well as theological heretic! and stigmatize all whose doctrines bore the very faintest resemblance to his by some easily understood badge, and you have to hand formidable weapons by which to crush him and his. The badge of course was "Lollard," which was used in precisely the same lax and comprehensive sense as Puritan, in the 17th century, to describe all whose seriousness might be taken as a reproach to themselves by the frivolous, or whose earnestness in behalf of social or religious reform appeared inconvenient to those, whose comfortable condition made the very thought of change highly unpalatable. Such strategy has proved successful, not once nor twice in the course of history, but it was especially likely to be successful in a nation long to be haunted by the horrid vision of those hungry thousands, which had entered the capital that summer's day and carried dismay into the heart at once of splendid courtier and sober merchant. It was in this way, then, that the finger on the clock of the nation's religious history was put back.

Wielif was, perhaps, a greater man than any of the English Reformers during the Sixteenth century; yet his work to a large extent failed. The account of this failure is certainly not to be found solely in the Rebellion of 1381. The alliance between Crown and Church during the Lancastrian era, the renewal of the Hundred Years War, the Thirty Years War of the Roses, and the actual as well as the pretended follies of the Lollards, all went to contribute to that seeming failure. Still the first serious blow dealt to the cause of ecclesiastical and religious Reform so powerfully advocated by Wiclif, was that dealt it by the violence of the Rebels and the panic it created. In justice to the Reformer it should be added that his very greatness must be regarded as another cause of the abortiveness of his doctrines. He was too far ahead of his generation; some among its nobler spirits might have sympathy with, few, if any, could understand him.

One of his most active patrons, until he opposed the Church in doctrine as well as on social and ecclesiastical, had been John of Gaunt. This support had proved of temporary value to him.

But it could never have proved of any substantial value. The mention of Gaunt's name suggests one (among other minor consequences) of the Rebellion with which this paper may conclude. Hatred against him found vent, it has been said, in the destruction of that beautiful palace of the Savoy. If he had ever entertained any hopes of succeeding or of supplanting his nephew, all such hopes were from this time put aside. His ambition was to take another direction; and judging by the failure of all his schemes, it was always far in excess of his ability. In Gascony, in Scotland, and in Spain he was to be, as he had been in England, unsuccessful. But we are only concerned to notice that the Revolt had, among other consequences, John of Gaunt's disappearance as the chief figure in the national history.

THE INVASION OF IRELAND.

BY W. F. CARTER, ESQ., B.A.

February 27th, 1883.

PART I.-THE AUTHORITIES.

GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS.

The only contemporary historian of the invasion of Ireland in the time of Henry the Second is Gerald de Barri, who was born in the year 1147, at the Castle of Manorbeer, in the county of Pembroke. To the fact of his being born in Wales or Cambria, he owes his Latin surname of Cambrensis, and also the epithet of "Silvester," i.e. "Savage," or "Man of the Woods," which for at least two centuries after the Norman Conquest, was commonly applied to the native Welsh. He was, as I shall show hereafter, related to the Fitz-Geralds and the Fitz-Henrys, who with his own family the de Barris, had taken a leading part under Earl Richard de Clare in the first invasion of Ireland in 1169. His uncle David Fitzgerald, Bishop of St. David's, had assisted with his wealth and influence that Dermot, king of Leinster, whose invitation first gave the English foothold in Ireland, and thus it will be seen that Giraldus had unusually good opportunities for acquiring a knowledge of his subject. His high birth, his literary powers, and his undeniable ability brought him into contact with the leading men of the English Court upon terms of equality; and he was thus able to speak of the great men of the time, their motives and characters, from personal observation; in short, to judge by his surroundings alone there could have been no more suitable historian of the Invasion of Ireland, than Gerald de Barri, and the independence of his nature is amply proved by his life, of

which a large part was spent in battling for the ecclesiastical independence of Wales against the King, the Pope, and the Welsh themselves. On the other hand, he combined in himself several qualities entirely opposed to the true historical genius; he was a man of violent likes and dislikes, and seems at least once or twice to have revenged himself upon a personal enemy by suppressing the full and fair account of his achievements; he was credulous not merely in respect of miracles and religious wonders, as became a pious ecclesiastic, but also in his acceptance of the thousand and one tales of Irish customs and Irish natural and unnatural curiosities with which his works are crowded * His credulity, however, has its limits; he seems to believe that St. Nannan banished fleas from a village (unnamed) in Connaught, and that St. Yvor expelled mures majores qui vulgariter "Rati" vocantur, "the larger mice commonly called rats," from Fernegin in Leinster; but on the other hand he considers it merely a flattering figment which ascribes to St. Patrick the expulsion of reptiles from Ireland, and thinks that their absence is caused by quodam naturali defectu, "some natural deficiency." He seems, however, to be perfectly serious in deciding that the Isle of Man belongs to England, because unlike Ireland it is infested by venomous reptiles. It is also significant of Giraldus' credulity that he quotes with all gravity the prophesies of Merlin Ambrosius, and Merlin of

* Some of these are of course unfit for repetition, but many are exceedingly ludicrous, and their absurdity is often heightened by the religious precepts they are used to enforce. Thus Giraldus tells us that the bodies of kingfishers when dead and placed in a dry place, do not putrefy, but give out a pleasant odour, and so it is with saintly men, whose lives are as it were odorous. Storks hybernate, he tells us, at the bottom of rivers, and so remind us of the resurrection of the just. A fish was found at Carlingford with three golden teeth; this Giraldus considers typifies the golden days of the English Conquest. He has himself seen men skilled in magic arts selling at the fairs, what appeared to be fat pigs but of a red colour, and really made out of any material at hand. These pigs, however, upon crossing water vanished away into their true substance, and however carefully they were looked after, only remained pigs for three days. Irish cocks crow differently from those of other nations The ravens of Glendalough keep a fast on St. Kevin's day. The teal dwelling round a Leinster lake so resent any insult offered to the church or a cleric, or to themselves, that they will fly off to a distant pool until satisfaction has been made, nor can they be boiled, nor preyed on by the kite or the fox

Celidon, informing his readers that he has been at considerable trouble in excising the additions of modern Welsh Bards. Giraldus seems to have accepted those that he considered genuine in perfect good faith, and no doubt his Welsh nationality prejudiced him in their favour*: it must, however, be acknowledged that he probably attempted to suppress some of these prophesies in later editions, and that he only published a few words of his third Book, which was intended to deal fully with them. But the chief characteristic of Giraldus, and one that could not fail to affect him as an historian, was his vanity, a vanity of such stupendous and appalling proportions, that it amounted almost to insanity. It is displayed with the most artless simplicity in almost every page of his autobiography and his letters, and it would be necessary to give a full history of his life if it were desirable to fully develop this side of his character. Excessively proud of his noble descent and quasi-royal relationships, he seems to have considered the Barris and the Fitz-Geralds as almost the sole conquerors of Ireland, and as surpassing in vigour of mind and body, the united prowess of all the other invaders; nor would it be doing him an injustice to say that he regarded himself as the flower of that splendid flock.t

This marvellous vanity and credulity then are the weak points of Giraldus Cambrensis, but I do not think that to any great extent they depreciate the general value of his history. It is easy enough to see when he is simply repeating some wondrous tale as

*Two of these prophesies of Merlin of Celidon may be mentioned, as they seem to relate to armorial bearings. One was that a white knight on a white horse bearing birds on his shield, shall be the first to invade Ulster," this is applied to John de Courci, who was remarkably fair, rode a white horse, bore Argent, three eagles displayed gules, and led the invaders of Ulster in 1177. The other to the effect that "a knight with a parti shield shall be the first to invade Ireland," is referred to Robert Fitz-Stephen, who bore Parti per pale Ermine and Gules a saltire counterchanged, and led the expedition of 1169.

A good example of Giraldus estimate of things nearly concerning himself, is to be found in his description of Manorbeer, his birth-place, of which he says, "As Demetia is the fairest of all the seven cantreds of Wales, and Pembroke the fairest province of Demetia, and this spot the fairest of all Pembroke, it follows that Maenor Pyrr is the most pleasant spot in Wales."