178 



Dublin a noble city,* an epithet which his Majesty would scarcely 

 have bestowed upon a village consisting solely of hurdle cabins; 

 and also, because this fashion of dwellings continued to be cus- 

 tomary, not only in Ireland, but in England,-f- even so late as the 

 time of Elizabeth, when Holingshed laments the degenerate effe- 

 minacy of his countrymen, since the laying aside of willow-houses 

 had become a prevalent fashion. Nor is the silence of the early Eng- 

 lish historians conclusive that there were no stone edifices in Dublin 

 when the Anglo-Normans seized it. That silence would rather 

 imply, that the buildings and the appearance of the city were not 

 altogether dissimilar from what they were accustomed to in Bri- 

 tain.J Christ Church cathedral appears from Ware§ to have been 

 built a hundred years before Strongbow's invasion by Sitricus the 

 Dane, petty king of Dublin. This mixture of wattle and timber 

 dweUing houses, with stone and lime churches, was one to which 

 they were habituated, and therefore the lofty round tower, as the 

 peculiar building of the country, is alone mentioned. 



When the Anglo-Romans established themselves in Ireland, they 

 built stone dwelling-houses, or rather small castles, in which they 

 could defend themselves, and the country quickly became studded 

 over with the strong holds of the English. The Irish chieftains 

 very tardily adopted the fashion of their invadei-s, disliking it both 

 from the circumstance of its origin, and from its being opposed to 



* Whitelaw's History of Dublin, I. p. 46 —Littleton's History of Henry U. v. IH. p 28. 



f It is evident from the description given by Ariiulphus de Montgomery of Pembroke Castle, 

 built about the same period, that stone buildings were then uncommon in England Philoso- 

 phical Survey, p. 53. 



J Littleton's History of Henry H. v. H. p. 340, houses of stone in London were at tliis time 

 rather rare. — Hallara on the Middle Ages, iii, p. 420. 



§ Ware's Antiquities, p. 131. 



