 Chapter 1 Dermid McMurray's Negotiations and Success—The First Expedition of the Normans into Ireland. The result of Dermid McMurray's interview with Henry II in Aquitaine was a royal letter addressed to all his subjects authorizing such of them as would to enlist in the service of the Irish Prince. Armed alone with this, the expelled adulterer, chafing for restoration and revenge, retraced his course to England. He was at this time some years beyond three score, but the snows of age had had no effect in cooling his impetuous blood. His stature is described as almost gigantic, his voice loud and harsh, his features stern and terrible. His cruel and criminal character we already know. Yet it is but just here to recall that much of the horror and odium which has accumulated on his memory is posthumous and retrospective. Some of his contemporaries were no better in their private lives than he was, but they had no part in bringing in the Normans. Talents both for peace and war he certainly had, and there was still a feeling of attachment, or at least of regret, cherished towards him and the people of his patrimony. Dermid proceeded at once to seek the help he so sorely needed upon the marches of Chester in the city of Bristol and at the court of the Prince of North Wales. At Bristol he caused King Henry's letter to be publicly read, and each reading was accompanied by ample promises of land and recompense to those disposed to join in the expedition but all in vain. From Bristol he proceeded to make the usual pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. David, the Apostle of Wales, and then he visited the court of Griffith-Aparis, the Prince of North Wales, whose family ties formed a true Welsh triad among the Normans, the Irish and the Welsh. He was the nephew of the celebrated Ness, or Nesta, the Helen of the Welsh, whose blood flowed in the veins of almost all the first Norman adventurers in Ireland, and whose story is too intimately interwoven with the origin of many of the highest names of Norman Irish to be left untold. She was in her day the loveliest woman of Cambria, and perhaps of Britain, but the fabled mantle of Tregau, which according to her own mythology will fit none but the chaste, had not rested upon the white shoulders of Nesta, the daughter of Rhys Aptudur. Her girlish beauty had attracted the notice of Henry I, to whom she bore Robert Fitzroy and Henry Fitz-Henry, the former the famous Earl of Gloucester, and the latter the father of two of Strongbow's most noted companions. Afterwards, by consent of her royal paramour, she married Gerald Constable of Pembroke, by whom she had Maury Fitz-Gerald, the common ancestor of the Kildare and Desmond Geraldines. While living with Gerald at Pembroke, Owen, son of Cadigan, Prince of Powis, hearing of her marvellous beauty at a banquet given by his father at the castle of Abertyvy, came by night to Pembroke, surprised the castle, and carried off Nesta and her children into Powis. Gerald, however, had escaped, and by the aid of his father-in-law, Rhys, severed his wife and rebuilt his castle, A.D. 1105. The lady survived this husband and married a second time, Stephen, Constable of Cardigan, by whom she had Robert Fitz-Steven and probably other children. One of her daughters, Angkorad, married David DeBerry, the father of Geraldus and Robert DeBerry. Another, named after herself, married Bernard of Newmarch and became the father of the Fitz-Bernard, who accompanied Henry II. In the second and third generations this fruitful Cambrian vine, grafted on the Norman stock, had branched out into the great families of the Carous, Gerald's, Fitz-Williams, and Fitzroy's of England and Wales, and the Geraldine's, Grace's, Fitz-Henry's, and Fitz-Marie's of Ireland. These names will show how entirely at the expeditions of 1169 and 1170 were joint stock undertakings with most of the adventurers. When the Lester King reached the residence of Griffith-Aprice, near St. David's, he found that for some personal or political cause he held in prison his near-Kinsman, Robert, son of Stephen, who had the reputation of being a brave and capable knight. Dermot obtained the release of Robert, on condition of his imbalance in the kingdom of England. When the Lester King reached the residence of Griffith-Aprice, near St. David's, he found that for some personal or political cause he had the condition of his embarking in the Irish Enterprise, and he found in him an active recruiting agent, alike among the Welsh, Flemmings, and Normans. Through him, Maurice Fitz-Gerald, the de Berries, and the Fitz-Henry's, and their descendants, were soon enlisted in the Inventure. The son of Griffith-Aprice, who may be mentioned along with these knights, his kinsmen, and whom the Irish analysts consider the most important person of the first expedition, their pillar of battle, also resolved to accompany them with such forces as he could enlist. But a still more important ally waited to treat with Dermot, on his return to Bristol. This was Richard DeClaire, called variously from his castles or his country, Earl of Strigel and Chepstow, or Earl of Pembroke. From the strength of his arms he was nicknamed Strongbow, and in our annals he is usually called Earl Richard, by which title we prefer hereafter to distinguish him. His father, Gilbert DeClaire, was descended from Richard of Normandy and stood no further removed in degree from that duke than the reigning prince. For nearly forty years under Henry I, and during the stormy reign of King Stephen, he had been Governor of Pembroke, and like all the great barons played his game chiefly to his own advantage. His castle at Chepstow was one of the strongest in the West, and the power he bequeathed to his able and ambitious son excited for the apprehensions of the astute and suspicious Henry II. Fourteen years of this king's reign had passed away, and Earl Richard had received no great employments, no new grants of land, no personal favours from his sovereign. He was now a widower, past middle age, condemned to a life of inaction such as no true Norman could long endure. Arrived at Bristol he read the letter of Henry and heard from Dermot the story of his expulsion and the grounds on which he assisted his hopes of restoration. A consultation ensued at which it is probable the sons of Nesta assisted, as it was there agreed that the town of Wetzford, with two cantrids of land adjoining it, should be given to them. The pay of the archers and men at arms and the duration of their service were also determined. Large grants of land were guaranteed to all adventurers of nightly rank, and Earl Richard was to marry the king's daughter and succeed him in the sovereignty of Lentster. Having by such lavish promises enlisted this powerful Earl in those adventurous nights, Dermot resolved to pass over in person with such followers as were already equipped, in order to rally the remnant of his adherents. The Irish annals enter this return under the year 1167. Within twelve months are their bouts from the time of his banishment. By their account he came back, accompanied by a fleet of strangers whom they called Flemings, and who were probably hired soldiers of that race, then easily to be met with in Wales. The Welsh prince already mentioned seems to have accompanied him personally, as he fell by his side in a skirmish the following year. Whatever this force may have amounted to, they landed at Glaskerig Point, and wintered probably spent the Christmas at Ferns. The more generally received account of Dermot's landing alone and disguised and his secretly repairing his plans under the shelter of the Austen friary at Ferns, must be rejected, if we are still to follow those trite but trustworthy guides whom we have so many reasons to confide in. The details differ in many very important particulars from those usually received, as we shall endeavour to make clear in a few words. Not only do they bring Dermot over with a fleet of Flemings, of whom the natives made small account, but dating that event before the expiration of the year 1167, at least sixteen months must have elapsed between the return of the outlaw and the arrival of the Normans. By allowing two years instead of one for the duration of his banishment, the apparent difficulty as to time would be obviated, for his return and Fitz Stephen's arrival would follow upon each other in the spring and winter of the same year. The difficulty, however, is more apparent than real. A year suffice for the journey to Aquitaine and the Welsh negotiations. Another year seems to have been devoted with equal art and success to resuscitating a native Lentster party favourable to his restoration. For it is evident from our annals that when Dermot showed himself to the people after his return, it was simply to claim his patrimony, high kinselag, and not to dispute the kingdom of Lentster with the actual ruler, Muragna Gael. By this pretended moderation and humility he disarmed hostility and lulled suspicion asleep. Roderick and a roarke did indeed muster a host against Dermot, and some of the Calvary and currants skirmished with the troops in his service at Kellestown in Carlow, when six were killed on one side and twenty-five on the other, including the Welsh Prince already mentioned. Afterwards Dermot emerged from his fastnesses and entered the camp of O'Connor, gave him seven hostages for the ten cantrids of his patrimony, and to O'Rourke he gave one hundred ounces of gold for his enyak, that is, as damages for his criminal conversation with Derver-Girl. During the remainder of the year eleven-sixty-eight, Dermot was left to enjoy unmolested the moderate territory which he claimed, while King Roderick was engaged in enforcing his claims on the north and south, founding lectureships at Armog and partitioning Mjeth between his inseparable colleague O'Rourke and himself. He celebrated, in the midst of an immense multitude, the ancient national games at Tal Ten. He held an assembly at Tera, and distributed magnificent gifts to his suffragins. Roderick might have spent the festival of Christmas eleven-sixty-eight or of Easter eleven-sixty-nine, full assurance that his power was firmly established, and that a long secession of peaceful days were about to dawn upon Aaron. But he was destined to be soon and sadly un-deceived. In the month of May a little fleet of Welsh vessels filled with armed men approached the Irish shore, and Robert Fitz-Stevens ran into a creek of the Bay of Bannow, called by the adventurers, from the names of two of their ships, Baginbun. Fitz-Stevens had with him thirty knights, sixty esquires, and three hundred footmen. The next day he was joined by Maurice de Prendergrast, a Welsh gentleman, with ten knights and sixty archers. After landing they reconordered cautiously, but saw neither ally nor enemy. The immediate coast seemed entirely deserted. Their messenger dispatched to Dermott, then probably at Ferns, in the northern extremity of the county, must have in absence several anxious days, when much to their relief he returned with Donald, the son of Dermott, at the head of five hundred horsemen. Uniting their troops, Donald and Fitz-Stevens set out for Wexford, about a day's march distant, and the principal town in that angle of the island which points toward Wales. The tradition of the neighbourhood says that they were assailed upon the way by a party of the native population, who were defeated and dispersed. Within ten days or a fortnight of their landing they were drawn up within side of the walls of Wexford, where they were joined by Dermott, who obviously did not come unattended to such a meeting. What additional force he may have brought up is nowhere indicated, that he was not without followers or mercenaries we know from the mention of the Flemmings in his service and the action of Kellestown in the previous year. The force that had marched from Bannow consisted, as we have seen, a five hundred Irish horse under his son Donald, surnamed Kavanaugh, thirty knights, sixty esquires and three hundred-minute arms under Fitz-Stevens, ten knights and sixty archers under Prendergrast, in all, nobles or servitors, not exceeding one thousand men. The town, a place of considerable strength, could muster two thousand men capable of bearing arms, nor is it discreditable to its Dano-Irish artisans and seamen that they could boast no captain equal to Fitz-Steven or Donald Kavanaugh. What a town multitude could do they did. They burned down an exposed suburb, closed their gates, and manned their walls. The first assault was repulsed with some loss on the part of the assailants, and the night passed in expectation of a similar conflict on the morrow. In the early morning the townsmen could discern that the holy sacrifice of the mass was being offered in the camp as a preparative for the dangers of the day. Within the walls, however, the clergy exercised all their influence to spare the effusion of blood, and to bring about an accommodation. Two bishops who were in the town especially advised to surrender on honorable terms, and their advice was taken. Four of the principal citizens were deputed to Dermott, and Wexford was yielded on condition of its rights and privileges, hitherto existing, being respected. The cantrids immediately adjoining the town on the north and east were conferred on Fitzsieben according to the treaty made at Bristol, and he, at once, commenced the erection of a fortress on the Rock of Carrigg at the narrowest pass on the River Slaney. Strong Bozunkel, Herve, was endowed with two other cantrids to the south of the town, now known as the Berenice of Forth and Bargy, where the descendants of the Welsh and Flemish settlers then planted are still to be found in the industrious and sturdy population, known as Flemmings, Furlongs, Wattings, Prendergrass, Berries, and Walshas. Side by side with them now dwell in peace the Cavanaugh's, Murphy's, Connors, and Breen's, whose ancestors so long and so fiercely disputed the intrusion of these strangers amongst them. With some increase of force derived from the defenders of Wexford, Dermott, at the head of three thousand men, including all the Normans, marched into the adjoining territory of Ossary to chastise its chief, Dunogh Fitzpatrick, one of his old enemies. This campaign appears to have consumed the greater part of the summer of the year, and ended with the submission of Ossary after a brave but unskillful resistance. The tidings of what was done at Wexford and in Ossary had, however, roused the apprehension of the monarch Rodrick, who appointed a day for a national muster of the Irish at the Hill of Terra. Thither repaired accordingly the monarch himself, the lords of Mieth, Oriel, Ulidia, Brevne, and the chiefs of the farther north. With this host they proceeded to Dublin, which they found as yet in no immediate danger of attack, and whether on this pretext or some other the Ulster chiefs returned to their homes, leaving Rodrick to pursue, with the aid of Mieth and Brevne only, the footsteps of McMurrah. The latter had fallen back upon ferns, and had, under the skillful directions of Fitz Stevens, strengthened the naturally difficult approaches to that ancient capital by digging artificial pits, by felling trees, and other devices of Norman strategy. The season, too, must have been drawing nearly to a close, and the same amiable desire to prevent the shedding of Christian blood, which characterized all the clergy of this age, again subserved the unworthy purposes of the traitor and invader. Rodrick, after a vain endeavor to detach Fitz Stevens from Dermid and to induce him to quit the country, agreed to a treaty with the Lester King, by which the latter acknowledged his supremacy as monarch, under the ancient conditions for the fulfillment of which he surrendered to him his son Connor as hostage. By his secret and separate agreement, Dermid bound himself to admit no more of the Normans into his service, an engagement which he kept as he did all others, whether of a public or a private nature. After the usual exchange of stipends and tributes, Rodrick returned to his home in the West, and thus, with the Treaty of Ferns, ended the comparatively unimportant, but significant campaign of the year eleven sixty-nine. End of chapter one. Chapter two of a popular history of Ireland, book four. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Robin Cotter. August 2008. A popular history of Ireland, from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics, book four, by Thomas Darcy McGee. Chapter two. The Arms, Armor and Tactics of the Normans and Irish. This would seem to be the proper place to point out the peculiarities in arms, equipment and tactics which gave the first Normans those military advantages over the Irish and Dano-Irish, which they had hitherto maintained over the Saxons, Welsh and Scots. In instituting such a comparison, we do not intend to confine it strictly to the age of Strongbow and Dermed. The description will extend to the entire period from the arrival of Fitz-Steven to the death of Richard, Earl of Ulster, from eleven sixty-nine to thirteen thirty-three, a period of five or six generations which we propose to treat of in the present book. After this Earl's decease, the Normans and Irish approximated more closely in all their customs, and no longer presented those marked contrasts which existed in their earlier intercourse and conflicts with each other. The armour of the first adventurers, both for man and horse, excited the wonder, the sarcasms, and the fears of the Irish. No such equipments had yet been seen in that country, nor indeed in any other, where the Normans were still strangers. As the knights advanced on horseback in their metal coating, they looked more like iron cylinders filled with flesh and blood than like lithe and limber human combatants. The man at arms, whether night or squire, was almost invariably mounted. His war horse was usually led, while he rode a hackney, to spare the destreer. The body armour was a hobbock of netted iron or steel to which were joined a hood, sleeves, breeches, hose, and sabotons, or shoes, of the same material. Under the hobbock was worn a quilted gambeson of silk or cotton, reaching to the knees, over armour, except when actually engaged, all men of family wore costly coats of satin, velvet, cloth of gold or cloth of silver, emblazoned with their arms. The shields of the thirteenth century were of triangular form, pointed at the bottom, the helmet, conical, with or without bars. The beaver, visor, and plate armour were inventions of a later day. Earls, dukes, and princes wore small crowns upon their helmets, lovers were the favours of their mistresses, and victors the crests of champions they had overthrown. The ordinary weapons of these cavaliers were sword, lance, and knife. The demilance, or light horsemen, were fairly armed. And a force of this class, common in the Irish wars, was composed of mounted crossbowmen, and called from the swift light hobbies they rode, hobbler archers. Besides many improvements in arms and manual exercise, the Normans perfected the old Roman machines and engines used in sieges. The scorpion was a huge crossbow, the catapults showered stones to distance. The ballista discharged flights of darts and arrows. There were many other varieties of stone-throwing machinery. The war wolf was long the chief of projectile machines, as the ram was of manual forces. The power of a battering ram of the largest size, worked by a thousand men, has been proven to be equal to a point-blank shot from a thirty-six pounder. There were movable towers of all sizes and of many names. The sow was a variety which continued in use in England and Ireland till the middle of the seventeenth century. The divisions of the cavalry were, first the constables command, some twenty-five men. Next the banneret was entitled to unfurl his own colors with consent of the marshal, and might unite under his penne one or more constabularies. The knight led into the field all his retainers who held of him by feudal tenure, and sometimes the retainers of his squires, wards or valets and kinsmen. The laws of chivalry were fast shaping themselves into a code complete and coherent in all its parts, when these ironclad, inventive, and invincible masters of the art of war first entered on the invasion of Ireland. The body of their followers in this enterprise, consisting of Flemish, Welsh, and Cornish archers, may be best described by the arms they carried. The irresistible crossbow was their main reliance. Its shot was so deadly that the Lateran Council, in eleven thirty-nine, strictly forbade its employment among Christian enemies. It combined with its stock or bed, wheel and trigger, almost all the force of the modern musket, and discharged square pieces of iron, leaden balls, or in scarcity of ammunition, flint stones. The common crossbow would kill point-blank at forty or fifty yards distance, and the best improved at fully one hundred yards. The manufacture of these weapons must have been profitable since their cost was equal in the relative value of money to that of the rifle in our times. In the reign of Edward II each crossbow purchased for the garrison of the Cherborn Castle cost three shelling and eight pence, and every hundred of quarrels, the ammunition just mentioned, one shelling and six pence. Iron, steel, and wood were the materials used in the manufacture of this weapon. The longbow had been introduced into England by the Normans, who were said to have been more indebted to that arm than any other for their victory at Hastings. To encourage the use of the longbow, many statutes were passed, and so late as the time of the stewards, royal commissions were issued for the promotion of this national exercise. Under the early statutes, no archer was permitted to practice at any standing mark at less than eleven score yards distant. No archer under twenty-four years of age was allowed to shoot twice from the same standpoint. Parents and masters were subject to a fine of six shelling and eight pence and allowed their youth under the age of seventeen, quote, to be without a bow and two arrows for one month together, unquote. The walled towns were required to set up their butts to keep them in repair and to turn out for target practice on holidays and at other convenient times. Aliens residing in England were forbidden the use of this weapon, a jealous precaution showing the great importance attached to its possession. The usual length of the bow which was made of U, which hazel, ash, or elm was about six feet, and the arrow about half that length. Arrows were made of ash, feathered with part of a goose's wing, and barbed with iron or steel. In the reign of Edward III a painted bow cost one shelling and six pence, a white bow, one shelling, a sheaf of steel-tipped arrows twenty-four to the sheaf, one shelling and two pence, and a sheaf of non-acerata, the blunt sword, one shelling. The range of the long bow at its highest perfection was, as we have seen, eleven score yards, more than double that of the ordinary crossbow. The common sort of both these weapons carried up at the same distance, nearly one hundred yards. The natural genius of the Normans for war had been sharpened and perfected by then. Campaigns in France and England, but more especially in the First and Second Crusades. All that was to be learned of military science in other countries, all that Italian skill, Greek subtlety, or Saracen invention could teach, they knew and combined into one system. Their feudal discipline, moreover, in which the youth who entered the service of a veteran, as Page, rose in time to the rank of Esquire and Bachelor at arms, and finally won his spurs on some well contested field, was eminently favorable to the training and proficiency of military talents. Not less remarkable was the skill they displayed in seizing on the strong and commanding points of communication within the country, as we see it this day, from the sights of their old castles, many of which must have been before the invention of gunpowder, all but impregnable. The art of war, if art it could in their case be called, was in a much less forward stage among the Irish in the 12th and 13th centuries than amongst the Normans. Of the science of fortification, they perhaps knew no more than they had learned in their long struggle with the Danes and Norwegians. To render roads impassable, to strengthen their islands by stockades, to hold the naturally difficult passes which connect one province or one district with another, these seem to have been their chief ideas of the aid that Valor may derive from artificial appliances. The fortresses of which we hear so frequently, during and after the Danish period, and which are erroneously called Danes forts, were more numerous than formidable to such enemies as the Normans. Some of these earth and stone works are older than the Malaysian invasion and of Cyclopean style and strength. Those of the Malaysians are generally of larger size, contain much more earth, and the internal chambers are of less massive masonry. They are almost invariably of circular form, and the largest remaining specimens are the Giants Ring near Belfast, the Fort at Netterville, which measures three hundred paces in circumference round the top of the embankment. The Black Wrath on the Boine, which measures three hundred twenty-one paces, round the outer wall of circumvillation, and the King's Wrath at Terra, upwards of two hundred eighty in length. The height of the outer embankment in forts of this size varied from fifteen to twenty feet. This embankment was usually surrounded by a faussy. Within the embankment there was a platform. Many of these military wraths have been found to contain subterranean chambers, and circular winding passages, supposed to be used as granaries and armories. They are accounted capable of containing garrisons of from two hundred to five hundred men. But many of the fortresses mentioned from age to age in our annals were mere private residences, enclosing within their outer and inner walls space enough for the immediate retainers and domestics of the chief. Although coats of mail are mentioned in manuscripts along anterior to the Norman invasion, the Irish soldiers seem seldom or never to have been completely clothed in armour. Like the northern berserkers, they prided themselves in fighting, if not naked, and their orange-coloured shirts died with saffron. The helmet and the shield were the only defensive articles of dress, nor did they seem to have had trappings for their horses. Their favourite missile weapon was the dart or javelin, and in earlier ages the sling. The spear or lance, the sword and the sharp, short-handled battle-axe were their favourite manual weapons. Their power with the battle-axe was prodigious. Geraldus says they sometimes lopped off a horseman's leg at a single blow, his body falling over on the other side. Their bridal bits and spurs were of bronze, as were generally their spearheads and short swords. Of siege implements beyond the torch and the scaling ladder, they seemed to have had no knowledge and to have desired none. The Dano-Irish alone were accustomed to fortify and defend their towns, on the general principles which then composed the sum of what was known in Christendom of military engineering. Quick to acquire in almost every department of the art, the native Irish continued till the last obstinately insensible to the absolute necessity of knowing how modern fortifications are constructed, defended and captured. A national infatuation of which we find melancholy evidence in every recurring native insurrection. The two divisions of the Irish infantry were the Galoglass or heavily armed foot soldier called Gal, either as a mercenary or from having been equipped after the Norman method, and the Kern or light infantry. The first men were men of the free tribes who followed their chief on terms almost of equality, and who except his immediate retainers equipped and foraged for themselves. The highest unit of this force was a calf or battalion of three thousand men, but the subdivision of command and the laws which established and maintained discipline have yet to be recovered and explained. The old Spanish rite of insurrection seems to have been recognized in every chief of a free tribe, and no Hidalgo of old Spain for real or fancied slight was ever more ready to turn his horse's head homeward than were those refractory lords with whom Roderick O'Connor and his successors in the front of the national battle had to contend or to cooperate. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tony Ashworth. A popular history of Ireland from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics. Book four by Thomas Darcy McGee. Chapter three, the first campaign of Earl Richard, Siege of Dublin, Death of King Dermid McMurrow. The campaigns of 1168 and 1169 had ended prosperously for Dermid in the Treaty of Ferns. By that treaty he had bound himself to bring no more Normans into the country and ascend those already in his service back to their homes. But in the course of the same autumn or winter in which this agreement was solemnly entered into, he welcomed the arrival at Wexford of Morris Fitzgerald's son of the Fair Nesta by her first husband, and immediately employed this fresh force consisting of ten knights, thirty esquires, and a hundred footmen upon a hosting which harried the open country about Dublin, and induced the alarmed inhabitants to send hostages into his camp, bearing proffers of allegiance and amity. As yet he did not feel in force sufficient to attack the city, for if he had been his long cherished vengeance against its inhabitants would not have been postponed till another season. In the meantime he had written most urgent letters to Earl Richard to hasten his arrival according to the terms agreed upon at Bristol. That astute and ambitious nobleman had been as impatiently biding his time as Dermid had been his coming. Knowing the jealous sovereign under whom he served he had gone over to France to obtain Henry's sanction to the Irish Enterprise but had been answered by the monarch in a trailer-phrases which might mean anything or nothing. Determined, however, to interpret these doubtful words in his own sense he dispatched his vanguard early in the spring of the year eleven-seventy under the command of his uncle Hervé, and a company of ten knights and seventy archers under Raymond's son of William, Lord of Corru, elder brother of Morris Fitzgerald, and grandson of Nesta. In the beginning of May, Raymond, nicknamed Legros or the Fat, entered Waterford Harbour and landed eight miles below the city under the rock of Dundonolfe on the east or Wexford side. Here they rapidly threw up a camp to protect themselves against attack and to hold the landing place for the convenience of the future expedition. A tumultuous body of natives amounting according to the Norman account to three thousand men were soon seen swarming across the sewer to attack the foreigners. They were men of Idrone and Dessie's under their chiefs, Orion and Ophelen, and citizens of Waterford who now rushed towards the little fortress entirely unprepared for the long and deadly range of the Welsh and Flemish crossbows. Throne into confusion by the unexpected discharge in which every shot from behind the ramparts of turf brought down its man they wavered and broke. Raymond and Hervé then saled out upon the fugitives who were feigned to escape as many as could to the other side of the river leaving 500 prisoners including 70 chief citizens of Waterford behind them. These were all inhumanly massacred according to Geraldus, the eulogist of all the Geraldines, by the order of Hervé contrary to the entreaties of Raymond. Their legs were first violently broken and they were then hurled down the rocks into the tide. Five hundred men could not well be so captured and put to death by less than an equal number of hands and we may therefore safely set down that number as holding the camp of Dundonolf during the summer months of the year. Earl Richard had not completed his arrangements until the month of August so that his uncle and lieutenant had to hold the post they had seized for fully three months awaiting his arrival in the deepest minority. At last leaving his castle in Pembroke he marched with his force through North Wales by way of St. David's to Milford Haven and still as he went he took up all the best chosen and picked men he could get. At Milford just as he was about to embark he received an order from King Henry forbidding the expedition. Holy disregarding this missive he hastened on board with two hundred knights and twelve hundred infantry in his and on the eve of St. Bartholomew's day August the 23rd landed safely under the earthwork of Dundonolf where he was joyfully received by Raymond at the head of forty knights and a corresponding number of men at arms. The next day the whole force under the Earl who had all things in readiness for such an enterprise proceeded to lay siege to Waterford. Malachy O'Felon the brave Lord of Dessies forgetting all ancient enmity against his Danish neighbors had joined the townsmen to assist in the defence. Twice the besieged beat back the assailants until Raymond perceiving at an angle of the wall the wooden props upon which a house rested ordered them to be cut away on which the house fell to the ground and a breach was affected. The men at arms then burst in slaughtering the inhabitants without mercy. In the tower long known as Reginals or the Ring Tower O'Felon and Reginal the Dano Irish chief held out until the arrival of King Dermott whose intercession procured them such terms as led to their surrender. Then amid the ruins of the burning city and the muttered malediction of its surviving inhabitants the ill omen marriage of Eva McMurrow with Richard DeClaire was gaily celebrated and the compact entered into at Bristol three years before was perfected. The marriage revelry was hardly over when tidings came from Dublin that Askelf MacTorkel, its Danish Lord had either by the refusal of the annual tribute or in some other manner declared his independence of Dermott and invoked the aid of the monarch Roderick in defence of that city. Other messengers brought news that Roderick had assumed the protection of Dublin and was already encamped at the head of a large army at Klondalken with a view of intercepting the march of the invaders from the south. The whole Lentster and Norman force with the exception of a troop of archers left to Garrison Waterford were now put in motion for the siege of the chief city of the hibernicised descendants of the Northmen. Informed of Roderick's position which covered Dublin on the south and west, Dermott and Richard followed boldly the mountain paths and difficult roads which led by the secluded city of Glendaloc and then so long the coast road from the mouth of the Liffey until they arrived unexpectedly within the lines of Roderick to the amazement and terror of the townsmen. The force which now under the command in chief of Dermott sat down to the siege of Dublin was far from being contemptible. For a year past he had been recognised in Lentster as fully as any of his predecessors and had so strengthened his military position as to propose nothing short of the conquest of the whole country. The use of a line of march sufficiently shows how thoroughly he had overcome the former hostility of the stubborn mountaineers of Wicklow. The exact numbers which he encamped before the gates of Dublin are nowhere given but on the march from Waterford the vanguard led by Milo de Cogan consisted of 700 Normans and an Irish battalion which taken literally would mean 3000 men under Donald Kavana. Raymond the Fat followed with 300 British Dermott led on the chief part of the Irish number not given in person. Richard commanded the rearguard 300 British and 1000 Irish soldiers. Altogether it is not exorbitant to conjecture that the Lentster Prince led to the siege of Dublin an army of about 10,000 native troops 1500 Welsh and Flemish archers and 250 knights. Except the handful who remained to defend his fort at Carrick on the slainy and the archers left in Waterford the entire Norman force in Ireland at this time were united in the siege. Of the foreign knights many were eminent for courage and capacity both in peace and war. The most distinguished among them were Morris Fitzgerald the common ancestor of the Geraldines of Desmond and Kildare Raymond the Fat ancestor of the Graces of Osary the two Fitz Henry's grandsons of Henry I and the Fair Nesta. Walter de Riddlesford 1st Baron of Bray Robert de Quincy son-in-law and standard bearer to Earl Richard Hervé uncle to the Earl and Gilbert declare his son Milo de Cogan the first who entered Dublin by assault and its first Norman governor the de Barys and de Prendergast other founders of Norman Irish houses as the De Laces, De Corses De Burgos, Butler's Birmingham's came not over until the landing of Henry II or still later with his son John. The townsmen of Dublin had every reason from the knowledge of Dermott's cruel character to expect the worst at his hands and those of his allies. The warning of Waterford was before them but besides this they had a special cause of apprehension Dermott's father having been murdered in their midst and was utterly ignominiously interred with the carcass of a dog. Roderick having failed to intercept him the citizens either to gain time or really desiring to arrive at an accommodation entered into negotiations. Their ambassador for this purpose was Lorcan or Laurence O'Toole the first Archbishop of the city and his first prelator of Milesian origin. This illustrious man canonized both by sanctity and patriotism was then in the thirty ninth year of his age and the ninth of his episcopate. His father was lord of Amale and chief of his clan. His sister had been wife of Dermott and mother of Eva the prized bride of Earl Richard. He himself had been a hostage with Dermott in his youth and afterwards Abbott of Glendaloch the most celebrated monastic city of Lentster. He stood therefore to the besieged chief pastor in the relation of a father to Dermott and strangely enough to Strongbow also as brother-in-law and uncle by marriage. A fitter ambassador could not be found. Morris Regan the Latina or secretary of Dermott had advanced to the walls and summoned the city to surrender and deliver up thirty pledges to his master, their lawful prince. Askelf's son of Torkul was in favour of the surrender but the citizens could not agree among themselves as to hostages. No one was willing to trust himself to the notoriously untrustworthy Dermott. The archbishop was then sent out on the part of the citizens to arrange the terms in detail. He was received with all reverence in the camp but while he was deliberating with the commanders without and the townsmen were anxiously awaiting his return Milo de Cogan and Raymond the fat having the opportunity broke into the city at the head of their companies and began to put the inhabitants ruthlessly to the sword. They were soon followed by the whole force eager for massacre and pillage. The archbishop hastened back to endeavour to stay the havoc which was being made of his people. He threw himself before the infuriated Irish and Normans he threatened, he denounced he bared his own breast to the swords of the assassins. All to little purpose the blood fury exhausted itself before peace settled over the city. Its Danish chief, Askelf with many of his followers escaped to their ships and fled to the Isle of Man and the Hebrides in search of succor and revenge. Roderick unprepared to besiege the enemy who had thus outmatched and outwitted him at that season of the year. It could not be earlier than October. Broke up his encampment at Klondalken and retired to Connord Earl Richard having appointed D'Kogan, his governor of Dublin followed on the rear of the retreating Ardree at the instigation of McMurrow, burning and plundering the churches of Kells, Clonard and Slain and carrying off the hostages of East Meath. Though Dermid seemed to have forgotten altogether the conditions of the treaty of ferns, yet not so Roderick. When he reached Athlone he caused Connors son of Dermid and the son of Donald Kavana and the son of Dermid's forester who had been given him as hostages for the fulfilment of that treaty so grossly violated in every particular to be beheaded. Dermid indulged in impotent vows of vengeance against Roderick when he heard of these executions which his own perjuries had provoked. He swore that nothing short of the conquest of Connord in the following spring would satisfy his revenge and he sent the Ardree his defiance to that purport. Two other events of military consequence marked the close of the year 1170. The foreign garrison of Waterford was surprised and captured by Cormac McCarthy Prince of Desmond and Henry II having prohibited all intercourse between his leges and his disobedient subject, Earl Richard the latter had dispatched Raymond the Fat with the most humble submission of himself and his new possessions to his majesty's decision. And so with Askel son of Taukel recruiting in the Isles of Incy Gaul Lawrence the Archbishop endeavouring to unite the proud and envious Irish lords into one united phalanx and Roderick preparing for the New Year's campaign the winter of 1170-71 came and waned and went. One occurrence of this succeeding spring may most appropriately be dismissed here the death of the wretched and odious McMurray. This event happened according to Geraldus in the Callens of May. The Irish annals surround his deathbed with all the horrors appropriate to such a scene. He became, they say, putrid while living through the miracles of St. Colombs Seal and St. Finian whose churches he had plundered and he died at Fernamore without making a will, without penance without the body of Christ without unction as his evil deeds deserved. We have no desire to meditate over the memory of such a man. He far more than his predecessor whatever that predecessor's crimes might have been deserved to have been buried with a dog. End of Chapter 3 Recording by Tony Ashworth, Brisbane Chapter 4 of A Popular History of Ireland Book 4 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Tony Ashworth A Popular History of Ireland from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics Book 4 by Thomas Darcy McGee Chapter 4 Second Campaign of Earl Richard Henry II in Ireland The Campaign of the Year 1171 languished from a variety of causes at the very outset the invaders lost their chief patron who had been so useful to them. During the Siege of Dublin in the previous autumn the townsmen of Wexford who were in revolt had by stratagem induced Robert Fitt Stephen to surrender his fort at Carrick and had imprisoned him in one of the islands of their harbour. Waterford had been surprised and taken by Cormac McCarthy Prince of Desmond and Strongbow alarmed by the proclamation of Henry knew hardly whether to consider himself outlaw, subject or independent sovereign. Roman the Fat had returned from his embassy to King Henry with no comfortable tidings. He had been kept day after day waiting the pleasure of the King and returned with sentences as dubious in his mouth as those on which Earl Richard had originally acted. It was evidently not the policy of Henry to abandon the enterprise already so well begun but neither was it his interest or desire that any subject should reap the benefit or erect an independent power upon his mere permission to embark in the service of McMurrow. Hervé the Earl's uncle had been dispatched as ambassador in Raymond's place but with no better success. At length Richard himself by the advice of all his councillors repaired to England and waited on Henry at Newenham in Gloucestershire. At first he was ignominiously refused an audience but after repeated solicitations he was permitted to renew his homage. He then yielded in due form the city of Dublin and whatever other conquests he claimed and consented to hold his lands in Lenster as chief tenant from the Crown. In return for which he was graciously forgiven the success that had attended his adventure and permitted to accompany the King's expedition in the ensuing autumn. Before Strongbow's departure for England three unsuccessful attempts had been made for the expulsion of the Norman Garrison from Dublin. They were unfortunately not undertaken in concert but rather in succession. The first was an attempt at surprising the city by Askelf MacTorkel heavily relying on the active aid of the inhabitants of his own race. He had but a small force chiefly from the isles of Inseagull and the Orkneys. The Orcadians were under the command of a warrior called John the Furious or Mad the last of those wild berserkers of the North whose valor was regarded in pagan days as a species of divine frenzy. This redoubted champion after a momentary success was repulsed by Milo and Richard the Cogan and finally fell by the hand of Walter de Riddelsford. Askelf was taken prisoner and avowing boldly his intention never to desist from attempting to recover the place was put to death. The second attack has been often described as a regular investment by Roderick O'Connor at the head of all the forces of the island which was only broken up in the ninth week of its duration by a desperate sally as part of the famished garrison. Many details and episodes proper to so long of a legament are given by Gereldus and reproduced by his copyists. We find however little warrant for these passages in our native annals any more than for the antithetical speeches which the same partial historian places in the mouths of his heroes. The foremasters limit the time to the course of a fortnight. After their account was accompanied by the lords of Brefne and Oriol lonely. Frequent skirmishes and conflicts took place an excursion was made against the Lenster allies of the Normans to cut down and burn the corn of the Saxons. The surprise by night of the monarch's camp is also duly recorded and that the enemy carried off the provisions, armour and horses of Roderick. By which sally according to Gereldus Dublin having obtained provisions enough for a year, Earl Richard marched to Wexford taking the higher way by a drone with the hope to deliver Fitz Stephen. But the Wexford men having burned their suburbs and sent their goods and families into the stockated island sent him word that at the first attack they would put Fitz Stephen and his companions to death. The Earl therefore held sorrowfully on his way to Waterford where leaving a stronger force than the first garrison to which he had entrusted it he sailed for England to make his peace with King Henry. The third attempt on Dublin was made by the Lord of Brefney during the Earl's absence and when the garrison were much reduced it was equally unsuccessful with those already recorded. The Cogan displayed his usual courage and the Lord of Brefney lost a son and some of his best men in the assault. It was upon the marches of Wales that the Earl found King Henry busily engaged in making preparations for his own voyage into Ireland. He had levied on the land holders throughout his dominions an escutage or commutation for personal service and the pipe roll which contains his disbursements for the year has led an habitually cautious writer to infer that the force raised for the expedition was much more numerous than has been represented by historians. During the muster of his forces he visited Pembroke and made a progress through North Wales severely censuring those who had enlisted under strong bow and placing garrisons of his own men in their castles. At St David's he made the usual offering on the Shrine of the Saint and received the hospitality of the bishop. All things being in redness he sailed from Milford Haven with a fleet of 400 transports having on board many of the Norman 500 knights and an army usually estimated of 4,000 men at arms. On the 18th of October 1171 he landed safely at Crook in the county of Waterford being unable according to an old local tradition to sail up the river from adverse winds. As one headland of that harbour is called Hook and the other Crook the old adage by Hook or by Crook is thought to have arisen on this occasion. In Henry's train and beside O'Richard there came over Hugh de Lacey sometime Constable of Chester William's son of Aldelm ancestor of the clan Riccades Fearbull Walter ancestor of the butlers Robert Le Poir ancestor of the powers Humphrey de Bohun Robert Fitz Barnard Hugh de Gunderville Philip de Hastings Philip de Braios were renowned throughout France and England. As the imposing host formed on the seaside a white hare according to an English chronicler leapt from a neighbouring hedge and was immediately caught and presented to the king as an omen of victory. Prophecies pagan and Christian quatrains fathered on St. Moaling and triads attributed to Merlin were freely showered in his path. But the true omen of his success he might read for himself in a constitution which had lost its force in laws which had ceased to be sacred and in a chieftain race brave indeed as mortal men could be but envious, arrogant, revengeful and insubordinate for their criminal indulgence of these demoniocal passions a terrible chastisement was about to fall on them and not only on them but also alas on their poor people. The whole time passed by Henry II in Ireland was from the 18th of October 1171 till the 17th of April following just seven months. For the first politician of his age with the command of such troops and so much treasure these seven months could not possibly be barren of consequences. Winter, the season of diplomacy was seldom more industriously or expertly employed. The townsmen of Wexford aware of his arrival as soon as it had taken place hastened to make their submission and to deliver up to him their prisoner, Robert Fitz-Steven the first of the invaders. Henry affecting the same displeasure towards Fitz-Steven he did for all those who had anticipated his own expedition ordered him to be fettered and imprisoned in Reginald's tower. At Waterford he also received the friendly overtures of the Lords of Desius and Ossary and probably some form of feudal submission was undergone by those chiefs. Cormac, Prince of Desmond followed their example and soon afterwards Donald O'Brien of Thaumond met him on the banks of the sewer not far from Cachele made his peace and agreed to receive a Norman garrison in his hibernodanish city of Limerick. Having appointed commanders over these and other southern garrisons Henry proceeded to Dublin where a spacious cage work palace on the lawn without the city was prepared for winter quarters. Here he continued those negotiations with the Irish chiefs which we are told were so generally successful. Amongst others whose adhesion he received, mention is made of the Lord of Brefney, the most faithful follower the monarch Roderick could count. The chiefs of the northern High Neal remain deaf to all his overtures and though Fitz-Heldon and Delacy the commissioners dispatched to treat with Roderick are said to have procured from the deserted Ardrey an act of submission it is incredible that a document of such consequence should have been allowed to perish. Indeed most of the confident assertions about submissions to Henry are to be taken with great caution. It is quite certain he himself though he lived nearly 20 years after his Irish expedition never assumed any Irish title whatever. It is equally true that his successor first never assumed any such title as an incident of the English crown. And although Henry in the year 1185 created his youngest son John Lackland Lord of Ireland, it was precisely in the same spirit and with as much ground of title as he had for creating Hugh Delacy Lord of Meath or John D'Corsi Earl of Ulster. Of this question of title we shall speak more fully hereafter for we do not recognize any English sovereign as King of Ireland previous to the year 1541, but it ought surely to be conclusive evidence that neither had Henry claimed the crown nor had the Irish chiefs acknowledged him as their Ardrey that in the two authentic documents from his hand which we possess he neither signs himself Rex nor Dominus Hibernii. These documents are the Charter of Dublin and the concession of Glendalock and their authenticity has never been disputed. After spending a right merry Christmas with Norman and Milesian guests in abundance at Dublin, Henry proceeded to that work of religious reformation under plea of which he had obtained the Bill of Pope Adrian 17 years before declaring such an expedition undertaken with such motives lawful and praiseworthy. Early in the new year by his desire a synod was held at Cachel where many salutary decrees were enacted. These related to the proper solemnization of marriage, the catechizing of children before the doors of churches, the administration of baptism in baptismal or parish churches, the abolition of erinarchs or lay trustees of church property and the imposition of tithes both of corn and cattle. By most English writers the synod is treated as a national council and inferences are then drawn of Henry's admitted power over the clergy of the nation. There is however no evidence of the bishops of Ulster or Connord were present at Cachel but strong negative testimony to the contrary. We read under the date of the same year in the Four Masters that a synod of the clergy and laity of Ireland was convened at Tuam by Roderick O'Connor and the Archbishop Catholicus O'Duffie. It is hardly possible that this meeting could be in continuation or in Connord with the assembly convoked at the instance of Henry. Following quickly upon the Cachel Synod Henry held a Curia Regis or Great Court at Lismore in which he created the offices of Marshall, Constable and Seneschal for Ireland. Earl Richard was created the First Lord Marshall the Lacey the First Lord Constable Theobald, ancestor of the Orman family was already Chief Butler and the Vernon was created the First High Steward or Seneschal. Such other orders could be taken for the preservation of the places already captured was not neglected. The surplus population of Bristol obtained a charter of Dublin to be held of Henry and his heirs with all the same liberties and pre-customs which they enjoyed at Bristol. Wexford was committed to the charge of Fitzalden Waterford to Devon and Dublin to Delacey. Castles were ordered to be erected in the towns and at other points and the politic king having caused all those who remained behind to renew their homage in the most solemn form sailed on Easter Monday from Wexford Haven and on the same day landed at Port Finan in Wales. Here he assumed the pilgrim staff and proceeded humbly on foot to St. David's preparatory to meeting the papal commissioners appointed to inquire into Beckett's murder. It is quite apparent that had Henry landed in Ireland at any other period of his life except in the year of the martyrdom of the renowned Archbishop of Canterbury while the wrath of Rome was yet hanging poised in the air, ready to be hurled against him, he would not have left the work he undertook but half begun. The result of his expedition of his great fleet, mighty army and sagacious councils was the infusion of a vast number of new adventurers, most of them of higher rank and better fortunes than their precursors into the same old field. Except the garrisons admitted into Limerick and Cork and the displacing of Strongbow's commandants by his own at Waterford, Wexford and Dublin there seems to have been little gained The decrees of the synod of Cachel Wood no doubt stand him in good stead with the papal legates as evidences of his desire to enforce strict discipline even on lands beyond those over which he actually ruled but after all, harassed as he was with apprehensions of the future perhaps no other prince could have done more in a single winter in a strange country than Henry II did for his seven months sojourn in Ireland. Chapter 5 From the return of Henry II to England till the death of Earl Richard and his principal companions The ardrig Rodrick during the period of Henry II's stay in Ireland had continued west of the Shannon unsupported by suffragins many of whom made peace with the invader he attempted no military operation nor had Henry time sufficient to follow him into his strongholds. It was reserved for this ill-fated and we cannot but think harshly judged monarch to outlive the first generation of the invaders of his country and to close a reign which promised so brightly at the beginning in the midst of a distracted war-spent people having preserved through all his vicissitudes the title of Sovereign but little else that was of value to himself or others. Among the guests who partook of the Christmas cheer of King Henry at Dublin we find mention of Tiernan O'Rourke, the Lord of Brefney and East Meath. For the methion addition to his possessions Tiernan O'Rourke and his allies with Roderick and the success of their joint arms anciently the east of Meath had been divided between the four families called the Four Tribes of Terra whose names are now anglicized Ohart, O'Kelly, O'Connelly and O'Regan. Whether to balance the power of the Great West Meath family of O'Mellickland or because these minor tribes were unable to defend themselves successfully Roderick, like his father had partitioned Meath and given aside a new master in the person of O'Rourke. The investiture of Hugh DeLacy by King Henry with the seniority of the same district led to a tragedy, the first of its kind in our annals, but destined to be the prototype of an almost indefinite series in which the gainers were sometimes native but much oftener Normans. O'Rourke gave DeLacy an appointment at the Hill of Ward near Athboy in the year 1173 in order to adjust their conflicting claims to the Meath. Both parties naturally guarded against surprise by having in readiness a troop of armed retainers. The principles met apart in the summit of the hill amid the circumvulations of its ancient fort. A single unarmed interpreter only was present. An altercation having arisen between them, O'Rourke lost his temper and raised the battle-axe which all our warriors carried in those days as the gentlemen of the last century did their swords. This was the signal for both troops of the guard to march towards the spot. DeLacy, in attempting to fly, had been twice felled to the earth when his followers under Maurice Fitzgerald and Griffith, his nephew, came to his rescue and assailed the chief of Brefney. It was now Tiernan's turn to attempt escaping, but as he mounted his horse the spear of Griffith brought him to the earth mortally wounded and his followers fled. His head was carried in triumph to Dublin where it was spiked over the northern gate and his body was gibbeted on the northern wall with the feet uppermost. Thus the spectacle of intense pity to the Irish did these severed members of one of their most famous nobles remain exposed on that side of the stronghold of the stranger which looks toward the pleasant plains of Mied and the verdant uplands of Cavan. The administration of DeLacy was now interrupted by his summons to join his royal master, sore beset by his own sons in Normandy. The kings of France and Scotland were interrupted by the presence with those unnatural princes and their mother, Queen Eleanor, might be called the author of their rebellion. As all the force that could be spared from Ireland was needed for the preservation of Normandy, DeLacy hastened to obey the royal summons and Earl Richard, by virtue of his rank of marshal, took for the moment the command in chief. Henry, however, who never cordially forgave that adventurer, first required his presence in France to defend the conquests already made. He associated with him in the supreme command, though not apparently in the civil administration, the gallant raiment to grow. And it was full time for the best head and the bravest sword among the first invaders to return to their work, a task not to be so easily achieved as many confident persons then believed and as many ill-informed writers have since described it. During the early rule of DeLacy, Earl Richard had established himself at ferns, assuming, to such of the Irish as adhered to him, the demeanor of a king. After Dermond's death, he styled himself in utter disregard of Irish law, Prince of Lenster, in virtue of his wife. He proceeded to create feudal dignitaries, placing at their head, as constable of Lenster, Robert de Quincey, to whom he gave his daughter by his first wife in marriage. At this point the male representatives of King Dermond came to open rupture with the Earl. Donald Cavanaugh, surnamed The Handsome, and by the Normans, usually spoken of as Prince Donald, could scarcely be expected to submit to an arrangement so opposed to all ancient custom and to his own interests. He had borne a leading part in the restoration of his father, but surely not to this end, the exclusion of the male succession. He had been one of King Henry's guests during the Christmas holidays of the year 1172, and had rendered him some sort of homage as Prince of Lenster. Henry, ever ready to raise up rivals to Strongbow, seems to have received him into favour, until Eva, the Earl's wife, proved, both in Ireland and England, that Donald and his brother Anna were born out of wedlock, and that there was no direct male heir of Dermond left, after the execution of Connor, the hostage put to death by King Roderick. To English notions this might have been conclusive against Donald's title, but to the Irish, among whom the possible was the source of all chieftainry, it was not so. A large proportion of the patriotic Lensterman, what might be called the native party, adhered to Donald Kavanaugh, utterly rejecting the title derived through the Lady Eva. Such conflicting interests could only be settled by a resort to force, and the bloody feud began by the Earl, executing at ferns one of Donald's son, held by him as a hostage. In an expedition against Odemsey, who also refused to acknowledge his title, the Earl lost, in the campaign of 1173, his son-in-law, de Quincey, several other knights, and the banner of Lenster. The following year we read in the Anglo-Irish annals of Lenster that King Donald's men, being moved against the Earl's men, made a great slaughter of the English. Nor was this the worst defeat he suffered in the same year, 1174. Marching into Munster he was encountered in a pitched battle at the front by the troops of the Monarch Roderick, under command of his son Connor, surnamed Moynmoy, and by the troops of Thomund, under Donald Morro-Briand. With Strongbow were all who could be spared of the garrison of Dublin, including a strong detachment of Danish origin. Four knights and seven hundred, or according to other accounts, seventeen hundred, men of the Normans were left dead on the field. Strongbow retreated with the remnant of his force to Waterford, but the following reached that city before him, the townspeople ran to arms and put his garrison of two hundred men to the sword. After encamping for a month on an isle without the city, and hearing that Kilkenny Castle was taken and raised by O'Brien, he was feigned to return to Dublin as best he could. His fortunes at the close of this campaign were at their lowest ebb. The loss of DeQuincey and the defeat of Thurles had sorely shaken his military reputation. His jealousy of that powerful family connection, the Geraldines, had driven Maurice Fitzgerald and Raymond the fat to retire in disgust into Wales. Donald Kavanaugh, O'Dempsey, and the native party in Leinster set him at defiance, and his own troops refused to obey the orders of his Uncle Hervé, demanding to be led by the more popular and youthful Raymond. To add to his embarrassments, Henry summoned him to France in the very crisis of his troubles, and he dared not disobey that jealous and exacting outcome. He was, however, not long detained by the English king. Clothed with supreme authority and with Raymond for his lieutenant, he returned to resume the work of conquest. To conciliate the Geraldines, he at last consented to give his sister Basilia in marriage to the brilliant captain, on whose sword so much depended. At the same time Alina, the widow of DeQuincey, was married to the second son of Fitzgerald, and Nesta Fitzgerald was united to fulfill Hervé. Thus bound together, fortune returned in full tide to the adventurers. Limerick, which had been taken and burned to the water's edge by Donald O'Brien after the Battle of Turles, was recaptured and fortified anew. Waterford was more strongly garrisoned than ever. Donald Kavanaugh was taken off, apparently by treachery, A.D. 1175, and all seemed to promise the enjoyment of uninterrupted power to the Earl. But his end was come, and Ulster in his foot brought on a long and loathsome illness which terminated in his death in the month of May 1176 or 1177. He was buried in Christchurch, Dublin, which he had contributed to enlarge, and was temporarily succeeded in the government of the Normans by his lieutenant and brother-in-law Raymond. By the Lady Ava he left one daughter, Isabel, married at the age of fourteen to William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, who was claimed the Proprietary of Lentster by virtue of this marriage. Lady Isabel left again five daughters, who were the ancestresses of the Mortimer's Braces and other historic families of England and Scotland. And so the blood of Earl Richard and his Irish princess descended for many generations to enrich other houses and in noble other names than his own. Strongbow is described by Geraldus, whose personal sketches of the leading invaders formed the country, as less a statesman than a soldier and more a soldier than a general. His complexion was freckled, his net slender, his voice feminine and shrill, and his temper equable and uniform. His career in Ireland was limited to seven years in point of time, and his resources were never equal to the task he undertook. Had they been so, or had he not been so jealously counteracted by his suzerain, he might have founded a new Norman dynasty on where as Rallo himself had done. Raymond and the Geraldines had now, for a brief moment, the supreme power, civil and military in their own hands. In his haste to take advantage of the Earl's death, of which he had privately been informed by a message from his wife, Raymond left Limerick in the hands of Donald Morrow-Brian, exacting, we are told, a solemn oath from the Prince of Thelman to protect the city, which the latter broke before the King. This story, like many others of the same age, rests on uncertain authority of the vain, impetuous and passionate Geraldus. Whether the loss of Limerick discredited him with the King, or the ancient jealousy of the first adventurers prevailed on the royal councils, Henry, on hearing of Strongbow's death, at once dispatched as Lord Justice, William Fitzaldom DeBergo, first cousin to Hubert DeBergo, chief gestiary of England, and like Fitzaldom, mother of William the Conqueror, by Harlow and DeBergo, her first husband. From him have descended the noble family of DeBergo, or Burke, so conspicuous in the after-annals of our island. In the train of the new gestiary came John DeCorsi, another name destined to become historical, but before relating his achievements we must conclude the narrative so far as regards the first set of adventurers. Maurice Fitzgerald, the common ancestor of the Earls of Desmond and Kildare, the Knights of Glen, of Cary, and of all the Irish Geraldines, died at Wexford in the year 1177. Raymond the Fat, superseded by Fitzaldom and looked on coldly by the King, retired to his lands in the same county, and appears only once more in arms in the year 1182, innate of his uncle, Robert Fitz Stephen. This premier invader had been entrusted by the new ruler with the command of the garrison of Cork, as Milo de Cogan had been with that part of Waterford, and both had been invested with equal halves of the Principality of Desmond. DeCogan, Ralph, son of Fitz Stephen's, and other knights had been cut off by surprise at the house of one MacTire, near Lismore in 1182, and all Desmond was up in arms for the expulsion of the foreign garrisons. Raymond sailed from Wexford to the aid of his uncle and succeeded in relieving the city from the sea. But Fitz Stephen afflicted with grief for the death and, worn down with many anxieties, suffered the still greater loss of his reason. From thence forth we hear no more of either uncle or nephew, and we may therefore account this last year of Robert Fitz Stephen, Milo de Cogan, and Raymond Le Gros. Hervé de Montmorency, the ancient rival of Raymond, had three years earlier retired from the world to become a brother in the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Canterbury. His Irish estates passed to his brother subsequently became justiciary of the Normans in Ireland, the successful rival of the Marshals and founder of the Irish title of Montmorency. The posterity of Raymond survived in the noble family of Grace, Barons of Courtsdown, in Ossyrie. It is not therefore strictly true what Geoffrey Keating and the authors he followed have asserted that the first Normans were punished by the loss of posterity for the crimes and outrages they had committed in their life. Let us be just even to these spoilers of our race. They were fair specimens of the prevailing type of Norman character. Indomitable bravery was not their only virtue. In patience, in policy, and in rising superior to all obstacles and reverses, no group of conquerors ever surpassed Strongbow and his companions. Ties of blood and brotherhood in arms were strong between them, and whatever unfair advantages they allowed themselves to take of their enemy, they were in general devoted in their friendships toward each other. Rivalries and intrigues were not unknown among them, but generous self-denial and chivalrous self-reliance were equally as common. If it had been the lot of our ancestors to be effectually conquered, they could hardly have yielded to nobler foes. But as they proved themselves able to resist successfully the prowess of this hitherto invincible race, their honor is augmented in proportion to the energy and genius both for government and war brought to bear against them. Neither should we overstate the charge of impiety. If the invaders broke down and burned to churches in the heat of battle they built better and costlier temples out of the fruits of their victory. Christchurch Dublin, Dunbrody Abbey on the estuary of Waterford, the Greyfriars Abbey at Wexford, and other religious houses long stood or still stand to show that although the first Norman like the first Dane thirsted after spoil and lusted after land, unlike the Dane he created, he enriched, he improved wherever he conquered. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of a popular history of Ireland, Book 4 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Tony Ashworth A popular history of Ireland from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics Book 4 by Thomas Darcy McGee Chapter 6 The Last Years of the Ardrey Roderick O'Connor The victory of Thurlis in the year 1174 was the next important military event as we have seen after the raising of the second Siege of Dublin in the first campaign of Earl Richard. It seems irreconcilable with the consequences of that victory and ambassadors from Roderick should be found at the Court of Henry II before the close of the following year but events personal to both sovereigns will sufficiently explain the apparent anomaly. The campaign of 1174 so unfavorable to Henry's subjects in Ireland had been most fortunate for his arms in Normandy. His rebellious sons after severe defeats submitted and did him homage. The King of France had gladly accepted peace. The King of Scotland while in duress had rendered him fealty as his leech man and Queen Eleanor having fallen into his power was a prisoner for life. Tried by a similar unnatural conspiracy in his own family Roderick O'Connor had been less fortunate in coercing them into obedience. His elder son Murray claimed according to ancient custom that his father should resign in his favor the patrimonial province contending himself at the higher rank of King of Ireland. But Roderick well understood that in his days with a new and most formidable enemy established in the old Danish strongholds with the constitution torn to shreds by the war of succession his only real power was over his patrimony. He refused therefore the unreasonable request and thus converted some of his own children into enemies nor were they wanting princes themselves fathers who had vetted this household treason as the kings of France and Scotland had done among the sons of Henry II. Soon after the battle of Thurlis the recovery of Limerick and the taking of Kilkenny Donald Moore O'Brien lending himself to this odious intrigue was overpowered and deposed by Roderick but the year next succeeding having made submission he was restored by the same hand which had cast him down. While harassed by the open rebellion of his eldest son and while Henry was rejoicing in his late success that Roderick dispatched to the court of Windsor Catholicus Archbishop of Tuam Concours Abbot of Simbrendans and Lawrence Archbishop of Dublin who was styled in these proceedings Chancellor of the Irish King to negotiate an alliance with Henry which would leave him free to combat against his domestic enemies. An extraordinary treaty agreed upon at Windsor about the Feast of Michaelmas 1175 recognised Roderick's sovereignty over Ireland the cantrids and cities actually possessed by the subjects of Henry accepted it sub-infudated his authority to that of Henry after the manner lately adopted towards William King of Scotland the payment of a merchantable hide of every tenth hide of cattle was agreed upon as an annual tribute while the minor chiefs were to acknowledge their dependence by annual presence of hawks and hounds this treaty which proceeded on the wild assumption that the feudal system was a force among the free clans of erin was probably the basis of Henry's grant of the lordship of Ireland to his son John Lackland a few years later it was solemnly approved by a special council or parliament and signed by the representatives of both parties among the signers we find the name of the Archbishop of Dublin who while in England narrowly escaped martyrdom from the hands of a maniac while celebrating Mass at the tomb of St Thomas four years afterwards this celebrated ecclesiastic attended at Rome with Catholicus of Tuam and the proletes of Lismore, Limerick, Waterford and Kilaloe the third general council of Lateran where they were received with an all honour by Pope Alexander the Third from Rome he returned with legantine powers which he used with great energy during the year 1180 in the autumn of that year he was entrusted with the delivery to Henry II of the son of Roderick O'Connor as a pledge for the fulfilment of the Treaty of Windsor and with other diplomatic functions on reaching England he found the king had gone to France and following him thither he was seized with illness as he approached to and with a prophetic foretaste of death he exclaimed as he came in sight of the towers of the convent here shall I make my resting place the abbot Osbert and the monks of the order of St Victor received him tenderly and watched his couch for the few days he yet lingered anxious to fulfil his mission he dispatched David tutor of the son of Roderick with messages to Henry and awaited his return with anxiety David brought him a satisfactory response from the English king and the last anxiety only remained in death as in life his thoughts were with his country ah foolish and insensible people he exclaimed in his latest hours what will become of you who will relieve your miseries who will heal you when recommended to make his last will he answered with apostolic simplicity God knows all my revenues I have not a single coin to bequeath and thus on the 11th day of November 1180 in the 48th year of his age under the shelter of a Norman roof surrounded by Norman mourners the Gaelic statesman saint departed out of this life bequeathing one more canonized memory to Ireland and to Rome the prospects of his native land were at that moment of a caste which might well disturb the deathbed of the saint in Lawrence Fitzeldom advanced to the command at Dublin in 1177 had shown no great capacity for following up the conquest but there was one among his followers who were unaffected by his sluggish example and undeterred by his jealous interference resolved to push the outpost of his race into the heart of Ulster this was John the Corsi Baron of Stoke Corsi and Somerseture a cabalier of fabulous physical strength romantic courage and royal descent when he declared his settled purpose to be the invasion of Ulster he found many spirits as discontented with Fitzeldom's inaction as himself ready to follow his banner his inseparable brother in arms Sir Almaric of St. Lawrence his relative Jordan de Corsi Sir Robert de la Poa Sir Jeffrey and Walter de Marisco and other knights to the number of twenty and five hundred men at arms marched with him out of Dublin hardly had they got beyond sight of the city when they were attacked by a native force near health where St. Lawrence laid in victory the foundation of that title still possessed by his posterity on the fifth day they came by surprise upon the famous ecclesiastical city of Down Patrick one of the first objects of their adventure and prophecy had foretold that the place would be taken by a chief with birds upon his shield the bearings of de Corsi mounted on a white horse which de Corsi happened to ride thus the terrors of superstition were added to the terrors of surprise and the town being entirely open the Normans had only to dash into the midst of its inhabitants but the free clansmen of Eulidia those surprised were not intimidated under their lord Rory when the town had done levy they rallied to expel the invader Cardinal Vivian the papal legged who had just arrived from Man and Scotland on the neighbouring coast proffered his mediation and besought de Corsi to withdraw from Down his advice was peremptorily rejected and then he exhorted the Eulidians to fight bravely for their rights five several battles are enumerated as being fought in this and the following year Corsi and the men of Down, Lough and Antrim sometimes with success at others without it always with heavy loss and obstinate resistance the barony of L'Cale in which Down Patrick stands is almost a peninsula and the barony of the aards on the opposite shore of Strangford Locke is nearly insulated by Belfast Locke the channel and the tides of Strangford with the active cooperation of Godred King of Man whose daughter Afrika he had married de Corsi's hold on that coast became an exceedingly strong one a ditch and a few towers would as effectually enclose L'Cale and the aards from any landward attack as if they were a couple of well-walled cities hence long after the pale ceased to extend beyond the boin and while the mountain passes from Meath into Ulster were all in native hands these two baronies continued to be suckered and strengthened by sea and retained as English possessions reinforced from Dublin and from Man after their first success de Corsi's companions stuck to the castle building about the shores of Strangford Locke while he himself made incursions into the interior by land or by sea fighting a brisk succession of engagements at Newry in Antrim, at Coal Reign and on the eastern shore of Locke Foil at the time these operations were going forward in Ulster Milo de Cogan quitted Dublin on a somewhat similar expedition we have already said that Murray, elder son of Rodrick had claimed, according to ancient usage, the O'Connor Patrimony his father being Ardrey and had his claim refused he now entered into a secret engagement with de Cogan whose force is stated by Gereldus at 500 men at arms and by the Irish analysts as a great army with the smaller force he left Dublin but marching through Meath was joined at Trim by men from the garrisons de Lacy had planted in East Meath so accompanied de Cogan advanced on Ross Common where he was received by the son of Rodrick during the absence of the Ardrey on a visitation among the glens of Connemara after three days spent in Ross Common these allies marched across the plain of Connord directed their course on Tuam, burning as they went Elfin, Roskeen and many other churches the western clansmen everywhere fell back before them, driving off their herds and destroying whatever they could not remove at Tuam they found themselves in the midst of a solitude without food or forage with an eager enemy swarming from the west and the south to surround them they had once decided to retreat and no time was to be lost as the were already at their heels from Tuam to Athleague and from Athleague to their castles in East Meath, fled the remnant of de Cogan's inglorious expedition Murray O'Connor being taken prisoner by his own kinsmen his eyes were plucked out as the punishment of his treason and Connor Moynmoy the joint victor with Donald O'Brien over Strongbow at Thurlis became the roid damner or successor of his father but fresh dissension soon broke out between the sons and grandsons of Roderick and the sons of his brother Thurlow in one of whose deadly conflicts 16 princes of the Silmuri fell both sides looked beyond Connord for help one drew friends from the northern O'Neils another relied on the aid of O'Brien Connor Moynmoy in the year 1186 according to most Irish accounts banished his father into Munster but at the intercession of the Silmuri his own clan allowed him again to return and assigned him a single cantret of land for his subsistence from this date we may count the unhappy Roderick's retirement from the world near the junction of Loc Corrib with Loc Mask on the boundary line between Mayo and Galway stands the ruins of the once populous monastery and village of Kong the first Christian kings of Connord had founded the monastery O'Neils sent Fetchin to do so by their generous donations the father of Roderick had enriched its shrine by the gift of a particle of the true cross reverently enshrined in a reliquary the workmanship of which still excites the admiration of the antiquaries here Roderick retired in the 70th year of his age and for 12 years thereafter until the 29th day of November 1198 here he wept and prayed and withered away dead to the world as the world to him the opening of a new grave in the royal corner of Clon McNoise was the last incident connected with his name which reminded Connord that it had lost its once prosperous prince and Ireland that she had seen her last artery according to the ancient Malaysian constitution powerful princes of his own and other houses the land was destined to know for many generations before its sovereignty was merged in that of England but none fully entitled to claim the high sounding but often fallacious title of monarch of all Ireland the public character of Roderick O'Connor has been hardly dealt with by most modern writers he was not like his father like Mercataco Brian Malachy II Brian Mercataco of the Leathern Cloaks or Malachy I eminent as a law giver a soldier or popular leader he does not appear to have inspired love or awe or reverence into those of his own household and patrimony not to speak of his distant contemporaries he was probably a man of secondary qualities engulfed in a crisis of the first importance but that he is fairly chargeable with the success of the invaders or that there was any very overwhelming success to be charged up to the time of his enforced retirement from the world we have failed to discover from Dermott's return until his retreat to Kong 17 years had passed away 17 campaigns more or less energetic and systematic the Normans had fought Munster was still in 1185 when John Lackland made his memorable exit and entrance on the scene almost wholly in the hands of the ancient clans John Hort was as yet without a single Norman Garrison Hugh Delacy returning to the government of Dublin in 1179 on Fitz Alderm's recall was more than half hybridised by marriage with one of Roderick's daughters and the Norman tide stood still in Meath several strong fortresses were indeed erected in Desmond and Lenster by John Lackland and by D'Corsi in his newly won Northern Territory Ardfinan, Lismore Lakeland, Carlow Castle Dermott, Lakes Delvin, Kilkay, Maynooth and Trim were fortified by considering who the Anglo-Normans were and what they had done elsewhere even these very considerable successes may be correctly accounted for without overcharging the memory of Roderick with folly and incapacity that he was personally brave has not been questioned that he was politic or at least capable of conceiving the politic views of such a statesman as Saint Lawrence O'Toole we may infer from the rank of Chancellor which he conferred and the other negotiations which he entrusted to that great man that he maintained his self-respect as a sovereign both in abstaining from visiting Henry II under pretense of hospitality at Dublin and throughout all his difficult diplomacy with the Normans we are free to conclude with the Normans for foes with a decayed and obsolete national constitution to patch up with nominal subordinates more powerful than himself with rebellion staring him in the face out of the eyes of his own children Roderick O'Connor had no ordinary part to play in history the fierce family pride of our fathers and the vices of their political system are to be deplored and avoided let us not make the last of their national kings the scapegoat for all his contemporaries and all his predecessors End of Chapter 6 Recording by Tony Ashworth Brisbane Chapter 7 of a popular history of Ireland Book 4 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A popular history of Ireland from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics Book 4 by Thomas Darcy McGee Chapter 7 Assassination of Hugh DeLacy John Lackland in Ireland Various expeditions of John DeCorsi Death of Conor Moynmoy and Rise of Cthul the red-handed O'Connor Close of the career of DeCorsi and DeBurg Hugh DeLacy restored to the supreme authority on the recall of Fitz Aldum in 1179 began to conceive hopes as Strongbow had done of carving out for himself a new kingdom After the assassination of O'Rourke already related he assumed without further parley the titles of Lord of Mieth and Brefney To these titles he added that of Oriel or Laoth but his real strength lay in Mieth where his power was enhanced by a politics second marriage with Rose daughter of O'Connor Among the Irish he now began to be known as the king of the foreigners and some such assumption of royal authority caused his recall for a few months and his substitution by DeCorsi and Philip DeBrosa in 1184 but his great qualities caused his restoration a third time to the rank of justiciary for Henry or deputy for John whose title of Lord of Ireland was bestowed by his father at a parliament held at Oxford in 1177 This founder of the Irish DeLacies is described by Geraldus who knew him personally as a man of gallant sobriety ambitious, avaricious and lustful of small stature and deformed shape with repulsive features and dark deep-set eyes By the Irish of the Midland districts he was bitterly detested as a sacrilegious spoiler of their churches and monasteries and the most powerful among their invaders The murder of O'Rourke whose title of Brefney he had usurped was attributed to a deep laid design He certainly shared the odium with the advantage that ensued from it Nor was his own end unlike that of his rival Among other sites for castles he had chosen the foundations of the ancient and much venerated monastery of Duro planted by Columnsill seven centuries before in the midst of the fertile region watered by the Brosna This act of profanity was fated to be his last for while personally superintending the work, Omey a young man of good birth and foster-brother to a neighbouring chief of Teffia known as Sionak or the Fox who was the single-blow of his acts and escaped into the neighbouring forest of Kilclair during the confusion which ensued Delacy left issue two sons, Hugh and Walter by his first wife and a third, William Gorm by his second of whom and of their posterity we shall have many occasions to make mention In one of the intervals of Delacy's disfavor Prince John, surnamed Santère or Lackland was sent over by his father in Ireland He arrived in Waterford, accompanied by a fleet of sixty ships, on the last of March 1185 and remained in the country till the following November If anything could excuse the levity folly and misconduct of the Prince on this expedition, it would be his youth He was then only eighteen But Henry had taken every precaution to ensure success to his favourite son He was preceded into Ireland by Archbishop Cumming the English successor of St. Lawrence The learned Glanville was his legal adviser John de Corsi was his lieutenant and the eloquent but passionate and partial Geraldus Cambrensis his chaplain and tutor He had, however, other companions more congenial to his age and temper Young nobleman as forward and extravagant as himself yet as he surpassed them all in birth and rank so he did in wickedness and cruelty of disposition For age he had no reverence or esteem, neither truth towards man nor decency towards woman On his arrival at Waterford the new Archbishop of Dublin John de Corsi and the principal Norman nobles hastened to receive him With them came also certain Lester chiefs, desiring to live at peace with the new Gauls When, according to the custom of the country, the chiefs advanced to give John the kiss of peace, their venerable age was made a mockery by the young Prince, who met their proffered by plucking at their beards This appears to have been as deadly an insult to the Irish as it is to the Asiatics and the deeply offended guests instantly quitted Waterford Other follies and excesses rapidly transpired and the native nobles began to discover that a royal army encumbered, rather than led by such a Prince, was not likely to prove itself invincible In an idle parade from the Sur to the Liffey, from the Liffey to the Boyne, and in issuing orders for the production of castles, some of which are still correctly, and others erroneously called King John's castles, the campaign months of the year were wasted by the King of England's son One of these castles, to which most importance was attached, Ard Finan on the Sur, was no sooner built than taken by Donald Morrow Bryan on Midsummer Day, when four nights and its other defenders were slain Another was rising at Lismore on the Blackwater, under the guardianship of Robert Barry, one of the brood Vesta, when it was attacked in Barry Slain. Other nights in castellans were equally unfortunate Raymond Fitzhugh fell at Leyland another Raymond in Idrone and Roger LePore in Ossyrie In Desmond, Cormac McCarthy besieged Thelbald, ancestor of the butlers in Cork, but this brave Prince, the worthy compere of O'Brien, was cut off in a parley by them of Cork The Clan Coleman, or Omeliclens had risen in West Meeth to reclaim their own, when Henry, not an hour too soon, recalled his reckless son and entrusted for the last time the command to Hugh Delacy whose fate has already been related In the fluctuations of the power of the invaders after the death of Delacy, and during the next reign in England, one steadfast name appears foremost among the adventurers that of the gallant giant DeCorsi the conqueror of the aards of down Not only in prowess, but also in piety, he was the model of all the knighthood of his time We are told that he always carried about his person a copy of the prophecies attributed to Columnsill and when, in the year 1186 the relics of the three great saints whose dust sanctifies down Patrick, were supposed to be discovered by the Bishop of Down in a dream, he caused them to be translated to the altar side with all suitable reverence Yet all his devotions and pilgrimages did not prevent him from pushing the conquest whenever occasion offered His plantation in Down had time to take root from the unexpected death of Donald, Prince of Aliac, in an encounter with the garrison of one of the new castles near Newry, AD 1188 The same year he took up the enterprise against Canot in which Milo de Cogan had so signally failed, and from which even Delacy had, for reasons of his own, refrained The feuds of the O'Connor family were mixed in the ground of hope with the invaders, but Donald More O'Brien, victorious on the Sur and the Shannon, carried his strong suckers to Conor Moynmoy on the banks of the Sookah near the present Balinislo and both powers combined marched against O'Corsi Unprepared for this junction the Norman retreated toward Sligo and had reached Balisaderre when Flaherty, Lord of Tierconel Donnigl, came against them They were forced to fly through the rugged passes of the Curlough mountains skirmishing as they went The only incidents which signalized this campaign on their side was the burning of Balisaderre and the plunder of Armagh To the Irish it was creditable for the combinations it occasioned It is cheering in the annals of those Delsatory wars to find a national advantage gained by the joint action of a Munster, a Canot, and an Ulster force by the Alliance of O'Brien and O'Connor in the years 1188-89 had been followed up by the adhesion of the Lords of Brefney, Olydia, or Down the Chiefs of the Clan Coleman and McCarthy, Prince of Desmond But the assassination of Conor Moynmoy by the partisans of his cousins extinguished the hopes of the country and the peace of his own province The old family feuds broke out with new fury In vain the aged Roderick emerged from his convent with feeble hand to curb the fiery passions of his tribe In vain the archbishops of Armagh and of Tuam interposed their spiritual authority A series of fratricidal contests for which history has no memory and no heart were fought out between the warring branches of the family during the last ten years of the century until, by virtue of the strong arm, Cthul Crothiarg, son of Terlock Moore, and younger brother of Roderick, assumed the sovereignty of Conot about the year 1200 In the twelve years which intervened between the death of Moynmoy and the establishment of the power of Cthul Crothiarg or Conor the Normans had repeated opportunities for intervention in the affairs of Conot William de Berg, a powerful baron of the family of Fitzaldom the former Lord Justice sided with the opponents of Cthul while de Corsi, and subsequently the younger Delacy fought on his side Once at least these restless barons changed allies desperately against their former candidate for the succession as they had before fought for him In one of these engagements the date assigned to which is the year 1190 Sir Armorick St. Lawrence, founder of the Houth family, at the head of a numerous division, is said to have been cut off with all his troop But the fortune of war frequently shifted during the contest In the year 1199, Cthul Crothiarg with his allies Delacy and de Corsi was utterly defeated at Kilmack Dog in the present county of Galway and were it not that the rival of Conor was sorely defeated and trodden to death in the route which ensued, three years later Conot might never have known the vigorous administration of her red-handed hero The early career of the sable and now triumphant prince as preserved to us by history and tradition is full of romantic incidents He is said to have been born out of wedlock and that his mother, while pregnant of him, was subject to all the cruel persecutions and magical torments the jealous wife of his father could invent No sooner was he born than he became an object of hatred to the queen so that mother and child after being concealed for three years in the sanctuaries of Conot had to fly for their lives into Lenster In this exile, though early informed of his origin, he was brought up among the laborers in the field and was actually engaged, sickle in hand cutting the harvest when a traveling ball scare or newsmen from the west related the events which enabled him to return to his native province Farewell, sickle, he exclaimed casting it from him, now for the sword Hence, Cathel's farewell to the rye was long a proverbial expression for any sudden change of purpose or of condition Fortune seems to have favored him in the most of his undertakings In a storm upon Lowery when a whole fleet foundered and its warrior crew perished he was one of seven who were saved Though in some of his early battles unsuccessful, he always recovered his ground, kept up his alliances and returned to the contest After the death of the celebrated Donald Morrow Bryan, AD 1194 he may certainly be considered the first soldier and first diplomatess among the Irish Nor was his lot cast on more favored days, nor was he pitted against less able men than those with whom the brave king of Munster, the stoutest defender of his fatherland had so honorably striven fortunate it was for the renown of the Gale that as one star of the race set over Thoman, another of equal brilliancy rose to guide them in the west With the end of the century the career of Cathel's allies D'Corsi and a bird may be almost said to have ended The obituary of the latter bears the date of 1204 He had obtained large grants from King John of lands in Canot if he could conquer them, which his vigorous descendants, the Birks of Tyrone, did their best to accomplish D'Corsi, warring with the sons of Delacy and seeking refuge among the clansmen of Tyrone, disappears from the stage of Irish affairs He is said to have passed on to England and ended his days in prison a victim to the caprice or jealousy of King John Many tales are told of his matchless intrepidity His indirect descendants, the barons of Kinsale, claim the right to wear their hats before the king in consequence which represents him as the champion knight of England, taken from a dungeon to uphold her honour against a French challenger Other tales as ill-authenticated are founded on his career, which, however, in its literal truth, is unexcelled except for hardyhood and adventure except perhaps by the co-temporaneous story of the lion-hearted Richard whom he closely resembled The title of Earl of Ulster, created for D'Corsi in 1181 was transferred in 1205 by royal patent to Walter D'Lacy whose only daughter, Maude, brought it in the year 1264 to Walter de Berg, Lord of Connaught from whose fourth female descendant it passed in 1354 by her marriage with Lionel, Duke of Clarence into the royal family of England