undertakers, one of the latter, Robert Paine, writing from Limerick to his partners in England, says that "English is being taught to Irish pupils there through the medium of Latin." (Paine's "Brief Description of Ireland in 1589.")

"The verie English of birth," complains Campion, "conversant with the brutish sort of that people [the Irish] become degenerate in short space, and quite altered into the first ranke of Irish rogues." Yet, elsewhere we discover from Campion regarding these brutish Irish: "They speake Latine like a vulgar tongue, learned in their common schools of leachcraft and law, whereat they begin children, and hold on sixteene or twentie years conning by roate the aphorisms of Hypocrates, and the Civill Institutions."2

After the new religion had been introduced to Ireland new doors were open for the persecution of the Irish Race, and fresh. inspiration for the work was supplied. By virtue of Henry's warrant, the churches and monasteries were robbed of their riches, shrines were defiled, sacred relics were burned or scattered, beautiful statues were smashed, orders of religious were expelled from hundreds of their houses-which went to enrich his minions-and beautiful churches were wrested from the people.

And as the Reformation progressed in age, its ingenious methods for bringing the knowledge of the true God to the people progressed likewise. Some of the subjects chosen for inducting of religion into, "were burned before a slow fire; some were put on the rack and tortured to death; whilst others, like Ambrose Cahill and James O'Reilly, were not only slain with the greatest cruelty, but their inanimate bodies were torn into fragments, and scattered before the wind." The fate of the gentle and saintly Archbishop Plunkett is only too well known: "His speech ended and the cap drawn over his eyes, Oliver Plunkett again recommended his happy soul, with raptures of devotion into the hands of Jesus, his Saviour, for whose sake he died-till the cart was drawn from under him. Thus then he hung betwixt Heaven and earth, an open sacrifice to God for innocence and religion; and as soon as he expired the executioner ripped his body open and

2 And the prejudiced Campion admits of these savages: "The people are thus inclined; religious, franke, amorous, irefull, sufferable of paines infinite, very glorious, great givers, passing in hospitalitie; the lewder sort are sensual, but reformed, are such mirrours of holinesse and austeritie, that other nations retain but a shewe or shadow of devotion in comparison of them. Abstinence and fasting is to them a familiar kind of chastisement. They are sharp-witted, lovers of learning, capable of any studie whereunto they bend themselves, constant in travaile, adventurous, intractable, kinde-hearted, secret in displeasure."

pulled out his heart and bowels, and threw them in the fire already kindled near the gallows for that purpose.'

Under Elizabeth it was enacted that every Romish priest found in Ireland after a certain date should be deemed guilty of rebellion, that he should be hanged till dead, then his head taken off, his bowels taken out and burned, and his head fixed on a pole in some public place.

Keating tells us how Bishop Patrick O'Healy and Cornelius O'Rourke were put to the rack, had their hands and feet broken by hammers, needles thrust under their nails, and were finally hanged and quartered.

It was under Elizabeth that the price fixed on the head of a priest was made uniform with that on the head of a wolf. And under her was passed the law of Recusancy fixing heavy penalties upon all delinquents who refused to attend Sabbath services in the church of the new religion.

It was not alone the religion of the Irish people that was then sought to be wiped out, but their very life. Her armies with torch and sword, converted a smiling fruitful country into a fearful desert. Edmund Spenser in his "View of the State of Ireland" thus graphically pictures a little of what Elizabeth accomplished: "Notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corne and cattel, yet, ere one yeare and a half, they were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would rue the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glenns, they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eate the dead

3 The following are a few samples of the tens of thousands of such efforts for the reforming of the Irish.-Two Franciscans were taken and thrown into the sea, and another was trampled to death by horses. Three laymen, at Smerwick, had their legs and arms broken with hammers, and then were hanged, and similar torture was inflicted on the abbot of Boyle. Three Franciscans, at Abbeyleix, were first beaten with sticks, then scourged with whips until the blood came, and finally were hanged. One Roche was taken to London and flogged publicly through the streets, and then tortured in prison until, he died; another being flogged, had salt and vinegar rubbed into his wounds, and then was placed on the rack and tortured to death. And Collins, a priest at Cork, was first tortured, then hanged, and whilst he yet breathed, his heart was cut out and held up, soldiers around crying out in exultation, Long live the Queen.-From "Our Martyrs," quoted by E. A. D'Alton in his "History of Ireland.'

4 Five pounds was the usual price for both-but Burton's Parliamentary Diary of June 10th, 1567, records the words of Major Morgan, M.P for Wicklow-who was protesting in Parliament against striking more taxes on Ireland-"We have three beasts to destroy that lay burdens upon us; the first is a wolf upon whom we lay five pounds; the second beast is a priest on whom we lay ten pounds-if he be eminent, more; the third beast is a Tory," etc.

carrions, happy where they could finde them; yea, and one another soone after; insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves, and, if they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time; yet, not able to continue there withal; that in shorte space, there was none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful countrey suddainlie left voyde of man and beast."

Lecky in the preface to his History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century says: "The slaughter of Irishmen was looked upon as literally the slaughter of wild beasts. Not only men, but even women and children who fell into the hands of the English, were deliberately and systematically butchered. Bands of soldiers traversed great tracts of country, slaying every living thing they met." And he also says: "The suppression of the native race was carried on with a ferocity which surpassed that of Alva in the Netherlands, and which has seldom been exceeded in the pages of history."

The honest Scottish Protestant Dr. Smiles sums up the Elizabethan work in Ireland, "Men, women and children wherever found were put indiscriminately to death. The soldiery was mad for blood. Priests were murdered at the altar, children at their mother's breast. The beauty of woman, the venerableness of age, the innocence of youth was no protection against these sanguinary demons in human form."

The Protestant Rev. Dr. Taylor, in his History of the Civil War in Ireland, bears testimony to the fact that these Irish barbarians, when opportunity offered for avenging themselves on their persecutors, took their revenge in a manner that would have done credit to a civilised people-say, to the gende English. He tells how, when in the reign of Queen Mary the persecutors of the Catholics found their occupation gone, "The restoration of the old religion was effected without violence: no persecution of the Protestants was attempted; and several of the English, who fled from the furious zeal of Mary's inquisitors, found a safe retreat among the Catholics of Ireland. It is but justice to this maligned body to add that they never injured a single person in life or limb for professing a religion different from their own. They had suffered persecution and learned mercy, as they showed in the reign of Mary, and in the wars from 1641 to 1648."5

5 For more light upon the subject of this Chapter see the later Chapter on Cromwell.

CHAPTER XLVII

THE ULSTER PLANTATION

WITHIN a decade after the "Flight of the Earls" came the Ulster Plantation a scheme of fatal and far-reaching consequence for the Island ever since.

It was the Sixth James of Scotland who, after he became James I of England, perpetrated this crime. The land-greedy and gaingreedy among his Scotic fellow-countrymen, and among the English, were the instigators. Upon Ireland the covetous eyes of such people were ever turned. The flight of the Earls proved a welcome excuse for the wholesale robbing of the clans. It was a very simple matter to find that all the Northern chiefs had been conspiring to rebel-against England. Hence they were "traitors" -to England! And naturally their estates were forfeit and for distribution among James' hungry followers.

That the clan-lands did not then, or ever at any time, belong to the chieftain, but to the whole clan community, was a matter of no consequence. According to English law and custom it should belong to the people's lords (chiefs). And if "civilised" law did not obtain in Ireland, it must be imposed wheresoever British profit could be reaped from such imposition.

The English Lord Lieutenant, Sir Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney General, Sir John Davies, were the instruments, under James, for giving effect to the great Plantation. The lands of the six counties of Donegal, Derry (then called Coleraine), Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan and Armagh-four million acres-were confiscated. (The lands of the three remaining Ulster counties, Antrim, Down and Monaghan were bestowed upon Britons at other times.) The true owners, the natives, were driven like wild fowl or beasts, from the rich and fertile valleys of Ulster, which had been theirs from time immemorial, to the bogs and the moors and the barren crags-where it was hoped that they might starve and perish. English and Scotch Undertakers (as they were called), and Servitors of the Crown, scrambled for the fertile lands which were given to them in parcels of one thousand, one

thousand five hundred, and two thousand acres. The County of Coleraine (Derry) was divided up among the London trade Guilds, the drapers, fishmongers, vintners, haberdashers, etc.— who had financed the Plantation scheme. The Church termon lands were bestowed upon the Protestant bishops. And thus a new nation was planted upon the fair face of Ireland's proudest quarter.

The new nation was meant to be the permanent nation there. The written conditions upon which the new people got their lands specifically bound them to repress and abhor the Irish nativesconditions which through hundreds of years since the new people have faithfully endeavoured to carry out. They were bound never to alien the lands to Irish, to admit no Irish customs, not to intermarry with the Irish, not to permit any Irish other than menials to exist on or near their lands. And they were bound to build castles and bawns, and keep many armed British retainers-thus constituting a permanent British garrison which would help to tame if not exterminate the Irish race. Sir John Davies, the Scotic king's very faithful servant, assures us that his master did tame the whole race. In his book, "A Discoverie of the True Causes why Ireland was never Subdued and Brought under Obedience to the Crowne of England until the Beginning of His Majestie's Happie Reign," he says, "The multitude having been brayed as it were in a mortar with sword, pestilence and famine, altogether became admirers of the Crowne of England."

And when they were made true admirers of the Crown of England it was that their fertile possessions were given to the stranger, and they sent to co-habit with the snipe and the badger among the rocks and heather. And the faithful servant, Sir John, a pious Puritan rogue who strained his powers to rob and wrong the natives even far beyond the sweeping robbery powers which the "law" provided to his hand-this Saint, in the traditional British fashion, tells us: "This transplanting of the natives is made by his Majestie like a father, rather than a lord or monarch. So as his Majestie doth in this imitate the skilful husbandman who doth remove his fruit trees, not on purpose to extirpate and destroy, but the rather that they may bring forth better and sweeter fruit!" And when the starving one, from his perch among the rocks, glanced over the smiling valleys from which James had transplanted him for his own betterment, it is easy to conceive the depth of feeling with which he appreciated that kind father's solicitude.

The character of the Planters who were given the lands of