effects of his wound, they thus describe the Lord Lieutenant's condition: "His soldiers have deserted him; the people of his household are on the point of leaving him; and though they were willing to remain, our lord is not able to keep them together; our said lord, your son, is so destitute of money, that he hath not a penny in the world, nor a penny can he get credit for." One consequence of this battle of Kilmainham was, that while Art McMurrogh lived, no further attacks were made upon his kindred or country. He died at Ross, on the first day of January, 1417, in the 60th year of his age. His Brehon, O'Doran, having also died suddenly on the same day, it was supposed they were both poisoned by a drink prepared for them by a woman of the town. "He was," say our impartial Four Masters, who seldom speak so warmly of any Leinster Prince, "a man distinguished for his hospitality, knowledge, and feats of arms; a man full of prosperity and royalty; a founder of churches and monasteries by his bounty and contributions," and one who had defended his Province from the age of sixteen to sixty.

On his recovery from the effects of his wound, the Duke of Lancaster returned finally to England, appointing Prior Butler his Deputy, who filled that office for five consecutive years. Butler was an illegitimate son of the late Earl of Ormond, and naturally a Lancasterian: among the Irish he was called Thomas Baccagh, on account of his lameness. He at once abandoned South Leinster as a field of operations, and directed all his efforts to maintain the Pale in Kildare, Meath, and Louth. His chief antagonist in this line of action was Murrogh or Maurice O'Conor, of Offally. This powerful chief had lost two or three sons, but had gained as many battles over former deputies. He was invariably aided by his connexions and neighbours, the MacGeoghegans of West-Meath. Conjointly they captured the castles and plundered the towns of their enemies, holding their prisoners to ransom or carrying off their flocks. In 1411 O'Conor held to ransom the English Sheriff of Meath, and somewhat later defeated Prior Butler in a pitched battle. His greatest victory was the battle of Killucan, fought on the 10th day of May, 1414. In this engagement MacGeoghegan was, as usual, his comrade. All the power of the English Pale was arrayed against them. Sir Thomas Mereward, Baron of Screen, "and a great many officers and common soldiers were slain," and among the prisoners were Christopher Fleming, son of the Baron of Slane, for whom a ransom of 1,400 marks was paid, and the ubiquitous Sir Jenico d'Artois, who, with some others,

paid "twelve hundred marks, beside a reward and fine for intercession." A Parliament which sat at Dublin for thirteen weeks, in 1413, and a foray into Wicklow, complete the notable acts of Thomas Baccagh's viceroyalty. Soon after the accession of Henry V. (1413), he was summoned to accompany that warlike monarch into France, and for a short interval the government was exercised by Sir John Stanley, who died shortly after his arrival, and by the Archbishop of Dublin, as Commissioner. On the eve of St. Martin's Day, 1414, Sir John Talbot, afterwards so celebrated as first Earl of Shrewsbury, landed at Dalkey, with the title of Lord Lieutenant.

The appointment of this celebrated Captain, on the brink of a war with France, was an admission of the desperate strait to which the English interest had been reduced. And if the end could ever justify the means, Henry V., from his point of view, might have defended on that ground the appointment of this inexorable soldier. Adopting the system of Sir Thomas Butler, Talbot paid little or no attention to South Leinster, but aimed in the first place to preserve to his sovereign, Louth and Meath. His most southern point of operation, in his first Lieutenancy, was Leix, but his continuous efforts were directed against the O'Conors of Offally and the O'Hanlons and McMahons of Oriel. For three succeeding years he made circuits through these tribes, generally by the same route, west and north, plundering chiefs and churches, sparing "neither saint nor sanctuary. On his return to Dublin after these forays, he exacted with a high hand whatever he wanted for his household. When he returned to England, 1419, he carried along with him, according to the chronicles of the Pale-" the curses of many, because he, being run much in debt for victuals, and divers other things, would pay little or nothing at all." Among the natives he left a still worse reputation. The plunder of a bard was regarded by them as worse, if possible, than the spoliation of a sanctuary. One of Talbot's immediate predecessors was reputed to have died of the malediction of a bard of West-Meath, whose property he had appropriated; but as if to show his contempt of such superstition, Talbot suffered no son of song to escape him. Their satires fell powerless on his path. Not only did he enrich himself, by means lawful and unlawful, but he created interest, which, a few years afterwards, was able to checkmate the Desmonds and Ormonds. The see of Dublin falling vacant during his administration, he procured the appointment of his brother Richard as Archbishop, and left

him, at his departure, in temporary possession of the office of Lord Deputy. Branches of his family were planted at Malahide, Belgarde, and Talbotstown, in Wicklow, the representatives of which survive till this day.

One of this Lieutenant's most acceptable offices to the State was the result of stratagem rather than of arms. The celebrated. Art McMurrogh was succeeded, in 1417, by his son, Donogh, who seems to have inherited his valour, without his prudence. In 1419, in common with the O'Conor of Offally, his father's friend, he was entrapped into the custody of Talbot. O'Conor, the night of his capture, escaped with his companions, and kept up the war until his death: McMurrogh was carried to London and confined in the Tower. Here he languished for nine weary years. At length, in 1428, Talbot, having "got license to make the best of him," held him to ransom. The people of his own province released him, "which was joyful news to the Irish."

But neither the aggrandizement of new nor the depression of old families effected any cardinal change in the direction of events. We have traced for half a century, and are still farther to follow out, the natural consequences of the odious Statute of Kilkenny. Although every successive Parliament of the Pale recited and re-enacted that statute, every year saw it dispensed in particular cases, both as to trading, intermarriage, and fostering with the natives. Yet the virus of national proscription outlived all the experience of its futility. In 1417, an English petition was presented to the English Parliament, praying that the law, excluding Irish ecclesiastics from Irish benefices, should be strictly enforced; and the same year they prohibited the influx of fugitives from Ireland, while the Pale Parliament passed a corresponding act against allowing any one to emigrate without special license. At a Parliament held at Dublin in 1421, O'Hedian, Archbishop of Cashel, was impeached by Gese, Bishop of Waterford, the main charges being that he loved none of the English nation; that he presented no Englishman to a living; and that he designed to make himself King of Munster. This zealous assembly also adopted a petition of grievances to the King, praying that as the Irish, who had done homage to King Richard, "had long since taken arms against the government notwithstanding their recognizances payable in the Apostolic chamber, his Highness the King would lay their conduct before the Pope, and prevail on the Holy Father to publish a crusade against them, to follow up the intention of his predecessor's grant to Henry II.!"

In the temporal order, as we have seen, the policy of hatred brought its own punishment. "The Pale," which may be said to date from the passing of the Statute of Kilkenny (1367), was already abridged more than one-half. The Parliament of Kilkenny had defined it as embracing "Louth, Meath, Dublin, Kildare, Catherlough, Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford, and Tipperary," each governed by Seneschals or Sheriffs. In 1422 Dunlavan and Ballymore are mentioned as the chief keys of Dublin and Kildare-and in the succeeding reign Callan in Oriel is set down as the chief key of that part. Dikes to keep out the enemy were made from Tallaght to Tassagard, at Rathconnell in Meath, and at other places in Meath and Kildare. These narrower limits it long retained, and the usual phrase in all future legislation by which the assemblies of the Anglo-Irish define their jurisdiction is "the four shires." So completely was this enclosure isolated from the rest of the country that, in the reign at which we have now arrived, both the Earls of Desmond and Ormond were exempted from attending certain sittings of Parliament, and the Privy Council, on the ground that they could not do so without marching through the enemy's country at great risk and inconvenience. It is true occasional successes attended the military enterprises of the Anglo-Irish, even in these days of their lowest fortunes. But they had chosen to adopt a narrow, bigoted, unsocial policy; a policy of exclusive dealing and perpetual estrangement from their neighbours dwelling on the same soil, and they had their reward. Their borders were narrowed upon them; they were penned up in one corner of the kingdom, out of which they could not venture a league without license and protection, from the free clansmen they insincerely affected to despise.

CHAPTER VI.

ACTS OF THE NATIVE PRINCES-SUBDIVISION OF TRIBES AND TERRITORIES-ANGLO-IRISH TOWNS UNDER NATIVE

PROTECTION ATTEMPT OF THADDEUS O'BRIEN, PRINCE OF THOMOND, TO RESTORE THE MONARCHY-RELATIONS OF THE RACES IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

THE history of "the Pale" being recounted down to the period of its complete isolation, we have now to pass beyond its en

trenched and castellated limits, in order to follow the course of events in other parts of the kingdom.

While the highest courage was everywhere exhibited by chiefs and clansmen, no attempt was made to bring about another National Confederacy, after the fall of Edward Bruce. One result of that striking denouement of a stormy career-in addition to those before mentioned-was to give new life to the jealousy which had never wholly subsided, between the two primitive divisions of the Island. Bruce, welcomed, sustained, and lamented by the Northern Irish, was distrusted, avoided, and execrated by those of the South. There may have been exceptions, but this was the rule. The Bards and Newsmen of subsequent times, according to their Provincial bias, charged the failure of Bruce upon the Eugenian race, or justified his fate by aspersing his memory and his adherents of the race of Conn. This feeling of irritation, always most deepseated when driven in by a consciousness of mismanagement or of self-reproach, goes a great way to account for the fact, that more than one generation was to pass away, before any closer union could be brought about between the Northern and Southern Milesian Irish.

We cannot, therefore, in the period embraced in our present book, treat the Provinces otherwise than as estranged communities, departing farther and farther from the ancient traditions of one central legislative council and one supreme elective chief. Special, short-lived alliances between lords of different Provinces are indeed frequent; but they were brought about mostly by ties of relationship or gossipred, and dissolved with the disappearance of the immediate danger. The very idea of national unity, once so cherished by all the children of Miledh Espaigne, seems to have been as wholly lost as any of those secrets of ancient handiwork, over which modern ingenuity puzzles itself in vain. In the times to which we have descended, it was every principality and every lordship for itself. As was said of old in Rome, "Antony had his party. Octavi had his party, but the Commonwealth had none."

Not alone was the greater unity wholly forgotten, but no sooner were the descendants of the Anglo-Normans driven into their eastern enclosure, or thoroughly amalgamated in language, laws and costume with themselves, than the ties of particular clans began to loose their binding force, and the tendency to subdivide showed itself on every opportunity. We have already, in the book of the "War of Succession," described