of Ireland. Irish peers, not elected among the twenty-eight, were given the right to be elected and to sit as members of the British House of Commons. The British House of Lords was made the final court of appeal from Irish as well as English courts. The national debts of the two islands were kept separate, and Ireland was now required to raise two-fifths of the revenue of the United Kingdom. The debt created after the union was made a joint one. Commercial equality was established between the two islands. Each was forbidden to impose any duty on the goods produced by the other. The act of union went into actual operation on the 1st of January succeeding its passage

Daniel O'connell

The union of the Parliaments, obtained as it was by wholesale force, fraud, and corruption, caused intense discontent among the Irish people. In less than two years, an attempt was made to revive the United Irishmen, and a few daring spirits planned a rebellion. Chief among these was Robert Emmet, a young man of ardent temper and fervent love of country. Emmet gathered about him a few young men, and one day sallied forth in Dublin at the head of eighty adherents, to take possession of the city. The people did not respond to his summons, and Emmet was forced to hide himself. He might now have escaped; but he was in love with Sarah Curran, the daughter of the great Irish advocate, John Philpott Curran, and resolved to see her once more before seeking safety in flight. While he was awaiting his chance for an interview, he was arrested. He was promptly tried for high treason, and hung (1803). Notwithstanding the folly and failure of his attempt, the name of Robert Emmet is still loved in Ireland as that of a zealous and self-sacrificing patriot.

The Irish Catholics had been promised, before the union, that they should be "emancipated;" that is, that the laws which prevented them from voting, sitting as members of Parliament, and holding civil and military offices, should be done away with. But after the union, Pitt failed to redeem this promise. He might have redeemed it, had it not been for the obstinate refusal of George the Third to consent to Catholic emancipation. The king would not listen to such a thing; and the result was, that the rights of the Irish Catholics were not conceded to them until many years after. There now ensued a revival of the acts of violence into which the Irish always fell when they despaired of getting justice from the laws. The Whiteboys once more came into existence; and, in various parts of the island, cattle were maimed, houses were burned, and landlords and their agents were maltreated. The government met this state of things by passing a severe "coercion act," by which the ordinary laws were suspended, and large powers were given to the lord-lieutenant and the magistrates. To this were added the suspension of the habeas corpus, and an "arms act," by which the Irish were forbidden to keep arms, and the authorities were empowered to search houses for them.

Henry Grattan was now an old man. But, although the Irish Parliament which he had established had been suppressed, Grattan's heart and voice were still devoted to his unhappy country. He became a member of the British Parliament, and within its walls eloquently urged that Catholic emancipation should be granted to Ireland. He continued to devote all his energies to this object until his death (1820). But now a new and still more powerful champion of Irish rights was fast rising into public notice. This was Daniel O'Connell. This great leader, who was by profession a lawyer, and who belonged to an old and landed family in southwestern Ireland, first came into notice as the chairman of a committee, whose purpose it was to agitate before Parliament the Catholic claim to political freedom (1808). He was already known as an eloquent pleader, with a powerful frame, a strong, melodious, sonorous voice, and a bold and vigorous temperament. The previous leaders of the Irish cause were Protestants: O'Connell was a zealous Catholic. He was thirty-five, in the early prime of his manhood.

O'Connell in no long time became the undisputed chief of the Irish patriots. At first he hesitated whether to pursue an agitation to repeal the act of union, and restore the Irish Parliament, or to confine himself to seeking to obtain Catholic emancipation. He decided upon the latter course. A strong party in Ireland was soon formed to support him. Prominent among his adherents was Richard Lalor Shiel, who was a vehement, eloquent orator, and an earnest patriot; and once more the familiar name of Parnell appears, in Sir Henry, as a leader in the patriot cause.

The agitation for Catholic emancipation became active and formidable, and was continued with ever-increasing force for six years (1823-29). In the meantime Ireland suffered terribly from repeated failures of the potato crop. The mass of the Irish people have always relied upon potatoes as their principal food. Whenever, therefore, the potato crop has failed, the horrors of famine have followed and to famine has usually been added, in many places, desperate deeds of violence. In one year (1822) many hundreds of thousands of Irish were fed daily by charity. Great numbers died of downright starvation; and so turbulent was the country, that a large military force was needed to keep it from drifting into anarchy.

The first important step which O'Connell took was to form the "Catholic Association." This society was organized to get up petitions, to arrange public meetings, to spread pamphlets, and to aid in sending men to Parliament who were in favor of Catholic emancipation. Its members paid an annual assessment of a guinea ($5.25); and it was headed by a select committee, to whom was committed the work of carrying forward its objects. In no long time the association contained half a million Irishmen. In order to obtain funds for keeping up the agitation, the Irish Catholics were asked to contribute a penny a month. This was called the "Catholic rent," and soon produced no less a sum than five hundred pounds a week. So rapidly did the society increase, that the government became alarmed. It was finally suppressed by law (1825). But O'Connell was equal to the occasion. He simply changed the name of the society, and went on with his agitation.

At last O'Connell resorted to a bold expedient. He desired to show England that the Irish nation demanded political liberty for the Catholics. The law forbade a Catholic to sit in Parliament; but it did not say that a Catholic could not be a candidate, and be elected to Parliament. A vacancy occurred in the Irish county of Clare. O'Connell suddenly presented himself as a candidate. After a stormy contest, he was triumphantly elected. But he refused to take the oath in the House of Commons, for the oath rejected the Catholic faith. Both England and Ireland were now wrought up to a high pitch of excitement. It was seen that, unless O'Connell's demand was conceded, civil war would ensue. The Duke of Wellington, a Tory, was prime minister. In spite of his dislike of Catholic emancipation, he felt compelled to grant it. A bill was brought in, which admitted the Catholics to Parliament, and to civil and military office. It passed both Houses, was signed by George the Fourth, and became a law of the land (I829).

By the provisions of the new law the oath which compelled a Catholic, before he could sit in Parliament, to renounce his religion, was done away with. All he had now to do was to swear that he would sustain the Protestant succession and the reigning dynasty on the throne, and that he would not injure the Protestant religion. Any Roman Catholic might now sit in either House of Parliament, except that no Catholic priest could be a member of the Commons. O'Connell took his seat as member for Clare. His triumph was brilliant, but was not entirely complete; for, while Parliament gave Catholic emancipation, it at the same time restricted the suffrage in Ireland. Before the passage of Catholic emancipation, Irishmen who held freehold estates, the rent of which exceeded forty shillings, could vote for members of Parliament. But now a law was passed raising the qualification for voting to ten pounds; that is, no Irishman could now vote in a county, who did not have an estate valued at a ten-pounds' rental. A few years later, the ten-pounds qualification was extended to the boroughs as well as the counties, and thus included all Ireland.

This restriction of the Irish suffrage deprived six-eighths of the former electors of their votes. It naturally lessened the satisfaction afforded by the emancipation of the Catholics. It enabled the landlords to deal more severely with their tenants, and thus brought about evictions, distress, deeds of violence, and a renewal of the harsh laws of coercion. Meanwhile O'Connell and his adherents did not rest content with the victory which their boldness and persistency had wrung from the British Parliament. The political rights of the Catholics had been achieved. O'Connell had learned the power and successful results of a vigorously sustained agitation, conducted without violating law, and without resort to physical force. He now resolved to apply this effective method to another and yet more important purpose. This purpose was to repeal the union of the Parliaments, to recall into existence the separate Irish Parliament, and thus to restore to Ireland the self-government enjoyed during the last eight years of the eighteenth century.

The Three Years' Famine

The Irish Catholics, who comprised an immense majority of the country, had long felt it a bitter grievance that they were forced to pay for the support of the Protestant church. Under the law, every Irishman was compelled to pay his tithe, or the tenth part of his cattle, to maintain the Protestant bishops, clergy, and sacred edifices. The wretched condition of the country now drove the peasants into a stubborn resistance to this tax. The "tithe proctors," as the agents who collected the tithe were called, were utterly hated, and were often subjected to violence.

Many of the cattle seized for tithes were maimed or killed; nor did any one dare to buy the cattle so seized, when they were put up at auction, for fear of the vengeance of the peasants. A large force of soldiers had to be used to enforce the collection of these tithes. At last, in the first year of the reign of Victoria, a law was passed by which the peasants, or tenants, were relieved of the payment of tithes, which were now imposed upon the landlords (1838). But this did not always prove a benefit to the tenants; for the landlords, in many cases, raised their rents so as to cover the amount of the tithes.

A short time before, two reforms relating to Ireland had been adopted, and had proved of benefit to the country. One was the establishment of a system of elementary schools; the other, the reduction of the number of Protestant bishops, by which the cost of the established church was considerably lessened. In the same year that the tithes were transferred to the landlords, occurred the great temperance revival in Ireland, led by the ardent, eloquent young priest, Father Mathew; in the course of which nearly two hundred thousand Irish subscribed to the pledge not to drink any intoxicating liquors. The results of this revival upon crime in Ireland, and upon the habits and condition of the people, were most beneficent.

It was while Father Mathew was stirring the popular heart with his fervent appeals in behalf of temperance, that Daniel O'Connell entered upon his second great agitation,—that to dissolve the union of the Parliaments, and to restore the old "Grattan's" Parliament (I838). In doing this, he pursued the same methods which he had so successfully used in bringing about the political emancipation of the Catholics. O'Connell's first step was to form a "Repeal Association," similar to the "Catholic Association" which had done such effective work. In no long time the society had grown into a numerous and enthusiastic body. It was mainly composed of the middle and lower classes, and there were many more Catholics than Protestants in its ranks. Yet it contained many Protestants, and many well-educated young men of both creeds joined the movement. O'Connell was the leading spirit. He organized monster meetings in Ireland at which he declaimed about the wrongs of the land, recalled the cruelties, tyrannies, and miseries of the past, and wrought the people up to a high pitch of excitement. Money flowed into the coffers of the society. The English government at first tolerated the repeal meetings, in the hope that the agitation would in time cease. But as it became more alarming and formidable, the ministry resolved to suppress the gatherings of the association.

It was announced that a great repeal meeting would take place at Clontarf (the scene of the decisive conflict between the Irish and the Danes) on October 8 (I843). O'Connell and other repeal chiefs were to be present, and address the multitude. The English ministry issued a proclamation forbidding the meeting. The more ardent repealers insisted that the government should be defied, and that the meeting should be held in spite of its prohibition. But O'Connell, who was always opposed to the use of physical force in aiming to obtain Irish rights, declared that the proclamation must be obeyed. The Clontarf meeting was not held. O'Connell and eight of his lieutenants were arrested, and tried for treason. They were at first convicted by a packed jury; but their decision was overruled by the House of Lords, and O'Connell and his companions were set free. The success .of the government in vigorously dealing with the repeal agitation gave that agitation its death-blow. O'Connell's popularity with the Irish masses rapidly waned. The cause of repeal was abandoned by many of its former leaders; and in a short time was followed by another Irish agitation, which had an altogether different end in view.

But before a new struggle was to take place on behalf of Irish liberty, the island was doomed to a terrible calamity. A famine, more extensive and devastating than had ever before desolated the Irish people, spread through the land. Once more wet and chilly seasons caused repeated failures of the potato crop (1845-47). A winter of dreadful distress among the poor peasantry ensued. Thousands were unable to pay their rent; and when the landlords, as was the case in many instances, tried to force them to pay it, they resorted, in their desperation, to violence and outrage. The government made several efforts to relieve the distress of the Irish. The corn-laws, which placed a high duty on bread-stuffs, were repealed. Large sums were voted to employ the starving people as laborers on the building of roads and public buildings. At one time, more than seven hundred thousand men were thus provided with work. Yet the second year of the famine was worse than the first. The abolition of the corn-laws did not bring the expected relief to Ireland; nor did the large employment of men on public works suffice to supply the starving families with sufficient food to keep them alive.

It is a strange and startling fact that at this very time, when thousands of families were utterly famished, Ireland was sending abroad more shiploads of wheat and other grain and provisions, than any country in the world. There was plenty of food; but it was beyond the reach of the poor, rent-ridden, hungry Irish peasants. Other sufferings were soon added to that of famine. The wretched huts, the miserably scant clothing of the peasants, exposed them mercilessly to cold storms and winds. Fevers and other contagious disorders spread rapidly among the villages and farming-districts. Men, women, and children died daily by hundreds, often breathing their last breath by the road-side, in the ditches, or in the fields among the blighted potato crops. Charitable societies and committees were formed for the purpose of supplying, as far as possible, food for the starving multitude. Cooked provisions were energetically distributed by these societies and the more humane landlords. But the calamity proved too wide-spread to be checked by any exertion that was or could be made.

One important result of this terrible and long-continued famine was to drive many thousands of the Irish to seek homes in other countries. Most of these came across the Atlantic to Canada and the United States. One hundred thousand landed, in one year, in Canada alone. Many of the emigrants were emaciated, and stricken with disease. Large numbers died on shipboard, or soon after their arrival in America. In a less degree the tide of emigration carried many of the Irish into England. When the famine began, the population of Ireland had comprised eight millions of people. When, at last, the frightful scourge had spent its force, the population of Ireland had been reduced, by death and emigration, to less than six millions. The country had lost two millions of its people. The severity of many of the landlords, and the "coercion" laws which Parliament had passed to suppress the desperate acts of the peasants during the period of the famine, rekindled the hatred of England in Irish breasts. The famine thus prepared the Irish for the next movement for trying to throw off the English yoke altogether.

Later Revolts

While O'Connell's agitation to restore the Irish Parliament was going on, a new party came into existence in Ireland. This party consisted, to a large degree, of young men, who desired, not only that should the Irish Parliament be revived, but that Ireland should become altogether independent of England. Its members were not satisfied with the moderate demands of O'Connell; nor did they accept O'Connell's idea, that in no event should Irishmen fight for their liberties. They believed that when all other means of securing the freedom of their country failed, Irishmen should take up arms in her cause. The leading spirits of this "Young Ireland" party, as it was called, were Thomas Davis, John Blake Dillon, Gavan Duffy, Smith O'Brien, John Mitchel, Thomas Francis Meagher, and John Martin. All of them were young men. Dillon and Duffy were Catholics. O'Brien, Mitchel, Davis, and Martin were Protestants. Every one of these men was an undoubted patriot.

The first step of the Young Ireland party was to found a newspaper, which they called "The Nation" (1842). It forcibly advocated Ireland's cause. It presented vivid pictures of the wrongs under which Ireland was suffering. It did not approve of O'Connell's course and methods. The ability with which "The Nation" was conducted won for it wide-spread influence in Ireland. Soon after O'Connell's death, John Mitchel, impatient of the delay of the Young Irelanders in taking up arms, founded another paper, "The United Irishman," which boldly advocated insurrection. Mitchel was arrested, tried for treason, and transported beyond seas for fourteen years. Immediately another paper, "The Irish Tribune," edited by Kevin Izod O'Doherty, was issued, urging the people to rebel; and soon after, yet another journal, edited by John Martin, and devoted to the same object, made its appearance. O'Doherty, Martin, and others were arrested; and the government made a strenuous attempt to crush out Irish disaffection by suspending the habeas corpus act.

These events were followed by the breaking-out of the third French revolution. The Young Ireland party caught from France the spirit of revolt (1848). Smith O'Brien took the lead of the Irish insurgents. With Dillon and Meagher, he made a desperate effort to persuade the people at various points to rise in arms. The attempt, however, was a disheartening failure. In two or three places disturbances occurred, but the triumph of the government was easy. The leaders were speedily captured. O'Brien and Meagher were transported for life, and O'Doherty and Martin for ten years. Dillon escaped to the United States. Duffy was released, after a failure to convict him. In the following year, another feeble attempt at insurrection was made, but was quickly suppressed. The wretchedness of the Irish tenantry again caused a marked increase in emigration. The landlords exacted rents which it was impossible for the tenants to pay; and, when they did not pay, the landlords remorselessly turned them out of their little holdings, often to starve or freeze to death by the roadside.

For many years after the failure of the rising of Young Ireland, indeed, the history of the island consists of the story of the miseries produced by the Irish land-system. Not only did the landlords demand high rents, and "evict," or turn out, the tenants unable to pay them; but they also reaped the advantage of the added value of the land, caused by the improvements made upon it by the tenants. When such improvements had been added, the rents were raised in consequence of the increase thus effected in the value of the land. This was called "rack-renting." The officers of the law aided the landlords to collect their rents and to turn out their tenants. The tenants had no protection from any source. Thousands were thus reduced to the most desperate poverty. The result was, that many acts of violence took place in different parts of the island. Landlords and their agents went about in peril of their lives. Cattle were maimed; and houses, barns, and hay-ricks were burned. The attempts made by the British Parliament to remedy these terrible evils in Ireland were fitful, and did not prove effectual.

Ten years after the suppression of the Young Ireland revolt, another and far more formidable society was formed, for the purpose of obtaining the separation of Ireland from Great Britain by force of arms (1858). The leaders of the Young Ireland revolt had been amnestied, and were once more free men. Some of them had returned home; and these entered upon a fresh effort to secure freedom for their country. They formed what is now famous as the "Fenian brotherhood." At its head was James Stevens, a resolute and able man, who had taken part in the rising of 1848. At first it seemed as if the Fenian conspiracy would be as short-lived as that of Young Ireland. Its secret meetings were revealed to the government, and its chiefs were arrested and thrown into jail. But it was aided and supported, to an extent that no previous conspiracy had been, by the Irish in the United States. Branches of the society were formed in American cities and towns. Funds were raised, and men provided, for the operations of the brotherhood.

In the year following the close of the American civil war (1866), the Fenians had become a widespread and powerful association. A Fenian paper, "The Irish People," had been established. Stevens, the "head center" of the Fenians, who had been captured, had escaped from prison, and was again actively employed in the projects of the society. The arrest and transportation of some of the other leaders had only increased the popularity of the brotherhood among the Irish. The American Fenians organized a well-trained force, which invaded Canada, defeated the Canadian volunteers sent to oppose them, and were only deterred from a further advance by the intervention of the United States. At about the same time a plot was formed by the Fenians in England to seize the castle of Chester, and thence make a descent upon Ireland. This project was revealed to the British cabinet by treacherous Fenians, and was therefore not attempted. Early in the following year, the Fenians tried to incite a general revolt in Ireland; but this, too, proved an utter failure. The government had again suspended the habeas corpus; and, following upon the discomfiture of the Fenian plans, large numbers of those who had been concerned in them, were arrested, hastily tried, convicted, and punished with imprisonment and transportation.

In spite of all these failures, Fenianism was not yet crushed. Two startling events, which took place in the same year (1867), reminded the world that its fierce spirit still survived. The first of these events occurred at Manchester, England. Two Fenians were one day being taken in a prison-van from the court-house, where they had just been convicted, to jail. As the van was passing through the streets, it was assailed by a party of armed Irishmen, who attempted to rescue the prisoners. In the struggle which ensued, a policeman named Brett was killed by the assailants. The latter were captured; and, after a brief trial, three of them—O'Brien, Larkin, and Allen—were condemned to death and executed. Their fate caused intense agitation throughout Ireland. The three men were looked upon as martyrs; and great gatherings took place in Ireland, to celebrate their funerals. Many prominent Englishmen tried to save their lives, but the appeals of men like John Bright and John Stuart Mill proved unavailing.

THE MANCHESTER TRAGEDY.

Less than a month after the execution of the Manchester rescuers, a barbarous attempt was made to blow up Clerkenwell prison in London. Some Fenians were incarcerated in this prison, and one of their comrades, a man named Barrett, took it into his head to try to release them by shattering the prison-wall with gunpowder. He placed a barrel of powder near the wall, and set it off. The result was, not to effect the escape of the Fenian prisoners, but to kill several innocent persons, and to injure many more. Nothing could be more stupid or cruel than this crime. It made Fenianism obnoxious to many Irishmen who had before sympathized with the society, and it aroused indignation throughout the world. Barrett was tried and hung. But the Manchester and Clerkenwell affairs had at least one striking result. They showed how bitterly the Irish continued to regard the unjust laws, institutions, and oppressions, to which they were still subjected by English power; and they aroused a great English statesman to sternly resolve that he would seek out, and try to remedy, the evils which had created and fostered Irish discontent.

Gladstone's Irish Reforms

In the year following the Manchester and Clerkenwell tragedies, William Ewart Gladstone became, for the first time, prime minister of England (1868). He was already a statesman of long experience, and of unsurpassed genius. He had been a member of the House of Commons for more than thirty years, and had repeatedly sat in previous cabinets. After the retirement from office of Lord Russell (i866), Mr. Gladstone had be-come the acknowledged leader of the Liberal party. He had entered public life as a Tory. But in the course of years his political convictions had constantly become broader and more liberal. He had, moreover, won the confidence of the English people by the long-proved sincerity, uprightness, and moral elevation of his public acts and of his personal character. No statesman could have been better fitted to deal with a subject so difficult, so important, and so replete with moral aspects, as was that of Ireland.

Mr. Gladstone perceived that it was necessary to deal without delay, and with resolute energy, with the state of Ireland. The disaffection of the Irish to English rule, and the great abuses which had grown up under, and had been fostered by, that rule in Ireland, had been so persistently revealed throughout the period succeeding the union of the Parliaments, that it was vitally important, if possible, to apply a remedy. Mr. Gladstone set about the task of removing some of the chief grievances of which the Irish justly complained. His earnest desire was to remove them, and to reconcile the Irish to English rule, by getting rid, as far as possible, of those features of English rule which fostered the discontent of the Irish. Those features were, as he declared, three: "the established church, the system of land tenure, and the system of national education." With each of these he proposed to deal, by framing and passing laws which would either greatly modify them, or get rid of them altogether.

One of Mr. Gladstone's first acts as prime minister was to assert, in the House of Commons, that the Irish Protestant church, as a church recognized and sustained by the state, must cease to exist. It was the church of the small minority of Irishmen; yet it was to a large degree supported, on compulsion, by the contributions of Irish Catholics. It had not increased, and had utterly failed to fulfill the mission entrusted to it, of converting the masses of the Irish to the Protestant faith. It held property to the amount of £14,000,000, for the most part confiscated in preceding centuries from Catholic owners. It was, in short, a slothful and stagnant church, enjoying wealth for which it made no return, and always prominent, in the eyes of the immense majority of the Irish, as a symbol of English oppression. Mr. Gladstone therefore brought in a bill to "disestablish and disendow" the Irish church; that is, to deprive it of its position as the state church, and to take away from it a part, at least, of the property it had, in the process of years, acquired.

EVICTING TENANTS.

After a long struggle, in the course of which the House of Lords once rejected it, the bill was finally passed, and became a law (July 26, 1869). From and after January 1, 1871, the Irish state church ceased to exist. At the same time, the grant which had long been made from the English treasury to the Irish Catholic college of Maynooth, was withdrawn. Only a portion of the property of the Irish church was taken from it. Over £10,000,000 still remained in the hands of its bishops and clergy. The sum of which it was deprived (about £4,000,000) was reserved, to be devoted to the relief of the Irish if a famine, or some other terrible scourge, should come upon them. The next object of Mr. Gladstone's attack was the system of the Irish land. The powers of the landlords, used most often cruelly and oppressively, formed a far more serious material grievance to the Irish masses than the Irish church. The question, too, was a far harder one to solve. To deal justly by the landlords on the one hand, and the tenants on the other, was a task calculated to tax the ability of the greatest statesman.

Mr. Gladstone made two efforts to settle the relations between the Irish landlords and their tenants, so that the rights of both might be protected. His first attempt was made in the year following the disestablishment of the Irish church (1870), and his second attempt was made eleven years after (1881). In his first Irish land bill, Mr. Gladstone sought to lessen the power of the landlords to turn the tenants out of their holdings at the landlords' will and caprice; to secure to the tenants payment for any improvements they might make on their plots of land; to enable tenants, by easy methods, to become absolute owners of the land they tilled; and to give tenants the right to sell out their leases to others, if they wished to do so. Various causes combined, however, to render this measure, though well intended, an ineffectual one. The landlords evaded its provisions, and induced the tenants to make agreements which deprived them of the privileges the new law gave them. The cost of appealing to the courts, to support their rights under the law, was too great for the poor peasants, who lived constantly from hand to mouth; and it soon appeared that Mr. Gladstone's measure was practically a failure.

To improve the system of education in Ireland was the next object of Mr. Gladstone's exertions. Much, indeed, had been done in the previous twenty years to remove the inequalities between the Irish Catholics and Protestants in public instruction, and to give the Irish larger opportunities than before to educate their children. The children of the poorer classes had, to a certain extent, been supplied with common schools. Three colleges, devoted to purely secular instruction, had been established at Belfast, Galway, and Cork, and had been grouped into a university. The Catholic college at Maynooth had been supported in part by grants made from the public treasury. Trinity College, Dublin, moreover, the ancient Irish college, which had once excluded Catholics both from its government, its professorships, and its classes, had recently been thrown open to students of all creeds. The Catholics, however, did not feel that, in the matter of education, they had been placed on an entire equality with their Protestant countrymen; and Mr. Gladstone resolved to try to remove the cause of their complaint.

Three years after the passage of the first land bill, Mr. Gladstone introduced a measure re-organizing the system of Irish education (1873). He proposed to set up a great Irish university in place of those already existing, which were to be abolished. In the new institution, neither theology nor history was to be taught.

The measure met with prompt disaster. It was defeated in the House of Commons by a small majority, and was the cause of the downfall of Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues. They remained at the head of affairs a year longer, it is true; but the blow dealt by the vote on the Irish education bill was fatal to the power of the ministry. After such an event, Mr. Gladstone could not hope to deal successfully with any large measure of reform, either for Ireland or for Great Britain. His successor, Mr. Disraeli, carried a measure which swept away the "queen's colleges" of Belfast and Cork, and which set up a board of examiners, who were empowered to examine Irish students, and to confer degrees upon them. He also devoted £1,000,000 of the money taken from the Irish church, to the support of certain Irish schools.

While English statesmen were thus attempting to make laws which would remove the long and deep-seated discontent of the Irish, a fresh project was being matured by Irish leaders to secure, by agitation, broader objects than those pursued by Mr. Gladstone. A league was formed for the purpose of advocating and urging ''Home Rule" (1871). ''Home Rule" meant, that Ireland should be allowed to make the laws which related to her own local affairs and interests. It was proposed by the league that for this object, an Irish Parliament should be created. The new association was composed of both Protestants and Catholics. Its leader was Isaac Butt, a Protestant lawyer of great ability. Its growth was rapid and, at the next parliamentary election succeeding its formation, fifty-one Home Rulers were chosen by Irish districts to sit in the House of Commons (1874). Mr. Butt and his followers soon found, however, that there was, at the time, a more pressing subject than that of Home Rule which demanded their energies and advocacy. This was the question of the land.

The condition of the tenants and peasants was still wretched. Mr. Gladstone's land-act had failed to relieve them. The landlords were still tyrannical, overbearing, and powerful. Meanwhile the potato-crop again partly failed, and once more Ireland was threatened with famine. The Home-Rule leaders, therefore, for the time abandoned their demand for a local legislature, and vigorously took up the land question. They urged that the Irish tenants should be granted "fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale;" that is, that they should not be turned out of their land so long as they paid their rent, that that rent should be a fair one, and that they should have the right to sell their unexpired leases if they so wished. Soon after this agitation to reform the land system had been begun, Mr. Butt died, and was replaced by Mr. Shaw as the leader of the league (1879). Mr. Shaw's leadership was brief. He was speedily forced to give way to a new group of Irish chiefs, who were destined to make Irish agitation for Irish rights more formidable and effective than it had ever been before.

The Land League

While the Home-Rule league was pursuing its agitation under the lead of Isaac Butt, a quiet, unobtrusive young man had taken his seat for the first time in the House of Commons, as the member for the county of Meath (1875). At first he took no part in the proceedings of the House, and attracted little attention. He was barely thirty years of age. He was a Protestant and a landlord, and was descended from a line of ancestors who had, now and then, become eminent as leaders of Mae Irish cause. On his mother's side, he was the grandson of the American commodore Stewart, who had won, in the war of 1812, the sturdy nickname of "Old Ironsides." This was Charles Stewart Parnell.

A few years after he entered Parliament, a certain section of the Irish members became dissatisfied with the moderate methods and aims of Mr. Butt, and of his successor, Mr. Shaw. This section desired more vigorous and more aggressive action in urging the claims of Ireland; and, almost as soon as it was formed as a distinct party, Charles Stewart Parnell became its unquestioned leader. Meanwhile another Irishman, who had been condemned and imprisoned as a Fenian, and whose parents had suffered from a cruel eviction from their land, was maturing a scheme, which, when put into operation, was destined to achieve important benefits for Ireland. This Fenian convict was Michael Davitt; and his scheme was, to establish a vast "Land League," the purposes of which were to get rid of landlordism in Ireland altogether, and to make the tillers of the soil its owners (1879). The Land League soon be-came a large and powerful organization. That advanced section of the Home-Rule party which had now adopted Mr. Parnell as leader, entered warmly into Mr. Davitt's plan; and Mr. Parnell was chosen as president of the league. Meetings in promotion of the league's purpose1were held everywhere in Ireland. Its membership ere long reached half a mil-lion of Irishmen. Branches of the league were also formed in the United States; and Mr. Parnell him-self went to the United States to promote its interests, and to raise money to aid the poor Irish tenants, who were now suffering from a famine caused by repeated failures of the crops.

The agitation of the Land League was soon followed by the second attempt on the part of Mr. Glad-stone to settle the Irish land difficulty on a just and sound basis. Mr. Gladstone had returned to power, for the second time, as Prime Minister (1880). He had at his back a very large majority of the just-elected House of Commons. Sixty Home Rulers, most of whom accepted the leadership and policy of Mr. Parnell, sat in the new Parliament. Several attempts were made to give temporary relief to the starving Irish tenantry. But the Land League was not satisfied. It pursued its ends with ardor and energy. So violent, in the view of the government, did the agitation become, that Mr. Gladstone felt compelled to resort to stringent measures to check the operations of the league. A new coercion bill was passed. It gave authority to the lord-lieutenant to arrest and imprison any Irish-man suspected of treason, and to keep him in prison for an indefinite period, without a trial. The coercion act was followed by an arms act, under which the officers of the law could search Irish houses for fire-arms, and seize them if found.

The leaders of the league, notwithstanding these repressive laws, continued to make fiery and exciting addresses before vast meetings of Irishmen. Then the ministry went a step farther. Several of the Irish leaders were arrested and tried for conspiracy. But the jury failed to convict them. Soon after Michael Davitt, the founder of the league, and rather Sheehy, a vehement league speaker, were arrested and thrown into prison. At the same time many less important members of the league were consigned to Irish jails. Even these harsh measures did not awe those leaders of the league who were still at large. Incendiary speeches continued to excite the Irish. Then the ministry arrested the chiefs of the league under the coercion act. Messrs. Parnell, Dillon (the son of the Dillon of "Young Ireland" days), Sexton, O'Brien, and O'Kelly were suddenly committed to Kilmainham jail. From their prison cells these leaders issued a proclamation to the Irish tenants, urging them to pay no rent until the prisoners were released. Then the government declared that the Land League had acted in violation of the law, and ordered its complete suppression.

Having, by these strong measures, striven to restore the power of the government in Ireland, Mr. Gladstone set to work upon his second land scheme. He introduced this into the House of Commons in the year after his return to office (1881). The new bill created land courts in Ireland, which were intended to settle all disagreements between the landlords and their tenants. To these courts was given the power to fix the rents to be paid by tenants for a period of fifteen years; to enable tenants to sell the "good will" of their holdings; and to protect tenants from eviction for any cause, except the non-payment of the rents established by the courts. The bill, however, did not provide any adequate method for enabling the tenants to become the absolute owners of the soil they cultivated. To secure this ownership was the aim of the Land League. The Irish leaders refused to accept Mr. Gladstone's bill as a final settlement of the land question; yet they did not oppose it. The bill, after a series of long debates, finally became a law (Aug. 22, 1881); and the land courts created by it began their sessions. They were soon over-crowded with tenants who applied to have their rents fixed, and the tenure of their holdings secured.

The courts moved slowly; and the result was that, from month to month, only a very small proportion of the thousands of tenants who sought their protection, received it. Within a year, it had become apparent that Mr. Gladstone's second attempt to secure justice to the downtrodden tenantry of Ireland, was destined, like his first, to fall far short of satisfying the demands and needs of the Irish people. Meanwhile the Irish tenants were suffering as grievously as ever from the tyranny of the landlords. Impoverished by a succession of bad harvests, they could not pay their rents; and large numbers of evictions took place. The suppression of the Land League was followed by the formation of secret societies and conspiracies in Ireland, which inaugurated a reign of crime and violence. It was evident that the coercion act on the one hand, and the land bill on the other, had failed to restore order to Ireland.

Mr. Gladstone, however, did not yet despair of satisfying the Irish with English rule. He now released from prison Mr. Parnell and his companions, and Michael Davitt. He recalled Mr. Forster, the chief secretary for Ireland, under whose auspices coercion had been rigorously carried out; and appointed Lord Frederick Cavendish, a younger son of the Duke of Devonshire, in Mr. Forster's place. At the same time Earl Cowper was succeeded as lord-lieutenant by Earl Spencer. It was clear that Mr. Gladstone had made up his mind to adopt a conciliatory policy towards Ireland.

Just at this moment an appalling crime startled the world, and forced Mr. Gladstone to abandon, for the while at least, his generous intention. As Lord Frederick Cavendish, the new chief secretary, and Thomas Burke, a prominent official of the Irish government, were walking, one day, through Phoenix Park, Dublin, they were set upon by a band of ruffians, and murdered (May 6, 1882). There could be no doubt that this hideous crime had been committed by Irish conspirators. It at once deprived Ireland of the sympathy of Englishmen, and was speedily followed by a more severe coercion act than that which had preceded it.

The new coercion act empowered three Irish judges to try conspirators without a jury; and authorized the lord-lieutenant to cause houses to be searched; to have any suspicious persons who were abroad after dark arrested; to suppress newspapers; and to order brief and summary trials of suspected persons. With this severe measure, however, Mr. Gladstone carried through Parliament a bill to partially relieve the poorer Irish tenants of their arrears of rent. In cases where rent was due for the three years in which the harvest had failed (1578-80), the tenant paid one year's rent, the treasury one year's rent, and the landlords were required to remit one year's rent. This measure brought relief to large numbers of the Irish farmers. Coercion, on the other hand, failed to restore order in Ireland. An attempt was made upon the life of justice Lawson, and upon that of a juryman named Field, who had favored the conviction of Irish prisoners. Once more the government arrested and imprisoned Michael Davitt and two other Irish leaders for treasonable speeches.

The murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were at last discovered and suffered the penalty of their crime upon the scaffold. It was found that a secret band, called the "Invincible Society," had not only planned and carried out the killing of Cavendish and Burke, but had also attacked justice Lawson and the juryman Field. The Invincible Society was betrayed, and its operations were revealed by James Carey, who was its founder and leading spirit. James Carey had been a member of the Dublin common council, and was a man of good social position. In return for his betrayal of his confederates, he received a free pardon. Five of the Invincibles were convicted and hung, mainly upon Carey's evidence; and several others were sentenced to varying periods of imprisonment. James Carey, with his family, left Ireland, to take up his abode at the Cape of Good Hope. Just before landing at the Cape, he was killed on board ship by an Irishman named O'Donnell. O'Donnell was taken to England, tried, and executed.

Soon after these events, secret societies, composed of Irish extremists, began to resort to the use of dynamite, as a means of striking terror into the hearts of the English. A succession of explosions by dynamite took place in various parts of London, and in other English towns. Several of the London railway stations were the scenes of more or less violent destruction. The most considerable of the dynamite explosions were those which took place, on the same day, in Westminster Flail and the Tower of London (January, 1885). In most cases the perpetrators of these acts escaped capture. They at least succeeded in causing a feeling of alarm and suspense throughout England. Although the criminals were not always brought to justice, it was well known that the dynamite explosions were the work of Irishmen, and that this method of creating terror was supported, in the main, by funds collected in America.

Gladstone Proposes Home Rule

The Irish leaders were not dismayed by the suppression of the Land League. Within a year another association, called the "National League," took its place, with Mr. Parnell at its head. The objects of the new league were announced to be, to make the tillers of the soil its owners, and to secure an Irish Parliament for the making of Irish laws. It was not long before the National League had become as large and as formidable as the Land League had been. Branches of it were formed in every part of Ireland, and in the United States. The support of the Irish agitation by Irishmen in America, indeed, had now become a very important feature of its progress. Funds poured in from across the Atlantic, and the movement was to a large degree sustained by American money. Mr. Parnell found himself at the head of a small but resolute group of young, eloquent, fearless Irish members in the House of Commons. The "Nationalists," as they were called, resorted to obstruction of the business of the House, whenever they thought it useful to the Irish cause to do so. They kept up an active agitation in Ireland; and so indefatigable had the Irish party grown in pursuit of its ends, that branches of the league were formed and flourished in many English cities and towns.

The time had now come, in the judgment of Mr. Gladstone, the prime minister, to extend the right of suffrage to large numbers of the subjects of the queen, who had hitherto been excluded from it. Household suffrage was already enjoyed by the dwellers in the towns and villages of England, Scotland, and Wales. Mr. Gladstone now proposed that household suffrage should be extended to those who lived in the counties, that is, in the rural districts; and also that it should be given to the people of Ireland, both in the towns and in the country. He introduced a reform bill with this purpose in view into the House of Commons (1884). The bill was strenuously opposed by the Tories, and was once rejected by the House of Lords. But it was re-introduced in the autumn, and then became a law. Its main provision was that every subject of the queen in Great Britain and Ireland, who was twenty-one years of age, and who lived in a dwelling owned or rented by himself, should have the right to vote for members of Parliament.

Immediately after the passage of this great and beneficent measure, a bill to "redistribute" the seats of the House of Commons also became a law. This bill made the electoral districts more equal in population, and thus formed a House of Commons more completely representative of the will of the people. In the summer after these reforms had been carried, the Gladstone ministry was defeated on a financial question, by a combination of the Tories and Irish Nationalists; and the Marquis of Salisbury, with a Tory ministry, came into power (June, 1885). Parliament was accordingly dissolved; and a general election for a new House of Commons, held under the new extension of the suffrage, took place in the autumn. Nearly two millions of voters had been added to the electoral lists in the three kingdoms. The greatly increased number of voters in Ireland made it certain that Mr. Parnell's party would be much stronger in the new Parliament than ever be-fore. The result of the election was, that neither of the two great English parties secured a majority in the House. The Liberals elected 333 members; the Tories, 251; and the Home-Rule followers of Mr. Parnell, 86. Thus Mr. Parnell and his followers held the balance of power between the Liberals and Tories; since, by uniting with either, they would make a majority of the House.

Upon their accession to office, the marquis of Salisbury and his colleagues had refused to renew the severe coercion act of their predecessors, and had declared their intention to try to keep order in Ireland by the ordinary law. But very soon after the meeting of the newly elected Parliament (January, 1886), the ministry declared that they should revive coercion. Upon this, the Nationalists united with the Liberals, and defeated the ministry on a resolution relating to the English land question. The marquis of Salisbury thereupon resigned office, and for the third time Mr. Gladstone became prime minister. No sooner had the Liberals, under their great and venerable chief, returned to power, than it became known that, at last, Mr. Gladstone was ready to yield to the demand of the Irish Nationalists for an Irish Parliament. Several of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues in the ministry—chief among whom was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, the leader of the radical section of. the Liberals—resigned office, because they could not support the prime minister in his new Irish policy. Already several eminent Liberals—Lord Hartington, Lord Selborne, the Duke of Argyll, and Mr. Goschen—had refused to join the ministry, foreseeing that, if they did so, they would probably be called upon to support Home Rule.

GLADSTONE EXPLAINING HIS SCHEME FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND

Mr. Gladstone promptly filled up the vacant posts in his ministry, and on an ever memorable night (April, 1886) brought a bill into the House of Commons, which, if passed into law, would establish a Parliament in Dublin, with power to legislate on Irish affairs. He proposed that the Irish Parliament should consist of two "orders," but of only one house or chamber. One of the orders was to consist, at first, of the Irish peers, and afterwards of members elected by a restricted suffrage. The other order was to be composed of members chosen, as now, by household suffrage. The first order was to have the right to suspend an act passed by the House, for the period of three years. Other safeguards were added, to protect the Protestant minority in Ireland. To the Parliament so formed, Mr. Gladstone proposed that all powers should be given which would not conflict with the preservation and unity of the British empire. It would have control of the police, of education, and of Irish finances. The British Parliament, however, would still levy and collect customs and excise in Ireland; and Ireland would pay a tribute to Great Britain of 4,000,000 a year, as her share in sup-porting the empire.

With his Home-Rule bill, Mr. Gladstone proposed a measure to purchase, with funds from the British treasury, the estates of the Irish landlords, and to parcel out and sell the land thus acquired to the tenants and farmers. This measure, however, did not compel the landlords to sell their estates; it only enabled them to do so if they wished. The object of the bill was that which the Nationalists had long demanded,—the ownership of the Irish land by those who cultivate it. The debates on the Home Rule bill were prolonged through the spring, and were earnest, eloquent, and exciting. Never did the British House of Commons witness more thrilling scenes and episodes. Never did the sturdy old leader of the Liberals rise to loftier heights of fervent eloquence and heart-stirring appeal. He pleaded that Ireland had hitherto been ruled by force, and that the time had come to win her by justice and by love. He exhausted every resource of argument, persuasion, and historical illustration, and employed every weapon of forensic warfare, to carry his bill. The parliamentary conflict raged for weeks, as probably it had never raged before.

The vote on the Home-Rule bill resulted in its defeat by a majority of thirty. The Nationalists under Mr. Parnell, who had accepted Mr. Gladstone's measure with gratitude and delight, and who had freely declared that it would satisfy the aspirations of Ireland, unanimously supported the prime minister by speech and vote. But nearly a hundred Liberals joined the Tories in their inveterate hostility to the bill, and thereby caused its overthrow. Mr. Gladstone would not accept the vote of the House of Commons as final. He had adopted the policy of Home Rule, and was determined to stand resolutely and loyally by it. Although Parliament was less than a year old, he promptly dissolved it, and appealed to the people on the issue of Home Rule for Ireland. An election ensued which was notable for its brevity and its excitement (July, 1886). The Liberals who had deserted Mr. Gladstone in the struggle over Home Rule, and had joined his antagonists, made an alliance with the Tories throughout the electoral districts.

The result of the election was that a majority opposed to Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy was chosen to the new House of Commons. The Tories won 317 seats; the anti-Gladstone Liberals, 78; the Gladstone Liberals, 190; and the Irish Nationalists, 85. No one of these parties, therefore, could command an absolute majority of the House, which was composed of 670 members. But the Tories, combined with their allies, the anti-Gladstone Liberals, had a majority of one hundred and twenty over their Home-Rule opponents; since the whole force in favor of Home Rule, including the Gladstone Liberals and the Nationalists, numbered only 275 votes. As soon as the result of the election was fully known, Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues resigned office; and for the second time, the Marquis of Salisbury, at the head of a Tory cabinet, came into power. The new Parliament was promptly called together (Aug. 5, 1886), and entered upon its career attended by the watchful interest of the world. Ireland was still the uppermost, almost the exclusive, political topic before the people of the United Kingdom; and all men looked forward earnestly to see what new phase that great and pressing question would assume.

At this engrossing and critical point in Irish history, this narrative must be brought to a close. After an almost continuous struggle for liberty extending through more than seven hundred years, during which Ireland has never consented to rest contented under the rule of the Englishman, the Irish people seem at last to have reached a position in which the right of self-government cannot be much longer refused to them. The masterly conduct of the Irish agitation by Charles Stewart Parnell and his patriotic lieutenants; the patient attitude of the mass of the Irish people during the conflict for Home Rule; their instant appreciation of and gratitude to the great English statesman, who not only championed, but absorbed himself in devotion to their cause,—have raised that cause to a dignity and an importance which foreshadow its not distant triumph. Whether the task of according full justice to Ireland shall be finally entrusted to Mr. Gladstone or not, his name must always be held in the highest reverence, honor, and affection by the Irish people, as one who has spent, in their behalf, the later period of a life fruitful and illustrious, beyond that of any English statesman of the present century.

THE END