CHAP VII had restored him to his rank, appearing as the natural leader of the patriots.

Ireland was thus happy in the gratification of all its natural tendencies. The Brehon law readvanced upon the narrow limits to which by the exertions of Henry the Eighth the circuits of the Judges had been extended; and with the Brehon law came anarchy as its inseparable attendant. The Lords and Gentiles of the Irish Pale that were not governed under the Queen's laws were compelled to keep and maintain a great number of idle men of war to rule their people at home, and exact from their neighbours abroad-working every one his own wilful will for a law-to the spoil of his country and decay and waste of the common weal of the same.' 'The idle men of war ate up all together;' the lord and his men took what they pleased, 'destroying their tenants and themselves never the better;' 'the common people having nothing left to lose,' became as idle and careless in their behaviour as the rest,'' stealing by day and robbing by night.' Yet it was a state of things which they seemed all equally to enjoy, and high and low alike 'were always ready to bury their own quarrels to join against the Queen and the English."

At the time when the crown passed to Elizabeth the good and bad qualities of the people were thus described by a correspondent of the Council.

"The appearance and outward behaviour of the Irish sheweth them to be fruits of no good tree, for they exercise no virtue, and refrain and forbear from no vice, but think it lawful to do every man what him listeth.

They neither love nor dread God nor yet hate the

1 The disorders of the Irishry, 1559.—Irish MSS. Rolls House.

devil. They are worshippers of images and open CHAP VII idolaters. Their common oath they swear is by books, bells, and other ornaments which they do use as holy religion. Their chief and solemnest oath is by their The Irish lord's or master's hand, which whoso forsweareth is sure Commandto pay a fine or sustain a worse turn.

"The Sabbath day they rest from all honest exercises, and the week days they are not idle, but worse occupied. They do not honour their father or mother so much as they do reverence strangers.

For every murder they commit they do not so soon repent; for whose blood they once shed, they lightly never cease killing all that name.

'They do not so commonly commit adultery; not for that they profess or keep chastity, but for that they seldom or never marry, and therefore few of them are lawful heirs, by the laws of the realm, to the lands they

possess.

They steal but from the strong, and take by violence from the poor and weak.

They know not so well who is their neighbour as whom they favour; with him they will witness in right and wrong.

They covet not their neighbours' goods, but command all that is their neighbours as their own.

Thus they live and die, and there is none to teach them better. There are no ministers. Ministers will not take pains where there is no living to be had; neither church nor parish, but all decayed. People will not come to inhabit where there is no defence of law."

The condition of the Pale was more miserable than

and the Ten

ments.

1 The disorders of the Irishry, 1559.—Irish MSS. Rolls House.

CHAP VII

1559

of the Pale.

that of the districts purely Irish. The garrison took from the farmers by force whatever they required for their support, paying for it in the brass shillings in which they themselves received their own wages. The soldiers robbed the people; the Government had before robbed the soldiers; and the captains of the different disThe misery tricts in turn robbed the Government by making false returns of the number of men under their command. They had intermarried with the Irish, or had Irish mistresses living in the forts with them, and thus for the most part they were in league with those whom they were maintained to repress; so that choosing one master instead of many, and finding themselves obnoxious to their own countrymen by remaining under a rule from which they derived no protection, the tenantry of Meath flocked by hundreds over the northern border, and took refuge with O'Neil.1

Sir Edward Bellingham in 1549, by firmness of hand and integrity of heart, had made the English name respected from the Giant's Causeway to Valentia. Could Bellingham have lived a few years longer-could Somerset or Northumberland or Mary, so zealous each in their way for the glory of God,' have remembered that

1 After six years of discipline and improvement, Sir Henry Sidney described the state of the four shires, the Irish inhabitants, and the English garrison, in the following languge :

'The English Pale is overwhelmed with vagabonds-stealth and spoil daily carried out of it; the people miserable-not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend twenty pounds. They have neither horse nor armour, nor apparel nor victual. The soldiers be so beggarlike as it

would abhor a general to look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them, yet so allied with the Irish I dare not trust them in a fort or in any dangerous service. They have all an Irish we or two-never a married wife among them; so that all is known that we intend to do here.'-Sidney to Leicester, March 5, 1566. Irish MSS. Rolls House.

1559

without common sense and common honesty at the CHAP VII bottom of them, creeds and systems are as houses built on quicksands-the order which had taken root might have grown strong under the shadow of justice, and Ireland might have had a happier future.

But this was not to be. The labour and expense of a quarter of a century was thrown idly away. The Irish army, since the rebellion of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, had cost thirteen or fourteen hundred thousand pounds, yet the Pale was shortened and its revenues decreased; the moral ruin was more complete than the financial, and the report of 1559 closed with an earnest exhortation to Elizabeth to remember that the Irish were her subjects; that it was her duty as their sovereign 'to bring the poor, ignorant people to better things,' 'and to recover so many thousand lost souls that were going headlong to the devil."

Following close on the first survey, a more detailed account was furnished to Cecil of the social condition of the people. The common life of a chief and the relations between any two adjoining tribes were but too familiar and intelligible. But there was a general organization among the people themselves, extending wherever the Irish language was spoken, with a civilization of an Irish. kind and an intellectual hierarchy. Besides the priests there were four classes of spiritual leaders and teachers, each with their subdivisions.

of the

The first,' wrote Cecil's correspondent, is called the Analysis Brehon, which in English is called "the judge;" and spiritual before they give judgment they take pawns of both the chiefs of parties, and then they will judge according to their own nation.

the Irish

1 Irish MSS. Rolls House.

CHAP VII discretion.

1559

These men be neuters, and the Irishmen will not prey them. They have great plenty of cattle, and they harbour many vagabonds and idle persons; and if there be any rebels that move rebellion against the prince, of these people they are chiefly maintained; and if the English army fortune to travel in that part where they be, they will flee to the mountains and woods, because they would not succour them with victuals and other necessaries.

The next sort is called the "Shankee.' They also have great plenty of cattle wherewith they do succour the rebels. They make the ignorant men of the country believe that they be descended of Alexander the Great, or of Darius, or of Cæsar, or of some other notable prince, which makes the ignorant people to run mad and care not what they do the which is very hurtful to the realm.

The third sort is called "Denisdan," which is to say in English the "Boulde." These people be very hurtful to the commonwealth, for they chiefly maintain the rebels; and further they do cause them that would be true, to be rebellious-thieves, extortioners, murderers, ravenersyea and worse if it was possible. Their first practice, if they see any young man descended of the septs of O or Mac, and have half a dozen about him, then will they make a rhyme wherein they will commend his father and his ancestors, numbering how many heads they have cut off, how many towns they have burned, how many virgins they have deflowered, how many notable murders they have done; and in the end they will compare them to Annibal, or Scipio, or Hercules, or some other famous person-wherewithal the poor fool runs mad and thinks indeed it is so. Then will he gather a sort of rascals to him, and he must get him a prophecier who shall tell him how he shall speed as he thinks. Then