policy.

Under King Henry VI. of England, Richard, Duke of York, being Lord
Deputy, the Parliament of the Pale, assembled in Dublin, repudiated
the authority of the English Parliament in Ireland, established a
mint, and assumed an attitude of almost complete independence. On the
other hand, in 1494, under Henry VII., the Parliament of the Pale,
assembled at Drogheda, passed Poyning's Act, extending all English
laws to Ireland and subjecting all laws passed in Ireland to revision
by the English Council. This, extended to the whole of Ireland as
English power extended, remained in force until 1782. Henry VIII. was
the first English sovereign to take practical measures for the
pacific and diplomatic conquest of the whole of Ireland and the
substitution of English for Irish institutions and methods. His
daughter, Queen Elizabeth, continued and completed the conquest; but
it was by drenching the country in blood, by more than decimating the
Irish people, and by reducing the remnant to something like the
condition of the ancient _fuidre_. Her policy prepared the ground for
her successor, James I., to exterminate the Irish from large tracts,
in which he planted Englishmen and Scotchmen, and to extend all
English laws to Ireland and abolish all other laws. James's English
attorney-general in Ireland, Sir John Davies, in his work, _A
Discoverie of the True Causes, etc._, says:

"For there is no nation of people under the sunne that doth love
equall and indifferent [= impartial] justice better than the Irish;
or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof, although it
bee against themselves; so as they may have the protection and
benefit of the law, when uppon just cause they do desire it."