The resistance of the tribes of the north was broken in a victory at Bellahoe.

In seven years, partly through the vigour of Skeffington's successor, Lord Leonard Grey, and still more through the resolute will of Henry and Cromwell, the power of the Crown, which had been limited to the walls of Dublin, was acknowledged over the length and breadth of the land.
[Sidenote: Henry's Irish Government] But submission was far from being all that Henry desired.

His aim was to civilize the people whom he had conquered--to rule not by force but by law.

But the only conception of law which the king or his ministers could frame was that of English law.

The customary law which prevailed without the Pale, the native system of clan government and common tenure of land by the tribe, as well as the poetry and literature which threw their lustre over the Irish tongue, were either unknown to the English statesmen or despised by them as barbarous.