VIII.

State of

The fituation of affairs in Ireland was fo greatly CHAP. altered from the commencement of Meyler Fitz henry's adminiftration to the departure of king John, things. that a prince lefs indolent, and more fecure in the love of his people, might have at this time reduced all the island under English government. The colonies had become fo extended, and fo firmly establifhed, as to be little molefted by the natives, engaged, as they were, in mutual hoftilities. O Nial of Tir-Owen, who continued to breathe defiance, and to wage war against the English, found in his encounters with the garrifons on his frontier no decifive fuccefs; while in Connaught Cathal, fo formidable fome years before, could contrive no resource against the encroachments of the colonists except humble complaints to the king as his fovereign. The great English barons of Ireland also were quite in fubjection to the crown. The Lacies with difficulty obtained restoration on paymant of great fums as fines to the king; two thoufand five hundred marks for Meath, and four thoufand for Ulfter; fums at least equal in efficient value to fixty-five thousand pounds in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Wil. liam de Braofa, who was unable to raise enough of money for this tyrannical monarch, remained in exile, while his wife and children perifhed in prifon in the caftle of Bristol, from want of fuftenance, if the accounts of this tranfaction are not overcharged by monkish historians.

СНАР.

CHAP.

IX.

riffa buildings.

CHA P. IX.

rifh Buildings-Round Towers-Castles-Henry the
Third-Great Charter-Scope of this chapter
Fate of Earl Marshal-Wars of Connaught-
Tranfactions of Fedlim-Wars of Munfter-Gerald-
ines, Mac-Arthys, and De Burgo-Prince Edward
lord of Ireland-Acceffion of Edward the first-War
in Thomond-Feuds of the English colonists-Violences
of the Clergy-Petitions of the Irish for English Laws
-Parliaments-Sir John Wogan-State of Ireland
-Piers Gavafton-Defeat of De Burgo-Alliance
with the Geraldines.

FROM the first arrival of the English in Ireland
to the end of king John's reign, the face of the coun-
try, as well as its political ftate, had undergone
confiderable changes, as the fettlements of the colo-
nifts had penetrated the interior and remote parts of
the island, fortified with caftles and other works of
mafonry. Except in the maritime towns founded
by the Danes, almost the only ftructures of ftone
found in Ireland previoufly to this period were a
kind of towers, which in shape were tall hollow pil
lars of ftone and lime, nearly cylindrical, but nar-
rowing upward in fome fmall degree, pierced with
fome lateral holes to admit the light, high above
the ground, and furmounted with conical roofs of
the fame materials. Of these fimple but durable
productions

productions of old Irish mafonry fifty-fix, from fifty CHAP.

The

to a hundred and thirty feet high, and from eight
to twelve in diameter in the clear, ftill furvived the
injuries of time in the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The most elegant of all in ftile of archi-
tecture is one in the ifland of Devenish in Logh Ern,
which internally is fmooth like the barrel of a gun,
eighty-four feet high to the apex of its coniform roof,
which occupies fifteen feet of that altitude.
round towers of Ireland, concerning the ufes of
which odd conjectures have been made by fome an-
tiquarians, are known to the peafantry to have been
belfries of churches, as the Irish word cloghad imports,
and the English term Steeple, which is applied to
them in those parts of Leinster, where fettlements
were formed by early English colonifts. The walls
of thefe belfries, built apart from the churches, as
in Italy, long furvived, by their form and materials,
the ftructures of clay and wattles, the churches and
monafteries to which they belonged, as alfo their
own wooden staircases by which they were afcended
on the infide. The firft Irish church of stone and
lime was one built at Bangor, in the county of Down,
by Malachy, archbishop of Armagh who died in
1148; and the first Irish dwelling houfe of the fame
kind of ftructure was a palace erected at Tuam by
Roderic O'Connor, the laft Irish monarch of Ireland.
Various ornaments and utenfils, fome framed of gold,
found buried in bogs and elsewhere, may have been
partly imported in remote ages by traders in exchange
for peltry, the ancient merchandize of the ifland, and
partly the acquirements of plunder carried hither by

Danish

ix.

IX.

CHAP. Danish pirates from richer countries. As monumental proofs of ancient greatnefs and civilization in the Irish they cannot fairly be admitted, fince rich ornaments, procured by barter, may be found even in Lapland.

Caftles.

Henry the thud.

Caftles, at once the manfions of the nobles and citadels of defence, the building of which had been introduced into England by the Normans, into Ireland by the English, were numerous in the reign of John and for ages after, while feudal government remained, as appears by the many ruins at this day extant. Thefe fortreffes varied in form and fize according to the importance of the purpose and means of the builder. In general a fquare fabric termed the keep, with walls of prodigious thickness, which from scantiness of light rendered the apartments gloomy, ftood in the midst of a large court inclofed with a wall eight or ten feet thick, and above twenty high, which was furnished with towers, parapets, and embrafures, and lined on the infide with buildings for various purposes. This wall was environed with a broad and deep ditch; and the principal gate and drawbridge were defended by an outwork termed the barbacan. Caftles of primary magnitude were furnished with a fecond wall and ditch, enclofing at some distance the former, and of the fame kind.

Ireland, in fo large proportion colonized and caftellated, remained comparatively tranquil at the death of John, a prince elsewhere most unfuccessful from the general odium excited against him by the allied vices of cowardice and tyranny, expelled by the French from his continental dominions, ignomi.

niously

IX.

niously reduced to the condition of the pope's vaffal, CHAP. compelled by his barons to grant a charter of rights to his fubjects, and dying in war against the fame affifted by a French army. After the acceffion of 1216. Henry the third, who fucceeded at the death of his father in 1216, the charter of John, called Magna Charta, was renewed, and in February of the following year extended to Ireland, with fome alterations required for local circumstances, and with ftill more of the aristocratic fpirit fo blamed in the original. By this inftrument, ftill extant in the Red Book of the Exchequer in Dublin, obtained by the petition of the Irish barons, the union of the English colonists in Ireland with their fellow-fubjects in Britain under the fame king, laws, and rights, was clearly afcertained and established.

William earl Marthal, earl of Pembroke, protec- Scope of tor of England in the king's minority, a king who this chapter!

had fucceeded to the crown at the age of nine years,

was owner of extenfive property in Ireland, where
the loyalty of the nobles was encouraged by the
hopes of his favour, and their turbulence awed by
his vigilance and abilities. On the death of this 1219.
great and honeft baron in 1219, diforders recom-
menced, from which for ages after we fcarcely find
even temporary ceffations. From this time, through
the reigns of Henry the third, and his fon and fuc-
ceffor, Edward the firft, to the Scottish invafion in
the time of Edward the fecond, a period of ninety-
fix
years, the annals of Ireland are a confufed mafs
of defultory wars and other petty transactions of Irish
chieftains and English barons, the latter degenerated

almoft