Mac Maurice, Mac Gibbon, Mac Gerald, Mac William, which are equivalent to Fitz-Maurice, Fitz-Gibbon, Fitz-Gerald, Fitz-William. In this manner, however, the great Anglo-Norman families of the south and west of Ireland, who were after all more French and Irish than they were English (their ancestors having dwelt scarcely a century in England), nearly all hibernicised their names. It seems rather curious that Spenser has not furnished any list of those Anglo-Norman families who really hibernicised their names, while he was so minute in naming those who were not English, but whom he wished to make appear as such, in order to be enabled to censure them the more harshly for their treasons and rebellions. He contents himself by stating that there were great English families in Ireland who, he regretted to say, had become Irish in name and feeling. The manner in which he states this fact is worthy of consideration, and I shall therefore insert his very words here as they appear in the Dublin edition:--“Other great houses there bee of the English in Ireland, which thorough licentious conversing with the Irish or marrying or fostering with them, or lacke of meet nurture [_i. e._ education or rearing], or such other unhappy occasions, have degendred from their auncient dignities, and are now growne ‘_as Irish as O’Hanlon’s breech_,’ as the proverbe there is.” Sir Henry Piers of Tristernagh, in the county of Westmeath, complains of the same custom among the families of English descent, in about a century after Spenser’s period. “In the next place, I rank the degeneracy of many English families as a great hindrance of the reducing this people to civility, occasioned not only by fostering, that is, having their children nursed and bred during their tender years by the Irish, but much more by marriages with them, by means whereof our English in too many great families became in a few generations one both in manners and interest with the Irish, insomuch as many of them have not doubted [_i. e._ hesitated] to assume even Irish names and appellations: instances whereof are but too many even to this day: thus a Bermingham is called by them Mac Yoris, Fitz-Simmons, Mac Kuddery [_recte_ Mac-Ruddery], Wesley [_i. e._ Wellesley], Mac Falrene, &c., and from men thus metamorphosed what could be expected?”--_Collectanea_, vol. I. p. 105. On the other hand, the Irish families who lived within the English pale and in its vicinity gradually conformed to the English customs, and assumed English surnames; and their doing so was deemed to be of such political importance that it was thought worthy the consideration of parliament: accordingly it was enacted by the statute of 5 Edward IV (1465), that every Irishman dwelling within the English pale, then comprising the counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare, should take an English surname. This act is so curious as illustrating the history of Irish family names, that it demands insertion in this place.