going on in other rich and populous neighbourhoods; whilst the revenues of many lordly owners of mines have simultaneously increased. On the whole, therefore, we see no reason to fear that any sweeping or revolutionary change in the well-ordered social system of the United Kingdom is at hand; and the effect on our minds of this review of the vicissitudes of families, especially in their political bearings, is rather reassuring than the contrary.

325

LIVES OF THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF IRELAND.

The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland, from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria. By J. RODERICK O'FLANAGAN, M.R.I.A., Barrister-at-Law, Author of Recollections of the Irish Bar,' the Bar Life of O'Connell,' &c. In two volumes. London: 1870.

Ir has been wittily said that bad books make good reviews, as bad wine makes good vinegar. If this were true, the critics ought to be grateful to Mr. O'Flanagan for the opportunity afforded them by his 'Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland.' It is a bad book, although with judicious correction and curtailment it may eventually take rank as a useful compilation. Notwithstanding the amount of anxious labour bestowed upon the composition, we cannot say materiam superabat opus; for the conception is better than the execution, and the materials rise superior to the arrangement and the style.

Till within living memory, owing to political causes, the Irish woolsack was practically reserved for Eng. lishmen. The lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, therefore, are mostly the lives of English lawyers; so that the nicest discrimination was required in selecting such portions as relate to their judicial career in Ireland, and compressing or rapidly glancing over the rest. Not marking this peculiarity of his subject, Mr. O'Flanagan has overloaded it with general history, English and Irish. But he is rich in traditions and reminiscences: he is well versed in Irish

Memoirs and Biographies: he is trustworthy, if not always apposite, in his citations; and he blunders honestly when he blunders (which he does very often) in his dates. In a word, despite of its manifold defects, we have found the book capital gleaning ground, and we hope by means of it to illustrate and place in broad relief the most eventful passages of the forensic annals of Ireland-annals forming the brightest pages of her history, the pages of which she has most reason to be proud, almost the only pages which she might write without a blot and read without a tear.

Thomas Moore was wont to relate how, some time after the publication of the first volume of his History of Ireland,' a literary lady was kind enough to suggest to him the History of Ireland' as an appropriate subject for his pen; and he frankly admitted the suggestion to be a fair test of the limited circulation of his book, which (so far as he had then gone) was exclusively conversant with rude traditions, apocryphal heroes, and mythical events, which read better in poetry than prose. Warned by his example, we shall have nothing to say to personages like Cormac MacArt, monarch of Ireland, A.D. 227, who, we are assured by Mr. O'Flanagan, 'was distinguished for his devotion to literature, and is said to have regained his ancestral throne by his intellectual powers;' nor do we care to meddle in detail with the Chancellors who flourished in the dark ages, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, when the office was more political than judicial, and was indiscriminately bestowed on lawyers, churchmen, powerful nobles, and men of the sword. Thus, in 1449, Richard, Duke of York, being appointed Viceroy of Ireland, made his son, Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Rutland, Lord Chancellor. In 1483 the Great Seal was entrusted to Sir Thomas Fitz Gerald (brother of the Earl of Kildare, Lord Deputy), who, on the civil war breaking out anew, resigned it for the battle-axe,

and fell fighting valiantly in the command of a division at the battle of Stoke. Nicholas, Lord Howth, led the billmen on foot at the well-named battle of Knocktough (hill of slaughter), fought on August 10, 1504, and was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1509.

Archiepiscopal Chancellors abounded on each side of the Irish Channel; and we so repeatedly find the Great Seal in the possession of an Archbishop of Dublin, that the dignities seem to have an affinity to each other at these early stages of civil and ecclesiastical administration. One of the most remarkable instances was that of John Alan, Wolsey's chaplain, whom, in 1528, the then all powerful Cardinal made Archbishop and Lord Chancellor at once. This double elevation took place in open defiance of that famous Earl of Kildare of whom so many strange stories are related. One, tolerably well known, that on a Lord of the Council saying-All Ireland cannot govern that Earl,' the King (Henry VIII.) declared, Then that Earl shall govern all Ireland,' and forthwith made him Viceroy. Another, that when he was accused before the same. Council of having set fire to a cathedral, he excused himself on the ground that he believed the Archbishop was within it at the time.

And here arises the grave question, whether the Archbishop whom he meant to roast, was or was not the Cardinal's hated nominee. We find that one of Kildare's first acts as Lord Deputy was to take away the Great Seal from Alan, and confer it on the Archbishop of Armagh. It further appears that the feud between Alan and the Fitz Geralds led to his death by violence. During one of their insurrectionary movements against the constituted authorities, after vainly trying to escape to England, he was seized in his bed by a party of the Geraldines, and dragged half-naked before Lord Offaly, the son of his dreaded foe. He fell on his knees and besought the young lord to forget former

injuries and respect his calling. Lord Offaly, meaning to spare him, exclaimed in Irish-Beir naim an bodach!' (Take away the churl !'), which his followers unfortunately misinterpreted, and immediately beat out the Archbishop's brains.

"The Chancellor,' remarks Mr. O'Flanagan, in these primitive days, had very extensive jurisdiction, and a proportionate sphere of duty. Besides presiding in the Court of Chancery, attending Parliament, and assisting the Lord Deputy with his advice; ministering to the wants of his diocese, and the important functions of an archbishop or bishop, he presided as Judge of Assize, and disposed of the business civil and criminal. The absence of the Chancellor in England, in 1380, caused the assizes which were to be holden before him to lapse.'

The mixed character of the office may account for the novel description of duty undertaken by the Lord Chancellor (Trimlestown) in 1537, who, with the Archbishop and other members of the council, undertook a converting circuit, which jumbled preaching, hanging, law, and religion, varied by feasting and visiting, in a most extraordinary manner.' Their proceedings at Wexford, as officially reported, may suffice for a specimen :—

'There, the Sunday, my Lord of Dublin preached, having a very great audience, when also were published the King's injunctions. The day following we kept the Sessions there, both for the city and the shire, where was put to execution four felons, accompanied with another, a friar, whom among the residue, we commanded to be hanged in his habit, and so to remain upon the gallows for a mirror to all his brethren to live truly.'

The last of the archiepiscopal Chancellors of Ireland was Boyle, Archbishop of Dublin in 1663 when he received the Great Seal, and Archbishop of Armagh in 1678. He continued in uninterrupted possession of