they kill one for that purpose, they distribute it all to be devoured at one time; for they approve not the orderly eating at meals, but so they may eat enough when they are hungry, they care not to fast long. And I have known some of these Irish footmen serving in England (where they are nothing less than sparing in the food of their families) to lay meat aside for many meals, to devour it all at one time. These wild Irish, as soon as their cows have calved, take the calves from them and thereof feed some with milk, to rear for breed, some of the rest they flay, and seethe them in a filthy poke, and so eat them, being nothing but froth, and send them for a present one to another. But the greatest part of these calves they cast out to be eaten by crows and wolves, that themselves may have more abundance of milk. And the calves being taken away, the cows are so mad among them as they will give no milk till the skin of the calf be stuffed and set before them, that they may smell the odour. Yea, when these cows thus madly deny their milk, the women wash their hands in cows' dung, and so gently stroke their dugs; yea, put their hands into the cow's tail and with their mouths blow into their tails, that with this manner, as it were, of enchantment, they may draw milk from them. Yea, these cows seem as rebellious to their owners as the people are to their Kings, for many times they will not be milked but of some one old woman only, and of no other. These wild Irish never set any candles upon tables-what do I speak of tables? since indeed they have no tables, but set their meat upon a bundle of grass, and use the same grass as napkins to wipe their hands. But I mean that they do not set candles upon any high place to give light to the house, but place a great candle made of reeds and butter upon the floor in the midst of a great room. And in like sort the chief men in their houses make fires in the midst of the room, the smoke whereof goeth out at a hole in the top thereof. An Italian friar coming of old into Ireland and seeing at Armagh this their diet and the nakedness. of the women, is said to have cried out— "Civitas Armachana, civitas vana, "Vain Armagh city, I did thee pity, Thy meat's rawness and women's nakedness. I trust no man expects among these gallants any beds, much less feather beds and sheets, who, like the Nomades removing their dwellings according to the commodity of pastures for their cows, sleep under the canopy of heaven, or in a poor house of clay, or in a cabin made of the boughs of trees and covered with turf, for such are the dwellings of the very lords among them. And in such places they make a fire in the midst of the room, and round about it they sleep upon the ground, without straw or other thing under them, lying all in a circle about the fire, with their feet towards it. And their bodies being naked, they cover their heads and upper parts with their mantles, which they first inake very wet, steeping them in water of purpose; for they find that when their bodies have once warmed the wet mantles, the smoke of them keeps their bodies in temperate heat all the night following. And this manner of lodging not only the mere Irish lords and their followers use, but even some of the English-Irish lords and their followers when, after the old but tyrannical and prohibited manner vulgarly called coshering, they go, as it were, on progress, to live upon their tenants till they have consumed all the victuals that the poor men have or can get. To conclude, not only in lodging passengers not at all or most rudely, but even in their inhospitality towards them, these wild Irish are not much unlike to wild beasts, in whose caves a beast passing that way might perhaps find meat, but not without danger to be ill entertained, perhaps devoured, of his insatiable host. APPENDIX. I. THE GERALDINES. THE first Gerald of the Fitzgeralds was grandson to Walter Fitzother, who appears in Domesday Book as lord of manors in Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Middlesex, and Buckinghamshire. That Gerald married Nesta, daughter of Rhys, King of South Wales. They had a son, Maurice Fitzgerald, who died in 1176. The same Nesta had a son by Stephen, Constable of Cardigan, and he was Robert Fitzstephen, half-brother to Maurice Fitzgerald. She had a son also by King Henry I., who was named Meilyr Fitzhenry. These three sons of Nesta went to Ireland together in 1169, where Dermod, King of Leinster, who had been seeking help in South Wales against those who had turned him out of his kingdom, promised that Maurice Fitzgerald and Robert Fitzstephen should have Wexford and the two adjoining cantreds given to them for their services. The King of Leinster obtained also letters patent from Henry II. saying, "Whosoever within our jurisdiction will aid and help him, our trusty subject, for the recovery of his land, let him be assured of our favour and license in that behalf." Dermod M'Murrough, seeking further, found Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, surnamed Strongbow, ready to help him. In Strongbow's invasion of Ireland, Raymond Fitzgerald was the foremost leader of the English force. He married Strongbow's sister, who had been at first denied to him, but when he retired in dudgeon into Wales disaster followed, and want of his aid caused his recall, with full assent to his wishes. After the death of Strongbow, Raymond Fitzgerald ruled over the English in Ireland till the coming of William Fitzaldhelm, who set himself to despoil the Geraldines. But Raymond died master of Cork about the year 1182. Henry the Second had given him the middle cantred of Ophelan, Offaly, which is the district about Naas in Kildare. His son Gerald Fitzgerald, who had fought by his side, succeeded to his estates, and was known also as Lord of Offaly, which barony he held of the Earl of Pembroke. He was dead in 1204. His successor was a second Maurice, known also as Lord of Offaly, who became Justiciar of Ireland in 1232, an active defender of the King of England's interests. He died in 1258, and the barony passed to the son of his eldest son, who had died before his father. That grandson, another Maurice, was drowned in 1268, when crossing between England and Ireland. He left an infant, Gerald Fitzmaurice, for whom the barony was held against Irish attacks. The succession of Fitzgeralds now becomes confused. Along one line of Geraldines we come to John Fitzthomas, sixth Lord Offaly and first Earl of Kildare. A younger son of the Maurice Fitzgerald who fought by the side of Strongbow and founded the great family of the Geraldines was a Thomas Fitzmaurice, who had a son John Fitzthomas, killed at the battle of Callan in 1261, together with his son Maurice Fitzjohn, who had a son Thomas Fitzmaurice, Justice of Ireland in 1295. The son of the last-named Thomas was the Maurice Fitzthomas or Fitzgerald who married, in 1312, the daughter of Richard de Burgh, the second Earl of Ulster, who levied private war against Arnold le Poer for calling him a rhymer, and who in 1329, as a leader of the English colony, was created Earl of Desmond, with a grant to him of the County Palatine of Kerry. That first Earl of Desmond came into conflict with the authority of England when Edward III. set on foot a policy that gave advantage to the English born in England over the English born in Ireland. His estates were forfeited, but, on his submission, afterwards restored to him, and in 1355 he was appointed Viceroy in Ireland. The first Earl of Desmond was the first prominent upholder of the claims of the descendants of those who first came over with Strongbow to be independent chiefs in Ireland. He died in 1356 while he still held office as Viceroy. Two sons of his, Maurice and John, became the second and third Earls of Desmond. The fourth Earl, Gerald Fitzgerald, was the son of the first Earl by his second wife. In 1367 he succeeded Lionel Duke of Clarence as Justiciar of Ireland. He went far in the adoption of Irish customs, was well versed in the Irish language and history, wrote verse, and made war with nobody for calling him. Gerald the Poet. He died in 1398, but the Munster peasantry, who thought him a magician, said that he had only gone under the water of Lough Air near Limerick, whence he came up every seven years to pay a visit to his castle. His son John, the fifth Earl of Desmond, was drowned soon after his father's death, leaving a son Thomas, the sixth Earl, who was supplanted by his uncle James, third son of Gerald. James was seventh Earl, and his son Thomas Fitzgerald eighth. Thomas Fitzgerald, who succeeded in 1462 to the earldom, was in 1463 made Deputy to George Duke of Clarence, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. He was executed at Drogheda in 1468, upon a charge urged against him by John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, who superseded him in his office. He was accused of fosterage and alliance with the Irish, giving the Irish horses, harness, and arms, and supporting them against the faithful subjects of the King. Four of his sons became, in succession, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Earls of Desmond. James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, grandson of Thomas, was the thirteenth Earl, but his succession was |