and churches; and a terrible famine ensued.  But the Irish chiefs were no more energetic in supporting Edward Bruce than their ancestors had been in supporting Brian; he and his chief officers fell in a battle against the English near Dundalk, and the rest of his followers escaped to Scotland.  The coalition fell to pieces; and the only result of the Scotch invasion was to increase the misery of the people, especially of the unhappy English settlers, who continued to flock back to England in greater numbers than before.

As soon as the rebellion was put down, the great legislator Edward III made another effort at introducing order into the distracted land.  Acts were passed by the English Parliament providing that the same law should be applicable to both English and Irish, and forbidding landowners to keep larger bands of armed men than were necessary for self-defence.  But the Ersefied barons on whom he relied refused to obey the new laws; they renounced their allegiance and joined the rebellious Celtic tribes.  Then the king, seeing the impossibility of carrying out his scheme for pacifying the whole of Ireland, was reduced to the expedient of dividing the country into two; leaving the larger part of it for the natives and degenerate English to misgovern as they pleased according to their own customs, and preserving only a mere fraction (the “English Pale”) in allegiance to the Crown of England.  This was the real meaning of the “Statutes of Kilkenny,” which have been so often misrepresented by modern writers.

The next king, Richard II, attempted to imitate the policy of his ancestor Henry II.  He went to Ireland with great pomp.  Again the Celtic chiefs flocked to Dublin to swear allegiance to their lord; and as soon as his back was turned commenced not only fighting amongst themselves but even attacking the English Pale.  The result of all his efforts was that the limits of the Pale were still further contracted; the English power was confined to a small area in the neighbourhood of Dublin.

But even within that narrow boundary the power of the king was far from being secure.  When England was torn by the Wars of the Roses, the so-called Parliament (which was really an irregular assembly at best representing a territory about the size of a modern county) seized the opportunity of declaring itself independent.  It is interesting, in view of present-day questions, to observe that Dr. Richey, writing in 1869, seems to consider their action as not only justifiable but inevitable.  He says:—­

“The Irish Parliament declared the complete independence of the Irish Legislature, and boldly affirmed those constitutional rights which, though involved in the existence of separate parliament, had not hitherto been categorically expressed.  They asserted their rights to a distinct coinage, and their absolute freedom from all laws and statutes except such as were by the Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons of Ireland freely admitted