158

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XII.

1C8!J.

would take many years to repair the waste which had beenwrought in a few weeks by the armed peasantry.* Some ofthe Saxon aristocracy had mansions richly furnished, and side-boards gorgeous with silver bowls and chargers. All thiswealth disappeared. One house, in which there had beenthree thousand pounds’ ivorth of plate, was left without aspoon.** But the chief riches of Ireland consisted in cattle.Innumerable flocks and herds covered that vast expanse ofemerald meadow, saturated with the moisture of the Atlantic.More than one gentleman possessed twenty thousand sheepand four thousand oxen. The freebooters who now overspreadthe country belonged to a class which was accustomed to liveon potatoes and sour whey, and which had always regardedmeat as a luxury reserved for the rich. These men at firstrevelled in beef and mutton, as the savage invaders, who of oldpoured down from the forests of the north on Italy, revelledin Massic and Falernian wines. The Protestants describedwith contemptuous disgust the strange gluttony of their newlyliberated slaves. The carcasses, half raw and half burned tocinders, sometimes still bleeding, sometimes in a state ofloathsome decay, were tom to pieces and swallowed withoutsalt, bread, or herbs. Those marauders who preferred boiledmeat, being often in want of kettles, contrived to boil the steerin his own skin. An absurd tragicomedy is still extant, whichwas acted in this and the following year at some low theatrefor the amusement of the English populace. A crowd ofhalf naked savages appeared on the stage, howling a Celticsong and dancing round an ox. They then proceeded tocut steaks out of the animal while still alive and to fling thebleeding flesh on the coals. In truth the barbarity and

* Ten years, says the French ambassador; twenty years, says a Pro-testant fugitive.

** Animadversions on the proposal for sending back the nobility andgentry of Ireland; 16££.