birth to ruins and round towers. And when, after the Anglo-Norman invasion, it became a question how their fallen position could be retrieved, how it might be reduced into a portion of the modern imperfectly civilized world, and raised from a condition abject for themselves, dangerous for England, of being a mere landing-place for enemies, an approach for foreign intrigue,-it soon became too apparent that one course alone was practically effective. It was one full of difficulties and objectionable consequences, not to be adopted without leaving behind a surviving enmity of the worst kind, the enmity of races. The disposition of property, the laws of inheritance, the distribution of power, the civil jurisdiction, with the prejudices and customs of every class, were, as they stood, unfavourable to regular government, common as they were to peace or constitutional freedom. There was nowhere power to remedy these evils by peaceful means. The nation, half conquered, had been left to flounder on like a wounded bird that could neither fly nor walk, escape nor resist. It was full of conflicting elements: two races were hostile to each other-two laws clashed—two powers strove for mastery-two religions cursed each other;―ills partially, and but partially, redressed by the only remedies which could be found applicable, yet which no less tended to perpetuate than to assuage them.

During this period there cannot be traced the regular form or working of any civil constitution, beyond the imperfect administration of criminal law and financial imposition by the legislative council, afterwards to occupy so important a position in Irish history, and so largely modify the national condition and the train of events. From the seve ral occasional and incidental allusions to this essential estate of free government, it is not easy to fix the period of its institution, its earliest privileges and constitution. We meet it first very much in the form of a council of ecclesiastics and other persons having rank and authority, assembled to consult on local or at most provincial interests. Under successive monarchs, from the reign of Henry, its constitution was by slow degrees improved, both in authority and the composition of members. These were long the persons of noble rank, summoned by the king or by his lieutenant for some special occasion;-there was not, and, properly speaking, could not have been, a House of borough representation. For long no boroughs existed, until created by successive kings of the Norman descent. The first House of Commons seems to have been in 1613. Of its after history we shall have much occasion to speak more fully. We may here best observe that for the whole of this period, from Elizabeth to Anne, the Irish parliament possessed little power to influence the course of events. It became a matter of discre tion or favour long before it was of right, to call in the council or obtain the sanction of the nobles for the laws which were projected by the government, or (by Poyning's Law,) transmitted to the council in England. The law was loosely worded, and one convenient evasion followed another, and abuses rose which were the business of further enactments and declarations to correct or aggravate. At times the balance of encroachment preponderated for the nobles, sometimes for the Crown, and latterly for the Commons, according to the varying changes in the successive reigns, from Henry VIII. to Charles II. The

declaratory act of Philip and Mary is to be regarded as having fixed the sense of the law, and given to the parliament that form which it afterwards held. The Irish parliament began in disorder and confusion, not unprophetic of its future and of its end. The government continued, from the commencement of this period, in the formal possession of lieutenants or deputies of the crown, but mostly with little authority beyond the metropolitan district, or what they could assert by military force. The country, until this time, yet remained in the same condition as before the Anglo-Norman invasion, and with many nominal institutional changes was virtually the same. The population, as of old, consisted of lords and serfs. There was no people, in the vulgar sense of the term; neither commerce, nor arts, nor manufactures, nor even agriculture existed. The land was a forest and a morass. The petty kings -as they chose to be ranked-amused themselves with the chase, or with the costlier game of war and civil intrigue and circumvention; until discord and mutual strife at last brought in the Anglo-Norman. Thus was originated the first step of what might have come to be the dawn of civil progress, but (not to say, that the conquerors themselves were yet but little beyond the first rudiments) the elements of barbarism had somewhat of a constitutional growth in the country. Inveterate prejudices traditionally rooted, and, as it were, crystallized into laws, were favourable to the usurpations of the new, as well as of the ancient lords, and adapted to the manners and customs of both; and combined with a territorial distribution which converted the whole land into a hunting-field, prevented all those wholesome influences of property, and useful occupations of the soil on which, primarily, the social advantage of a people must depend: the country was divided rather into kingdoms and lordships, than farms and pastures. The rule of force was the law. The acquisition of a fortified house was a title to rob, and to lord it over the neighbouring district with its inhabitants, who looked to the owner for protection, espoused his quarrels, and joined his marauding excursions.

The long succession of feudal contentions, forfeitures, appropriations, and settlements, of wars, and transfers of lordship, which constitute the history of the following four centuries, belong to the period already past, and may be referred to the memoirs contained in our former volume. They are here but adverted to, as descriptive of the state of things from which we must next proceed. In quitting the subject, a few reflections may be allowed. We have approached the history of a state of things from which, if suffered to continue, there could follow no recovery. "History's muse," as the spirit of the Irish historian has, with inadvertent satire, been termed by the poet of Ireland, has adorned the "blotted" page with bright dreams of heroic achievement and patriotic suffering. The colours of the rainbow have been lavished to glorify the monuments of those dark ages of crime and mutual wrong. The chronicler and the bard too frequently have supplied matter for the rant of Irish eloquence, by ignoring the protracted lapse of ages, which separate the "glories of Brian the Brave" from the black betrayal of friendly trust and domestic sanctity in Charlemont fort. It grieves us to touch these dark recollections; but our main object is, so far as we may, to restore the balance of reality. On

every side there has been matter enough for reproach; but the fancy of the poet, and the eloquence of the rhetorician, have ever found their most ready material on the side of popular malcontent. The gait and countenance of freedom, independence and liberty, are most easily assumed to the vulgar eye, by the swaggering of democratic insolence, by lawless insubordination, and renunciation of principle. The people whose wrongs are trumpeted abroad in all the keys of brazen exaggeration, were in those heroic days on a level with beasts of pasture as to freedom, and not much above them in moral nature. The rule of force, "the good old plan," was the universal law, the right, was the power to take and the power to keep.

During the long period marked by these characters, there existed no orderly or normal constitution. Calm and disturbance, tyranny and resistance, rebellions against authority, sanguinary feuds among chiefs, and popular excitements, all on an increasing scale, variously shifted like clouds on a stormy day. Virtually there was no government in the dominant kingdom, disorder of too frequent recurrence, and too violent, left long intervals of license to corrupt authority and to nurture disaffection. There existed no care for the development of internal resources. Agriculture was discouraged by the despotic chief for the preservation of the beast of chase; nor was the tenure of land favourable to improvement. It was the ancient maxim of the chiefs to keep the "hereditary bondsman" in the state best adapted to the savage submission of their class-subservient to the mandate of robbery and mutual aggression. The astute priesthood saw the security of their growing influence, in the exclusion of all moral or intellectual advance, whether in lord or serf. Over all these was growing unperceived by any party or class, the skilfully ordered influence of an alien jurisdiction, and a secretly advancing cause. We may now pass on to the consideration of those circumstances which mainly contributed to alter, if not materially to advance, this torn and trampled nation from its dead level of poverty and depression.

Ages might pass, and leave it still in the same condition of serf bondage and aristocratic tyranny. The first great step towards improvement was yet unthought of, when an event of a different nature had begun to diffuse a saving and exalting light, which, while it brought in a dawn of freedom and prosperity to England, unhappily carried bitterness and controversial rancour, to give new force and impulse to the national discontents of Ireland. This was the Reformation.

The nation first, by a combination of fraud and dominant power deprived of its more ancient and truer faith, was next, with better intention, but not more lawful means, constrained into unwilling subjection to a renewal of the old creed under a newly framed constitution. In the 15th century, the apostolical faith of the old Irish church was long forgotten, and the heresies of middle-age superstition possessed the people, and were radically combined with their habits, discontents, and animosities.

To estimate more justly the true effects of this and other causes, which aggravated and protracted the state of things heretofore described, we must proceed to notice the more active and energetic measures

afterwards adopted for the improvement of the country, and for the correction of its main abuses.

During the reign of Henry VIII., the reformation obtained, amid much resistance, some advance in Ireland; this was, however, counteracted in the next reign; the superstitious Mary, governed by the Spanish counsels and influence of her husband, and wholly devoted to the interests of the Papal See; though under considerable difficulties from the discontents of the English aristocracy and better classes of her subjects; was not deterred from adopting the inquisitorial proceedings of her husband's church and country; and the persecution commenced in England was readily extended into Ireland. In 1556, there was published a Bull of Pope Paul IV., complaining of the separation of Ireland from his See, and asserting the readiness of the people to return. The Protestant prelates were violently driven from their Sees, which were filled with Romish ecclesiastics. The primatial authority, committed to Bishop Dowdal, was wielded with more than the harshness of his bigoted mistress.

Meanwhile, the perpetual disorders of the country were much increasing. Great commotion was fast growing violent, in the Queen's county and King's county,† on account of the occupation of new settlers on the lands. In consequence, great numbers were slain, and but for the humane and truly patriotic intercession with the Queen, of the Earls of Ormonde and Kildare, these counties would have been depopulated.

On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, steps were taken to restore the church in Ireland to its condition in the preceding reigns. But the hostility of Rome, and the active enmity of its creatures and zealous supporters in the country, were more than proportionally augmented. The brutal chief of Tyrone, encouraged by many escapes, by much impunity, by the devotion of his rabble followers, and by the injudicious efforts of the government at conciliation, increased in pride, and in encroachments on his brother chiefs. In 1562, he came to a resolution to visit the Queen in great state, and appeared in London in barbaric pomp, at the head of a grotesque train of his northern savages. He was received with politic favour, and allowed to plead his rights and complain of his wrongs, and was dismissed with assurances of favour. On his return, he pursued his former turbulent course, but under the cautious pretext of resisting the Queen's enemies. His pretended loyalty was felt by Sydney to be as formidable as his hostility. He was, however,

This Pope quarrelled with Henry II. of France for slightly relaxing the persecution of his Protestant subjects. Ranke, in his history of the Popes, traces very clearly the strong Protestant reactions in Germany and other parts of Europe, caused by the excessive violence of this Pope. In the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth is supposed to have had some leaning to Romanism. She caused her accession to be notified to Paul. He scornfully told the English ambassador that "she must first submit her claims to his judgment." It is even not obscurely apparent that, if England had not been providentially leavened with a strong infusion of scriptural truth, from a period long antecedent, the conduct of this Pope had secured the victory of Protestantism in England. And the same observation may, in nearly similar terms, be extended through many parts of Europe, from the same period and causes. Paul's most favoured instrument was the Inquisition, which he revived. His tyranny was nearly driving the people of Rome into revolt. On his death their hatred was freely indulged by many excesses, among which was the mutilation of his statue, which was dragged through the streets of Rome.

+ Anciently Leix and Offally.

soon encouraged to cast aside pretences, by the occurrence of a destructive explosion of the powder magazine in Derry, which passed for a miracle on the gross superstition of the time, and was ascribed to the vengeance of Saint Columkille on the intruders upon his abode. Tyrone at once raised his standard in the north, and proclaimed his defiance. Once more he plunged the northern provinces into disorder and ruin; he burned the church of Armagh, razed many castles, and sent out his emissaries to engage the aid and alliance of the chiefs of Munster and Connaught. Sydney assailed him with not dissimilar policy; he was aware that O'Neal's ferocity and arrogance, with his savage severity towards his followers, had alienated their temper, and led to desertion and hatred. O'Neal's forces ebbed away from around him, and he presently found himself alone and a fugitive. It is needless to describe the treacherous artifice by which he was slain in a brawl with many of his followers, by a hostile chief whose ancestor he had slain. His attainder, which soon followed, left nearly the whole province of Ulster in the possession of Queen Elizabeth.

Many salutary laws were at this time enacted; much was done to restore the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the crown; the province of Connaught was divided into six counties; but still the late condition of disquiet was far from its end. The Queen was excommunicated by Pius V. 1572, who damned all who should acknowledge her. Fresh commotions followed, and it must have been very strongly apparent at the time, that there could be no reliable security for the peace of the kingdom, while an alien jurisdiction, with the policy and interests of the Pope, could at any moment exercise a sway so absolute over an ignorant and excitable people. The present commotions were quieted in the south by Perrot, and effectively resisted by the citizens of Kilkenny, and by the influence of Ormonde, though his brother, with others of the Butlers, seem to have been rather inadvertently betrayed into the designs of those who were ill-affected towards the government. We have in the preceding volume already related the main incidents and fate of the principal chiefs and leaders of these commotions, and notice them in this place, only to preserve the historical connection of our memoirs. The discontents of chiefs, and of their family connections, under the deprivation of their estates, along with the more secret unremitting hostility of papal emissaries, may be said to have perpetuated disorder as the normal condition of the period; nor can the continual recurrences of insurrection and forced calm be conveniently followed out in their monotonous details, unless in very voluminous order.

The period of which we write is memorable for the active hostility of Philip II. against Queen Elizabeth. Irritated by her protection and countenance to the persecuted Protestants in the Netherlands, this cruel bigot equipped an expedition against Ireland, and a landing was effected in Kerry, at the Bay of Smerwick, from three ships, in which he sent 80 Spaniards, with James Fitz Maurice, and a disorderly band of fugitives from both England and Ireland. This little company was joined by the brothers of the Earl of Destnond. An English ship of war putting out from Kinsale, seized their ships, and thus cut off their retreat by sea. The Earl of Desmond attempted to collect his followers under pretext of aiding the government, and summoning the Earl of