 8 Events of the thirteenth century, the Normans in Canot. The reign of John, ending in 1216, and that of Henry III, extending until 1271, were fully occupied with the insurrections of the barons, with French, Scotch, and Welsh wars, family feuds, the rise and fall of royal favourites, and all those other incidents which naturally befall in the state of society where the king is weak, the aristocracy strong and insolent, and the commons disunited and despised. During this period the fusion of Norman, Saxon, and Britain went slowly on, and the next stage saw for the first time a population which could be properly called English. Do you take me for an Englishman? was the last expression of Norman arrogance in the reign of King John, but the close of the reign of Henry III, through the action of commercial and political causes, saw a very different state of feeling growing up between the descendants of the races which contended for mastery under Harold and William. The strongly marked Norman characteristics lingered in Ireland half a century later, for it is usually the case that traits of caste survive longest in colonies and remote provinces. In Richard de Bergo, commonly called the Red Earl of Ulster, all the genius and the vices of the race of Rolo blazed out over Ireland for the last time, and with terrible effect. During the first three quarters of the century our history, like that of England, is the history of a few great houses, nation there is, strictly speaking, none. It will be necessary, therefore, to group together the acts of two or three generations of men of the same name, as the only method of finding our way through the shifting scenes of this stormy period. The power of the great Cannot family of O'Connor, so terribly shaken by the fratricidal wars and unnatural alliances of the sons and grandsons of Roderick, was in great part restored by the ability and energy of Cathle Crovedereck. In his early struggles for power he was greatly assisted by the Anarchy which reigned among the English nobles. Mailer Fitz Henry, the last of Strongbow's companions, who rose to such eminence, being gestiary in the first six years of the century, was aided by O'Connor to besiege William de Bergo and Limerick, and to cripple the power of the De Laces in Mietha. In the year 1207 John Gray, Bishop of Norwich, was sent over, as more likely to be impartial than any ruler personally interested in the old quarrels, but during his first term of office the interdict, with which Innocent III had smitten England, hung like an Egyptian darkness over the Anglo-Norman power in Ireland. The native Irish, however, were exempt from its innervating effects, and Cathle O'Connor, by the time King John came over in person in the year 1210, to endeavour to retrieve the English interest, had warred down all his enemies, and was power sufficient to treat with the English sovereign as independently as Roderick had done with Henry II thirty-five years before. He personally conferred with John at Dublin, as the O'Neill and other native princes did. He procured from the English king the condemnation of John de Bergo, who had maintained his father's claims on a portion of Canot, and he was formally recognised, according to the approved forms of Norman diplomacy, as seized the whole of Canot in his own right. The visit of King John, which lasted from the twentieth of June till the twenty-fifth of August, was mainly directed to the reduction of those intractable Anglo-Irish barons whom Fitz Henry and Gray had proved themselves unable to cope with. Of these the de Laces of Mieth were the most obnoxious. They not only assumed an independent state, but had sheltered de Brouse, Lord of Brednock, one of the recusant barons of Wales, and refused to surrender him on the royal summons. To assert his authority, and to strike terror into the nobles of other possessions, John crossed the channel with a prodigious fleet, and the Irish annals said to consist of seven hundred sail. He landed at Crook, reached Dublin, and prepared at once to subdue the de Laces. With his own army, and the co-operation of Cathill O'Connor, he drove out Walter de Laces, Lord of Mieth, who fled to his brother Hugh de Laces, since Corcy's disgrace, Earl of Luster. From Mieth into Louth John pursued the brothers, crossing the Lough at Carlingford with his ships, which must have coasted in his company. From Carlingford they retreated, and he pursued to Carrick-Fergus, and from that fortress, unable to resist a royal fleet and navy, they fled into Mann, or Scotland, and thence escaped in disguise into France. With their guest de Brouse, they wrought as gardeners in the grounds of the Abbey of Saint Turin-Evro, until the Abbot, having discovered by their manners the key to their real rank, negotiated successfully with John for their restoration to their estates. Robert agreed to pay a fine of twenty-five hundred marks for his lordship in Mieth, and Hugh four thousand marks for his possessions in Ulster. Of de Brouse we have no particulars. His high-spirited wife and children were thought to have been starved to death by order of the unforgiving tyrant in one of his castles. The de Laces, on their restoration, were accompanied to Ireland by a nephew of the Abbot of Saint Turin, on whom they conferred an estate and the honour of knighthood. The only other acts of John's sojourn in Ireland was his treaty with O'Connor, already mentioned, and the mapping out on paper of the intended counties of Oriel, or Lyothe, Mieth, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Catherlow, or Carlo, Wexford, Waterford, Court, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary, as the only districts in which those he claimed as his subjects had any possessions. He again installed the Bishop of Norwich as his gestiary or lieutenant, who, three years later, was succeeded by Henry de Lange, the next Archbishop of Dublin, and he again, AD 1215, by Geoffrey de Marisco, the last of John's deputies. In the year 1216 Henry III, an infant ten years of age, succeeded to the English throne, and the next dozen years the history of the two islands is slightly connected, except by the fortunes of the family of de Berg, whose head, Hubert de Berg, the chief gestiary from the accession of the new king until the first third of the century had closed, was, in reality, the sovereign of England. Among his other titles he had that of Lord of Canot, which he conveyed to his relative, Richard de Berg, the son or grandson of William Fitzaldom de Berg, about the year 1225. And this brings us to relate how the House of Clanrecard rose up upon the flank of the House of O'Connor, and after holding an almost equal front for two generations, finally overshadowed its more ancient rival. While Cathal Crovedar lived, the O'Connor's held their own, and rather more than their own by policy or arms. Not only did his own power suffer no diminution, but he more than once assisted the Dalgaes and the Eugenians to expel their invaders from north and south Munster and to uphold their ancient rights and laws. During the last years of John's reign that king and his barons were mutually too busy to set aside the arrangement entered into in 1210. In the first years of Henry it was also left undisturbed by the English court. In 1221 reread that the Dalaises, remembering no doubt the part he had played in their expulsion, endeavored to fortify Athelic against him, but the veteran king, crossing the Shannon farther northward, took them in the rear, compelled them to make peace, and broke down their castle. This was almost the last of his victories. In the year 1213 we read in the annals of an awful and heavy shower which fell over Connaught, and was held to presage the death of his heroic king. Feeling his hour had come, this prince, to whom our justly attributed the rare union of virtues, ardor of mind, chastity of body, meekness in prosperity, fortitude under defeat, prudence in civil business, undaunted bravery in battle, and a piety of life beyond all his co-temporaries, feeling the near approach of death retired to the abbey of Nockmoy, which he had founded and endowed, and there expired in the Franciscan habit, at an age which must have bordered on forescore. He was succeeded by his son, Hugh O'Connor, the hostages of Connaught being in his house, at the time of his illustrious father's death. No sooner was Cathal Crovedog deceased than Hubert de Burgaux procured the grants of the whole province, reserving only five cantrids about Athelon for a royal garrison to be made to Richard de Burgaux, his nephew. Richard had married he Adurnia, granddaughter to Cathal, and thus like all the Normans, though totally against the Irish custom, claimed a part of Connaught in right of his wife. But in the sons of Cathal he found his equal both in policy and arms, and with the fall of his uncle at the English court, about the year 1233, Fide Lumo Conna, the successor of Hugh, taking advantage of the event, made interest at the court of Henry the Third sufficient to have his overgrown neighbor stripped of some of his strongholds by royal order. The king was so impressed with O'Connor's representations that he wrote peremptorily to Moritz Fitzgerald, second Lord Auffoli, then his deputy, to root out that barren tree planted in Auffoli by Hubert de Burgaux in the madness of his power, and not to suffer it to shoot forth. Five years later, Fide Lumo, in return, carried some of his force in conjunction with the deputy to Henry's aid in Wales, though as their arrival was somewhat tardy, Fitzgerald was soon after dismissed on that account. Richard de Burgaux died in attendance on King Henry in France, A.D. 1243, and was succeeded by his son, Walter de Burgaux, who continued with varying fortunes the contest for Connaught with Fide Lum, until the death of the latter in the Black Abbey of Roscommon in the year 1265. Huo O'Connor, the son and successor of Fide Lum, continued the intrepid guardian of his house and province during the nine years he survived his father. In the year 1254, by marriage with the daughter of de Lacey, Earl of Ulster, that title had passed into the family of de Burg, bringing with it, for the time, much substantial, though distant strength. It was considered only a secondary title, and as the eldest son of the first de Lacey remained Lord of Mieth, while the younger took de Corsi's forfeited title of Ulster, so in the next generation did the sons of this Walter de Burg, until death and time reunited both titles in the same person. Walter de Burg died in the year 1271, in the castle of Galway, his great rival, Fide Lum O'Connor, in 1274, was buried in the Abbey of Boyle. The former is styled King of the English of Connaught by the Irish analysts, who also speak of Fide Lum as the most triumphant and the most feared by the invaders of any King that had been in Connaught before this time. The relative position of the Irish and English in that province, towards the end of this century, may be judged by the fact that, of the Anglo-Normans summoned by Edward I to join him in Scotland in 1299, but, too, Richard de Burg and Pierce de Birmingham, baron of Athenry, had then possessions in Connaught. There were Norman castles at Athelon, at Athenry, at Galway, and perhaps at some other points, but the natives still swayed supreme over the plains of Rathcrogan, the plains of Boyle, the forests and lakes of Rathcomen, and the whole of Lar, or West Connaught, from La Corab to the ocean, with the very important exception of the castle and port of Galway. A mightier de Burgaux than any that had yet appeared was to see in his house, in the year 1286, the hostages of all Connaught, but his life and death form a distinct epic in our story, and must be treated separately. CHAPTER IX. Events of the thirteenth century. The Normans in Munster and Lindster. We have already told the tragic fate of the two adventurers, Fitz Stephen and de Cogan, between whom the whole of Desmond was first partitioned by Henry II. But there were not wanting other claimants, either by original grant from the Crown, by intermarriage with Irish, or Norman Irish heiresses, or newcomers, favorites of John, or of Henry III, or of their ministers, enriched at the expense of the native population. Thomas, third son of Maurice Fitzgerald, claimed partly through his uncle Fitz Stephen, and partly through his marriage with the daughter of another early adventurer, Sir William Morrie, whose vast estates on which his descendants were afterwards known as the Earl's of Desmond, the White Knight, the Knight of Glen, and the Knight of Kerry. Robert de Carreux and Patrick de Corsi claimed as heirs general to de Cogan. The de Morricos, de Barris, and LePors, were not extinct. And finally, Edward I, soon after his accession, granted the whole land of Thoman to Thomas de Clair, son of the Earl of Gloucester, and son-in-law of Maurice, the third baron of Offaly. A contest very similar to that which was waged in Canot between the O'Connor's and the de Berg's was consequently going on in Munster at the same time, between the old inhabitants and the new claimants, of all three classes just indicated. The Principality of Desmond, containing angles of Waterford and Tipperary, with all cork and Kerry, seemed, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in greatest danger of conquest. The O'Callagans, lords of Canal Aida, in the south of cork, were driven into the mountains of Dunhalo, where they rallied and held their ground for four centuries. The O'Sullivans, originally settled along the Sur, about Clonmel, were forced towards the mountain sea coast of cork and Kerry, where they acquired new vigor in the less fertile soil of Baer and Bontree. The native families of the Dacys, from their proximity to the port of Waterford, were harassed and overrun, and the ports of Dungarvin, Jungol, and cork, being also taken and garrisoned by the founder of the Earldom of Desmond, easy entrance and egress by sea could always be obtained for his allies, auxiliaries, and supplies. It was when these dangers were darkening and menacing on every side that the family of McCarthy, under a succession of able and vigorous chiefs, proved themselves worthy of the headship of the Eugenian race. Cormac McCarthy, who had expelled the first garrison from Waterford, ere he fell in a parley before cork, had defeated the first enterprises of Fitz-Steven and Dicogon. He left a worthy son in Donald Nakura, who, uniting his own correlations and acting in conjunction with O'Brien and O'Connor, retarded by his many exploits the progress of the invasion in Munster. He recovered cork and raised King John's castle at Notgrafen on the Sur. He left two surviving sons, of whom the eldest, Donald Gott, or the stammerer, took the title of Moor or Great, and his posterity remained Princess of Desmond until that title merged in the Earldom of Glencar, A.D. 1565. The other, Cormac, after taking his brother prisoner, compelled him to acknowledge him as Lord of the Four Baronies of Carbury. From this Cormac the family of McCarthy-Reg descended, and to them the O'Driscolls, O'Donovans, O'Mahonys, and other Eugenian houses became tributary. The chief residence of McCarthy-Reg was long fixed at Dunmanway. His castles were also at Baltimore, Castle Haven, Laofine, and Inniskirkin and Clear Island. The power of McCarthy-Moor extended at its greatest reach, from Tralee and Kerry to Lismore and Waterford. In the year 1229 Dermot McCarthy had peaceable possession of court, and founded the Franciscan monastery there. Such was his power that according to Hamner and his authorities, the Geraldines dare not, for twelve years, put plough into the ground in Desmond. At last another generation rose, and fierce family feuds broke out between the branches of the family. The Lord of Carbury was now Feneen, or Florence, the most celebrated man of his name, and one whose power naturally encroached upon the possession of the elder house. John, son of Thomas Fitzgerald of Desmond, seized the occasion to make good the enormous pretension of his family. In the expedition which he undertook for this purpose, in the year 1260, he was joined by the Justiary, William Dean, by Walter de Bergo, Earl of Ulster, by Walter de Riddlesford, Baron of Bray, by Donald Rowe, chief of the hostile house of McCarthy. The Lord of Carbury united under his standard the chief Eugenian families, not only of the coast, but even of McCarthy Moore's principality, and the battle was fought with great ferocity at Callen Glen, near Kenmar in Cary. There the Anglo Normans received the most complete defeat they had yet experienced on Irish ground. John Fitzthommas, his son Maurice, eight barons, fifteen knights, and countless numbers of common soldiers were slain. The Monastery of Tralee received the dead body of its founder and his son, while Florence McCarthy, following up his blow, captured and broke down in swift succession all the English castles in his neighborhood, including those of McCroom, Dunamark, Dunlow, and Kilorgun. In besieging one of these castles, called Ringrone, the victorious chief in the full tide of conquest was cut off, and his brother, called the Ethelarach, or Suspended Priest, succeeded to his possessions. The death of the victor arrested the panic of the defeat, but Munster saw another generation before her invaders had shaken off the depression of the battle of Callen Glen. Before the English interests had received the severe blow in the south, a series of events had transpired in Lenster, going to show that its aspiring barons had been seized with the madness which precedes destruction. William, Earl Marshall, and Protector of England during the minority of Henry III, had married Isabella, the daughter of Strongbow and granddaughter of Dermot, through whom he assumed the title of Lord of Lenster. He procured the office of Earl Marshall of Ireland, originally conferred on the First Delacy for his own nephew, and thus converted the Delacies into mortal enemies. His son and successor Richard, having made himself obnoxious soon after his accession to that title, to the young king, or to Hubert de Berg, was outlawed, and letters were dispatched to the gestiary, Fitzgerald, to de Bergo, Delacy, and other Anglo-Irish lords, if he landed in Ireland to seize his person, alive or dead, and send it to England. Strong in his estates and alliances the young Earl came, while his enemies employed the wily Joffrey de Montmorys to entrap him into a conference in order to his destruction. The meeting was appointed for the first day of April 1234, and while the outlawed Earl was conversing with those who had invited him, and a fray began among their servants by design, he himself was mortally wounded and carried to one of Fitzgerald's castles where he died. He was succeeded in his Irish honors by three of his brothers, who all died without heir's mail. And Selma, the last Earl-Marshall of his family, dying in 1245, left five co-erises, Maud, Joan, Isabel, Sibyl, and Eva, between whom the Irish estates, or such portions of them in actual possession, were divided. They married, respectively, the earls of Norfolk, Suffolk, Gloucester, Ferrars, and Brouse, or Brace, Lord of Bregnock, in whose families, for another century or more, the secondary titles were Catherlog, Kildare, Wexford, Kilkenny, and Lakes, these five districts being supposed, most absurdly, to have come into the Marshall family from the daughter of Strongbow. The false knights and dishonored nobles concerned in the murder of Richard Marshall were disappointed of the prey which had been promised them, the partition of his estates. And such was the horror which the deed excited in England, that it hastened the fall of Hubert de Berg, though Maurice Fitzgerald, of Offaly, ancestor of the Kildare family, having cleared himself of all complicity in it by oath, was continued as Justice Ciary for ten years longer. In the year 1245, for his tardiness in joining the King's army in Wales, he was succeeded by the false-hearted Joffrey Timont-Maurice, who held the office till 1247. During the next twenty-five years, about half as many justices were placed and displaced, according to the whim of the successive favourites of the English court. In 1252, Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I, was appointed with the title of Lord Lieutenant, but never came over. Nor is there in the series of rulers we have numbered, with perhaps two exceptions, any who have rendered their names memorable by great exploits or lasting legislation. So little inherent power had the incumbents of the highest office, unless when they employed their own proper forces in their sovereign's name, that we read without surprise how the bold mountaineers of Wicklow, at the opening of the century, A.D. 1209, slaughtered the Bristolians of Dublin, engaged at their archery in Cullenswood, and at the close of it, how one of the cavernas of the blood of McMurrah, living at Lentster, displayed his standards with inside of the city. Yet this is commonly spoken of as a country overrun by a few score Norman knights in a couple of campaigns. The maintenance of the conquest was in these years less the work of the king's justices than of the great houses. Of these the two principally profited, by the untimely felling of that great tree which overshadowed all others in Lentster, the marshals. The descendants of the eldest son of Maurice Fitzgerald clung to their Lentster possessions, while their equally vigorous cousins pushed their fortunes in Desmond. Maurice, grandson of Maurice, and second Baron of Offaly, from the year 1229 to the year 1246, was three times Lord Justice. He was a valiant knight, a very pleasant man, and inferior to none in the kingdom by Matthew Parris's account. He introduced the Franciscan and Dominican orders into Ireland, built many castles, churches, and abbeys at Yogyl, at Sligol, at Armagh, at Maynooth, and in other places. In the year 1257 he was wounded in single combat by O'Donnell, Lord of Tier Connell, near Sligo, and died soon after in the Franciscan habit in Yogyl. He left his successors so powerful that in the year 1264, there being a feud between the Geraldines and de Bergs, he seized the Lord Justice and the Hull de Bergh party at a conference at Castle Dermot, and carried them to his own castles of Lee and Unimes as prisoners. In 1272, on the accidental death of the Lord Justice O'Dly, by a fall from his horse, the council elected this the third Baron of Offaly in his stead. The family of Butler were of slower growth, but of equal tenacity with the Geraldines. They first seemed to have attached themselves to the marshals, for whom they were indebted for their first holdings in Kilkenny. At the conference of Castle Dermot, Theobald Butler, the fourth in descent from the founder of the house, was numbered among the adherents of de Bergh, but a few years later we find him the ally of the Geraldines in the Invasion of Thomand. In the year 1247 the title of Lord of Carrick had been conferred on him, which in 1315 was converted into Earl of Carrick, and this again into that of Ormond. The butlers of this house, when they had attained their growth of power, became the hereditary rivals of the Kildare Geraldines, whose earldom dates from 1316 as that of Ormond does from 1328 and Desmond from 1329. The name of Maurice, the third Baron of Offaly, and uncle of John, the first Earl of Kildare, draws our attention naturally to the last enterprise of his life, the attempt to establish his son-in-law, Thomas De Clair, in possession of Thomand. The declares, Earl's of Glouster, pretended a grant from Henry II of the whole of Thomand as their title to invade that principality, but their real grant was bestowed by Edward I in the year 1275. The state of the renowned patrimony of Brian had long seemed to invite such an aggression. Mirtog, the son of Donald Moore, who succeeded his father in 1194, had early signalized himself by capturing the castles of Beer, Kennedy, Ballerone, and Lothra in Lex, and raising them to the ground. But these castles were reconstructed in 1213, when the feuds between the rival O'Brien's, Mirtog, and Donog Kerber had paralyzed the defense force of Thomand. It was doubtless in the true divide and conquer spirit that Henry III's advisers confirmed to Donog the lordship of Thomand in 1220, leaving to his elder brother the comparatively barren title of King of Munster. Both brothers, by alternately working on their hopes and fears, were thus for many years kept in a state of dependence on the foreigner. One gleam of patriotic virtue illuminates the annals of the House of O'Brien during the first forty years of the century, when, in the year 1225, Donog Kerber assisted Fellham O'Connor to resist the Anglo-Norman army, then pouring over Canot, in the Coral of Deburg. Connor, the son of Donog, who succeeded his father in the year 1242, animated by the example of his co-temporaries, made successful war against the invaders of his province, more especially in the year 1257, and the next year, attended with O'Connor the meeting at Belique, on the air, where Brian O'Neill was acknowledged by both the Munster and the Canot Prince as Argrig. The untimely end of this attempt at National Union will be hereafter related. Meantime, we proceed to mention that in 1260 the Lord of Thomand defeated the Geraldines and their Welsh auxiliaries at Kilbaron and Clare. He was succeeded the following season by his son, Brian Rowe, in whose time Thomas de Clare again put to the test of battle his pretensions to the lordship of Thomand. It was in the year 1277 that, supported by his father-in-law, the Kildare Fitzgerald, to Clare marched into Munster and sought an interview with the O'Brien. The relation of gossip, accounted sacred among the Irish, existed between them, but Brian Rowe, having placed himself credulously in the hands of his invaders, was cruelly drawn to pieces between two horses. All Thomand rose in arms, near Donog, son of Brian, to revenge this infamous murder. Near Ennis the Normans met a terrible defeat, from which De Clare and Fitzgerald fled for safety into the neighboring church of Quinn. But Donog O'Brien burned the church over their heads, and forced them to surrender at discretion. Strange to say they were held to ransom, on condition we may suppose sufficiently hard. Other days of blood were yet to decide the claims of the family of De Clare. In 1287, Terlog, then the O'Brien, defeated an invasion similar to the last, in which Thomas de Clare was slain, together with Patrick FitzMaurice of Carey, Richard Tafe, Richard de Retier, Nicholas Stealing, and other knights, and Gerald, the fourth Baron of Offaly, brother-in-law to De Clare, was mortally wounded. After another interval, Gilbert De Clare, son of Thomas, renewed the contest, which he bequeathed to his brother Richard. This Richard, whose name figures more than his brothers in the events of his time, made a last effort in the year 1318 to make good the claims of his family. On the fifth of May in that year he fell in battle against McCarthy and O'Brien, and there fell with him Sir Thomas de Nass, Sir Henry Cappell, Sir James and Sir John Compton, with four other knights and a proportion of men at arms. From thenceforth that proud offshoot of the House of Gloucester, which, at its first settling in Munster, flourished as bravely as the Geraldines themselves, came extinct in the land. Such were the varying fortunes of the two races in Lester and Munster, and such the men who rose and fell. We must now turn to the contest as maintained at the same period in Mieff and Ulster. CHAPTER 10. Events of the thirteenth century. The Normans in Mieff and Ulster. We may estimate the power of the De Lacey family in the second generation, from the fact that their expulsion required a royal army and navy commanded by the king and person to come from England. Although pardoned by John, the brothers took care never to place themselves in that cowardly tyrant's power, and they observed the same precaution on the accession of his son, until well assured that he did not share the antipathy of his father. After their restoration the Lacey's had no rivals among the Norman Irish except the Marshall family, and though both houses in half a century became extinct, not so those they had planted or patronized, or who claimed from them collaterally. In Mieff the Toots, Cossacks, Flemings, Dalton's, Pettits, Hussies, Nangles, Tyrels, Nugents, Verdans, and Genvilles struck deep into the soil. The co-erises Margaret and Matilda De Lacey married Lord Taobold de Verden and Sir Joffrey de Genneville, between whom the estate of their father was divided. Both these ladies dying without male issue, the lordship was, in 1286, claimed by Richard de Bergo, Earl of Ulster, whose mother was their cousin German. But we are anticipating time. No portion of the island, except perhaps Wexford, and the shores of Strangford Lough, was so thoroughly castellated as the ancient Mieff from the sea to the Shannon. Trim, Kells, and Duro were the strongest holds. There were keeps or castles at Ardbracken, Slain, Rathweyr, Navin, Screen, Santee, Clontarf, and Castlemock. For even these places, almost within side of Dublin, were included in De Lacey's original grant. None of these fortresses could have been more than a few miles distant from the next, and once within their thick-ribbed walls the Norman, Saxon, Cambrian, or Danish Serf or Tenant might laugh at the Melesian arrows and battle axes without. With these fortresses, and their own half Irish origin and policy, the De Lacey's father and son held Mieff for two generations in general subjection. But the banishment of the brothers in 1210, and the death of Walter of Mieff, presented the family of Omelican and the whole of the Methian tribes with opportunities of insurrection not to be neglected. We read, therefore, under the years 1211, 12 and 13, that Art Omelaglan and Cormac, his son, took the castles of Kilclane, Ardnaker, Uthboy, and Smerhe, killing knights and wardens, and enriching themselves with booty. That the whole English of Ireland turned out Ammas to the rescue of their brethren in Mieff. That the castles of Beer, Duro, and Caneti were strengthened against Art, and a new one erected at Clomac Noise. After ten years of exile the banished De Lacey's returned, and by alliance with O'Neill, no less than their own prowess, recovered all their former influence. Cormac, son of Art, left a son and successor also named Art, who, we read at the year 1264, gave the English of Mieff a great defeat upon the Brosna, where he that was not slain was drowned. Following the blow he burned their villages and broke the castles of the stranger throughout Devlan, Calry, and Brawny, and replaced in power over them the Macaulins, Magalwees, and O'Breens, from whom he took hostages according to ancient custom. Two years afterward he repulsed Walter de Burg at Shannon Harbour, driving his men into the river where many of them perished. At his death, AD 1283, he is eulogized for having destroyed twenty and seven English castles in his lifetime. From these exploits he was called Art Nacazlain, a remarkable distinction when we remember that the Irish were, up to this time, wholly unskilled in besieging such strongholds as the Norman engineers knew so well how to construct. His only rival in Mieff in such meritorious works of destruction was Connor, son of Donald, and O'Melliglain of East Mieff, or Bregia, whose death is recorded at the year 1277, as one of the three men in Ireland whom the Midland English most feared. From the ancient mensel the transition is easy to the north. The borderland of Brefney, whose chief was the first of the native nobles that perished by Norman perfidity, was at the beginning of the century swayed by Ulgarg or Rourke. Of Ulgarg, we know little, save that in the year 1231 he died on his way to the river Jordan, a not uncommon pilgrimage with the Irish of those days. Nial, son of Congol, succeeded, and about the middle of the century we find Brefney divided into two lordships, from the mountain of Sleven-Erin Eastward or Cavant, being given to Art, son of Cathol, and from the mountain westward, or Lethram to Donald, son of Connor, son of Tyrnan, Delacy's victim. This subdivision conduced neither to the strengthening of its defenders nor to the satisfaction of O'Connor, under whose auspices it was made. Family feuds and household treasons were its natural results for two or three generations. In the midst of these broils two neighboring families rose into greater importance, the O'Reiles in Cavant and the Maguire's in Fermanagh. Still, strong in their lake and mountain region, the tribes of Brefney were comparatively unmolested by foreign enemies, while the stress of the northern battle fell upon the men of Tyr Connell and Tyrone, of Oriel and of the coast country, from Carlingford to the Cosway. The borders of Tyr Connell and Tyrone, like every other tribe land, were frequently enlarged or contracted according to the vigor or weakness of their chiefs or neighbors. In the age of which we now speak, Tyr Connell extended from the Urn to the Foil and Tyrone from the Foil to Laughniag, with the exception of the extreme north of Bury and Antrim, which belonged to the O'Caines. It was not till the fourteenth century that the O'Neil spread their power east of Laughniag, over those baronies of Antrim, long known as North and South Clan Hukbudi, Clanaboi. North Antrim was still known as Dalriada and South Antrim and Down as Olydia. Oriel, which has usually been spoken of in this history as Laugh, included Angles of Monahan and Armagh, and was anciently the most extensive lordship in Ulster. The chieftain families of Tyr Connell were the O'Donnells of Tyrone, the O'Neils and the McLaughlins of Dalriada, O'Caines, O'Harris and O'Shields of Olydia, the McGuinness of Evagh, and the Dunleveys of Down, of Oriel, the McMahon's and O'Hanlon's. Among these populous tribes the invaders dealt some of their fiercest blows, both by land and sea, in the thirteenth century. But the North was fortunate in its chiefs, they may fairly contest the Lora with the O'Connor's, O'Brien's, and McCarthy's of the West and South. In the first third of the century Hugh O'Neil, who succeeded to the lordship of Tyrone in 1198, and died in 1230, was contemporary with Donald Moore O'Donnell, who, succeeding to the lordship of Tyr Connell in 1208, died in 1241, after an equally long and almost equally distinguished career. Melaklyn O'Donnell succeeded Donald Moore from 41 to 47, Godfrey from 48 to 57, and Donald O'ogue from 1257 to 1281, when he was slain in battle. Hugh O'Neil was succeeded in Tyrone by Donald McLaughlin, of the rival branch of the same stock, who in 1241 was subdued by O'Donnell, and the ascendancy of the family of O'Neil established in the person of O'Brien, afterwards chosen King of Ireland, and slain it down. Hugh Boy, or the Swarthie, was elected O'Neil on O'Brien's death, and ruled till the year 1283, when he was slain in battle, as was his next successor, O'Brien, in the year 1295. These names and dates are worthy to be borne in mind, because on these two great houses mainly devolved the brunt of battle in their own province. These northern chiefs had two frontiers to guard or assail, the northeastern, extending from the glens of Antrim to the hills of Morn, and the southern, stretching from sea to sea, from New Reet to Sligo. This country was very assailable by sea, to those whose castles commanded its harbors and rivers, the fleets of Bristol, Chester, Mann, and Dublin could always carry supplies and reinforcements. By the interior line one road threaded the Morn Mountains, and deflected towards Armagh, while another, winding through West Brefney, led from Sligo into Donegal by the cataract of Asero, the present Valley Shannon. Along these ancient lines of communication, by fords and mountain passes, and near the landing places for ships, the struggle for the possession of that end of the island went on, at intervals, whenever large bodies of men could be spared from garrisons, and from districts already occupied. In the year 1210 we find that there was an English castle at Cal Yousig, now castle Caldwell, on Law Arran, and that it was broke down and its defenders slain by Hugh O'Neill and Donald Moore O'Donnell acting together. After this event we have no trace of a foreign force in the interior of Ulster for several years. Hugh O'Neill, who died in 1230, is praised by the bards for never having given hostages, pledges, or tributes to English or Irish, which seems a compliment well founded. During several years following that date the war was chiefly centred on Canot, and the fighting men of the North who took part in it were acting as allies to the O'Connor's. Donald Moore O'Donnell had married a daughter of Cathal Crovedarg, so that ties of blood, as well as neighboring interests, united these two great families. In the year 1247 an army under Maurice Fitzgerald, then Lord Justice, crossed the Arran in two divisions, one above and the other at Ballishannon. Melolyn O'Donnell was defending the passage of the river when he was taken unexpectedly in the rear by those who had crossed higher up, and thus was defeated in slain. Fitzgerald then ravaged Tyr Connell, set up a rival chief, O'Cannivan, and rebuilt the castle at Cal Yousga, near Belique. Ten years afterwards Godfrey O'Donnell, the successor of Melolyn, avenged the defeat at Ballishannon, in the Sanguinary Battle of Credin, near Sligo, where engaging Fitzgerald in single combat he gave him his death-stroke. From wounds received at Kedrin, Godfrey himself, after lingering twelve months in great suffering, died. But his bodily afflictions did not prevent him discharging all the duties of a great captain. He raised a second time the English castle on Lough Arran, and stoutly protected his own borders against the pretensions of O'Neill, being carried on his beer in front of a battle of Lauswilly in 1258. It was while Tyr Connell was under the rule of this heroic soldier that the unfortunate feud arose between the O'Neill's and O'Donnell's. Both families sprung from a common ancestor of equal antiquity and equal pride. Neither would yield a first place to the other. Pay me my tribute, was O'Neill's demand. I owe you no tribute, and if I did, was O'Donnell's reply. The O'Neill at this time, Brian, aspiring to restore the Irish sovereignty in his own person, was compelled to begin the work of exercising authority over his next neighbor. More than one border battle was the consequence, not only with Godfrey, but with Donald O'ogue, his successor. In the year 1258, Brian was formally recognized by O'Connor and O'Brien as Chief of the Kingdom in the Conference of Kel Yuska, and two years later, at the Battle of Down, gallantly laid down his life in defense of the kingdom he claimed to govern. In this most important battle, no O'Donnell is found fighting with King Brian, though immediately afterwards we find Donald O'ogue of Tyr Connell endeavoring to subjugate Tyrone, and active afterwards in the aid of his cousins, the grandsons of Cathal Croft-Darg in Canot. The Norman commander in this battle was Stephen de Longspay, then Lord Justice, Earl of Salisbury in England, and Count de Rosemann in France. His marriage with the widow of Hugh de Lacy and daughter of de Riddlesford connected him closely with Irish affairs, and in the Battle of Down he seems to have had all the Anglo-Irish chivalry engulfed in iron at his back. With King Brian O'Neill fell on that crimson day the Chiefs of the Ohanlands, O'Caines, McLaughlin's, O'Gormley's, McCann's, and other families who followed his banner. The men of Canot suffered hardly less than those of Ulster. McDermott, Lord of Moorleg, Cathal O'Connor, O'Gara, McDonough O'Mollerney, O'Quinn, and other Chiefs were among the slain. In Hugh-Bwee O'Neill the only hope of the House of Tyrone seemed now to rest, and his energy and courage were all taxed to the uttermost to retrain the place of his family in the province, beating back rapacious neighbors on the one hand, and guarding against foreign enemies on the other. For twelve years Hugh-Bwee defended his lordship against all aggressors. In 1283 he fell at the hands of the insurgent Chiefs of O'Rell and Brefney, and a fierce contest for the succession arose between his son Brian and Donald, son of King Brian who fell it down. A contest of twelve years saw Donald successful over his rival, A.D. 1295, and his rule extended from that period until 1325 when he died at Learys Lake in the present diocese of Clogger. It was this latter Donald, or Donald O'Neill, who towards the end of his reign addressed to Pope John XXII, elected to the pontificant in 1316, that powerful indictment against the Anglo-Normans, which has ever since remained one of the cardinal texts of our history. It was evidently written after the unsuccessful attempt in which Donald was himself a main actor to establish Edward Bruce on the throne of Ireland. That period we have not yet reached, but the merciless character of the warfare waged against the natives of the country could hardly have been aggravated by Bruce's defeat. They oblige us, by open force, says the ulcer prince, to give up to them our houses and our lands, and to seek shelter like wild beasts upon the mountains, in woods, marshes, and caves. Even there we are not secure against their fury. They even envy us those dreary and terrible abodes. They are incessant and unremitting in their pursuit after us, endeavoring to chase us from among them. They lay claim to every place in which they can discover us with unwarranted audacity and injustice. They allege that the whole kingdom belongs to them of right, and that an Irishman has no longer a right to remain in his own country. After specifying in detail the proofs of these and other general charges, the eloquent prince concludes by uttering the memorable vow that the Irish will not cease to fight against and among their invaders until the day when they themselves, for want of power, shall have ceased to do us harm, and that a supreme judge shall have taken just vengeance on their crimes, which we firmly hope will sooner or later come to pass. CHAPTER XI Retrospect of the Norman period in Ireland, a glance at the military tactics of the times. No conquest of the country in the thirteenth century. Though the victorious and protracted career of Richard de Berg, the Red Earl of Ulster, might without overstraining be included in the Norman period, yet as introductory to the memorable advent and election of King Edward Bruce, we must leave it for the succeeding book, having brought down the narrative as regards all the provinces to the end of the first century. From the invasion, we must now cast a backward glance on the events of that hundred years before passing into the presence of other times and new combinations. QUOTE, There were, says Geraldus Cambriances, three sundry sorts of servitors which served in the realm of Ireland, Normans, Englishmen, and the Cambrians, which were the first conquerors of the land. The first were in most credit and estimation, the second next, but the last were not accounted or regarded of. QUOTE, The Normans, as the author, were very fine in their apparel and delicate in their diets. They could not feed but upon deities, neither could their meat digest without wine at each meal. Yet would they not serve in the marches or any remote place against the enemy? Neither would they lie in garrison to keep any remote castle or fort, but would be still but their lords aside to serve and guard his person. They would be where they might be full and have plenty. They could talk and brag, swear, and stare, and standing in their own reputation, disdain all others." This is rather the language of a partisan, then of a historian, of one who felt and spoke for those, his own kinsmen, many of them, who he complains, although the first to enter on the conquest, were yet held in contempt and disdain, quote, and only newcomers called to counsel, unquote. The Normans were certainly the captains in every campaign, from Robert Fitz-Steven to Stephen de Longspay. They made the war, and they maintained it. In the rank and file, and even among the knighthood, men of pure Welsh, English and Flemish and Danish blood, may be singled out, but each host was marshaled by Norman skill, and every defeat was born with Norman fortitude. It may seem strange, then, that these great masters of the art of war, as waged in the Middle Ages, invincible in England, France, Italy, and the East, should, after a hundred years, be no nearer to the conquest of Ireland than they were at the end of the tenth year. The main causes of the fluctuations of the war were, no doubt, the divided military command, and the frequent change of their civil authorities. They had never marched or colonized before with either duke or king at their head, and in their midst. One supreme chief was necessary to keep to any common purpose the minds of so many proud, intractable nobles. The feuds of the Deleyses with the marshals, of the Geraldine's with the Debergs, broke out periodically during the thirteenth century, and were naturally seized upon by the Irish as opportunities for attacking either or both. The secondary nobles and all the adventurers understood their danger and its cause when they petitioned Henry II and Henry III so often and so urgently as they did, that a member of the royal family might reside permanently in Ireland to exercise the supreme authority, military, and civil. The civil administration of the colonists, passing into different hands every three or four years, suffered from the absence of permanent authority. The law of the marches was of necessity, the law of the strong hand, and no other. But Cambrensis, whose personal prejudices are not involved in this fact, describes the walled towns as filled with the litigation in his time. Quote, there was, he says, such lying and vexation that the veteran was more troubled in lying within the town than he was in peril at large with the enemy. This being the case, we must take with great caution the bold assertions so often made of the zeal with which the natives petitioned the Henrys and Edwards that the law of England might be extended to them. Certain Celts whose lands lay within or upon the marches, others who compounded with their Norman invaders, a chief or prince, hard-pressed by domestic enemies, may have wished to be in a position to quote Norman law against Norman spoilers, but the popular petitions which went to England, beseeching the extension of its laws to Ireland, went only from the townsmen of Dublin, and the new settlers in Leinster, or Meath, harassed and impoverished by the arbitrary jurisdiction of menorial courts, from which they had no appeal. The great mass of the Irish remained is warmly attached to their Brehun Code down to the seventeenth century as they were before the invasion of Norman or Dane. It may sound barbarous to our ears that, according to that code, murder should be compounded by an eric, or fine, that putting out the eyes should be the usual punishment of treason, that maiming should be judiciously inflicted for sundry offences, and that the land of a whole clan should be equally shared between the free members of that clan. We are not yet in a position to form an intelligent opinion upon the primitive jurisprudence of our ancestors, but the system itself could not have been very vicious which nourished in the governed such a thirst for justice that, according to one of their earliest English law reformers, they were anxious for its execution, even against themselves. The distinction made in the courts of the adventurers against natives of the soil, even when long domiciled within their borders, was of itself a sufficient cause of war between the races. In the eloquent letter of the O'Neill to Pope John XXII, written about the year 1318, we read that no man of Irish origin could sue in an English court, that no Irishman within the marches could make illegal will, that his property was appropriated by his English neighbors, and that the murder of an Irishman was not even a felony punishable by fine. This latter charge would appear incredible if we had not the record of more than one case where the homicide justified his act by the plea that his victim was a mere native, and where the plea was held good and sufficient. A very vivid picture of hiberno-norman town life in those days is presented to us in an old poem on the entrenchment of the town of Ross in the year 1265. We have there the various trades and crafts mariners, coat-makers, fullers, cloth-dyers and cellars, butchers, cord-wainers, tanners, hucksters, smiths, masons, carpenters, arranged by guilds, and marching to the sound of flute and taber, under banners bearing a fish and platter, a painted ship, and other rare devices. On the walls, when finished, crossbows hung, with store of arrows ready to shoot. When the city horn sounded twice, Burgess and Batchelor vied with each other in war-like haste. In time of peace the stranger was always welcome in the streets. He was free to buy and sell without toll or tax, and to admire the fair dames who walked the quiet ramparts, clad in mantles of green or russet or scarlet. Such is the poetic picture of the town of Ross in the thirteenth century. The poem itself is written in Norman French, though evidently intended for popular use, and the author is called Friar Michael of Kildare. It is pretty evident from this instance, which is not singular, that a century after the first invasion the French language was still the speech of part, if not the majority, of these Hiberno-Norman townsmen. So walls and laws and language arose, a triple barrier between the races. That common religion which might be expected to form a strong bond between them had itself to adopt a two-fold organization. Distinctions of nationality were carried into the sanctuary and into the cloister. The historian Geraldus, in preaching at Dublin against the alleged vices of the native clergy, sounded the first note of a long and bitter controversy. He was promptly answered from the same pulpit on the next occasion by Alban Omoloi, the patriot abbot of Beltenglas. In one of the early courts or parliaments of the adventurers they decreed that no monastery in those districts of which they had possession should admit any but natives of England as novices, a rule which, according to O'Neill's letter, was faithfully acted upon by English Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines, and regular cannons. Some of the great Cistercian houses and the marches in which the native religious predominated adopted a retaliatory rule for which they were severely censured by the general chapter of their order. But the length to which this feud was carried may be imagined by the sweeping charge O'Neill brings against, quote, Brother Simon, a relative of the Bishop of Coventry, unquote, and other religious of his nation, who openly maintained, he says, that the killing of a mere Irishman was no murder. When this was the feeling on one side, or was believed to be the feeling, we cannot wonder that the war should have been renewed as regularly as the seasons. No sooner was the husband men in the field than the night was upon the road. Some peculiarities of the wars of those days gleam out at intervals through the methodic indifference to detail of the old annals, and reveal to us curious conditions of society. In the Irish country where castle building was but slowly introduced, we see, for example, that the usual storage for provisions in time of war was in churches and church yards, thus to burg, in his expedition to Mayo in 1236, quote, left neither rick nor basket of corn in the large church yard of Mayo, or in the yard of the church of St. Michael the Archangel, and carried away eighty baskets out of the churches themselves, unquote. When we read, therefore, as we frequently do, of both Irish and Norman's plundering churches in the land of their enemies, we are not to suppose the plunder of the sanctuary. Popularly, this seizing the supplies of an enemy on consecrated ground was considered next to sacrilege, and while it was for the fugitives in the sanctuary in those iron times, that it should be so considered, yet not the less it is necessary for us to distinguish a high-handed military measure from actual sacrilege, for which there can be no apology and hardly any earthly atonement. In their first campaigns the Irish had one great advantage over the Normans in their familiarity with the country. This helped them to their first victories, but when the invaders were able to set up rival houses against each other, and to secure the cooperation of natives, the advantage was soon equalized. Great importance was attached to the intelligence and good faith of the guides, who accompanied every army, and were personally consulted by the leaders in determining their march. A country so thickly studded with the ancient forest, and so netted with rivers, then of much greater volume than since they have been stripped of their guardian woods, afforded constant occasion for the display of minute local knowledge. To miss a pass or to find a ford might determine a campaign almost as much as the skill of the chief, or the courage of the battalion. The Irish depended for their knowledge of the English towns and castles on their daring spies, who continually risked their necks in acquiring for their clansmen such needful information. This perilous duty, when undertaken by a native for the benefit of his country, was justly accounted highly honourable. Proud poets educated in all the mysteries of their art, and even men of chieftain rank did not hesitate to assume disguises and act the patriot's by. One of the most celebrated spies of this century was Dunof Fitzpatrick, son of the Lord of Osary, who was slain by the English in 1250. He was said to be one of the three men, most feared by the English in his day. Quote, he was in the habit of going about to reconitre their market towns, says the analysts, in various disguises. Unquote, an old quatrain gives us a list of some of the parts he played when in the towns of his enemies. Quote, he is a carpenter, he is a turner, my nursing is a bookman, he is selling wine and hides, where he sees a gathering. Unquote. Unable captain, as well as an intrepid spy, he met his fate in acting out his favourite part. Quote, which, as our justice-loving foremasters, was a retaliation due to the English for up to that time, he had killed, burned, destroyed many of them. Unquote. Of the equipments and tactics of the belligerents we get from our annals but scanty details. The Norman battalion, according to the usage of that people, led by the marshal of the field, charged after the archers had delivered their fire. But these wars had bred a new mounted force, called hobbler archers, who were found so effective that they were adopted into all the armies of Europe. Although the bow was never a favourite weapon with the Irish, particular tribes seemed to have been noted for its use. We here in the campaigns of this century of the archers of Brefney, and we may probably interpret as referring to the same weapon, Phelom O'Connor's order to his men, in his combat with the sons of Roderick at drum-rate, 1237. Quote, not to shoot, but to come to a close fight. Unquote. It is possible, however, that this order may have reference to the old Irish weapon, the javelin, or dart. The pike, the battleaxe, the sword, and skein or dagger both parties had in common, though their construction was different. Their favourite tactic, on both sides, seems to have been the old military expedient of outflanking an enemy, and attacking him simultaneously in front and rear. Thus, in the year 1225, in one of the combats of the O'Connor's, when the son of Cethil Crovedier, endeavored to surround Terlot O'Connor, the latter ordered his recruit to the van, and Dunn O'ogh Maharati, with some Tyronian and other soldiers to cover the rear. Quote, by which means they escaped without the loss of a man. Unquote. The flank movement by which the Lord Justice Fitzgerald carried the passage of the urn, A.D. 1247, against O'Donnell, according to the analysts, was suggested to Fitzgerald, by Cormac, the grandson of Roderick O'Connor. By that period in their intercourse the Normans and Irish had fought so often together, that their stock of tactical knowledge must have been, from experience, very much common property. In the eyes of the Irish chiefs and chroniclers, the foreign soldiers who served with them were but hired mercenaries. They were sometimes repaid by the plunder of the country attacked, but usually they received fixed wages for the length of time they entered. Hostages for the payment of wages are frequently referred to, as given by native nobles, to those of foreign auxiliaries. The chief expedient for subsisting an army was driving before them herds and flocks. Free quarters for men and horses were supplied, but the tenants of allied chiefs within their territory. And for the rest, the simple outfit was probably not very unlike that of the Scottish borderers, described by Frosard, who cooked the cattle they captured in their skins, carrying a broad plate of metal and a little bag of oatmeal trussed up behind the saddle. One inveterate habit clung to the ancient race, even until long after the times of which we now speak, their unconquerable prejudice against defensive armor. Gilbride McNamee, the laureate to King Brian O'Neill, gives due prominence to this fact in his poem on the death of his patron in the Battle of Down, A.D. 1260. Thus sings the northern bard, quote, The foreigners from London, the hosts from Port Largy, came in a bright green body in gold and iron armor. Unequal they engage in the battle, the foreigners and the gale of Terra, fine linen shirts on the race of Caen, and the strangers won mass of iron, unquote. With what courage they fought, these scorners of armor, their victories of Ennis, of Calen Glen, and of Credrin, as well as their defeats at the Urn and at Down, amply testify. The first hundred years of war for native land with their new foes had passed over, and three-fourths of the Sire Clenna, were still as free as they had ever been. It was not reserved, even for the Norman race, the conquest of Innisfale. CHAPTER XII. State of Society and Learning in Ireland during the Norman period. We have already spoken of the character of the war waged by and against the Normans on Irish soil, and as war was then almost every man's business we may be supposed to have described all that is known of the time in describing its wars. What we have to add of the other pursuits of the various orders of men into which society was divided is neither very full nor very satisfactory. The rise, fall, and migrations of some of the clans have been already alluded to. In no age did more depend on the personal character of the chief than then. When the death of the heroic Godfrey left the free clansmen of Tyr Connell without a Lord to lead them to battle, or ruled them in peace, the analysts represent them to us as meeting in great perplexity, and engaged in making speeches as to what was to be done when suddenly, to their great relief, Donald Aug, son of Donald Moore, who had been fostered in Alba, Scotland, was seen approaching them. Not more welcome was Tuathol, the well-beloved, the restorer of the Milesian monarchy, after the revolt of the Tuatha. He was immediately elected chief, and the emissaries of O'Neill, who had been waiting for an answer to his demand of tribute, were brought before him. He answered their proposition by a proverb expressed in the Gaelic of Alba, which says that every man should possess his own country, and Tyr Connell armed to make good this maxim. The Bardic orders still retained much of their ancient power, and all their ancient pride. Of their most famous names in this period we may mention Murray O'Daily of Lysadel in Sligo, Dunog O'Daily of Finvara, sometimes called Abbot of Boyle, and Gilbride McNamey, laureate to King Brian O'Neill. McNamey, in lamenting the death of Brian, describes himself as defenceless, and a prey to every spoiler, now that his royal protector is no more. He gives him, he tells us, for a poem on one occasion, besides gold and raiment, a gift of twenty cows. On another, when he presented him a poem, he gave in return twenty horned cows, and a gift still more lasting, the blessing of the King of Arryn. Other chiefs, who fell in the same battle, and to one of whom, named Olyph O'Gormley, he had often gone on a visit of pleasure, are lamented with equal warmth by the bard. The poetic Abbot of Boyle is himself lamented in the annals as the Ovid of Ireland, as a poet who never had and never will have an equal. But the episode which best illustrates at once the address and the audacity of the bardic order is the story of Murray O'Daily of Lysadel, and Donald Moore O'Donnell, Lord of Tearconnell. In the year twelve-thirteen O'Donnell dispatched Finn O'Brellahan, his Aidsgraag, or Stuart, to collect his tribute in Canacht, and Finn, putting up at the house of O'Daily, near Drumcliff, and being a plebeian who knew no better, began to wrangle with the poet. The irritable master of song, seizing a sharp axe, slew the Stuart on the spot, and then to avoid O'Donnell's vengeance fled into clan-record. Here he announced himself by a poem addressed to de Bourgh, imploring his protection, setting forth the claims of the bardic order on all high-descended heroes, and contending that his fault was but venial, in killing a clown who insulted him. O'Donnell pursued the fugitive to Athenry, and de Bourgh sent him away secretly into Thomond. Into Thomond the Lord of Tearconnell marched, but O'Brien sent off the bard to Limerick. The enraged Ulsterman appeared at the gates of Limerick, when O'Daily was smuggled out of the town, and passed from hand to hand until he reached Dublin. The following spring O'Donnell appeared in force before Dublin, and demanded the fugitive, who, as a last resort, had been sent for safety into Scotland. From the place of his exile he addressed three deprecatory poems to the offended Lord of Tearconnell, who finally allowed him to return to Lysidil in peace, and even restored to him his friendship. The introduction of the new religious orders, Dominicans, Franciscans, and the order for the redemption of captives into Ireland in the first quarter of this century, gradually extinguished the old Columbian and Brigantine houses. In Lentster they made way most rapidly, but Ulster clung with its ancient tenacity to the Columban rule. The hierarchy of the northern half-kingdom still exercised a protectorate over Ionia itself, for we read in the year 1203 how Kellogg, having erected a monastery in the middle of Ionia, in despite of the religious, that the bishops of Derry and Raphaux, with the abbots of Armog and Derry, and numbers of the clergy of the north of Ireland, passed over to Ionia, pulled down the unauthorized monastery, and assisted at the election of a new abbot. This is almost the last important act of the Columban order in Ireland. By the close of the century the Dominicans had some thirty houses and the Franciscans as many more, whether in the wild towns or in the open country. These monasteries became the refuge of scholars during the stormy period we have passed, and in other days full as troubled which were to come. Moreover, as the Irish student, like all others in that age, desire to travel from school to school, these orders admitted him to the ranks of widespread European brotherhoods, from whom he might always claim hospitality. Nor need we reject as anything incredible the high renown for scholarship and ability obtained in these times by such men as Thomas Polerman of Nias in the University of Paris, by Peter and Thomas Hibernicus in the University of Naples, in the Age of Aquinas, by Malachi of Ireland, a Franciscan, chaplain to King Edward II of England, and professor at Oxford, by the Danish Dominican, Godfrey of Waterford, and above all, by John Scotius of Downe, the subtle doctor, the luminary of the Franciscan schools of Paris and Cologne. The native schools of Ireland had lost their early ascendancy, and are no longer traceable in our annals, but Irish scholarship, when arrested in its full development at home, transferred its efforts to foreign universities, and there maintained the ancient honour of the country among the studious nations of Christendom. Among the nations involved in the college riots at Oxford in the year 1274, we find mention of the Irish, from which fact it is evident that there must have been a considerable number of natives of that country, then frequenting the university. The most distinguished native ecclesiastics of this century were Matthew O'Haney, Archbishop of Casual, originally a Cistercian monk, who died in retirement at Holy Cross in 1207, Albin O Mully, the opponent of Geraldus, who died Bishop of Ferns in 1222, and Clarice MacMillan, Aronok of Trinity Island, Lough Key, if an Aronok may be called an ecclesiastic. It was O'Henry made the Norman, who said the Irish church had no martyrs, the celebrated answer that now men had come into the country who knew so well how to make martyrs that reproach would soon be taken away. He is said to have written a life of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, and we know that he had legantine powers at the opening of the century. The Aronok of Lough Key, who flourished in its second half, plays an important part in all the Western feuds and campaigns. His guarantee often preserved peace and protect of the vanquished. Among the church builders of his age he stands conspicuous. The ordinary churches were indeed easily built, seldom exceeding 60 or 70 feet in length, and one half that width, and the material still most in use was, for the church proper, timber. The towers, castles, or surrounding walls, and the cells of the religious, as well as the great monasteries and collegian and cathedral churches were of stone, and many of them remained monuments of the skill and munificence of their founders. Of the consequences of the abolition of slavery by the Council of Armonok at the close of the twelfth century we have no tangible evidence. It is probable that the slave trade, rather than domestic servitude, was abolished by that decree. The invaders of the soil were still divided into two orders, vietas and breweries. The former, Cesar Donovan, who were comparatively few in number, would appear to have held their lands free of rent, but were obliged to entertain travelers, and the chief's soldiers went on their march in his direction, and the latter, the breweries, would appear to have been subject to a stipulated rent and service. From the Book of Lekin, a compilation of the fourteenth century, we learn that the brewery was required to keep a hundred laborers and a hundred of each kind of domestic animals. Of the rights or wages of the laborers, we believe, there is no mention made.