Bi:knaud — Richitrd Talbot, Archbishop and Chancellor. 221 



the reconciliation of licr iiooiile.' Art MacMiuinuyli Iiad .sliown liiinseil' to 

 be a powerful and dangerous opponeuL of the English administration, and at 

 the time when Sir John Talbot became viceroy, tlie autliority of England was 

 liardly recognized outside the I'ale. In the nfiighbourhood of Dublin that 

 authority was indeed established, but it was far from secure. And the 

 frequent changes of viceroys, and the absence of any steady or consistent 

 policy, worked miscliief, the effecls of which have not yet been undone. 



In 1423 Archbishop Talbot was made Justiciar, and subsequently Chan- 

 cellor — an office from which he was removed for a short time in 1426,' but to 

 which he was reappointed, and which he held for a good many years, with 

 intervals when a rival succeeded in ousting liim. There were no circuits 

 outside the Pale, as indeed the country was hardly accessible except to an 

 armed force, and the Chancellor's jurisdiction was in fact limited to a small 

 part of the Island, the Pale including only the counties of Dublin, Louth, 

 Meath, and Kildare.^ Violence and disorder prevailed ; and the methods of 

 government suggest that the cynical maxim of Cosmo de Medici that " States 

 could not be governed by Paternosters" was literally accepted. 



Archbishop Talbot did not always give satisfaction even to the English 

 colony, and possibly this may mean that he tried to do impartial justice to 

 all classes of the population. In 1429 he was summoned to England on the 

 charge ttiat he had failed to prohibit and prevent illegal and seditious meetings 

 attended by armed Irishmen.' But as he retained the Chancellorship, he was 

 probably able to satisfy the King's Government chat he had acted for the best. 



' There is a significant sentence in an Act of Parliament passed at Drogheda in 1451, 

 just two years after Archbishop Talbot's death, which illustrates the state of unrest in 

 Ireland. The statute recites that Easter would fall late that year, and that Parliament 

 "cannot be advantageously held after the said feast, on account of the impending Vars 

 of the Irish enemies of our lord the king, uho are wont to go to luar immediately after the 

 Feast of Easter." 



- Treshani's Chancery Hulls, pp. 225, 227 ; Nicolas' Acts of the Prii'y Council iii. 

 93, 212. 



^ In the remarkable poem. The Libel of Enylish Policy, written in 1430, tlie author 

 says (Wright's Political Poems ii. 188) : — 



" That wylde Yrishe so muche of ground have gotyne 

 There upon us, as likelynesse may be, 

 Lyke as England to slieris two or tlire 

 Of thys oure londe is made comparable, 

 So wylde Yrishe have wonne unto us unable 

 Yit to defende, and of no powere 

 That oure grounde there is a lytelle cornere, 

 To alle Yrelonde in trewe comparisone." 

 The author notes that he learnt from tlie earl of Oruiondw some of his facta about 

 Ireland, of which he gives an instructive picture. 

 * Tresham, Chancery Rolls, p. 249. 



