wood and there keepeth him close till morning; and when it is daylight then will they go to the poor villages, not sparing to destroy young infants and aged people; and if a woman be ever so great with child, her will they kill, burning the houses and corn, and ransacking the poor cots. Then will they drive all the kine and plough horses, with all other cattle, and drive them away. Then must they have a bagpipe blowing before them, and if any of the cattle fortune to wax weary or faint they will kill them rather than it should do the owner good. And if they go by any house of friars or religious house, they will give them two or three beeves; and they will take them and pray for them-yea, and praise their doings, and say 'his father was accustomed so to do;' wherein he will rejoice.

'And when he is in a safe place they will fall to a division of the spoil according to the discretion of the captain. Now comes the rhymer that made the rhyme with his 'Rakery.' The 'Raker' is he that shall utter the rhyme, and the rhymer himself sits by with the captain very proudly. He brings with him also his harper, who plays all the while that the raker sings the rhyme. Also he hath his bard, which is a foolish fellow who must have a horse given him. The harper must have a new saffron shirt and a mantle; and the raker must have two or three kine; and the rhymer himself a horse and harness, with a nag to ride on, a silver goblet, and a pair of bedes of coral with buttons of silver. And this with more they look for to have for the reducing of the people, to the disruption of the commonwealth and blasphemy

of God; for this is the best thing the rhymer causeth them to do.

The fourth sort are those which in England are called Poets. These men have great store of cattle, and use all the trade of the others with an addition of prophecies. These are maintainers of witches and other vile matters to the blasphemy of God and to the impoverishing of the commonwealth.

1

These four septs are divided in all places of the four quarters of Ireland and some of the islands beyond Ireland, as the Land of the Saints,' the 'Innis Buffen,' 'Innis Turk,' Innis Main,' and 'Innis Clare.' These islands are under the rule of O'Neil, and they are very pleasant and fertile, plenty of wood, water, and arable ground and pastures, and fish, and a verv temperate air.2

'There be many branches belonging to the four septs -as the Gogath, which is to say the glutton, for one of them will eat half a mutton at a sitting: another called the Carrow; he commonly goeth naked and carrieth dice and cards with him, and he will play the hair off his head; and these be maintained by the rhymers.

'There is a set of women called the Goyng women. They be blasphemers of God, and they run from country to country sowing sedition among the people. They are common to all men; and if any of them happen to be

1 Arran, outside Galway Bay.

2 At present they are barren heaps of treeless moors and mountains. They yield nothing but scanty oat-crops and potatoes, and

though the seas are full of fish as ever, there are no hands to catch them. The change is a singular commentary on modern improvements.

with child she will say that it is the great Lord adjoining, whereof the Lords are glad and do appoint them to be nursed.

'There is another two sorts that goeth about with the Bachele of Jesus,' as they call it. These run from country to country; and if they come to any house where a woman is with child they will put the same about her, and whether she will or no causeth her to give them money, and they will undertake that she shall have good delivery of her child, to the great disruption of the people concerning their souls' health.

' Others go about with St Patrick's crosier, and play the like part or worse; and no doubt so long as these be used the word of God can never be known among them, nor the Prince be feared, nor the country prosper.'

So stands the picture of Ireland, vivid because simple, described by some half-Anglicised, half-Protestantized Celt who wrote what he had seen around him, careless of political philosophy or of fine phrases with which to embellish his diction. The work of civilization had again to begin from the foundation. Occupied with Scotland and France and holding her own throne by so precarious a tenure, Elizabeth, for the first eighteen months of her reign, had little leisure to attend to it; and the Irish leaders, taking advantage of the opportunity, offered themselves and their services to Philip's ambassador in England. The King of Spain, who at the

1 The Baculum Jesus, said to have been brought over by St Patrick. 2 Report on the State of Ireland, 1559: Irish MSS. Rolls House.

beginning desired to spare and strengthen Elizabeth, sent them a cold answer, and against Philip's will the great Norman families were unwilling to stir. The truebred Celts however, whose sole political creed was hatred of the English, were less willing to remain quiet. To the Celt it was of small moment whether the English sovereign was Protestant or Catholic. The presence of an English deputy in Dublin was the symbol of his servitude and the constant occasion for his rebellion. Had there been no cause of quarrel the mere pleasure of fighting would have insured periodical disturbances; and in Ulster there were special causes at work to produce a convulsion of peculiar severity.

Identical in race and scarcely differing in language, the Irish of the north and the Scots of the Western Isles had for two centuries kept up a close and increasing intercourse. Some thousand Scottish families had recently emigrated from Bute, Arran, and Argyleshire, to find settlements on the thinly peopled coasts of Antrim and Down. The Irish chiefs had sought their friendship, intermarried with them, or made war on them, as the humour of the moment prompted; but their numbers had steadily increased whether welcome or unwelcome, and at Elizabeth's accession they had become objects of alarm both to the native Irish, whom they threatened to supplant, and to the English, whom they refused to obey.

Lord Sussex, who was Mary's last deputy, had made expeditions against them both in the Isles and in Ulster; but even though assisted by the powers of O'Neil had

only irritated their hostility. They made alliance with the O'Donnells who were O'Neil's hereditary enemies. James M'Connell and his two brothers, near kinsmen of the House of Argyle, crossed over with two thousand followers to settle in Tyrconnell, while to the Callogh O'Donnell, the chief of the clan, the Earl of Argyle himself gave his half-sister for a wife.

With this formidable support the O'Donnells threatened to eclipse their ancient rivals, when there rose up from among the O'Neils one of those remarkable men who in their own persons sum up and represent the energy, intellect, power, and character of the nation to which they belong.

In the partial settlement of Ireland which had been brought about by Henry the Eighth, the O'Neils, among the other noble families, surrendered their lands to the Crown to receive them again under the usual feudal tenure; and Con O'Neil the Lame had received from Henry for himself and his heirs the title of Earl of Tyrone. For himself and his heirs-but who the heirs of Con O'Neil might be was not so easy to decide. His son Shan in explaining his father's character to Elizabeth said that he was a gentleman,'-the interpretation of the word being that he never denied any child that was sworn to him, and that he had plenty of them.'1 The favourite of the family was the offspring of an intrigue with a certain Alyson Kelly, the wife of a blacksmith at Dundalk. This child, a boy named Matthew, grew to

1 Shan O'Neil to Elizabeth, February 8, 1561: Irish MSS. Rolls Hous