PREFACE. THIS sketch is an expansion of a lecture de livered before the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society at their Annual Meeting in June 1861. It would serve a good purpose if it should fall into the hands of any popular writer on Irish history, and induce him to pay more attention than writers on that subject have generally paid to general causes, to cultivate the charities of history, and, in the case of the rulers as well as of the people, to take fair account of misfortunes as well as of crimes. |