These chiefs, with their dependent clans, were distributed over the four provinces in the following order. The Geraldines, the most powerful of the remaining Normans, were divided into two branches. The Geraldines of the south, under the Earls of Desmond, held Limerick, Cork, and Kerry; the Geraldines of Leinster lay along the frontiers of the English pale; and the heads of the house, the Earls of Kildare, were the feudal superiors of the greater portion of the English counties. To the Butlers, Earls of Ormond and Ossory, belonged Kilkenny, Carlow, and Tipperary. The De Burghs, or Bourkes, as they called themselves, were scattered over Galway, Roscommon, and the south of Sligo, occupying the broad plains which lie between the Shannon and the mountains of Connemara and Mayo. This was the relative position into which these clans had settled at the Conquest, and it had been maintained with little variation.

The north, which had fallen to the Lacies and the

times there appeareth great show of | made up and smothered. And this equity in determining the right between parties, but in many things repugning quite both to God's law and man's. As, for example, in the case of murder, the Brehon, that is, their judge, will compound between the murderer and the friends of the party murdered, which prosecute the action, that the malefactor shall give unto them or unto the child or wife of him that is slain, a recompense which they call an Eriarch. By which vile law of theirs many murders are

judge being, as he is called, the Lord's Brehon, adjudgeth, for the most part, a better share unto his Lord, that is the Lord of the soil, or the head of that sept, and also unto himself for his judgment, a greater portion than unto the plaintiffs or parties grieved.—SPENSER'S View of the State of Ireland. Spenser describes the system as he experienced it in active operation. Ancient written collections of the Brehon laws, however, existed and still exist.

De Courcies, had been wholly recovered by the Irish. The Lacies had become extinct. The De Courcies, once Earls of Ulster, had migrated to the south, and were reduced to the petty fief of Kinsale, which they held under the Desmords. The Celtic chieftains had returned from the mountains to which they had been driven, bringing back with them, more intensely than ever, the Irish habits and traditions. Old men, who were alive in 1533, remembered a time when the Norman families attempted to live in something of an English manner,' and when there were towns in the middle of Ireland with decent municipal institutions. The wars of the Roses had destroyed the remnants of English influence by calling away a number of leading nobles, such especially as were least infected by the Irish character; and the native chiefs had reoccupied the lands of their ancestors, unresisted, if not welcomed as allies. The O'Neils and O'Donnells had spread down over Ulster to the frontiers of the pale. The O'Connors and O'Carrolls had recrossed the Shannon, and pushed forwards into Kildare; the O'Connor Don was established in a castle near Portarlington, said to be one of the strongest in Ireland; and the O'Carroll had seized

By relation of ancient men in | bours the King's subjects. And now times past within remembrance, all for the most part they keep horsethe English lords and gentills within men and knaves, which live upon the pale heretofore kept retinues of the King's subjects; and keep in English yeomen in their houses, after manner no hospitality, but live upon the English fashion, according to the poor.-The Council of Ireland to the extent of their lands, to the great the Master of the Rolls, 1533: State strength and succour of their neigh- | Papers, vol. ii. p. 163.

Leap, an ancient Danish fortress, surrounded by bog and forest, a few miles from Parsonstown. O'Brien of Inchiquin, Prince-as he styled himself-of Thomond, no longer contented with his principality of Clare, had thrown a bridge across the Shannon five miles above Limerick, and was thus enabled to enter Munster at his pleasure and spread his authority towards the south; while the M'Carties and O'Sullivans, in Cork and Kerry, were only not dangerous to the Earls of Desmond, because the Desmonds were more Irish than themselves, and were accepted as their natural chiefs.

In Tipperary and Kilkenny only the Celtic reaction was held in check. The Earls of Ormond, although they were obliged themselves to live as Irish chieftains, and to govern by the Irish law, yet partly from an inherent nobility of nature, partly through family alliances and a more sustained intercourse with their English kindred, partly perhaps from the inveterate feud of their house with both branches of the Geraldines, remained true to their allegiance, and maintained the English authority so far as their power extended. That power, unfortunately, was incommensurate with their good will, and their situation prevented them from rendering the assistance to the Crown which they desired. Wexford, Wicklow, and the mountains of Dublin, were occupied by the highland tribes of O'Bryne and O'Toole, who, in their wild glens and dangerous gorges, defied attempts to conquer them, and who were able, at all times, issuing down out of the passes of the hills, to cut off communication with the pale. Thus the Butlers had no

means of reaching Dublin except through the county of Kildare, the home of their hereditary rivals and foes.

This is a general account of the situation of the various parties in Ireland at the beginning of the sixteenth century. I have spoken only of the leading families; and I have spoken of them as if they possessed some feudal supremacy-yet even this slight thread of order was in many cases without real consistency, and was recognized only when fear, or passion, or interest, prompted. There be sixty counties, called regions, in Ireland,' says the report of 1515, 'inhabited with the King's Irish enemies, some regions as big as a shire, some more, some less, where reigneth more than sixty chief captains, whereof some calleth themselves kings, some king's peers in their language, some princes, some dukes, that liveth only by the sword, and obeyeth to no other temporal person save only to himself that is strong. And every of the said captains maketh war and peace for himself, and holdeth by the sword, and hath imperial jurisdiction, and obeyeth no other person, English or Irish, except only to such persons as may subdue him by the sword. . . . . Also, in every of the said regions, there be divers petty captains, and every of them maketh war and peace for himself, without license of his chief captain. .. And there be more than thirty of the English noble folk that followeth this same Irish order, and keepeth the same rule." Every man, in short, who could raise himself to that dishon

...

State Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1, 5, 6.

ourable position, was captain of a troop of banditti, and counted it his chief honour to live upon the plunder of his neighbour.

This condition of things might have been expected to work its own cure. The earth will not support human life uncultivated, and men will not labour without some reasonable hope that they will enjoy the fruit of their labour. Anarchy, therefore, is usually shortlived, and perishes of inanition. Unruly persons must either comply with the terms on which alone they are permitted to subsist, and consent to submit to some kind of order, or they must die. The Irish, however, were enabled to escape from this most wholesome provision by the recklessness of the people, who preferred any extremity of suffering to the endurance of the least restraint, and by the tyranny under which the labouring poor were oppressed. In England, the same hands were trained to hold the sword and to hold the plough. The labourers and the artisans in peace were the soldiers in war. In Ireland, labour was treated as disgraceful; the chiefs picked out the strongest and fiercest of their subjects, and trained them only to fight; the labourers were driven to the field as beasts of burden, and compelled to work on the chance that the harvest might be secured. By this precarious means, with the addition of the wild cattle which roamed in thousands among the woods and bogs, sufficient sustenance was extracted from the soil to support a scanty population, the majority of whom were supposed to be the most wretched specimens of human nature which could be found upon the globe. What