The Irish, unfortunately, they looked upon as savages who had refused peace and protection when it was offered to them, and were now therefore to be _rooted out and destroyed_.' A reformer in 1583, however, suggested a milder policy.
He recommended that 'all Brehons, carraghs, bards, rhymers, friars, monks, jesuits, pardoners, nuns, and such-like should be executed by martial law, and that with this clean sweep the work of death might end, and a new era be ushered in with universities and schools, a fixed police, and agriculture, and good government.' When the English had destroyed all the houses and churches, burnt all the corn, and driven away all the cattle, they were disgusted at the savage state in which the remnant of the peasantry lived.

A gentleman named Andrew Trollope gave expression to this feeling thus: 'The common people ate flesh if they could steal it, if not they lived on shamrock and carrion.

They never served God or went to church; they had no religion and no manners, but were in all things more barbarous and beast-like than any other people.

No governor shall do good here,' he said, 'except he show himself a Tamerlane.

If hell were open and all the evil spirits abroad, they could never be worse than these Irish rogues--rather dogs, and worse than dogs, for dogs do but after their kind, and they degenerate from all humanity.'[1] [Footnote 1: Froude, vol.xi.