ABSTRACT
The nature of Gaelic Ireland has exerted not only a fascination in the minds of later generations of Irishmen, but also an influence on the history of Ireland. For an Anglo-Irishman to cease speaking Norman French or English and begin speaking Gaelic did not alter his physique; but it did alter his political interest, and his allegiance to the particular political nation in which his aspirations, his daily concerns, his family’s future prospects lay. The Irish medieval Parliament was an institution representing only one of the two nations in the country; and the colony’s unease, occasionally breaking out into hostility, about its Irish neighbours found legislative expression in the numerous statutes which sought to restrain any too close intermingling of the communities. In the thirteenth century the colony grew and the area of direct royal government increased.
