Above : Norman Settlements at end of 13th Century

Above: A PICTURE OF THOMAS WENTWORTH The EARL OF STRAFFORD, 1641.

AFTER the fall of Strafford the Irish Government was administered by two Lord Justices, Parsons and Borlase. Both were supposed to be Puritanical in their sympathies, and soon they made themselves most unpopular. Both opposed the concessions to the Catholics, which Charles, anxious for the support of the latter, seemed now willing to grant. The whole country was in a state of dangerous unrest. Numbers of disbanded soldiers wandered about, without employment or means of support. The Connacht landowners knew not when the decrees which the late Viceroy had obtained against them might be put in force. Those of the other provinces felt that, when such remote Crown claims had been admitted, no Irish proprietor anywhere was secure of his estate.The generation which remembered the Ulster plantation was yet by no means extinct; plenty of old men and women remained to tell to their grandchildren the tales of their sufferings in those evil days ; to kindle in their minds the desire of vengeance, and the hope of wresting the fields which their ancestors had tilled from the hands of the stranger. Over in England the anti-Catholie feeling was growing. Seven priests had been executed in London, merely for saying Mass.

Above: King John

King Henry died in the year 1189, and was succeeded by his son Richard the Lion Hearted. Richard took no interest in Ireland, and left the whole management of its affairs to his brother John, who, in 1189, appointed Hugh de Lacy lord justice, in place of John de Courcy. At this time and for long after, Connaught was in a iTiis;’rable state of turmoil, partly from the contests of the members of the O’Conor family for the provincial throne, a-nd partly on account of tlie interference of the barons, vvho always took advantage ol the native dissensions to advance their own interests.