Their monopoly being now at an end, they became malcontents, and in due course, patriots: and, with their accustomed arrogance, these lordlings, of a district which extended not quite thirty miles, to the north and north-west of Dublin, affected to be considered as the country party. Their opposition was constant, harassing, but unarmed; the first unarmed opposition in our history: their cooler temperament shunned the perils of the field, and their legal subtlety eluded the scaffold; the chief danger which threatened them, was that of being trampled in the rout of their Irish associates, whom they treacherously goaded on, to stand the shock of the English arms. But, while they thus abused the reckless valour of one faction, they were themselves ensnared by the deeper artifices of another. Led to a coalition with the ex-bishops, by similarity of circumstances, and by the sympathies of discontent, they sunk gradually, from allies to instruments; and their descendants, to this day, continue, for the most part, to endure the hereditary bondage; and to swell the triumphal cavalcade, of an insolent hierarchy.*

*There is only one noble Roman Catholic family in Ireland, which is not descended from these lords. The first Valentine Brown in our annals, was an English Protestant, employed by queen Elizabeth as a commissioner of forfeited estates; and, in the cutting up of the great Desmond property, a portion fell to the lot of the carver. 6 This Brown,' says Cox, wrote a notable tract for the reformation of Ireland, wherein there is nothing blameworthy, saving that he advises the extirpation of the Irish Papists; and, therefore, did not foresee, that his own

The nobles of the remoter districts were equally dissatisfied; and were turbulent, in proportion to their superior power, and to the greater rudeness of their manners. They had begun to discover, that, in acknowledging a king of Ireland, they were understood by the government as making concessions, which it was by no means their intention to grant; while, galled by the taunting triumph of an adverse faction, they were quite willing that the civil authorities should have jurisdiction over churchmen with this view, they had taken the oath of supremacy under Henry; and, at the beginning of the present reign, they repeated it with the same alacrity but, for themselves, they were still enamoured of the barbarous power and circumstance of feudalism. Those great lords, in particular, who had accepted English titles, and agreed to attend parliament, affected not to perceive, how such acts. of condescension implied a surrender of substantial authority, or a consent to admit the interference of the crown in the internal regulation of their princely domains. But no simplicity or self-importance could blind them any longer, to the designs of government; and they saw, with much vexation, that they were expected to lay aside their old usages, to submit to equal laws, and to asso

heir would degenerate into an Irish Papist, and ungratefully oppose that English interest, upon which his estate is founded. p. 302. + Ibid. ii. 185.

* Leland, ii. 381.

ciate with their former vassals, on the footing of

fellow-subjects.

Measures to this effect had been making silent progress, during the latter years of Henry; and, somewhat more openly, in the two succeeding reigns: but the high spirit of Elizabeth dictated an uncompromising and adventurous policy. Resolved to monopolize the glory of the settlement of a barbarous country, and, as yet, a stranger to those parsimonious suggestions which too much influenced her later policy towards Ireland, the new queen urged forward, together, the two measures of ecclesiastical and civil reform; and thus doubled and consolidated opposition. From time to time, Elizabeth sent instructions to her Irish government to proceed with vigour, in breaking the power of the nobles deep and general discontent among them was the natural consequence; and from discontent it was, in those days, an easy transition to insurrection. Having determined to rebel, they wisely made religion their ostensible grievance : the pretext was plausible; it would strengthen their confederacy, engage the simple and superstitious in their cause, and help to conceal from all, the true sources of Irish calamity; accordingly, they became the champions of religion. Formerly,

when they had once resolved to obey the king, they made no scruple to renounce the pope* ; knowing, that, thereby, they would lower the tone of a domincering priesthood: now, on the other

*Sir John Davies.

hand, they had resolved to oppose the crown, and therefore, affected a zeal for the papacy.

The common opinion received,' says Sir George Carew, and by the rebels published, to be the principal motive of their late and former rebellions, since her majesty's reign, is supposed to be religion. But, therein let no man be deceived; for ambition only, is the true and undoubted cause, that moves the rebels, and others of this realm, to take arms; though the English race and the Irish have different ends. The English, to recover again the supreme government, in bearing her majesty's sword by one of themselves, as, for many years and ages, they have done; and generally striving to have the captainries of their countries, like the Palatines, in their own hands, not admitting of sheriffs, or other officers of justice, to overlook them, or restrain their barbarous extortions. Thus far only, the ambition of the English reacheth; for, to be subjects to any other prince than her majesty or her successors, no man can think them so sottish as to desire it; and to be in any other quality than the state of a subject, they cannot be so foolish as to propound any hope. But the Irish rebels aim at a higher mark; still retaining in memory, that their ancestors have been monarchs and provincial kings of this land; and, therefore, to recover their former greatness, they kick at the government, and enter into rebellion, losing no times of advantage, nor refusing the least foreign aid, that, by troubling the

* Letter to Secretary Cecil, Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, i. 6

state, may advance their desires, hoping, in time, by strong hand, to regain the crown of Ireland to themselves. These several ambitious swellings in the hearts of the English and Irish rebels, are the true grounds of their continual rebellions; and to draw multitudes of the meaner sort of this kingdom unto them, they mask their ambition with religion, making the same their stalking-horse, to allure the vulgar to crown their fortunes.'

The object of the hierarchy, was similar to that, which Carew has here ascribed to the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Convinced, like their predecessors, that the dependence of Ireland upon some foreign country would forward their ambitious projects, because the absence of the sovereign would naturally increase their own importance at home, they had now acquired an attachment to England, from the events of four hundred years, and from the associations of their order; and they were not as yet led, by repeated disappointments, and by the progress of intrigue, to think seriously of a connection with France or Spain. They were, therefore, willing that the titular sovereignty of the country should still be vested in the English crown, provided that the substantial powers of government were committed to their own order, to be administered according to their canons or their caprice, and without responsibility to any higher tribunal. But, though their purpose was the same, which had inspired the cabals of Lawrence and his contempo

* See the extract from Dr. Routh's Analecta Sacra in chap. 3.