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Proceedings of the Royal Ii'lah Academy. 



writer of English prose at a period when English prose, still in the 

 making, was struggling to free itself from the shackles of the pedantry 

 of Lyly and his school, it is probable that Eich's chief interest 

 for posterity has hitherto lain in the fact that it was to his version 

 of one of Bandello's novels, printed in Rich, his Parewell to 

 Military Profession," that Shakespeare was directly indebted for his 

 plot of ''Twelfth Mght."i 



Like those of most of his class and period, the opinions of Eich upon 

 Irish affairs were those of an ardent combatant, in the field of letters as 

 well as in that of arms, on the English and Protestant side in the great 

 European struggle in which Philip of Spain and Elizabeth of England 

 were the protagonists. At the period when the " Eemembrances " 

 here printed were written, the Plantation of Ulster had been completed ; 

 and the statesmen of James the Eirst were seeking, for the moment 

 at least, to administer Irish affairs with something more of con- 

 sideration for the vanquished party than had been evinced for more 

 than a generation. It is necessary, in reading Eich's observations, 

 to remember that they were written in old age by an ultra-Protestant 

 survivor of the Armada period, to whom all symptoms of toleration 

 were profoundly distasteful. 'Eo one, accordingly, need go to his 

 writings for an impartial view of the contentions of the time, or for 

 an example of tolerance in the theological sphere. Eich's merits 

 lie in other directions. Of all Elizabethan or Jacobean writers on 

 Ireland Eich's acquaintance with the country was the closest and 

 most continuous. His first visit was paid during the government of 

 Sir Henry Sidney, in 1577; and he died in Dublin exactly forty 

 years later. His second publication, the ''Allarme to England," 

 printed as early as 1578, was written in Ireland, and is largely 

 occupied with Irish affairs ; and some half dozen other works, 

 concluding with '< The Irish Hubbub," published in 1617, are 

 principally conversant with the same topic. Thus, not only did 

 Eich enjoy ample opportunities during a residence of forty years in 

 Ireland of exercising the faculty of observation which he undoubtedly 

 possessed, but his mind was occupied throughout that long period 

 with the problems of Irish government as they presented themselves 

 to a man of action who had seen much of the world and was intimately 

 involved in Irish affairs. AVhile, therefore, many deductions have to 

 be made from the value of his reports and descriptions on the score 



1 This work, published in 1581, was reprinted for tlie Shakespeare Society in 

 1846. 



