from his enemies the affectation of sorrow for his untimely and unworthy fate. So great was the popular sentiment in favour of his memory, that the king, in all the meanness of hypocrisy and terror, yielded to the public indignation; and the death of this illustrious Englishman, had the effect of accomplishing what the triumphs of his arms could only have achieved, namely, the banishment of those foreigners which had monopolized all the places of profit and confidence under the crown, and the total annihilation of that fabric, which the ambition and the obstinacy of the bishop of Winchester had so lately raised. The people of Ireland sympathized with the friends of Richard, earl of Pembroke, and the people of Leinster, laying claim to the honour of being governed by the family of the earl of Pembroke, manifested the most ardent zeal against the murderers of their prince.

Soon after the death of Richard, earl of Pembroke, Fedlim, or Phelim, prince of Connaught, presented himself before his sovereign, to complain of the grievances under which he and his people laboured from Richard de Burgo. His complaints were heard with respect, and immediately attended to by the king.-Orders were issued to suppress the outrages of the baron De Burgo, who was the oppressor of his Irish subjects. This act of justice by the English monarch is a good deal diminished in value by the royal conquest which immediately followed. It appears as the result of royal policy, more than of royal mercy; and discovers the arts of the politician, more than the protection of the sovereign.

Henry immediately summoned the prince of Connaught, in return for the protection he afforded the Irish, to assist him against the king of Scotland.

We find Fedlim soon after leading his troops into Wales, against David, and co-operating with the Irish viceroy to reduce the Welsh. The deaths of Richard de Burgo, Hugh de Lacy, and Geoffry de Maurisco, became

new sources of national distraction and misery. The disorders and calamities of England gave opportunity to the ambition of the English adventurers in Ireland; and the native Irish, amidst the contending great families, were the common* victims of ambition, jealousy and avarice. The reader of the scenes just related, cannot suppress his smiles at the stories so gravely told by the apologists of England, of the two mandates which were issued by king Henry, directing that the nobility, knights, freeholders, and bailiffs of the several counties, should be convened, in order that the great charter should be read over in their presence; and that they should be directed to adhere to the laws and customs received from king John, and strictly to obey them; that the Anglo-Irish barons be requested to permit Ireland to be governed by the laws of England; and that peace should at length be restored to that unfortunate country.

The following observations are made by an Irish historian (Mr. Taaffe) who discovers in every page of his work, an ardent sensibility to the sufferings, and an honest anxiety for the fame of his countrymen. "It is surprising the incessant din of arms did not entirely banish the muses from this ill-fated island; but it seems the person of a bard was held more sacred than that of a priest. The English settlers frequently plundered and massacred the clergy; while we find few or no instances of similar cruelty exercised on the children of the muses. In addition to the high respect entertained for their profession, ambition was interested in their protection. They were, in a great measue, arbiters of fame; and the murder of one of their body, would inflame the whole irritable race of poets and harpers, to consign the perpetrator to the execration of posterity. Sensible that character forms one species of power, the chief of the settlers not only avoided insulting men possessed of such influ ence on public opinion, but he kept pensioned bards to sound and extend his credit: at his command they sounded the war song, inveighed against his enemies, extolled his success in collecting their spoils, and praised the munificence with which he shared the fruits of his victories among his followers. In the book of Fermoy, there remains a curious collection of such mercenary rhapsodies, composed by Roche's bards. In those times of anarchy they were generally employed as trumpeters of war, and served by their melodious notes and rapturous strains, to attract enthusias tic youth to the standard of the chief, and to influence their ardour in the day of battle."-For 600 years the enemies of Ireland have found their mercenary poets and historians to sing their praises and conceal their tyranny; and to the hour in which this line is writing, may we see the interests and happiness of Ireland sacrificed to the mercenary poverty of some despicable calumniator, whose only hope of decent existence is his sycophancy to the worst passion of an avaricious monopoly.

May it not be permitted us to ask, at this distant period of time, how came it to pass, that the power which was able to extinguish the efforts of those barons, whenever they rebelled against the English interests, was so feeble and so petitioning, when the object of its interposition was the peace and happiness of Ireland? May it not be conjectured, without any great stretch of sagacity, that the English government connived at the extortions and the plunder of the colonists, in order the more effectually to compel the devoted inhabitants of Ireland to solicit the royal interposition, in terms sufficiently humiliating to the national pride; and thus obtain by the slow and lingering torments of continued persecution, those advantages which could not, perhaps, be won in the field?

In this view of the subject, we shall not be surprised when we see Henry humbly suing for the permission of his barons; or some of the persecuted people of Ireland petitioning, in turn, for royal patents, by which they may enjoy the rights and privileges of English subjects. It is idle to talk of the obstinate resistance of the Irish to the English laws and customs, after perusing the history of national suffering we have already passed through, produced by English ambition and avarice. It is worse than idle, to express our wonder at the inflexible attachment of the Irish to their old laws and customs, under which they experienced the blessings of independence; or to be surprised that they would close their eyes and their ears to the instruction of their enlightened invaders, who were desolating their beautiful country with fire and sword.

It is said that Henry, in order to repress the violence of his barons in Ireland, made the experiment of sending, as his representatives, a succession of Englishmen, who would have no interest to consult but that of their master, and the country to which they were sent. But such rapid successions always produce the miseries inseparable from distracted and conflicting councils; and the wisdom and

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virtue of one viceroy, was counteracted by the folly or the vices of his successor.

An event of high importance occurred at this period, (1253) which, if the circumstances of the English nation had permitted, might have been attended with the most fortunate consequences to Ireland. Prince Edward, the son of the English monarch, being married to the infanta of Spain, was invested by his royal father with the sovereignty of all that part of Ireland then under English dominion, excepting the cities and counties of Dublin, Limerick, and Athlone; excepting also the lands of the church, on the proviso that the territories so granted should never be separated from the crown, but remain for ever to the kings of England. The lands, therefore, which were claimed, or possessed by the king's subjects in Ireland, were called the lands of lord Edward, and all writs ran in this prince's name. Edward, from whose great talents much might have been expected, had he assumed the administration of Ireland, was carried down the current of the day, which ran so strongly in favour of the wild and adventurous expeditions of the crusades. Ireland, in the mean time, suffered all the calamities inseparable from a state of anarchy and civil war. The Fitzgeralds and the Mac Cartys, desolated each other's territories, till at length the family of the Geraldines were completely destroyed, by one general engagement.

The English government were indolent or indifferent spectators of the sanguinary scene. The English monarch, as it is recorded, made no greater effort than to write to the rival combatants, commanding them to suspend their animosities. The miserable confusion which was created by those rival factions, generated death and disease in every part of Ireland.

The severity of the season aggravated the miseries of civil war; and the finest portion of the British dominions lay mangled and torn by the barbarity of the most rancor

ous feuds. In addition to the afflictions under which Ireland now suffered, we have to enumerate the insolent exactions of the papal authority, as well as of the English

monarch.

Henry, whom we saw, some time back, lamenting the distraction of the kingdom of Ireland, we now find cooperating with the pope in levying exorbitant taxes on the beggary of the country, a fifteenth of all the cathedral churches, and a sixteenth of all ecclesiastical revenues, as well as the most intolerable taxes on the laity. Thus do we see this ill-fated country, in the extremity of her distress, resorted to by the English monarch, to remunerate him for the loss he sustained in his foreign wars; and while Ireland is thus writhing under the miseries of English invasion, we are stopped by the historians of the colonists, to reflect on the singular want of judgment evinced by the Irish nation, in not embracing the laws and customs of England. Ireland was, at this period, as well as England, overrun with Italian ecclesiastics, who were invested with the dignities and revenues of the church, within the territories of the English powers. It is to be observed, that the oppressive exactions of the pope, and usurpations of the Italian ecclesiastics, were confined to the popish limits of English jurisdiction, and were effectually resisted by the native catholics. The native Irish, sensible of the abuse of the pope's spiritual authority, were little inclined to pay him tribute, or to submit to the insolent impor sitions of his foreign emissaries,

The Irish princes, who as yet retained their independence, scornfully rejected such encroachments as unchristian. The evils of this ecclesiastical tyranny became so oppressive to the colonists, that remonstrances crowded from every corner of the pale to the viceroy, against so destructive a practice, Thus unfortunate Ireland seemed to be doomed the resting place for every greedy adventurer,