Parliament. Though some writers have spoken of this as the most disgraceful Act ever passed by an independent legislature, the people in Ireland at the time considered it a boon and a favour; for it shielded them from the unauthorized power of a Lord Deputy supported by a Parliament of his own creatures. And so, with the close of the mediaeval period, ended the second chapter of Irish history. It will be observed that there had been no religious persecution, unless indeed the conduct of the Norman--that is, the Roman--Church towards the ancient Celtic Church, or the burning of some heretics in the fourteenth century, could be so described; a view which the Nationalists of to-day will hardly care to put forward. Nor can the English Government be fairly blamed for the condition of affairs; for responsibility depends on power, and English power in Ireland hardly existed. The suzerainty of England, feeble at best, had gradually been limited to a mere fraction of the country. The Celtic tribes had long since thrown off even a nominal submission to the English Crown; the Anglo-Norman lords had become either avowedly or practically independent. But the inhabitants of Ireland did not constitute a nation or possess any common interest or bond of union. There was no trace of an organization by which the Irish tribes could be united into one people. The ceaseless civil wars had indeed supplanted the original tribesmen by the mercenary followers of another set of rival chiefs; but there had been no union; and the mass of the people, still under the influence of their native customs, were probably in a more wretched condition than they had ever been before. CHAPTER III. IRELAND UNDER THE TUDORS. We have seen that at the close of the Middle Ages Ireland was in the condition that some people in England now consider the panacea for all the woes of the country; it possessed a subordinate Parliament and England interfered as little as possible in its local affairs. Henry VIII attempted "to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas"; having no army of his own, he appointed the most powerful of the Norman barons his deputy. But this deputy used his authority precisely as an Ersefied Norman (who possessed no more patriotism or national feeling than a Celtic chief) might have been expected to use it,--that was, to aid him in a succession of family quarrels and tribal wars in which, allied with some of the native septs he attacked others. Even the towns outside the Pale fared little better than the remoter districts; there was actually a civil war between Cork and Limerick. The state of affairs in Celtic Ireland during the brief period from 1500 to 1534