So distracted and torn to pieces was Ireland, from these and other causes, for a long time previous to the Anglo-Norman invasion that the country might have fallen an easy prey to any foreign invader disposed to make the experiment. It seems to have been the fate of this noble country, from the first, to be the prey of social discord, convulsion and strife. The cause of the common welfare of all, has almost throughout been sacrificed in the selfish struggles between rival factions; and while the people have been tearing each other to pieces at the bidding of their respective chiefs, the common enemy has been enabled to forge the chains of their national coercion and enslavement.

Notwithstanding, however, the fierceness of the feuds which raged among the native chiefs and kings of Ireland, it is extraordinary to observe with what spirit and unanimity they occasionally acted when attacked by foreign invaders. While England, during the period of the invasion of the Northmen or Danes, was laid completely prostrate, and her king was a fugitive in foreign lands, Ireland continued to struggle and resist to the last, pouring out her princes and her clans to oppose their progress, to the death, till they at length succeeded in striking the fatal blow at their power on the field of Clontarf. The tremendous exertions which the Irish people made on such occasions were sufficient evidence of the energies of which Ireland is capable, in a cause that rallies around it cordially the arms and hearts of her sons. We cannot avoid here quoting a passage from an old English historian, in proof of the brave and patriotic spirit of the Irish people, down to a comparatively recent period, in resisting every attempt to bring them under a foreign yoke: "It is a matter of wonder," says William of Newbridge, "that Britain, which is of larger extent, and equally an island of the ocean, should have been so often, by the chances of war, made the prey of foreign nations, and subjected to foreign rule, having been first subdued and possessed by the Romans, then by the Germans, afterwards by the Danes, and, lastly, by the Normans; while her neighbour, Hibernia, inaccessible to the Romans themselves, even when the Orkneys were in their power, has been but rarely, and then imperfectly subdued; nor even, in reality, has been brought to submit to foreign domination, till the year of our Lord 1171."

CHAPTER II.

Causes which led to the Anglo-Norman invasion-Early independence of the Irish Church-The supremacy of the Pope acknowledged-Pope Adrian's Bull, granting the Lordship of Ireland to Henry II.-Dermot Macmurchad, the betrayer of Ireland-Dermot is dethroned, and flies to England for helpState of England at this period-Tyranny of the nobles, and slavery of the people-Dermot obtains help from Norman adventurers-They land in Ireland. THERE have been many disputes about the causes which led to

the first invasion of Ireland by the English. The Norman kings, whose army of freebooters had overawed and conquered England, long looked with an eye of envy towards the neighbouring kingdom; and the more so, that it had always been ready to aid the Saxon people in their struggles for independence. After the defeat at Hastings, three sons of the conquered king sought refuge and succour in Ireland, and were there enabled to fit out a large fleet and army for the invasion of England. Hence, William "the Conqueror," and the first Henry, are said to have early entertained serious thoughts of adding Ireland to their dominions; and William Rufus, in one of his expeditions against the Welsh, (who were generally aided in their incursions on England by large bodies of Irish troops), is reported to have said, as he stood on the rocks at St. Davids, looking towards Ireland -"I will have the shippes of my kingdome brought hither, wherewith I will make a bridge to invade this land." It was not, however, until the reign of Henry the Second, one of the most ambitious and powerful of the AngloNorman monarchs, that the invasion of Ireland was seriously resolved upon. The peculiar position of the church in Ireland, at this period, auspiciously favoured his designs.

It would appear that though, at the time of which we speak, Ireland was Catholic throughout nearly its whole extent-the Druids being extinct, except in the remote districts of Ulster and Connaught there was a degree of sturdy independence among the clergy of the Irish church, which was not to be observed in any other portion of Christendom. They zealously maintained their independence, and refused as yet to recognize the spiritual authority of Rome. Hence they were placed under the ban of the early Popes, and spoken of in terms of angry reproach and sometimes of bitter denunciation. But, as the feuds among the rival factions of Ireland increased, the strength and vigour of the national church became terribly shaken. Numerous abuses crept in; religious ordinances were neglected; seminaries for the instruction of pastors were destroyed; monasteries and churches were seized by ambitious chiefs; and religion was fast going under foot. The heads of the Irish church deplored and lamented this state of things; especially when they contrasted it with the prosperous state of the AngloNorman church, which had now fully acknowledged the Papal authority. Accordingly, a party soon sprung up in Ireland, and rapidly increased in numbers and influence, in favour of a recognition of the Roman see; which, on its part, was not slow to avail itself of these dispositions in its favour. At length, after various and gradual steps, the papal authority was formally recognised, and the last of the western national churches was finally united to the Roman ee.

This union, however, was far from being complete. It was with great difficulty that the inferior clergy could be induced to resign their independence, and give up their ancient usages. The native

chiefs and kings also resisted a system which tended greatly to limit and control their power; and, in spite of the new arrangement, they still continued to nominate to ecclesiastical office and dignities. Adrian IV., originally an Englishman, named Breakspear, was now Pope, and longed for the opportunity of fully establishing the supremacy of the Romish see in Ireland. He found that some ally was needed to aid him in his designs; and the ambition of the young Norman king pointed him out as a likely auxiliary. Probably, also, the Norman monarch was nothing loth to seize the opportunity of extending his power and his conquests, even under the hypocritical plea of religion. He accordingly sent an envoy to Rome, acknowledging an amount of temporal power in the Pope, such as no one had ever before thought of assuming; and Adrian, on his part, granted Henry the lordship of Ireland, with full leave to take possession of it, provided only that he would maintain the papal supremacy and its ecclesiastical constitution. In the words of the bull issued by his holiness, full permission was granted that "Henry II. should enter the kingdom of Ireland, with the pious purpose of extending the borders of the church, restraining the progress of vice, correcting the manners of its inhabitants, and increasing the influence of religion; and that, in consideration for this power so vested in the English monarch, the annual pension of one penny for every house be levied and delivered over to the service of St. Peter."* With this bull, containing the grant and stipulation, was also sent a gold ring, adorned with a valuable emerald, as a token of Henry's investiture of the right to rule over Ireland. It was many years, however, before Henry could avail himself of the warrant granted to him by the Pope. He had rebellions of his own subjects to quell, headed by his own sons; and he was also engaged in possessing himself forcibly of his brother's territories in Anjou, in France, which he had been left by his father's will,-a will which Henry himself (the pious missionary who had undertaken to "extend the borders of the church" in Ireland) had sworn faithfully to fulfil ! But, in the meantime, an incident occurred, which hastened the Norman invasion, and brought over to the Irish soil a swarm of the same freebooting adventurers who had already divided among them for a spoil the national wealth and property of England.

* Dr. TAYLOR, in his "History of the Civil Wars of Ireland," gives a circumstantial account of this convention between Adrian IV. and Henry II.; and notices that "by a very rare coincidence, the zealous Protestant and Catholic writers of Irish history have agreed in suppressing the important fact that to establish the spiritual authority of the Pope was the avowed object of the expedition, and on the Papal gift alone did the Norman monarch rest his claim to the sovereignty of the country. The Protestants (continues he) were unwilling to acknowledge that their ascendancy, which they justly identified with English connection, was derived from the great object of their fear and hatred; while the Catholics, equally attached to their country and their religion, were disinclined to confess that their spiritual head had destroyed their national church, and given the dominion over their native land to a stranger, in order to extend his own power."--See vol. i., pp. 30-8 THOMAS MOORE also, in his " History of Ireland," takes a similar view of this transaction, which, he says, "presents in all respects a perfect instance of that sort of hypocritical prelude to wrong, that holy league for purposes of rapine, between the papal and regal powers, in which most of the usurpations, frauds, and violences of those dark and demoralized times originated."-LARDNER'S CYCLOPEDIA, HIST. OF IRELAND, vol. ii. p. 204.

The immediate cause of the invasion of Ireland was the malignant treachery of one of her own chiefs. As the name of Menteith, the betrayer of Wallace, Scotland's preserver, yet stinks in the nostrils of the people of Scotland,-so does that of Dermot Macmurchad, king of Leinster, the traitorous betrayer of Ireland, yet call forth the loathing and abhorrence of every patriotic Irishman. This Dermot was a thorough monster; but a fitting enough instrument for the freebooters whom he at length succeeded in introducing and settling upon his native soil. He had early made himself obnoxious for his cruelty, having on one occasion treacherously seized seventeen of the principal nobles of Leinster, and put the greater part of them to death; the rest he served by plucking their eyes out! Such was the fiend who introduced the Normans into Ireland! He afterwards seduced and carried off Devorgilla, wife of O'Ruarc, lord of Breffny, which led to a war, in which the adulterer was defeated with great loss. With this event, many historians have connected the expulsion of Dermot from his kingdom, and his subsequent flight into England, to solicit aid from Henry. But this did not occur for some sixteen years after; and in the meantime, many desolating and bloody wars had taken place, during which the king of Leinster retained his sovereignty, and even considerably augmented his power.

Dermot was a warm espouser of the Hy-nial faction, the hereditary rulers of Ulster, as opposed to the O'Connors, who were the hereditary rulers of Connaught. So long as O'Lachlan, a chief of the Hy-nial race, preserved the sovereignty of Ireland, Dermot, protected by this powerful monarch, was safe in the possession of his throne and his dominions. But, no sooner had O'Lachlan's power been overthrown, and he himself slain in battle, than Roderick O'Connor ascended the vacant throne, and immediately prepared to take vengeance on the opposite faction. Dermot's territories were invaded, when his feudatories and vassals, by whom he was hated, at once deserted him on all sides; and finding himself unable to make any effective resistance to his enemies, he set fire to his capital, Ferns, and fled to England, with a small train of followers, to solicit the aid of the Normans. On reaching Bristol, he found that Henry was absent from England, in France, where he was engaged in subduing some of his rebellious barons in Bretagne, over whom he had recently acquired authority. Dermot immediately set out for the Norman king's camp, and laid his case before him, tendering his allegiance. The traitor was at once received into high favour, and ample promises were made of military assistance in order to set him again on the throne of Leinster. Though Henry could not himself personally come to the assistance of Dermot, he gave him letters patent, to be employed throughout his dominions, granting "license and favour" to all such of his liegemen, "English, Norman, Welsh, and Scotch," who should be disposed to aid Dermot in the recovery of his dominions. Dermot

could not wait for the subsidence of the rebellions, in crushing which Henry was engaged. But he immediately resolved to avail himself of the king's letter, and to solicit the assistance of those Norman adventurers who had then settled in Wales, or were still engaged in its conquest.

Let us just glance, for a moment, at the condition of England at this period. But a short time had elapsed since the Norman conquest, when the country had been overrun and plundered by the armies of William of Normandy, who had routed the Saxon monarchs and chiefs, divided their lands among his followers, and made slaves of the great body of the Saxon people. That the iron was yet burning in their souls, was obvious enough from the frequent insurrections and rebellions of the people which took place at this period. The land was held possession of by mere physical force; the barons, with their vassals, free tenants, and socmen, holding in stern thrall the original Saxon inhabitants of the soil. The latter were excluded from all civil rights; they could possess no kind of property; they had not a right to even their own wives, the droits de seigneur intervening; they themselves were bought and sold with the soil, and were considered as mere chattels and regular articles of commerce. Giraldus states that the number of them exported to Ireland for sale, even in the reign of Henry II., was so great that the market was absolutely overstocked; and from William I. to the reign of John, there was scarcely a cottage in Scotland but possessed an English slave. The condition of the country was meanwhile wretched. An old writer, speaking of the transactions during the reign of Stephen, who immediately preceded Henry II., says, "The nobles burnt all the towns: thou mightest go a whole day's journey and not find a man sitting in a town, nor an acre of land tilled. Wretched men starved of hunger; to till the ground was to plough the sands of the sea.

Meanwhile the land had been parcelled out among the Norman chiefs and their vassals. While the king of the freebooters retained all the riches of the ancient kings of the country, the church plate and the most precious articles found in the warehouses of the merchants, the barons and knights who followed in his train, a collection of desperado adventurers from all parts of Europe,* received vast domains, castles, villages, and even entire towns, while the vassals were rewarded by smaller portions. Fortified towers and strong places were built in every direction: the natives were completely disarmed: the name of Saxon became a term of reproach, while the followers of the successful Normans were held to be "noble," in right of their victory and foreign birth.

But while so many of the Norman chiefs were thus richly rewarded by large portions of the spoil wrung from the conquered Saxons, there were others, who arrived later from the European

It is from these freebooting chiefs that many of the English aristocracy of the present day boast of being descended.