486 



part of the kingdom beyond the limits of the Pale. The late lamented 

 Mr. Herbert Hore, with rare appreciation of the true value for the real 

 purposes of history of many minute historical memorials, which to 

 others have little more than a personal or genealogical, or at best an 

 antiquarian interest, was at much pains to publish in the " Kilkenny 

 Archaeological Journal" a large portion of the ancient Rental of the Earl 

 of Kildare, which is preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British 

 Museum, and the historical importance of many of the seemingly 

 smallest details of which he fully recognised. 



Through the kindness of the Marquis of Kildare, I have been enabled 

 to examine this Rental. It was begun in 1518 ; but it comes down as 

 far as 1564 ; and it is curious to find in it, on August 15th, 1562, not 

 only an entry of the very payment from the Mac Rannalls, which is 

 covenanted in the Agreement now before us, but also in the very same 

 folio, corresponding entries for the territory of " Brene Iroryke," which, 

 as will be remembered, is included in the terms of this Covenant. 



But the Mac Rannall and O'Ruark payments are only specimens of 

 a host of similar tributary payments, filling a large number of folios in 

 the Rental. The system of which they form a part, although its exis- 

 tence will be understood without difficulty by those who are familiar 

 with the State Papers of Henry VIIL, appears in strange contrast with 

 the commonly received representations of the state of Ireland in the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century, according to which the Anglo- 

 Norman was strictly circumscribed within the shrunken limits of the 

 Pale, and the Border English with difficulty maintained themselves 

 against the steady advances and constantly recurring predatory incur- 

 sions of the native population. 



" Beyond the borders of the Pale," says one of the most recent and 

 popular English writers on Ireland under Henry VIIL, Mr. Froude,* 

 who describes as " a narrow strip some fifty miles long and twenty broad" 

 the Pale of this period,f " the Common Law of England was of no au- 

 thority; the King's writ was but a strip of parchment; and the country 

 was parcelled among a set of independent chiefs, who acknowledged 

 no sovereignty but that of strength, and levied tribute on the inhabit- 

 ants of the Pale as a reward for a nominal protection of their rights, 

 and as a compensation for abstaining from the plunder of their farms." 

 In a word, the relations of the border English Palemen to their Celtic 

 neighbours outside the Pale, are popularly considered to have been some- 

 what like what Scott, in "Rob Roy," describes as the condition of the low- 

 land proprietors in their unpleasant proximity to the lawless Highland 

 clans, from whom they obtained a precarious security solely by the pay- 

 ment of the well-known and most distasteful impost of Black Mail. 

 Such an impost, undoubtedly, was levied off their Saxon neighbours 

 by many of the northern chiefs. Even after the date of the Deed 

 which is before us, complaints are found in the reports sent to the 



* " History of England," vol. ii., p. 247. 



f Ibid. 



