History of the English People, Volume IVGreen, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume IV
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
In the south, where the system of English law was slowly spreading, the
chieftains sate on the bench side by side with the English justices of
the peace; and something had been done to check the feuds and disorder
of the wild tribes between Limerick and Tipperary. "Men may pass quietly
throughout these countries without danger of robbery or other
displeasure." In the Clanrickard county, once wasted with war,
"ploughing increaseth daily." In Tyrone and the north however the old
disorder reigned without a check; and everywhere the process of
improvement tried the temper of the English Deputies by the slowness of
its advance. The only hope of any real progress lay in patience; and
there were signs that the Government at Dublin found it hard to wait.
The "rough handling" of the chiefs by Sir Edward Bellingham, a Lord
Deputy under the Protector Somerset, roused a spirit of revolt that only
subsided when the poverty of the Exchequer forced him to withdraw the
garrisons he had planted in the heart of the country. His successor in
Mary's reign, Lord Sussex, made raid after raid to no purpose on the
obstinate tribes of the north, burning in one the Cathedral of Armagh
and three other churches. A far more serious breach in the system of
conciliation was made when the project of English colonization which
Henry had steadily rejected was adopted by the same Lord Deputy, and
when the country of the O'Connors was assigned to English settlers and
made shire-land under the names of King's and Queen's Counties in honour
of Philip and Mary. A savage warfare began at once between the planters
and the dispossessed septs, a warfare which only ended in the following
reign in the extermination of the Irishmen, and commissioners were
appointed to survey waste lands with the aim of carrying the work of
colonization into other districts. The pressure of the war against
France put an end to these wider projects, but the strife in Meath went
savagely on and proved a sore drain to the Exchequer.
[Sidenote: Scotland and Protestantism.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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