numbering about 600, surrendered at discretion, and were all put to death, as well as some women who were found with them in the fort. A larger expedition of about 3,500 men landed in Kinsale in 1601, and was joined by the followers of O'Donnell and Tyrone, but it was surprised and defeated by the English. The Spaniards were allowed to retire to their own country, and O'Donnell and many other Irish accompanied them, and planted in a happier soil families which in more than one instance produced noble fruit. From this time it was noticed that Irish exiles were scattered widely over the Continent. Great numbers of the old nobility of the land fought and fell under foreign flags, and 'found their graves in strange places and unhereditary churches.' But, on the whole, theological animosity is scarcely perceptible in this period of Irish history. The chief towns, though almost wholly Catholic, remained faithful to the English all through the Elizabethan wars; large numbers of Catholic Irish served under the English banner. There was little real religious persecution on the one side, and little real religious zeal on the other. At the same time the religious worship of the whole nation was proscribed by law, and although that law was in many districts little more than a dead letter, although it was nowhere rigorously and efficiently enforced, the apprehension of the extirpation of their religion hung as a new terror over the Irish people.2

The other cause which was called into action, and which in this stage of Irish history was much more important, was the confiscation of Irish land. The great impulse which the discovery of the New World and the religious changes of the sixteenth century had imparted to the intellect and character of Europe, was shown in England in an exuberance of many-sided activity equalled in no previous portion of her history. It produced among other consequences an extraordinary growth of the spirit of adventure, a distaste for routine, an extreme desire to discover new and rapid paths to wealth. This spirit showed itself in the immense development of maritime enterprise both in the form of discovery and in the form of piracy, and still more strongly in the passion for Irish land. The idea that it was possible to obtain, at a few hours' or days' journey from the English coasts, and at little or no cost, great tracts of fertile territory, and to amass in a few years gigantic fortunes, took hold upon the English mind with a fascination much like that which was exercised by the fables of the exhaustless riches of India in the days of Clive and of Hastings. The Govern

tion, there was no incurable disloyalty. If they were left with their own lands, their own laws, and their own creed, the chiefs were willing to acknowledge the English sovereign;' and Mr. Froude adds, with great energy: 'The Irish were not to be blamed if they looked to the Pope, to Spain, to France, to any friend in earth or heaven to deliver them from a power which discharged no single duty that rulers owe to subjects.' (Vol. x. Cabinet Ed. pp. 222, 223, 262, 263, 298.) In his English in Ireland, which is intended to blacken to the utmost the character of the Irish people, and especially of the Irish Catho

lics, the same writer represents the same rebellions as the unprovoked manifestations of an incurable ingratitude. Elizabeth forbade her viceroys to meddle with religion, and she had to encounter three bloody insurrections.' 'In no Catholic country in the world had so much toleration been shown to Protestants as had been shown to Catholics in Ireland.... The bloody rebellions of Shan O'Neill, of the Earl of Desmond, and of the Earl of Tyrone . were the rewards of forbearance.' -Vol. i. pp. 211, 364.

1 See Carte's Life of Ormond, i. 27.

ment warmly encouraged it. They believed that the one effectual policy for making Ireland useful to England was, in the words of Sir John Davis, 'to root out the Irish' from the soil, to confiscate the property of the septs, and plant the country systematically with English tenants. There were chronic disturbances between the English Government and the Irish chiefs, who were in reality almost independent sovereigns, and these were made the pretexts for gigantic confiscations; and as the hunger for land became more intense, and the number of English adventurers increased, other methods were employed. A race of discoverers were called into existence who fabricated stories of plots, who scrutinised the titles of Irish chiefs with all the severity of English law, and who, before suborned or intimidated juries, and on the ground of technical flaws, obtained confiscations. Many Irish proprietors were executed on the most frivolous pretexts, and these methods of obtaining confiscations were so systematically and skilfully resorted to, that it soon became evident to chiefs and people that it was the settled policy of the English Government to deprive them of their land.1

Burke, who had studied Irish history with much care, and whose passing remarks on it always bear to an eminent degree the traces of his great genius, has noticed in a very remarkable passage, how entirely its real clue, during the period between the accession of Elizabeth and the accomplishment of the Revolution, is to be found in this feature of the English policy. The wars of Elizabeth

were not wars of nationality. The Irish clans had never been fused into a single nation; the country was much in the condition of Gaul before the conquests of Clovis, and wherever the clan system exists the national spirit is very faint and the devotion of the clansman is almost restricted to his clan. They were not wars of races. Desmond, who was of the purest Norman blood, was supported by his Irish followers with as much passionate devotion as O'Neil; and in the long catalogue of Irish crimes given by the English writers of the time, outrages against old English naturalised landlords find no place. They were not to any considerable extent wars of religion. Tyrone, indeed, made 'liberty of conscience' one of his demands; but he was so far from being inspired by the spirit of a crusade against Protestantism that he had assisted the Government against Desmond, and would probably have never drawn the sword had he not perceived clearly that his estate was marked out for confiscation. The real motive that stirred the Irish population through the land was the conviction that they

there, before the Revolution, as well as during the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth.... The original scheme was never deviated from for a single hour. Unheard-of confiscations were made in the Northern parts, upon grounds of plots and conspiracies never proved, upon their supposed authors. The war of chicane succeeded to the war of arms and of hostile statutes, and a regular series of operations were carried on, particularly from Chichester's time, in the ordinary courts of justice, and by special commissions and inquisitions; first under pretence of tenures, and then of titles in the Crown, for the pur

pose of the total extirpation of the interests of the natives in their own soil-until this species of subtle ravage being carried to the last excess of oppression and insolence under Lord Strafford, it kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641. By the issue of that war, by the turn which the Earl of Clarendon gave to things at the Restoration, and by the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691, the ruin of the native Irish and in a great measure too of the first races of the English, was completely accomplished.'-Burke's Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe.

Under the clan system

were to be driven from the soil. it may easily be conceived what passionate indignation must have been excited by the attempt to expel the old chiefs from their property, and to replace them by new owners who had no single object except to amass rapid fortunes, who had no single sympathy or interest in common with the natives. But this was not all. The Irish land customs of tanistry and gavelkind, as established by the Brehon laws, were still in full force among the Irish tribes. According to this system, the chief was not, like an English landlord, owner in fee of his land; he was elected, though only out of a single family, and the clan had a vested interest in the soil. The humblest clansman was a co-proprietor with his chief; he was subject, indeed, to many exactions in the form of tribute that were extremely burdensome and oppressive, but he could not be ejected, and he had large rights of inheritance of common land. His position was wholly different from, and in some respects it was superior to, that of an English tenant. In the confiscations these rights were completely disregarded. It was assumed, in spite of immemorial usage, that the land was the absolute, hereditary property of the chiefs, and that no compensation was due to their tenants; and in this manner the confiscation of territory became a burning grievance to the humblest clansman.

If the object of the Government had been merely to replace the Irish land system by that of English law, such a measure might probably have been effected without exciting much lasting discontent. Great care would have indeed been needed in touching the complicated rights of chief and people, but there were on each side so many disabilities, restrictions, or burdens, that a composition might without any insuperable difficulty have been attained. A very remarkable measure of this kind was actually carried in 1585, by Sir John Perrot, one of the