The Irish were the fighting race now if ever.  Without hope of outside assistance, facing a foe ever reinforced from a stronger, richer, more fully organized country, nothing but their stubborn character and their fighting genius kept them in the field.  And century out and century in, they stayed, holding back the foreign foe four hundred years.  It is worthy of note that it was the Norman English, racial cousins, as it were, of the Norsemen, who first wrought at the English conquest of Ireland.  When some of these were seated in Irish places of pride, when a Butler was made Earl of Ormond and a Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, it was soon seen that they were merging rapidly in the Irish mass, becoming, as it was said, “more Irish than the Irish themselves.”  Many were the individual heroic efforts to strike down the English power.  Here and there small Irish chiefs accepted the English rule, offsetting the Norman Irish families who at times were “loyal” and at times “rebel.”  The state of war became continuous and internecine, but three-fourths of Ireland remained unconquered.  The idea of a united Ireland against England had, however, been lost except in a few exalted and a few desperate breasts.  A gleam of hope came in 1316, when, two years after the great defeat of England by the Scotch under Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn, Edward, the victor-king’s brother, came at the invitation of the northern Irish to Ireland with 6,000 Scots, landing near Carrickfergus.  He was proclaimed king of Ireland by the Irish who joined him.  Battle after battle was won by the allies.  Edward was a brilliant soldier, lacking, however, the prudence of his great brother, Robert.  The story of his two years of fighting, ravaging, and slaying, is hard at this distance to reconcile with intelligible strategy.  In the end, in 1318, the gallant Scot fell in battle near Dundalk, losing at the same time two-thirds of his army.  For two years Scot and Irish had fought victoriously side by side.  That is the fact of moment that comes out of this dark period.

The following century, like that which had gone before, was full of fighting.  In 1399, on Richard II.’s second visit to Ireland, he met fierce opposition from the Irish septs.  MacMorrough, fighting, harassing the king’s army from the shelter of the Wicklow woods, fairly drove the king to Dublin.  The sanguinary “Wars of the Roses”—­that thirty years’ struggle for the crown of England between the royal houses of York and Lancaster, 1455 to 1485—­gave Ireland a long opportunity, which, however, she was too weak to turn to advantage; but fighting between Irish and English went on just the same, now in one province, now in another.

In the reign of Henry VIII. a revolt against England started within the Pale itself, when Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, known as Silken Thomas, went before the Council in Dublin and publicly renounced his allegiance.  He took the field—­a brave, striking figure—­in protest against the king’s bad faith in dealing with his father, the Earl of Kildare.  At one time it looked as if the rebellion (it was the first real Irish rebellion) would prosper.  Lord Thomas made combinations with Irish chieftains in the north and west, and was victor in several engagements.  He finally surrendered with assurances of pardon, but, as in many similar cases, was treacherously sent a prisoner to London, where he was executed.