border; but apart from this they were a source of more anxiety than profit. Paralysis, therefore, having seized the heart of the English government in Dublin, all control began to fail over the trunk and the extremities; the whole was ripe for dissolution at the touch of an external solvent.

The overthrow of the English at Bannockburn, in A.D. 1314, was the signal for revolt amongst the native Irish. They had afforded a sanctuary to Bruce in his hour of adversity, and had watched with much anxiety the struggle between their masters and their Scottish kinsmen; and now the tide had turned against the former. The movement began in the north-the O'Neils being the first to stir; and overtures were made to Robert Bruce for the despatch to them of his brother Edward, to whom they were willing to offer the crown of Ireland. A petition from the Irish chieftains was sent to the Pope, setting forth their complaints against the English, and praying him to interfere and restrain the King of England from molesting them. But the Irish clergy were true to the English cause, and the only answer vouchsafed was the excommunication of the Bruces and all who took up arms against the English.

Edward Bruce landed near Carrickfergus with 6000 Scots, in A.D. 1315. He was at once joined by the Irish of the north, and presently by Fedlim O'Connor, King of Connaught. The Earl of Ulster was driven in upon Dublin. O'Brien of Thomond rose, and the chiefs of Munster and Meath; even the De Lacys, and many of

the Anglo-Irish settlers, threw in their lot with the Irish; and Edward Bruce was crowned at Dundalk.

A struggle for existence now began on the part of the Desmonds, the Butlers, and the Kildares. Troops were collected and sent to co-operate with the helpless English government at Dublin, and to make a diversion in O'Connor's country. The latter and all his tribe were exterminated in the battle of Athenry; but the English were not strong enough to oppose Bruce in the field. The Scots marched into Meath and Munster, laying waste the country with fire and sword, routing the English, and capturing their strongholds. Robert Bruce arrived with reinforcements; and the burning and plundering of towns, castles, and churches was carried into Tipperary and Kildare, and even to the walls of Dublin. But Bruce's excesses were the cause of his destruction : the desolated country had nothing left wherewith to support his army; famine and pestilence, the consequences of his ravages, thinned his numbers, so that, it is said, the survivors were reduced to eating the carcases of the dead; the indiscriminate plunder of friends and foes caused his Irish allies to fall away; and the King of the Scots was summoned back to Scotland. Meanwhile, the Geraldines had collected an irregular force of 30,000 men. Roger Mortimer, of Wigmore, the new lieutenant-governor, was reorganizing the government at Dublin. Leinster was reduced; and the opportunity for striking was not missed by the English. Sir John de Bermingham, having been appointed to the command of 1500 chosen troops, pushed

his way northward, and met the enemy at Dundalk. A short sharp conflict ensued: the Scottish army was overthrown; the remnant escaped to Scotland; but Edward Bruce was among the slain.

The Scottish invasion was at an end; but the shock to the English system was severe, and the consequences far-reaching. The inability of the English Government to afford protection to its Anglo-Irish subjects had been painfully demonstrated; and the result was a falling away of the Anglo-Irish from their allegiance. The causes of estrangement had long been silently at work, and now that the opportunity had come, the Norman baron became an Irish chief. The consequences to the English yeomen, who held the land as tenants to the territorial owners, were equally serious. Many were utterly ruined by the Scottish raid; many had suffered from the military requisitions of their own lords, who had adopted the Irish practice, for the support of their troops, of "coyne and livery," or free quartering of the soldiery for food and fodder. The total want of security for life and property compelled large bodies of them to quit the country. Those who remained sank into the condition of the tribal Irish; and the deserted lands were reoccupied by the native clans.

All Desmond was in this way cleared of its English yeoman population. Large portions of Leinster suffered a like fate. The O'Moores and O'Connors swarmed out of the Slievebloom mountains, and reoccupied Leix and Offaly; the McMurroughs recovered Carlow and half the county of Wexford; while the

O'Tooles and O'Byrnes were raiding from the Wicklow hills upon the fertile plains of Kildare. In A.D. 1333, William De Burgh, third Earl of Ulster, was murdered by Richard de Manneville, his own uncle by marriage; and his estates of right passed to his only daughter and heiress, who afterwards married Lionel, Duke of Clarence. The broad lands, therefore, of the lordships of Connaught and Ulster being in the feeble hands of a defenceless girl, O'Neil seized upon the Ulster territory; and two collaterals of the house of Bourke, Ulick and Edmund, sons of Sir William, divided Connaught, one taking Galway, and the other taking Mayo. The two Bourkes then threw off all allegiance to the English Crown, adopted the Irish dress and manners, and took the names of McWilliam Uachtar and McWilliam Iochtar, the "Nether" and "Further " McWilliam. Two of their cousins became McHubbard and McDavid. Other "degenerate" English followed their example and affected the Irish nomenclature. Bermingham of Athenry called himself McYorris; D'Exester became McJordan; and Nangle, McCostelo. The White Knight took the name of McGibbon; the Baron of Dunboyne, McPheris; Fitzmaurice of Lixnaw, McMorice; while the Condons of Waterford became McMajoge, and the Fitzurses of Louth became McMahon.

CHAPTER V.

THE RUIN OF THE ENGLISH COLONY. A.D. 1320-1485.

ULSTER had been lost, and Connaught had revolted. Desmond, though acknowledging a bare allegiance to the king, was virtually independent. Thomond had never been regularly colonized. Only Leinster and Meath remained. Even Leinster was so honeycombed with Irish tribes that little more remained English but the walled towns, and the territories of the great earls of Kildare, and of the earls of Ormonde, who were almost as independent as the earls of Desmond. Of Meath not more than half had survived the encroachments of the McGeoghans and O'Melaghlins. So that we find the actual country where the king's writ ran was an undefined and decreasing district, which became known as "the English land," and which at this time consisted of the counties of Louth, Dublin, and Kildare, and parts of Meath, Tipperary, and Wexford.

The Crown had by this time given up the idea of subduing the native Irish as hopeless; and as it found the Anglo-Irish slipping away from its grasp, its policy became one of self-defence, and developed in two