unusual parade of English power, the chiefs hurried to do homage-lip submission, over with the danger which evoked it.

The conflict of the laws was, perhaps, as productive of bad blood as the conflict for the land; at least the native historians have made rather more use of it to keep alive the Irish hatred of England. A septman who slew an Englishman was, by native law, liable only in the Eric-a money payment to the relatives of the slain. By the English, however, if they caught him, he was hanged, in defiance of the Cain Patric. By English law, on the other hand, to kill an Irishman was no murder. He was an outlaw and enemy of the Crown. To break a contract with him was no wrong; he could not sue in the English courts. The slaughter of the Irish and seizure of their property were acts rewarded by the Government. They helped to give the substance where there was little beyond the name of dominion. So the Irish were plundered and massacred at will, subject only to the restraints imposed by the fear of retaliation. Five of the septs, more fortunate than their neighbours, were treated differently, being allowed the benefit of the English law. A common defence in charges of murder was that the murdered man was of "the mere Irish," and not of the quinque sanguines-the five favoured bloods. It might be imagined that the septmen in love with the Cain Patric were beyond the law because they chose not to come within it. This was not the case. To get rid of the disadvantages of their position, they repeatedly petitioned for admission to the benefits of English law, and were always refused. The petitions, indeed, were uniformly treated with contempt. To have granted them would have been to abandon the privilege of oppression. Even

the Irish within the Pale were not yet within the law. They were the subjects of special enactments which practically excluded them from its protection. By a statute dated 1465, for example, any one might kill any person GOING TO rob or steal, having no faithful man of good name or fame in his company in English apparel." This, of course, exposed every Irishman to be killed at the discretion of any Englishman. It should be stated, however, that by the next Act of the same Parliament, the septmen of the Pale were directed to take English names, and to wear English apparel.*

The privilege of oppression belonged to the King's Irish subjects-the barons of the Pale; the victims of the privilege were the King's Irish enemies the people of Ireland. After a time there grew up a third classthe King's Irish rebels; adventurers who took to the wild life of the Irish, as in Australia some English take to the bush; or the barons in outlying districts, who, forming ties with the natives, or being charmed by their mode of life, dropped the Norman style and set up as Irish chiefs. The renegades became, in mere outward respects, more Irish than the Irish. Had the growing influence of Irish habits and customs been allowed to extend itself, the races, in process of time, might have become naturally mixed. The infusion of Norman and Saxon blood would have gradually rendered the population similar to the British. The mixed population might at a later time have gone more securely through the organic changes. They would gradually, through the influence of the ideas brought in by the English, have been trained in the relations of landlord and tenant, and prepared for the reception as a national system of "Statutes established in a Parliament holden at Trym," chap.

*

ii. and iii.

the feudal land-tenures and laws of succession. This, however, was not to be. The growing tendency towards amalgamation was checked by the Statutes of Kilkenny, passed in 1367. It is difficult to believe that these statutes were not dictated more by antipathy than policy. They were certainly as impolitic as they were malicious. To intermarry with the Irish, to form any connection with them in the way of fostering or of "gossipred," to adopt or submit to the Brehon laws, were declared to be acts of high treason, and to be punishable as such.* On the other hand, it was made penal to present an Irishman to an ecclesiastical benefice, or to entertain an Irish bard, minstrel, or story-teller. In short, intercourse with the natives was for ever interdicted, and perpetual war declared, not only against them, but against every one of English blood who, having settled beyond the Pale, had formed connections with them or adopted their customs.

The effect of these statutes was to draw together the Irish rebels and the Irish enemies. The area of conquered land, which, constantly changing in extent, had at one time covered more than five counties, was very soon reduced to a single county. By the time of Henry IV., after two centuries of the conflict, there was little left to the English except the county of Dublin. In the time of Edward IV., the Pale was at such an ebb that its defenders consisted of only eighty archers on horseback and forty spearmen! By the time of Henry VII., it was verging on extinction. From a report made in the reign of Henry VIII., it appears that "the English order, tongue, and habit" were used, and the English laws obeyed, within a district of not more

* A statute of Kilkenny is said to be now in force in New Zealand. Marriage with the natives is criminal, but concubinage is permitted.

than twenty miles in compass; sixty "regions" of Ireland were under the dominion of Irish chieftains; and thirty"regions" under the authority of chiefs of AngloNorman descent-the Irish rebels—who acknowledged neither the laws nor the government of England. In the mean time, the relations between the septs and the barons of the Pale had come to a great extent to be reversed; and the barons on the borders, who did not lose their lands, paid tribute to the native chiefs for protection. It seems as if the existence of the Pale must have often depended on the native contempt for it. Perhaps a wholesome dread of England's power, which had more than once been paraded in Ireland-a first time by Henry II., and twice afterwards by Richard II. -restrained the septs from the attempt; but it is obvious that had there been anything like national spirit in Ireland, the Irish could easily have cleared the country, at least for a time, of all who did not fall in with their own ways. There was, however, no Irish nation, and as yet no push for the mastery of the country had been made by the English. The real struggle came later. When it came, it was a war for the overthrow of the septs; which, beginning under Henry VIII., after long wavering ended with the fall of Tyrone, in the time of Elizabeth, leaving Ireland a waste of blood and ashes.

The event which precipitated the struggle was undoubtedly the Reformation. Henry VIII., having finally quarrelled with Rome, assumed the title of King of Ireland; the English kings had previously been mere lords of Ireland under the authority of the Popes. The conquest, begun in a communion of the interests of Rome and England, was now to be consummated through their opposition. Both were to retain a hold

on the common prey-this to win the political, and that the spiritual allegiance; this the kingdom, and that the people. The struggle, had it come earlier, would have been for the land merely. Coming when and as it did, it was not only a war of races, but of religions. The Irish hatred of England, says an eloquent writer, was before an instinct; it was now to become a passion.

From the first there was a religious difference, but strictly it was rather a difference of Church-adherence than of religion. The Irish Church had early acknowledged the See of Rome. It had peculiarities of organisation and discipline, however, and continued to be a separate and independent Church.

With the Church of the Pale, in which the ecclesiastical order of England was established, it had absolutely no connection. They were both Christian-they were both Catholic ; the difference was that the English was a Romish Church, and the Irish was not, save by remote acknowledgment. It was independent.

By the course of events which followed the Reformation the relations of the Churches came to be reversed. The Church of the Pale became Protestant-separate from Rome; the Church of the Irish became Roman Catholic, and the most zealous and devoted of the Romish Churches. Rome, become the natural ally of the Irish, bent her energies to win them, and succeeded. The power of England, under Henry and Elizabeth, was so exerted against the Irish that they welcomed countenance from any quarter. To the chiefs the change may have been a policy; to the septmen an act of fealty at any rate it was thorough. A Papal Church was quickly organised. Its organisation was as quickly braced by manifold persecutions.