seized and executed as a spy, some circumstances of a miraculous nature are said to have occurred at this saint's death, in consequence of which he received the honours of martyrdom; and a Benedictine monastery was established, in memory of his name, at Melck, which still exists, it appears, in great splendour. Another Irish saint, named Helias, or Elias, who had come from the monastery of Monaghan, paid a visit, in the course of his travels, to Rome, and is recorded as the first who brought from thence the Roman chant, or church music, to Cologne.* So great was the resort in those times of Irishmen to Germany, that in 1036 a monastery was erected for them, at Erford, by the Bishop Walter de Glysberg. There were likewise a number of Irish monks at Fulda, one of the most celebrated of whom, St. Amnichad, died a recluse in that monastery some years before Marianus entered it; and so strong an impression had he left of the sanctity of his character, that, as we learn on the authority of the chronographer just mentioned, it was believed that lights were occasionally seen, and psalmody heard, over his tomb; and Marianus, as he himself tells us, celebrated mass over that tomb every day for ten years. Judging of the internal condition of Ireland at this period, even as represented in the friendly pages of her own annals, without taking into account the unsightly picture drawn by a foreign hand, it is not to be wondered at that such of her pious and learned sons as could make their way to shores more favourable to their pursuits should gladly avail themselves of the power. Not that, even in this dark age, the celebrated schools of the country had ceased to be cherished or frequented, nor is there any want of, at least, names of reputed eminence to grace the obituaries of the different monasteries;-scarcely a year elapsing without honourable mention in these records of some persons thought worthy of commemoration, either as poets, theologians, antiquaries, or scribes. Early in this century died Mac Liag, to whom several poems, still extant, are attributed. Chief Ollamh, or Doctor, of Ireland, and secretary to Brian Boru, whom he is said to have survived but a year, this poet's muse was principally employed, as far as may be judged from the pieces remaining under his name, in commemorating the warlike achievements of his royal master, and lamenting over his loss. Some curious historical poems by Flann and Gilla-Coeman, two metrical chronographers of this century, have furnished a subject for much learned comment to the pen of the reverend editor of the Irish Chronicles; who, in proof of the accuracy of Gilla-Coeman's chronological computations, has shown that all the dates assigned by him to the great events of Scripture-history coincide, to a wonderful degree, with those laid down by no less authorities than Scaliger, Petavius, and Sir Isaac Newton. It should have been added by the learned doctor, that when coming to apply this chronological skill to the ancient history of his own country, Coeman was found to be by no means so trustworthy, and for a very sufficient reason: having in his former task been guided by an acquaintance with foreign_historians; whereas, in calculating the successions of the kings of his own country, he was led away partly by the national vanity on this point, and partly by the grave fictions of the bardic historians who had preceded him. The author of the Ogygia, who adopted Coeman as his chief guide, in computing the periods of the early Irish kings, has been thereby led into such wild and absurd flights of chro nology, as even the most sanguine of his brother antiquarians have refused to sanction. "Ille dum sanctam Solymorum urbem *Lanigan, Hist. Eccles. c. xxiv. § 2. f Florence of Worcester, ad ann. 1043. As Asser and Marianus had both copied the Saxon Chronicle, so Florence of Worcester, coming still later, transcribed and interpolated Marianus.-See Preface to Ingram's Saxon Chronicle. "As to the ancient Scribes of the Irish, I cannot understand them in any other sense than as Readers of Divinity."-Ware, Antiq chap. xxv. §3. It should rather be said, perhaps, that in the same manner as the scribes of the Hebrews were both writers and doctors of the law, so the scribes of the Irish were at once writers and doctors of divinity. $ Trans. Iberno. Celt. Society, xciv. In their record of the decease of this poet, the Four Masters have introduced two distichs, or ranns, of his composition, which give by no means a favourable notion of his poetic powers. It would appear, indeed, from the fragments of this nature scattered throughout the Annals, that the rhyming of one hemistich to the other, and the adaptation of the rythm and flow of the words to song, were all that the writers of these ranns attended to; as, with but few exceptions, their meaning is of the most negative description. "Quam accurate sint Comani rationes patebit ex subjuncta tabula, in qua cum rationibus Scaligeri, Fergusoni, Usserii, Petavii, et Newtoni, conferuntur."-See the Rev. Doctor's notes on Coeman's poem, Prolegom. xxxv. By this enthusiastic calculator the date of the arrival of the Milesian colony in Ireland is placed as far back in antiquity as the time when King Solomon reigned in Jerusalem. This was too much even for Mr. O'Connor of Belanagare;-at least in his later and more modified views of Irish antiquity. See his very candid retractations on the subject, Collect. Hibern, vol. iii. Though somewhat anticipating, in point of time, it may save the trouble, perhaps, of future repetition and reference, to state, while touching on the subject, that the chronological list of the Irish kings, which had by Coeman been brought down to the time of St. Patrick, was by another metrical chronographer, Gilla Moduda, who flourished about the middle of the twelfth century, continued to the death of Malachy II., in a poem consisting of a number of ranns, or strophes, much in the manner of the metrical list of the Dalriadic kings, composed in Scotland in the reign of Malcolm III. Among the native authors of this period, whose works were produced at home, may be included Dubdalethe, a nominal archbishop of Armagh,-being one of those laymen whose usurpation of this see was denounced so vehemently by St. Bernard. The saint acknowledged, however, in the midst of his ire, that these intruders were men of literary acquirements; and Dubdalethe, one of the number, gave proofs of his claim to this character by writing some Annals of the affairs of Ireland (to which reference is more than once made in the chronicles that have reached us,†) as well as an account of the archbishops of Armagh, down to his own time. While thus not a few of the natives themselves continued to cultivate, even in those stormy times, most of the studies for which their country was once so famous, neither does it appear that the attractions and advantages, by which foreign students were formerly drawn to their schools, had altogether at this dark period ceased. An instance to the contrary, indeed, is afforded in the case of Sulgenus, afterwards Bishop of St. David's who," moved by the love," as we are told, "of study, set out, in imitation of his ancestors, to visit the land of the Irish, so wonderfully celebrated for learning." Having been driven back by a storm to his own country, it was not till after a long lapse of time that he again ventured on the voyage, when, reaching the country of the Scots in safety, he remained there tranquilly for more than ten years, studying constantly the Holy Scriptures, and storing his mind with the spiritual wealth which they contained. Such is the account given, in a poem written by his own son, of the studious labours of Bishop Sulgenus in the schools of Ireland at this period; and Usher cites the poem as a proof that the study of letters had at this time revived in the country, and that Ireland, even in the eleventh century, was still "a storehouse of the most learned and holy men."|| In recording one of the great conflagrations that occurred in this century at Armagh, the Four Masters state that the part of the city called the Trian Saxon,¶ that is, the division inhabited by the Saxons, had suffered considerably by the fire. That this region of the city may have been originally so called, from its having been the principal quar "Viri uxorati et absque ordinibus, literati tamen."-Vit. Malach chap. vii. † Annal. Ult. ad ann. 962 and 1021; also, in the Annals of the Four Masters, ad ann. 978, there will be found some verses of this prelate cited. See Ware (Bishops,) Lanigan, chap. xxiv. § 4., and Rer. Hib. Scrip. Ep. Nunc. ciii. According to some authorities, the schools of Ireland, had, in a great degree, revived at this period. "Les écoles," says Geoghegan, “étoient déjá bien rétablies dans l'intervalle de la journée de Clontarf, jusqu'a l'arrivée des Anglois, principalement celles d'Ardmach."-Tome i. part. 2. chap. 7. Archbishop Usher, by tracing through the ninth and tenth centuries a succession of professors of divinity at Armagh, has shown that even through the gloom and storms of the Danish persecution some vestiges of that noble school may be discerned:-" Quæ idcirco commemoravimus, ut Ardmachane academiæ, inter medias Norwagiensis tempes tatis procellas, emergentis, iliqua deprehendi possint vestigia."-Eccles. Primord p. 861. Dr. Campbell (Strictures, &c.) has thus misrepresented the import of this passage:-" which I have enumerated, in order to trace the thriving state of the university of Armagh during the severest tempests of the Norman devastation." "Revixisse tamen bonarum literarum studia, et seculo adhuc undecimo habitam fuisse Hiberniam (ut in Vita Florentii loquitur Franciscus Guillimannus) virorum sanctissimorum doctissimorumque officinam." Another conclusion which Usher draws from this poem is, that the name of Scots was still in the eleventh century applied, xar xv, to the Irish. Seth do trian Sax. IV. Mag. ad ann. 1092. "The present English Street,'" says Stuart," seems clearly to have derived its name from the old denomination Trian Sessenagh,' or the Saxon portion of the city."Hist. Memoirs of the City of Armagh. ters of the English students at Armagh, appears highly probable. But to conclude, merely from its being named on this occasion, that there were at that time any such students in the city, is one of those gratuitous assumptions which show more the wish to prove a desired point than the power. CHAPTER XXVI. Interregnum of fifteen years.-Contention among the Irish Princes for the Monarchy.-Tordelvach O'Connor, the successful candidate.-Account of the reigns of the O'Brian Princes. Decline of Tordelvach's good fortune.-Is opposed by O'Lochlin, King of Tirone. Interference of the Clergy in the quarrels of the Princes.-Its salutary effects.Death of Tordelvach.-Synod of Kells.-Palliums distributed by the Pope's legate, Paparo.-Labours and death of the great Saint Malachy.-First introduction of Tithes into Ire. land.-Misrepresentations respecting the Irish church, corrected.-Murtogh O'Loghlin acknowledged King of Ireland.-Is killed in battle,-Various Synods held during his reign.-Roderic O'Connor, King of Connaught, succeeds to the Monarchy.-Great Convention at Athboy.-Abduction of the wife of O'Ruarc by Dermot, King of Leinster.-Supposed, but erroneously, to have been the immediate cause of the Invasion of Ireland by the English.-Enmity between O'Ruarc and Dermot.-The latter, expelled from his dominions, embarks for England.—Designs of Henry II. upon Ireland.—Obtains a grant of that Island from Pope Adrian IV. AFTER the death of Donald O'Lochlin, who, for the two years during which he survived his co-regnant, Murkertach, reigned by right, and without competitor, over the whole kingdom, there ensued an interregnum of fifteen years, throughout the whole of which all the various elements of strife and confusion, that had ever mixed themselves with the course of Irish polity, continued to rage in full ferment and force. The most enterprising among the candidates for the monarchy, and he who, at last, carried off that high prize, was Tordelvac O'Connor, King of Connaught, who had already distinguished himself during the latter years of the reigns of Murkertach and O'Lochlin, by frequent and fierce incursions into the other provinces;* and, in one of these sanguinary inroads, was left for dead upon the field. The chief obstacle in the way of his success was the ever active power of Munster; that province having, under four successive princes of the O'Brian race, opposed perseveringly, and with all the confidence which its past history could not but inspire, a formidable barrier in the way of his projects of aggrandizement. More than once had he been driven to extremities in the struggle: but at length policy effected what his arms could not accomplish. By sowing dissensions among the Momonians themselves, that ever sure mode of distracting the strength of the Irish, and rendering them easy victims whether of the stranger or of each other,—the ruler of Connaught at length succeeded in turning the scale of the contest triumphantly in his own favour. Availing himself of the hereditary jealousy of the Eugenians, respecting their right of alternate succession to the throne, he found means to separate this gallant tribe from the Dalcassians, and even introduced for a time dissension among the brave Dalgais themselves. In Connor O'Brian, however, who had succeeded to the throne of Munster, in the year 1120, the ambitious Tordelvac found an adversary in no ordinary degree A. D. formidable. Twice, in the course of two successive years, did this bold prince 1132. 1133. carry the war into the very heart of Tordelvac's dominions, and defeat him signally on his own ground; and again, a third time, having first routed the combined armies of the King of Leinster and the Danes of Dublin, he marched at the head of his victorious troops into Connaught, determined to bring the great struggle for supremacy to an issue. But the interposition of the Church averted the threatened conflict; and a negotiation having been entered into, under the auspices of the Archbishop of Tuam, terms of peace were agreed to by the rival princes.* Whatever may have been the stipulations of this compact, it evidently led to, or at least was followed by, a great preponderance of power on the side of Tordelvac, as the date of his accession, by force of arms and the strength of his faction, to the monarchy, is marked at a. D. 1136, two years after this event. The remaining years of the reign of O'Brian passed unmarked by any new enterprise or achievement; the decided ascendant acquired by his competitor having thrown his latter days into the shade. He was confessedly, however, a prince of great activity and resources, and exhibited, together with the rude violence which pervaded the policy, warfare, and manners of the Irish chieftains of this period, some marks of a munificent and even (notwithstanding some occasional acts of sacrilege) religious spirit. Thus the same prince who, in his several inroads into Ulster and Meath, laid waste without scruple the free lands of churches, and carried off from cathedrals their plate and treasures, yet liberally founded, and continued through life to supply with funds, the abbey of St. Peter, at Ratisbon; and, if the records of this abbey may be trusted, sent, through the counts and noble knights who were about to seek the Holy Land, large presents in aid of the cause to Lothaire the Roman emperor. Finishing his days like most of the other Irish princes of this time, he died in penitence at Killaloe, and was solemnly interred in the cathedral church, in the grand vault of the O'Brian kings. Under Turlough O'Brian, the successor of this brave prince, the struggle of Munster against the now paramount power of Tordelvach was obstinately, and for some time with success, maintained. But dissensions again broke out between the two kindred septs; and the desertion of the Eugenians, under two of their princes, to the ranks of the monarch, gave the first signal of the defeat and dismemberment which awaited that restless province. The crisis was hastened, too, by a sudden incursion on the part of the monarch's son Roderic,-a youth of ill-fated celebrity in the melancholy history of his country, who, entering at the head of a chosen party into Thomond, attacked by surprise the seat of the O'Brians, the celebrated palace of Kinkora, and burned that royal structure to the ground. This act, as encouraging to the spirits of one party as it was insulting and irritating to the other, was instantly followed by a muster, on both sides, of all the forces they could collect, and the great and memorable battle of Moinmor ensued, in which the army of Munster was totally defeated, and the King of 1151. Thomond, together with the flower of the Dalcassian nobility, left dead upon the field. Seven thousand, according to our annals, was the number of Momonians slain on that day;-a great portion of the loss being attributed to the habitual reluctance of the brave Dalgais either to ask for quarter from an enemy, or to withdraw themselves from the field. Having acquired by this signal victory entire dominion over Munster, the monarch divided that province into two principalities, and rewarded the treachery of the two Momonian princes who had joined him by appointing them its rulers.** A. D. A. D. From this period the fortunes of Tordelvach, which had now reached their loftiest point, began gradually to decline;-a new rival in the power and honours of the supremacy having appeared in the person of Murtogh O'Lochlin (or, as sometimes 1153. styled, O'Neill,) King of Tyrone, and chief ruler of all Ulster, who, as the representative of the royal Hy-Niells of Tyrone, combined in himself at once the purest claims of legitimacy, together with the growing strength of the sword. Taking up the cause of the kingdom of Munster, O'Lochlin received her exiled sovereign at his court, and, having induced the princes of Ulster to form a league in his behalf, took the field with the troops of Tyrone, Tyrconnel, and other principalities of the north; and, after a IV. Mag. ad an. 1133. In the Ratisbon Chronicle is given an account of a mission consisting of two persons, natives of Ireland, sent from Ratisbon to solicit the aid of the Irish princes towards a fund for the building of an abbey in that city. The kind reception these missionaries met with from the King of Munster and other princes, and the munificent aid afforded towards the object of their visit, are recorded with all due gratitude:-" Eos humanitur excepit, atque post aliquot dies in Germaniam honorifice remisit onustos ingenti vi auri, argenti et pretiosorum aliorum donorum. Alii principes Hiberniæ amplissima in Germaniam revertentibus munera varii generis contulerunt." To Connor O'Brian, indeed, is attributed by these records the credit of having founded the abbey. "Jam enim vitâ functus fundator consecrati Petri et monasterii S. Jacobi Scotorum rex Conchur O'Brian."-Ibid. The author of Cambrensis Eversus, to whom these extracts from the Ratisbon Chronicle were communicated by Stephen Vitus (Stephen White,) mentions, on the authority of this learned man, that, in the original records, an attempt had been made to erase with a penknife the words "ex Scotia seu Hiberniæ insula;" for the purpose, says Lynch, of inducing a belief that the Scots mentioned in this record were Scots of North Britain, not of Ireland :-"Nimirum ut hoc fuco lectorem ad credendum adduceret de Scotia Britanniæ sermonem in eo monumento, non de Hibernia institui." ↑ "Per magnæ nobilitatis ac potentia Comites cruce signatos et Hierosolymam petituros, ad Lotharium regem Romanorum ingentia munera misit."-Ibid. IV. Mag. ad an. 1151. Ibid. 1151. Ibid. 1153. ** Ibid. 1154. victory over Tordelvach, who had opposed his passage through Meath, replaced the King of Munster, Turlough O'Brien, upon his throne.* The conflict with the monarch, commenced thus daringly by O'Lochlin, continued to be prosecuted with equal vigour on both sides, as well by water as by land. In his anxiety to be able to cope with his active opponent, O'Lochlin had despatched agents to the coasts of Albany, to the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man, to hire and purchase ships,t to fit him out an armament; while, on the other side, the monarch Tordelvach, with a fleet accustomed to the Connaught seas, collected from Umalia, Conmacnemara, and Tyrawley, had already attacked and despoiled the peninsula of Inisowen, and laid waste the coasts of Tyrconnel. At length, on the meeting of the two armaments, a desperate action between them ensued; and, as the Four Masters, with evident complacency, report, the transmarine fleet‡ was with great slaughter defeated and dispersed." Of the period we are now employed upon, one of the most prominent characteristics is undoubtedly the increased strength and activity of the ecclesiastical power: and, however, in general, the interference of churchmen in the merely temporal affairs of life is to be deprecated, the services rendered by them, in a state of society such as now existed in Ireland, was in the highest degree salutary, and far outweighed, in a moral point of view, any mischiefs or inconveniences which their interfering spirit, as an engine of temporal authority, might under other circumstances have a tendency to produce. Subjected to an aristocracy of the very worst kind, for such was the government by a swarm of petty kings, the sole chance of protection for the wretched people, against the self-will of such masters, lay in the power possessed by the church of striking terror into these small tyrants, and compelling them, through fear of what might be their own fate in a future state of existence, to extend some portion of justice and mercy towards those subjected to their absolute will in the present. There occur in the records of Tordelvach's reign some curious instances of interposition on the part of the clergy, for the purpose of reconciling personal feuds, which, if merely as pictures of the manners of the time, it may not be irrelevant. Before the accession of this prince to the monarchy, there had broken out some quarrels between him and O'Melachlin, King of Meath, which the Archbishop Gelasius, and others of the prelates, undertook to settle. Having fixed on the terms of the reconciliation, they brought the two princes together before the altar of St. Kieran, and there pledged them, upon the relics of the saints,-among which were the Staff of Jesus, the Bell of St. Fechin, and the White Cow of St. Kevin,g-to abide faithfully by the agreement. A short time after, notwithstanding this public and solemn proceeding, Tordelvach O'Connor having, by stratagem, made his way suddenly into Meath, took O'Melachlin prisoner, as though he had been guilty of some violation of the treaty, and confined him in the Castle of Dunmore. Surprised at this act of aggression, the prelates, who had mediated between the parties, hastened to inquire into the cause of so violent a step; when it appeared that no charge whatever was alleged by Tordelvach against his prisoner, but that still he refused to restore him to liberty, except on the condition of his giving up his Princedom of Meath, to be enjoyed for a time by young Connor O'Connor, King Tordelvach's son. This audacious stipulation, though resisted and reprobated by the prelates, was agreed to on the part of the captive king; while on young Connor's head devolved the retribution for so gross an act of injustice, as he was soon after assassinated by an indignant chieftain of Fertulla, in the west of Meath, who could not brook the shame of submitting to any but his own rightful master. In the very same year occurred another instance of the mediation of the ecclesiastics, showing at once how strong was their desire to soften the fierce spirit of the age, and how rude and intractable were the materials with which they had to deal. For some offence, which is not specified, Tordelvach had ordered his son Roderic to be confined in chains; and, notwithstanding that the princes and clergy of Connaught interfered earnestly in his behalf, and that the chiefs of the latter body, assembling at the Rath of St. Brendan, held a solemn and mournful fast on the occasion, the stern father would not relent, and the young prince was left to linger in his chains. In the following year, however, at a synod in which were present the Archbishops of Armagh and Cashel, and Vallancey, from Munster Annals. According to the Four Masters, ad an. 1153, it was only half of his kingdom," leith righe," that Turlogh regained. IV. Mag. ad an. 1154.-We may smile at these rude naval exploits; but the genius of Homer has given immortality to an armament in no respect, perhaps, superior. The fleet which assembled at Aulis (says Wood) consisted of open, half-decked boats, a sort of galleys with one mast, fit for rowing or sailing." Inquiry, &c. "Allmuirach."-It is stated (IV. Mag.) that M'Scelling, the commander-in-chief of O'Lochlin's fleet, was punished for his failure by having all his teeth drawn out.-Ro benadh a fhiacla a mac Scelling. § Bo ban Caoimg hin.-IV. Mag. ad an. 1143. |