their dress, mimicked their gestures, went so far as to pluck them by the beard, and finally thrust them with repeated insults from their presence. The hot blood of these Irish chiefs could not brook this treatment. They hastened home, burning for revenge: they represented to their neighbour chiefs the galling insults they had received, and asked "if such be the manners in which our loyal submission is received, what other hope remains for the country, but united and determined resistance?" The flame caught and spread with amazing rapidity; a spirit of hostility to the invaders sprung up, such as had never before been witnessedalmost the entire island being animated by the sentiment of deadly hate against the Anglo-Norman government. The chiefs now agreed to sink all minor differences, and pledged themselves by the most solemn oaths to defend their country and its liberties to the death.

While such was the spirit of determined resistance awakened by Norman arrogance and insolence, the young prince, with his courtiers and advisers, were heedlessly pursuing their foolish and dissipated career. The storm burst upon their heads with terrible fury. Almost a simultaneous attack was made upon the Norman forces at all points, with extraordinary and unprecedented success. Castles were daringly assaulted, and their garrisons put to the sword; bodies of Norman troops were attacked and cut to pieces, many of the most celebrated of the Norman chiefs falling victims to the outraged feelings of the people. In some places, the Irish were repulsed with great loss; but such was the result of the struggle, that by the end of the season, (according to the testimony of the English chroniclers themselves), John had lost almost his whole army! Henry heard with dismay of the ruin which threatened his cause in Ireland; and lost no time in recalling John, and entrusting the government to an old and experienced, but fierce and blood-thirsty warrior, by name De Courcy, who had long been engaged in ravaging and desolating the province of Ulster. He acted with the utmost vigour, in recovering the lost ground, and restoring the tottering Norman influence; but even he and all his powers would have failed, but for the dissensions which again begun to appear among the Irish chiefs at the very time of their greatest success. Alas! the liberties of Ireland were again lost by the treachery of her chiefs! One or other of the rival factions called in the aid of the foreigners, for the purpose of destroying their native enemy; and thus the foreigner was again enabled to repossess himself of all the ground he had lost. Ulster was distracted with civil war, and thus De Courcy was enabled to recover his original position there, almost without interruption. In Connaught, the sons of Roderick were at war with their father, whom they succeeded in deposing, when he took shelter in a monastery, and shortly afterwards ended his unfortunate career.

Thus distracted and torn to pieces was Ireland, and thus

miserable and wretched was its population, when the death of Henry II., at Chinon, in Normandy, (A.D. 1189), closed for ever any hope which might yet be entertained, of a more pacific and rational course of policy, on the part of that monarch, in the government of unfortunate Ireland.

CHAPTER V.

State of Ireland at Henry's death-The Church: introduction of Tithes-English Laws-The English Pale-Ireland beyond the Pale-The native Irish in relation to the soil-Irishmen might be plundered and murdered with impunity-Proofs -The quarrel hereditary.

THE condition of Ireland, at the death of Henry, was indeed wretched in the extreme. The country had been repeatedly ravaged throughout almost its whole extent; crops, flocks, and herds, had been destroyed; and thousands of people whom the sword had spared, died of hunger. But anarchy did not die for the elements of mischief still existed in all their force, and were even carefully fostered by the invaders of Ireland, as their best protection and safety, as well as their surest means of future encroachment and conquest. To the demoralization consequent upon such a longcontinued warfare, and the frequency of scenes of violence and bloodshed, was also to be added the worse demoralization now introduced among the Irish, of hiring themselves out to fight on any side, regardless of aught but rapine and plunder,—a practice which could not but have the most injurious and debasing effects on the character of the Irish people. No surer method than this could have been devised of obliterating all distinctions between right and wrong, and producing that state of moral degradation which both disposes and fits men to be slaves.

Among the other methods adopted by Henry to undermine the independence of Ireland, was the attempted attachment to his cause, by bribery and corruption, of the Irish clergy. Despots have in all times eagerly embraced alliances with the religious teachers of the people, in order to suit their own unholy purposes; and all experience proves that there is no more effectual means of extinguishing the liberties of a nation, than by placing over it a corrupt and venal priesthood. Henry, it will be remembered, first appeared in Ireland in the character of a missionary he had a commission to "reform" the church, and we have shown what were the amount of his reforms. Among other things, he endeavoured to attach to his interests the Irish clergy, by considerably increasing their power and privileges. He also exempted lands and other property belonging to the church from all impositions exacted by the laity; enjoining also, for the first time in Ireland, the payment of tithes to the priesthood by the people. This, it was no doubt hoped, would prove a lasting bribe to the church.

But Henry was mistaken: tithes could not be collected; the great body of the Irish clergy preferred the old independent usages of the church; and for a long time after the passing of this decree, the priesthood remained unbribed, and tithes remained unpaid. At length Henry, finding that the Irish were but unwilling instruments in his hands, resolved to promote his Norman followers to the high offices in the English church; and, on the death of the famous Lawrence O'Toole, John Comyn, an Englishman, was made Archbishop of Dublin. This was the commencement of a system of corruption in the Irish church, which has continued down to the present day. The church in Ireland is still the badge of conquest, as much as when Henry placed his English bishops over the Irish people nearly seven hundred years ago.

When Henry died, but a small portion of Ireland, comparatively speaking, was under the rule of the Norman chiefs, and subject to the English law and authority. Not more than one-third part of the kingdom then acknowledged the foreign power. The rest was ruled over by the native chieftains, who exercised the same rights of sovereignty as under the ancient monarchy. And thus the laws, language, and customs, of the native Irish, continued unchanged; the English remaining an isolated and circumscribed colony, in the midst of a hostile and ever resisting people. All the elements, however, of national anarchy were preserved; and the peace and happiness of Ireland continued to be sacrificed for centuries to come. The extension of the English power being henceforward entrusted to private adventurers, who were rewarded with the spoils which they were able to seize from the natives, plunder was thus legalized, and the security of native life and property set at nought. To kill "mere Irish" was not considered a crime, while to seize their property was deemed an honourable act, to be rewarded by honours and offices in the state. Irishmen might be oppressed, spoiled, or killed, without controul; and thus were they rendered outlaws and perpetual enemies of the crown of England.*

Had Henry given the country a uniform system of law and government at the first, when he had the opportunity, much of this future misery and mischief might have been spared. A community of interests would thus have sprung up; both invaders and natives would ere long have merged into one people; the invidious distinctions, as of conquerors and conquered, would have been removed; factious practices and unsocial manners would have yielded to the restraints of regular government; and the genial fruits of protected industry and progressing civilization would ere

"It was certainly a great defect (says Sir John Davies, an English Attorney-General) in the civil policy of Ireland, that, for the space of three hundred and fifty years, at least, after the conquest first attempted, the English laws were not communicated to its people, nor the benefit nor protection thereof allowed them; for, as long as they were out of the protection of the laws, so as every Englishman might oppress, spoil, and kill them, without controul, how was it possible they could be other than outlaws, and enemies to the crown of England."-DAVIES HISTORICAL RELATIONS.

long have been gathered and enjoyed by all classes of the community. Instead of this, however, an opposite course was adopted, which produced as opposite results. An English Pale was formed, consisting of the first acquisitions of the Anglo-Normans, and extending along the eastern and south-eastern shores of Ireland. Within this pale only, the laws, language, and institutions of England prevailed; all the Irish people beyond it being regarded in the light of savages, "enemies," and outlaws. The most deadly rancour sprung up, and became hereditary, between the two races; the Normans and their descendants adding to their haughty contempt for the Irish a deep and inveterate hatred, which displayed itself in every form of insult and injury that devilish ingenuity could devise; while the Irish people amply repaid it on their side, by deadly enmity, by perpetual harassments, by nocturnal attacks, by destructive invasions, and by all the contrivances of a people driven mad and desperate by oppression and insult.

Who does not see in that first invasion and settlement of Ireland by the Normans, a clear unravelment of the condition of Ireland down to the present day? There were the two races, distinct and hostile, hating and hated by each other, the one denounced as foreigners and tyrants, the other as serfs and rebels,+-the one assuming the rights of conquerors, the other resisting them often to the death, the one race, constituting a small minority, enjoying with trembling the wealth and property which was theirs by right of physical force only, while the great mass of the people were plunged by oppression into deep poverty, misery, and suffering,the soil monopolized by a small band of rapacious foreigners, while the native inhabitants, counted only as outlaws and enemies, were hunted from the soil which they occupied, and, thus rendered homeless and destitute, perished by multitudes in the land of their birth. It was one of the evils of the native Irish system, previous to the Norman invasion, that the land was held by the people

At the present day, the foreign invaders of Ireland are very erroneously stigmatized as "SAXONS." If there be any use in names at all, why not call them by their right name of "NORMANS," as we have above shown it to be the true one? The fact is, almost the only "Saxons" in Ireland at the time of its invasion, in 1170, were those who had been sold to the Irish people as slaves, after the conquest of England by the Normans! At a general council of the Irish clergy held at Armagh, shortly after the invasion of Ireland by Dermot and his Norman allies, they declared that the success of the invaders was owing to the anger of heaven, which the Irish had provoked by purchasing English slaves (the vanquished Saxons) from the merchants of Bristol; and the slaves throughout the country were accordingly ordered to be immediately liberated, in order thus to avert the divine wrath from the Irish nation. See MOORE, TAYLOR, O'HALLORAN, &C.

It is a singular fact, that the very first resistance which the Irish made to the Norman troops, namely, at the siege of Wexford, was designated as "rebellion," by the English chroniclere!" Thus early," says Moore," was it considered "rebellion" in the Irish to defend their own rightful possessions. A similar view of the historical relations between the two countries has continued to be entertained ever since. Thus THOMAS WHARTON, in the preface to his spirited Ode, "Stately the feast, and high the cheer," speaks of Henry II. "undertaking an expedition into Ireland to suppress a rebellion raised by Roderick, king of Connaught," and describes him in the ode as

at the pleasure of their chiefs; consequently, they might all be dispossessed at a moment's warning. The possession of similar power," says a well-informed Irish writer,*" was ardently desired by the Norman barons. With short-sighted policy, they preferred a horde of miserable serfs to a body of substantial yeomanry; and they sacrificed readily their true interests, and the interests of both countries, to secure this object of their unworthy ambition. A similar folly seems to have seized on the successive oligarchies that have wielded the destinies of Ireland. Nothing was deemed so formidable as an independent tenantry; no possession more desirable than an estate stocked with beings who were slaves in all but the name. Hence, for many centuries, the valuable class of substantial farmers was utterly unknown in Ireland-hence the number of such is even now inconsiderable-and hence the great mass always ready for insurrection, when summoned by popular leaders, or by their own passions; men possessing no sympathy with their landlords, for never did community of feeling exist between master and slave; men having nothing to lose in agrarian tumult, and every thing to hope from the prospect of revolution. The Norman oligarchs (if such a word may be used) were bad masters, and worse subjects. The monarchs soon found the degenerate English who had adopted Irish customs more obstinate and formidable enemies than the natives. In the language of the old historians, they were more Irish than the Irish themselves ;' and, from their first settlement, their principal object and that of their successors was, to controul, and if possible prevent, the wholesome influence of the British government, in order to maintain their own monopoly of oppression. Had Henry remained a sufficient time to complete his prudent plans, he might really have established an English interest in Ireland; but he only left behind him an oligarchy, which, like all other oligarchies in a country possessing the semblance of freedom, was ever jealous to the sovereign, and odious to the people."

Besides the merciless sword, the law was also as mercilessly turned against the Irish people. We have said that Henry refused to extend the English laws beyond the English pale. Many of the Irish pressed for admission to the rank of subjects, and for enjoyment of the "privileges" of the English constitution. But Henry and his advisers refused; and, with the exception of the five families of O'Neills of Ulster, O'Connors of Connaught, O'Briens of Thomond, O'Lachlans of Meath, and Mac Murroughs (Mc Murchads) of Leinster, the Irish people were held to be aliens and enemies, and could neither sue nor be sued in the English courts of law. This was the case down even to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a period of nearly 350 years! The Irish were not only denied all protection from the laws of their invaders; they

TAYLOR'S "History of the Civil Wars of Ireland."