th to a boy,
the future Edward the Sixth. The triumph of the Crown at home was doubled
by its triumph in the great dependency which had so long held the English
authority at bay, across St. George's Channel. Though Henry the Seventh
had begun the work of bridling Ireland he had no strength for exacting a
real submission; and the great Norman lords of the Pale, the Butlers and
Geraldines, the De la Poers and the Fitzpatricks, though subjects in name,
remained in fact defiant of the royal authority. In manners and outer
seeming they had sunk into mere natives; their feuds were as incessant as
those of the Irish septs; and their despotism combined the horrors of
feudal oppression with those of Celtic anarchy. Crushed by taxation, by
oppression, by misgovernment, plundered alike by native marauders and by
the troops levied to disperse them, the wretched descendants of the first
English settlers preferred even Irish misrule to English "order," and the
border of the Pale retreated steadily towards Dublin. The towns of the
seaboard, sheltered by their walls and their municipal self-government,
formed the only exceptions to the general chaos; elsewhere throughout its
dominions the English Government, though still strong enough to break down
any open revolt, was a mere phantom of rule. From the Celtic tribes
without the Pale even the remnant of civilization and of native union
which had lingered on to the time of Strongbow had vanished away. The
feuds of the Irish septs were as bitter as their hatred of the stranger;
and the Government at Dublin found it easy to maintain a strife which
saved it the necessity of self-defence among a people whose "nature is
such that for money one shall have the son to war against the father, and
the father against his child." During the first thirty years of the
sixteenth century the annals of the country which remained under native
rule record more than a hundred raids and battles between clans of the
north alone.

[Sidenote: Ireland and Cromwell]

But the time came at last for a vigorous attempt on the part of England to
introduce order into this chaos of turbulence and misrule. To Henry the
Eighth the policy of forbearance, of ruling Ireland through the great
Irish lords, was utterly hateful. His purpose was to rule in Ireland as
thoroughly and effectively as he ruled in England, and during the latter
half of his reign he bent his whole energies to accomplish this aim. From
the first hour o