ajority from that moment
ceased to do so. Save within the "five obedient shires" which came to be
known as the English Pale, "the king's writ no longer ran." The native
Irish swarmed back from the mountains and forests, and repossessed
themselves of the lands from which they had been driven. No serious
attempts were made to re-establish the authority of the law over
three-fourths of the island. Within a century and a half of the
so-called conquest, save within one small and continually narrowing
area, Ireland had ceased even nominally to belong to England.

[Illustration: TRIM CASTLE ON THE BOYNE.]

XVI.

THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY,

It was not to be expected, however, that the larger country would for
very shame let her possessions thus slip from her grasp without an
effort to retain them, certainly not when a ruler of the calibre of an
Edward III. came to the helm. Had his energies been able to concentrate
themselves upon Ireland the stream which was setting dead against
loyalty might even then have been turned back. The royal interest would
have risen to the top of faction, as it did in England, and would have
curbed the growing and dangerous power of the barons. That magic which
surrounds the word king might--who can say that it would not?--have
awakened a sentiment at once of patriotism and loyalty.

Chimerical as it may sound even to suppose such a thing, there seems no
valid reason why it might not have been. No people admittedly are more
intensely loyal by nature than the native Irish. By their failings no
less than their virtues they are extraordinarily susceptible to a
personal influence, and that devotion which they so often showed towards
their own chiefs might with very little trouble have been awakened in
favour of a king. It is one of the most deplorable of the many
deplorable facts which stud the history of Ireland that no opening for
the growth of such sentiment was ever once presented--certainly not in
such a form that it would have been humanly possible for it to
be embraced.

Edward III. had now his chance. Unfortunately he was too busy to avail
himself of it. He had too many irons in the fire to trouble himself much
about Ireland. If it furnished him with a supply of fighting
men--clean-limbed, sinewy fellows who could run all day without a sign
of fatigue, live on a handful of meal, and for a lodging feel luxurious
with an armful of hay and the sheltered side of a stone--it was pretty
much