cotland, Irish Protestantism
would probably have died out. Yet it is but fair to state, and to bear
in mind, that there was no religious persecution as such in Ireland
during the Tudor period. Elizabeth's policy was, without making any
actual promise of freedom of conscience, to leave the question of
religious opinions alone as far as possible. The real difficulty came
from the political nature of the Church of Rome; when the Pope deposed
Elizabeth and gave Ireland to Philip of Spain every Irish Roman
Catholic had either to be false to his religion or to become a
traitor--_in esse_ or _in posse_--to the queen.

When Henry had resolved to do his utmost to bring Ireland to a state
of civilization, there were not wanting advisers who urged upon him
that his only safe course was absolutely to destroy the whole native
population by sword and famine and re-people the vacant lands by
immigrants from England. Such a course would have been quite in
accordance with the ideas of the time. Not thirty years previously,
the combined forces of Church and State had pursued the heretic
population of the Loise into the mountain fastnesses to which they had
fled, and had piled logs of wood at the mouths of the caves in which
they had taken refuge, and set them on fire. Then, when all the
unhappy people--men, women and children, numbering some thousands
in all--had perished, their lands were distributed amongst strangers
brought in from a distance to occupy them. And at a later date--in the
middle of the sixteenth century--the native inhabitants of the Canary
Islands were exterminated by the Spanish Inquisition, and their lands
taken by the invading race. But to Henry it appeared that there was
one milder course that might still be possible. Might not the native
chiefs and the degenerate Normans who had shown that their only idea
of independency was anarchy yet be brought together as nobles under
a strong central government with a Parliament representing not merely
the Pale, but all Ireland? Might not the mass of the people, whose
native customs had been well nigh crushed out by civil wars,
be persuaded to _adopt_ the law of England? This was the policy
deliberately adopted by Henry and acted on by him during his life.
It is easy for writers living in modern times to sneer at some of the
details of his scheme; but it is not so easy for them to point out
what other course would have been better; or indeed, whether any other
course short of