Page:History of the Fenian raid on Fort Erie with an account of the Battle of Ridgeway.djvu/14

 CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF THE INVASION.

About seven hundred years ago, Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, at the head of his English archers, effected a landing on the coast of Ireland, and after various successes over the Irish chieftains, at last secured so firm a lodgment, that Henry II. of England compelled him to hold from him as his sovereign lord, the lands he had acquired by conquest. From that time until the present day, Ireland, or the greater part of it, has been an appendage of the British Crown. Looking back through the long course of years that have since elapsed, we find that the history of Ireland is little more than an account of a continual series of wars and insurrections, in which the native Irish, or the Celts, have endeavoured to throw off the yoke of their Saxon conquerors.

Although in England the Norman conquerors and the Saxon conquered have, through a series of centuries, so intermingled and united that at the present day an Englishman neither knows or cares which blood predominates in him; and although the Jacobite party and the causes which led to its formation, have ceased to exist in England, and the feelings to which they gave birth have been forgotten, yet in Ireland the very reverse has been the case.

There, the two parties, the Celts and the Saxons, have as bro dbroad [sic] marks of distinction and are as utterly divided as in the wars of Cromwell and William the Third. Religion among them seems to form a grand distinguishing mark, by which the national feelings are kept alive, and their traditions of hostility confined to well known bounds. Since the reign of William III., Ireland has been gradually improving, and the feelings of the two parties becoming less intense than before. 9