proposal for augmenting
the standing army to five thousand men; a number which the king deemed
necessary for retaining Ireland in obedience.

Charles, thinking it dangerous that eight thousand men accustomed to
idleness, and trained to the use of arms, should be dispersed among a
nation so turbulent and unsettled, agreed with the Spanish ambassador
to have them transported into Flanders, and enlisted in his master's
service. The English commons, pretending apprehensions, lest regular
bodies of troops, disciplined in the Low Countries, should prove still
more dangerous, showed some aversion to this expedient; and the king
reduced his allowance to four thousand men. But when the Spaniards had
hired ships for transporting these troops, and the men were ready to
embark, the commons, willing to show their power, and not displeased
with an opportunity of curbing and affronting the king, prohibited
every one from furnishing vessels for that service. And thus the
project formed by Charles, of freeing the country from these men was
unfortunately disappointed.[*]

The old Irish remarked all these false steps of the English, and
resolved to take advantage of them. Though their animosity against
that nation, for want of an occasion to exert itself, seemed to be
extinguished, it was only composed into a temporary and deceitful
tranquillity.[**] Their interests, both with regard to property and
religion, secretly stimulated them to a revolt. No individual of
any sept, according to the ancient customs, had the property of
any particular estate; but as the whole sept had a title to a whole
territory, they ignorantly preferred this barbarous community before the
more secure and narrower possessions assigned them by the English. An
indulgence, amounting almost to a toleration, had been given to the
Catholic religion: but so long as the churches and the ecclesiastical
revenues were kept from the priests, and they were obliged to endure the
neighborhood of profane heretics, being themselves discontented, they
continually endeavored to retard any cordial reconciliation between the
English and the Irish nations.

* Clarendon, vol. i. p. 281. Rush. vol. v. p, 381. Dugdale,
p. 78 May, book ii. p. 3.

** Temple, p. 14

There was a gentleman called Roger More, who, though of a narrow
fortune, was descended from an ancient Irish family and was much
celebrated among his countrymen for valor and capacity. This man
first formed