three bishoprics in Ulster to which the crown had never nominated, namely, Derry, Raphoe, and Clogher. Later in Elizabeth's reign, Sir John Perrot reduced Ulster into counties, adding Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh, and Cavan, though in his time sheriffs never executed the law there. James made Wicklow a county, and sent sheriffs into Tyrone and Tyrconnel (Donegal). James also held surrenders. According to Brehon law, no man owned land; he had at most but a life-interest in it. Therefore, when an Irish lord surrendered his country, a commission was sent out, which ascertained what land he held in demesne, and what under tenants; the former was granted absolutely to him; the latter was granted to the tenants, subject to a rent equivalent to the 'coherings, cessings, and rents of butter and oatmeal,' previously rendered to the lord.

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CHAPTER III.

FROM THE INVASION TO THE WARS OF THE ROSES.

TWELVE years after Henry's landing, his son John, earl of Morton, then eighteen years of age, was sent over (1185) with a noble retinue, among whom was Glanville, the grand justiciary, and four hundred knights. The chieftains waited upon him with their submission, and he erected three castles, at Tipperary, Ardfinnan, and Lismore. This was all. Roderic O'Connor, the last king of Ireland, died at the age of eighty-two, in 1198, and the chieftainship was occupied by Cathal the Bloody handed, his son. De Lacy, the great baron of Meath, was assassinated, 1186, by an Irish workman he was employing.

In the twelfth year of his reign, King John came over again, and, it is said, with a great army. Of what this great army consisted, or how it could at that particular period of his depressed fortunes be raised, does not appear; we only know that he came over in June and returned in September (1210) the same year, and did nothing effectual for the kingdom. The Irish chieftains for the most part, especially O'Neill of Ulster and Cathal of Connaught, submitted themselves to him, as they had before done to his father: this was probably understood and accepted as a nominal acknowledgment of a nominal sovereignty; or, in modern terms, they renounced thereby all claim of independence. For two hundred years from the first conquest, the kings of England made no effort for the further reduction of the island; they left the struggle to the English colonies already subsisting, and to those adventurers who crossed the sea to join them.

As the early English annals record many small wars between the monarch and his refractory barons, so the

staple substance of Irish history is composed, for a century and a half, of the quarrels of the great Norman barons established in Ireland, and of similar quarrels with the native chiefs. The principal facts may be shortly stated. The Lacies of Meath made war (1204) upon Sir John de Courcy, whom they took by treachery and sent prisoner to England. King John by-and-bye (1210) in person undertook an expedition against the Lacies, and expelled them from their possessions; but on payment of great fines they were restored. De Lacy having been, on the death of De Courcy without issue, created earl of Ulster, fell into dissension (1228) with William Marshal, earl of Pembroke (son of the Protector Pembroke), and by inheritance lord of Leinster. All Meath was laid waste. William was succeeded by his brother Richard, earl of Pembroke: he was assassinated in Ireland as an enemy to the king (1234). Sir Stephen Longespé, the lord justice, slew O'Neill (1259) in the streets of Down, with 350 of his followers. The MacCarthies of Desmond (1261) suddenly attacked at Callan, and slew, a number of the Geraldines. Walter Bourke (or De Burgh), having married the heiress of Lacy, held mortal debate with Maurice Fitz-Maurice, the Geraldine (1264), for lands in Connaught; so that all Ireland was full of wars between the Bourkes and Geraldines. During them, Maurice Fitz-Maurice took the lord justice himself, Sir Richard Capel, a prisoner, and detained him. The Irish chief of Connaught (1270) routed the people of Bourke, earl of Ulster, and slew two lords. Richard Bourke, earl of Ulster, commonly called the Red Earl (1288), pretending a title to the lordship of Meath, made war upon Sir Theobald de Verdun, and besieged him in the castle of Athlone. John Fitz-Thomas, the Geraldine (1292), having, in contention with the Lord de Vesci, obtained from the king a goodly inheritance in Kildare, becomes arrogant, and, quarrelling with Richard, the Red Earl of Ulster, takes him prisoner and confines him in the castle of Ley. Gaveston was sent over (1308) by his royal patron, and

Sir

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no sooner arrived than he made an expedition into the mountains near Dublin, broke and subdued the rebels there, built Newcastle in the country of the Byrnes, repaired Castle Kevin, and afterwards proceeded into Munster, and performed everywhere great service with much virtue and valour.' In 1311, the Red Earl coming to besiege Bonratty, in Thomond, which was then held by Richard de Clare as his inheritance, fell again into the hands of his enemies, and all his men were overthrown and cut to pieces.

The interruption which occurs at this point arises from the Scotch disasters of King Edward II. Robert Bruce, when he fled from the old warrior, King Edward I., had lain concealed during the winter (1306) in a small island called Rachlin, a few miles off the coast of Antrim. After the Scotch victory at Bannockburn (1314), some of the Irish sent to ask for Edward Bruce as their king. He came-landing at Larne with six thousand men (25th May, 1315). With scarcely any resistance he overran the whole province of Ulster, stormed and burnt Dundalk, and caused himself to be there crowned king of Ireland. Bourke, or De Burgh, mustering his vassals, and assisted by the Irish chieftain of Connaught, Feidlim O'Connor, followed Edward Bruce into the north, and gave him battle on the Bann. The conflict was severe: Bourke lost the day, and several of his most valued friends were taken. After this the Irish rose, not so much for independence as for plunder: they burnt the castles of Randown and Athlone, with three others belonging to the Earl of Ulster in Connaught. Feidlim also renounced the English, and declared for Bruce and the Scots. Edward Bruce, having formed the siege of Carrickfergus, marched into Meath, and there broke an English force under Roger Mortimer, the lord justice. In Kildare he defeated the lord justice Butler. Thence he retired to the north, and lay quiet for the winter. Taking advantage of these disturbances, the Irish carried their

devastations over the whole face of the country, and were themselves a sufficient occupation for the authori ties. They composed their differences and united their armies, but received a great check at Athenry (1316), where Feidlim O'Connor, with all his abettors, was totally overthrown and killed. Eleven thousand Irish perished in this fight. At this juncture, Robert Bruce came over to the assistance of Edward, and Carrickfergus surrendered to them; they were masters of the field wherever they appeared; they encamped at Castleknock, near Dublin, and wasted the whole country as far as Kilkenny. The desolation thus created produced a famine even among themselves, and the Bruces once more retired to Ulster, whence Robert returned to Scotland. Early in 1318, the Scotch war came to an end by the defeat of Edward Bruce at the Faughard, an artificial mount, two miles from Dundalk. Maupas, a knight of English origin and Irish domicile, considering that the Bruce's death would probably put an end to the invasion, sought out his distinguished antagonist, and the two at the end of the day were found dead together.

John

Four years of devastation threw back the better elements of colonization, and drove the English from their more advanced posts into the four counties which formed the Pale-Dublin, Meath, Kildare, and Louth. The authority of the supreme government was shaken; abuses, tolerable only in the presence of a foreign enemy, became customary exercise of power; and the English, unsupported by their proper superiors, began to degenerate, and to adopt the dress, manners, and even names of the Irish. In this way, the colonies in Munster, Connaught, Ulster, and a third part of Leinster, cast off the English law, and even the borders and marches of the Pale grew unruly and out of order too, being subject to blackrents and Irish tributes.

The next period of Irish history, reaching from the Scotch war to the Wars of the Roses, retains a general