with the Irish was forbidden; the nursing of English infants by Irish women was discountenanced; and severe punishments were allotted to the offences, on the part of men of English descent, of speaking the Irish language, using the Irish customs, or wearing the Irish dress. These enactments were doubtless severe; but it must be remembered that an opposite spirit had, for two hundred years, been tried in vain; and that between this stern severity and the actual abandonment of the islandthe possession of which by France would have been so prejudicial to the English throne—the condition and temper of the Irish people left room for no middle course. However reasonable the demands of the English government, they never failed to provoke an armed resistance; the country was continually in a state of revolt, famine was frequent, and suffering constant.

Soon after the accession of Richard II. to the throne of England, that prince went to Ireland with a considerable force, naturally expecting that he should find the chiefs disinclined to yield him peaceable homage. Whether from some vague predilection in his favour, or from the fact of his being accompanied by a well-appointed force, he was even joyfully received. No fewer than seventy-four of the most powerful men hastened to make a surrender of their possessions, and to agree to receive them in grant from him on condition of maintaining his royal authority in Ireland. Delighted with a loyalty so exuberant, Richard proposed to honour with knighthood the four principal chiefs. But the Irish were not learned in the lore of chivalry, and an honour which would have been eagerly coveted by the high-born and wealthy elsewhere, was actually declined by these untutored men, who gravely assured him it was the custom of the Irish kings to confer knighthood on their sons as early as the age of seven years. And it was not until pains had been taken to explain to them the theory of knighthood, that they could be induced to pass the preparatory vigil and receive the honour with its formalities. Richard on this occasion made a considerable stay in Ireland, and he and his Irish subjects parted in apparent good feeling. But as soon as the king was absent the chiefs became turbulent as ever. The English pale was perpetually attacked, and so much territory recovered that it became reduced within dangerously narrow limits; and at length, Roger, earl of March, cousin and heir-presumptive of the king, was barbarously murdered. Richard was at this time greatly harrassed by the enmity of Henry Bolingbroke, the exiled duke of Lancaster. But though he well knew that noble meditated the invasion of England, Richard unhesitatingly led an army to Ireland to avenge the death of his cousin: (A. D. 1399.) As usual with them, the Irish chieftains endeavoured to avoid being brought to a general action, and retired among the bogs and mountains. But Richard was too intent upon avenging the murder of his cousin to listen to those who represented the difficulty of following the rebels into their retreats. Burning the towns and villages as he marched along, and disregarding the sufferings and complaints of his soldiers, who often floundered in the treacherous soil of the bogs, he followed so closely, that the greater part gladly submitted on condition of being received into the king's peace with full indemnity for the past. But Macmorrogh, a lineal descendant of that chief whose misconduct had first called the English into Ireland, held out and loudly protested that neither fear nor love should induce him to submit. The chivalry of England was not to be resisted by a chieftain so comparatively powerless; and Macmorrogh at length agreed to treat with the earl of Gloucester. But when the meeting took place, the fiery chieftain was so enraged at what he thought the insulting terms proposed, that he angrily broke up the conference and betook himself to his savage haunts, less inclined than ever to submission. Richard offered a large reward for the person of Macmorrogh, living or dead; but events had by

this time taken place in England, which compelled him to forego his de sire to punish the haughty enemy; for the earl of Lancaster, who subsequently dethroned Richard, and succeeded him under the title of Henry IV., had landed in England, and been joined by some of the most powerful of the nobility, and an army of near sixty thousand men. Richard was consequently obliged to abandon whatever projects he had formed. Henry IV. could find no leisure to attend to the affairs of Ireland, though many petitions were sent to him; and during the whole of his reign the turbu lence of the Irish chieftains, and the cupidity and despotism of the English authorities, made the country a scene of wild disorder and wretchedness; in which condition it remained from the close of the fourteenth century to the accession of Henry VII. of England. During this long period the whole history of Ireland may be written in two words, strife and misery and to enter into any detail would be merely to weary the reader with a monotonous recital.

A. D. 1485.-As though Ireland had not already suffered sufficiently, the accession to the throne of England of one of its most solidly wise and peace-loving kings, Henry VII., was the signal for more disturbance. Hitherto the unhappy people had at least fought about their own affairs; out now they were involved in the cause of a silly impostor, the tool of a more knavish one. The history of the impudent attempt of the pries Simon to palm a youth of low degree named Lambert Simnel, upon the people as the earl of Warwick, nephew of Edward IV., and heir to the throne of England, we gave in detail under the history of that country. But it is necessary to speak of it here, inasmuch as that gross imposture became a cause of suffering to the Irish.. Richard Simon, a priest living in Oxford, was instructor of the young impostor, Simnel; but considering the character of the dowager-queen, there is little reason to doubt that Simon was himself a tool in the hands of persons far higher in rank. Young Simnel was well furnished with information connected with the royal family; and his tutor, aware of its propensity to fighting for any or for no cause, judged Ireland to be the fittest scene for the first attempt; especially as the Irish were attached to the house of York, of which it was pretended the young impostor was a scion. The lord-deputy of Ireland, Thomas Fitzgerald, earl of Kildare, received the impostor's story without suspicion, the people followed the example of the court, and the impudent son of a baker was actually crowned-the crown being taken for that purpose from an image of the virgin-lodged in Dublin castle with all regal honours, and received throughout Ireland under the title of king Edward VI., without a word said, or a blow stricken in defence of king Henry. Henry VII., with the prudence which characterized his life, no sooner heard of the pretensions of Simnel, than he put all doubt out of the question, by causing the real earl of Warwick to be taken from his confinement in the Tower of London, and exhibited to the populace, at Paul's cross. Margaret of Burgundy, however, affecting to believe the absurd tale, got together two thousand German troops, under the command of an enterprising officer named Swartz, and sent them to Ireland The arrival of such a force, sent, too, by a person of such influence as the duchess-dowager of Burgundy, raised the Irish enthusiasm to the highest pitch. Too poor to be able much longer to support the pretender and his followers, the Irish now became eager to be led to dethrone king Henry. That shrewd monarch had, however, wisely convinced his Er glish subjects of Simnel's imposture, and thus prepared them to give him à hostile reception should he attempt to leave Ireland for England. Simnel, intoxicated with honours, was easily induced to believe that his cause was popular in England; and in full persuasion that he had only to show nimself in order to secure support, he actually disembarked his Germans at Foudrey, in Lancashire. This was precisely what the king desired,

He marched against him, and the hostile forces met in Nottinghamshire, near Stoke, where a most sanguinary action was fought. The impostor was completely defeated, and he and his tutor taken prisoners. The Irish, who fought with even more than their accustomed bravery, suffered dreadfully. Ill provided with offensive weapons, they were a'together destitute of defensive armour; and consequently received the most ghastly and fatal wounds. Rushing, half naked, upon the cool and well-pro 'ected soldiery of England, they saw their ranks awfully thinned at every charge, and when the battle was over but few of them remained alive. With the capture of Simnel the king's anger ended. He immediately dispatched Sir Richard Edgecombe with a fu.l pardon to all in Ireland who had abetted the impostor; to Thomas, earl of Kildare, he sent, with the letter ontaining his pardon, a splendid gold chain; and shortly afterwards the principal lords of Ireland were summoned to wait upon the king at Greenwich, ostensibly for the purpose of doing homage and taking oaths of allegiance. But the ever-politic king had a deeper design; that of making the Irish lords so ashamed of the impostor to whose designs they had so foolishly lent themselves, that they should be ever after little disposed to countenance similar adventurers. Accordingly, at a grand banquet to which they were invited, they had the surprise and mortification to find among the liveried menials who waited upon them, that identical Simnel whom a short time previous they had crowned as their king-crowned, too, with a diadem taken from the head of an image of the Virgin!

Henry VII., though he loved peace and preferred amassing money to the empty glories of the mere conqueror, was nevertheless very capable of exerting vigour upon occasion; and he now determined to make such alterations as would prevent Ireland from being so convenient a recruiting place for pretenders and their traitorous friends. It is a singular fact that Ireland was at this time an avowed sanctuary to evil-doers. He who had committed in England an offence by which he had forfeited life or liberty, had only to escape into Ireland, and no man could touch him. The right of sanctuary was first recognised by Richard, duke of York-father of Edward IV. during his governorship of Ireland; but for its actual origin we must look to the numerous monastic houses there. Henry VII., perceiving the immense and pernicious advantages which the enemies of England derived from this Irish right of sanctuary, wisely determined to abolish it; and he entrusted this and some other reforms to a man of considerable talent and still more energy, Sir Edward Poynings, whose able and firm conduct caused his name to be given to the important regulation known to lawyers as "Poyning's law," which struck at the very root of Irish sedition, by taking away from the lords, parliament, and all other authorities in Ireland, the power of giving validity to any law until it should have been considered by the king of England. But, perhaps, the most important act performed by Sir Edward Poyning, was his arrest ing and sending prisoner to England the celebrated earl of Kildare. Henry VII. carried his peaceable policy too far now, and not merely pardoned him, but even reappointed him to the dangerously powerful office for which he had shown himself unfit.

A. D. 1497.-Warned by his narrow escape, the earl of Kildare seems henceforward to have conducted himself with considerable discretion. Perkin Warbeck, another impostor, aided by his French friends, having made an attempt upon England, was signally disappointed by the loyal men of Kent. They invited him to land, intending to seize him, but the pretender was too experienced a cheat to fall into the snare, and the resuit fully justified his caution. Those of his adherents who had landed were either slain or made prisoners; and Warbeck, unaware or neglectful of the alteration in the temper and opportunities of Ireland that had been wrought by Poyning's law, proceeded thither. But though on landing

at Cork he was well received by the mayor of that place, and also by the factious earl of Desmond, he speedily found it necessary to depart for Scotland, where he had a most credulous and fast friend in James IV., who protected and honoured him to the utmost, and even went so far as to give him the hand of his own relative, the lovely Catherine Gordon, daughter of the earl of Huntley, who, to the honour of Henry VII. be it said, was most kindly and hospitably treated after the fall and execution of her husband. The short stay of Warbeck in Ireland was, thanks to the good order established by Poyning, productive of no general injury; the inayor of Cork, who was subsequently executed for his treasonable concert with the pretender, being the chief sufferer.

A. D. 1535.—The young earl of Kildare had now for some time been in a sort of honourable imprisonment in England; Cardinal Wolsey, the able minister of Henry VIII., having very wisely objected to allowing that nobleman's use or abuse of his immense power in Ireland to depend upon his more or less lively recollection of the narrow escape his father had formerly had; and the cardinal had an additional reason to doubt the loyalty and faith of the young earl, from the fact of his being very closely allied with the notoriously seditious and powerful chieftains of the septs O'Carrol and O'Connor. During Kildare's enforced absence, he_left_all his interests and influence in the hands of his son, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, who was then barely twenty-one years of age. It is not surprising that, under such circumstances, the lord Thomas Fitzgerald should fall into the snare that was laid for him by his father's enemies. They, in order to involve him with the English government, caused it to be reported to him that his father had been put to death, and that orders had been issued for his own arrest and that of other members of his family. Hotheaded, and, to say the truth, partly justified by the probabilities of the case, the young man assembled his armed followers and galloped to Dublin, where he scornfully threw down his father's state sword, and made a solemn renunciation, in both his own and his father's name, of all allegiance and respect to the English crown. It was to no purpose that the chancellor, one of the few real friends of the Fitzgerald family, implored the deceived young man not to commit himself too hastily and too far The mere rhymed follies of an Irish bard were, with this hot-headed and most ill-advised young nobleman, sufficient to counterbalance all the wisdom of a grave and honest counsellor. He collected all the friends and stores he could command; and though the plague was then raging in Dublin, he proceeded to invest that city.

A. D. 1536.-Lord Leonard Grey, newly appointed to the government of Ireland, displayed considerable talent in the course of this strife; and after upwards of six months hard fighting he obliged Lord Thomas to surrender. He and five of his uncles, who had been as deeply concerned as himself, were sent to London as prisoners, and there executed. Henry VIII. was the more enraged by the extent and continuance of this rebellion, because it put a stop to the efforts he was making to carry into the religion of Ireland the same reformation he had brought about in England As soon as the rebellion was suppressed, Henry renewed his endeavours to that end; and so evident an evil was the multitude of monastic houses in Ireland, that the archbishop of Dublin was the first person to fall in with the king's design. The suppression of the monasteries, and the formal declaration of Henry VIII. as king of Ireland, independent of the pope-instead of lord of Ireland holding under the pope, which was the light in which the Irish had hitherto looked upon the king of Englandwere followed up by some politic endeavours on the part of Henry to conciliate the regard of the Irish chieftains. O'Donnel, for instance, was created earl of Tyrconnel; O'Neill, earl of Tyrone; and his son, Lord Duncannon; though the latter. formidable as he could make himself i

wild Irish warfare, was so poor, that in order to be able to go to London to receive his new honour from the hands of the king, was actually obliged to borrow a hundred pounds of St. Leger, the English governor and had so little prospect of returning even that sum in hard cash, that he stipulated to be allowed to repay it in cattle.

A. D. 1558.-The comparatively short reign of Mav in England, served to show that the facility with which the Irish had acquiesced in Henry's sweeping reform of religion was chiefly owing to self-interest and the skill of the king in accommodating his favour to the desires of the person to be conciliated. For a very general inclination was shown in Ireland during the reign of Mary, to return to the papal faith, and one of the earliest difficulties experienced by Elizabeth was that of re-establishing protestantism among her Irish subjects. The Desmonds and the O'Neills were especially troublesome in their resistance to England. The earl of Desmond broke out into an open war with the earl of Ormond, who, besides being a very able nobleman, was cousin to the queen. Desmond professing to be confident that he could show he was in the right, and was the injured party in the dispute between him and Ormond-a question of boundary of their adjoining possessions-petitioned to be allowed to represent the matter to the queen in person. He arrived in London, under the impression that he was to have the required interview; but instead of being so favoured he was thrown in the Tower, where he was kept a close prisoner for some years. When he at length got his liberty he naturally enough considered himself a deeply-injured man, and extended his enmity from the earl of Ormond to the English power altogether.

A. D. 1579.-Philip of Spain, hating Elizabeth, both as the protestant ruler of that kingdom which he would fain have subjected to the gloomy despotism of the inquisition, and because she had, most prudently, refused the offer he made of his hand almost ere her sister and his wife was laid in her tomb, gladly encouraged Desmond in his desire to work evil to the English power, and actually sent the rebel earl a very considerable force of Spaniards and Italians. But the wild Irish warfare, with its accompanying famine and other sufferings, was too much for the endurance of these troops, who had been accustomed to make war with considerably less bloodshed and more personal indulgence. Defeated wherever they appeared, and at length abandoned in despair by Desmond himself, they laid down their arms, and Sir Walter Raleigh and other English officers decided that they could not be looked upon so much in the light of prisoners of war, as in that of felonious abettors of a domestic rebellion; and, as a consequence of this decision, they were summarily executed. Desmond himself being found in a hut, was put to death by some soldiers for the sake of the reward they anticipated receiving for his head from his enemy the earl of Ormond. The large territories of Desmond, and the vast possessions of the numerous wealthy men who had abetted his rebellion were confiscated, either on the death of the owners in battle, or by their departure on the failure of the rebellion to the Low Countries, where service was offered to them by Philip. If the miseries of civil war fell exclusively upon those who excite it, the evil would be great and sad enough; but, unhappily, the worst share of wretchedness usually falls upon people who neither take part in the crime, nor have any power to prevent its commission. In the present case, the horrors of famine and disease raged to such an extent as almost to depopulate Munster. Raleigh and other Englishmen got grants of the land that was left untenantable and to the accident of his obtaining a grant, Ireland owes the introdiction of her great staple, potatoes, which he first brought into that country from Spanish America. He also introduced the cultivation of tobacco, but the climate prevented it from being good. But, by introducing the potato, Raleigh conferred a real and permanent benefit upon that country