who continued to flock
back to England in greater numbers than before.

As soon as the rebellion was put down, the great legislator Edward
III made another effort at introducing order into the distracted land.
Acts were passed by the English Parliament providing that the same
law should be applicable to both English and Irish, and forbidding
landowners to keep larger bands of armed men than were necessary for
self-defence. But the Ersefied barons on whom he relied refused to
obey the new laws; they renounced their allegiance and joined the
rebellious Celtic tribes. Then the king, seeing the impossibility
of carrying out his scheme for pacifying the whole of Ireland, was
reduced to the expedient of dividing the country into two; leaving the
larger part of it for the natives and degenerate English to misgovern
as they pleased according to their own customs, and preserving only
a mere fraction (the "English Pale") in allegiance to the Crown of
England. This was the real meaning of the "Statutes of Kilkenny,"
which have been so often misrepresented by modern writers.

The next king, Richard II, attempted to imitate the policy of his
ancestor Henry II. He went to Ireland with great pomp. Again the
Celtic chiefs flocked to Dublin to swear allegiance to their lord;
and as soon as his back was turned commenced not only fighting amongst
themselves but even attacking the English Pale. The result of all his
efforts was that the limits of the Pale were still further contracted;
the English power was confined to a small area in the neighbourhood of
Dublin.

But even within that narrow boundary the power of the king was far
from being secure. When England was torn by the Wars of the Roses, the
so-called Parliament (which was really an irregular assembly at best
representing a territory about the size of a modern county) seized
the opportunity of declaring itself independent. It is interesting, in
view of present-day questions, to observe that Dr. Richey, writing
in 1869, seems to consider their action as not only justifiable but
inevitable. He says:--

"The Irish Parliament declared the complete independence
of the Irish Legislature, and boldly affirmed those
constitutional rights which, though involved in the existence
of separate parliament, had not hitherto been categorically
expressed. They asserted their rights to a distinct coinage,
and their absolute freedom from all laws and statutes except