urished in Ireland during the seventh and eighth
centuries. The same cause which destroyed it in other countries also
destroyed it there. The Danes, then pagans, made themselves masters of
the island, after a long and wasteful war, in which they destroyed the
sciences along with the monasteries in which they were cultivated. By as
destructive a war they were at length expelled; but neither their
ancient science nor repose returned to the Irish, who, falling into
domestic distractions as soon as they were freed from their foreign
enemies, sunk quickly into a state of ignorance, poverty, and barbarism,
which must have been very great, since it exceeded that of the rest of
Europe. The disorders in the Church were equal to those in the civil
economy, and furnished to the Pope a plausible pretext for giving Henry
a commission to conquer the kingdom, in order to reform it.

The Irish were divided into a number of tribes or clans, each clan
forming within itself a separate government. It was ordered by a chief,
who was not raised to that dignity either by election or by the ordinary
course of descent, but as the eldest and worthiest of the blood of the
deceased lord. This order of succession, called Tanistry, was said to
have been invented in the Danish troubles, lest the tribe, during a
minority, should have been endangered for want of a sufficient leader.
It was probably much more ancient: but it was, however, attended with
very great and pernicious inconveniencies, as it was obviously an affair
of difficulty to determine who should be called the worthiest of the
blood; and a door being always left open for ambition, this order
introduced a greater mischief than it was intended to remedy. Almost
every tribe, besides its contention with the neighboring tribes,
nourished faction and discontent within itself. The chiefs we speak of
were in general called Tierna, or Lords, and those of more consideration
Riagh, or Kings. Over these were placed five kings more eminent than
the rest, answerable to the five provinces into which the island was
anciently divided. These again were subordinate to one head, who was
called Monarch of all Ireland, raised to that power by election, or,
more properly speaking, by violence.

Whilst the dignities of the state were disposed of by a sort of
election, the office of judges, who were called Brehons, the trades of
mechanics, and even those arts which we are apt to consider as depending
principally