by the Irish parliament in 1538 and generally accepted by the chiefs; and orders were given, though not apparently carried out, for the translation of the English service-book into Irish. The Reformation, how ever, on its spiritual side was wholly foreign to the Irish character ; the people still clung to the old faith, and to the ministrations of the itinerant friars; and it is from the friars and their preaching that the Irish Catholic Church has received the national and popular character which distinguishes it at the present day. At the same time, it must not be supposed that the conduct of the Irish chiefs towards the English government was dictated by religious motives. Mary restored the Roman Catholic religion, but the chiefs rebelled against her just the same; and the names of Queen's County and Maryborough, King's County and Philipstown still remain to show how far English rule was advanced in her time. The Irish Land System. The system, however, of annexing the territories of the chiefs and organising them as English shires, brought the government face to face with a new and most serious difficulty. In the history of land-tenure, ownership of land by the nation, the tribe, the family or community, and the individual, mark four successive stages of civilisation. The English had reached the stage of individual ownership before they arrived in Britain; but the Celts were between the tribal and family stages, and their customs appeared, to the English of the sixteenth century, perfectly barbarous. The whole nation was divided into groups, each of whom acknowledged the authority of a chief, who held certain demesne lands in his own hands, and whose household was provided for by contributions due from all the inhabitants. Under him were secondary groups, called Septs, all the members of whom had one surname and had a particular chieftain or Tanist, who had likewise his demesnes and dues. At the death of a chief or chieftain, his land went as a whole to the next heir; but all other lands, held by the inferior inhabitants, were divided by gavelkind, in which all the children, legitimate or illegitimate, shared alike. The consequence was to make agriculture and progress almost impossible, for almost every acre of land hath a several owner, which termeth himself a lord, and his portion of land his country.' Moreover, the Irish regarded the lands of the chief or chieftain not as belonging to him, but as belonging to his followers collectively, and therefore looked upon the confiscation of the property of the chief as robbery of themselves. Confronted with this land-system, the English attempted to introduce the English system. They created the chiefs earls, and regarded the dues paid as rents. From this it followed that, when an Irish chief committed treason, his property was confiscated as in England, and probably redivided among English adventurers, without regard to the rights of the chieftains. Thus one rebellion led the way to another. Early in Elizabeth's reign, her authority was defied by Shan O'Neal, earl of Tyrone. Like the other Irish chieftains, Shan had made Shan The The an excellent impression at the English court, but immediately on his return he began disturbances; and he maintained his independence, more or less, till in 1586 he was assassinated in a fray. Troubles then broke out in the south-west, owing to a quarrel of the queen with the Ormonds and the Desmonds; but nothing very serious happened till 1579, when the Desmonds of Munster Desmonds. broke into rebellion, assisted by a Spanish force. Irish, however, again proved too weak to resist the English when fairly roused: the Desmonds were routed, and the Spanish and Italian soldiers, sent by the pope, were forced to surrender and then brutally massacred at Smerwick. The most formidable insurrection of all, however, broke out after the Armada. The defeat of the Desmonds was followed by a wholesale confiscation of their lands, which were divided out among the English colonists. Among others, the poet Spenser, who had acted as secretary to the lord-lieutenant, and whose View of the Present State of Ireland is a most valuable contribution to our knowledge of the time, received Kilcolman Castle; and another large share was given to Sir Walter Raleigh. Spenser went and resided on his estate, and Sir Walter Raleigh made a genuine effort to people his lands with English settlers ; but, in most cases, the adventurers did little or nothing to make good their hold on their grants. The result was to drive the Irish chieftains to despair. Accordingly, a most formidable insurrection broke out, in which Spenser barely escaped with his life; and the English colonists in Munster were practically swept away. This insurrection, however, though terrible in its immediate consequences, would have been short Hugh lived had not Hugh O'Neal, earl of Tyrone, who was a relative of Shan O'Neal, put himself at the head of the movement. Tyrone was probably the best general the Irish had yet had. He was a master of the art of irregular warfare, and knew exactly how to train his soldiers enough to stand up against regular troops without destroying their aptitude for the irregular forays to which they had been accustomed. He proved himself, therefore, a most formidable antagonist. Sir John Norris, one of the best English soldiers of the day, was worn out in pursuing him. His successor, Sir Bagnal. Henry Bagnal, was led into an ambush, by the Blackwater, and slain with most of his soldiers. In these circumstances, the council determined to enlist the services of the earl of Essex. Norris. Essex was, on the whole, the best man to send. He had had much experience in fighting, and was believed to be capable of great deeds. At the same time, the courtiers saw him depart with mixed feelings. He was hated by the Cecils, and by his personal rivals, Raleigh and Cobham, to whom his failure, even at the expense of the state, could not fail to be grateful. On the other hand, he received a letter of sound advice from Francis Bacon. Arrived in Ireland, Essex entirely for- Essex's got, or was unable to carry out, the policy he had advocated Expedition. in England. Instead of attacking Tyrone in his Ulster headquarters, he allowed himself to be beguiled into a ruinous campaign in the desolated regions of the south. Here, without any commensurate result, he lost half his forces, and, when he finally confronted Tyrone, found himself too weak to engage him with any prospect of success. In these circumstances, he entered into a treaty by which he agreed that some great lord should be sent as viceroy, and that only Irishmen should be appointed to offices. To such an arrangement Essex must have been perfectly aware that Elizabeth would never agree. His failure. For some time he was at a loss what to do. At one time he thought of bringing his army over to England and dictating his own terms; eventually he left it under the command of Lord Mountjoy, Return to and, without any leave of absence, returned to London. England. On his arrival, without even waiting to change his travel-stained clothes, he rushed into the queen's apartments, and claimed an audience. Elizabeth indignantly ordered him out; and, though she granted him a private interview, ordered his case to be investigated by the council. The members, however, being unaware of Essex's treasonable designs, merely ordered him to be confined to his house; and, after a short time, even this restriction was removed. Nevertheless, the earl was not permitted to appear at court; and, chafing at the triumph which his own folly had given to his enemies, he entered into a treasonable corre- His treason. spondence with the king of Scots; collected round him soldiers, and desperate men such as Catesby and others, who afterwards took part in the Gunpowder Plot. He had also behind him a number of noblemen, such as Lords Southampton and Monteagle; and, by an expression he had let fall, that, if he were in power, no one should suffer for his religious opinions, had secured some support from both Roman Catholics and Puritans. Such a combination was, obviously, most dangerous to the government, and Elizabeth and her ministers, though they did not know the full extent of Essex's schemes, were aware of their general import. Orders were, therefore, given for his arrest. Essex, however, cleverly evaded the officers, and, after an unsuccessful attempt to raise the Londoners, defended Essex House against the Essex's queen's troops. Such conduct was, obviously, intolerable. Death. His conviction for treason followed as a matter of course, and he was beheaded in 1601. His death left Cecil in secure possession of power, Parliament. The last parliamentary event of Elizabeth's reign was the question of monopolies. During the first thirty years of her reign only eight subsidies had been voted. This remarkable economy, which was of the greatest advantage to the country, was impossible after the Spanish war; and, during the last fifteen years, Elizabeth had had to raise fifteen subsidies and to sell crown lands to the value of more than two more. In spite of this she was in great difficulties for money. During her earlier years she had paid off the debts of her father and her brother and sister, but during the years of war she had great difficulty in providing both for the ordinary expenses of the country, and the extra charges entailed by the war and by her alliances with the Dutch and French. As a means of raising money, therefore, she had used largely her right of granting monopolies, for which an annual charge Monopolies. was made to the state. These created a good deal of discontent; and the parliament of 1601 having raised the question, the queen consented to a revision. On the whole, the relations between Elizabeth and her parliaments were extremely friendly, the only difficulty arising from the fact that the Commons wished to go farther than the queen; and though on several occasions Elizabeth arrested members for their conduct in the house, no serious exception seems to have been taken at the time. The reign of Elizabeth saw a most marked change in the economical condition of the country. The rise of sheep-farming, the disendowment Social of the guilds, and the dissolution of the monasteries had Changes. proved fatal to the old system of life, both in town and country. That system, which depended upon the organisation of the individual in some recognised community such as the manor or the guild, had been almost replaced by the new system, in which the relation between employer and employed is simply a matter of wages. The introduction of the new system was inevitable, but it brought with it its drawbacks. First, because it substituted for a fixed relation and a fixed remuneration a temporary connection and a fluctuating income; and secondly, because it brought with it the problem of the unemployed. These difficulties were met by statesmen by an attempt to fix wages by law, and by the provision of a regular system of Poor Law relief. The rate of wages was regulated by the Apprenticeship Act of 1564, generally known as the Fifth of Queen Elizabeth, Chapter 4. Its scope was twofold. First, it attempted to limit the number of skilled labourers by enacting that each artisan must have served a seven years' apprenticeship in the trade which he followed. Secondly, it empowered the magistrates at quarter sessions to fix the wages payable in their |