purposed to destroy the said lieges,
and to conquer the land, the petitioners pray that remedy thereof
be made."[178]

[Footnote 178: See Sir H. Ellis, Orig. Let. xix.]

When Henry of Monmouth succeeded to the throne, Ireland was as
wild[179] in its country, and as rude in its inhabitants, as it was in
the reign of Henry II. The English pale (as it has been correctly
said) was little more than a garrison of territory; and it was
absolutely necessary either for the English inhabitants to leave their
possessions and abandon Ireland altogether, or for the English
government to keep the aboriginal Irish in check with a strong hand,
and compel them by military force to abstain from outrage. What would
have been at the present day the state of Ireland, had Henry directed
his concentrated energies to subdue the island, and then to (p. 236)
civilize and improve it, (measures by no means improbable had not the
conquest of France occupied him instead,) it would be profitless to
speculate. Even with his thoughts distracted by his foreign
expeditions, or rather, perhaps, almost absorbed by them, and whilst
he had but a very scanty contingent of officers and men at his
disposal for home-service, we have evidence that Ireland had not been
in so peaceable a condition for very many years as it had become under
his government. Whilst pursuing his victories on the Continent, he
laboured (and his labours were in an astonishing degree successful) to
provide for the effective administration of his own dominions with a
view to peace and justice.

[Footnote 179: Moryson, in his Travels, book iv. c.
3, gives a most extraordinary and disgusting
account of the habits of the Irish. The story of a
Bohemian Baron, who visited Morane, one of the
native princes, represents the Irish from the
highest to the lowest to have continued in the most
degraded state of barbarism. In their food, their
dwellings, their clothing, (those who had any to
wear,) and their general habits, if the accounts in
Moryson are not exaggerated, the Irish were not
removed many degrees from the wildest savages on
earth.]

A memorial forwarded this year to Henry, probably in consequence of
certain complaints of mal