ABSTRACT
Connaught, and Ulster-in which the tribal authority of the chiefs, sometimes disguised as the palatine jurisdiction of nominal earls, exerted the only effective rule. Leinster, nearest the Pale, contained the lands of Kildare, but this branch of the great house of Fitzgerald gave no more trouble. The other magnate of the province was the head of the house of Butler, Thomas tenth earl of Ormond, the feudal ruler of Kilkenny and Tipperary (the latter part of Munster), who throughout the reign proved the queen's most loval Irishman. An able commander who understood the needs C:f the country, ruthless in war but generous in peace, Ormond stood firm despite many disappointments at the hands of lords deputies who disliked all Irishmen; for his loyalty was grounded on a passionate devotion to Elizabeth of whose court the earl had been a shining ornament in his young days. Elizabeth repaid him with a firm trust and frequent kindness. Also in Leinster, County Wicklow-wooded, hilly, wild-was a standing threat of disaffection, much too near Dublin to be comfortable. In Munster, the O'Briens of Thomond preserved an intermittent attachment to the government, while the more powerful Geraldines of Desmond were one of the greatest dangers to English rule. Connaught was wild Irish, practically unaffected by the superficial anglicisation of south and east; Ulster was worse. Here lay the real centre of Irish resistance, pretty well inaccessible and held by tribes still virtually in the savagery of the bronze age. As far as they could control it, the houses of O'Donnell (Tyrconnel) and O'Neill (Tyrone, Fermanagh, Monaghan, and Armagh) divided the province between them; the situation was complicated by the settlement in Clandeboy (Antrim) of the Scottish l\1acDonalds, invaders from the Western Islands, who-at intervals refreshed by accessions from Scotland-provided an element of confusion as well as a source of mercenary soldiers (Redshanks) under such leaders as the enchantingly if improbably named Sorley Boy MacDonald.
