Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/53

 war, and turned her attention to Ireland. The old methods were renewed with a new perfection of craft. The Statutes of Kilkenny became an active weapon of offence; and with each new monarch of the Tudor dynasty the war between State and State was carried to a closer issue. The Irish language was interdicted; the Irish manner of dress was forbidden; and finally every attempt was made to blot out every memory of the Irish stateships and to create English counties in their stead. Kings of territories were offered pompous English titles if they pledged to abtsain [sic] from the use of their simple Irish titles. To help them to a decision they were offered the land over which they ruled, to be held by feudal knight's service and to descend by feudal right of primogeniture. Those who accepted this offer at once found the stateships in rebellion against them, for that land did not lie in the gift of any man but belonged only to the freemen. They rose in protection of their rights since time immemorial; and they rose to repudiate their elected officer; with the result that a soldiery was sent against them that burned their crops and left their land a waste.

Such was the last phase of the war by which the State was to be broken, not only as a whole, but in its several parts. The country far and wide became acquainted with a soldiery whose business it was to tear out all memory of the National State. At the end of that war there arose a figure who saw clearly all that was involved. That was Hugh, the descendant by Irish election of the O'Neill