310 



traveller in southern climates, they but point where guilt has done its 

 work. 



* The country, as far as it was precariously subjected to English 

 power, was cantoned among adventurers, whose direct interest it was 

 to exterminate and debase the native inhabitants. Strong to oppress 

 but feeble to govern, " they persuaded the king of England that it 

 was unfit to communicate the laws of England to their victims; that 

 it was the best policy to hold them as aliens and enemies, and to prose- 

 cute them with a continual war ;"* and indeed it would seem as if no- 

 thing but the necessity of using the Irish as slaves and villeins prevented 

 their utter extirpation, until at length "tttese large scopes of land and 

 great liberties, with the absolute power to make war and peace, did 

 raise the English lords to that height of pride and ambition, as that 

 they could not endure one another."* 



Roderic lived to witness the ruinous consequences of his own inde- 

 cision. Stung with remorse for not having opposed the encroach- 

 ments of these marauders, with that political ability which had placed 

 his family on the throne, and broken-hearted at the unnatural rebel- 

 lion of his sons,-f* he sought a retreat in the solitude of a convent, 

 and died in the Abbey of Cong, where his tomb is still marked by 

 tradition. 



Thus, as well among the English adventurers as the Irish natives, 

 faction and civil war had shed their baneful seeds in a soil unhappily 

 too apt for such a harvest. Feuds and rebellions sprang up luxuri- 

 antly in every province; the march of civilization was impeded, and 

 even the scanty streams of justice, which the better policy of govem- 



* Davis's Historical Relations, p. 64. Hence the historian of the Crusades remarks, that 

 Ireland was by Henry the Second connected with England, " sous le litre d'esclave plutot qui 

 de sujette."— L'Esprit des Croisades, vol. ii. p. 18. 



f See Lanigan's Eccl. Hist. vol. iv. p. 333. 



