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The History of Ireland from the Invasion of Henry II.
The History of Ireland from the Invasion of Henry II Author:Thomas Leland Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: '; o P T ri'E HISTORY Of I REL A'K' . : - ...'. 11 ' .i ...; ;n ..(, . f , .. i : .JU INtRQDUCTIQN p CTIANIT Y, ;:i.J i-!'JV.'":iJ. ' 'i-1 ..()... more »r-!T.'-'j i. . ;''./.I. :(:: .-J' . ! ;il hi:: .-.'J!JriA' ;:.,u: :'!j i IF all nations have affected to' deduce their Hiftory from the earlieft periods, and to claim that origin which they dteitted::;nioft honourable, the old Irifh have been .particularly tempted : to indulge this vanity. Deprofled for .many ages, and reduced to a mortifying.. ftate of inferiority, ftung with the reproaches,::with the contempt, and fbmet;mes.with the injurious flander of their neighboxirs, they paffionately recurred to the monuments of their ancient glory, and fpoke of the noble actions of their anceftdrs in the glowing ftyle of indignation. O'Flagherty, their celebrated antiquarian, (in a vindication, of his -Ogygia againft Sir George Mackenzie, which I have teen in manufcript) ipeaks with ah enthufiaftic zeal of his country, as the venerable mother of Britain, " that engendered: of her own bowels one hundred " and feventy-one monarchs for above two th-ou- " fand years, to the year 1198 all-- of the fame " houfe and lineage; with fixty-eight kings arid " one queen of Britim-Sebtknd, (omitting " Bruces and Baliols) and four'imperial kings " and two queens of Great-Britain and Ireland, " fprung from her own loins." In the reign of Edward the Second, the Irifh claimed a ftill greatergreater antiquity. An Ulfter prince of this timeT, boafts to the pope of an uninterrupted fucceffion of one hundred and ninety-feven kings of Ireland to the year 1170. It cannot be denied, that no literary monuments have yet been discovered in Ireland earlier than the introduction of Chriftianity into this country; and that the evidence of any tranfa...« less