From the Celtic tribes without the Pale even the remnant of civilization and of native union which had lingered on to the time of Strongbow had vanished away.

The feuds of the Irish septs were as bitter as their hatred of the stranger; and the Government at Dublin found it easy to maintain a strife which saved it the necessity of self-defence among a people whose "nature is such that for money one shall have the son to war against the father, and the father against his child." During the first thirty years of the sixteenth century the annals of the country which remained under native rule record more than a hundred raids and battles between clans of the north alone.
[Sidenote: Ireland and Cromwell] But the time came at last for a vigorous attempt on the part of England to introduce order into this chaos of turbulence and misrule.

To Henry the Eighth the policy of forbearance, of ruling Ireland through the great Irish lords, was utterly hateful.

His purpose was to rule in Ireland as thoroughly and effectively as he ruled in England, and during the latter half of his reign he bent his whole energies to accomplish this aim.

From the first hour of his accession indeed the Irish lords felt the heavier hand of a master.