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Mac Carty, prince of Desmond,* resigned the city of Limerick to the sovereignty of Henry; engaging to pay tribute, on condition that he was to enjoy a certain portion of territory without any further molestation or restraint. The chiefs of Munster vied with each other in the alacrity of their submissions. Henry returned to Wexford, and stationed garrisons at Cork, Waterford, and Limerick. He then proceeded to Dublin, and in passing through the country, the Irish chieftains of Limerick appeared before the English monarch, and became his tributaries. The rapid progress of Henry's arms and the defection of the Irish chiefs, from the standard of their lawful monarch, alarmed the Irish king.

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Roderic, though abandoned by those vassal kings, who swore allegiance to him, and harassed by the dissentions of his family, and the factions of his people, would not resign his title to the monarchy of Ireland, without a great and formidable struggle. He collected his faithful troops, and intrenched himself on the banks of the Shannon. Hugh de Lacy, and Fitzansdelm, were ordered by Henry to reduce the refractory monarch to subjection. The brave and powerful chiefs of Ulster still remained unsubdued, and Roderic determined to surrender the dignity of his country but with his life. Henry left no arts unpractised to seduce the Irish chieftains from their allegiance. He dazzled the eyes of the people by the splendor of his hospitality; he de ceived them by the most conciliating expressions of kindness; he intoxicated the base and degraded Irishman by the magnitude of his professions, and consoled the afflicted and de

Desmond anciently Desmunham or south Munster, was formerly a country in the province of Munster, but now a part of the counties of Kerry, or Cork. Its ancient kings were the Mac Cartys, hereditary chiefs of Cork. After the arrival of the English, it gave title to a branch of the Fitzgeralds, who were afterwards attainted by queen Elizabeth; also to sir Richard Preston, Lord Dengwale, in Scotland; and at present it gives title to the family of Fielding, earl of Denbigh; in England.

pressed spirits of a subjugated people, by a perpetual round of costly pleasures, of empty though splendid pageantry. Such for 600 years has been the insidious practice of England towards this devoted country; the hospitality of the viceroy's table, put, into the scale against the miserable consequences of a narrow and malignant policy, which, full of jealousy and terror, cramps the industry, corrupts the morals, and encourages the most vicious and unprincipled propensities of our nature.

It is asserted by English historians, that the Irish clergy pressed forward with peculiar alacrity, to make their submission to Henry; but for the honor of the Irish clergy, it is very remarkable, that the most celebrated prelate of Ireland at that period, Gelasius, primate of Armagh, refused to attend; or in other words, refused to sanction by his presence the usurpations of Henry. The English monarch, it is true, found some ready instruments among the Irish clergy, who prostituted their ministry in the service of the invader. They were a small and contemptible minority; and in the age of Henry II. as well as in subsequent times, the majority of the Irish clergy could not be seduced by corruption, nor intimidated by terror, into a surrender of their liberties, or the rights of their countrymen. The synod assembled at Cashel, ordered that no marriages should take place within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity; it directed that baptism should be publickly administered, that the youth should be instructed, tythes regularly paid, and the land of the clergy exempted from secular exactions. At this synod, Henry did not presume to innovate upon the ancient discipline and usages of the Irish church. The old Irish customs remained untouched, but with regard to the clergy, some mitigation of the heavy penalties imposed on them was recommended and adopted. It appears that Henry never hazarded the experiment of imposing the laws of England on his Irish subject chieftains.

The latter stipulated to become his vassals, and tributaries; and Henry, on his part, engaged to protect them in the administration of their separate governments, according to their own laws and customs.* They governed their people, says Sir John Davis, by the Brehon law, they made their own magistrates, they pardoned and pun

The unwarranted contempt and malignity with which Mr. Hume speaks of the old Irish character, and which he so unphilosophically dis covers in all his observations on the people of this insulted country, can. not but excite the indignation, and wound the pride of every man who has read our ancient history, or who has followed the melancholy relation of Irish suffering. The ancient fame of this beautiful island, in arts, as well as in arms, and the cruel devastation which it suffered from those hands that calumniated and slandered the memory of the people whom they plundered, are recorded by authors too powerful, and too commanding of universal credit, to be set aside by a philosophic sneer of contempt, or satirical sarcasm of incredulity, though coming from the pen of so great and so profound an historian as Mr. Hume. On this sub, ject his usual love of truth and justice deserts him; and we behold with sorrow one of the ablest historians which the world has produced, carried down the stream of inveterate prejudice with the humblest names, who have presumed to defame and falsify, the character of the Irish nation. Mr. Hume thus writes of the ancient state of Ireland:

"The Irish, from the beginning of time, had been buried in the most profound barbarism and ignorance; and as they were never conquered, or even invaded by, the Romans, from whom all the western world derived its civility, they continued still in the most rude state of society, and were distinguished only by those vices to which human nature, not tamed by education, nor restrained by laws, is for ever subject. The small principalities, into which they were divided, exercised perpetual rapine and violence against each other. The uncertain succession of their princes was a continual source of domestic convulsions. The usual title of each petty sovereign, was the murder of his predecessor. Courage an force, though exercised in the commission of crimes, were more honored than any pacific virtues; and the most simple arts of life, even tillage and agriculture, were almost wholly unknown among them. They had felt the invasions of the Danes, and other northern people; but these inroads, which had spread barbarism in the other northern parts of Eu rope, tended rather to improve the Irish; and the only towns which were to be found in this island, had been planted along the coast by the freebooters of Norway, and Denmark. The other inhabitants exercised pasturage in the open country, sought protection from any danger in their forts and morasses, and being divided by the severest animosities against each other, were still more intent on the means of mutual injury, than on expeditions for the common, or even for private interest." Thus writes Mr. Hume, against the testimony of Bede, Camden, Keating, Usher, O'Connor, and almost every name worthy of our veneration, And thus does the great English historian fling into the shade, the enormities of that power, which was the fruitful parent of all those jealousies and convulsions, that rendered Ireland an easy prey to its insatiable and consuming rapacity.

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ished all malefactors within their respective jurisdictions, they made war and peace, without any foreign controul or dictation; and this they did, not only in the reign of Henry II. but in all subsequent times, until the reign of Elizabeth. Soon after Henry obtained possession of Dublin, he granted it by charter to the inhabitants of Bristol, to be held of him and his heirs, with the same liberties and customs which they enjoyed at Bristol. He also divided that part of Ireland which was immediately subject to him, or which is generally denominated within the pale, into shires and counties. He appointed sheriffs for counties and cities, with judges itinerant; officers of justice, and of state, and all the appendages of English government, and English law. He also appointed a chief gov. ernor, who was to exercise the royal authority, in his absence; and made such regulations as were in his mind calculated to perpetuate his authority, and confirm his conquests. The affairs of England now demanded the attention of Henry; and the threatened denunciations of the Roman pontiff obliged him to suspend his proceedings against Ireland, and to return, with all possible expedition, to the protection of his English dominions. Henry was thus compelled to leave the greater part of Ireland unsubdued; and those parts which submitted to him, were under the government of men whose allegiance was questionable, and whose ambition and avarice were insatiable. The west of Ireland, under Roderic, the north, under O'Neil, was still unconquered.-Henry settled his confidential officers, and gave to each the command of the most principal places which had submitted to him. To Hugh de Lacy, he granted the whole territory of Meath, and made him governor of Dublin. He commanded forts and castles to be raised in Dublin; and granted to John de Courcy the entire province of Ulster, provided he could reduce it by force of arms.

Had not the English monarch been thus interrupted in his efforts to reduce the kingdom of Ireland, the latter might have escaped the tedious and lingering torture of protracted warfare. The intriguing talents of Henry would have achieved what the merciles sword of the mercenary soldier could scarcely effect, and prosperity would have been rescued from the afflicting visitations of civil war, flowing from the struggles of the rapacity of a vindictive conqueror, with the indignant bravery of insulted freedom.

Henry embarked at Wexford, and landed at Pembrokeshire on the feast of Easter 1173. From hence he proceeded to Normandy, to meet the convention of cardinals there, assembled by the direction and authority of the pope. It is said, the Roman pontiff Alexander, consented at this convention, to confirm the grant of Ireland by pope Adrian.

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Sir John Davis observes, that Henry left not one true or faithful subject behind him, more than he found when he first landed. A small interval of time elapsed, until the old animosities and jealousies of the Irish chieftains broke out with their accustomed fury, and impatient of the yoke to which they had submitted, manifested a disposition to rebel against the authority, to which they had so lately, and so reluctantly submitted.

The followers of Henry proceeded, after the departure of their master, to make such regulations, and adopt such measures, as might secure the subjection of the conquered Irish. They parcelled out lands to their most attached English friends, and drove the unoffending natives from the inheritance of their forefathers. Such measures roused the indignation of Roderic the prince of Breffney* or Lei

Breffney or Breghane, that is, the country of the little hills, called also Hy-re Leigh, or the district of the country of the king, the chiefs of which were the O'Reillys. The subordinate districts of this country

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