Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/116

100 colony, after the conquet of it by king Henry the econd; and the laws of England were then received and worn to by the Irih nation, aembled at the council of Limore. And as Ireland, thus conquered, planted, and governed, till continues in a tate of dependence, it mut necearily conform to, and be obliged by, uch laws as the uperior tate thinks proper to precribe.

the time of this conquet the Irih were governed by what they called the Brehon law, o tiled from the Irih name of judges, who were denominated Brehons. But king John in the twelfth year of his reign went into Ireland, and carried over with him many able ages of the law; and there by his letters patent, in right of the dominion of conquet, is aid to have ordained and etablihed that Ireland hould be governed by the laws of England : which letters patent ir Edward Coke apprehends to have been there confirmed in parliament. But to this ordinance many of the Irih were avere to conform, and till tuck to their Brehon law: o that both Henry the third and Edward the firt were obliged to renew the injunction; and at length in a parliament holden at Kilkenny, 40 Edw. III, under Lionel duke of Clarence, the then lieutenant of Ireland, the Brehon law was formally abolihed, it being unanimouly declared to be indeed no law, but a lewd cutom crept in of later times. And yet, even in the reign of queen Elizabeth, the wild natives till kept and preerved their Brehon law; which is decribed to have been “a rule of right unwritten, but delivered by tradition from one to another, in which oftentimes there appeared great hew of equity in determining the right between party and party, but in many things repugnant quite both to God’s law and man’s.” The latter part of this character is alone acribed to