the courtier, aspiring to shine in the train of
Leicester before the eyes of the great queen,--found himself
transplanted into a wild and turbulent savagery, where the elements of
civil society hardly existed, and which had the fatal power of drawing
into its own evil and lawless ways the English who came into contact
with it. Ireland had the name and the framework of a Christian realm. It
had its hierarchy of officers in Church and State, its Parliament, its
representative of the Crown. It had its great earls and lords, with
noble and romantic titles, its courts and councils and administration;
the Queen's laws were there, and where they were acknowledged, which was
not, however, everywhere, the English speech was current. But underneath
this name and outside, all was coarse, and obstinately set against
civilized order. There was nothing but the wreck and clashing of
disintegrated customs, the lawlessness of fierce and ignorant
barbarians, whose own laws had been destroyed, and who would recognize
no other; the blood-feuds of rival septs; the ambitious and deadly
treacheries of rival nobles, oppressing all weaker than themselves, and
maintaining in waste and idleness their crowds of brutal retainers. In
one thing only was there agreement, though not even in this was there
union; and that was in deep, implacable hatred of their English masters.
And with these English masters, too, amid their own jealousies and
backbitings and mischief-making, their own bitter antipathies and
chronic despair, there was only one point of agreement, and that was
their deep scorn and loathing of the Irish.

This is Irish dealing with Irish, in Munster at this time:--

The Lord Roche kept a freeholder, who had eight plowlands,
prisoner, and hand-locked him till he had surrendered seven
plowlands and a half, on agreement to keep the remaining
plowland free; but when this was done, the Lord Roche extorted
as many exactions from that half-plowland, as from any other
half-plowland in his country. . . . And even the great men
were under the same oppression from the greater: for the Earl
of Desmond forcibly took away the Seneschal of Imokilly's corn
from his own land, though he was one of the most considerable
gentlemen in Munster.[62:3]

And this is English dealing with Irish:--

Mr. Henry Sheffield asks Lord Burghley's interest with Sir
George Carew, to be made his deputy at Leighli