allegiance, and maintained the English authority
so far as their power extended. That power, unfortunately, was
incommensurate with their good will, and their situation prevented them
from rendering the assistance to the crown which they desired. Wexford,
Wicklow, and the mountains of Dublin, were occupied by the Highland
tribes of O'Bryne and O'Toole, who, in their wild glens and dangerous
gorges, defied attempts to conquer them, and who were able, at all
times, issuing down out of the passes of the hills, to cut off
communication with the pale. Thus the Butlers had no means of reaching
Dublin except through the county of Kildare, the home of their
hereditary rivals and foes.

[Sidenote: Sixty chief lords in Ireland, who made war and peace for
themselves, and obeyed only the sword.]

[Sidenote: In each of these sixty districts divers petty captains, who
claimed a like independence.]

This is a general account of the situation of the various parties in
Ireland at the beginning of the sixteenth century. I have spoken only of
the leading families; and I have spoken of them as if they possessed
some feudal supremacy,--yet even this slight thread of order was in many
cases without real consistency, and was recognised only when fear, or
passion, or interest, prompted. "There be sixty counties, called
regions, in Ireland," says the report of 1515, "inhabited with the
king's Irish enemies, some regions as big as a shire, some more, some
less, where reigneth more than sixty chief captains, whereof some
calleth themselves kings, some king's peers in their language, some
princes, some dukes, that liveth only by the sword, and obeyeth to no
other temporal person save only to himself that is strong. And every of
the said captains maketh war and peace for himself, and holdeth by the
sword, and hath imperial jurisdiction, and obeyeth no other person,
English or Irish, except only to such persons as may subdue him by the
sword.... Also, in every of the said regions, there be divers petty
captains, and every of them maketh war and peace for himself, without
licence of his chief captain.... And there be more than thirty of the
English noble folk that followeth this same Irish order, and keepeth the
same rule."[294] Every man, in short, who could raise himself to that
dishonourable position, was captain of a troop of banditti, and counted
it his chief honour to live upon the plunder of his neighbour.

[Sidenote: Why anarchy did not w