removed his residence to Avignon, where his court remained about seventy years. This step considerably lowered his prestige; and was particularly disagreeable to the inhabitants of the States of the Church, who were accustomed to designate his long absence from Italy his Babylonish captivity.2 During its continuance the sovereign Pontiffs were the mere vassals of the French monarch; and the conclave of cardinals was ruled by the same influence. Clement V., who inaugurated the change of residence, was obliged to suppress the Knights Templars to gratify his Gallic master. These military monks whose wealth seems to have excited the cupidity of Philip the Fair-were put down in Ireland, as well as in other parts of Europe. The mean subserviency with which the Pope submitted to their ruin is acknowledged even by Roman Catholic historians. The writ for their suppression in this country was issued by Edward II. in 1307, the first year of his reign; and some time afterwards the Templars all over the island were arrested, conducted to Dublin, and imprisoned in the Castle. Their trial was little better than a mockery of the forms of justice; for the charges against them were supported by most unsatisfactory evidence; but they were condemned, and their property confiscated. The Pope granted their possessions throughout the kingdom to the Hospitallers; and Edward II. subsequently confirmed the donation. Though their treatment was very harsh, they are said to have experienced less severity in Ireland than in most other countries.1

1 From A.D. 1305 to A.D. 1376.

2 Reid's Mosheim, p. 492.

3 This order was instituted in the time of the Crusades. It was so called because the house in which the knights originally resided was near the site of the temple of Jerusalem. The knights undertook to defend Christianity by force of arms, and especially to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land.

Gilbert's Viceroys, p. 125.

CHAPTER IV.

FROM THE DEATH OF EDWARD I. TO THE DEPOSITION OF RICHARD II.1 A.D. 1307 TO A.D. 1399.

IN the early part of the fourteenth century the social state of Ireland was most unsatisfactory. After one hundred and thirty years' experience of English sovereignty, the people still submitted impatiently to the yoke. Little care was taken to win them over to more cordial obedience. Those who belonged to the English settlements-or what was subsequently called the Pale-were subject to the provisions of the British statute-book; whilst almost all the rest of the inhabitants remained under the old Brehon law. There was always a border territory of undefined extent, where neither English nor native rule decisively predominated; where lawlessness was the order of the day; and where the people lived in a wretched condition. The natives within the Pale did not enjoy the privileges of English or Anglo-Irish residents: they were regarded as an inferior class of human beings; and received the harshest and most unjust treatment. They were robbed of their cattle, but they could obtain no redress; they were stripped of their lands on the most frivolous pretences;

1 Edward II. A.D. 1307 to A.D. 1327; Edward III. A.D. 1327 to A.D. 1377; Richard II. A.D. 1377 to A. D. 1399.

2 There were five families of the Irish, viz: the O'Melaghlins, the O'Neills, the O'Conors, the O'Briens, and the McMurroughs (Cavanaghs)-called "the five bloods"-entitled to the coveted distinction of the advantage of the English laws. See Sir John Davys' Historical Relations, p. 23. Dublin, 1704. It was to these five septs that the old royal families of Ireland belonged. Hallam's Const. Hist. of England, p. 837. Ed. London, 1870.

VOL. I.

T

and an Englishman could kill an Irishman with impunity.1 In the reign of Edward I. these natives, again and again, petitioned government for admission to the enjoyment of the laws of England; and offered the king a large sum of money for the privilege; but the British settlers, aware that such a concession would curb their rapacity and violence, contrived to defeat the application. Without the vision of a seer the consequences might have been predicted. The aborigines deeply resented their cruel oppression; the estrangement between them and the colonists increased; and it became more and more difficult to maintain the authority of the English monarch. When Robert Bruce appeared as the deliverer of Scotland, and when on the memorable 24th of June, 1314, he secured its independence by the glorious victory of Bannockburn, the Irish began to take courage. They invited the Scottish hero to interfere in their defence; Robert induced his brother Edward to respond to their appeal; and, accordingly, in May 1315, this brave soldier landed with six thousand men at Larne on the coast of Antrim.3 Joined by the natives in great numbers, he soon overran a large portion of the country, and was crowned King of Ireland. For upwards of three years he maintained his ground against all opposition; but famine at length began to make terrible ravages among his troops; the ablest English generals encountered him in the field; and, in October, 1318, he sustained a complete defeat near Dundalk, and lost his life in the

1 See King's Primer, ii. 638.

2 Leland, i. 243-247. "The great Anglo-Irish lords had a direct interest in excluding their Irish tenants from the protection of the English law. Over their English tenants they could legally exercise no powers but such as were exercised in England; but over their Irish tenants they claimed, and were legally entitled to, all the privileges which had been exercised by the Irish princes." Note to Grace's Annals, p. 84. Irish Archæol. Soc. Publications.

3 See Reeves's Antiq. of Down, Connor, and Dromore, pp. 265, 271. King Robert Bruce himself came to Ireland when his brother was in the country, but remained only for a short period. The appearance of Edward Bruce in Ireland seems to have been hailed with delight by the bulk of the native population. Clyn says that "during the whole time the Scots were in Ireland, almost all the Irish of the land adhered, very few preserving faith and fidelity to the English crown." But the horrors of the war seem to have at length made them weary of Bruce's presence, and hence the annalists speak of his death with so much satisfaction.

engagement. This overthrow extinguished the Scottish power in Ireland.

Though Edward Bruce appeared among the men of Ulster at their own request to liberate them from horrid oppression, and though many of the native clergy, and even some of the bishops, gave him their support,' the Pope fulminated excommunications against both himself and all his adherents. This step seems to have been anticipated by the northern chieftains; and one of the most remarkable documents of the period is a petition addressed to John XXII., the reigning Pontiff, by King Donald O'Neill, in the name of the nobles and people of Ireland. This memorial sets forth the miseries of the country, and states the reasons which had induced so many of the aboriginal inhabitants to join the standard of their Scottish emancipator. After referring to the legendary history of the island, and to the Bull of Adrian making it over to the British crown, the petition goes on indignantly to describe the gross injustice which the natives had recently experienced. It declares that the conditions calculated to promote the improvement of the native population, as mentioned in the papal grant, had never been fulfilled; and that the English had ever since endeavoured, with all their power, to exterminate the Irish inhabitants. "By means of base and iniquitous scheming," says this appeal, "they have so far prevailed against us that, after expelling us violently, without regard to the authority of any superior, from our spacious habitations and patrimonial inheritances, they have forced us to retire, for the preservation of life, to mountains, woods, bogs, and barren moors, and even to the caves of the rocks;

1 Leland, i. 271, 275. Adam de Northampton, bishop of Ferns, was one of the adherents of Bruce. Gilbert's Viceroys of Ireland, p. 140. The Irish state, in their appeal to John XXII., that they were prepared to verify their recital of outrages "by the testimony of twelve bishops at least." Most of these were probably sympathisers. The document itself was evidently written by an ecclesiastic.

2 O'Neill styles himself "King of Ulster and true heir to the throne of all Ireland by hereditary right." From the English invasion to this period the power of the O'Neills had been declining in Ulster; but it now acquired fresh strength, and continued to flourish till the beginning of the seventeenth century.

3 This letter is given at length in King's Primer. Supplementary volume. 1119-1135. The original may be found in Fordun's Scotichronicon, at A.D. 1318.

and there, like wild beasts, to dwell for a long period. Nay, even there they are incessantly molesting us, and exerting themselves with all their might to drive us away; and recklessly seizing, for their own use, on every spot where we reside, they mendaciously assert, in the extreme frenzy which blinds them, that we have no claim to any free dwelling-place in Ireland; but that, of right, the whole property of the country belongs to themselves. Because of these and many other things of the same description, there have arisen between us and them implacable enmities and perpetual wars. . . . From the period when the grant [of Adrian] was issued to the present time, more than fifty thousand people of both nations have perished by the sword, besides those who have fallen victims to famine, to grief, and to the rigours of captivity. These few circumstances relative to the general history of our forefathers, and the miserable condition to which the Pope of Rome has reduced ourselves, may suffice for this occasion."

"1

In this memorial special mention is made by the petitioners of the barefaced partiality shown to persons of English descent in the civil courts. Every man who was not Irish might, they assert, on any pretence, go to law with an Irishman ; whilst, with the exception of the prelates, neither layman nor ecclesiastic, who was Irish, could commence any action whatever. If an Englishman killed an Irishman-no matter of what rank, whether he were clergyman or layman, secular or regular were he even a bishop-there was no punishment awarded for the murderer by the English judge. Monks of the English race had been known to declare that it was no more sin to kill an Irishman than to kill a dog; and that, if they committed such an act, they would not, on that account, refrain, for a single day, from the celebration of mass. If an Irish female of any rank, married an Englishman, she lost her right of inheritance on the death of her husband. The memorial adds that, in the part of Ireland of which the English were in peaceful possession, religious communities were prohibited from admitting among them any who were

1 "Haec pauca de generali progenitorum nostrorum origine, et miserabili in quo Romanus Pontifex statu nos posuit, sufficiant ista vice."