occupy certain districts, paying whatever rent or Other dues might be extracted from them. But at any moment colonists might settle on these lands, driving them off altogether, or allowing them to remain in a more or less servile condition.
Modern writers seem to hold that the Irish ought to have been, or actually were, satisfied with this state of affairs, just as eels are said to like being skinned.[1] The lower orders, we are told, benefited immensely by the more settled government, with its ensuing security, brought in by the settlers. But this view takes no account of the loss of property and position suffered by the free clansmen. No doubt the servile classes did rise in position, or, what was much the same, saw those who had been their superiors depressed to their own level.[2] But to the free clansmen, and above all to the leading families, the new state of affairs must have been intolerable.
A native Irish writer sums up the position tersely. The foreigners considered every foreigner noble even if he was ignorant of letters, and considered none of the Gael to be noble, even if he owned land. The most exhaustive account of the new order consequent on the Anglo-Norman Invasion is to be found in Dr. Bonn's Englische Kolonisation in Irland, a work indispensable to all students of Irish history.[3] He sums up the
- ↑ See Orpen and Knox.
- ↑ Pretty full records of the condition of the Irish tenants or rather serfs in the districts subject to the Anglo-Normans are now available in print: for instance in the "Pipe Roll of Cloyne," published in Jour. Cork Hist, and Arch. Soc., 1914; Begley's Limerick, and elsewhere.
- ↑ Specially to be studied in this connection are his chapters III., IV., and V. in Vol. I. For a summary see pp. 128—9, Vol. I.
