and competitions. It was scarcely possible for a writer not to share in the passions and prejudices of those around him: or, however candid, dispassionate, and accurate, still he must have done dangerous violence to their opinions and prepossessions, Time, and reflection, and an increasing liberality of sentiment, may have sheathed the acrimony of contending parties; and those at a distance may look on their contentions with indifference: yet, even at this day, the historian of Irish affairs must be armed against censure only by an integrity which confines him to truth, and a literary courage which despises every charge but that of wilful or careless misrepresentation.

IN several instances the author may have stated facts in a manner different from those writers usually accepted as authentic. Had he in such cases proceeded to a particular examination of the opinions and assertions of other men; had he entered into a justification of his own accounts, or specified the reasons which determined him to reject or to admit every particular authority, his work must have swelled to an enormous size. He was therefore, obliged to content himself with a diligent and attentive inspection of different evidence, with a careful use of his private judgment, with exhibiting the authorities he chose to follow, without generally engaging in critical and controversial discussions. They who are best acquainted with the materials of which this History, and

par

particularly the latter periods, have been formed, will possibly be the readiest to acknowledge the necessity of this method.

IT will justly be expected, that something should be said of the ancient state of Ireland previous to the adventure of Henry's subjects, But in this the author must confiné himself to those particulars which seem necessary to introduce, or to illustrate his principal subject. It is no part of his design to explore the antiquities of the Irish, to decide on the authenticity of their scattered records, or to take any share in any contest relative to these points. He is particularly disqualified for such attempts, by being totally unacquainted with the Irish language. In recurring to the monkish annals quoted in the first and second volumes, he was indebted to translations made for the use of Sir James Ware, and in possession of the UNIVERSITY of Dublin; to the collections, now the property of the DUBLIN SOCIETY, and most obligingly communicatedby that respectable body; but above all, to the zealous friendship and assistance of CHARLES O'CONNOR, esquire. And here he might enlarge on the assistance he hath received, and the materials obtained both in England and Ireland. But as such details may be suspected to contain more of ostentation than gratitude, the reader shall not be detained from that which seems of absolute necessity to be premised.

OF THE

HISTORY OF IRELAND

PREVIOUS TO THE

INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

If all nations have affected to deduce their History from the earliest periods, and to claim that origin which they deemed most honourable, the old Irish have been particularly tempted to indulge this vanity. Depressed for many ages, and reduced to a mortifying state of inferiority, stung with the reproaches, with the contempt, and sometimes with the injurious slander of their neighbours, they passionately recurred to the monuments of their ancient glory, and spoke of the noble actions of their ancestors in the glowing style of indignation. O'Flagherty, their celebrated antiquarian, (in a vindication of his Ogygia against Sir George Mackenzie, which I have seen in manuscript) speaks with an enthusiastic zeal of his country, as the venerable mother of Britain, "that engen"dered of her own bowels one hundred and "seventy-one monarchs for above two thou"sand years, to the year 1198, all of the

"same

same house and lineage; with sixty-eight kings and one queen of British-Scotland (omitting Bruces and Baliols) and four imperial kings and two queens of Great Britain and Ireland, sprung from her own "loins." In the reign of Edward the Second, the Irish claimed a still greater antiquity. An Ulster prince of this time, boasts Fordun. to the pope of an uninterrupted succession of Appendix one hundread and ninety-seven kings of Ireland, to the year 1170.

IT cannot be denied, that no literary monuments have yet been discovered in Ireland earlier than the introduction of Christianity into this country; and that the evidence of any transactions previous to this period, rests entirely on the credit of Christian writers, and their collections from old poets, or their transcripts of records deemed to have been made in times of paganism. It seems un

reasonable to expect, that any other domestic evidence of Irish antiquity should subsist at this day. From these the antiquarian forms a regular history, (mixed indeed with childish and absurd fables) of a long succession of kings from the earlier ages of the world. Not to mention Partholan, his sons, his hound, and oxen; the gigantic Fomorians and their extirpation; the Nemedians, Firbolgs, Tuatha-de-Danans and their sorceries; it is generally asserted, that about a thousand, or to speak with the more moderate, about five hundread years before the Christian æra, a colony of Scythians, imme

diately

1

diately from Spain, settled in Ireland, and introduced the Phoenician language and letters into this country; and that however it might have been peopled still earlier from Gaul or Britain, yet Heber, Heremon, and Ith, the sons of Milesius, gave a race of kings to the Irish, distinguished from their days by the names of Gadelians and Scuits, or Scots. Hence their writers trace a gradual refinement of their country, from a state of barbarous feuds, factions, and competitions; until the monarch celebrated in their annals by the name of Ollam-Fodla, established a regular form of government, erected a grand seminary of learning, and instituted the FES, or triennial convention of provincial kings, priests, and poets, at Teamor, or Tarah, in Meath, for the establishment of laws and regulation of government. Keating, the Irish historian, who transcribed his accounts from poetical records, mentions little more of this boasted assembly, than that its great object was to introduce civility, and to guard against those crimes which predominate in days of rudeness and violence. The magnificent detail of its grandeur and solemnity, the scrupulous attention paid by its members to the national history, annals, and genealogies, are nothing more, (as I am assured) than the interpolations of an ignorant and presumptuous translator.

BUT whatever were the institutions of this monarch, it is acknowledged that they soon proved too weak for the wildness and disorder

of