And it is plain how greatly the means of exaction of both the Irish and the English landed systems were pressed upon the inhabitants of the Pale, for the report says that:—

"What with the extortion of coyne and lyverye dayly, and wyth the wrongful exactions of osteing money, and of caryage and cartage dayly, and what with the Kinge's greate subsydye yerely, and with the said trybute and blak rent to the Kynge's Iryshe enymyes, and other infynyt extortions and dayly exactions," they were even more heavily oppressed than the inhabitants of the Marches.

Henry endeavoured to change this state of affairs by the enforcement of English rule, and was to a certain limited extent successful". His assumption of the title of King of Ireland was well received; and by bribing the leading native chiefs with the spoils of the Church, in the shape of lands formerly belonging to the Irish abbeys, he induced some of them to surrender their lands and receive them again as feudal tenants. It would seem, however, that the Irish Princes reserved to themselves all their former privileges. Mr Froude observes "Henry did not insist that the Irish, ill-trained as they had been, should submit at once to English law.... He disavowed all intentions of depriving the chiefs of their lands, or of confiscating their rights for the benefit of Englishmen. He desired to persuade them to exchange their system of election for a feudal tenure, to acknowledge by a formal act of surrender that they held their lordships under the crown...in return they might retain and administer the more tolerable of their own Brehon laws, till a more settled life brought with it a desire for the English common law"." By similar gifts of Church lands Henry won over many of the degenerate

1 State Papers, Henry VIII. Vol. 11. pt. iii. p. 9.

2 Ib. pp. 9, 10.

3 O'Connor Morris, L. Q. Review, 1887, p. 138.

4 Some of the land in Ireland held

by small crown rents is derived from these grants.

5 See Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, 1633, p. 4.

6 The English in Ireland, Froude, Vol. 1. pp. 37, 38.

barons', and he also endeavoured to prevent absenteeism, and thus to strengthen the loyal element within the Pale.

This policy, if carried out to the full, might at least have largely increased the English power in Ireland, even if it had not ultimately led to the subjection of the whole island'; but the narrow aims of the colonists of the Pale, whose desires appear to have been centred in universal spoliation, and who aimed at nothing but the division of the lands of 'the enemy' between themselves, opposed a barrier to the more liberal methods of the English king. Before long also the religious animosities arising out of the reformation added fuel to the raging furnace of national passions, and brought all the powers of bigotry and intolerance into play in the death struggle of Irish independence.

At first the efforts of Henry to introduce the reformation into Ireland did not raise as much opposition as might have been expected from the Irish lords, though the resistance of the clergy rendered the attempt futile. The wars of Elizabeth were in reality inspired by the lust of conquest and the antagonism of race rather than by religious fervour; but from the time when the Stuarts ascended the English throne the crusade of religion began in earnest; and Cromwell and his fanatical soldiery gained those substantial temporal possessions in Ireland (which for the first time justify its being termed a completely conquered country) under the banner of religious bigotry, and in the cause of religious intolerance.

1 Land holding in various countries, Field, p. 250.

2 O'Connor Morris, L. Q. R. p. 138. 3 "The patriotism of the Irish had taken a peculiar direction. The object of their animosity was not Rome but England; and they had especial reason to abhor those English sovereigns who had been the head of the great schism, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. During the vain struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintained against the Tudors, religious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm became inseparably blended in

the minds of the vanquished race. The new feud of Protestant and Papist inflamed the old feud of Saxon and Celt." Lord Macaulay's Hist. of England, Vol. 1. p. 34.

4 But the Geraldines were a conspicuous exception.

5 Cromer, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, was a vigorous opponent of Henry. This is the same Cromer who in 1553 obtained a formal pardon for having made use of the Brehon laws. (Pat, and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, 24 and 25 Hen. VIII.)

The earlier portion of the reign of Elizabeth was marked by the theoretical confiscation of Ulster, which, however, remained practically unsubdued; by an attempt to levy assessments by Royal authority independent of the sanction of Parliament; and finally by some claims to lands in Cork under alleged charters dating from the time of the old Norman feudal grants'. Plans for colonization also were laid before the English government by those who had no title, but offered to defray the costs of conquest in consideration of grants from the conquered territory2.

The Anglo-Irish lords and Irish chieftains, with no small reason, felt that the seal of doom was upon them, and the brewing trouble took form in the rising at first headed by Sir John Desmond, the treacherous murderer of Henry Davels, and afterwards by the Earl of Desmond. Religious motives strengthened this outbreak, and indeed almost created it; but although aided by a small expedition of Italian and Spanish volunteers, the futile effort ended in desolation and despair, and so complete was the ravage and wreck in Munster that "the lowing of a cow or the sound of a ploughboy's whistle was not to be heard from Valentia to the rock of Cashel"." From the widespread confiscations which followed, a supply of lands was obtained, sufficient, it would seem, to have been a most potent bribe to the new settler class that it was the policy of the English crown to plant on the Irish soil. Half a million acres escheated to the crown, and were divided into lots of 12,000, 8,000, 6,000 and 4,000 acres respectively. The rents reserved were practically nil, an estate at fee farm of 12,000 acres being only rented at £33. 6s. 8d. for three years, and then at £66. 13s. 4d. The scheme designed for the plantation was briefly that every

1 Field, pp. 250 and 251.

2 This method of raising money from 'Undertakers' afterwards became com

mon.

3" Whosoever did travel from one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Limerick which is about six score miles, he should not meet any man, woman, or child, saving

4

in towns and cities; nor yet see any beasts but the very wolves, the foxes, and other ravening beasts." Quoted by Hallam, Const. Hist. of Eng. vol. III. pp. 366, 367. And see John Hooker's dedicatory epistle to Girald. Cambr. in Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. 1.

4 574,628 acres.

seigniory should be inhabited within seven years on the following system:-" every undertaker of 12,000 acres was bound to plant eighty-six families: his own family was to have 1,600 acres, one chief farmer 400, two good farmers 600, two other farmers 400, fourteen freeholders (each 300) 4,200, forty copyholders (each 100) 4,000, twenty-six cottagers and labourers 800. Other undertakers being bound proportionately'."

3

In 1586 an immense quantity of fertile land was practically going begging; lands were offered at twopence an acre with no rent to be required for the first three years, yet the fruitful soil scarce found an owner. By the original design of the plantation the grants of land were to have been conditional on the settlement on the soil by the undertakers of English tenants, but the idea had to be abandoned. The practical failure of the plantation, at any rate, to answer the purpose for which it was designed, i.e. the ousting of the native population, was mainly due to (1) the extensive grants made to particular individuals who themselves remained absentees, making but small and unsuccessful efforts to plant English sub-tenants, and who moreover were not averse to an Irish tenantry (since they paid higher rent than any for which English small holders' could be induced to settle); and (2) the short terms for which lands were granted by the English undertakers. The uncertainty of possession and the exactions levied on the tenants prevented any real improvement of the land, and led to its being wastefully impoverished. No buildings worthy of the name were erected, and the wretched slave of the soil lived a life but one degree above that of the animals he tended. Any gathering of wealth brought ruin; coshered by some wandering ex-chief, or rack-rented by some English undertaker, the small holder presented an emblem of misery.

When dealing with the reorganization of much of the Irish land system which took place during the reign of Elizabeth, the

1 Sigerson, p. 33.

2 Field, 251.

3 Sir Walter Raleigh obtained 42,000 acres in Cork and Waterford.

4 See a passage from Robert Paine's Briefe Description of Ireland (1589), quoted p. 35 Sigerson.

Composition of Connaught,' planned under a Commission issued in 1585, with the object of inducing the nobles of Connaught to surrender their titles and hold instead by letters patent' from the crown, should not be passed over. It was one of the first of a succession of legal devices for the change of Irish tenures into feudal ones. Few chieftains, however, agreed to the change, which would have greatly altered the relations of chiefs and people both inter se and towards the land. The principle proposed in the change was that a payment of 10s. for every 120 acres should operate as a discharge from all cess, taxation tallage, charges, bearing of soldiers, &c., and that a rent should be payable for the lands; while the customs of Gavelkind and Tanistry were to be abolished. In several of the indentures also the mean freeholders were placed in direct dependence on the crown, a remarkable fact bearing a strong resemblance to the effect of 'quia emptores,' and establishing something greatly like a peasant proprietary. Though this abortive scheme is not of great importance, for few chieftains surrendered under it (though the surrender was widespread under the commission of James the First), still when the plans of Wentworth with regard to Connaught are remembered, an interest is felt in the nature of the titles so unscrupulously attacked: and in regard to those of the Irishry who had surrendered their estates and received a re-grant, it is hard to find words strong enough to describe the injustice of the pretext on which it was attempted to oust them.

2

In August 1598 the flame of open revolt again broke out, this time in Ulster under Hugh O'Neil (afterwards Earl of Tyrone), and O'Donnell. With the war-cry of religion added to the stored wealth of national hatred, indued with a fury

1 By 12 Eliz. c. 4 (Irish) a power had been given by which any of the Irishry or degenerate English were enabled on surrender to obtain grants of their lands by letter patent from the crown-defects appearing in the letters patent issued under this Act, they were remedied by James I. in 1615 by new surrenders and re-grants.

2 This enactment is to be found in the indentures for Roscommon, Sligo, Mayo and Leitrim-and Dr Sigerson suggests it may have had a bearing on "the after quietness of the western provinces," p. 31.

3 The dispossession of the Catholic clergy by Elizabeth and the substitution of what has been well termed a