code, or the galling ascendancy of a privileged class of favored subjects. Francis I, in vain endeavoured to seduce from their allegiance those Irish chieftains who had been honored with the royal patronage; and the armies of France had now to contend with Henry's intrepid Irish auxiliaries, who excited universal admiration by the agility of their movements, the fury of their courage, and their unconquerable patience of the hardships and privations of war. Mr. Leland is induced to attribute to the influence of terror those effects which the impartial observer must acknowledge to be the natural consequence of a mild and protecting policy. Henry VIII. restored peace to Ireland by the cheap and easy remedy of stars, and garters, and royal honors. Former sovereigns convulsed it by an idle display of power which could not follow up its blow, and a destructive system of policy, which recoiled on its authors. From this reign the reader of Irish history should peruse its pages with more than ordinary attention. The scenes that were acted, as well as the characters which appeared, have a greater bearing on the politics of succeeding times, than those which we have been describing.

The great lights which burst upon Europe in the commencement of the sixteenth century, communicated some of their rays to the Irish mind; and although the re-. forming spirit met in Ireland with a resistance unexampled as it is wonderful, when we consider the varied efforts of its propagators, yet Ireland participated in that improvement which flowed to the civilized world from the struggles of the new and the old religion. The universal agitation of the mind, and the perpetual exertion which the understanding was obliged to make in the attack and defence of the most sacred interests of mankind-the art of printingthe improvements in navigation-the discovery of a new world-the bold and intrepid spirit of innovation upon all the venerated systems, religious and political, to which men had been accustomed for centuries-render the history of

those times, which we are now about to relate, sources of instruction to the youthful and inexperienced, and of admiration and delight to the philosopher. The latter sees, in the successful progress of the human mind to its present great and enlightened epoch, the certainty of that infinite perfection which extends the limits of human to the verge of divine intelligence, and realizes the prophecies of those superior souls, whose speculations have been considered the dreams of the poet, or the ravings of insanity.

ΤΗΣ

HISTORY OF IRELAND.

Edward VI.

A. D. 1547.

THE reign which we have just concluded, having given existence to such novel and alarming innovations upon the ancient principles and habits of the Irish, it is not matter of any great surprise that the annalists who were zealously devoted to the ancient religion of Ireland, should visit the last moments of Henry VIII. with all the penalties of an apostate, and the terrific omens of future misery. The imagination of the fanatic of all religious deems himself the most favoured of all human beings, and consigns to the vengeance of an insulted deity those unhappy persons who may conscientiously dissent from his opinions. It is extraordinary that the readers of history do not learn from the numerous examples with which its pages are crowded, of the ludicrous follies that intolerance has been always committing, and the laughable denunciations it has been ever proclaiming, how much more wise and useful, how much more Christian and kind is that principle which leaves every man to the dictates of his own conscience, and to the profession of that form of religion which either education or prejudice

may incline him to pursue. Three hundred years of an intolerant warfare have been waged by the innumerable sects of Christianity, almost all guilty of the same enormities—all violating the sacred principles of that religion they affect to advance; under the pretence of vindicating the rights of Heaven, insulting the majesty of its benevolent doctrines, and perverting the spirit of mercy which breathes through its instructions. We therefore see the various contending sects alternately denouncing and damning each other, and the zeal of the sectarian estimated by the violence of his unchristian illiberality, and the fury of his persecution. Modern philosophy has discovered the remedy for this desolating folly; and the mild and parental spirit of toleration protects mankind from the absurd struggles of the polemic, and the sanguinary violence of fanaticism. When Henry VIII. had closed his eventful life, the enemies of the reformation were industrious in circulating among the credulous the most dreadful fictions which their enraged fancy could conceive. They reported that angels of darkness hovered round his bed, during the last moments of his existence, and snatched away his spirit to irredeemable suffering. The more sober contented themselves with the consolation, that Henry, since his schism and divorce, had not a moment's tranquillity of mind; that his numerous wives were concubines; that the heresies which he detested crept in through the breaches which his passions or his folly had made; that he died unregretted; that he was not even honored with a sepulchre nor an epitaph by his children; that the latter died without issue, and that the seed of the wicked had perished-thus defeating the hopes and the ambition of the apostate monarch. Such were the consolations of those who deprecated the principles of the reign of Henry VIII.

We have little to record during the reign of his successor interesting to the reader. Sir Anthony St. Leger, whose administration of Ireland, in the latter part of Hen

ry's reign, was considered vigorous and efficient, alienated the affections of the principal Irish chieftains by the weight of his exactions, and the excess of those taxes which he levied to recruit the resources of an exhausted exchequer. We find Ormond and his partizans resisting the viceroy; and in the course of the contest which arose between those rival powers, it is lamentable to behold the treachery to which the enemies of Ormond had recourse, in order to gain the ascendant over their formidable rival. It is recorded, that Ormond, with sixteen of his retinue, were poisoned at a feast in Ely house, and that the instruments of this disgusting treachery were the devoted friends of the English

interest.

As the protector of England, Somerset, determined to follow up the principles of reformation in Ireland with all the vigour of which he was master, it was deemed necessary to send into the latter a reinforcement of 600 horse and 4000 foot, which, on their arrival, were soon brought into action, against the Irish headed by O'Moore, chief tain of Leix, and O'Connor of Offally. The celebrated Bellingham, an old and experienced officer, led the English; ́ and after some unsuccessful efforts, O'Connor and O'Moore surrendered to the pledged faith of the English commander, who promised the royal clemency, held out hopes that they would be received into the royal confidence, and perhaps obtain the same dignities as were formerly conferred upon their countrymen who had submitted to Henry. The Irish chieftains had no sooner arrived in England, than they were committed to prison, their lands declared forfeit, and granted to those very men who had so infamously violated their words. O'Moore died in captivity, by treachery or by force. Bellingham reduced the territories of those devoted Irishmen, and thus left on record an example which should ever have destroyed the confidence of Ireland in the honor and integrity of English faith. Two considerable districts were thus added to