set out to colonists. To the two elements of the population the Celtic or "mere Irish" and the Anglo-Norman or "old English," whom we may now begin to call the Anglo-Irish, had been added under Elizabeth a third element the new English. This was strengthened under James; kept apart as far as possible by a system of dense colonisation from the older elements; was strongly differentiated from them by religion. The religious opinions of many of the Elizabethan settlers were, as I have said, not very definite. This was the case with a very large proportion of the English nation at the time. But under James Puritanism had made strides, High Church Anglicanism had developed and grown definitely apart from Rome, the Scots in the north added a strong fanatical element.
A common religion, common disabilities began to draw the two older elements together. The conscious idea of a nation begins to appear. But the test of nationality becomes almost a religious one. The descendant of the planter of Leix or the undertaker of Munster, if a Catholic, begins to be classed as an Irishman. The Protestant heirs of Brian of the Tributes feel and speak as Englishmen.
By the year 1641 we find somewhat more than half the island still in possession of Catholics, some of them the descendants of planters of the previous generation. Against these last we must set the few great men of the two older elements who had embraced the new doctrines. Perhaps we may calculate that in 1641 three-fifths of the island belonged to the descendants of the owners
