his destruction. Placing implicit reliance on the faith of Henry, he went over to England, but was treacherously seized and sent to the Tower. Lord Grey, successor to Skeffington, was ordered to seize the five uncles of lord Thomas, and cause them to be conveyed prisoners to London. He invited them for this purpose to a banquet, and after sumptuously entertaining them, perfidiously arrested their persons. Though three of these had decidedly opposed the rebellion, and all of them were entitled to pardon by the treaty concluded with the rebels, Henry ordered the whole to be executed as traitors with their nephew, and vowed destruction to the whole race of Kildare. Gerald, however, brother to lord Thomas, a boy only twelve years old, was by the vigilance of his guardians secretly conveyed out of the kingdom to cardinal Pole in Italy, the determined enemy of Henry; and under his protection he lived to regain the honours and estates of his illustrious family. Kildare himself died of grief for his son's rebellion and the fatal consequences by which it was followed.

Considering the suppression of this revolt as a new conquest of the island, Henry was about to have proceeded to lengths which might have produced the most fatal consequences, proposing it as a question whether he had not a right to seize the whole property, spiritual and temporal, of the country, notwithstanding many, both within and without the Pale, had contributed vigorously to the reduction of lord Thomas. This impolitic conduct, together with his unjust and cruel treatment of the Kildare family one of the most powerful and popular in Ireland, brought on him the detestation of the whole people, and was particularly incautious at a period when he was preparing to affect important changes in the system of religion, changes which require all the energies of a sovereign well beloved by his people to accomplish.

The vigorous administration of Grey, who laboured to forward the designs of Henry, for bringing about a partial reformation of the church, and having himself acknowledged its supreme head on earth, and whose zeal for his service carried him not unfrequently beyond the bounds of justice and honour, met with the reward which might be expected from a king who resembled in tyranny too many of those who have been distin

guished by the same title. By the intrigues of the Butlers and the enmity of church zealots, he was imprisoned on a variety of frivolous and groundless charges. Conscious of the tyranny of Henry, whose unjust measures he himself had assisted to put in execution against others, his courage, for which he was eminent in the field, forsook him at a juncture that required him to summon it all forth to his support. Relying on his many and eminent services to secure the good dispositions of his sovereign, he declined a trial, pleaded guilty, and threw himself on the clemency of the king, who, with no less ingratitude than cruelty and injustice, ordered him to be beheaded.

The government, meantime, reaped the benefits of his exertions. The chieftains came so eagerly forward that Sir Anthony St. Leger, the lord deputy, was busied receiving their professions of submission. The earl of Desmond, who had hitherto held high privileges, voluntarily renounced them, threw off the supremacy of the pope, and gave up his son to receive an English education: Several septs petitioned to be admitted to a participation of the privileges of English subjects, and to be placed under the jurisdiction of English law: The O'Byrnes, in particular, requested that their territory should be formed into an English county. These favourable dispositions of the Irish were much increased by the assumption of the title of king by Henry instead of that of lord of Ireland which had been originally bestowed by the pope, the splendour and novelty of the appellations conveying to them notions of respect with which they had never formerly been impressed. But this noble opportunity of uniting the Irish into one powerful people under English administration was unfortunately lost by the thoughtless inattention of the king towards their country, who lavished the blood and wasted the treasure of the empire in vain-glorious wars on the Continent, and neglected, like most of his predecessors, the solid interests of his crown at home. Indeed it has been the fatal and misguided policy of Great Britain, for a considerable period before, and ever since, the accession of this monarch, to be eternally involved in the prosecution of delusive -schemes of aggrandizement, forming, for the furtherance of her plans, continental alliances, and embroiling herself in continental wars, which must ultimately prove her destruction, rather than

to be engaged in cultivating the blessings of peace, and in attempting to ameliorate the wretched condition of by far the greater part of her people.

A powerful party of the servants of the Crown, all of them determined enemies of Kildare, at the head of which was Allan archbishop of Dublin, had been in the mean time formed. They obtained with much difficulty a resolution of the lords in council to send the master of the rolls to the king, for the purpose of laying before him the state of the country, and to crave his royal interference in its behalf. The master of the rolls represented to the king in their name the distressed state of the country; the nearly total disuse of the English laws, manners, and language, which were confined within the trifling compass of twenty miles; the exorbitant exactions by which most of the tenantry were compelled to relinquish their lands; and the heavy tribute which the few remaining were obliged to pay in order to procure the precarious protection of Irish chieftains; the enormous power of the English barons, who, by keeping a great number of Irish in their pay, could with impunity oppress his highness's liege subjects; and above all, the scantiness of the royal revenue, which left the realm without the means of defence; they entreated, for the amendment of these abuses, that he would be pleased to appoint in future such governors as had no interest in Ireland, who, unbiassed by Irish influence or Irish faction and party-spirit, might impartially administer to the glory and honour of his crown; and concluded with strenuous professions of loyalty and attachment to his government.

Henry, though the slave of caprice and passion, did not want for penetration, and was sensible that more might be done towards accomplishing his designs in Ireland by conciliating than by violent measures. He therefore gave a gracious answer to the petition from the colony. He encouraged the chieftains by every means to submit to his dominion. He gratified their fancied importance and their family pride, by conferring on them pompous titles and honours. He prevailed on numbers to resort to his court; and bestowed on others sumptuous houses and lands in the neighbourhood of Dublin, for their convenient attendance on the chief governor. Many of them, flattered by these marks of

distinction, surrendered their possessions and received fresh grants of them on military tenure.

The archbishop of Dublin, Allan, having died about this time, George Browne, an eminent preacher of the Reformation in London, was appointed to succeed him by the king, with a view to forward that important work in Ireland. Several commissioners were sent over with him, who were instructed to confer with the clergy and nobility, and to endeavour to procure from them an acknowledgment of the king's spiritual supremacy. Having begun to execute their instructions, Cromer, archbishop of Armagh, immediately protested against the measure as impious and rebellious against the holy see, from which the kings of England held their sovereignty. Leaving the commissioners, he summoned the suffragans and clergy of his province, and denouncing dreadful curses upon all who should give way to the views of the king, commanded them in the name of the pope to resist all innovation, as they valued their eternal salvation. He then dispatched two emissaries to the court of Rome, to represent to it the danger of the church, and to rouse it to the defence of its rights.

Meantime Browne, by labouring to forward the views of the king, brought his life several times into imminent danger, and at length advised that a parliament should be summoned to enforce by law what could not be accomplished by persuasion. Accordingly a provincial assembly of the Pale, dignified with the appellation of a parliament of Ireland, met on the first day of May, one thousand five hundred and thirty-six, which, by the intrigues of Henry, enacted that all who should refuse to acknowledge his supremacy were guilty of high treason; that the spiritual power of the pope was for ever annulled; and that payment should be made to the king of the first fruits of bishoprics, abbeys, priories, hospitals, and colleges. This parliament also renewed the laws against intermarriages with the colonists and native Irish, and enforced the observance of English customs and the use of the English language throughout the Pale. By these regulations the division between the colonists and the primitive inhabitants was widened and extended more than ever, and two factions were formed within the Pale itself, which involved the colony in endless dissension and

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hostility. The whole nation, aboriginals and new settlers, with exception of a few who favoured the designs of Henry, were at this period zealously attached to the doctrines of the church of Rome. Vindictive as the Irish were to each other and to the English, they had hitherto implicitly believed and observed the same forms of religious worship. In their wars, though uni, form in their detestation of the English, they as often had recourse to arms for the annoyance of each other as of them. But they were now closely connected by a new bond of union with which they were formerly unacquainted, and which they could allege to be the cause of all their future disaffection-the defence of the inviolability of their conscience. Several chieftains, on that pretence, rose in arms and acted openly as rebels, till they were obliged to submit by the vigorous conduct of the deputy. These oppressive measures, however, and the introduction of base money into the Pale, contributed to render the administration of Henry exceedingly unpopular, and to distract the short reign of his successor Edward VI.

Many chieftains, immediately on the accession of this virtuous young monarch, hoping to profit by his minority, showed themselves in arms, and resorted to their ancient practices of pillage and warfare. Sir Anthony Bellingham, the deputy, however, succeeded in reducing them to obedience. He also seized the earl of Desmond, who had begun to relapse into his former way of life; but, instead of punishing him, he prevailed on him by conciliating treatment to give sureties for his future good conduct, and to continue a true and faithful subject during the remainder of his life.

Meantime the Reformation was pushed with greater vigour than before. The protector, Somerset, having successfully proceeded with it in England, determined that the English liturgy, together with several other new ordinances, should be introduced into the Irish church. Accordingly, Sir Anthony St. Leger, who was appointed Lord deputy [1559] was entrusted with the management of this important business. Without convening a parliament, the royal Proclamation was published, enjoining the clergy to accept the new liturgy in the English tongue. An ecclesiastical assembly being called, it was submitted to their inspection; when John Dowdall, an Irishman by birth, who had