ABSTRACT
Once power and authority were vested in the colonizers, usually the landlords, one of the conditions of owning land was that the owner be Protestant. The Catholic population on the land was disenfranchised. Its leadership, once hereditary, became ephemeral, for the "mere Irish," as the English called them, had no means of gaining power and keeping it. This is one of the areas of Irish life in which the "cen tur ies of British oppress ion" explanation works very well; the response to the crisis of authority was the use of intermediaries in most areas of social life, especially where there was potential for conflict.
