the principal chief, Shan O’Neill (who was described by the Spanish Ambassador as “so good a Christian that he cuts off the head of any man who enters his country if he be not a Catholic”) was in open rebellion with the avowed object of crushing out the English power, exterminating the rival tribes, and making himself King of Ulster.  To so miserable a state had that part of Ireland been reduced by petty local wars between rival chiefs that hundreds of people had died of hunger.  Can it be wondered that Elizabeth conceived the idea of imitating her sister’s policy and forming a “plantation” in the North?

Then came another formidable rebellion in Munster, headed by an Ersefied Norman, Desmond.  These rebellions were fomented by the Pope, and in the South the rebels were aided by Spanish troops.  In the amount of the aid sent from Spain, however, the Irish rebels were sadly disappointed.  That has been one of the characteristic features of all Irish rebellions; the foreign powers on which they have relied have been liberal enough with promises of aid, but when the time for performance has come they have left the unfortunate Irish to their fate. (Thus in 1641 not only did the rebels fully expect that a powerful Spanish force would come to their assistance, but they even believed that 18,000 Spanish troops had actually landed at Wexford.) That these rebellions were crushed by the forces of Queen Elizabeth with a savage violence that is more suggestive of the government of the Netherlands by Spain than of what should have been the action of a Christian nation cannot be denied; but when reading the accounts of the terrible condition to which the country was reduced one cannot help thinking that the stories of outrages committed by the English troops must be exaggerated.  In the first place, the writers, even when eye-witnesses, seem to have assumed that the country was peaceful and prosperous up to that time; whereas not only had the tribal wars which had gone on incessantly until a few years before reduced the people almost to a condition of famine, but the rebels themselves, such as O’Neill and Desmond, had ravaged the country anew.  And if it was obvious that the object of Elizabeth was to exterminate the whole Irish population and the Roman Catholic religion, it seems impossible (even allowing for the eccentricity of human nature in general and of the Irish character in particular) to believe that a large part of the queen’s forces should have been composed of Irish Roman Catholics; or that the inhabitants of the towns, most of whom were also Irish Roman Catholics, should have taken her side; but such was undoubtedly the case.  Again, if nearly the whole native population had been exterminated by slaughter and famine it would have taken at least a century to recover.  Yet—­a few years after the commencement of the English settlement we find Spenser complaining that the new proprietors were acting as the Norman barons had done centuries before; instead of keeping out the Irish they were