was depending upon sinewy, clean-limbed young
Irishmen to fight his battles in France and help him to win _Crecy_.
(Which they did.) These are some of the provisions of the statute:
Marriage between English and Irish is punishable by death in most
terrible form. It is high treason to give horses, goods, or weapons of
any sort to the Irish. War with the natives {209} is binding upon good
colonists. To speak the language of the country is a penal offence,
and the killing of an Irishman is not to be reckoned as a crime.

But in spite of the ferocity of her purpose, England grew lax. She had
great wars on her hands, and more important interests to look after.
Things were left to the Geraldines, and to the Irish Parliament, which
was controlled by the Lords of the Pale. Intermarriages, against which
horrible penalties had once been enforced, had become frequent, and
many dispossessed chiefs, notably the O'Neills, had recovered their own
lands. So, when Henry VII. came to the throne, although the Norman
banners had for three centuries floated over Ireland, the English
territory, "the Pale," was really reduced to a small area about Dublin.

Henry VII. determined to change all this. Sir Edward Poynings came
charged with a mission, and Parliament passed an Act called _Poynings
Act_, by which English laws were made operative in Ireland as in
England. When Henry VIII. succeeded his father, the astute Wolsey soon
doubted the fidelity of the Geraldines. Of what use {210} were the
Statutes of Kilkenny and the Poynings Act, when the ruling Anglo-Irish
house acted as if they did not exist! He planned their downfall. The
great Earl of Kildare was summoned to London, and six of the doomed
house were beheaded in the Tower. The Reformation had given a new
aspect to the troubles in Ireland. Henry's attack upon the Church drew
together the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish. The struggle had been
hitherto only one over territory, between these naturally hostile
classes; now they were drawn together by a common peril to their
Church, and when, in 1560, Queen Elizabeth had passed the famous Act of
Uniformity, making the Protestant liturgy compulsory, the exasperation
had reached an acute stage, and the sense of former wrongs was
intensified by this new oppression. Ireland was filled with hatred and
burning with desire for vengeance, and there was one proud family in
Ulster, the O'Neills, which was preparing to defy all England.