Note 8 — PREFACE.

Had they made the country endurable to live in, they would have done what all the penal laws that ever have been framed can never affect—they would have kept the Irish at home. At the time when Henry VIII. was framing his “act of absencie” for preventing the increase of the absentees the state of the country in which they were by law obliged to live, is thus described by Spenser;—“Notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, (Munster more particularly is here speken of,) yet in one year and a half (during the war carried on against the Earl of Desmond for the purpose of forfeiting his estates) the natives were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stoney heart would rue the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glyns they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them, they looked like anatomies of death, they shoke like ghosts crying out of their graves, they did eat the dead carrion, happy when they could find them; yea, and one another soon after, inasmuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able to continue them withal, that in short space there was none almost left; and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast.”—State of Ireland, 1581.