and desolation. The contracted views of those placed at the head of its administration, by causing them to be treated in general as objects of suspicion, rather than with the liberality due to a free people living under the protection of a free goument, have, instead of bringing the Irish to be peaceable and useful members of that community to which they appertain, rendered them turbulent and involuntary subjects, ready at all times to arm against those whom they esteem their oppressors, and to plunge themselves into all the miseries, the inconceivable horrors, of a civil war.

HENRY, previous to the recal of Strongbow, had been engaged in a dangerous contest with one of his own subjects, Becket, whom he had raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Instigated by the pope, Adrian III. the same who granted to Henry the sovereignty of Ireland, the archbishop had pertinaciously opposed the constitutions of Clarendon, whereby the civil was declared independent on the ecclesiastical authority. Incensed by his insolence and ingratitude, Henry, amongst other passionate exclammations, was overheard to complain that no one had attempted to rid his sovereign of the turbulent and refractory prelate. Four of his knights, zealously attached to the person of their monarch, imagining they could not better display their promptitude in his service, silently quitted France, where Henry then was,

and making all speed to England, assassinated the archbishop in church, while performing his duty at the altar. Henry was stunned by the intelligence of this atrocious deed, which threatened to arm the papal power for his destruction. By his great abilities, however, he frustrated the designs of his enemies at the court of Rome, and having brought matters to an accommodation, he at length found leisure to attend to the state of Ireland, and, after his return to England, had summoned Strongbow, as we formerly observed, to appear and answer for his conduct.

The earl waited on the king at Newnham, near Gloucester, and surrendering to him his territory round Dublin and his maritime fortresses, was, by the intercession of his uncle, Hervey de Mountmorres, received into the royal favour, and permitted to retain all his other Irish possessions under Henry and his heirs for ever.

Henry, now determined to push his personal expedition to Ireland with the utmost vigour, accompanied by the earl, proceeded through South Wales to Pembroke, seizing the castles of many Welch chieftains in his route and at length having complet

ed his preparations, set sail from Milford Haven with a fleet of two hundred and forty vessels and about five thousand men. He arrived in the harbour of Waterford, on the feast of St Luke, in October, one thousand one hundred and seventy-two. Destitute of a common interest to unite them in their own defence, and already dispirited by the successes of the first adventurers, the Irish made little or no resistance to the king of England. His progress resembled more the procession of a triumphant prince through his own dominions than the march of an invading army. The chieftains flocked eagerly from all quarters to make their obeisance: he had only to accept their homage. The men of Wexford waited on him soon after his landing, and delivered up their prisoner, Fitzstephen, whom they represented as a traitor. He was afterwards pardoned; and surrendering to Henry the town of Wexford, was reinstated in his other possessions. The grandeur of Henry, his condescension, his munificence, seem to have made great impression on the minds of the Irish chieftains, his new subjects, whom he magnificently entertained during the feast of Christmas in an immense fabric erected for the purpose in the suburbs of Dublin; while William Fitzandelm and Hugh de Lacey were dispatched with a

body of troops against O'Connor of Connaught, and O'Nial, the powerful prince of Ulster, who declined submission.

As the inclemency of the season prevented the reduction of these monarchs, Henry summoned the clergy and the lords who had made their submission to meet at Cashel, in order to take into consideration the affairs of the church, the ostensible object of his invasion. By this convention Henry was solemnly acknowledged sovereign of Ireland: The clergy were declared independent of the civil magistrate in criminal cases, and their lands exempted from secular taxes: But the most important decree passed by this assembly, a decree which, notwithstanding the violent shocks by which the country has been convulsed, has continued unremittingly to exert its force, was that whereby the Irish churches were reduced to a similarity with that of England, consequently to a dependance on the see of Rome.

After having been about six months in Ireland, during which period he had made several regulations for the government of his new dominions, and was preparing to subdue by his arms the whole island, he was