ferred knighthood upon John Mortimer, and four other of his train, and shortly after set sail for England, leaving all his debts, which amounted to 10007., unpaid; in consequence of which, says the chronicler, "many a bitter curse he carried with him to the sea." Before Mortimer's departure, he had condemned John de Lacy, who had been for some time in prison, and refused to plead to the indictment against him, to suffer the frightful punishment of being pressed to death.*

The spell of inaction that had hung, all this time, around Edward Bruce,-owing far more to the weakened condition of his army than to any effect produced by the anathemas of the pope,-was now on the point of being broken, and in a way fatal to his chivalrous enterprise and life. Alexander Bicknor, archbishop of Dublin, had just been appointed lord justice, succeeding in that office the archbishop of Cashel, William FitzJohn. An early and abundant harvest, in all those parts of the country not wholly wasted by war, enabled both of the belligerent parties to resume early their operations; and Edward Bruce, taking the field with an army amounting, as some say, to about 3000 men, marched to the Faughard, a memorable spot within two miles of Dundalk.† The other A. D. commanders of the Scottish force were Philip lord Mowbray, Walter lord de Soulis, and Alan lord Stewart, together with his three brothers. The three De Lacys, also, had joined the rebel ranks.

1318.

The English force which had marched from Dublin to encounter this army was commanded by the lord John Bermingham, having under him a number of distinguished officers,-sir Richard Tuit, sir Miles de Verdon, John Maupas, and other Anglo-Irish barons, and being accompanied to the field by the primate of Armagh, to perform the last offices to the dying.t

According to the Scottish historians, Edward Bruce had, in the course of the three years during which he waged war in Ireland, encountered the English armies eighteen times, and been in every one of those successive battles victorious. The same authori ties compute his force on the present occasion to have been little more than a tenth of that of his adversaries; while the English choniclers, on the other hand, represent the number of their own countrymen engaged to have been not one half of that of the Scots. On whichever side, in these widely differing statements, the balance of truth may be supposed to lean, it is clear, from both accounts, that the conflict was short; that victory declared for the English on the very first onset; and, moreover, that to the desperate bravery of one man that result is mainly to be attributed. Under the persuasion that the death of Bruce himself would give victory, at once, to the English, John Maupas, a brave Anglo-Irish knight, rushed devotedly into the enemy's ranks, to accomplish that object; and when, after the battle, the body of Bruce was discovered, that of John Maupas was found laying stretched across it. The amount of the slain in the respective armies has been variously stated; being made, by each party, proportionate to its own calculation of the numbers originally engaged. T

Untaught by the generous example of Robert Bruce, who, after the victory of Bannockburn, treated with the courtesy of a true knight those whom he had conquered in the field,** the English insulted over the body of his fallen brother, and, dividing it into quarters, sent them to be exhibited all over the country; while the head, which Ber

Holinshed-a mode of punishment called by the law, peine forte et dure. The annalist in Camden, not understanding this refinement of cruelty, tells us that Lacy's punishment was "to be pinched in diet, so that he died in prison ""

The Faughard" is an artificial mount, composed of stones and terras, with a deep trench round it, raised to the height of sixty feet, in the form of the frustrum of a cone, upon the north frontier of what is now called the English pale. There has formerly been some sort of an octagonal building on the top of it, as appears from the foundations remaining."--Wright, Louthiana.

By Walsingham this prelate is represented as having been the captain of the English force. "Primate de Armach pro rege Anglorum capitaineo existente." § Barbour, book xii.

"A pillar, in the burying ground of Faughard," says Dr. Drummond, "marks the grave of Edward Bruce. This pillar is said to have stood, within the memory of man, seven feet above the ground." He adds that "every peasant in the neighbourhood can point out the grave of king Bruce, as he is universally

called."

¶ The following is Walsingham's account of the result:-Occisis baronettis de Scotia 29, in eodem campo, et 5 millibus et octingentis aliis præter millites et nobiles supradictos."

** Captivos quos caperat tam civiliter tractari fecit, tam honorifice custodiri, quod corda multorum in amorem sui indivisibiliter commutavit."-Walsingham. "He set at liberty," says another historian," Ralph de Monthermar and sir Marmaduke Twenge, without ransom; and sent the dead bodies of the earl of Gloucester and lord Clifford to be interred in England with the honours due to their birth and valour." Dalrymple, Annals of Scotland. An instance of the chivalrous courtesy of Robert Bruce, while in Ireland, is thus related by Mr. Tytler,-"In Ireland we find the king halting the army, while retreating, in circumstances of extreme difficulty, on hearing the cries of a poor lavendere, or washerwoman, who had been seized with labour, commanding a tent to be pitched for her, and taking measures for her pursuing her journey when she was able to travel."-Hist. of Scotland, vol. ii.

mingham presented as a trophy, to the English king, procured for him, in return the earldom of Louth and a grant of the manor of Atherdee.*

We have seen that the pope, in consequence of the complaints made to him by Edward of the rebellious spirit manifested in Ireland, as well by the clergy as by the laity, had addressed a strong letter to the chief Irish prelates, empowering them to launch the censures of the church against all those, whether lay or ecclesiastical, who were guilty of disaffection to the ruling powers. This interposition, in aid of the views of their haughty oppressors, was felt the more keenly by the great body of the Irish chieftains, as coming from a quarter to which the ancient fame of their country for sanctity and learning might well have encouraged them to look for sympathy and support. In the warmth of this feeling, a memorable remonstrance was addressed to the pope by O'Neill, prince of Tyrone, speaking as the representative of his brother chiefs and of the whole Irish nation. "It is with difficulty," say they, "we can bring ourselves to believe that the biting and venomous calumnies with which we, and all who espouse our cause, have been invariably assailed by the English, should have found admittance, also, into the mind of your holiness, and have been regarded by you as founded in fact and truth." Lest such an impression, however, should, unluckily, have been produced, they begged to lay before him their own account of the origin and state of their nation,-" if state it could be called," and of the cruel injuries inflicted upon them and their ancestors by some of the English monarchs and their unjust ministers, as well as by the English barons born in Ireland;-injuries, they add, inhumanly commenced, and still wantonly continued. It would thus be in his power, to judge of them and their rulers, and determine on which side the real grounds for complaint and resentment lay.

After this introduction, the Irish chiefs proceed to give a rapid sketch of the early history of their country; and beginning with the sons of Milesius, lay claim to a succession of kings of Ireland through no less a period than 4000 years, ending in the year 1170, when Adrian, an Englishman by birth, and still more, as they add, by affection and prejudice, delivered up a country which its own line of kings had preserved sacred from foreign dominion, through so many ages, to be the helpless prey of a horde of tyrants, far more cruel than the fangs of ravening wild beasts. From that fatal moment, they allege, no device or expedient that fraud or violence, in their most odious forms, could suggest, had been left untried by the English intruders to extirpate the native race, and appropriate to themselves the sole dominion over the soil. In this design, too, they had so far succeeded, that while all the fairest portion of the island had been gradually usurped by them, the rightful proprietors were driven to the bogs and mountains, and, even there, were compelled to fight for some dreary spot upon which to exist.

The state of a country thus circumstanced, could not be otherwise, these chiefs add, than one of constant civil war; and it was, therefore, not wonderful that the crimes and miseries which are ever attendant on domestic strife,-the murder and rapine, the mean frauds, the detestible perfidies, which it engenders, should, with both parties, have grown so habitual as to become a second nature. So great had been the sacrifice of human life, in this struggle, that, without counting the numbers carried off by famine, and long grievous imprisonment, no less than 50,000 on each side had fallen by the sword in the field. "Alas!" they exclaim, "we have now no directing head to watch over us, to enlighten our counsels, and amend our errors."¶

The safety of their church, they bitterly complain, had been brought into peril, not merely in a worldly and temporal sense, but as regarded the eternal safety of their own souls; and while such was the extremity to which the act of the Roman pontiff had reduced them, none of those conditions on which he had granted the dominion of Ireland to Henry and his successors had been fulfilled by any of those princes. According to the bull confirming this grant, the English king had solemnly promised to enlarge the boun

* Rymer. t. iii. p. 767.-This grant" shows (says Dalrymple) the manner in which earls were created at that time. It confers twenty pounds per annum upon him for his services in the battle of Dundalk, under the name of earl of Loueth, and gives that earldom to him and the heirs male of his body by the service of one fourth of a knight's fee."

"De ortu nostro et statu, si tamen status dici bebeat, ac etiam de injuriis crudelibus nostris, nostrisque progenitoribus, per nonnullos reges Angliæ, eorumque ministros iniquos, et barones Anglicos in Hibernia natos, inhumaniter illatis, et continuatis adhuc."

Sicque nos privans honore regio, nostri absque culpa, et sine rationabili causa, credelioribus omnium bestiarum dentibus tradidit laercandos."

§ Unde propter hæc et multa alia similia inter nos et illos implacabiles inimicitiæ et guerræ perpetuæ sunt exorta. Ex quibus secutæ sunt occasiones mutuæ, depredationes assiduæ, rapinæ continuæ, fraudes et perfidiæ detestabiles et nimis crebræ."

"Plusquam quinquaginta millia hominum à tempore quo facta est usque in præsens de utraque natione, præter consumptos fame et afflictos carcere gladio ceciderunt."

"Sed, proh dolor! ex defectu capitis, omnis correctio nobis defecit et debita emenda."

daries of the Irish church, and preserve all its rights and privileges untouched and entire to inform the people, by wholesome laws and sound moral discipline; to implant every where, throughout the land, the seeds of virtue, and eradicate those of vice; and, finally, to pay to St. Peter the stipulated pension of 1d. a-year from every house.

Such were the conditions of the papal grant; but the kings of England, they declare, had, in every respect, departed from them. Instead of the boundaries of the church having been enlarged, it had, on the contrary, been so much encroached upon, that some of the cathedrals had been despoiled of half their possessions; while, to such an extent was ecclesiastical liberty violated, that bishops and prelates themselves were, by the mere order of the king's ministers, cited to appear, and then arrested and cast into prison;* till, at length, from long endurance of such treatment, the spirit of the clergy had sunk into servile submission, nor could they now summon the courage to whisper, even to his holiness, the grievances and insults under which they suffered. Such being "their own unworthy silence, under such wrongs, it is not for us," add these indignant chiefs, "to utter a syllable in their behalf."

With respect to the mass of the population, whom their new rulers had pledged themselves to instruct by means of salutary laws and sound moral discipline, such was the manner, they allege, in which this promise had been carried into effect, that, by degrees, all that holy and dovelike simplicity which had once characterized the Irish nation, was transformed, by the example and society of these strangers, into low serpentine craft.+ Depriving the people of their own ancient and written laws,-with the exception of a few which they would not suffer to be wrung from them, these foreigners replaced them by others of their own dictation, conceived in the bitterest spirit of hatred towards the people for whom they legislated; and, in more than one instance, providing deliberately for their extermination.

To give some idea of the iniquity of the code under which they suffered, the writers of the remonstrance cite the following instances:-1. That no Irishman, however aggrieved, could bring an action in the king's courts; though, against himself, an action might be brought by any person who was not an Irishman. 2. That if an Englishman murdered a native, however innocent and exalted in rank might be the latter, or whether he was layman or ecclesiastic, or even a bishop, no cognizance would be taken of the crime in the king's courts. 3. That no native woman married to an Englishman could, on his death, be admitted to the claim of dower. 4. That it was in the power of any English lord to set aside the last wills of the natives subjected to him, and dispose of their property according to his own pleasure, appropriating it all, if such was his inclination, to himself. When crime was thus sanctioned by the strict letter of the law, what a host of evils must have been let loose by its spirit!

The remonstrants add that, even by churchmen among the English, the killing of an Irishman was not regarded as a crime; and they refer to several instances of natives having been murdered with impunity; some of them, they say, under circumstances too atrocious to be easily credited. Among other proofs of the feeling of the English clergy, on this point, it is stated that a certain brother Simon, who was of the order of the friars minors, and also a near relation of the bishop of Connor, had been heard to say, but the year before, in the court and presence of Edward Bruce, that he thought it no sin to slay an Irishman; and that, if he himself were to commit such an act, he should not the less celebrate mass after it.||

From a total dissimilarity, as they allege, between the English and themselves, not only in race and language, but in every other respect,-a dissimilarity greater, they declare, than word or pen can adequately describe, there appeared no longer the slightest hope that they could ever live peacefully together. So great was the pride and lust of governing, on one side, and such the resolution, on the other, to cast off the intolerable yoke, that, as there never yet had been, so never, in this life, would there be, peace or truce between the two nations. They add, that they themselves had already sent letters

"Per ministros enim regis Angliæ in Hibernia citantur, arrestantur, capiuntur, et incarcerantur indifferenter episcopi et prælati."

"Quod sancta et columbina ejus simplicitas, ex eorum cohabitatione et exemplo reprobo, in serpentinam calliditatem mirabiliter est mutata."

"Quod omni homini non Hibernico licet super quacunque indifferenter actione convenire Hibernicum quemcunque; sed Hibernicus quilibet sive clericus sit, sive laicus, solis prælatis exceptis, ab omni repellitur actione eo ipso."

"Quando aliquis Anglicus perfidè et dolosè interfecit hominem Hibernicum, quantumcunque nobilem et innocentem, sive clericum, sive laicum, sive regularem, sive secularem, etiam si prælatus Hibernicus interfectus fuerit, nulla correctio vel emenda fit indicta curia de tali nefario occisore."

"Quod non est peccatum hominem Hibernicum interficere, et si ipsemet istud committeret, non minus ob hoc missam celebraret."

"Quod sicut nec fuit hactenus, nec unquam de cætero inter nos et illos sincera concordia esse vel fiəri poterit in hac vita."

to the king and his council, through the hands of John Hothum, now bishop of Ely, re. presenting the wrongs and outrages they had so long suffered from the English, and proposing a settlement by which all such lands as were known to be rightfully theirs should be secured, in future, to them, by direct tenure from the crown; or even agreeing in order to save the farther effusion of blood, to submit to any friendly plan proposed by the king himself, for a fair division of the lands between them and their adversaries.

To this proposition, forwarded to England two years before, no answer, they say, had been returned. "Wherefore," continue they, "let no one feel surprise if we now endeavour to work out our own deliverance, and defend, as we can, our rights and liberties against the harsh and cruel tyrants who would destroy them." In conclusion, they announce to the pope, that, for the more speedy and effectual attainment of their object (this spirited remonstrance having been addressed to his holiness before the Scottish war,) they have called to their aid the illustrious earl of Carrick, Edward de Bruce, a lord descended from the same ancestors with themselves, and have made over to him, by letters patent, all the rights which they themselves, as rightful heirs of the kingdom, respectively possess, thereby, constituting him king and lord of Ireland.

By some of those writers, who allow the spirit of religious partisanship to infect their views, even of those periods in our history when the same creed prevailed in both islands, this memorable Remonstrance of the chiefs and gentry of Ireland has been represented as really issuing from the Irish prelates and clergy.* It is, however, manifest, that the real object of this spirited document was to denounce, and indignantly protest against, that ultramontane party, in the Irish church, which was now leagued with the Roman court in abetting the English king's projects for the subjugation of Ireland.t The impressive passage in which this servility, on the part of the church, is so bitterly branded, sufficiently sets aside the perverse notion that the native clergy took any leading share in drawing up the document.

At the commencement of this reign, the cruel persecution and spoliation to which, in .consequence of their great wealth, the religious order of Knights Templars had been subjected in most parts of Europe, was also extended, though in a more mitigated shape, to England and Ireland ;-the combined influence of the pope and Philip le Bel (the latter the chief author of the conspiracy) having been exerted to prevail on Edward to join in their unprincipled scheme. To what extent the order of Knights Templars had established themselves in Ireland does not very clearly appear; but the orders for their seizure and imprisonment were issued in the first year of his reign; and in the year 1308, all the Knights Templars in England and Ireland were apprehended on the same day. The process against them lasted for three years, and was conducted in Dublin with great solemnity before Richard Balbyn, minister of the order of the Dominicans, friar Philp de Slane, lecturer of the same order, and friar Hugh St. Leger. The charges brought against them appear to have been most feebly supported; but already the general voice of Europe had pronounced their condemnation, and the lands and possessions belonging to them in Ireland were bestowed upon a rival order, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, long established at Kilmainham.

*See Phelan's History of the Policy of the Church of Rome in Ireland. This writer, however, thus eloquently does justice both to the matter and the manner of the Irish Remonstrance:-" When it urges, on their behalf, that, besides the sufferers by famine and disease, 50,000 of their countrymen had already suffered by the Saxon sword; and, that there is no longer a spot in their native country which the arrogance of the strangers will allow them to call their own; it makes an appeal, the truth of which is supported by our wretched annals, and the force acknowledged by human nature."

Here again," says Dr. O'Connor (Columbanus ad Hibernos, No. 2,)" the ultra-montanes interfered; and England, being then in amity with Rome, they confederated with her and with the Roman court, against their native country."

↑ Archdall, Monast. Hibern. 228.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

EDWARD III.

State of Ireland on the accession of Edward III.-Dissensions among the great English families.-Irish again petition for the advantages of English law-again without success.— Massacre of English by English in Leinster and Munster.-Maurice Fitz-Thomas created earl of Desmond.-Lavish grants of Palatinates.-O'Brian takes the field in great force.Feuds between the De Burghs and the earl of Desmond.-Severe measures of Sir Anthony Lucy.-Desmond refuses to attend Parliament-is arrested and thrown into prison.-Lord William Bermingham executed.-Announced intention of the king to visit Ireland—his real purpose an expedition against Scotland.-Murder of the young earl of Ulster-adoption of Irish laws and usages by the De Burghs and other English. The lord of Kerry joins the Irish-is taken prisoner by the earl of Desmond.-Severe Measures against the English Born in Ireland-announced resumption of all grants and gifts made to them.-General indignation of the old English settlers.-A parliament summoned, which Desmond and other lords refuse to attend.-A convention held by these lords at Kilkenny-remonstrance addressed by them to the king.-Administration of Sir Ralph Ufford-takes summary mea sures against the refractory lords-his treacherous seizure of the earl of Kildare.-Ufford's death and character.-Earl of Kildare released from prison-attends the king at Calais, and is knighted for his valour-gracious conduct of Edward to him and the earl of Desmond.Desmond appointed lord justice—his death.—Useful ordinances for Ireland.—Disqualifying Laws against the natives.-The Duke of Clarence, the king's son, made lord lieutenanthis prejudices against the English settlers-succeeds in defeating the Irish forces, and returns to England-sent over again as lord lieutenant, and holds a parliament.-The famous statute of Kilkenny-its tyrannical enactments.—Administration of Sir William Windsor-wanton acts of power committed by him.-Miscellaneous notices.

DURING the reigns of the first and second Edwards, the power of the English crown, in Ireland, had considerably declined. Even in its best time, the footing gained in that realm was but partial and local, and a large portion even of this limited sovereignty fell away during the reigns that followed, from the crown. The wars of Henry III. and the two succeeding princes, in France and Scotland, left no disposable force or treasure for the reduction of Ireland; and even of the portion of that kingdom already conquered, the greater part had been withdrawn from the royal jurisdiction, by those lavish grants to a few favoured individuals, beginning with the first adventurers, which had been the means of wantonly parcelling out, among nine or ten English lords, almost the whole of the kingdom.

A. D.

The reign of the third Edward will be found to differ but little from those of 1327. his predecessors, in the odious picture it presents of a cruel and rapacious aristocracy let loose upon a defenceless, because divided, people. It would seem, indeed, almost incredible that, in the chivalrous days of the Edwards, there should have been found so many of high-born and warlike English noblemen to take a part in the rude and inglorious frays of Anglo-Irish warfare. But, besides the temptations so fertile a field of plunder held forth, a nearer insight into the homes and habits of the English nobility of that period might warrant the conclusion, that they themselves were still very backward in civilization;* and that, not only in the general outline, but in some of the features also of their social condition, they differed not very much from those great Irish chieftains against whom they were now employing all the worst arts of buccaneering warfare. Like the chieftain, the English baron of that day was a kind of independent potentate, regarding only the conventional law of his own class, and submitting but by force to any other; while constantly surrounded by idle and ruffianly retainers, ever

The following is the character given by Hume, of the English baron of this period:-"The produce of his estates was consumed in rustic hospitality, by himself or his officers. A great number of idle retainers, ready for any disorder or mischief, were maintained by him: all who lived upon his estate were absolutely at his disposal. Instead of applying to courts of justice, he usually sought redress by open force and violence. The great nobility were a kind of independent potentates, who, if they submitted to any regulations at all, were less governed by the municipal law than by a rude species of the law of nations."