them to maintain themselves, and to extend their borders as best they could, relying on the incentives. of self-preservation and rapacity. The grants of territory he had made were to a great extent of a nominal character. Most of what he gave was in the hands of the native Irish, and if to be enjoyed would have to be won, and held, by the sword. The colonists lost no time in carrying out this programme. The island was densely wooded; it was traversed by mountainous ridges, running in Leinster and Munster for the most part from N.E. to S.W., through which burst numerous rivers, which broadened at their outfall into estuaries. The interior was broken with chains of lakes and huge tracts of morass. There was hardly a road in the country, and the only accessible portion was the river-valleys and the coast. These were the points of attack in the time of the incursions, of the Northmen, in whose footsteps the Normans followed. Settlements of their followers were made, and forts were built for their protection in the open lands of Meath and Leinster, the tribes retiring into the hill country and the bogs. They peopled the lower valleys of the Shannon, the Slaney, the Suir, the Barrow, and the Blackwater; they settled down upon the lowlands of Louth and the coastline of Down. Marauding expeditions were made to satisfy the rapacious soldiery. Ulster was attacked by De Courcy, who seized Downpatrick and overran Dalradia; Milo de Cogan made a raid across the Shannon, but the men of Connaught had laid waste their land, and he was forced to beat a retreat. Raymond le Gros captured the town

of Limerick; and in return for reinstating McCarthy King of Desmond, who had been imprisoned by his rebellious son, received large grants of land in Kerry. From time to time fresh parties of adventurers arrived, Subinfeudation was carried

and received allotments.

on briskly, and both the new and the old comers were planted in freeholds by those who had received grants from the king.

Henry never returned to Ireland to complete his conquest, but he proceeded to make further grants of Irish territory to his friends: giving all Connaught to Fitzaldelm; the kingdom of Cork to De Cogan and Fitzstephen, who partitioned it east and west of the city; the kingdom of Limerick to Philip de Braosa, and the Decies to Le Poer; but reserving the cities. of Cork and Limerick to himself. He then created his son Prince John, Lord of Ireland; and that youth, when the chieftains of Leinster came to do him honour, insulted them by his insolent conduct and levity, plucking them by the beard and ridiculing their fashion of dress. John's conduct put the match to a train which was ready to be fired. The Irish who had been driven from their own lands were ready to rise, and those who had become English subjects were alienated by the brutality and profligacy of the Normans. A confederacy was formed, and the English were attacked at all points and driven out of Munster; no sooner, however, was success apparently in the hands of the Irish, than they fell to quarrelling: the rebellion died out, the

English regained all that they had lost, and the chieftains again acknowledged the suzerainty of the king.

But the submission of the Irish chieftains was mainly a sham: they had been ready enough to swear allegiance to Henry as lord paramount; they had professed to recognize the suzerainty of Rory, and they were not unwilling to do the same to a king against whom Rory was unable to protect them. Rory himself, in 1175, after having overrun Meath in a raid out of Connaught, was frightened by a victory of Raymond over the Prince of Thomond into making a treaty with Henry; the substance of which was that he should recognize Henry as sovereign prince, and himself continue King of Ireland. beyond the English border, yielding a tribute of hides, which he never paid. But this was all! Henry pretended that the Irish chieftains had become his vassals, subject to all the attending feudal liabilities. Of this they had no conception; and as soon as his back was turned they set him at defiance, and asserted their independence at the first moment at which it suited their convenience. As for the English settlers, they were looked upon by the Irish as interlopers. They were not safe in their own forts; the natives were constantly on the watch to attack and expel them; and in consequence there was perpetual though desultory warfare going on within the English precincts even to the walls of the sea-coast cities.

CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT TERRITORIAL BARONS. A.D. 1200-1300.

HENRY was dead; and John had succeeded his brother Richard. He returned in A.D. 1210 to Ireland with a considerable force, a wiser if not a better man than when he first landed at Waterford. Upon his arrival the chiefs promptly made their submission: Tyrone and O'Neil from the north; Cathal of the bloody hand, of the house of O'Connor, from the west. Hostages were taken as well from the turbulent Norman barons as from the natives. The civil administration was attended to; and Leinster and Munster were divided into twelve counties, corresponding very much to those existing at the present day.*

This second visit of John to Ireland, who soon had his hands full both in England and on the continent, was of short duration. During his reign, and also the long reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., the history of Ireland maintains one monotonous character: a quick succession of lieutenant-governors; a constant border

* Dublin (including Wicklow), Meath (including West Meath), Kildare, Argial (Louth), Katherlagh (Carlow), Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary.

warfare between the natives and the settlers, characterized by bloody insurrections on the one hand, and bloody reprisals on the other; bitter feuds between the Irish themselves; jealous warfare between the rival Anglo-Irish houses; frequent submissions of the chieftains to the crown in return for promises of protection against the barons, which the king was unable or unwilling to afford; and a constant balancing by the Crown of the former against the increasing power of the latter.

The more prominent events which catch the eye in this monotonous record of lawless brigandage, are a rising of the McCarthys of Desmond against the Geraldines; an intermittent but bitter struggle between the latter and the De Burgos; a rising of the natives in Connaught and Offaly; a discreditable invasion and occupation of part of Thomond by Thomas de Clare, Earl of Gloucester; and a quarrel between De Vesci and Fitzgerald, Baron of Offaly, which ended in the ruin of the former, and the translation of the latter into Earl of Kildare.

The whole island had been nominally parcelled out in enormous grants amongst a few individuals. The larger portions were at different times erected into "counties palatine." The great barons on whom the Crown had conferred these tremendous privileges, accordingly occupied the position of independent princes. They planned and built fortified towns; they endowed them with land; they granted them charters of incorporation, and established markets. The franchise of