means of reaching Dublin except through the county of Kildare, the home of their hereditary rivals and foes.
This is a general account of the situation of the various parties in Ireland at the beginning of the sixteenth century. I have spoken only of the leading families; and I have spoken of them as if they possessed some feudal supremacy—yet even this slight thread of order was in many cases without real consistency, and was recognized only when fear, or passion, or interest, prompted. 'There be sixty counties, called regions, in Ireland,' says the report of 1515, 'inhabited with the King's Irish enemies, some regions as big as a shire, some more, some less, where reigneth more than sixty chief captains, whereof some calleth themselves kings, some king's peers in their language, some princes, some dukes, that liveth only by the sword, and obeyeth to no other temporal person save only to himself that is strong. And every of the said captains maketh war and peace for himself, and holdeth by the sword, and hath imperial jurisdiction, and obeyeth no other person, English or Irish, except only to such persons as may subdue him by the sword.… Also, in every of the said regions, there be divers petty captains, and every of them maketh war and peace for himself, without license of his chief captain.… And there be more than thirty of the English noble folk that followeth this same Irish order, and keepeth the same rule.'[1] Every man, in short, who could raise himself to that dishon-
- ↑ State Papers, vol. ii. pp. 1, 5, 6.
