.

.

I will punish, exact, cut and hang where and whenever I list." Had they been able to make common cause they might perhaps have shaken the English grasp from their necks, for it was commonly corrupt and feeble.

Sir Henry Sidney was the strongest and best governor sent to the island during the century, but he was able to do little.

Though the others could be bribed and though one of them, the Earl of Essex, conspired with the chiefs to rebel, and though at the very end of Elizabeth's reign a capable Spanish army landed in Ireland to help the natives, nothing ever enabled them to turn out the hated "Sassenach." [Sidenote: English colonization] England had already tried to solve the Irish problem by colonization.
Leinster had long been a center of English settlement, and in 1573 the first English colony was sent to Ulster.