The scene of this famous conflict is on the coast, between Dublin and the Hill of Howth. A wide strand of boulders is laid bare by the receding tide, with green sea-grass carpeting the stones. At the very verge of the farthest tide are two huge sand-banks, where the waves roar and rumble with a sound like the bellowing of bulls, and this tumultuous roaring is preserved in the name of the place unto this day.



XI.

THE PASSING OF THE NORSEMEN.

A.D. 1013-1250.

There was, as we have seen, no "Danish Conquest" of Ireland, nor anything approaching a conquest. What really happened during the ninth and tenth centuries was this: Raiders from the shores of the Northern seas, from the Scandinavian peninsula and the Western Isles of Scotland, sailed in their long ships among the islands of the Irish coast, looking for opportunities to plunder the treasuries of the religious schools, and carrying off the gold and silver reliquaries and manuscript cases, far more valuable to these heathen seamen than the Latin or Gaelic manuscripts they contained.

These raids had little connection with each other; they were the outcome of individual daring, mere boat's-crews from one or another of the Northern fiords. A few of the more persistent gradually grew reluctant to retreat with their booty to the frozen north, and tried to gain a footing on the shores of the fertile and wealthy island they had discovered. They made temporary camps on the beach, always beside the best harbors, and threw up earthworks round them, or perhaps more lasting forts of stone. Thus they established a secondary base for raids inland, and a place of refuge whither they might carry the cattle, corn and captives which these raids brought them from the territories of the native clans. These camps on the shore were the germ of a chain of sea-ports at Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick.

From these points raiding went on, and battles were fought in which the raiders were as often vanquished as victorious. There was little union between the various Norse forts, and indeed we sometimes find them fighting valiantly among themselves. Meanwhile, the old tribal contest went on everywhere throughout the island. The south invaded the north and was presently invaded in return. The east and the west sent expeditions against each other. Clan went forth against clan, chief against chief, and cattle and captives many times changed hands. These captives, it would seem, became the agricultural class in each clan, being made to work as the penalty for unsuccessful fighting. The old tribal life went on unbroken during the whole of this period; nor did it subsequently yield to pressure from without, but rather passed away, during succeeding centuries, as the result of inward growth. Meanwhile the religious schools continued their work, studying Latin and Greek as well as the old Gaelic, and copying manuscripts as before; and one fruit of their work we see in the gradual conversion of the heathen Norsemen, who were baptized and admitted to the native church. The old bardic schools likewise continued, so that we have a wealth of native manuscripts belonging to this time, embodying the finest tradition and literature of the earlier pagan ages.



If the Danes and Northern raiders never conquered Ireland, on the other hand they never were expelled. Through the cessation of the original impulse of unrest which brought them, they gradually ceased to receive accessions from the North, and at the same time the forces of amalgamation were slowly merging them into the national and tribal life of their new home. Their separate influence grew less and less, but their race continued, and continues to this day in the sea-ports we have named.

We shall presently have to record another series of Norse inroads, this time not directly from the North, but mediately, through France and Britain, and we shall find that much of our subsequent history was influenced by the new elements and principles then added. We shall do well, therefore, to linger for a moment before this new transition, to gain a clear view of the tendencies of the epoch then closed, the wider significance of that chapter of our nation's life.

The culture of Ireland, during the period before the Northern raids, bridged over the abyss between the classical and the mediaeval world. During the whole of that period the rest of Europe was hidden under the clouds of the Dark Ages. Ireland stood alone as the one cultured nation. Receiving the classical learning from Roman Gaul and Britain and Italy, while the old world was still alive, Ireland carried that culture onward when Rome and the Roman Empire fell, crushed under the hordes of Northern barbarians: the Franks in Gaul; the Lombards, Goths and Vandals in Spain and Italy; the Angles, Saxons and Danes in Britain; and the Picts and Northmen in the Scottish lowlands. Austria was meanwhile overrun by Asian nomads, the Huns and Magyars; Russia and Germany, with the Scandinavian lands, were still pagan.

Thus all Europe was submerged under a deluge of heathenism, and the old Latin culture was swept away. The tradition of ancient Greece still lingered at Constantinople behind the wall of the Balkans, but it had no influence at all on the northern nations beyond the wall. Ireland was thus the one exception, the ark of safety for the old wisdom and beauty of classical days. And from Ireland, when the tide of heathen invasion slackened, the light of classical times and the spirit of the New Way went forth to all the nascent nations, the great pagan tribes that were to form the modern world. Thus Ireland was the bridge over the Dark Ages, the first of modern nations, keeping the old and blending it with the new.

Yet another view of Ireland's significance must not be forgotten. Of the original life of the great pagan world which swept over the Roman Empire we know almost nothing. How much do we realize of the thought and genius of Aleman, Frank and Vandal, of Angle and Lombard and Burgundian?

Nothing at all. The darkness that shrouds them is complete. But what a contrast when we come to Ireland! If we leave out the basin of the Mediterranean, with its Asian and African traditions, Ireland is the one European nation which has clear records of its pagan history. And how excellent that history was, how full of humanity and the rich wine of life, the stories of Fergus and Concobar and Cuculain, of Find and Ossin and Gael, of Meave and Deirdre and Crede bear sufficient witness. The tide of Irish life to which they belong, and which brought them forth, flowed on without break to a time so recent that their whole tradition has come down to us, practically at first hand, from the heralds and bards themselves. Ireland is, therefore, our one doorway to the history of northern Europe through the long era of pagan times.

That history was everywhere a fierce tale of tribal warfare. Its heroes are valiant fighters, keen leaders of forays, champion swordsmen and defenders of forts. The air throbs to the battle-drum, rings to the call of the war-trumpet. Every tribe, every clan, is in turn victor and vanquished, raider and victim of raids. Everywhere are struggle and unrest, tales of captivity and slaughter.

We fall into vain lamenting over this red rapine and wrath, until we divine the genius and secret purpose of that wonderful epoch, so wholly different in inspiration from our own. The life of races, like the life of men, has its ordered stages, and none can ripen out of season. That was the epoch of dawning individual consciousness, when men were coming to a keen and vivid realization of themselves and their powers. Keen consciousness and strong personal will could be developed only through struggle—through long ages of individual and independent fighting, where the best man led, and often fought for his right to lead with the best of his followers. Innumerable centers of initiative and force were needed, and these the old tribal life abundantly gave. The territory of a chief hardly stretched farther than he could ride in a day, so that every part of it had a real place in his heart. Nor was he the owner of that territory. He was simply the chosen leader of the men who lived there, perhaps the strongest among many brothers who shared it equally between them. If another thought himself the better man, the matter was forthwith decided by fighting.

The purpose of all this was not the "survival of the fittest" in the material sense, but a harvest purely spiritual: the ripening of keen personal consciousness and will in all the combatants, to the full measure of their powers. The chiefs were the strongest men who set the standard and served as models for the rest, but that standard held the minds of all, the model of perfect valor was in the hearts of all. Thus was personal consciousness gained and perfected.

If we keep this in mind as the keynote of the whole pagan epoch, we shall be better able to comprehend the new forces which were added to that epoch, and which gradually transformed it. The greatest was the Message of the New Way. Deeds are stronger than words, and in the deeds of the first Messengers we can see the new spirit bearing fruit. The slave of Slemish mountain returned breathing not vengeance for his captivity but pity and generous kindness towards his captors. Colum the exile did not seek to enlist the Picts against his native land, but sought rather to give the message of that land to the wild Pictish warriors, and to spread humane and generous feeling among them. Thus was laid the foundation of a wide and universal consciousness; a bridge was built between soul and soul.

From the waning of the Norsemen to the first coming of the Normans is a period of about a hundred and fifty years. We shall best gain an insight into the national and religious life of that time by gleaning from the Annals the vivid and living pictures they never fail to give,—pictures which are the records of eye-witnesses. The strictly contemporary character of the records is vouched for by the correct entry of eclipses: for instance, "on the day before the calends of September, in the year 1030, there was a darkening of the sun."

We see the genius of the Norsemen suffering a like eclipse the year before: "1029: Olaf son of Sitric, lord of the Foreigners, was taken prisoner by Matgamain Ua Riagain lord of Breag, who exacted twelve hundred cows as his ransom, together with seven score British horses, three score ounces of gold, the sword of Carlus, the Irish hostages, sixty ounces of white silver as the ransom of his fetters, eighty cows for word and supplication, and four hostages to Ua Riagain as a security of peace."

Two generations later we read: "1088: Tigearnac Ua Briain, chief successor of Ciaran and Coman, died. He was a paragon of learning and history." The work of the paragon Tigearnac, a history of Ireland, is extant and writ in choice Latin, a monument at once of the classical learning of our schools and of the historical spirit carried down from the days of the pagan heralds and bards. Tigearnac quotes abundantly from Greek and Latin authors, fortifying his conclusions with passages from Eusebius, Orosius, Julius Africanus, Josephus, Jerome and Bede.

A half-century later we get a quaint and vivid glimpse into the religious life of the time: "1145: A lime-kiln which was sixty feet every way was erected opposite Emain Maca by Gilla Mac Liag, the successor of Patrick, and Patrick's clergy in general." Here is the glow of that devotion through work which gave us the great mediaeval cathedrals, the fervor and artistic power, which in former times adorned the Gospels of the Book of Kells, now working out its way in lasting stone. The date of this lime-kiln lies indeed just half-way between the consecration of Cormac's Chapel at Cashel in 1134 and the foundation of the beautiful cathedral beside it by the lord of Tuaid-Muma or Thomond in 1152. Cormac's Chapel is a very pure example of native style, untouched by foreign or continental influence.



We can divine the figure of one of the great men of the religious world in the records for the year 1148: "A synod was convened at Saint Patrick's Isle by Maelmaedog, called also Malachias, successor of Patrick, at which were present fifteen bishops and two hundred priests, to establish rules and morals for all. Maelmaedog by the advice of the synod went a second time to Rome, to confer with the successor of Peter." A few months later we read this record of his death: "Malachias, that is, Maelmaedog Ua Morgair, Archbishop of the chair of Patrick, chief head of the piety of the West of Europe, legate of the successor of Peter, the only head whom the Irish and the Foreigners obeyed, chief paragon of wisdom and piety, a brilliant lamp which illumined territories and churches by preaching and good works, faithful shepherd of the church in general,—after having ordained bishops and priests and persons of every degree; after having consecrated many churches and cemeteries; after having performed every ecclesiastical work throughout Ireland; after having bestowed jewels and food upon the mighty and the needy; after having founded churches and monasteries, for by him was repaired in Ireland every church which had been consigned to decay and neglect, and they had been neglected from times remote;—after leaving every rule and every good moral in the churches of Ireland in general; after having been the second time in the legateship; after having been fourteen years in the primacy; and after the fifty-fourth year of his age, resigned his spirit to heaven on the second day of November, and was buried in the monastery of Saint Bernard at Claravallis in France."

This is the same worthy under whose influence was built the great lime-kiln over against the fort of Emain, where Concobar once ruled. Even from the scant notices which we have quoted he stands forth clear and strong, full of spiritual and moral vigor, a great man in every sense, and one in whom we divine a lovable and admirable spirit. At that time there were four archbishoprics in Ireland, at Armagh, Cashel, Dublin and Tuam; the primacy belonging to the first, as the seat of the Damliag Mor or Great Stone Church, built by Saint Patrick himself. A sentence in the Annals shows how the revenues were raised: "A horse from every chieftain, a sheep from every hearth." A few passages like these are enough to light up whole epochs of that mediaeval time, and to show us how sympathetic, strong and pure that life was, in so many ways.

We find, meanwhile, that the tribal struggle continued as of old: "1154: Toirdealbac Ua Concobar brought a fleet round Ireland northwards, and plundered Tir-Conaill and Inis Eogain. The Cinel Eogain sent to hire the fleets of the Hebrides, Arran, Cantyre and Man, and the borders of Alba in general, and they fell in with the other fleet and a naval battle was fiercely and spiritedly fought between them. They continued the conflict from, the beginning of the day till evening, but the foreign fleet was defeated." This records perhaps the only lesson learned from the Norsemen, the art of naval warfare. We may regret that the new knowledge was not turned to a more national end.

Four years later, "a wicker bridge was made by Ruaidri Ua Concobar at Athlone, for the purpose of making incursions into Meath. There was a pacific meeting between Ruaidri Ua Concobar and Tigearnan, and they made peace, and took mutual oaths before sureties and relics." This is our first meeting with a king as remarkable in his way as the great archbishop his contemporary. Ruaidri descendant of Concobar was king of Connacht, holding the land from the western ocean up to the great frontier of the river Shannon. Eager to plunder his neighbors and bring back "a countless number of cows," he undertook this wonderful work, a pile bridge across the river, seemingly the first of its kind to be built there, and in structure very like the famous bridge which Caesar built across the Rhine,—or like many of the wooden bridges across the upper streams of the Danube at the present day. We shall record a few more of this enterprising and large-minded prince's undertakings, following the course of the years.

In parenthesis, we find a clue to the standard of value of the time in this record: "1161: The visitation of Osraige was made by Flaitbeartac, successor of Colum Kill; the tribute due to him was seven score oxen, but he selected, as a substitute for these, four hundred and twenty ounces of pure silver." The price of an ox was, therefore, three ounces of silver. The old-time barter, an echo of which still lingers in the word "pecuniary" from the Latin name for "cattle," was evidently yielding to the more convenient form of exchange through the medium of the metals, which are easily carried and divided, and suffer no detriment from the passage of time. With the wicker bridge and the lime-kiln, this change from a tribute in cattle to a payment in silver may remind us that we are on the threshold of the modern world.

In 1162 we find the king of Connacht in a new adventure: "An army was led by Muirceartac Ua Lochlain, accompanied by the people of the north of Ireland, the men of Meath, and a battalion of the Connacht men, to At-Cliat, to lay siege to the Foreigners and the Irish; but Ua Lochlain retired without battle or hostages after having plundered the Fair Strangers. A peace was afterwards concluded between the Foreigners and the Gaels; and six score ounces of gold were given by the Foreigners to Ua Lochlain, and five score ounces of gold were paid by Diarmaid Ua Maelseaclain to Ruaidri Ua Concobar for West Meath." Here again we see the "countless cows" giving place to counted gold in the levying of tribute. We note also, in the following year, that "a lime-kiln measuring seventy feet every way was made by the successor of Colum Kill and the clergy of Colum Kill in twenty days," in evident emulation of the work of the Armagh see.

The synod already recorded as having been held in the little island of Saint Patrick off the Dublin coast, gives us a general view of the church at that time, the number of sees and parishes, and the spirit animating them. We gain a like view of the civil state in the record of a great assembly convened in 1167 by the energetic and enterprising Connacht king: "A great meeting was called together by Ruaidri Ua Concobar and the chiefs of Leat Cuin, both lay and ecclesiastic, and the chiefs of At-boy,—the Yellow Ford across one of the streams of the Boyne in Meath. To it came the successor of Patrick, the archbishop of Connacht, the archbishop of Leinster, the lord of Breifne, the lord of Oirgialla, the king of Ulster, the king of Tara, and Ragnall son of Ragnall, lord of the Foreigners. The whole of their gathering and assemblage was 19,000 horsemen, of which 6000 were Connachtmen, 4000 with the lord of Breifne, 2000 with the king of Tara, 4000 with the lord of Oirgialla and the king of Ulster, 2000 with the chief of Ui-Failge, and 1000 with the Foreigners of At-Cliat. They passed many good resolutions at this meeting, respecting veneration for churches and clerics, and control of tribes and territories, so that women used to traverse Ireland alone; and a restoration of his prey was made by the chief of the Ui-Failge at the hands of the kings aforesaid. They afterwards separated in peace and amity, without battle or controversy, or without anyone complaining of another at that meeting, in consequence of the prosperousness of the king, who had assembled these chiefs with their forces at one place."

Here is a foreshadowing of the representative assemblies of our modern times, and the same wise spirit is shown in another event of the same year, thus recorded: "A hosting and a mustering of the men of Ireland, with their chieftains, by Ruaidri Ua Concobar; thither came the lord of Deas-muma, the lord of Tuaid-muma, the king of Meath, the lord of Oirgialla and all the chieftains of Leinster. They arrived in Tir-Eogain, and allotted the part of it north of Slieve Gullion,—now the eastern part of Derry,—to Nial Ua Lochlain for two hostages, and allotted the part of the country of the clan to the south of the mountain to Aed Ua Neill for two other hostages. Then the men of Ireland returned back southwards over Slieve Fuaid, through Tir-Eogain and Tir-Connaill, and over Assaroe—the Cataract of the Erne—and Ruaidri Ua Concobar escorted the lord of Deas-muma with his forces southwards through Tuaid-muma as far as Cnoc-Aine—in Limerick—and the lord of Deas-muma departed with gifts of many jewels and riches."

While the Norse foreigners were a power at Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, there were not wanting occasions when one of the native tribes called on them for aid against another tribe, sharing with them the joys of victory or the sorrow of defeat, and, where fortune favored, dividing with them the "countless cows" taken in a raid. In like manner the Cinel Eogain, as we saw, hired the fleet of the Norsemen of the Western Isles of Scotland to help them to resist a raid of the Connachtmen. The example thus set was followed repeatedly in the coming years, and we find mention of Flemings, Welshmen and Saxons brought over to take one side or other in the tribal wars.

In the same year that saw the two assemblings of the chieftains under Ruaidri Ua Concobar, another chieftain, Diarmaid son of Murcad brought in from "the land of the Saxons," as it was called, one of these bands of foreign mercenaries, for the most part Welsh descendants of the old Gaelic Britons, to aid him in his contest for "the kingdom of the sons of Ceinnsealaig." Two years later, Ruaidri Ua Concobar "granted ten cows every year from himself and from every king that should follow him for ever, to the Lector of Ard Maca, in honor of Patrick, to instruct the youths of Ireland and Alba in Literature."

For the next year, 1170, we find this record: "Robert Mac Stepni and Ricard Mac Gillebert—Iarl Strangbow—came from Saxonland into Erin with a numerous force, and many knights and archers, in the army of the son of Murcad, to contest Leinster for him, and to disturb the Gaels of Erin in general; and the son of Murcad gave his daughter to Iarl Strangbow for coming into his army. They took Loch Garman—Wexford—and Port Lairge—Waterford—by force; and they took Gillemaire the officer of the fortress and Ua Faelain lord of the Deisi and his son, and they killed seven hundred persons there. Domnall Breagac with numbers of the men of Breag fell by the Leinstermen on that occasion. An army was led by Ruaidri Ua Concobar with the lord of Breifne and the lord of Oirgialla against Leinster and the Foreigners aforesaid, and there was a challenge of battle between them for the space of three days." This contest was indecisive. The most noteworthy event of the battle was the plundering and slaughter of the Danes of At-Cliat by the newcomers under Iarl Strangbow. The Danes had long before this given up their old pagan faith, converted by their captives and their Gaelic neighbors. Christ Church Cathedral in At-Cliat or Dublin was founded early in the preceding century by Sitric son of Olaf, king of the Danes of Dublin, and Donatus the first Danish bishop; but the oldest part of the present structure belongs to the time we are now speaking of: the close of the twelfth century. The transepts with their chevron mouldings and the principal doorway are of that period, and we may regard them as an offering in expiation of the early heathen raids on Lambay, Saint Patrick's Isle, and the early schools of the church.

The ambitious Diarmaid Mac Murcad died shortly after the last battle we have recorded, "perishing without sacrament, of a loathsome disease;" a manifest judgment, in the eyes of the Chronicler, for the crime of bringing the Normans to Ireland. In the year that saw his death, "Henry the Second, king of the Saxons and duke of the Normans, came to Ireland with two hundred and forty ships." He established a footing in the land, as one of many contesting powers, but the immediate results of his coming were slight. This we can judge from the record of three years later: "A brave battle was fought by the Foreigners under Iarl Strangbow and the Gaels under Ruaidri Ua Concobar at Thurles, in which the Foreigners were finally defeated by dint of fighting. Seventeen hundred of the Foreigners were slain in the battle, and only a few of them survived with the Iarl, who proceeded in sorrow to his home at Port Lairge—Waterford." Iarl Strangbow died two years later at Dublin.

Norman warriors continue to appear during the succeeding years, fighting against the native chieftains and against each other, while the native chieftains continue their own quarrels, just as in the days of the first Norse raids. Thus in the year of Iarl Strangbow's death, Kells was laid waste by the Foreigners in alliance with the native Ui-Briain, while later in the same year the Foreigners were driven from Limerick by Domnall Ua-Briain, who laid siege to them and forced them to surrender.

Two years later, four hundred and fifty of the followers of De Courcy, another great Norman warrior, were defeated at Maghera Conall in Louth, some being drowned in the river, while others were slain on the battlefield. In the same year De Courcy was again defeated with great slaughter in Down, and escaped severely wounded to Dublin. For At-Cliat, from being a fortress of the Danes and Norsemen, was gradually becoming a Norman town. The doorway of Christ Church Cathedral, which dates from about this time, is of pure Norman style.

In 1186 we find a son of the great Ruaidri Ua Concobar paying a band of these same Foreigners three thousand cows as "wages," for joining him in some plundering expedition against his neighbors. The genius of strife reigned supreme, and the newcomers were as completely under its sway as the old clansmen. Just as we saw the Dark Norsemen of the ninth century coming in their long ships to plunder the Fair Norsemen of At-Cliat, and the Fair Norsemen not less vigorously retaliating, so now we find wars breaking out among the Normans who followed in the steps of the Norsemen. In 1205 the Norman chieftain who held a part of Meath under his armed sway, and who had already built a strong castle at Kells, was at war with the De Bermingham family, who at that time held the old Danish stronghold of Limerick. Two years later another contest broke out between the De Berminghams and William Marescal, and yet another struggle between Hugo de Lacy and De Bermingham, very disastrous to the retainers of the latter, for the Chronicler tells us that "nearly all his people were ruined."

Thus the old life of tribal struggle went on. The country was wealthy, full of cattle and herds, silver and gold, stored corn and fruit, rich dyed stuffs and ornaments. The chieftains and provincial kings lived in state within their forts, with their loyal warriors around them, feasting and making merry, and the bards and heralds recited for their delight the great deeds of the men of old, their forefathers; the harpers charmed or saddened them with the world-old melodies that Deirdre had played for Naisi, that Meave had listened to, that Crede sang for her poet lover.

The life of the church was not less vigorous and vital. There are many churches and cathedrals of that period of transition, as of the epoch before the first Norman came, which show the same fervor and devotion, the same faith made manifest by works of beauty. In truth no country in the world has so full and rich a record in lasting stone, beginning with the dwellings of the early saints who had seen the first Messenger face to face, and passing down through age after age, showing the life and growth of the faith from generation to generation.

The schools, as we saw, carried on the old classical tradition, bringing forth monuments like the Annals of Tigearnac; and there was the same vigor and vital force in every part of the nation's life. The coming of the Normans changed this in no essential regard. There was something added in architecture, the Norman modifying the old native style; the castle and keep gradually taking the place of the earthwork and stone fort. And in the tenure of land certain new principles were introduced. But the sum of national life went on unbroken, less modified, probably, than it had been by the old Norse raids.



XII.

THE NORMANS.

A.D. 1250-1603.

When summing up each epoch of Irish history, we may find both interest and profit in considering what the future of the land and the people might have been had certain new elements not been added. Thus we may try to picture to ourselves what would have been our history had our life moved forward from the times of Cuculain and Concobar, of Find and Cormac son of Art, without that transforming power which the fifth century brought. We may imagine the tribal strife and stress growing keener and fiercer, till the whole life and strength of the people was fruitlessly consumed in plundering and destroying.

Or we may imagine an unbroken continuance of the epoch of saintly aspiration, the building of churches, the illumination of holy books, so dividing the religious from the secular community as almost to make two nations in one, a nation altogether absorbed in the present life, with another nation living in its midst, but dwelling wholly in the thought of the other world. Religion would have grown to superstition, ecstasy would have ruled in the hearts of the religious devotees, weakening their hold on the real, and wafting them away into misty regions of paradise. We should have had every exaggeration of ascetic practice, hermitages multiplying among the rocks and islands of the sea, men and women torturing their bodies for the saving of their souls.

The raids of the Norsemen turned the strong aspirations of the religious schools into better channels, bringing them to a sense of their identity with the rest of the people, compelling them to bear their part of the burden of calamity and strife. The two nations which might have wandered farther and farther apart were thus welded into one, so that the spirit of religion became what it has ever since remained, something essential and inherent in the life of the whole people.

After the waning of the Norsemen, a period opened full of great national promise in many ways. We see the church strengthened and confirmed, putting forth its power in admirable works of art, churches and cathedrals full of the fire and fervor of devotion, and conceived in a style truly national, with a sense of beauty altogether its own. Good morals and generous feeling mark the whole life of the church through this period, and the great archbishop whose figure we have drawn in outline is only one of many fine and vigorous souls among his contemporaries.



The civil life of the nation, too, shows signs of singular promise at the same time, a promise embodied in the person of the king of Connacht, Ruaidri Ua Concobar, some of whose deeds we have recorded. There was a clearer sense of national feeling and national unity than ever before, a recognition of the method of conciliation and mutual understanding, rather than the old appeal to armed force, as under the genius of tribal strife. We see Ruaidri convoking the kings, chieftains and warriors to a solemn assembly, presided over by the king and the archbishops of the realm, and "passing good resolutions" for the settlement of religious and civil matters, and the better ordering of territories and tribes. That assembly was convened a half-century before the famous meeting between King John and his barons, at Runnymead among the Windsor meadows; and the seed then sown might have brought forth fruit as full of promise and potency for the future as the Great Charter itself. The contrast between these two historic assemblies is instructive. In the one case, we have a provincial king from the rich and beautiful country beyond the Shannon, gradually gaining such influence over the kings of the provinces and the chieftains of the tribes that he had come to be regarded as in a sense the overlord of the whole land, not through inherent sovreignty or divine right, but first as the chosen chief of his own tribe, and then as the elect of the whole body of chieftains, first among his peers. In this character we see Ruaidri settling disputes between two sections of the great Northern clan, and fixing a boundary between them; giving presents to the chieftains of the south for their support in this difficult decision, and exercising a beneficent influence over the whole people, a moral sway rather than a sovereign and despotic authority. It is pleasant to find the same king establishing a college foundation for the instruction of the youth of Ireland and Scotland in literature.

This is what we have on the one hand. On the other, we have the Norman king surrounded by his barons, over whom he claimed, but could not exercise, despotic authority; and the Norman barons taking advantage of his necessity to extort promises and privileges for their own order rather than for the whole people. For we must remember that the Angles and Saxons had been reduced by conquest to a servile condition, from which they never wholly recovered. The ruling classes of Britain at the present day are at least nominal descendants of those same Norman barons; and between them and the mass of the people—the sons of the Saxons and Angles—there is still a great gulf fixed. It is quite impossible for one of the tillers of the soil to stand on a footing of equality with the old baronial class, and the gulf has widened, rather than closed, since the battle of Hastings and the final overthrow of the Saxon power.

We see here the full contrast between the ideal of kingship in Ireland and that which grew up among the Norman conquerors of the Saxons. The Irish king was always in theory and often in fact a real representative, duly elected by the free suffrage of his tribesmen; he was not owner of the tribal land, as the duke of the Normans was; he was rather the leader of the tribe, chosen to guard their common possessions. The communal system of Ireland stands here face to face with the feudal system of the Normans.

It would be a study of great interest to consider what form of national life might have resulted in Ireland from the free growth of this principle of communal chieftainship. There are many analogies in other lands, all of which point to the likelihood of a slow emergence of the hereditary principle; a single family finally overtopping the whole nation. Had this free development taken place, we might have had a strong and vigorous national evolution, an abundant flowering of all our energies and powers through the Middle Ages, a rich and vigorous production of art and literature, equal to the wonderful blossoming of genius in the Val d'Arno and Venice and Rome; but we should have missed something much greater than all these; something towards which events and destiny have been leading us, through the whole of the Middle Ages and modern times.

From this point forward we shall have to trace the working of that destiny, not manifested in a free blossoming and harvesting of our national life, but rather in the suppression and involution of our powers; in a development arrested by pressure from without and kept thus suspended until the field was ready for its real work. Had our fate been otherwise, we might now be looking back to a great mediaeval past, as Spain and Austria look back; it is fated that we shall look not back but forwards, brought as we are by destiny into the midst of the modern world, a people with energy unimpaired, full of vigorous vital force, uncorrupted by the weakening influence of wealth, taught by our own history the measureless evil of oppression, and therefore cured once for all of the desire to dominate others. Finally, the intense inner life towards which we have been led by the checking of our outward energies has opened to us secrets of the invisible world which are of untold value, of measureless promise for all future time.

We have, therefore, to trace the gradual involution of our national life; the checking and restraining of that free development which would assuredly have been ours, had our national life grown forward unimpeded and uninfluenced from without, from the days when the Norse power waned. The first great check to that free development came from the feudal system, the principle of which was brought over by Robert FitzStephen, Richard FitzGilbert, the De Courcys, the De Lacys, the De Berminghams and their peers, whose coming we have recorded. They added new elements to the old struggle of district against district, tribe against tribe, but they added something more enduring—an idea and principle destined almost wholly to supplant the old communal tenure which was the genius of the native polity. The outward and visible sign of that new principle was manifested in the rapid growth of feudal castles, with their strong keeps, at every point of vantage gained by the Norman lords. They were lords of the land, not leaders of the tribe, and their lordship was fitly symbolized in the great gloomy towers of stone that everywhere bear witness to their strength, almost untouched as they are by the hand of time.

When the duke of the Normans overthrew the Saxon king at Hastings, he became real owner of the soil of England. His barons and lords held their estates from him, in return for services to be rendered to him direct. To reward them for supporting him, first in that decisive battle, and then in whatever contests he might engage in, they were granted the right to tax certain tracts of country, baronies, earldoms, or counties, according to the title they bore. This tax was exacted first in service, then in produce, and finally in coin. It was the penalty of conquest, the tribute of the subject Saxons and Angles. There was no pretence of a free contract; no pretence that the baron returned to the farmer or laborer an equal value for the tax thus exacted. It was tribute pure and simple, with no claim to be anything else. That system of tribute has been consecrated in the land tenure of England, and the class enriched by that tribute, and still bearing the territorial titles which are its hall-mark, has always been, as it is to-day, the dominant class alike in political and social life. In other words, the Norman subjugation of Saxon and Angle is thoroughly effective at this moment.

This principle of private taxation, as a right granted by the sovereign, came over to Ireland with the De Courcys and De Lacys and their like. But it by no means overspread Ireland in a single tide, as in England, after Hastings was lost and won. Its progress was slow; so slow, indeed, that the old communal system lingers here and there at the present day. The communal chiefs lived their lives side by side with the Norman barons, fighting now with the barons, now with each other; and the same generous rivalry, as we have seen, led to abundant fighting among the barons also. The principle of feudal ownership was working its way, however. We shall see later how great was its ultimate influence,—not so much by direct action, as in the quite modern reaction which its abuse provoked—a reaction from which have been evolved certain principles of value to the whole world.

Leaving this force to work its way through the centuries, we may turn now to the life of the times as it appeared to the men and women who lived in them, and as they themselves have recorded it. We shall find fewer great personalities; nor should we expect this to be otherwise, if we are right in thinking that the age of struggle, with its efflorescence of great persons, had done its work, and was already giving way before the modern spirit, with its genius for the universal rather than the personal. We shall have contests to chronicle during the following centuries, whether engendered within or forced upon us from without; but they are no longer the substance of our history. They are only the last clouds of a departing storm; the mists before the dawn of the modern world.

The most noteworthy of these contests in the early Norman age was the invasion under Edward Bruce, brother of the Scottish king, who brought a great fleet and army to Larne, then as now the Irish port nearest to the northern kingdom. The first sufferers by this invasion were the Normans of Heath, and we presently find these same Normans allied with Feidlimid son of Aed Ua Concobar and the Connachtmen, fighting side by side against the common foe. This was in 1315; two years later Robert Bruce joined his brother, and it was not till 1319 that Edward Bruce finally fell at Dundalk, "and no achievement had been performed in Ireland for a long time before," the Chronicler tells us, "from which greater benefit had accrued to the country than from this; for during the three and a half years that Edward had spent in it, a universal famine prevailed to such a degree that men were wont to devour one another."

A ray of light is thus shed on the intellectual and moral life of the time: "1398: Garrett Earl of Desmond—or Deas-muma—a cheerful and courteous man, who excelled all the Normans and many of the Irish in the knowledge of the Irish language, poetry, history and other learning, died after the victory of peace." We see that the Normans are already fallen under the same influence of assimilation which had transformed the Danes two hundred years before.

A half-century later, we get a vigorous and lurid picture of the survival of the old tribal strife: "1454: Donell O'Donell was installed in the lordship of Tyrconnell, in opposition to Rury O'Donell. Not long after this, Donell was treacherously taken captive and imprisoned in the castle of Inis—an island in Lough Swilly. As soon as Rury received tidings of this, he mustered an army thither, and proceeded to demolish the castle in which Donell was imprisoned with a few men to guard him. Rury and his army burned the great door of the castle, and set the stairs on fire; whereupon Donell, thinking that his life would be taken as soon as the army should reach the castle,—it being his dying request, as he thought—that he might be loosed from his fetters, as he deemed it a disgrace to be killed while imprisoned and fettered. His request was granted, and he was loosed from his fetters; after which he ascended to the battlements of the castle, to view the motions of the invading army. And he saw Rury beneath, with eyes flashing enmity, and waiting until the fire should subside, that he might enter and kill him. Donell then, finding a large stone by his side, hurled it directly down upon Rury, so that it fell on the crest of his helmet, on the top of his head, and crushed it, so that he instantly died. The invading forces were afterwards defeated, and by this throw Donell saved his own life and acquired the lordship of Tyrconnell."

There is a whole historical romance in that single picture; the passage could not easily be surpassed for direct and forcible narrative. A few years later, we come on one of the most amusing things in the whole series of annals, a perfect contrast to the grim ferocity of the feud of the O'Donells. In 1472 "a wonderful animal was sent to Ireland by the king of England. She resembled a mare, and was of a yellow color, with the hoofs of a cow, a long neck, a very large head, a large tail, which was ugly and scant of hair. She had a saddle of her own. Wheat and salt were her usual food. She used to draw the largest sled-burden behind her. She used to kneel when passing under any doorway, however high, and also to let her rider mount." It is evident that the Gaelic language in the fifteenth century lacked a name for the camel. The same year, we are told, "the young earl of Desmond was set at liberty by the MacCarthys; he disabled Garrett, son of the earl of Kildare."

Here is another passage which vies in vividness and force with the story of the death of Rury O'Donell: "1557: Two spies, Donough and Maurice by name, entered the camp of John O'Neill by Lough Swilly, and mingled with the troop without being noticed; for in consequence of the number and variety of the troops who were there, it was not easy for them to discriminate between one another, even if it were day, except by recognizing their chieftains alone. The two persons aforesaid proceeded from one fire to another, until they came to the great central fire, which was at the entrance of the son of O'Neill's tent; and a huge torch, thicker than a man's body, was continually flaming at a short distance from the fire, and sixty grim and redoubtable warriors with sharp, keen axes, terrible and ready for action, and sixty stern and terrific Scots, with massive, broad and heavy striking swords in their hands, ready to strike and parry, were guarding the son of O'Neill. When the time came for the troops to dine, and food was divided and distributed among them, the two spies whom we have mentioned stretched out their hands to the distributor like the rest, and that which fell to their share was a measure of meal, and a suitable complement of butter. With this testimony of their adventure they returned to their own people."

Here again, what a picture of the camp-life of the age; the darkness of night, the great central fire with the sixty grim and redoubtable warriors armed with keen axes, terrible and ready for action, and the sixty stern and terrific Scots with their massive swords. The admirable manner of the narrative is as striking as the fierce vigor of the life portrayed. So we might go on, adding red pages of martial records, but in reality adding nothing to our understanding of the times. The life of the land was as full and abundant as of old, and one outcome of that life we may touch on rather more at length.

We have said much of the old religious schools of Ireland, with their fine and vigorous intellectual life, which did so much to carry forward the torch of culture to our modern world. For nearly seven hundred years these great schools seem to have developed wholly along indigenous lines, once they had accepted the body of classical culture from the Roman Empire, then tottering to its fall. The full history of that remarkable chapter in the world's spiritual life has yet to be written; but this we can foretell, that when written, it will abound with rich material and ample evidence of a sound and generous culture, inspired throughout with the fervor of true faith.

About the time when the Norman warriors began to mingle with the fighting chieftains of the old native tribes, a change came over the religious history of the country. After sending forth men of power and light to the awakening lands of modern Europe, Ireland began to receive a returning tide, to reap a harvest from these same lands, in the friars and abbots of the great Continental orders founded by men like Saint Bernard, Saint Dominick and Saint Francis of Assisi. A change in the church architecture of the period visibly records this spiritual change; continental forms appear, beginning with the rounded arches of the Normans, and passing gradually into the various forms of pointed arches which we know as Gothic. Very beautiful Abbeys belonging to this epoch remain everywhere throughout the island, making once more evident—what strikes us at every point of our study—that no country in the world is so rich in these lasting records of every step of our national life, whether in pagan or Christian times.

We have said much of the archaic cromlechs. We have recorded the great Pyramids by the Boyne telling us of the genius of the De Danaans. The Milesian epoch is even now revealed to us in the great earthworks of Tara and Emain and Cruacan. We can, if we wish, climb the mound of heaped-up earth where was the fortress of Cuculain, or look over the green plains from the hill of Find.



In like manner, there is an unbroken series of monuments through the early Christian epoch, beginning with the oratories of the sixth century, continuing through the early churches of Killiney, Moville, Dalkey, Glendalough and Monasterboice, from before the Norse inroads; followed by the epoch of Round Towers, or protected belfries, with their churches, nearly three score of these Round Towers remaining in fair preservation, while many are perfect from base to apex; and culminating in Cormac's chapel and the beautiful group of buildings on Cashel Rock. For the next period, the age of transition after the waning of the Norsemen and the coming of the first Normans, we have many monuments in the Norman style, like the door of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, with its romance of Danish conversion and Norse religious fervor.

Finally, we come to the age whose progress we have just recorded, which covers the whole of the Middle Ages. For this period, which was for Ireland an epoch of foreign influence much more than of foreign rule, we have many beautiful Abbeys, built for those foreign orders whose coming was in a sense a return tide, a backward flow of the old missionary spirit which went forth from Ireland over nascent modern Europe. The life of these abbeys was full of rich imaginative and religious power; it abounded in urbanity and ripe culture of a somewhat selfish and exclusive type. Yet we cannot but feel a limitless affection and sympathy for the abbots and friars of the days of old who have left us such a rich heritage of beauty and grace.

All these abbeys seem to have been formed on a single plan: a cruciform church symbolized the source of all their inspiration, its choir extending towards the east, whence the Light had come; the nave, or main body of the church, was entered by the great western door, and the arms of the cross, the transepts, extended to the north and south. Here is a very beautiful symbol, a true embodiment of the whole spirit and inspiration of the monastic orders. From one of the transepts a side door generally led to the domestic buildings, the dormitory, the refectory, the chapter house, where the friars assembled in conclave under the presidency of the abbot. There were lesser buildings, store-rooms, granaries, work-rooms, but these were the kernel of the establishment. The church was the center of all things, and under its floor the friars were at last laid to rest, while brother friars carved tombs for them and epitaphs, adding a new richness of decoration to the already beautiful church.

We may record a few of these old foundations, showing at the same time the present state of the old abbey buildings. At Newtown on the northern bank of the Boyne, about a mile below Trim, Simon Rochfort founded an abbey for the Augustinian Canons in 1206, dedicating it to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The capitals of the pillars in the church, the vaulting of the roof and the shafts of the arches which supported the tower are full of singular grace and beauty, even now when the abbey is roofless and in part destroyed, while the corbels and mouldings round the lancet-shaped windows are full of luxuriant fancy and charm. We can divine from them the full and rich spiritual life which brought forth such exquisite flowers of beauty; we can imagine the fine aroma of fervor and saintly peace which brooded over these consecrated aisles.

A few miles below Trim, and an equal distance from the old royal palace of Tara, Bective Abbey stands on the northern bank of the Boyne, with a square, battlemented tower overshadowing its cloistered quadrangle. The cinque-foil cloister arches, the fillets that bind the clustered shafts of the pillars, the leaf ornaments of the plinths at their base all speak of a luxuriant sense of beauty and grace, of a spirit of pure and admirable artistic work. This rich creative power thus breaking forth in lovely handiwork is only the outward sign of a full inner life, kindled by the fire of aspiration, and glowing with the warm ardor of devotion. Bective Abbey dates from about 1150. We are told that the king of Meath who founded it for the Cistercian order "endowed it with two hundred and forty-five acres of land, a fishing-weir and a mill." From this meager outline we can almost restore the picture of the life, altogether idyllic and full of quiet delight, that the old Friars lived among the meadows of the Boyne.

Grey Abbey was founded a little later, in 1193, for the same Cistercian order, where the promontory of the Ards divides Strangford Lough from the eastern sea. Over the waters of the lough, the red sandstone hills of north Down make a frame for the green of the meadows, as the tide laps and murmurs close to the old monastic church. Grey Abbey owes its foundation to the piety of a princess of the Isle of Man, wedded to De Courcy, the Norman warrior whose victories and defeats we have recorded. The great beauty of its church is due to the soaring loftiness of the eastern window, and the graceful daring of the arches which in former days upheld the central tower.

Other Cistercian foundations are commemorated in the names of Abbey-leix in Queen's county, and Abbey-dorney and Abbey-feale in Kerry; all three dating from after the reformation of the order by Saint Bernard the Younger, though the work of that ardent missionary did not apparently extend its influence to Ireland until a later date. This reformer of the Cistercians must not be confused with the elder Saint Bernard, whose hospice guards the pass of the Alps which bears his name. Saint Bernard of the Alps died in 1008, while Saint Bernard the reformer was born in 1093, dying sixty years later as abbot of Clara vallis or Clairvaux, on the bank of the Aube in northern France. It was at this Abbey of the Bright Vale, or Clara vallis, that Archbishop Maelmaedog resigned his spirit to heaven, five years before the death of the younger Saint Bernard, then abbot there. This is a link between the old indigenous church and the continental orders of the Friars.

Killmallock Abbey, in Limerick, belonged to the order of the Dominicans, founded by the scion of the Guzmans, the ardent apostle of Old Castile, known to history as Saint Dominick. Here again we have a beautiful abbey church with a square central tower, upborne on soaring and graceful arches from the point where the nave joined the choir. There is only one transept—on the south—so that the church is not fully cruciform, a peculiarity shared by several other Dominican buildings. The eastern window and the window of this transept are full of delicate grace and beauty, each containing five lights, and marked by the singularly charming manner in which the mullions are interlaced above. Enough remains of the cloister and the domestic buildings for us to bring back to life the picture of the old monastic days, when the good Friars worked and prayed there, with the sunlight falling on them through the delicate network of the windows.

Holycross Abbey, near Thurles in Tipperary, was another of the Cistercian foundations, its charter, dating from 1182, being still in existence. Its church is cruciform; the nave is separated from the north aisle by round arches, and from the south aisle by pointed arches, which gives it a singular and unusual beauty. The great western window of the nave, with its six lights, is also very wonderful. Two chapels are attached to the north transept, with a passage between them, its roof supported by a double row of pointed arches upheld by twisted pillars. The roof is delicately groined, as is the roof of the choir, and the whole abbey breathes a luxuriant richness of imagination, bearing everywhere the signs of high creative genius. The same lavish imagination is shown everywhere in the interlaced tracery, the black limestone giving the artist an admirable vehicle for his work. Though the charter dates from the twelfth century, some of the work is about two centuries later, showing finely the continuity of life and spiritual power in the old monastic days.



The Friars of Saint Augustine, who were in possession of the abbey at Newtown on the Boyne, had another foundation not far from West port in Mayo, in the Abbey of Ballintober, founded in 1216 by a son of the great Ruaidri Ua Concobar. Here also we have the cruciform church, with four splendid arches rising from the intersection of nave and choir, and once supporting the tower. The Norman windows over the altar, with their dog-tooth mouldings, are very perfect. In a chapel on the south of the choir are figures of the old abbots carved in stone.

One of the Ui-Briain founded a Franciscan Abbey at Ennis in Clare about 1240, which is more perfectly preserved than any of those we have described. The tower still stands, rising over the junction of nave and choir; the refectory, chapter house, and some other buildings still remain, while the figure of the patron, Saint Francis of Assisi, still stands beside the altar at the north pier of the nave.

Clare Abbey, a mile from Ennis, was founded for the Augustine Friars in 1195, and here also the tower still stands, dominating the surrounding plain. Three miles further south, on the shore of Killone Lake, was yet another abbey of the same period, while twenty miles to the north, at Corcomroe on the shore of Galway Bay, the Cistercians had yet another home.

We might continue the list indefinitely. Some of the most beautiful of our abbeys still remain to be recorded, but we can do no more than give their names: Bonamargy was built for the Franciscans in Antrim in the fifteenth century; the Dominican priory at Roscommon dates from 1257; the Cistercian Abbey of Jerpoint in Kilkenny was begun in 1180; Molana Abbey, in Waterford, was built for the Augustinians on the site of a very old church; and finally Knockmoy Abbey in Galway, famous for its fourteenth century frescoes, was begun in 1189. We must remember that every one of these represents, and by its variations of style indicates, an unbroken life through several centuries. The death-knell of the old life of the abbeys and priories, in Ireland as in England, was struck in the year 1537 by the law which declared their lands forfeited to the crown; as the result of the religious controversies of the beginning of the sixteenth century.



XIII.

THE TRIUMPH OF FEUDALISM.

A.D. 1603-1660.

The confiscation of the abbey lands, as the result of religious controversy, closed an epoch of ecclesiastical life in Ireland, which we cannot look back on without great regret for the noble and beautiful qualities it brought forth in such abundance. There is a perennial charm and fascination in the quiet life of the old religious houses—in the world, yet not of the world—which appeals to aesthetic and moral elements in our minds in equal degree. From their lovely churches and chapter-houses the spirits of the old monks invite us to join them in an unworldly peace on earth, a renewal of the golden age, a life full of aspiration and self-forgetfulness, with all the burdens of egotism laid aside.

Yet after all is said, we can hardly fail to see that out of the spoliation and scattering of the religious orders much good came. There was a danger that, like the older indigenous schools which they supplanted, these later foundations might divide the nation in two, all things within their consecrated walls being deemed holy, while all without was unregenerate, given up to wrath. A barrier of feelings and hopes thus springing up, tends to harden from year to year, till at last we have a religious caste grown proud and arrogant, and losing all trace of the spiritual fervor which is its sole reason for being.

The evils which surround a wealthy church are great and easily to be understood, nor need we lay stress on them. There is, indeed, cause for wonder in the spectacle of the followers of him "who had not where to lay his head" become, in the Middle Ages, the greatest owners of land in Europe; and we can see how temptations and abuses without number might and did often arise from this very fact. Ambition, the desire of wealth, the mere love of ease, led many to profess a religious life who had never passed through that transformation of will and understanding which is the essence of religion. The very purpose of religion was forgotten, or allowed to be hidden away under things excellent in themselves, yet not essential; and difference of view about these unessential things led to fierce and bitter controversy, and later to open strife and war.

We take religion, in its human aspect, to mean the growth of a new and wider consciousness above the keen, self-assertive consciousness of the individual; a superseding of the personal by the humane; a change from egotism to a more universal understanding; so that each shall act, not in order to gain an advantage over others, but rather to attain the greatest good for himself and others equally; that one shall not dominate another for his own profit, but shall rather seek to draw forth in that other whatever is best and truest, so that both may find their finest growth. Carried far enough, this principle, which makes one's neighbor a second self, will bring to light in us the common soul, the common life that has tacitly worked in all human intercourse from the beginning. Individual consciousness is in no way effaced; something new, wider and more humane, something universal, is added to it from above; something consciously common to all souls. And through the inspiration of that larger soul, the individual life for the first time comes to its true power—a power which is held by all pure souls in common.

We can see that something like this was the original inspiration of the religious orders. Their very name of Friars or Brothers speaks of the ideal of a common life above egotism. They sought a new birth through the death of selfishness, through self-sacrifice and renunciation. All their life in common was a symbol of the single soul inspiring them, the very form of their churches bearing testimony to their devotion. More than that, the beauty and inspiration which still radiate from the old abbey buildings show how often and in how large a degree that ideal was actually attained.

Nevertheless we can very well see how the possession of large wealth and costly offerings might be a hindrance to that spirit, fanning back to life the smouldering fires of desire. We can see even more clearly that the division between the secular and the religious life would tend to raise a moral barrier, hardening that very sense of separation which the humane and universal consciousness seeks to kill. Finally, we should see what the world has often seen: the disciples of the Nazarene dwelling in palaces, and vying with princes in the splendor of their retinues. This is hardly the way to make real the teaching of "the kingdom not of this world." This world, in the meaning of that saying, is the old world of egotism, of self-assertion, of selfish rivalry, of the sense of separation. The kingdom is that very realm of humane and universal consciousness added from above, the sense of the one soul common to all men and working through all men, whether they know it or not.

We can, therefore, see that the confiscation of the monasteries, and even the persecution of the religious orders, might be the cause of lasting spiritual good; it was like the opening of granaries and the scattering of grain abroad over the fields. The religious force, instead of drawing men out of the world, thenceforth was compelled to work among all men, not creating beautiful abbeys but transforming common lives. Persecution was the safeguard of sincerity, the fire of purification, from which men's spirits came forth pure gold. Among all nations of the world, Ireland has long held the first place for pure morals, especially in the relations of sex; and this is increasingly true of those provinces where the old indigenous element is most firmly established. We may affirm that the spiritualizing of religious feeling through persecution has had its share in bringing this admirable result, working, as it did, on a race which has ever held a high ideal of purity.

Thus out of evil comes good; out of oppression, rapacity and confiscation grow pure unselfishness, an unworldly ideal, a sense of the invisible realm. We shall presently see the same forces of rapacity and avarice sowing the seeds for a not less excellent harvest in the world of civil life.

The principle of feudalism, though introduced by the first Norman adventurers in the twelfth century, did not gain legal recognition over the whole country until the seventeenth. The old communal tenure of the Brehon law was gradually superseded, so that, instead of innumerable tribal territories with elected chiefs, there grew up a system of estates, where the land was owned by one man and tilled by others. The germ of this tenure was the right of private taxation over certain districts, granted by the Norman duke to his barons and warriors as the reward for their help in battle. Feudal land tenure never was, and never pretended to be, a contract between cultivator and landowner for their mutual benefit. It was rather the right to prey on the farmer, assigned to the landowner by the king, and paid for in past or present services to the king. In other words, the head of the Norman army invited his officers to help themselves to a share of the cattle and crops over certain districts of England, and promised to aid them in securing their plunder, in case the Saxon cultivator was rash enough to resist. The baronial order presently ceased to render any real service to their duke, beyond upholding him that he might uphold them. But there was no such surcease for the Saxon cultivator. The share of his cattle and crops which he was compelled to give up to the Norman baron became more rigidly defined, more strictly exacted, with every succeeding century, and the whole civil state of England was built up on this principle.

The baronial order assembled at Runnymead to force the hand of the king. From that time forward their power increased, while the king's power waned. But there was no Runnymead for the Saxon cultivator. He continued, as to this day he continues, to pay the share of his cattle and crops to the Norman baron or his successor, in return for services—no longer rendered—to the king. The whole civil state of England, therefore, depends on the principle of private taxation; the Norman barons and their successors receiving a share of the cattle and crops of the whole country, year after year, generation after generation, century after century, as payment for services long become purely imaginary, and even in the beginning rendered not to the cultivator who was taxed, but to the head of the armed invaders, who stood ready to enforce the payment. The Constitution of England embodies this very principle even now, in the twentieth century. Two of the three Estates,—King, Lords and Commons,—in whom the law-making power is vested, represent the Norman conquest, while even the third, still called the Lower House, boasts of being "an assembly of gentlemen," that is, of those who possess the right of private taxation of land, the right to claim a share of the cattle and crops of the whole country without giving anything at all in return.

This is the system which English influence slowly introduced into Ireland, and with the reign of the first Stuarts the change was practically complete, guaranteed by law, and enforced by armed power. The tribesmen were now tenants of their former elected chief, in whom the ownership of the tribal land was invested; the right of privately taxing the tribesmen was guaranteed to the chief by law, and a share of all cattle and crops was his by legal right, not as head of the tribe, but as owner of the land, with power to dispossess the tribesmen if they failed to pay his tax.

But very many districts had long before this come under the dominion of Norman adventurers, like the De Courcys, the De Lacys, and the rest, of whose coming we have told. They also enjoyed the right of private taxation over the districts under their dominion, and, naturally, had power to assign this right to others,—not only to their heirs, but to their creditors,—or even simply to sell the right of taxing a certain district to the highest bidder in open market.

The tribal warfare of the Middle Ages had brought many of the old chiefs and Norman lords into open strife with the central power, with the result that the possessions of unsuccessful chiefs and lords were continually assigned by the law-courts to those who stood on the side of the central power, the right to tax certain districts thus changing hands indefinitely. The law-courts thus came into possession of a very potent weapon, whether for rewarding the friends or punishing the enemies of the central power, or simply for the payment of personal and partisan favors.

During the reign of the first Stuarts the full significance of this weapon seems to have been grasped. We see an unlimited traffic in the right to tax; estates confiscated and assigned to time-serving officials, and endless abuses arising from the corruption of the courts, the judges being appointed by the very persons who were presently to invoke the law to their own profit. The tribal system was submerged, and the time of uncertainty was taken advantage of to introduce unlimited abuses, to assign to adventurers a fat share of other men's goods, to create a class legally owning the land, and entitled, in virtue of that ownership, to a share of the cattle and crops which they had done nothing to produce.

The Stuarts were at this very time sowing the seeds of civil war in England by the introduction of like abuses, the story of which has been repeatedly told; and we are all familiar with the history of the great uprising which was thereby provoked, to the temporary eclipse of the power of the crown. The story of the like uprising at the same epoch, and from kindred causes, in Ireland, is much more obscure, but equally worth recording, and to this uprising we may now turn.

Its moral causes we have already spoken of. There was, first, the confiscation of the abbey lands, and the transfer of church revenues and buildings to Anglican clergy—clergy, that is, who recognized the sovreign of England as the head of the church. This double confiscation touched the well-springs of intense animosity, the dispossessed abbots using all the influences of their order in foreign lands to bring about their re-installation, while the controversy as to the headship of the church aroused all the fierce and warring passions that had been raging on the Continent since the beginning of the sixteenth century.

There were, besides, the griefs of the dispossessed chieftains, whose tribal lands had been given to others. Chief among these was the famous house of O'Neill, the descendants of Nial, the old pagan monarch whose wars are thought to have brought the captive of Slemish Mountain to Ireland. The O'Neills, like their neighbors the O'Donnells, descendants of Domnall, had been one of the great forces of tribal strife for eighty generations, and they now saw their lands confiscated and given over to strangers. But they were only representatives of a feeling which was universal; an indignant opposition to arbitrary and tyrannous expropriation.

The head of the O'Neills had made his peace with the Tudors on the very day Queen Elizabeth died, and the tribal lands had been guaranteed to him in perpetuity. But within four years plots were set on foot by the central authorities, possibly acting in good faith, to dispossess him and the chief of the O'Donnells on a charge of treason; and in 1607 both fled to the Continent. Their example was followed by numberless others, and the more restless and combative spirits among the tribesmen, who preferred fighting to the tilling of their fields, entered the continental armies in large numbers.

When the chiefs of the north fled to the Continent, their lands were held to have reverted to the crown; and not only was the right to tax the produce of these lands assigned to adherents of the central power, but numbers of farmers from the Scottish lowlands, and in lesser degree from England, were brought over and settled on the old tribal territory. The tribesmen, with their cattle, were driven to less fertile districts, and the valleys were tilled by the transplanted farmers of Scotland. This was the Plantation of Ulster, of 1611,—four years after the flight of O'Neill and O'Donnell. The religious controversies of Scotland were thereby introduced into Ireland, so that there were three parties now in conflict—the old indigenous church, dispossessed of revenues and buildings, and even of civil rights; the Anglicans who had received these revenues and buildings, and, lastly, the Dissenters—Presbyterians and Puritans—equally opposed to both the former.

The struggle between the king and Parliament of England now found an echo in Ireland, the Anglican party representing the king, while the Scottish and English newcomers sympathized with the Parliament. A cross-fire of interests and animosities was thus aroused, which greatly complicated the first elements of strife. The Parliament at Dublin was in the hands of the Puritan party, and was in no sense representative of the other elements of the country. There was a Puritan army of about ten thousand, as a garrison of defence for the Puritan newcomers in Ulster, and there were abundant materials of an opposing national army in the tribal warriors both at home and on the Continent.

These national materials were presently drawn together by the head of the O'Neills, known to history as Owen Roe, an admirable leader and a most accomplished man, who wrote and spoke Latin, Spanish, French and English, as well as his mother-tongue. Owen Roe O'Neill had won renown on many continental battlefields, and was admirably fitted by genius and training to lead a national party, not only in council but in the field. The nucleus of his army he established in Tyrone, gaining numbers of recruits whom he rapidly turned into excellent soldiers.

This took place at the end of 1641 and the beginning of 1642, and the other forces of the country were organized about the same time. The lines of difference between the Anglican and Catholic parties were at this time very lightly drawn, and the Norman lords found themselves able to co-operate with the Catholic bishops in forming a General Assembly at Kells, which straightway set itself to frame a Constitution for the country.

The Norman lords had meanwhile assembled and organized their retainers, so that there were now three armies in Ireland: the garrison of the Scottish settlers under Monroe, strongly in sympathy with the Puritans; the tribal army under Owen Roe O'Neill; and the army of the Norman lords. The General Assembly outlined a system of parliamentary representation in which the Lords and Commons were to form a single House, the latter, two hundred and twenty-six in number, representing all the important cities and towns. A supreme Cabinet was to be formed, composed of six members for each of the four provinces, twenty-four in all, who might be lords spiritual or temporal, or commoners, according to the choice of the Parliament. This Cabinet, thus selected from the whole Parliament, was the responsible executive of the country; and under the Supreme Council a series of Provincial Councils and County Councils were to be formed along the same lines.



This plan was adopted at a general meeting of all the influential forces of the country, which assembled in May at Kilkenny, where many Parliaments had sat during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Writs were issued for elections under the new Constitution, and the date of the first assembly of the new Parliament was fixed for October. The new national body enjoyed abundant revenues, and no small state marked its deliberations in Kilkenny. We read of an endless series of illuminations, receptions, banquets and balls,—the whole of the Norman nobility of Leinster lavishing their great wealth in magnificent display. The Supreme Council journeyed in state from Kilkenny to Wexford, from Wexford to Waterford, from Waterford to Limerick and Galway, surrounded by hundreds of horsemen with drawn swords, and accompanied by an army of officials. We hear of "civil and military representations of comedies and stage plays, feasts and banquets, and palate-enticing dishes."

The General Assembly, duly elected, finally met on October 23, 1642, at Kilkenny. On the same day was fought the battle of Edgehill, between the king of England and the forces of the English Parliament. This battle was the signal for division of counsels in the new Assembly. The Norman lords of Leinster, who stood on the ground of feudalism, and lived under the shadow of royal authority, were strongly drawn to take the side of the king against the English Parliament, and overtures of negotiation were made, which came near gaining a recognition and legalization of the General Assembly by the English Crown.

While the leaders at Kilkenny were being drawn towards the royalists of England, Owen Roe O'Neill was successfully holding Ulster against the Puritan forces under Monroe and Leslie, with their headquarters at Carrickfergus. Thus matters went on till the autumn of 1643, when we find him inflicting a serious defeat on the English army under Monk and Moore at Portlester in Meath, in which Moore was killed and his forces driven back within the walls of Drogheda.

The General Assembly continued to exercise sovreign authority at Kilkenny, collecting revenues, maintaining courts of justice in the provinces, and keeping several armies in the field, most effective of which was undoubtedly that of Owen Roe O'Neill. We find matters still in this condition three years later, in May, 1646, when Monroe and the Scottish forces prepared to inaugurate an offensive campaign from their base at Carrickfergus. General Robert Monroe had about seven thousand men at Carrickfergus; his brother George had five hundred at Coleraine; while there was a Scottish army at Derry, numbering about two thousand men. It was decided to converge these three forces on Clones, in Monaghan, and thence to proceed southwards against the government of the General Assembly, then centered at Limerick. Clones was sixty miles from Derry, and rather more from Coleraine and Carrickfergus, the two other points of departure.

Owen Roe O'Neill was then at Cavan, fourteen miles south of Clones, with five thousand foot and five hundred horse, all "good, hopeful men," to use his own words. General Robert Monroe, starting from Carrickfergus, and marching by Lisburn and Armagh, expected to reach Glasslough, some sixteen miles from Clones, on June 5th. By a forced march from Cavan, Owen Roe O'Neill reached Glasslough a day earlier, and marching along the northern Blackwater, pitched his camp on the north bank of the river. Here he was directly in the line between the two Monroes, who could only join their forces after dislodging him; and Robert Monroe, who by that time had reached Armagh, saw that it would be necessary to give battle without delay if the much smaller forces from the north were not to be cut off.

Robert Monroe began a movement northwards towards Owen Roe's position at dawn on June 5th, and presently reached the Blackwater, to find himself face to face with Owen Roe's army across the river. The two forces kept parallel with each other for some time, till Robert Monroe finally forded the Blackwater at Caledon, Owen Roe then retiring in the direction of the current, which here flows north. Owen Roe, in his movement of withdrawal, brought his army through a narrow pass, which he left in charge of one of his best infantry regiments, with orders to hold it only so long as the enemy could be safely harassed, meanwhile carrying his main body back to the hill of Knocknacloy, the position he had chosen from the first for the battle, and to gain which he had up to this time been manoeuvering.

At Knocknacloy he had the center of his army protected by the hill, the right by a marsh, and the left by the river, so that, a flanking movement on Monroe's part being impossible, the Scottish general was forced to make a frontal attack. Under cover of the rearguard action at the pass, which caused both delay and confusion to Monroe's army, Owen Roe formed his men in order of battle. His first line was of four columns, with considerable spaces between them; his cavalry was on the right and left wings, behind this first line; while three columns more were drawn up some distance farther back, behind the openings in the front line, and forming the reserve. We should remember that not only was Owen Roe's army outnumbered by Monroe's, but also that Owen Roe had no artillery, while Monroe was well supplied with guns.

Meanwhile Monroe's army came into touch with Owen Roe's force, and the Scottish general opened fire with guns and muskets, to which the muskets of Owen Roe as vigorously replied. The Scottish artillery was planted on a hillock a quarter-mile from Owen Roe's center, and under cover of its fire an infantry charge was attempted, which was brilliantly repulsed by the pikemen of Owen Roe's army. A second attack was made by the Scottish cavalry, who tried to ford the river, and thus turn the left flank of the Irish army, but they were met and routed by the Irish horse. This was about six in the evening, and the sun, hanging low in the sky, fell full in the faces of the Scottish troops. Owen Roe promptly followed up the rout of the Scottish horse by an advance, making a sweeping movement from right to left, and thereby forcing Monroe towards the junction of two streams, where he had no space to move. At this point Owen Roe's army received a notable accession of strength in the form of four squadrons of cavalry, sent earlier in the day to guard against the possible approach of George Monroe from Coleraine.

At a signal from Owen Roe, his army advanced upon Monroe's force, to be met by a charge of the Scottish cavalry, instantly replied to by a charge of the Irish cavalry through the three open spaces in the front infantry line of Owen Roe's army. Monroe's first line was broken, and the Irish pikemen, the equivalent of a bayonet charge, steadily forced him backwards. It was a fierce struggle, hand to hand, eye to eye, and blade to blade. The order of Owen Roe's advance was admirably preserved, while the Scottish and English forces were in confusion, already broken and crowded into a narrow and constricted space between the two rivers. Finally the advancing Irish army reached and stormed the hillock where Monroe's artillery was placed, and victory was palpably won. The defeat of the Scottish and English army became an utter rout, and when the sun set more than three thousand of them lay dead on the field.

It is almost incredible that the Irish losses were only seventy, yet such is the number recorded, while not only was the opposing army utterly defeated and dispersed, but Monroe's whole artillery, his tents and baggage, fifteen hundred horses, twenty stand of colors, two months' provisions and numbers of prisoners of war fell into the hands of Owen Roe; while, as a result of the battle, the two auxiliary forces were forced to retreat and take refuge in Coleraine and Derry, General Robert Monroe escaping meanwhile to Carrickfergus. It is only just to him to say that our best accounts of the battle come from officers in Monroe's army, Owen Roe contenting himself with the merest outline of the result gained, but saying nothing of the consummate generalship that gained it.

For the next two years we see Owen Roe O'Neill holding the great central plain, the west and most of the north of Ireland against the armies of the English Parliamentarians and Royalists alike, and gaining victory after victory, generally against superior numbers, better armed and better equipped. We find him time after time almost betrayed by the Supreme Council, in which the Norman lords of Leinster, perpetually anxious for their own feudal estates, were ready to treat with whichever of the English parties was for the moment victorious, hoping that, whatever might be the outcome of the great English struggle, they themselves might be gainers. At this time they were in possession of many of the abbey lands, and there was perpetual friction between them and the ecclesiastics, their co-religionists, who had been driven from these same lands, so that the Norman landowners were the element of fatal weakness throughout this whole movement, willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike. While praying for the final defeat of the English parliamentary forces, they dreaded to see this defeat brought about by Owen Roe O'Neill, in whom they saw the representative of the old tribal ownership of Gaelic times, a return to which would mean their own extinction.