ss than sufficed for his wants, it was not
extreme to mark the means by which he supplied the deficiency. Though
four fifths of the population of Ireland were Celtic and Roman Catholic,
more than four fifths of the property of Ireland belonged to the
Protestant Englishry. The garners, the cellars, above all the flocks
and herds of the minority, were abandoned to the majority. Whatever the
regular troops spared was devoured by bands of marauders who overran
almost every barony in the island. For the arming was now universal. No
man dared to present himself at mass without some weapon, a pike, a
long knife called a skean, or, at the very least, a strong ashen stake,
pointed and hardened in the fire. The very women were exhorted by their
spiritual directors to carry skeans. Every smith, every carpenter,
every cutler, was at constant work on guns and blades. It was scarcely
possible to get a horse shod. If any Protestant artisan refused to
assist in the manufacture of implements which were to be used against
his nation and his religion, he was flung into prison. It seems probable
that, at the end of February, at least a hundred thousand Irishmen
were in arms. Near fifty thousand of them were soldiers. The rest were
banditti, whose violence and licentiousness the Government affected to
disapprove, but did not really exert itself to suppress. The Protestants
not only were not protected, but were not suffered to protect
themselves. It was determined that they should be left unarmed in the
midst of an armed and hostile population. A day was fixed on which they
were to bring all their swords and firelocks to the parish churches; and
it was notified that every Protestant house in which, after that day, a
weapon should be found should be given up to be sacked by the soldiers.
Bitter complaints were made that any knave might, by hiding a spear head
or an old gun barrel in a corner of a mansion, bring utter ruin on the
owner, [150]

Chief Justice Keating, himself a Protestant, and almost the only
Protestant who still held a great place in Ireland, struggled
courageously in the cause of justice and order against the united
strength of the government and the populace. At the Wicklow assizes
of that spring, he, from the seat of judgment, set forth with great
strength of language the miserable state of the country. Whole counties,
he said, were devastated by a rabble resembling the vultures and ravens
which follow the march of an army.