Unpleasant man and detestable king as he was, John had no slight share of the governing powers of his race, and even his short stay in Ireland did some good, enough to show what might have been done had a better man, and one in a little less desperate hurry, remained to hold the reins.  He had proved that, however they might ape the part, the barons were not as a matter of fact the absolute lords of Ireland; that they had a master beyond the sea; one who, if aroused, could make the boldest of them shake in his coat of mail.  The lesson was not as well learnt as it ought to have been, but it was better at least than if it had not been learnt at all.

At that age and in its then condition a strong ruler—­native if possible, if not, foreign—­was by far the best hope for Ireland.  Such a ruler, if only for his own sake, would have had the genuine interests of the country at heart.  He might have tyrannized himself, but the little tyrants would have been kept at bay.  Few countries—­and certainly Ireland was not one of the exceptions—­were at that time ripe for what we now mean by free institutions.  Freedom meant the freedom of a strong government, one that was not at the beck of accident, and was not perpetually changing from one hand to another.  The English people found this out for themselves centuries later during the terrible anarchy which resulted from the Wars of the Roses, and of their own accord put themselves under the brutal, but on the whole patriotic, yoke of the Tudors.  In Ireland the petty masters unfortunately were always near; the great one was beyond the sea and not so easily to be got at!  There was no unity; no pretence of even-handed justice, no one to step between the oppressed and the oppressor.  And the result of all this is still to be seen written as in letters of brass upon the face of the country and woven into the very texture of the character of its people.

XIV.

THE LORDS PALATINE.

The jealousy shown by Henry and his sons towards the earliest invaders of Ireland is doubtless the reason why Giraldus—­for a courtier and an ecclesiastic upon his promotion—­is so remarkably explicit upon their royal failings.  The Geraldines especially seem to have been the objects of this not very unnatural jealousy, and the Geraldines are, on the other hand, to Giraldus himself, objects of an almost superstitious worship.  His pen never wearies of expatiating upon their valour, fame, beauty, and innumerable graces, laying stress especially—­and in this he is certainly borne out by the facts—­upon the great advantage which men trained in the Welsh wars, and used all their lives to skirmishing in the lightest order, had over those who had had no previous experience of the very peculiar warfare necessary in Ireland.  “Who,” he cries with a burst of enthusiasm, “first penetrated into the heart of the enemy’s country?  The Geraldines!  Who have kept it in submission?  The Geraldines!  Who struck most terror into the enemy?  The Geraldines!  Against whom are the shafts of malice chiefly directed?  The Geraldines!  Oh that they had found a prince who could have appreciated their distinguished worth!  How tranquil, how peaceful would then have been the state of Ireland under their administration!”