hands, for he had an insane hatred of the Irish, whether of native or English blood. With a force of 1500 trained soldiers he came to Ireland in 1361, but in his expeditions against the natives he was very unsuccessful and twice afterwards he came as lord lieutenant, in 1364 and 1367. After this experience he became convinced that it was impossible ever to subdue the Irish and bring them under English rule; and he seemed to think that all the evils of the country arose from the intercourse of the colonists with them. This state of things he attempted to A.D. 1367 remedy by an act which he caused to be passed by a parliament held in Kilkenny, and which he imagined would be the means of saving the colony from destruction. "The Statute of Kilkenny" was intended to apply only to the English, and was framed entirely in their interests. Its chief aim was to withdraw them from all contact with the "Irish enemies," as the natives are designated all through the act; to separate the two races for evermore. According to this law, intermarriage, fosterage, gossipred, traffic, and close relations of any kind with the Irish were forbidden as high treason:-punishment, death. If any man took a name after the Irish fashion, used the Irish language or dress, rode a horse without a saddle, or adopted any other Irish custom, all his lands and houses were forfeited, and he himself was put into jail till he could find security that he would comply with the law. The Irish living among the English were forbidden to use the Irish language under the same penalty: that is, they were commanded to speak English, a language they did not know. To use the Brehon law—as many of the English, both high and low, were now doing-or to exact Coyne and livery was treason. 66 No Englishman was to make war on the Irish without the special permission of the government, who would carry on all such wars, so that,” as the Act expresses it, "the Irish enemies shall not be admitted to peace until they be finally destroyed or shall make restitution fully of the costs and charges of that war.” No native Irish clergyman was to be appointed to any position in the church within the English district, and no Irishman was to be received into any English religious house in Ireland. It was forbidden to receive or entertain Irish bards, pipers, story-tellers, or mowers, because, as the Act said, these and such like often came as spies on the English. But this new law, designed to effect so much, was found to be impracticable, and became after a little while a dead letter. It would require a great army to enable the governor to carry it out: and he had no such army. Coyne and livery continued to be exacted from the colonists by the three great earls, Kildare, Desmond, and Ormond; and the Irish and English went on intermarrying, gossiping, fostering, dressing, speaking Irish, riding horse without saddle, and quarrelling on their own account, just the same as before. The reign of Edward III. was a glorious one for England abroad, but was disastrous to the English dominion in Ireland. Great battles were fought and won for the French possessions: while Ireland, which was more important than all the French possessions put together, was neglected. At the very time of the battle of Cressy, the Irish settlement had been almost wiped out of existence: the English power did not extend beyond the Pale, which now included only four counties round Dublin; for the three great earls of Kildare, Desmond, and Ormond acted as independent princes, and made no acknowledgment of the authority of the English king. If one-half of the care and energy expended uselessly in France had been directed to Ireland, the country could have been easily pacified and compacted into one great empire with England. CHAPTER XXIV. ᎪᎡᎢ MAC MURROGH KAVANAGH. Richard II. (1377-1399). HE man that gave most trouble to the English during the reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV. was Art Mac Murrogh Kavanagh, the renowed king of Leinster. He was elected king in 1375, when he was only eighteen years of age. Soon afterwards he married the daughter of Maurice Fitzgerald fourth earl of Kildare; whereupon the English authorities seized the lady's vast estates, inasmuch as she had violated the Statute of Kilkenny by marrying a mere Irishman (p. 167). In addition to this, his black rent- eighty marks a year-was for some reason stopped, a little time after the accession of Richard II. Exasperated by these proceedings, he devastated and burned many districts in Leinster, till the Dublin council were at last forced to pay him his black rent. This rent continued to be paid to his descendants by the Irish government till the time of Henry VIII. ness. Meantime Ireland had been going from bad to worse; and at last King Richard II. resolved to come hither himself with an overwhelming force, hoping thereby to overawe the whole country into submission and quietHe made great preparations for A.D. 1394 this expedition; and on the 2nd October, attended by many of the English nobles, he landed at Waterford with an army of 34,000 men, the largest force ever yet brought to the shores of Ireland. As soon as Mac Murrogh heard of this, far from showing any signs of fear, he swept down on New Ross, then a flourishing English settlement strongly walled, burned the town, and brought away a vast quantity of booty. And when the king and his army marched north from Waterford to Dublin, he harassed them on the way after his usual skilful fashion, attacking them from the woods and bogs and cutting off great numbers. But the Irish chiefs saw that they could not resist the king's great army; and accordingly most of themabout 75 altogether-including Mac Murrogh the most dreaded of all-came forward and made submission. They were afterwards invited to Dublin, where they were feasted in great state for several days by the king, who knighted the four provincial kings, O'Neill of Ulster, O'Conor of Connaught, Mac Murrogh of Leinster, and O'Brien of Thomond. King Richard, though shallow and weak-minded, had sense enough to perceive the chief causes of the evils that afflicted Ireland. In a letter to the duke of York, the English regent, he describes the Irish people as of three classes-Irish savages or enemies, who were outside the law (p. 165); Irish rebels, i. e. colonists who had once obeyed the law but were now in rebellion; and English subjects: and he says the rebels were driven to revolt by injustice and ill-usage. But this magnificent expedition, which cost an immense sum of money, produced no useful result whatever. It did not increase the king's revenue or the number of loyal subjects; and it did not enlarge the English territory by a single acre. As for the submission and reconciliation of the Irish chiefs, it was all pure sham. They did not look upon King Richard as their lawful sovereign; and as the promises they had made had been extorted by force, they did not consider themselves bound to keep them. After a stay of nine months the king was obliged to return to England, leaving as his deputy his cousin young Roger Mortimer earl of March, who, as Richard had no children, was heir to the throne of England. Scarcely had he left sight of land when the chiefs one and all renounced their allegiance, and the fighting went on again; till at last, in a battle fought at Kells in Kilkenny in 1397, against the Leinster clans, amongst them a large contingent of Mac Murrogh's kern, the English suffered a great overthrow, and Mortimer was slain. When news of this calamity reached the king, he was greatly enraged, and foolishly resolved on a second expedition to Ireland, in order as he said, to avenge the death of his cousin, and especially to chastise Mac Murrogh. Another army was got together A.D. 1399 quite as numerous as the former one. the middle of May the king landed with his army at Waterford, and after a short stay there he marched to Kilkenny on his way to Dublin. But |