from the Norman invaders of a former age. The Norman
generally espoused the cause of some native chief, and
took his pay in land; what he got by the sword he held
by the sword. But the Undertaker was usually a man of
peace--a courtier like Sir Christopher Hatton--a politician
like Sir Walter Raleigh--a poet like Edmund Spencer, or
a spy and forger like Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork.
He came, in the wake of war, with his elastic "letters
patent," or, if he served in the field, it was mainly
with a view to the subsequent confiscations. He was adroit
at finding flaws in ancient titles, skilled in all the
feudal quibbles of fine and recovery, and ready to employ
the secret dagger where hard swearing and fabricated
documents might fail to make good his title. Sometimes
men of higher mark and more generous dispositions, allured
by the temptations of the social revolution, would enter
on the same pursuits, but they generally miscarried from
want of what was then cleverly called "subtlety," but
which plain people could not easily distinguish from
lying and perjury. What greatly assisted them in then:
designs was the fact that feudal tenures had never been
general in Ireland, so that by an easy process of reasoning
they could prove nineteen-twentieths of all existing
titles "defective," according to their notions of the
laws of property.

Sir Peter Carew, already mentioned, was one of the earliest
of the Undertakers. He had been bred up as page to the
Prince of Orange, and had visited the Courts of France,
Germany, and Constantinople. He claimed, by virtue of