"Because by husbandry, which supplieth unto us all things necessary for food, whereby we cheerfully live, therefore it is to be first provided for. The first thing, therefore, we ought to draw these new tithing men to ought to be husbandry. First, because it is the most easy to be learned, needing only the labour of the body, next, because it is most natural; and lastly, because it is the enemy to war and most hateth unquietness; as the poet saith,

"Bella execrata colonis;"

for husbandry, being the nurse of thrift and the daughter of industries and labour, detesteth all that may work her scath, and destroy the travail of her hand, whose hope is all her lives, comfort unto the plough."

As to the increase of cattle in Ireland he says,—

"I would, therefore, wish that there were some ordinance made amongst them, that whosoever keepeth twenty kine should keep a plough going, for otherwise all men would fall to pasturage and none to husbandry, which is a great cause of the dearth now in England, and a cause of the usual stealths in Ireland. For look into all countries that live in such sort by keeping of cattle, and you shall find that they are both very barbarous and uncivil, and also greatly given to war. The Tartarians, the Muscovites, the Norwegians, the Goths, the Armenians, and many others do witness the same, and therefore, since now we purpose to draw the Irish from desire of war and tumult, to the love of peace and civility, it is expedient to abridge their great custom of herding, and to augment their trade of tillage and husbandry."

The State Papers describe the condition of Ireland in the following language (vol. ii., p. 14) :—

"What common folk in all the world is so poor, so feeble, so evil beseen in town and field, so bestial, so greatly oppressed and trodden under foot, fares so evil with so great misery, and with so wretched life as the common folk of Ireland? What pity is here wherewith to report! there is no tongue that can tell, no person can write. It passeth far the orators and Muses all to show the violence of the nobles, and how cruel they entreat the poor common people. What danger it is to the king against God to suffer his land, whereof he

bears the charge and the cure temporal, to be in the said misorder so long without remedy! It were more honour to surrender his claim thereto, and make no longer prosecution thereof, than to suffer his poor subjects always to be so oppressed, and all the nobles of the land to be at war within themselves, always shedding of Christian blood without remedy. The herd must account for his fold, and the king for his."

The effect of the injustice which had been perpetrated and heaped up with continuous and increasing violence upon the Irish people was most deplorable. The confiscation of their land embittered their minds, and drove them into hostility to government. The refusal to admit the Irish to holy orders deprived the Church of the power and influence which it might have used to repress injustice and to soften the lot of those who were exposed to it. The constantly recurring rebellions of the Anglo-Norman nobles, who threw off the power of the Crown and assumed the title and state of princes, the wars between the Desmonds, Geraldines, and Butlers, tended to create and aggravate the confusion. The consequence of ill treatment was the degradation of the native race, it became demoralized and degraded. I cannot do better to illustrate their position than quote the words of Edmund Burke, who wrote,—

"To render men patient under the deprivation of all the rights of human nature, everything which could give them a knowledge or feeling of those rights, was nationally forbidden. To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that it should be degraded."

Elizabeth had a long and most severe struggle to establish her authority in Ireland, and at the end of a war of upwards of seven years' duration, in which as many as 20,000 English troops were engaged, a final capitulation was agreed upon, but she did not live to see it perfected; it was signed a few days after her death. The country, worn out with this long and tedious war, was at length prostrate at the foot of the sovereign. The Plantagenets left to a new dynasty the duty

of reconstruction and restoration, and we shall see how that trust was fulfilled.

PART IV. THE STUART OR CONFISCATION PERIOD.

AFTER the rebellion and assassination of Shane O'Neil, 1568, his estates and those of his adherents, being most of the seignories and counties of Ulster, were confiscated by the 11th Elizabeth, c. i., 1569, and vested in the Crown. The lands were given to English adventurers, but they found it impossible to hold their ground against the original inhabitants. In 1588 O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, and other lords of Ulster, entered into a combination to defend their lands and religion. This war lasted fifteen years, and terminated in 1603. No cruelties were spared by the Lord Deputy Mountjoy to put them down. He made incursions on all sides, spoiled the corn, burnt all the houses and villages, and the people were reduced to live like wild beasts. Ireland, which had a population of two millions, was reduced to one-half. "The multitude," says Sir John Davis, "being brayed as it were in a mortar with sword, famine, and pestilence together, submitted to the English Government." All commodities had risen in value: wheat had advanced from 36s. to 180s. per quarter ; oatmeal, from 5s. to 22s. per barrel, and other things in proportion. The submission in 1603 led to the settlement of Ulster by James I.

In 1586 the large estates of the Earl of Desmond in the counties Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Waterford, Tipperary, and Dublin, comprising 524,628 acres (statute measure), were escheated, not for any overt act of treason, but on account of his quarrels with the Earl of Ormonde. These large possessions were a strong temptation to the Irish governors, but they found some difficulty in passing a bill of attainder. A claim was also set up by the Crown to the whole of Connaught and the county Clare, and an arrangement was made with the Lord Deputy, Sir John Perrott, that the lords and gentlemen of that district should surrender them to the Crown

and receive back, Royal Letters Patent. The surrenders were not enrolled, and the patents were not delivered. James I. issued a commission to receive the surrenders and re-convey the estates, by new patents, to the lords and gentry, they paying £3,000 for their enrolment in chancery. Though the money was duly paid the enrolment was not made, and the king claimed the land. The titles were pronounced defective, and the whole district was adjudged to vest in the Crown. This unfortunately resulted either from the negligence or wicked design of the officials, based, as Carte observes, “on a mere nicety of law which ought to be tenderly made use of in derogation of the faith and honour of the king's broad seal." The lords and gentry put no faith in the king's sense of equity; they appealed to his necessities, offered double their annual compositions, and to pay a fine of £10,000. The proposal was entertained, and the western scheme of plantation was suspended.

The jurors were coerced or bribed into finding for the Crown. The judges and law officers were rewarded. Sir Arthur Chichester got large possessions in Ulster, which remain in his family to the present day, his descendant, the Marquis of Donegal, having large estates in Ulster. Sir John Davis was rewarded with a grant of 4,000 acres in the same province. "No means of industry," says Leland, "or devices of craft were left untried, and there are not wanting proofs of the most iniquitous practices of hardened cruelty or vile perjury and scandalous subornation, employed to despoil the fair and unoffending proprietor of his inheritance."

"Where no grant appeared, or descent or conveyance in pursuance of it could be proved (says Carte), the land was immediately adjudged to belong to the Crown. All grants taken from the Crown since 1st Edward II. till 10th Henry VIII. had been resumed by Parliament, and the lands of all absentees, and of all that were driven out by the Irish, were, by various acts, vested again in the Crown. . Nor did even later grants afford full security; for if there was any former grant in being, at the time they were made, or if the

patents passed in Ireland were not exactly agreeable to the fiat, and both of these to the king's original warrant transmitted from England-in short, if there was any defect in expressing the tenure, or any mistake in point of form, there was an end of the grant and the estate under it."

The following statutes, confiscating lands in Ireland, were passed :

Philip and Mary, 3 and 4, cap. i., ii. cap. iii.

Elizabeth,

:

Disposing of Leix and Offaly. Divers and sundry waste grounds into shire grounds.

2, cap. vii. Restitution of the hospital of

St. John's.

Attainder of Christopher Eustace.

3, cap. iii.

Mr. H. C. Hamilton, F.S.A., Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, in the introduction to the Calendar of State Papers, 1509-1573, says :

"The power of the English in Ireland had so much decreased in Henry VII.'s time that the old Irish system of government in clans or separate small nations had revived and was in full force throughout the greater part of the land. Of this government and its workings we have the best and most ample accounts in these papers. The wars of Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth, reveal the whole strength and weakness of the system, and show how the superior combination of the English, supported by continual supplies of men and money from home, prevailed over the craft and daring of the native chiefs and favourite generalissimos."

E