452 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July, are so glaring that it is only just to emphasize the value of his achievement. It would not be possible to write a history of Ireland in the later middle ages without such a survey as he has given us. His book is essential, a considerable historical work of which any scholar might well be proud. That it is not possible to leave comment at this point is due to Mr. Orpen himself. He appears to think that he has rounded off the history of Ireland in the period which, in his view, is closed by the murder of William de Burgh, earl of Ulster and lord of Connaught, in June 1333. He has described the downfall of the great house of the Marshals and with infinite patience traced the partition of their lands ; he has worked out the history of the lordships of Munster, of the sub-infeudation of Connaught, and of the rise of the great earldom of Ulster ; he has marked the ebb and flow of the Irish element and defined the islets of obstinate Irish in the districts of shires and franchises. Edward I and the de Burghs, he suggests, had nearly established peace and prosperity — total subjection was merely a matter of time — when Edward Bruce shook the whole structure and threw Ireland back into anarchy. But this is not a history of Ireland, even though the narrative is supplemented by a rather perfunctory description of Edward I's parliaments and legislation, and the interesting details collected in the last chapter on ' one hundred and sixty years of Norman rule '. Mr. Orpen is too much under the influence of his original conception, expressed in his title-page ; he regards Irish history as a conflict between the fief and the sept, and in spite of evidence to the contrary which he provides himself, considers that the Ireland of the fourteenth and fifteenth . centuries is only explicable as the result of a catastrophe. It is hard to believe that Ireland in the thirteenth century was so isolated as this view implies ; that the legal, social, and intellectual movements of the time did not produce something more subtle and far-reaching. Ireland was a Plantagenet, not a Norman, state. The whole of the administrative machinery developed by Henry II and his successors was reproduced in Ireland, under the direction of trained lawyers and officials. Mr. Orpen's note-books must be full of information about its working. 1 In the reign of Edward II we find parliaments and a very interesting council (appointed indirectly by parliament) which was to co-operate with the king's council. 2 Mr. Orpen knows all about them, but he mentions them casually, as he might mention the mote at Ballyloughloe or the erection of a castle at Calanafersy. But in a history of Ireland we expect to hear whence these institutions came, how they compare with parliaments and councils elsewhere, wherein their significance lay, and in general what Mr. Orpen thinks of them. The records of Irish administration and legislation, if not very abundant for this period, are sufficiently extensive to form the basis of a study which could develop and deepen the work of Sir James Ware. Until the government of Ireland has been systematically described and considered as an organism, generalizations on the development of Irish history in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are premature. A comparative study of the franchises is even more essential. Scattered 1 Cf. Judge Johnston's paper on the ' First Adventure of the Common Law % in the Law Quarterly Review, January 1920, xxxvi. 9-30. 2 Berry, Early Statutes of Ireland, p. 264. S
