HISTORY.
Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509-1610). By Constantia Maxwell. (G. Allen and Unwin. 15s. net.)
Miss Maxwell, one of the very few competent and unbiased scholars who are working at Irish history, has compiled a most interesting volume of extracts from the State papers and other contemporary sources to illustrate the Tudor period and the Jacobean settlement and has prefixed a long and carefully written introduction. The extracts arc chosen both from English and from native Irish authorities, and deal not only with Henry VIII.'s bold and on the whole statesmanlike policy of stern repression followed by generous treatment, with the Reformation the Elizabethan wars and the plantations, but also with the social and economic conditions as viewed by natives, immigrants and travellers. Miss Maxwell shows that the wars dragged on interminably because the Anglo-Irish townsfolk and English merchants supplied the rebels with arms and the local officials connived at a trade which brought them handsome bribes. Two sections are given to the founding of modern Ulster, for which James I., London and the Scottish Lowland gentry must share the credit.
Previous page
