Chapter XV

In less than three weeks after the return of Lord Roberts, and the agitating interview for which she had been impatiently waiting, England's beloved Queen succumbed to a brief illness, and died January 22, 1901.

Her son Albert Edward was immediately proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland.

The change of Sovereigns has not materially altered the course of events in the Empire. The King, with much dignity and seriousness, assumed the responsibilities of his great inheritance, and England seems to be in safekeeping. The terms finally agreed upon at the Peace Conference, in May, 1902, bear the signature of Edward Rex, instead of Victoria Regina—a signature that peace-loving Sovereign would so gladly have affixed.

In the year 1904 a British military force entered the hitherto sacred domain of Tibet with the avowed purpose of obtaining redress from Tibetan authorities for having violated a commercial agreement made between China and British India in 1893; which convention was binding upon Tibet as a vassal State to China. In addition to this, a letter from the Viceroy of India to the Grand Lama, had been returned unopened, which, it was claimed, was an insult to the King he represents.

The time selected for this hostile demonstration, when the Russo-Japanese War fully engaged the attention of the nations chiefly interested, was, to say the least, significant; and some were so unkind as to insinuate that the recently discovered mineral wealth of this lofty plateau—"this Roof of the World"—was, like that of the Transvaal in South Africa, a factor in this sudden romantic adventure.

Nature has guarded well this home of mystery; a vast plateau, from 10,000 to 15,000 feet above the sea-level is held aloft upon the giant shoulders of the Himalaya, surrounded by deep valleys filled in with the detritus of an older world. This inaccessible spot is the home of the Grand Lama, the earthly representative of Buddha, and Lhassa is the Holy City where this sacred being resides, a city never profaned by infidel feet until the morning of August 4, 1904, when it fell, and was desecrated by the presence of red-coated soldiers, and the blare of military bands, and still worse the plundering of treasure-houses and monasteries.

It was a rude awakening from the slumber of centuries! The Western mind can scarcely realize how seriously this has wounded the sensibilities of millions of people throughout the East; and the question arises whether England may not some day have to pay more dearly than now appears for the concessions she has obtained.

The treaty in its early form throws light upon the results expected when the expedition was planned. It bound the Tibetan authorities to establish British markets at certain designated points; and stipulated that, without the consent of Great Britain, no Tibetan territory could be leased to any foreign power. Of course many people could see in this the ultimate purpose of a British occupation of Tibet, and an open way to the Yangtse Valley!

But with the Russo-Japanese War over, and Russia free to exert her control over China, a stand was taken by the Chinese Government which has resulted in modifying the terms of the treaty, which has recently been signed at Pekin, by which Great Britain affirms that she does not seek for herself any privileges which are denied to any other state or the subjects thereof.

Two very important measures have been under consideration during the new reign; one of these seeming to have afforded a solution for the Land-problem in Ireland, which has for so long been the nightmare of British politics. Further details of this will be found in the "History of Ireland," separately treated in this volume.

The other measure deals with the question of Education, and is an attempt to solve to the satisfaction of Nonconformists, Catholics, Church-of-England people, and people of no church at all, whether there shall be any religious instruction in the schools for which all are taxed, and if so what shall be its nature and restrictions.

The tendency since 1870 has been steadily toward the method adopted by the United States, i.e., a severance of the civil community from all responsibility for religious teaching. And such is the tendency of the Bill now before the House of Lords. But it is believed that that conservative body will hesitate long before giving up such a cherished and time-encrusted principle as is involved.

So many Parliamentary reforms have been accomplished since the time they commenced in 1832, the time seems not far distant when there will be little more for Liberals to urge, or for Conservatives and the House of Lords to obstruct. Monarchy is absolutely shorn of its dangers. The House of Commons, which is the actual ruling power of the Kingdom, is only the expression of the popular will.

We are accustomed to regard American freedom as the one supreme type. But it is not. The popular will in England reaches the springs of Government more freely, more swiftly, and more imperiously, than it does in Republican America. It comes as a stern mandate, which must be obeyed on the instant. The King of England has less power than the President of the United States. The President can form a definite policy, select his own Ministry to carry it out, and to some extent have his own way for four years, whether the people like it or not. The King cannot do this for a day. His Ministry cannot stand an hour, with a policy disapproved by the Commons. Not since Anne has a sovereign refused signature to an Act of Parliament. The Georges, and William IV., continued to exercise the power of dismissing Ministers at their pleasure. But since Victoria, an unwritten law forbids it, and with this vanishes the last remnant of a personal Government. The end long sought is attained.

The history of no other people affords such an illustration of a steadily progressive national development from seed to blossom, compelled by one persistent force. Freedom in England has not been wrought by cataclysm as in France, but has unfolded like a plant from a life within; impeded and arrested sometimes, but patiently biding its time, and then steadily and irresistibly pressing outward; one leaf after another freeing itself from the detaining force. Only a few more remain to be unclosed, and we shall behold the consummate flower of fourteen centuries;—centuries in which the most practical nation in the world has steadily pursued an ideal—the ideal of individual freedom subordinated only to the good of the whole!

A SHORT HISTORY OF IRELAND.

The history of prehistoric Ireland as told in ancient chronicles, easily proves the Irish to be the oldest nation in Europe, mingling their story with those not alone of Egypt, Troy, Greece, and Rome, but with that of Noah and the antediluvian world. Who was the Lady Cæsair, who fled with her household to Ireland from the coming deluge after being refused shelter by Noah? and who Nemehd, the next colonist from the East, who heads the royal procession of one hundred and eighteen kings? and who, above all, is Milesius, who comes fresh from the lingual disaster at Shinar, the divinely appointed ruler, bringing with him his Egyptian wife Scota (Pharaoh's daughter) and her son Gael? and who that other son Heber, whose name was given to the original lingua humana (the Hebrew), in honor of his efforts to prevent the blasphemous building of Babel? For what do these shadowy figures stand, looming out of formless mist and chaos, and bestowing their names as imperishable memorials?—Scotia, Scots, Gaelic,—the word Gaelic in its true significance including Ireland and Scotland. Even the name Fenian takes on a venerable dignity when we learn that Fenius, the Scythian King, and father of Milesius, established the first university—a sort of school of languages—for the study of the seventy-two new varieties of human speech, appointing seventy-two wise men to master this new and troublesome branch of human knowledge! We are told that Heber and Heremon, the sons of Milesius, finally divided the island between them, and then, after the fashion of Romulus, Heber drove the factious Heremon over the sea into the land of the Picts, and reigned alone over the Scots in Ireland.

The sober truth seems to be that Ireland, at a very early period, was known to the Greeks as Ierne (from which comes Erin), and later to the Romans as Hibernia. At a very remote time it seems to have been colonized by Greek and other Eastern peoples, who left a deep impress upon the Celtic race already inhabiting the island; but an impress upon the mind, not the life, of the Celts, for no vestige of Greek or other civilization, except in language and in ideals, has ever been found in Ireland. The only archæological remains are cromlechs, which tell of a Druidical worship, and the round towers, belonging to a much later period, whose purpose is only conjectured.

Ireland's Aryan parentage is plainly indicated in its primitive social organization and system of laws. The family was the social unit, and the clan or sept was only a larger family. Pre-Christian Ireland was divided into five septs: Munster, Connaught, Ulster, Leinster, and Meath. Each of these tribal divisions was governed by a chief or king, who was the head of the clan (or family). Among these, the chief-king, or Ard Reagh, resided at Tara in Meath, and received allegiance from the other four, with no jurisdiction, however, over the internal affairs of the other kingdoms. There was a perpetual strife between the clans. Outside of one's own tribal limits was the enemy's country. The business of life was marauding and plundering, and the greatest hero was he who could accomplish these things by deeds of the greatest daring.

All alike lived under a simple code of laws administered by a hereditary class of jurists called Brehons. All offences were punishable by a system of fines called erics. The land was owned by the clan. Primogeniture was unknown, and the succession to the office of chief was determined by the clan, which had power to select any one within the family lines as Tanist or successor. This in "Brehon Law" is known as the "law of Tanistry," and was closely interwoven with the later history of Ireland. But the class more exalted than kings or brehons was the Bards. These were inspired singers, before whom Brehons quailed and kings meekly bowed their heads.

During the Roman occupation of Britain in which that country was Christianized, pagan Ireland heard nothing of the new evangel almost at her door. But in 432, after Britain had relapsed into paganism, St. Patrick came into the darkened isle. If ever Pentecostal fires descended upon a nation it was in those sixty years during which one saintly man transformed a people from brutish paganism to Christianity, and converted Ireland into the torch-bearer and nourisher of intellectual and spiritual life, so that as the gothic night was settling upon Europe, the centre of illumination seemed to be passing from Rome to Ireland. Their missionaries were in Britain, Germany, Gaul; and students from Charlemagne's dominions, and the sons of kings from other lands, flocked to those stone monasteries, the remains of which are still to be seen upon the Irish coast, and which were then the acknowledged centres of learning in Europe. It was not until late in the ninth century that Ireland played a truly great part in European history. Rome became jealous of these fiery Christians; they had never worn her yoke, and concerned themselves little about the Pope. They had their own views about the shape of the tonsure, and also their own time for celebrating Easter, which was heretical and contumacious, and there began a struggle between Roman and Western Christianity. The passion for art and letters which accompanied this spiritual birth makes this, indeed, a Golden Age. But the painting of missals, and study of Greek poetry and philosophy, brought no change in the life of the people. It was for the learned, and a subject for just pride in retrospect. But the Christianized septs fought each other as before, and life was no less wild and disordered than it had always been.

In the eighth century the first viking appeared. It was then that a master-spirit arose, a man of the clan of O'Brien—Brian Boru. He drove out the Danes, usurped the place of Chief-King, and reigned in the Halls of Tara for a few years, then left his land to lapse once more into a chaos of fighting clans. But it was Dermot, the King of Leinster, whose fatal quarrel led to the subjugation of the land to England. The Irish epic, like that of Troy, has its Paris and Helen. If that fierce old man had not fallen in love with the wife of the Lord of Brefny and carried her away, there might have been a different story to tell. The injured husband made war upon him, in which the Chief-King took part, and so hot was it made for the wife-stealer, that he offered to place Leinster at the feet of Henry II. in return for assistance. A party of adventurous barons, led by Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke, rushed to Dermot's rescue, defeated the Chief-King, drove the Danes out of Dublin, which they had founded, and took possession of that city themselves. Henry II. followed up the unauthorized raid of his barons with a well-equipped army, which he himself led, landing upon the Irish coast in 1171.

The conquest was soon complete, and Henry proceeded to organize his new territory, dividing it into counties, and setting up law-courts at Dublin, which was chosen as the Seat of his Lord-Deputy. The system of English law was established for the use of the Norman barons and English settlers, the natives being allowed to live under their old system of Brehon laws. Henry gave huge grants of land with feudal rights to his barons, then returned to his own troubled kingdom, leaving them to establish their claims and settle accounts with the Irish chieftains as best they could. The sword was the argument used on both sides, and a conflict between the brehon and feudal systems had commenced which still continues in Ireland. If Henry had expected to convert Irishmen into Englishmen, he had miscalculated; it was the reverse which happened—the Norman-English were slowly but surely converted into Irishmen, and two elements were thereafter side by side, the Old Irish and the Anglo-Irish, who, however antagonistic, had always a certain community of interest which drew them together in great emergencies.

It is an easy task to describe a storm which has one centre. But how is one to describe the confused play of forces in a cyclone which has centres within centres? Irish chieftains at war with Irish chieftains, jealous Norman barons with Norman barons, all at the same time in deadly struggle with O'Neills, O'Connells, and O'Briens, who would never cease to fight for the territory which had been torn from them; and yet each and all of these ready in a desperate crisis to combine for the preservation of Ireland. In this chaos the territorial barons were the framework of the structure. The grants bestowed by Henry II. had created, in fact, a group of small principalities. These were called Palatinates, and the power of the Lords Palatine was almost without limit. Each was a king in his own little kingdom—could make war upon his neighbors, and recruit his army from his own vassals. It was the Geraldines who played the most historic part among these Palatines, the houses of Kildare and Desmond both being branches of this famous Norman family, which was always in high favor with the English sovereign, and always at war with the rival house of Ormond, the next most powerful Anglo-Norman family, descended from Thomas à Becket. These barons, or "Lords of the Pale," were, of course, supposed to be the intermediaries for the King's authority. But the Geraldines seem to have found plenty of time to build up their own fortunes, and as peace with their neighbors was sometimes more conducive to that pursuit, alliances with native chiefs and marriages with their daughters had in time made of them pretty good Irishmen.

But our main purpose is not to follow the fortunes of these picturesque and romantic robbers who considered all Ireland their legitimate prey, but rather those of the hapless native population, dispossessed of their homes, hiding in forests and morasses, and whom it was the policy of the English Government to efface in their own country. These pages will tell of many efforts to compel loyalty, but not one effort to win the loyalty of the Irish people is recorded in history! No race in the world is more susceptible to kindness and more easily reached by personal influences, and there are none of whom a passionate loyalty is more characteristic. What might have been the effect of a policy of kindness instead of exasperation, we can only guess. But we can all see plainly enough the disastrous results which have come from pouring vitriol upon open wounds, and from treating a nation as if they were not only intruders but outlaws in their own land.

Listen to the Statutes of Kilkenny, passed by an obedient Parliament at a time when Edward III. was depending upon sinewy, clean-limbed young Irishmen to fight his battles in France and help him to win Crécy. (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 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 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. They scornfully threw away the title "Earl of Tyrone," bestowed upon the head of their house by Henry VIII,, and declared that by virtue of the old Irish law of Tanistry, Shane O'Neill was King of Ulster! It was a test case of the validity of Irish or English laws. "Shane the Proud," the King of Ulster, at the invitation of Elizabeth, appeared with his wild followers at her Court, wearing their saffron shirts and battle-axes. The tactful Queen patched up a peace with her rival, and then made sure that his head should in a few weeks adorn the walls of Dublin Castle. His forfeited kingdom was thickly planted with English and Scotch settlers, who, when they tried to settle, were usually killed by the O'Neills. The only thing to be done was to exterminate this troublesome tribe. This grew into the larger purpose of extirpating the whole of the obnoxious native population. The Geraldines were not all dead, and this atrocious plan led to the famous Geraldine League, and that to the Desmond Rebellion. The league which was to be the avenger of centuries of wrong, was a Catholic one. The Earl of Desmond had long been in communication with Rome and with Spain, enlisting their sympathies for their co-religionists in Ireland. A recent event helped to steel the hearts of the natives against pity should they succeed. A rising in Connaught had, at the suggestion of Sir Francis Crosby, been put down in the following way. The chiefs and their kinsmen, four hundred in number, were invited to a banquet in the fort of Mullaghmast. But one man escaped alive from that feast of death! One hundred and eighty from the clan of O'Moore alone were slaughtered. It was "Rory O'Moore" who did not attend the banquet, who kept alive the memory of the awful event for many a year by his battle-cry, "Remember Mullaghmast!" Now the long-impending battle was on, with a Geraldine for a standard-bearer. But it was in vain. Another Earl of Kildare perished in the Tower, and another Desmond head was sent there as a warning against disloyalty! Those who escaped the slaughter fell by the executioner, and the remnant, hiding from both, perished by famine. But Munster was "pacified." The enormous Desmond estate, a hundred miles in territory, was confiscated and planted with settlers who would undertake the doubtful task of settling.

The smothered fires next broke out in Ulster—the brilliant Earl of Tyrone headed the rebellion bearing his name, with Spain as an ally. The Queen sent the Earl of Essex to crush Tyrone. His failure to crush or even to check the great leader, and his extraordinary conduct in consenting to an armistice at the moment when he might have compelled a surrender, brought such a reprimand from the furious Queen that he rushed back to England, and to his death. Another and more successful leader came—Mountjoy. The rebellion was put down, its leader exiled, and his estate, comprising six entire counties, was confiscated, planted with Scotch settlers, and Ulster, too, was "pacified."

The reign of Charles I. revived hope in Ireland. He wanted money, and when Strafford came bearing profuse promises of religious and civil liberty, and the righting of wrongs, a grateful Parliament at once voted the £100,000 demanded for the immediate use of the Crown, also 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse for his use in the impending revolution, which was soon precipitated by the attempt of Charles and Laud to force the liturgy of the Established Church upon the people in Scotland. Between the Scotch Presbyterians and the Irish Catholics there was the bitterest hatred engendered during the long strife between the natives and the Scotch settlers. So the King's cause was Ireland's cause, his enemies were her enemies, and his triumph would also be hers. The day of liberation seemed at hand. The Lords of the Pale were in constant communication with the King and ready to co-operate with him in his designs upon Scotland. Such was the situation when Charles, under the pressure of his need of money, summoned the Parliament (1641)—the famous Long Parliament—which was destined to sit for twenty eventful years.

Well would it be for Ireland if it could blot out the memory of that year (1641) and the horrid event it recalls. The story briefly told is that a plot, having for its end a general forcible exodus of the hated settlers, was discovered and defeated, when a disappointed and infuriated horde of armed men spent their rage upon a community of Scotch settlers in Armagh and Tyrone, whom they massacred with horrible barbarities.

There is no reason to believe this deed was premeditated; but it occurred, and was atrocious in details and appalling in magnitude. There can be no justification for massacre at any time; but if there were no background of cruelty for this particular one, it would stand out blacker even than it does upon the pages of history. There were many massacres behind it—massacres committed not to avenge wrongs, but to accomplish them! The massacre of Protestants by Irish Catholics is in itself no more hideous than the massacre of Irish Catholics by Protestants. And was it strange that in their first chance at retaliation, this half-civilized people treated their oppressors as their oppressors had many, many times treated them? Could anything else have been expected? especially when we learn that the Scotch Presbyterians in Tyrone and Armagh immediately retaliated by murdering thirty Irish Catholic families who were in no way implicated in the horror!

Strafford's head had fallen in the first days of the Long Parliament; then Archbishop Laud met the same fate, and finally the execution of Charles I. at Whitehall, in 1649, put an end to the dreams of liberation. Almost the first thing to occupy the attention of Cromwell was the settling of accounts with the Catholic rebels in Ireland, who had for years been intriguing with the traitor King and were even now plotting with the Pope's nuncio, Rinucini, for the return of the exiled Prince Charles.

It required six years and 600,000 lives for Cromwell to inflict proper punishment upon Ireland for these offences and the massacre of 1641; or rather, to prepare for the punishment which was now to begin, and for which we shall search history in vain for a parallel! The heroic Cromwellian scheme—which was carried out to the letter—was this: The entire native population were, before May 1, 1654, to depart in a body for Connaught, there to inhabit a small reservation in a desolate tract between the Shannon and the sea, of which it was said by one of the commissioners engaged in this business, "there was not wood enough to burn, water enough to drown, nor earth enough to bury a man." They must not go within two miles of the river, nor four miles of the sea, a cordon of soldiers being permanently stationed with orders to shoot anyone who overstepped such limits. Any Irish who after the date named were found east of the appointed line were to suffer death. Resistance was hopeless. We hear of wild pleas for time, for a brief delay to collect a few comforts, and make some provision for food and shelter. But at the beating of the drum and blast of the trumpet, and urged on by bayonets, the tide of wretched humanity flowed into Connaught, delicately nurtured ladies and children, the infirm, the sick, the high and the low, peer and peasant, sharing alike the vast sentence of banishment and starvation. The fate of others was even worse, many thousands, ladies, children, people of all ranks, had for various reasons been left behind. Wholesale executions of so great a number of helpless beings were impossible, so they were sold in batches and shipped, most of them to the West Indies and to the newly acquired island of Jamaica, to be heard of never more; while of the sturdier remnant left, a few fled into exile in other lands, and the rest to the woods, there to lead lives of wild brigandage, hiding like wolves in caves and clefts of rocks, with a price upon their heads!

Of the two crimes, the Cromwellian settlement and the massacre of 1641, it seems to the writer of this that Cromwell's is the heavier burden for the conscience of a nation to carry! Who can wonder that the Irish did not love England, and that the task of governing a people so estranged has been a difficult one for English statesmanship ever since?

But the extinction of a nation requires time, even when accomplished by measures so admirable as those employed in the Cromwellian settlement. In 1660 Charles II. was on his father's throne, and we hear of hopes revived, and the expectation that the awful suffering endured for the father would be rewarded by his son. The land of the exiles in Connaught had been bestowed by Cromwell upon his followers. But quick to discern the turn in the tide, these men had helped to bring the exiled Prince Charles back to his throne. They expected reward, not punishment! Like many another successful candidate, Charles was embarrassed by obligations to his friends; besides, he must not offend the anti-Catholic sentiment in England, which since the massacre of 1641 had become a passion. The matter of the land was finally adjudicated; such Irish as could clear themselves of complicity with the Papal Nuncio and of certain other serious offences, of which almost all were guilty, might have their possessions restored to them. So a small portion of the land came back to its owners, and the Duke of Ormond, a stanch Protestant, was created Viceroy.

Although nominally a Protestant, to the pleasure-loving Charles the religion of his kingdom was the very smallest concern. So, more from indifference than indulgence, things became easier for the Irish Catholics, and exiles began to return. The Protestants, both English and Irish, were alarmed. With the massacre ever before them, they believed the only safety for Protestants was in keeping the Irish papists in a condition of absolute helplessness. There was a smouldering mass of apprehension which needed only a spark to convert it into a blaze. The murder of Sir Edward Bery Godfrey, a magistrate, afforded this spark. Titus Gates, the most worthless scoundrel in all England, had recently made a sworn statement before this gentleman to the effect that a plot existed for the murder of the King in order to place his Catholic brother on the throne, to be followed by a general massacre of Protestants, the burning of London, and an invasion of Ireland by the French. When Sir Edward was found dead upon a hill-side, men's minds leaped to the conclusion that the carnival of blood had begun. An insane panic set in. Nothing short of death would satisfy the popular frenzy. The Roman Catholic Archbishop, Dr. Plunkett, a man revered and beloved even by Protestants, was dragged to London, and for complicity in a French plot which never existed, and for aiding a French invasion which had never been contemplated, was hanged, drawn, and quartered. Innocent victims were torn from their homes, fifteen sent to the gallows, and 2,000 languished in prisons, while a suite of apartments at Whitehall and £600 a year was bestowed upon Gates, who was greeted as the saviour of his country! In two years more Gates was driven from his apartment at Whitehall for calling the heir to the throne a traitor, was found guilty of perjury, and sentenced to be pilloried, flogged, and imprisoned for life. And so ended the famous "Popish Plot" of 1678.

In 1685 Charles II. died, and was succeeded by his brother, James II. It was precisely because this ignominious reign was so disastrous to England, that it was a period of brief triumph for Ireland. That country was the corner-stone for the political structure which James had long contemplated. It was the stronghold for the Catholicism which he intended should become the religion of his kingdom. The Duke of Ormond was deposed, and a Catholic filled the office of Viceroy in Ireland. At last their turn had come, and no time was lost. An Irish Parliament was summoned, in which there were just six Protestants. All the things of which they had dreamed for years were accomplished. The Poynings Act was repealed. Irish disabilities were removed. The Irish proprietors dispossessed by the Act of Settlement had their lands restored to them. All Protestants, under terrible penalties, were ordered to give up their arms before a certain day. 'Men' only recently with a price upon their heads were now officers in the King's service, and were quartering their soldiers upon the estates of the Protestants. There was a general exodus of the Protestants, some fleeing to England and others into the North, where they finally entrenched themselves in the cities of Enniskillen and Londonderry, winning for that last-named city imperishable fame by their heroic defence during a siege which lasted one hundred and five days.

In the meantime it had become evident in England that the safety of the kingdom demanded the expulsion of James. His son-in-law, William of Orange, accepted an invitation to come and share the English throne with his wife Mary. The fugitive King found a refuge with his friend and co-conspirator, Louis XIV., and from France continued to direct the revolutionary movements in Ireland, which he intended to use as a stepping-stone to his kingdom.

But for Catholic Ireland all these over-turnings meant only a realization of the long-prayed-for event, a separation from England, a kingdom of their own, with the Catholic James to reign over them. When he arrived with his fleet and his French officers and munitions of war, provided by Louis XIV., he was embraced with tears of rapturous joy. Their "Deliverer" had come! He passed under triumphal arches and over flower-strewn roads on his way to Dublin Castle. But almost before these flowers had faded, James had met the army of William, the "Battle of the Boyne" had been fought and lost (1690), and as fast as the winds would carry him he had fled back to France.

As the city of Londonderry had been the last refuge for the Protestants in the North, it was in the city of Limerick that the Irish Catholics made their last stand in the South. And the two names stand for companion acts of valor and heroism. Saarsfield's magnificent defence of the latter city after the flight of the King and during the terrible siege by William's army under Ginkel, is the one luminous spot in the whole campaign of disaster and defeat. With the surrender of Limerick the end had come. Their "Deliverer" was again a fugitive in France, and Ireland was face to face with an austere Protestant King, once more to be called to account and to receive punishment for her crimes.

By the famous Articles of Limerick the terms of the surrender, wrung by Saarsfield's valor from the English commander, were more favorable than could have been expected. These were a full pardon, and a restoration of the rights enjoyed by the Catholics under Charles II. The army, with its officers, was to go into exile, and they might choose either the service of William in England, or enroll themselves in the service of France, Spain, or other European countries. The latter was the choice of all except a very few; and when the heart-rending separation was over, wives and mothers clinging in despair to the retreating vessels, the last act in the Great Rebellion of 1690 was finished.

Of course the Poynings law was restored, the recent Acts repealed, and a new period had commenced for Ireland; a period of quiet, but a quiet not unlike that of the graveyard, the sort of quiet which makes the wounded and exhausted animal cease to struggle with his captors. For a whole century we are to hear of no more revolts, risings, or rebellions. There was nothing left to revolt. Nothing left to rise! The bone and sinew of the nation had gone to fight under strange banners upon foreign battle-fields, so there was left a nation of non-combatants, with spirit broken and hope extinguished, and grown so pathetically patient, that we hear not a single remonstrance as William's cold-blooded decrees, known as the "Penal Code," are placed in operation. These enactments were not blood-thirsty, not sanguinary, like those of former reigns, but just a deliberate process apparently designed to convert the Irish into a nation of outcasts, by destroying every germ of ambition and drying up every spring which is the source of self-respecting manhood.

Here are a few of the provisions of the famous, or infamous, code: No Papist could acquire or dispose of property; nor could he own a horse of the value of more than £5; and any Protestant offering that sum for a horse he must accept it. He might not practise any learned profession, nor teach a school, nor send his children to school at home or abroad. Every barrister, clerk, and attorney must take a solemn oath not for any purpose to employ persons belonging to that religious faith. The discovery of any weapon rendered its Catholic owner liable to fines, whipping, the pillory, and imprisonment. He could not inherit, or even receive property as a gift from Protestants. The oldest son of a Catholic, by embracing the Protestant faith, became the heir-at-law to the whole estate of his father, who was reduced to the position of life-tenant; and any child by the same Act might be taken away from its father and a portion of his property assigned to it; while it was the privilege of the wife who apostatized, to be freed from her husband, and to have assigned to her a proportion of his property.

The not unnatural result of these last-named enactments was that many were driven to feigned conversions in order to keep their families from starvation. It is said that when old Lady Thomond was reproached for having bartered her soul by professing the Protestant faith, her quick retort was, "Is it not better that one old woman should burn, than that all of the Thomonds should be beggars?"

More details are unnecessary after saying that by a decision of Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief-Justice Robinson it was declared that "the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic," while the English Bishop at Meath declared from his pulpit, "We are not bound to keep faith with papists." And it must be remembered that the people placed under this monstrous system of wrong and degradation were not a handful, whom the welfare of a community required should be dealt with severely, they were a large majority of the population, a nation dwelling in their own country, where, by a Parliament supposed to be their own, they were governed by a minority of aliens.

In this time of "Protestant ascendancy," as it is called, there were, of course, only Protestants in the Parliament. They had all the authority, they alone were competent to vote; they were the privileged and upper class; an Irish papist, whatever his rank, being the social inferior of his Protestant neighbor. But let it not be supposed that the Irish Protestants were on that account happy! They had been planted in that land as a breakwater against the native Irish flood, but for all that, England had no idea of permitting them to build up a dangerous prosperity in Ireland. The theory governing English statesmanship was that that country must be kept helpless; and to that end it must be kept poor. During the reign of Charles II. the importing of Irish cattle into England had been forbidden. The effects of this prohibition, so ruinous at first, were at last offset by the discovery that sheep might be made a greater source of profit at home, than when shipped to England. There was an increasing demand in Europe for Irish wool, and skilled manufacturers of woollen goods from abroad had come and started factories, thus giving employment to thousands of people.

When it was realized in England that a profitable Irish industry had actually been established, there was a panic. The traders demanded legislative protection from Irish competition, which came in this form. In 1699 an Act was passed prohibiting the export of Irish woollen goods, not alone to England, but to all other countries. The factories were closed. The manufacturers left the country, never to return, and a whole population was thrown out of employment. A tide of emigration then commenced which has never ceased; such as could, fleeing from the inevitable famine which in a land always so perilously near starvation must surely come.

There was no market now for the wool which the factories would have consumed. At home it brought 5d. a pound, but in France a half crown! The long, deeply indented coast-line was well adapted for smuggling. French vessels were hovering about, waiting an opportunity to get it; the people were hungry, and might be hungrier, for there was a famine in the land! Is it strange that they were converted into law-breakers, and that wool was packed in caves all along the coast; and that a vast contraband trade carried on by stealth, took the place of a legitimate one which was made impossible?

So it became apparent that any efforts to establish profitable enterprises in Ireland would be put down with a strong hand. The colonists who had been placed there by England felt bitterly at finding themselves thus involved in the pre-determined ruin of the country with which they had identified their own fortunes. Their love of the parent-country waned, some even turning to and adopting the persecuted creed. The voice of the native people, utterly stifled, was never heard in Parliament, and struggles which occurred there were between Protestants and Protestants; between those who did, and those who did not, uphold the policy of the Government. Such was the condition which remained practically unchanged until the middle of the eighteenth century; a small discontented upper class, chiefly aliens; below them the peasantry, the mass of the people, whose benumbed faculties and empty minds had two passions to stir their murky depths—love for their religion, and hatred of England.

The first voice raised in support of the constitutional rights of Ireland was that of William Molyneux, an Irish gentleman and scholar, a philosopher, and the intimate friend of Locke. In the latter part of the seventeenth century he issued a pamphlet which in the gentlest terms called attention to the fact that the laws and liberties of England which had been granted to Ireland five hundred years before had been invaded, in that the rights of their Parliament, a body which should be sacred and inviolable everywhere, had been abolished. Nothing could have been milder than this presentation of a well-known fact; but it raised a furious storm. The constitutional rights of Ireland! Was the man mad? The book was denounced in Parliament as libellous and seditious, and was destroyed by the common hangman. Then Dean Swift, half-Irishman and more than half-Englishman, an ardent High-Churchman and a vehement anti-papist, published a satirical pamphlet called "A Modest Proposal," in which he suggests that the children of the Irish peasants should be reared for food, and the choicest ones reserved for the landlords, who having already devoured the substance of the fathers, had the best right to feast upon their children. This was made the more pungent because it came from a man who so far from being an Irish patriot, was an English Tory. He cared little for Ireland or its people, but he hated tyranny and injustice; and was stirred to a fierce wrath at what he himself witnessed while Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Then it was that with tremendous scorn he hurled those shafts of biting wit and satire, which struck deeper than the cogent reasoning of the gentle and philosophic Molyneux.

So the spell of silence was broken, and there began to form a small patriotic party in Parliament, which in 1760 was led by Henry Flood, from Kilkenny. A day was dawning after the long night; and when in 1775 Henry Grattan's more powerful personality was joined with Flood's, then that brief day had reached its highest noon. Next to that of Edmund Burke, Grattan's is the greatest name on the roll of native-born Irishmen. Happy was that country in having such an advocate and guide at the critical period when the American colonies were throwing off the yoke of English tyranny. The wrongs suffered by the English colonies in America were trifling compared with those endured by that other English colony in Ireland. If ever there was a time to press upon England the necessity for loosening their shackles it was now, when their battle was being fought across the sea. Every argument in support of the independence of America applied with equal force to the legislative independence of Ireland. It was Grattan who at this momentous time guided the course of events. A Protestant, yet possessing the entire confidence of the Catholics; an uncompromising patriot, yet commanding the respect and admiration of the English Government; inflexibly opposed to Catholic exclusion and the ascendancy of a Protestant minority, and as inflexibly opposed to any act of violence, he was determined to obtain redress—but to obtain it only by means of the strictest constitutional methods. It was upon the constitutionality of their claims that he threw all the energy of the movement growing out of the American war. His personal sympathies were with the struggling colonists; yet he voted for men and money to sustain the English cause. Equal rights bestowed upon Catholics, who were in large majority, would transfer to them the power; yet he, a Protestant, passionately advocated a removal of the disabilities of four-fifths of the people. It was in this spirit of wise moderation and even-handed justice that Grattan took the tangled web of the Irish cause out of the hands of the more impetuous Flood; his eloquence and his moving appeals keeping two objects steadily in view—the independence of the Irish Parliament, and the removal of the fetters from Irish trade.

Times had changed since Molyneux's gentle remonstrance, when Grattan's famous Declaration of Rights was being supported by eighteen counties, and still more changed when at last, in 1782, an Irish House of Commons marched in a body to present to the Lord Lieutenant their address demanding freedom of commerce and manufacture.

An unlooked-for train of events had given new weight to this demand. England had realized the necessity of protecting Ireland from a possible invasion growing out of the American war. So it was determined that a body of militia should be levied, in which only Protestants should be enrolled. The attempt to raise the men or the money in Ireland was a failure, and while defenceless, the country was thrown into a panic by the descent of Paul Jones, the American naval hero, upon Belfast and other points on the coast. The citizens of Belfast enrolled themselves for their own defence. Other towns followed, and the contagion spread with such rapidity that in a short time there was in existence a volunteer force of 60,000 men.

Dismayed at the swiftness of the movement, England hesitated; but how could she deny her colony the right of self-defence? They were given the arms which had been intended for the Protestant militia. And so, when the House of Commons marched in a body to the Lord Lieutenant, and presented their address to the Crown, it had 60,000 armed men behind it!

The Viceroy wrote to England that unless the trade restrictions were removed, he would not answer for the consequences. Lord North had enough to do with one rebellion on his hands; and, besides, George III. might have need of some of those 60,000 soldiers before he got through with America. So the Prime Minister yielded. The first victory was gained, and the other quickly followed. American independence was acknowledged; England was in no mood to defy another colony with rebellion in its heart. The Poynings Act once more, and now for all time, was repealed, and the Irish Parliament was a free and independent body. Grateful for this partial emancipation, it voted £100,000 to Grattan.

But this legislative triumph did not feed the people. It was only the seed out of which future prosperity was to grow. A vague expectation of instant relief was bitterly disappointed when it was found instead that they were sinking deeper every day in the hopeless abyss of poverty and degradation. There had come into existence an organization called the "White Boys," with no political or religious purpose, simply a fraternity of wretchedness; beings made desperate by want, standing ready to commit any violence which offered relief. At the same time an irritation born of misery brought the Protestants and Catholics in the North into fierce collision; and the germ of the future Orange societies appeared.

These small storm-centres were all soon to be drawn into a larger one. In 1791 the "Society of United Irishmen" was formed at Belfast. It was merely a patriotic attempt to sink minor differences in an organization in which all could join. With the rising of the general tide of misery it changed in character, and fell into the control of a band of restless spirits led by Wolfe Tone, who maintained that since constitutional reforms had failed, force must be their resort. He sent agents to Paris, and the new French republic consented to assist in an attempt to establish a republic in Ireland.

When the year 1798 closed, there had been another unsuccessful rebellion. Ferocity had been met by ferocity, and Wolfe Tone and Edward Fitzgerald (a Geraldine) had perished in the ruin of the structure they had wildly built. Flood and Grattan had stood aloof from this miserable undertaking. It was now eighteen years since the constitutional triumph which had proved so barren. England was in stern mood. Pitt had long believed that the effacement of the Irish Parliament and a legislative union of the two countries was the only solution. The Irish Protestants were shown the benefits of the protection this would afford them, while the bait offered to the Catholics was emancipation, the removal of disabilities which it was intimated would quickly follow. But no one was won to the cause, Grattan, in the most impassioned way protesting against it, and the measure was defeated. Then followed the darkest page in the chapter.

It is well known that large amounts of money were paid to the owners of eighty-five doubtful boroughs—boroughs which would be effaced by the union—that peerages and baronetcies were generously distributed, and that shortly after, the measure was again brought up and carried! So by the Act of Union, 1800, the Irish Parliament had ceased to exist, and the two countries were politically merged. It is certain that the union was hateful to the Irish people, and that it was tainted by the suspicion of dishonorable methods, which one hundred years have failed to disprove. It may have been the best thing possible, under the circumstances, for Ireland; but to the Irish patriots it seemed a crowning act of oppression accomplished by treachery.

You cannot combine oil and water by pouring them into one glass. The union was not a union. The natures of the two races were utterly hostile. Centuries of cruel wrong and outrage had accentuated every undesirable trait in the Irish people. A nature simple, confiding, spontaneous, and impulsive, had become suspicious, explosive, and dangerous. Pugnacity had grown into ferocity. A joyous, light-hearted, and engaging people had become a sullen and vindictive one; famine, misery, and ignorance had put their stamp of degradation upon the peasantry, the majority of the people. Intermarriage, so savagely interdicted for centuries, was the only thing which could ever have fused two such contrasting races. Such a fusion might have benefited both, in giving a wholesome solidity to the Irish, while the stolid English would have been enriched by the fascinating traits and the native genius of their brilliant neighbors. But the opportunity had been lost; and enlightened English statesmanship is still seeking for a plan which will convert an unnatural and artificial union into a real one.

The delusive promises of the relief which was to come with union were not fulfilled. Catholics remained under the same monstrous ban as before, and things were practically unchanged. Young Robert Emmett's abortive attempt to seize Dublin Castle in 1803 intensified conditions, but did not alter them. The pathetic story of his capture while seeking a parting interview with Sarah Curran, to whom he was engaged, and his death by hanging the following morning, is one of the smaller tragedies in the greater one; and the death of Sarah from a broken heart, soon after, is the subject of Moore's well-known lines.

The most colossal figure in the story of Ireland had now appeared. Daniel O'Connell, unlike the other great leaders, was a Catholic. In the language of another, "he was the incarnation of the Irish nation." All that they were, he was, on a majestic scale. His whole tremendous weight was thrown into the subject of Catholic emancipation; and, although a giant in eloquence and in power, it took him just twenty-nine years to accomplish it. In the year 1829, even Wellington, that incarnation of British conservatism, bent his head before the storm, and there was a full and unqualified removal of Catholic disabilities. O'Connell was not content; he did not pause. The tithe-system, that most odious of oppressions, must go. A starving nation compelled to support in its own land a Church it considered blasphemous! A standing army kept in their land to wring this tribute from them at the point of the bayonet! Think of a people on the brink of the greatest famine Europe has ever known, being in arrears a million and a quarter of pounds for tithes for an Established Church they did not want! Is it strange that Sydney Smith said no abuse as great could be found in Timbuctoo? Is it a wonder that there was always disorder and violence from a chronic tithe-war in Ireland, which it is said has cost a million of lives? But in 1839, in the second year of Queen Victoria's reign, Parliament gave relief, in the following ingenious way. The burden was placed upon the land; the landlord must pay the tithe, not the people! The exasperation which followed took a form with which we are all more or less familiar. With the increase in rents which, of course, ensued, there commenced an anti-rent agitation which has never ceased. A repeal of the Union was the only remedy, and to this O'Connell devoted all his energies.

In 1845, in one black night, a blight fell upon the potato-crop. Carlyle says "a famine presupposes much." What must be the economic condition of a people when there is only one such frail barrier between them and starvation! The famine was the hideous child of centuries. There is no need to dwell upon its details. Its name expresses all the horror of those two years, when Europe and America strove in vain to relieve the famishing nation, even those who had food, dying, it is said, from the mental anguish produced by witnessing so much suffering which they could not assuage. The great O'Connell himself died of a broken heart in beholding this national tragedy. When it was over, Ireland had lost two millions of its population. Thousands had perished and thousands more had emigrated from the doomed land to America, there to keep alive, in the hearts of their children, the memory of their wrongs.

Out of this wreck and ruin there arose the party of "Young Ireland," led, with more or less wisdom, by Mitchell, Smith O'Brien (descended from Brian Boru), Dillon, and Meagher. Mitchell was soon transported, and later O'Brien and Meagher were under sentence of death, which was afterward commuted, Meagher surviving to lay down his life for the North in the civil war in America. It is not strange that these men were driven to futile insurrections, maddened as they were by the sight of their countrymen, not yet emerged from the horrors of famine, forced in droves out of the shelter of their miserable cabins, for non-payment of rent. It has been told in foregoing pages how it came about that absentee English landlords owned a great part of Ireland. From this had arisen the custom of subletting; and when it is known that sometimes four people stood between the tenant and the landlord, it will be realized how difficult it was to place responsibility, to do justice, or to show mercy in such an iniquitous system. It was the system, not the landlord, that was vicious. Eviction has done as much as famine to depopulate Ireland. It has driven millions of Irishmen into America; and the cruelty and even ferocity with which it has been carried out cannot be overstated. Whatever the weather, for the sick, or even for the dying, there was no pity. Out they must go; and to make sure that they would not return, the cabin was unroofed! And then, if the wretched being died under the stars by the road-side, he might, in the words of Mitchell, "lift his dying eyes and thank God that he perished under the best constitution in the world!"

At the close of the American civil war it was believed by Irishmen that the strained relations between England and America would lead to open conflict. An organization named Fenians (after the ancient Feni) formed a plan for a rising in Ireland, which was to be simultaneous with a raid into Canada by way of America.

The United States Government took vigorous action in the matter of the Canadian raid, and the failure of this and of other violent attempts at home put an end to the least creditable of all such organizations.

It was in 1869 that Mr. Gladstone realized his long-cherished plan for the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland. The generations which had hoped and striven for this had passed away, and in the Ireland which remained, there was scarcely spirit enough left to rejoice over anything. The words Home Rule were the only ones with power to arouse hope. With the Liberal Party on their side, this seemed possible of attainment. In 1875 Charles Parnell entered the House of Commons and became the leader of a Home Rule Party. But the question of evictions, of which there had been 10,000 in four years, became so pressing, that he organized a National Land League, which had for its object the relief of present distress, and the substitution of peasant-proprietorship for the existing landlord system; an agrarian scheme, or dream, to which Mr. Parnell devoted the rest of his life. Mr. Parnell's weapons were parliamentary. He introduced an obstructive method in legislation which caused extreme irritation and finally antagonism between the Liberal Party and his own. This, together with the unfounded suspicion of complicity in the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, in 1882, militated against Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Act, which was defeated in 1886; and the cause awaited another champion.

But while the door bearing the alluring words "Home Rule" still remains rigidly closed, another has unexpectedly opened. One of the first subjects to engage the attention of King Edward VII. after his accession was the settlement of the Irish agrarian question which that practical Monarch recognized as the most essential to the pacification of his Irish subjects. This has resulted in an ingeniously devised system of peasant-proprietorship, which is made possible by Government aid, in money and credit. The New Land Act, embodying this result, went into effect November 1, 1903, whereby tenants, sub-tenants, or people who are not tenants may purchase land in small lots and hold it as their own, by the payment of a small annual rental which applies to the purchase. It is impossible to give here the complicated details which insure this result with benefit to landlord, tenant, and also to the Government itself. But a remedy seems to have been found which accomplishes all this; and the condition, more demoralizing to Irish life and character than any other, has been removed. With the sense of peace and permanence, and even of dignity, which comes from proprietorship it is hoped a new day is dawning for the peasantry of that unhappy country.

It has been Ireland's misfortune to be geographically allied to one of the greatest European Powers. She has been fighting for centuries against the "despotism of fact." She has never once loosened the grasp fastened upon her in 1171; never had control of her capital city, which, built by the Northmen, has been the home of her political masters ever since. Of course everyone knows that when the English Government solemnly doubts the capacity of the Irish people for Home Rule, its solicitude is for England, not Ireland.

Francis Meagher, when on trial for his life, said: "If I have committed a crime, it is because I have read the history of Ireland!" One need not be an Irish patriot to be in rebellion against the English rule in that land; and no Protestant can read without shame and indignation the crimes which have been committed in the name of his Church.

But, in view of the small results of more than eight centuries of resistance, would it not be wise for the Irish people to abandon the fight against the "despotism of fact," to give up the attitude of a conquered people with rebellion in their hearts? Is not this the right moment, when England is manifesting a desire to be more just, for Ireland, deeply injured although she is, to accept the olive branch, and call a truce?

A SHORT HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.

The northern extremity of the British Isles, bristling with mountains and with its ragged coast-line deeply fringed by the sea, told in advance the character of its people. Scotland is the child of the mountains; and in spite of all that has been done to change their native character, the word Caledonia still invokes the same picturesque, liberty-loving race which in the first century, under the name of Picts, defied Agricola and his Roman legions, and the wall they had builded. If they have borrowed their name from Ireland, if they have used the speech and consented to wear the political yoke of the Anglo-Saxon, they have accepted these things only as convenient garments for a proud Scottish nationality, which has defied all efforts to change its essential character.

About four centuries after the Roman invasion, a colony of Scots (Irish) migrated to the opposite coast, under Fergus, and set up their little kingdom in Argyleshire, taking with them, perhaps, the sacred "Stone of Destiny" upon which a long line of Irish kings had been crowned, and which tradition asserts was "Jacob's Pillow." The Picts and the Irish Scots were both of the Celtic race, and if they fought, it was as brothers do, ready in an instant to embrace and make common cause, which they first did against the Romans. A common enemy is the surest healer of domestic feuds, and there were many of these to bring together the two Celtic branches dwelling on the same soil after the fifth century. Then came the more peaceful fusion through a common religious faith. St. Columba had been preceded by St. Nimian. But it was the Irish saint from Donegal who did for the Picts what St. Patrick had done for the Irish Scots. In the history of the Church there has never been an awakening of purer spiritual ardor than that which irradiated from Columba's monastery at Iona.

Why the Irish Scots, occupying only a small bit of territory, should have fastened their name upon the land of their adoption is not known. Perhaps it was the magic of that Stone of Destiny! The Picts had the political centre of their kingdom at Scone, on the river Tay. It was in 844 that Kenneth M'Alpin made war upon the Irish Scots, the little kingdom in Argyle was merged with that of the Picts, and by the eleventh century the latter name had disappeared and the name Scotland was applied to the whole country. In the two centuries following this union there were four reigns, in which wars between hostile clans were diversified by wars with invading Danes, and with the Angles near the border, with whom there was a chronic struggle, caused by aggressions upon both sides. Malcolm II. succeeded in defeating the Angles on the Tweed, seized Lothian, incorporated this bit of old England with his own kingdom, then died, in 1034, leaving his throne to his grandson, Duncan. There was the same play of fierce ambitions upon this small stage as on larger ones. Scottish thanes strove to undermine and supplant other thanes, just as Norman barons and Scotch-English earls would do later, and as in other lands and at all times, the dream of aspiring, intriguing nobles was by some happy chance to snatch the crown and reign at Scone.

Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, was by birth nearest to the supreme prize. His wife, whose "undaunted mettle" we all know, had royal blood in her veins. We also know how the poison of ambition worked in the once guiltless soul of the thane after the prophecy of the "Weird Sisters" had commenced its fulfilment. The story was quaintly told a century before Shakespeare lived, in a history of Scotland by Boece. The book was written in Latin, and in the sixteenth century was translated into the Scottish vernacular. It tells of the meeting between Macbeth, Banquo, and the "Weird Sisters." "The first of thaim said, 'Hale, Thane of Glammis!' the secound said, 'Hale, Thane of Cawder!' and the thrid said, 'Hale, King of Scotland!' Then Banquo said, 'How is it ye gaif to my companyeon not onlie landis and gret rentis, bot Kingdomes, and gevis me nocht?' To which they reply, 'Thoucht he happin to be ane King, nane of his blude sall eftir him succeid. Be contrar, thow sail nevir be King, bot of the sal cum mony Kingis, quhilkis sall rejose the Croun of Scotland!' Then they evanist out of sicht." This seems to have amused the two friends and "Fur sam time Banquho wald call Makbeth 'King of Scottis' for derisioun; and he on the samin maner wald call Banquho 'the fader of mony Kingis!' Yit, not long efter, it hapnit that the Thane of Cawder was disinherist and forfaltit of his landis for certane crimes; and his landis wer gevin be King Duncane to Makbeth. It hapnit in the nixt nicht that Banquho and Makbeth were sportand togiddir at thair supper," and Banquo reminded his friend that there remained only the Crown to complete the prophecy. Whereupon, "he began to covat the crown." And then Duncan named his young son Malcolm as his heir, "Quhilk wes gret displeseir to Makbeth; for it maid plane derogatioun to the thrid weird," promising him the Crown. "Nochtheless, he thocht, gif Duncane war slane, he had maist richt to the Croun, be the old lawis of King Fergus (law of tanistry), becaus he wer nerest of blude thair to," the text of the old law being, "Quhen young children wer unabil to govern, the nerrest of thair blude sail regne." Then, when his wife "calland him oft times, febil cowart, sen he durst not assail ye thing with manheid and enrage, quhilk is offert to him be benivolence of fortoun," then, so tempted and so goaded, "Makbeth fand sufficient opportunite, and slew King Duncane, the VII yeir of his regne, and his body was buryit in Elgin, and efter tane up and brocht to Colmekill, quhare it remanis yit, amang the uthir Kingis: fra our Redemption. MXLVI yeris."

The story told in these quaint words was, without any doubt, read by Shakespeare, and in the alembic of his imagination grew into the immortal play. Touched by his genius, the names Dunsinnane and Birnam, lying close to Scone, are luminous points on the map, upon which the eye loves to linger. The incidents may not be authentic. We are told they are not. But Macbeth certainly slew Duncan and was King of Scotland, and finally met his Nemesis at Dunsinnane, near Birnam Wood, where Malcolm III., called Canmore, avenged his father's death, slew the usurper, and was crowned king at Scone, 1054.

The historic point selected by Shakespeare has an important significance of a different sort. It was the dividing line between the old and the new. Macbeth's reign marks the close of the Celtic period. With the advent of Malcolm III., there commenced that infusion of Teutonic political ideals which was destined at last to merge the Anglo-Saxon and the Scottish Celt into one political organism. Malcolm's mother was the sister of the Earl of Northumberland. So the son of Duncan was half-English; and he became more than half-English when, somewhat later, he married Margaret, sister of his friend and guest, "Edgar the Atheling," last claimant of the Saxon throne, who had taken refuge with him while vainly plotting against William the Conqueror. This was in 1067, the year after the conquest. So at this critical period in English history, the door leading to the South, which had until now been kept bolted and barred, except for hostile bands, was left ajar. A host of Saxon nobles, following their leader, Edgar, streamed into Scotland, and soon formed the most powerful element about the throne, bringing new speech, new ways, new customs; in fact, doing at Scone precisely what the Norman nobles were at the same time doing at London, substituting a more advanced civilization for an existing one. The manners of the Norman nobles were not more odious to the Saxon nobility in England, than were those of the Saxons to the proud thanes and people in Scotland. Then Malcolm began to bestow large grants of land upon his foreign favorites, accompanied by an almost unlimited authority over their vassals, and feudalism was introduced into the free land. With these changes there gradually formed a dialect, a mingling of the two forms of speech, which became the language of the Court, and of the powerful dwellers in the Lowlands. And so, in succeeding reigns, the process of blending went on, the wave of a changed civilization driving before it the Celtic speech, manners, and habits, into their impregnable fastnesses in the Highlands, there to preserve the national type in proud persistence. Such was the condition for one hundred and fifty years, the Crown in open alliance with aliens, subverting established usages and fastening an exotic feudalism upon the South; while an angry and defiant Celtic people remained unsubdued in the North.

It was a favorite amusement with the Scottish kings to dart across the border into Northumbria, the disputed district, not yet incorporated with England, there to waste and burn as much as they could, and then back again. In one of these forays in 1174, the King, "William the Lion," was captured by a party of English barons. Henry II. of England had just returned from Ireland, where he had established his feudal sovereignty by conquest. Now he saw a chance of accomplishing the same thing by peaceful methods in Scotland. He named as a price of ransom for the captive King an acknowledgment of his feudal lordship. The terms were accepted, and the five castles which they included were surrendered. Fifteen years later, his son Richard I., the romantic crusader, gave back to Scotland her castles and her independence. But what had been done once, would be tried again. So while it was the steady policy of the English sovereigns to reduce Scotland to a state of vassalage to England, it was the no less steady aim of the Scottish kings to extend their own feudal authority to the Highlands and the islands in the north and west of their own realm, where an independent people had never yet been brought under its subjection.

In the year 1286 Alexander III. died, and only an infant granddaughter survived to wear the crown. The daughter of the deceased King had married the King of Norway, and dying soon after, had left an infant daughter. It was about this babe that the diplomatic threads immediately began to entwine. A regency of six nobles was appointed to rule the kingdom. Then Edward I. of England proposed a marriage between his own infant son and the little maid. The proposition was accepted. A ship was sent to Norway to bring the baby Queen to Scotland, bearing jewels and gifts from Edward; but just before she reached the Orkneys the "Maid of Norway" died. Edward's plans were frustrated, and the empty throne of Scotland had many claimants, but none with paramount right to the succession. In the wrangle which ensued, when eight ambitious nobles were trying to snatch the prize, Edward I. intervened to settle the dispute, which had at last narrowed down to one between two competitors, Bruce and Baliol, both lineally descended from King David I.

But the important fact in this mediatorial act of Edward was, that it was done by virtue of his authority as Over-Lord of Scotland. We are left to imagine how and why such a monstrous and baseless pretension was acknowledged without a single protest. But when we reflect that the eager claimants and their upholders represented, not the people of Scotland but an aristocratic ruling element, more than half-English already, it is not so strange that they were willing to pay this price for the sake of restoring peace and security at a time when everything was imperilled by an empty throne. There was no organic unity in Scotland; only a superficial unity, created by the name of king, which fell into chaos when that name was withdrawn. It was imperative that someone should be crowned at Scone at once. And so, when Edward, by virtue of his authority as Over-Lord, gave judgment in favor of John Baliol, without a single remonstrance Baliol was crowned John I. at Scone, rendered homage to his feudal lord, and Scotland was a vassal kingdom (1292). This whole proceeding, thus disposing of the state, had in no way recognized the existence of a nation. It was an arrangement between the Scottish nobles and clergy, and the King of England. When the heralds had, with great ceremony, proclaimed King Edward Lord Paramount of Scotland, the matter was supposed to be ended, and it was forgotten that there was beyond the Grampians a proud people, whose will would have to be broken before their country would become the fief of an English king. But Baliol soon discovered how empty was the honor he had purchased. There was now a right of appeal from the Scottish Parliament and courts to those of Edward I. Such appeals were made, and King John I. was with scant ceremony summoned to London to plead his own cause before a Parliament which humiliated and insulted him.

In 1295, so intolerable had his position become, that Baliol threw off the yoke of vassalage, secured an alliance with France, and gathered such of his nobles as he could about him, prepared to resist the authority of Edward; whereupon that enraged King marched into the rebellious land, swept victoriously from one city to another, gathering up towns and castles by the way; then took the sacred Stone of Destiny from Scone as a memorial of his conquest, and left the penitent vassal King helpless and forlorn in his humiliated kingdom. It was then that the famous stone was built into the coronation-chair, where it still remains.

We have now come to a name which, as Wordsworth says, is "to be found like a wild flower, all over his dear country." Everywhere there are places sacred to his memory. The story of Wallace is a brief one—an impassioned resolve to free his enslaved country, one supreme triumph, then defeat, an ignominious and cruel death in London, to be followed by imperishable renown for himself, and for Scotland—freedom. Sir William Wallace belonged to the lower class of Scotch nobility. He had never sworn allegiance to Edward I. His career of outlawry commenced by his making small attacks upon small English posts. As his successes increased, so did his followers, until so formidable had the movement become, that Edward learned there was a rising in his vassal kingdom. But it could not be much, he thought, as he had all the nobles, and how could there be a rising without nobles? So he despatched a small force to straighten things out. But a few weeks later, Edward himself was in Scotland with an army. Wallace was besieging the Castle of Dundee, when he heard that the King was marching on Stirling. With the quick instinct of the true military leader, he saw his opportunity. He reached the rising ground commanding the bridge of Stirling, while the English army of 50,000 were still on the opposite side of the river. When the English general, seeing his disadvantage, offered to make terms, Wallace replied that his terms were "the freedom of Scotland." The attack made as they were crossing the bridge resulted in the panic of the English and a rout in which the greater part of the fleeing army was slain and drowned (1297). Baliol had been swept from the scene and was in the Tower of London, so Wallace was supreme. But in less than a year Edward had returned with an army overwhelming in numbers, and Wallace met a crushing defeat at Falkirk. We next hear of him on the Continent, still planning for Scotland's liberation, then hunted and finally caught in Glasgow, dragged to London in chains, there to be tried and condemned for treason. Had they condemned him as a rebel and an outlaw there would have been justice, for these he was. But a traitor he never was, for he had never sworn allegiance to Edward. He had fought against the invaders of his country, and for this he died a felon's death, with all the added cruelties of Norman law. He was first tortured, then executed in a way to strike terror to the souls of similar offenders (1304). But his work was accomplished. He had lighted the fires of patriotism in Scotland. The power of his name to stir the hearts of his people like a trumpet-blast, is best described by the words of Robert Burns: "The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut, in eternal rest." To be praised by the bards was the supreme reward of Celtic heroes. What did death matter, in form however terrible, to one who was to be so remembered nearly five centuries later by Scotland's greatest bard?

We are accustomed to regard the name of Bruce as the intensest expression of a Scottish nationality, and of its aspirations toward liberty. But it had no such meaning at this time. The ancestor of the family was Robert de Bruis, a Norman knight who came over with the Conqueror. His son, Robert, was one of those hated foreign adventurers at the Court of David I., and received from that King a large grant and the Lordship of Annandale. The grandson of this first Earl of Annandale married Isabel, the granddaughter of David I., and so it was that the house of Bruce came into the line of royal succession. It was Robert, the son of Isabel, who competed with Baliol for the throne of Scotland.

Robert Bruce, who stands forth as the greatest character in Scottish history, was twelve years old when his grandfather was defeated by Baliol in this competition. No family in the vassal kingdom was more trusted by England's King, nor more friendly to his pretensions. The young Robert's father had accompanied King Edward to Palestine in his own youth, and he himself was being trained at the English Court. His English mother had large estates in England, and, in fact there was everything to bind him to the King's cause. He and his father, and the High Steward of Scotland, together with other Scottish-Norman nobles, had been with the King in his triumphal march through Scotland when Baliol was dethroned, and at the time of the rising under Wallace, Robert Bruce had not one thing in common with him or his cause. And as for the people in the Highlands, if he ever thought of them at all, it was as troublesome malcontents, who needed to be ruled with a strong hand. Wallace was in rebellion against an established authority, to which all his own antecedents reconciled him. How the change was wrought, how his bold and ardent spirit came to its final resolve, we can only surmise. Was it through a complicated struggle of forces, in which ambition played the greatest part? Or did the splendid heroism of Wallace, and the spirit it evoked in the people, awaken a slumbering patriotism in his own romantic soul? Or was it the prescience of a leader and statesman, who saw in this newly developed popular force an opportunity for a double triumph, the emancipation of Scotland, and the realization of his own kingship?

Whatever the process, a change was going on in his soul. He wavered, sometimes inclining to the party of Wallace, and sometimes to that of the King, until the year 1304. In that year, the very one in which Wallace died, he made a secret compact with the Bishop of Lamberton, pledging mutual help against any opponents. While at the Court of Edward, shortly after this, he discovered that the King had learned of this compromising paper. There was nothing left but flight. He mounted his horse and swiftly returned to Scotland. Now the die was cast. His only competitor for the throne was Comyn. They met to confer over some plan of combination, and in a dispute which arose, Bruce slew his rival. Whether it was premeditated, or in the heat of passion, who could say? But Comyn was the one obstacle to his purpose, and he had slain him, had slain the highest noble in the state! All of England, and now much of Scotland, would be against him; but he could not go back. He resolved upon a bold course. He went immediately to Scone, ascended the throne, and surrounded by a small band of followers, was crowned King of Scotland, March 27, 1306. He soon learned the desperate nature of the enterprise upon which he had embarked. There was nothing in his past to inspire the confidence of the patriots at the North, and at the South he was pursued with vindictive fury by the friends of the slain Comyn. Edward, stirred as never before, was preparing for an invasion, issuing proclamations; no mercy to be shown to the rebels. Bruce's English estates, inherited from his mother, were confiscated, and an outlaw and a fugitive, he was excommunicated by the Pope! Unable to meet the forces sent by Edward, he placed his Queen in the care of a relative and then disappeared, wandering in the Highlands, hiding for one whole winter on the coast of Ireland and supposed to be dead. His Queen and her ladies were torn from their refuge and his cousin hanged.

Had Robert Bruce died at this time he would have been remembered not as a patriot, but as an ambitious noble who perished in a desperate attempt to make himself king. But his undaunted soul was working out a different ending to the story. In the spring of 1307 he returned undismayed. With a small band of followers he met an English army, defeated the Earl of Pembroke at Ayr, and with this success the tide turned. The people caught the contagion of his intrepid spirit, and in the seven years which followed, he shines out as one of the great captains of history. By the year 1313 every castle save Berwick and Stirling had surrendered to him. Vast preparations were made in England for the defence of this latter stronghold.

It was on the burn (stream) two miles from Stirling that Bruce assembled his 30,000 men, and made his plans to meet Edward with his 100,000. On the morning of the 23d of June, 1314, he exhorted his Scots to fight for their liberty. How they did it, the world will never forget! And while Scotland endures, and as long as there are Scotsmen with warm blood coursing in their veins, they will never cease to exult at the name Bannockburn! Thirty thousand English fell upon the field. Twenty-seven barons and two hundred knights, and seven hundred squires were lying in the dust, and twenty-two barons and sixty knights were prisoners. Never was there a more crushing defeat.

Still England refused to acknowledge the independence of the kingdom, and Bruce crossed the border with his army. The Pope was appealed to by Edward, and issued a pacifying bull in 1317, addressed to "Edward, King of England," and "the noble Robert de Bruis, conducting himself as King of Scotland." Bruce declined to accept it until he was addressed as King of Scotland, and then proceeded to capture Berwick. The Scottish Parliament sent an address to the Pope, from which a few interesting extracts are here made:

"It has pleased God to restore us to liberty, by one most valiant Prince and King, Lord Robert, who has undergone all manner of toil, fatigue, hardship, and hazard. To him we are resolved to adhere in all things, both on account of his merit, and for what he has done for us. But, if this Prince should leave those principles he has so nobly pursued, and consent that we be subjected to the King of England, we will immediately expel him as our enemy, and will choose another king, for as long as one hundred of us remain alive, we will never be subject to the English. For it is not glory, nor riches, nor honor, but it is liberty alone, that we contend for, which no honest man will lose but with his life."

The spirit manifested in this had its effect, and the Pope consented to address Bruce by his title, "King of Scotland." After delaying the evil day as long as possible, England at last, in 1328, concluded a treaty recognizing Scotland as an independent kingdom, in which occurred these words: "And we renounce whatever claims we or our ancestors in bygone times have laid in any way over the kingdom of Scotland."

Concerning the character of Robert Bruce, historians are not agreed. To fathom his motives would have been difficult at the time; how much more so then after six centuries. We only know that he leaped into an arena from which nature and circumstances widely separated him, gave a free Scotland to her people, and made himself the hero of her great epic.

When we see the spiritless sons of Bruce in the hands of base intriguing nobles, trailing their great inheritance in the mire, we exclaim: Was it for this that there was such magnificent heroism? Was it worth seven years of such struggle to emancipate the land from a foreign tyranny, only to have it fall into a degrading domestic one? But the reassuring fact is, that the governing power of a nation is only an incident, more or less imperfect. The life is in the people. There was not a cottage nor a cabin in all of Scotland that was not ennobled by the consciousness of what had been done. Men's hearts were glad with a wholesome gladness; and every child in the land was lisping the names of Wallace and of Bruce and learning the story of their deeds. But for all that, the period following the death of the great King and Captain is a disappointing one, and we are not tempted to linger while the incapable David II. wears his father's crown, and while the son of Baliol, instigated by England, is troubling the kingdom, and even having himself crowned at Scone; and while Edward III., until attracted by more tempting fields in France, is invading the land and recapturing its strongholds. The limit of humiliation seems to be reached when David II., in the absence of an heir, proposes to leave his throne to Lionel, son of Edward III.!

When Robert Bruce bestowed his daughter, Marjory, upon the High Steward of Scotland, he determined the course of history in two countries; in England even more than in Scotland. The office of Steward was the highest in the realm. Since the time of David I. it had been hereditary in one family, and according to a prevailing custom, to which many names now bear testimony, the official designation had become the family name. The marriage of Robert Stewart (seventh High Steward of his house) to Marjory Bruce was destined to bear consequences involving not alone the fate of Scotland, but leading to a transforming revolution and the greatest crisis in the life of England. As the Weird Sisters promised to Banquo, this Stewart was "to be the fader of mony Kingis," for Marjory was the ancestress of fourteen sovereigns, eight of whom were to sit upon the throne of Scotland, and six upon those of both England and Scotland (1371 to 1714, three hundred and forty-three years).

Marjory's son, Robert II., the first of the Stuart kings, was crowned at Scone in 1371. His natural weakness of character made him the mere creature of his determined and ambitious brother, the Duke of Albany, who, in fact, held the state in his hand until far into the succeeding reign of Robert III., which commenced in 1390. The nobles had now established a ruinous ascendancy in the state, and so abject had the King become, that Robert III. was paying annual grants to the Duke of Albany and others for his safety and that of his heir. In spite of this, his eldest son, Rothesay, was abducted by Albany and the Earl of Douglas, and mysteriously died, it is said of starvation. The unhappy King then sent Prince James, his second son, to France for safety; but he was captured by an English ship by the way, and lodged in the Tower of London by Henry IV. When Robert III. died immediately after of a broken heart, the captive Prince was proclaimed king (1406), and his uncle, the Duke of Albany, the next in royal succession, ruled the kingdom in name, as he had for many years in fact.

There existed between France and Scotland that sure bond of friendship between nations—a common hatred. This had given birth to a political alliance which was to be a thorn in the side of England for many years. French soldiers and French gold strengthened Scotland in her chronic war with England, and in return the Scots sent their soldiers to the aid of the Dauphin of France. It was this which gave such value to the royal prisoner. He could be used by Henry IV. to restrain the French alliance, and also to keep in check the ambitious Duke of Albany, by the fact that he could in an hour reduce him to insignificance by restoring James to his throne.

Such were some of the influences at work during the eighteen years while the Scottish Prince with keen intelligence was drinking in the best culture of his age, and at the same time studying the superior civilization and government of the land of his captivity. He seems to have studied also to some effect the affairs of his own kingdom. He was released in 1424, crowned at Scone, and a new epoch commenced. He had resolved to break the power of the nobles, and with extraordinary energy he set about his task! There was a long and unsettled account with his own relatives. He knew well who had humiliated and broken his father's heart, and starved to death his brother Rothesay, and, as he believed, had also conspired with Henry IV. for his own capture and eighteen years' captivity. The old conspirator who had been the chief author of these things had recently died, but his son wore his title. So the Duke of Albany (the King's cousin) and a few of the most conspicuous of the conspirators were seized, tried, and one after another five of the King's kindred died by the axe, in front of Stirling Castle. It was one of those outbursts of wrath after a long period of wrongdoing, terrible but wholesome. An unscrupulous nobility had wrenched the power from the Crown, and it must be restored, or the kingdom would perish. This disease, common to European monarchies, could only be cured by just such a drastic remedy; successfully tried later in France, by Louis XI. (fifteenth century), by Ivan the Terrible in Russia (sixteenth century), and by slower methods accomplished in England, commencing with William the Conqueror, and completed when great nobles were cringing at the feet of Henry VIII. There are times when a tyrant is a benefactor. And when a centralized, or even a despotic, monarchy supplants an oligarchy, it is a long step in progress.

This ablest of the Stuart kings was assassinated in 1437 by the enemies he had shorn of power, his own kindred removing the bolts to admit his murderers. He was the only sovereign of the Stuart line who inherited the heroic qualities of his great ancestor Robert Bruce, a line which almost fatally entangled England, and sprinkled the pages of history with tragedies, four out of the fourteen dying violent deaths, two of broken hearts, while two others were beheaded.

It is a temptation to linger for a moment over the personal traits of James I. We shall not find again among Scottish kings one who is possessed of "every manly accomplishment," one who plays upon the organ, the flute, the psaltery, and upon the harp "like another Orpheus," who draws and paints, is a poet, and what all the world loves—a lover. It was his pure, tender, romantic passion for Lady Jane Beaufort, whom he married, just before his return to his kingdom, which inspired his poem, "The Kingis Qahaiir" (the King's book), a work never approached by any other poet-king, and which marked a new epoch in the history of Scottish poetry. It is the story of his life and his love—a fantastic mingling of fact and allegory after the fashion of Chaucer and other mediaeval writers. It is pleasant to fancy that a sympathetic friendship may have existed between the unfortunate youth and the warm-hearted, impulsive Prince Hal, who, immediately upon his accession as Henry V., had James transferred from the Tower to Windsor. There it was he spent the last ten years of his captivity, there he met Lady Jane Beaufort, and wrote a great part of his poem.

The turbulence which had been checked by the splendid energy of James I., revived with increased fury after his death. The fifty years in which James II. and James III. reigned, but did not govern, is a meaningless period, over which it would be folly to linger. If it had any purpose it was to show how utterly base an unpatriotic feudalism could become—Douglases, Crawfords, Livingstons, Crichtons, Boyds, like ravening beasts of prey tearing each other to pieces, and trying to outwit by perfidy when force failed; Livingstons holding the infant King, James II., a prisoner in Stirling Castle, of which they were hereditary governors, and together with the Crichtons entrapping the young Earl of Douglas and his brother by an invitation to dine, and then beheading them both—so that it is with satisfaction we learn of the King's reaching his majority and beheading a half-score of Livingstons at Edinburgh Castle! Then to the Douglases is traced every disorder in the realm, and with relief we hear of their disgrace and banishment, only to have the Boyds come upon the scene with a villanous conspiracy to seize the young King, James III., they, after rising to power, swiftly and tragically to fall again. History could not afford a more shameful and senseless display of depravity than in these human vultures. A Scottish writer says: "There was nothing but slaughter in this realm, every party lying in wait for another, as they had been setting tinchills (snares) for wild beasts."