The Lasting Effects of Feudalism. 7 



ill detached groups of low hills, and towards the centre of the 

 island in large extents of barren bog and morass, offered but 

 few incentives for foreign invasion. For half a dozen centuries 

 internecine warfare between tribal chieftains alone varied the 

 peaceful monotony of a pastoral life. The Phcenicians and 

 Greeks had come and gone, and left no trace of their visits. 

 St. Patrick had followed, and throughout the island introduced 

 a Continental form of the Christian faith. About the eighth 

 century those restless rovers, the Danes, began to invade the 

 eastern seaboard. The tanists, or chiefs of the various septs, 

 though more or less submissive to a national king, were true 

 to their Celtic instincts, and offered no combined resistance 

 to these wild intruders. As in East Anglia, so in Munster, the 

 Danes established a permanent foothold, and became absorbed 

 in the national existence. Then, four centuries later, in 

 1167, came the Anglo-Norman invasion, and the introduction 

 of Feudalism. And here begins a divergence, small at first, 

 becoming larger as it progresses, between the land tenure 

 established by the Norman in England and that established 

 by him in Ireland, which is really at the root of all those 

 national disagreements which have hitherto marred the 

 history of the Union. The Anglo-Saxon could adapt his 

 natural tastes to the new economy without much trouble, but 

 the Celt never seems to have been able to do so. There was 

 no national gathering of freeholders in Ireland like that of 

 Salisbury Plain to do homage to the sovereign, and this re- 

 sulted in a system of Feudalism more reconcilable with the 

 allodial land tenure of the Heptarchical economy than with 

 the polity developed in England after the Norman Conquest. 



Septal property was granted in huge quantities to the Free 

 Companions, who conquered Ireland under the authority of 

 King Henry II., and the countenance of Pope Adrian IV. ; 

 but as to the best means of introducing the English manorial 

 system, the conquerors were left to their own resources. Their 



butter were common dues, and the O'Neill and his clan lived principally 

 on these products of Irish farming, which signify the " Strowan," men- 

 tioned in the Ulster Journal of Archceology, vol. iii. p. 134. — Coch. 

 Patrick's Mediaeval Scotland, Appendix. 



