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had been distracted by the petty wars of chieftains against chieftains, and septs against septs, which her wretched administration was unable to restrain. But from the moment that Elizabeth ascended the throne, and declared for the Reformation, the grand Irish popish confederacy, in concert with Spain and Rome, was formed against her; which afterwards, when England was threatened with invasion by Philip, burst forth into two violent and well-organized rebellions, the last of which was not finally extinguished during her reign. Both these rebellions were openly abetted by the Pope, Philip, and all Elizabeth's foreign enemies, and were fomented in Ireland by the practices of the Catholic clergy, aided by the zeal of the ecclesiastical missionaries from abroad.

“That Shawn O'Nial, Tyrone, Desmond, and the other rebel leaders of that day, were indifferent to all religious creeds, or too ignorant to comprehend any, I am willing to admit. But that religious bigotry was their chief ally, and the great incitement to the exertions of their fanatic followers, can only be controverted by those who are destitute of candour, or of historical information.

"Mr. Plowden would wish to convince his readers, that religious bigotry was but a secondary cause of the convulsions of Ireland during this reign, which, according to his work, were provoked by the oppressions of the Irish Government; whereas in truth, the severities and confiscations of which he complains, did not take place, until after the Queen had been justly incensed at the treachery and rebellions of the native Irish. For when Sir John Perrott, in the 29th year of Elizabeth's reign, resigned his government

He delivered the sword,' (see Ware, p. 42, chap. 31, reign of Eli. zabeth,) to his successor, declaring, that he left the kingdom in peace, and that now, although a private man, he would engage to bring in any suspected leader within twenty days, without violence or contest; he embarked with the acclamations, particularly of the lower orders of the people, who had felt the benefits of his administration; old Tirlaugh, of Tirowen (an O'Nial) followed him to the water-side bathed in tears.” "That the principal cause of Tyrone's rebellion was religious fanaticism, or that it was the means he made use of to excite his countrymen to arms, the manifesto which he published previous to his great insurrection sufficiently proves. He tells them in it, as I shall answer before God, I will employ myself to the utmost of my power, for the extirpation of heresie, and the planting of the Catholic religion.' Again, I give you to understand upon my salvation, that chiefly and principally I fight for the Catholic faith, to be planted throughout all our poor country, as well in cities as elsewhere;' and again, if I had gotten to be King of Ireland without having the Catholic religion, which before I have mentioned, I would not accept the same:' and after informing them that they could not conscientiously pay obedience to an excommunicated Princess, though there might have been a mitigation made by her in fa vour of Catholics, by which they might be licensed, in civil matters, to give her, during their inability, obedience; he concludes with this exhortation:

And now let us join all together, to deliver this our poor country from that infection of heresie with which she is, and shall be, if God do not specially favour us, most miserably infected; taking example from

that

that most Christian and Catholic country of France; whose subjects, for defence of the Catholic faith, maintained warres so long, yea against their most natural King, as he was, by their means, constrained to profess the Catholic religion, duly submitting himself to the apostolical see of Rome, to which doubtless we may bring our country, you putting your helping hand to the same.'

"When, therefore, Mr. Plowden chuses to assert, that Tyrone's grand rebellion was brought on and continued by the noxious policy of treating the Irish as a divided, separate, and enslaved people,' he advances a position unsupported by any one reputable historian, and solely resting upon his own assertion. All the writers of this period agree, that Elizabeth was peculiarly anxious to conciliate this O'Nial; that she received him at her court with distinguished favour, created him Earl of Tyrone, and obliged her deputies to receive his frequent submissions and apologies for his insurrections; in consequence of which, they were restrained from counteracting his designs in their infancy; and thus he was suffered to mature that very formidable rebellion, to conquer which, Elizabeth was obliged to send her favourite Essex, with twenty thousand troops, and in consequence of which that island was nearly laid waste.

"One of the principal grievances of this reign, of which the natives complained, was the attempt to introduce the trial by Jury, that bulwark of British liberty; another was, the appointment of sheriffs in their counties. In the 39th year of this Queen, when the Deputy Fitzwilliam, immediately upon his succeeding Sir J. Perrott, intimated to the chieftain of Fermanagh, that he would send a sheriff into his county; he shall be wellcome,' answered Maguire; but let me know his eirick (the fine by the Brehon laws for murder), that if my people cut off his head, I may levy it upon the country; and, among the bills which the Catholic opposition in that Parliament (which Mr. Plowden informs us was packed for the base purposes of giving legislative sanction to unjust measures) refused to pass, we find the following, namely, one for laying a small duty on wines, and another for the suspension of Poyning's laws; the repeal of which, in our own times, was the first measure taken to establish the independence of Ireland; and for the obtaining of which, the Irish patriots imagined they deserved the eternal gratitude of their country.→ These two acts were at length, not without difficulty, passed, in the fourth session of this Parliament, in which this Catholic opposition also rejected two Bills, one for the reparation of parochial schools, and another for the erection of free schools. Their conduct is thus accounted for by Dr. Leland, who quotes Hooker, who was so scandalized at their conduct.

The enemies of the reformed religion, a numerous party, those who dreaded the diminution of their power, in the several districts which they had been used to oppress; those who enriched themselves, and supported their petty feuds by Irish exactions, &c. all came to Parliament with a determined resolution to oppose every measure that came from the throne."

Can we therefore wonder, that a Princess of Elizabeth's temper, who treated her own Parliaments with so high a hand, should have imprisoned those Deputies, whom this Catholic opposition, which so fac tiously opposed her favourite reformation, and her plans for civilizing Ireland, sent to London, to lay what they called their grievances at the foot of the throne ?a

"Mr. P. forgot to inform his reader that Queen Elizabeth, A.D. 1592, in the 35th year of her reign, founded and endowed the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, near Dublin; Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin, was the first Provost.

Queen Elizabeth in the first fifteen years of her reign expended in Ireland the sum of 490,7791. 7s. 6d. though the whole produce of the Irish revenue during that period was but 120,000l.-Ware, chap. xv.

"In her reign during the government of Lord Sussex, the first clock was set up in Dublin in the Castle, which, says Ware, being a novelty, was very pleasing to the common people.-Chap. iii.

"In the 13th year of her reign also, the Irish characters for printing were first brought into Ireland by Nicholas Walsh, Chancellor of St. St. Patrick's, Dublin.-Chap. xv. Ware.

"The first book ever printed in Ireland was the Liturgy, in the year 1550, printed by Humphry Powell.-Annals of Dublin.

"In the 30th year of her reign, Lilly's English Grammar was ordered by an Act of Council to be taught in Ireland.-Ware, chap. xxx.

"And in her reign in the year 1565, John Hawkins, from Santa Fè in New Spain, originally introduced potatoes into Ireland, the first brought into Europe; they did not become the general food of the Irish until after the Revolution: Sir W. Temple and Sir J. Dalrymple seem to consider (with good reason) the idleness of the lower Irish to arise in some measure, from the ease with which potatoes are cultivated, and from their being satisfied with such food.

"Whiskey was in use in Ireland from a much earlier period, some of the earliest acts in the Irish statute book, are two or three prohibiting the making and using of aqua vitæ made from grain.

"Vol. i. Irish Statutes.

"As to that unparalleled system of confiscation and depopulation which,' Mr. Plowden says, began in this reign; and which, being in its nature so diametrically opposite to union, pointedly marks the evils which so long afflicted Ireland for want of this salutary measure ;'-I beg leave, in answer, to observe, that this writer seems to have forgotten, that confiscation of property, in consequence of treason, was formerly, and still is, the law of England as well as of Ireland; nor has the act of Uniou repealed this statute; and as to the depopulation of which he complains, it arose from the inevitable consequences of the insurrections of the Irish, who were then (as I fear many of them still are) only to be taught lessons of obedience in the field of battle. The lands of Ire land were forfeited for rebellion. That they have been forfeited over and over again, I admit; and this is easily accounted for, because the history of that country is little more than the history of a series of rebellions. When, therefore, this writer condemns this system of confiscation, he condemns the laws of our country, which, in spite of the sensibilities of modern philosophers, and the practices of modern reformers, will, I trust, be immortal.

"To expose all the misrepresentations and erroneous conclusions to be found in this author's review of the reign of Elizabeth, it would be ne cessary to write a chapter longer than his own. I shall only therefore detain my readers by laying before them an extract from the Earl of Es sex's Letter to the Queen, given in Mr. Plowden's Appendix; and to

which,

which, in p. 81 of the first volume, he seems so triumphantly to refer. I trespass thus on my readers, because, although the picture was drawn for the natives in Queen Elizabeth's time, I am sorry to be obliged to observe, that some traces of the resemblance, may be found among their descendants of a much later period.

In their affection,' says Essex, they love nothing but idleness; in their rebellion they have no other end but 10 shake off the yoake of obedience to your Majestie, and to rout out all remembrance of the English nation in this kingdom. I say, I say this of the people in general, for I find not only a great part thus affected, but that it is a general quarrel of the Irish; and they who do not profess it are either so few or so false, that there is no account to be made of them. The Irish nobility and Lords of Counties do not only affect this plausible quarrel, and are di vided from us in religion, but have an especial quarrel against the English government, because it limiteth and tieth them, who have ever been, and ever would be, as absolute tyrants as any under the sun.

"It is plain, therefore, who it was that oppressed the common people of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth; and who endeavoured to restrain those oppressions."

We shall now proceed to make some strictures on the ill-founded observations of Mr. Plowden, on that bright æra of our history.

There were three great rebellions in Ireland during the reign of Elizabeth. The first was raised by Shane, or John O'Neil, though his father had been created Earl of Tyrone by Henry VIII. and had received many solid favours, and flattering marks of distinction; his son Shane renounced his allegiance to Elizabeth, declared himself the Pope's champion, and raised a rebellion which desolated a great part of the north.

This monster, in his father's life time, murdered his brother Matthew, who had been created Baron Dungannon, usurped the sovereignty of the province of Ulster, put to death many Irish chieftains, some of them with excruciating torture, seized their property, and ravished their wives. The Irish annalists represent him as actuated by brutal passions, and guilty of the most intemperate excesses; and they delineate with horror the number and atrocity of his crimes; and yet, with profane dissimulation, he professed the most dutiful and loyal intentions towards the crown. It would exceed our circumscribed limits to state how often he inade submissions, and took oaths of allegiance, which he never failed to violate. After repeated acts of perjury and treason, he made the most dutiful submission at the foot of the throne, and he so wrought on the Queen, by the fervour and solemnity of his assurances, that she confirmed his title and estate to him, and dismissed him with presents and promises of favour. After this he kindled a very general rebellion, and sent ambassadors to Spain and Rome for assistance against the English government, whom he called the common enemy. At last his career of guilt and infamy terminated in his assassination by a party of Scotch invaders, whom he solicited to join him in his vindictive and traiterous designs. Mr.

Plowden,

Plowden, with that intemperate zeal which he manifests through the whole of his work, to palliate the crimes of the Popish rebels, and to condemn the conduct of the English government in Ireland, laments that the act of attainder of Shane O'Neil, and the forfeiture to the Queen of the county of Tyrone, and other territories in Ulster, "seem to have been pointedly calculated to insult the feelings of the Irish nation, and consequently to inflame their animosity and rancour;" and the reasons which he assigns are," that it enumerates all his acts of outrage and rebellion, in a style of vindictive acrimony, and it affects to deduce the title of the English monarch to the absolute sovereignty of the whole kingdom of Ireland, as paramount to the Milesian race of kings." Mr. Plowden makes the following absurd and ridiculous remark to palliate the dreadful rebellions of Shane O'Neil. "This was a most wanton act of violence offered to the feelings of a people, singularly proud of their royal lineage and ancestry, and by public institution scrupulously chaste as to the fidelity of their national traditions Nothing short of a wish to goad them into rebellion, could have so effectually spirited them up to it, as thus kindling the flame of patriotism by a collision with their national honour." Mr. Plowden shews a constant propensity to abuse the English government; but finding no substantial reason for censuring Queen Elizabeth's, he selects this trifling one; and he endeavours to ascribe the various instances of Popish treason which occurred during her reign, to irritation. It was very politic to set forth the various crimes committed by this monster, and the punishment which followed them, in order to deter others from perpetrating such; for had they not been so well substantiated, writers of Mr. Plowden's cast would have denied the guilt of O'Neil, and would have imputed the Act of Parliament for his attainder and the confiscation of his estates, to motives of tyranny and avidity in the English governThe next great rebellion which took place in Ireland, was that raised in the year 1569, by James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, and John Fitzgerald, brothers of the Earl of Desmond, and in which the Earl himself afterwards took an open and active part. Preparatory to it, in the year 1568, they and their confederates implored the aid of the Pope and the King of Spain, through their ambassadors, the titular bishops of Emily and Cashel. That degree of fanatical hatred which the Popish clergy in Ireland never cease to infuse into their votaries against a Protestant state, and their Protestant fellow subjects, was raised to an extraordinary pitch of enthusiasm by various papal bulls, fulminated against Queen Elizabeth, in which she was excommunicated as an heretical usurper, and her subjects were called upon to rise in arms against her, may be considered as the source of this general and dreadful rebellion, which began in the province of Munster, and ultimately involved in its vortex most of the chieftains both of English and Irish blood. It is remarkable, that though the Butlers bore an implacable hatred to the Fitzgeralds, the hereditary enemics of their family, the false zeal of Romish superstition, and

ment.

their