their labour could be satisfactorily concluded, some destroying hand would come, and with the sword leave their works to posterity only as a tottering ruin, or the memorial of a bloody conflict. But, be this as it may, we can assert that the decorative arts, as applied to the beautifying of ecclesiastical buildings and sculpture in particular, were prosecuted with greater vigour and more ability in England, from the twelfth to the conclusion of the fifteenth century, than they were during the same period in Ireland. Doubtless, however, there was sufficient intercourse between the English and their turbulent Milesian neighbours to impart to Ireland the various fashions or styles which prevailed in England during that period, whether such fashions related to dress, manners, customs, weapons, or architecture with its attendant decorations. And thus, although the unsettled state of political affairs in Ireland effectually barred all advancement in the cultivation of taste and feeling for appropriate ornament as applied to religious edifices, there was sufficient general knowledge diffused among the people to give to the works of the native artist in that country a general similarity in style to such as may have been produced contemporaneously in England.
The Franciscan monastery at Cashel, on the site of which the remarkable effigies which have been described were found, was commonly called Hacket's Abbey, and strange as it may appear that the memorials of the invader and his wives or kinswomen should have been preserved in times when popular feeling was subject to no control, there can be little doubt that the knight whose portraiture has been brought before the notice of our readers, was either William Hacket, the founder, or one of his immediate descendants. The period to which, by comparison with monumental effigies in England, this figure may confidently be assigned, is the middle of the thirteenth century, and the singular effigies of ladies are doubtless of the same age. It may be observed that several writers in recent times have stated that cross-legged female effigies exist, an assertion which is grounded, perhaps, only on the observation of Mills to that effect, substantiated by no example or authority[1]. Wadding, who wrote early in the seventeenth century, declares that he had in vain sought to discover the period of the foundation of Hacket's Abbey; having only
- ↑ Hist. of the Crusades, vol. ii. p. 8, note.
