The whole of Elizabeth's Irish policy may be comprised under two headings: 1. Her policy toward the nobles, apparently one of compromise and toleration, but really one of destruction, and so rightly did they understand it that they rose and called in foreign aid to their assistance; 2. Her church policy, one of blood and total overthrow, which priests and people, now united forever in the same great cause, resisted from the outset, and finally defeated; and the decrees of high-treason, which were carried out with frightful barbarity, only served to confirm the Irish people in that unanimity which the wily dealings of Henry VIII. had originated. I. With the nobility Elizabeth hoped to succeed by flattery, cunning, deceit, finally by treachery, and sowing dissension among them; but all her efforts only served to knit them more firmly one to another, and to revive among them the true spirit of nationality and patriotism. She did not state to them that her great object was to destroy the Catholic Church; neverthless they should have felt and resented it from the beginning; above all, ought they to have given expression to the contempt they entertained for the bait held out to them that the "laws" would not be executed against them, but against Churchmen only. Had they been truly animated by the feelings which already possessed the hearts of the people, they would have scornfuly rejected the compromise proposed. But she appeared to allow them perfect freedom in religious matters; she subjected them to no oath, as in England; the new laws were a dead letter as far as regarded the native lords, who lived under other laws and remained silent, as with the lords of the Pale. Yet nothing was of such importance in her eyes as the enforcement of those decrees; consequently, she could only accomplish her designs by deceit. George Browne, the first Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, had predicted that the old Irish race and the Anglo-Irish chieftains would unite and combine with Continental powers in order to establish their independence. The whole policy of Elizabeth's reign would give us reason to believe that she rightly understood the deep remark of the worldly heretic. Hence, although (or, rather, because) the north, Ulster, was at that time the stronghold of Catholic feeling, and the O'Neills and O'Donnells its leaders, she flatters them, has them brought to her court, pardons several "rebellions" of Shane the Proud, and afterward loads with her favors the young Hugh of Tyrone, whom she kept at her own court. She would dazzle them by the splendor of that court, by the royal presents she so royally lavishes upon them, and by the prospect of greater favors still to come. Meanwhile on the south she turns a stern eye, and makes up her mind to destroy what is left of the Geraldine family. This was to be the beginning of the war of extermination, and the nobility which at the time was disunited became firmly consolidated shortly after.