ompanied by a force of a thousand men-at-arms, and five or
six English lawyers, who were appointed to fill the places of
chancellor, treasurer, and other offices from which the present
occupiers, most of whom had been concerned either in the Warbeck or
Simnel rising, were to be ejected.

It was at a parliament summoned at Drogheda, whither this new deputy had
gone to quell a northern rising, that the famous statute known as
Poynings' Act was passed, long a rock of offence, and even still a
prominent feature in Irish political controversy.

Many of the statutes passed by this Parliament--such as the one just
mentioned forbidding war cries, others forbidding the levying of private
forces, forbidding the "country's curse" Coyne and livery, and other
habitual exactions were undoubtedly necessary and called for by the
circumstances of the case. The only ones now remembered however are the
following. First, that no parliament should be summoned by the deputy's
authority without the king's special license for that purpose. Secondly,
that all English statutes should henceforward be regarded as binding
upon Ireland; and thirdly, that all Acts referring to Ireland must be
submitted first to the king and Privy Council, and that, when returned
by them, the Irish Parliament should have no power to modify them
further. This, as will be seen, practically reduced the latter to a mere
court for registering laws already passed elsewhere, passed too often
without the smallest regard to the special requirements of the country.
A condition of subserviency from which it only escaped again for a short
time during the palmy days of the eighteenth century.

By this same parliament Kildare was attained--rather late in the day--on
the ground of conspiracy, and sent prisoner to London. He lay a year in
prison, and was then brought to trial, and allowed to plead his own
cause in the king's presence. The audacity, frank humour, and ready
repartee of his great Irish subject seems to have made a favourable
impression upon Henry, who must himself have had more sense of humour
than English historians give us any impression of. One of the principal
charges against the earl was that he had burned the church at Cashel.
According to the account given in the Book of Howth he readily admitted
the charge, but declared positively that he would never have thought of
doing so had he not been solemnly assured that the archbishop was at the
time inside it. The au