So far from either giving elements of civilization or good government to the other, conqueror and conquered reaped only degradation from the ceaseless conflict.

The native tribes lost whatever tendency to union or social progress had survived the invasion of the Danes.

Their barbarism was intensified by their hatred of the more civilized intruders.
But these intruders themselves, penned within the narrow limits of the Pale, brutalized by a merciless conflict, cut off from contact with the refining influences of a larger world, sank rapidly to the level of the barbarism about them: and the lawlessness, the ferocity, the narrowness of feudalism broke out unchecked in this horde of adventurers who held the land by their sword.
[Sidenote: English and Irish] From the first the story of the English Pale was a story of degradation and anarchy.

It needed the stern vengeance of John, whose army stormed its strongholds and drove its leading barons into exile, to preserve even their fealty to the English Crown.

John divided the Pale into counties and ordered the observance of the English law; but the departure of his army was the signal for a return of the disorder he had trampled under foot.
Between Englishmen and Irishmen went on a ceaseless and pitiless war.