ish.]

The north, which had fallen to the Lacies and the De Courcies, had been
wholly recovered by the Irish. The Lacies had become extinct. The De
Courcies, once Earls of Ulster, had migrated to the south, and were
reduced to the petty fief of Kinsale, which they held under the
Desmonds. The Celtic chieftains had returned from the mountains to which
they had been driven, bringing back with them, more intensely than ever,
the Irish habits and traditions. Old men, who were alive in 1533,
remembered a time when the Norman families attempted to live in
something of an English manner,[293] and when there were towns in the
middle of Ireland with decent municipal institutions. The wars of the
Roses had destroyed the remnants of English influence by calling away a
number of leading nobles, such especially as were least infected by the
Irish character; and the native chiefs had reoccupied the lands of their
ancestors, unresisted, if not welcomed as allies. The O'Neils and
O'Donnells had spread down over Ulster to the frontiers of the pale. The
O'Connors and O'Carrolls had recrossed the Shannon, and pushed forwards
into Kildare; the O'Connor Don was established in a castle near
Portarlington, said to be one of the strongest in Ireland; and the
O'Carrolls had seized Leap, an ancient Danish fortress, surrounded by
bog and forest, a few miles from Parsonstown. O'Brien of Inchiquin,
Prince--as he styled himself--of Thomond, no longer contented with his
principality of Clare, had thrown a bridge across the Shannon five miles
above Limerick, and was thus enabled to enter Munster at his pleasure
and spread his authority towards the south; while the M'Carties and
O'Sullivans, in Cork and Kerry, were only not dangerous to the Earls of
Desmond, because the Desmonds were more Irish than themselves, and were
accepted as their natural chiefs.

[Sidenote: The Earls of Ormond only continue to hold them in check.]

[Sidenote: The desire of the Ormonds to maintain the English rule
greater than their power.]

In Tipperary and Kilkenny only the Celtic reaction was held in check.
The Earls of Ormond, although they were obliged themselves to live as
Irish chieftains, and to govern by the Irish law, yet partly from an
inherent nobility of nature, partly through family alliances and a more
sustained intercourse with their English kindred, partly perhaps from
the inveterate feud of their house with the Geraldines of Kildare,
remained true to their