methods failed, because too arbitrary, England went to work with sword, with fire, with famine, with massacre, torture, poison, exile, and execution. Her plan was weighed and deliberate. It had the aim of legality in the beginning, but later it appeared without disguise in its desire for profit and dominance, working on the theory of race-superiority to the ends that England's success seemed to demand. "Christ did not die for the Irish." The resulting shame and ruin were afterwards generously ascribed by patriotic Englishmen to "blunders" and "mistakes." But the burning of state papers had not then become an accomplishment of the English Government. And from state papers the history of English policy is to be fully derived.

2

In 1521 the Duke of Norfolk (then Earl of Surrey) unfolded his plan about Ireland.

"The land shall never be brought to good order and subjection but only by conquest, which is, at your Grace's pleasure, to be brought to pass in two ways

Henry VIII did not see eye to eye with Surrey. He weighed the policy of conquest, especially after the crushing of the Geraldines, but he had no spare money.

He had his complications with France and Spain, and he had his young Reformation to nourish. In addition he agreed with Machiavelli that it was better to win a people's confidence than to depend on fortresses. And the fiasco of the Geraldine rebellion gave him his chance.

First he planned to launch Reformation in Ireland. Since the Normans, there had, of course, been no "religious" question except the question of having proEnglish bishops. The Gaels from Scotland and the Hebrides, "piratical marauders," were now firmly settled in Down and Antrim, but of course they were Catholics. The English in the walled towns were tenaciously Catholic. The Anglo-Irish lords, who traced their moral right to be in Ireland to a papal bull, were ardent in their faith. The higher clergy, appointed from England and sanctioned by Rome, had no theological difficulties.

Perhaps the only people questioned as good Catholics were the beggar friars who went amongst the country people and kept God and education alive in the windowless hovels. Now these friars, and the occupants of five hundred monasteries, were to be suppressed. Neither Irish nor Ango-Irish welcomed this disorganization. The monasteries, for one thing, served as inns. The English who imported the Refor

mation found themselves intensely unpopular for reasons of heart, head, and belly. But the new bishops and their hangmen peddled their reform through the country, amid "angers, slanders, conspiracies, and, in the end, the slaughter of men."

3

Yet this transfer of the church and the schcols went hand in hand with a policy of political conciliation. Irishmen were not citizens. They stood outside the Pale, the "little place," and consequently outside English law. "The mere Irish were not only accounted aliens but enemies, and altogether out of the protection of the law, so as it was no capital offense to kill them every Englishman might oppress, spoil and kill them without controlment." (Sir John Davies.) Thus conciliation had a way to travel, especially as Lord Leonard Gray was about to be executed for having practised it. But statecraft is nimble.

The "five bloods" or royal septs were technically within the law. But they had helped Lord Thomas in his rebellion. So long as the Government planned to exterminate them, they would not dare to "come in." But the Government made it plain that it wished to

conciliate them, and they weakened. They were worn out and bled white, Years of warfare had devastated

the country. Scotland and France had delayed to help, as they always did delay, and the new deputy led them

man by man to the door of negotiation. By promising peace and offering territorial titles a surprising number of fresh "submissions" was collected-this time compelling the chiefs to acknowledge Henry VIII as lord of Ireland and to deny and forsake the bishop of Rome. The chiefs cheerfully and unequivocally "denied" and "forsook." Then, in 1541, they came to Dublin, expenses paid, to a parliament. McGillapatrick, now the Baron of Upper Ossony, was there, and MacMurrough, now MacMurrough Kavanagh, and an O'Neill and an O'Moore and an O'Brien and an O'Reilly. Kildare's kinsman, the Earl of Desmond, was there, with Barry, Roche, FitzMaurice, and others of the "degenerate" English. Lord Ormonde, adept at languages, translated the proceedings for the Irish; it seemed that the master wished to be known hereafter as the king of Ireland. King of Ireland they made him without a pang.

This was not all. In 1542 Con O'Neill went to London to be created an earl! One of the de Veres

sponsored him. Next year Ulick Burke and the O'Briens followed. The king gave them cash and golden chains, each worth sixty pound odd. The London records bulged with Irish letters-patent and sparkling professions of allegiance.