Kingdom been destroy'd but for the enormity of their sins Whereof whoever pleases may see proofs at large in Fitz-Herberts Policy and Religion Part 1. chap. 21. 22. 23 c. yea Jesus the son of Syrach for he may be more easily consulted in every Bible at hand may give to a sober man assurance enough where he says First cap. 10. 8. that the Kingdom is translated from Nation to Nation because of unjust dealings injuries calumnies and various deceits Secondly c. 40. 10. that death and bloodshed strife and the sword oppression famine contrition and scourges were all of them created for the wicked and for them the deluge was made Nay if we consult the Books of Kings read the Prophets run over the Books of Josuah Judges Deuteronomy Chronicles and the rest of the old Testament examine all the Histories of Christendom we shall not find any whole Kingdom or Nation destroy'd but for grievous and horrible sins either of the Rulers or People or Priests or all together Yea we shall commonly find the very quality and species of those transgressions mentioned that brought the vengeance on them However and notwithstanding that further yet we know that bloodshed is one of those four sins that cry to Heaven Gen. X. 11. for vengeance the Voice of thy brothers blood cries to me from the earth said God himself to Cain and that the very second of the Gen. IX 6. Laws he gave to Noe was that whosoever did shed the blood of man his also should be shed after all I dare not affirm positively that either those very Feuds of the Irish how unparallel'd soever in blood or those other transgressions in specie be they what you please were the sins that moved God to pronounce this final doom against them but only in general That their great sins compell'd him to it And how should I indeed For who was the Counsellor Esay XL. 13. Rom. XI 39. of God or who knows any thing of the secrets of his Providence except only those to whom himself was pleased to reveal them Nevertheless I dare acquaint the Reader that although I give but little credit generally and sometimes none at all to the Relations of Cambrensis where he seems rather to vent his passion and write a Satyr against that People than regard either Modesty or Truth yet I will not call in question what he relates l. 2. de Expug Hib. c. 33. of the Prophetical predictions made so many Ages before by the four Prophetical Saints of that Nation Moling Brachan Patrick and Columb-Cille and written by themselves says he in their own Irish Books extant yet in Ireland concerning the final Fate of their Countreymen the old Milesian Race viz. That the people of Great Brittain shall not only invade them but for many Ages continue a sharp cruel and yet doubtful War upon them at home in Ireland sometimes the one and sometimes the other side prevailing That although those Invaders shall be often disturb'd worsted weakned especially and according to the prophecy of Brachan by a certain King that shall come from the desert Mountains of Patrick and on a Sunday-night seize a Castle in the Woody parts of Ibh Faohlain and besides force them almost all away out of Ireland yet they shall continually maintain the Eastern Sea-Coast in their possession That in fine it will be no sooner than a little before the day of judgment and then it will be when they shall be throughly and universally victorious over all Ireland erect Castles every where among the Irish and reduce the whole Island from Sea to Sea under the English Yoak And verily those Prophetical predictions five hundred years since delivered us by Cambrensis as he received 'em from the Irish themselves are the more observable That by consulting the History of after-Ages from Henry II. of England to the last of Queen Elizabeth and first of King James we may see them to a tittle accomplish'd Unless peradventure some will unreasonably boggle at the circumstance of time express'd in these words Paulò ante diem Judicii a little before the day of Judgment Which yet no man has reason to do Because we know not how near this great day which shall end the World may be to us at this very present As for that King foretold as coming from the desâ—rt Mountains of Patric there may be occasion and place enough to speak of him again that is hereafter in the Second Part of this Treatise But whether from this Irish Prophesie either had as for the substance not the exact words of it from Cambrensis for he pretends not to give to us the exact words or had perhaps at least for some part of it from the Irish themselves resorting to Rome in those days the famous Italian Prophet of Calabria Joachimus Abbot of Flore did foretell in his time the utter destruction and eternal desolation that Joachimus Ab. post Tract super cap. X. Isaiae Part 1. de Oneribus sexti Temporis was to come upon the Irish Nation I cannot say This I know 1. That in all his predictions all along in his several Commentaries on Jeremy Esay the Apocalyps c. he pretends to divine Revelation 2. That he lived several years after the Writings of Cambrensis on Ireland had been publick For Cambrensis dedicated one part of them to Henry II. himself who died in the Year of Christ 1189. and the rest to his Son Richard when yet but Earl of Poicton And Joachim was in Sicily with Richard now King of England and Philip Polydore Virgil. in Ricardo primo King of France both wintring there with their Fleets An. 1190. in their way to the Invasion of the holy Land Nay I have my self read his submission of his Works to the See Apostolick dated by himself ten years after which was the Year 1200. of our Saviours Incarnation 3. That being ask'd what the success of this great expedition to the holy Land against Saladine should be his Answer was it should prove unsuccessful and that the time of recovering Hierusalem was not yet come 4. That this prediction of his was punctually true as appear'd ere long 5. That his Prophecy of the old Irish Nation is in these genuin words you read in the Margin * Ex rigoribus horribilis hyemis glacialis flatibus Aquilonis parit Hibernia Incolas furibundos Sed si sequentium temporum terrores praenoscerent internos impetus cogitarene à facie spiritus Domini ferreum pectus averterent se à sempiternis opprobriis liberarent Sed ex quo invicem vertitur furor aspideus involvit tam Clerum quam populum par insultus non video quod superna Clementia ulterius differat quin in â—os exactissimum judicium acuat in stuporem perpetuae desolationis impellat Omnes istos populos Cathedra Dubliniensis astringit Sed Darensium enormis iniquit as totum defaedat ordinem charitatis Et ideo
those very Monarchs for he names only the first and last of 〈◊〉 being Feidlimidius whom he mistakes for one more was not King of Ireland but of Mounster only So little he has of the very Milesians or their Antiquities or Actions Except only 1. A few words of the six Sons of Muredus Provincial King of Ulster entring Scotland 2. A slender touch upon the Danish Invasions of Ireland In which notwithstanding he is mightily out both as to the Year of Christ he fixes on for the first of those Invasions viz. 838. and as to the name person feats yea and Nation too of Gurmundus all being meer Fictions borrow'd mostly from Galfridus Monumethensis However with such and many more idle stories in other matters not only impertinent to the Title of his Books or discharge of his Promise nor only not had from any Records or Writings whatsoever as neither from the oral Testimony of men of knowledg or integrity but wholly deriv'd from old Wive's Tales and pastime of Ferry-men and random reports of Soldiers and imposture of some Knaves who fain'd things of purpose to impose on his vain credulity and besides with most vile reflections Invectives Satyrs almost every where against the Irish Nation of his own time their Princes Priests and People generally without sparing any degree not even the very Monks nor even the very Bishops excepted he patch'd up finish'd at last after five years study all his foresaid five Books of Ireland prefixing Dedicatories of some to the King as of other of 'em to Richard Earl of Poictou who soon after was Richard I. of England And now putting an extraordinary value on these Works of his own and no longer able to conceal his ambitious design of glory by 'em he goes to Oxford renews the ancient Roman Rehearsals there in the most publick Audience could be had continues 'em three days together from morning till night allowing a day for each of his Topographical Books And to make his Comedy the more solemn feasts all the meaner sort of that whole City on the firstday on the second all the Doctors Masters and chief Scholars of the Vniversity on the third day the rest of the Scholars the Soldiers too and all the Burgesses of that Place A sumptuous and noble act says Gerald himself glorying of it whereby the ancient Custom of Poets was renewed which neither the present Age nor any former could shew in England But after all he came short of his expectation of glory His little performance and great ignorance his many Fables and evil choice of other materials toâ— yea and his mortal enmity hatred malevolence to the Irish Nation were seen through especially at Court where as himself complains he had too many back Friends to malign him Above all his Satyrs and spleen against the very name of the Irish lai'd him open Nor were the true causes thereof unknown Besides the common concern he had in the destruction of that People for the sake of his Kinsmen there was another more peculiar to himself that continually egg'd him to the greatest violence against them He had even for his own sake very deeply engag'd in a particular controversie with Albinus O Molloy a Cistercian Irish Monk and Abbot of Baltinglass wherein he was worsted Whether any other causes mov'd him I do not know But this I know that in his Second Book of the Conquest of Ireland he desir'd that whole Nation might either be throughly weakned or totally destroy'd yea notwithstanding the Peace but lately concluded and still observ'd by them And that besides in the same Book cap. 36. he prescrib'd the ways to do it I see also that on every occasion as he is perpetually in the greatest extreams even of Romantic praises of his own Relatives Fitz Stephens Fitz Gerald Meyler the two Barrys and all their Brittish Soldiers too his own Countrey-men so of the other side upon the least pique he is no less passionately excessive in charging with and exaggerating the vilest things against the very Normans and English in Ireland tho embarqu'd in the save public quarrel with them against the Irish Nation Witness among others Herveus de Monte Marisco and William Fitz Adelm the King's Lieutenant and Progenitor of the noble Family of Bourks in that Kingdom Nay witness the King himself Henry II. Whom altho during his Life this Author made the Occidental Alexander the Invincible the Salomon of his own Time the most Pious of Princes and his only Fame tho far short of his Merits to have repress'd the fury of all the very Gentils of Europe and Asia too beyond the Mediterranean Sea adding many more Hyperbolical expressions to magnifie him above all truth and reason as for example That his Victoâ—â—â—◠〈◊〉 with the Circumference of the Earth and That if you seek after the Limits of his Conquests you shall sooner come to the end of the World than of them yet after this Great Prince's death as David Powel very particularly observes he the same Author Gerald of Wales most bitterly invey'd against him in his Book de Instructione Principis where he so belâ—bed forth the venom of his malevolence that he manifestly discover'd his old inveterate hatred of this King Henry So says Powell Moreover and in reference particularly to his stories of Ireland you may find in Primat Ushers Sylloge pag. 155. how the expostulations of other men and evidence of Truth compell'd him at last to several Retractations among which he confesses that altho he had some of his Relations from persons of credit in that Countrey yet for the rest he had only common report and fame Which if I be not mistaken is in effect to acknowledg that he had common Lyes and Forgeries to authorize them Nay further You may read Sir James Wares Censure of them in his own Antiquities of Ireland cap. 23. where in express terms he says in Latin That Gerald of Wales in his Topography of Ireland has heap'd together so many Fabulous Relations that to discuss them exactly would require a just Treatise And then adds in the same place his own wonder How it should come to pass that some of this very Age tho otherwise grave and learned men have again for Truths obtruded on the World those Fictions of Girald Besides You are to know that notwithstanding so many just exceptions against those Books of Cambrensis yea notwithstanding they had therefore lyen after his death 400 years neglected obscure unknown till Cambden had them printed at Francford an 1602. yet ever since that year they have proved the only chief warrant to all such men of little reading as were delighted in writing ill of the ancient Irish To conclude what I would say on the whole is That if hatred enmity open profess'd hostility and special interest and actual engagement too in the destruction of that ancient Irish Nation if ignorance of their Language and wilful passing by their History even the most authentick of their
a single Person must evince the same truth So for Spain Alphonsus III. by putting out the eyes of all his Brethren save one that was kill'd Alfonsus IV. with the like cruelty us'd by his own Brother â—aymirus Peter the Legitimat Son of Alphonsus XI depos'd and kill'd by his Bastard Brother Henry Garzias by Sanctius then Sanctius by Vellidus and after so many retaliations all Spain under King Roderic betray'd to the Moors by a natural Spaniard a Subject to that King Count Julian Prince of Celtiberia as Bodin calls him yea seven hundred thousand Spaniards kill'd in the short space of fourteen months next following that hideous treachery must evince mightily the self-same truth So for France those horrible Feuds Combustions Devastations cruelties inhumanities barbarous sacriledges of the late Civil Wars there continued 40 years against four Kings whereof you may read at large in D'Avila and the Holy Ligue and both Henry III. and Henry IV. one after another so vilely murder'd by those devoted Assassins of Hell Jacques Clement and Ravilliac evince it still Lastly and to come nearer home tho in an earlier time even so for England 1. Those eight and twenty Saxon Kings of the Heptarchy part by one another kill'd part by their own Subjects murder'd besides many other depos'd and forc'd to fly away for their lives For as Matthew of Westminster l. 1. c. 3. writes of the very Northumbrian Kings alone four were murder'd and three more deposed within the little time of one and forty years only And therefore it was that Charles the Great of France when the news of the last of them by name Ethelbert being murdered came to his hearing not only resolv'd to stop the presents he was before on sending to England nor only to do the English in lieu of sending them gifts all the mischiefs he could but said to Alcuinus an English man his own Instructor in Rhetorick Logick and Astronomy that indeed That was a perfidious and perverse Nation a murderer of their Lords and worse than Pagans Nay therefore also it was that many of the Bishops and Nobles fled out of this Northumbrian Kingdom and no man dared for 30 years next following venture on being their King but all men declined it and so left them a prey to the Irish Scâ—ts and Danes who by the just judgment of God over-run them and destroy'd them at last on that very occasion principally 2. Since the Norman Conquest besides the horrible rebellion of Henry the 2d's own Children against him and many other particulars which I pass over not only all the calamities miseries cruelties unspeakable evils of the Barons Wars on both sides under King John Henry III. and Edward II. nor only the deposition and murder too of this poor Edward even his own Wife Queen Eleanor and his own very Soâ—thâ—e Prince of Wales having both of them concurr'd in the deposing him and usurping his Crown but the most prodigiously mortal dissentions of Lancaster and York began with the rebellion against deposition and murder of Richard the II. and so bloodily prosecuted for thirty years under Henry VI. and Edw. IV. that besides eleven main Battels fought with infinite slaughter of English men on either side nay even twenty thousand men kill'd besides the wounded in one of them which Polydore calls the Battel of Touton a Village of Yorkshire the excellent Historian Philip Comines tells us of 80 of the Blood Royal destroyed in them and among this number Henry VI. a most vertuous innocent holy King most barbarously murder'd To say nothing of Richard the Third that Usurping Tyrant so justly dispatch'd in the Battel of Bosworth by the Earl of Richmond who thereupon succeeded King by the name of Henry VII and by marrying the Daughter of Edward IV. and thereby most happily uniting in himself and his Queen and Issue the right of the two Houses ended those fatal dissentions of Lancaster and York Dissentions indeed so fatal to England that besides all her best blood at home as we have seen by their long continuance from the year of Christ 1393. to the year 1486. lost Her not only the Kingdom of France but even the more ancient Inheritance of our Kings in the Dukedoms of Normandy Aquitane and whatever else belong'd to the English Crown on that side of the Sea only the Town of Calais with its little Appendages excepted Were it necessary Buchanan could furnish out of the neighbouring Kingdom of Scotland a very large addition of more examples to the purpose of this place But more than enough has been already said to conclude that notwithstanding any thing or expression in either of the two former Sections my meaning could not be to make those bloody Feuds in Ireland or consequents of them so peculiar to the Milesian Race or Irish Nation as if no other People on Earth had been at any time guilty of the like or as horrid The truth is I mean'd only to say That in respect of their long duration perpetual return from time to time for almost five and twenty hundred years compleat and their excessive degree at very many times within that long Succession of Ages especially considering the small extent of Ireland those cruel bloody Feuds were both National and peculiar to that People only Which I think is true notwithstanding that other Nations either much greater or much lesser might have been in some few Instances of time as high nay peradventure much more horrible transgressors in the very same kind than those antient Milesians were at any one time since their Conquest of Ireland from Tuath-Dee-Danan 33. The second point is to do those ancient Milesians the right as to acknowledg what their Histories have at large That amidst all the Feuds and fury of their Arms how bloody or how lasting soever they had several both Monarchs and after the Pentarchy was set up lesser Kings yea some of those too in their time of Paganism and many more as well of those as these after Christianity establish'd that were of great renown among them for other excellent Qualifications becoming their dignity than those only of Martial Vertue and Fortitude In time of Paganism they had their XXII Monarch Ollamh Fodhla so called from his great Knowledg that very name given him importing in Irish as Gratianus Lucius hath observ'd a great master in Sciences and Teacher of all Knowledg to his People It was he that divided the Lands of Ireland into Hundreds call'd by them Triochae-chead and placed a Lord over each Hundred and over each Town of the Hundred a Bailiff an Applotter of Duties and receiver of Strangers to provide Entertainment for them They had their XCI Monarch Conair mor mhac Eidirsgceoil so great a Justiciar so zealous a Prosecutor of all Malefactors that although with great pains industry hazard to himself yet he forc'd at last all kind of Robbers Thieves Vagabonds and Idlers to fly the whole Kingdom and after this during his Reign