which regulated the military relations between chief and vassal, they were wholly ignorant of its other more important principle, which made property the foundation of this mutual tie, and bound together lord and tenant by reciprocal obligations of protection and service. It is not improbable, therefore, that the general readiness of the Irish princes to tender their allegiance to Henry* arose from their habit of viewing this ceremony but as a pledge of military service, and their entire ignorance of the important and permanent change which, in the eyes of Henry's lawyers, would be effected in their right and title to their respective territories by that ceremony.

But though, by the treaty between the two kings acknowledging Henry to be lord paramount of Ireland, the sovereignty over that island was transferred to the English crown, yet, in point of real power, the king of England was no farther advanced by it than when, a few years before, he had set sail from the Irish shore; and, at that period, as a great law authority, Sir J. Davies, has declared, he left behind him not one more true subject than he had found on his arrival. Within the same limited sphere of dominion, extending to not more than one third of the kingdom, did the power and jurisdiction of the English crown continue to be circumscribed for many centuries after, making no impression whatever on the laws, language, or customs of the great mass of the natives, but remaining an isolated colony, in the midst of a hostile and ever resisting people. And yet to a footing on the soil thus limited and precarious, the first advances of which were, indeed, amicably yielded to, but its every farther inroad contested at every step, almost all of the historians of these islands, from, Giraldust down to Hume, have strangely assigned the name and attributes of a regular "conquest." How much, in the reign of James I., this crude and short sighted notion stood in the way of the sounder views then beginning to gain ground with respect to the relations between the two countries, appears from the arguments employed by the king's attorney-general, at that period, to disabuse the public mind of so vain and misleading a notion.

Had Ireland resisted, from the first, her invaders with a spirit worthy of her ancient name, and had she, yielding only to superior force, been at last effectually brought under, then, indeed, might the history of the two countries have had to record a conquest honourable to both; while both alike would have been spared that long train of demoralizing consequences which arose out of the means, as rash and violent as they were inefficient, employed to bring Ireland under subjection. Hence, the confused and discordant relations in which the two races inhabiting her shores necessarily stood towards each other,the one assuming the rights of conquest, without any power to enforce them; the other pretending to independence, with a foreign intruder in the very heart of the land; while, to add to all this confusion, there prevailed in the country two different codes of laws, between whose constantly conflicting ordinances the wretched people were kept distracted, while their unprincipled rulers had recourse indifferently to one or the other, according as it suited the temporary purposes of spoliation or revenge.

It is said of the Norman followers of William the Conqueror, that they despised the English for submitting to them so easily; and such was evidently the feeling awakened in their Anglo-Norman descendants by the facility with which the Irish gave way to their first encroachments. But as soon as these intruders began to discover that, however feebly opposed in their acquisition of the spoil, they were left not a moment of peace or security for the enjoyment of it; when they found that the Irish "enemy," as if to atone for the weak submission of their forefathers, never once slumbered in the task of harassing the despoiler, and rendering the throne of their ruler a seat of thorns; then was there added to the haughty contempt they had before felt for the natives a deep and inveterate hatred; and how far both these feelings were allowed to operate, will be seen in the History of the Parliament of the English Pale, whose successive enactments against the "mere Irish," exhibit almost every form of insult and injury that the combined bitterness of hatred and contempt could, in their most venomous conjunction, be expected to engender.

With respect to Henry's alleged "conquest" of this country, how far that able monarch himself was from laying any claim to the rights of a conqueror, appears from the spirit and terms of his treaty with Roderic; according to which but two of the five kingdoms of which Ireland consisted, and three principal cities, were exempted from the jurisdiction of the native monarch, while in all the other parts of the country, the ancient authorities

The English chronicler, William of Neubridge, attributes, naturally enough, the readiness of their submission to fear:-" Adventu ejus pavefactos, sine sanguine subjugavit."-L. 2. c. 26.

† Giraldus himself, however, though styling his history of these wars" The Conquest of Ireland," is forced to admit, on considering the result of the struggle commemorated by him, that it was a drawn battle between the two nations:-"Ut nec ille ad plenum victor in Palladis hactenus arcem, victoriosus ascenderit, nec iste. victus omnino plenæ servitutis jugo colla submiserit.”—Hibern. Expugnat. 1. 2. c. 33.

and laws remained in full force: the princes appointed their own magistrates and officers, retained the power of pardoning and punishing malefactors, and made war or peace with each other, according to their pleasure.

In the same council which ratified this singular treaty, Henry exercised his first act of authority over the Irish Church. As, in the subjection of England to the Normans, the native clergy were found to be useful instruments, so in those parts of Ireland, beyond the English boundary, the influence of the clergy was Henry's chief support. Desirous of strengthening this interest, he now appointed a native of Ireland, named Augustin, to the bishopric of Waterford, and, recognising the primatial rights of Cashel, sent him to be consecrated by the archbishop of that see.

About this time, the venerable St. Laurence, being at Canterbury, in attendance A. D. on the king, escaped narrowly a frantic attempt upon his life. Having been 1175. requested by the monks to celebrate mass, he was proceeding to the altar, dressed in his pontificals, when a man of deranged mind, who had heard of his fame for holiness, and thought it would be a meritorious act to confer on him the crown of martyrdom, rushed forth upon him from the crowd with a large club, and laid him prostrate before the altar. On recovering from the effects of the outrage, the good archbishop, finding that the king had condemned his assailant to death, begged earnestly for his pardon, and with some difficulty obtained it.

A. D.

event.

In the year 1176, the English colony was deprived, by death, of one of its most 1176. distinguished and successful founders, Richard de Clare, earl of Pembroke, who died in Dublin about the end of May, of a cancerous sore in his leg. His sister Basalia, who was with him in his last moments, despatched secretly a messenger to Raymond, who was then in Desmond with a letter enigmatically conveying intelligence of the Her great tooth, she told him, which had ached so long, was now at last fallen out, and she therefore earnestly besought of him to return to Dublin with all possible speed. Feeling how necessary, at such a juncture, was the immediate departure of himself and his army for Leinster, yet unwilling to abandon Limerick, a conquest redounding so much to his interest and fame, Raymond saw, at length, that he had no other alternative than to deliver up that city to Donald O'Brian, to affect reliance on his faith as one of the barons of the king, and to exact from him a new oath of fealty, taking his chance for the lord of Thomond's observance of it.

The result was precisely such as, without any great stretch of foresight, might have been anticipated. Force alone having procured the submission of O'Brian, no sooner had the English troops passed over one end of the bridge than they saw the other broken down by the Irish, and, at the same time, the city, in all its four quarters, was in flames,having been set fire to by command of O'Brian, in order that Limerick, as he remarked, might never again he made a nest of foreigners.* It is said, that when Henry was told of Raymond's conduct respecting Limerick, he pronounced the following generous and soldierly judgment upon it:-"Great courage was shown in the taking of the town; greater in the recovery of it; but wisdom only in the abandonment of it."+

On the arrival of Raymond in Dublin, the earl's remains were interred with the pomp becoming his station, in the Cathedral Church, of the Holy Trinity, now Christ Church, in that city; the archbishop Laurence presiding over the ceremony.

The political position occupied by Strongbow, in relation to Ireland, renders it difficult to sum up, impartially, any general estimate of his character; the very same qualities and achievements which won for him the eulogies of one party, having drawn down on his memory, from the other, the most bitter censure and hate. What his own countrymen have lauded as vigour and public spirit, those who were the victims of his stern policy have pronounced to be the grossest exaction and tyranny. Full allowance, of course, is to be made for the difficulties and odium of such a position; and where there are great or shining qualities to divert censure from the almost unavoidable wrongs which a military adventurer in a foreign land is, by the very nature of the mission, led to inflict, the historian, in such cases, may fairly suffer his judgment to relax into some degree of leniency in its verdict.

The splendid results, as far as regarded his own personal power and enrichment,

The Abbé O'Geoghegan, in the fullness of his Irish zeal, thus endeavours to defend this unchivalrous act of O'Brian:-"Cette action d'O'Brien, que les Anglois ont traitée de perfidie insigne, n'est pas aussi noire qu'elle le paroit d'abord. Il faut obsserver que c'étoit le défaut de tout autre défenseur qui avoit engagé les Anglois à confier cett place à O'Brien. Celui-ci ne sembloit-il pas dispensé de reconnoissance pour une confiance à laquelle forçoit la nécessité? D'ailleurs O'Brien étoit naturellement le maître de cette contrée; ne semble-t il pas juste qu'il usât de l'uniqe moyen qu'il avoit pour l'arracher à d'injustes usurpateurs, et qui étoit de détruire leurs places ?"

"Magnus fuit ausus in aggrediendo; major in subveniendo; sed sapientia solum in deserendo." Hibern. Expugnal. 1. 2. c. 15.

which arose out of Strongbow's Irish expedition, threw round his career that sort of spurious lustre, which great success, however attained, is almost always sure to impart; and that this success, as well as the courage by which it was achieved, recommended him to Henry's favour, appears from that prince having called in his aid when pressed by the dangers he was exposed to by the rebellion of his two sons. But here all the grounds on which we can rest any favourable opinion of Strongbow's character are exhausted; nor does he appear to have possessed any one great or elevating quality, by which the views that first prompted his enterprize could be ennobled, or the means which he adopted for their accomplishment can be palliated. Even in warfare-the walk where his talents most shone-it is evident that he was wanting in one of the chief requisites of a general, the power of originating plans of military operations; as we learn, from a most flattering painter of his character, Gerald of Cambria, that all his enterprizes were advised and planned for him by others, and that he never of himself ventured upon any movement in the field.

How strong was the traditional impression of the cruelty of his character, appears from the tale told-whether truly or not appears more than doubtful-of his inhuman conduct towards his son. This youth, as already has been stated, having been alarmed by the war-cry of the Irish,* at the battle of the Pass, in Idrone, fled in a panic to Dublin, and there announced that Strongbow and his army had all been destroyed. When assured however of his mistake, he hastened to join the earl in his camp, and was cheerfully congratulating him on his victory, when the inhuman father drew his sword, and, as the tradition runs, cut the ill-fated youth in two.f

The taste for founding and endowing religious establishments, which prevailed at this time among the chiefs of both nations, presented a painful contrast to the scenes of blood and havoc in which they were almost daily engaged; more especially as the wealth employed for such pious uses was, in general, the unholy produce of spoliation and wrong. We have already seen that the traitor, Dermot, was most liberal in his endowment of religious houses; and his son-in-law, Strongbow, following in his footsteps, founded at Kilmainham, near Dublin, a priory for knights of the order of St. John of Jerusalem.‡ But how little even this lord's munificence to the church could conciliate respect for his memory, appears from the terms in which an English chronicler, of his own times, speaks of his death: "He carried to the grave with him," says William of Neubridge, "no part of those Irish spoils he had coveted so eagerly after in life, putting to risk even his eternal salvation to amass them; but at last, leaving to unthankful heirs all he had acquired through so much toil and danger, he afforded by his fate a salutary lesson to mankind." Strongbow left by his wife Eva, the daughter of Dermot, king of Leinster, an only child,|| named Isabel, heiress of all his vast possessions, and afterwards married to William Mareschall, earl of Pembroke.

* See Harris on Ware, Antiq. chap. 21. sect. 3. Harris, by the way, has done injustice here to Stanihurst, in numbering him among those who subscribed to the Gadelian, or Milesian legend; that writer's views on the subject being, as the following passage will show, such as most men of any sense, if they give but fair play to their understanding, must take Habuerint Scoti, sicut et plurimæ quondam nationes, quæ jam nunc celebritate famæ in magno nomine sunt, sua quasi cunabula, aliqua barbarie infuscata. Et hoc prudentius esset confiteri, quám commentitia hac rerum gestarum gloria, seipsos apud imperitos venditare."-De Reb. Hibern. 1. 1.

The misrepresentation which Harris has given of Stanihnrst's opinions he took upon trust from Spenser (View of the State of Ireland,) who has himself hazarded an explanation of the cry "Farrah," which is hardly less absurd than the other. "Here also," he says, "lyeth open another manifest proofe that the Irish bee Scythes, or Scots, for in all their encounters they use one very common word, crying Ferragh, Ferragh, which is a Scottish word, to wit, the name of one of the first kings of Scotland called Feragus, or Fer. gus."

"This tradition," says Leland, "receives some countenance from the ancient monument in the cathedral of Dublin, in which the statue of the son of Strongbow is continued only to the middle, with the bowels open and supported by the hands. But as this monument was erected some centuries after the death of Strongbow, it is of the less authority. The Irish annals," he adds, "repeatedly mention the earl's son as engaged in several actions posterior to this period."

Stanihurst mentions that, by the falling in of a part of the cathedral in the year 1568, this monument was very much injured, but through the care of Sir Henry Sidney was afterwards repaired and restored.--" Co. actis fabris marmoreum parentis et nati tymbon singulari opre artificioque interpolandum curavit."

"The noble founder," says Archdall, "had enfeoffed the prior in the whole lands of Kilmainham." Monast. Hibern. He adds that "king Henry II. having enfeoffed Hugh Tirrell the elder in the lands of Kilmahalloch, with the appurtenances, together with the moiety of the river Liffey as far as the water-course near the gallows, Hugh bestowed the said lands on the prior of this hospital.

$Ex Hibernicis manubiis quibus multum inhiaverat et pro quibus tam multum cum periculo sudaverat salutis,nihil secum hinc abiens homo ille portavit; sed laboriose periculoseque quæsita ingratis relinquens heredibus; salubrem quoque multis ex suo occasu doctrinam reliquit.-Rer. Angl. 1. 2. c. 25.

There is some confusion in the accounts given by different historians of the number and sex of the children Strongbow left behind him. The chronicler Diceto states, in opposition to all the known facts that a boy, by the princess Eva, scarce three years old, was his heir:-"Pilium vix plene triennem, ex filia memorati regis sullatum relinquens hæredem." According to Lord Lyttelton, he left à son and a daughter, both infants. But a male child by Eva would have inherited, of course, the Irish possessions; and any sons the earl might have had by a former wife were no longer infants.

On Strongbow's death, the two English noblemen who had been sent by Henry to assist him in his government returned to that prince, leaving in Raymond's hands all the authority of the state till the will of the sovereign should be known. As no opportunity, however, had yet been afforded for a refutation of the charges advanced against Raymond, the king's jealousy of the influence of that officer still remained unabated. Accordingly, he sent into Ireland, as his justiciary, or viceroy, William Fitz-Aldelm, attended by a guard of ten knights of his own household, and having under his order, with each a similar train, John de Courcy, Robert Fitz-Stephen, and Milo de Cogan; all of whom had served the king gallantly, both in England and France. On being apprised of their arrival, Raymond hastened to meet them, on the borders of Wexford, with a chosen body of cavalry; and having received them with all due marks of respect, went through the ceremony of delivering up to the deputy all the cities and castles held by the English, as well as the hostages of the princes or chieftains of Ireland committed to his keeping.

A proof of the jealousy already entertained of the Geraldine family, of which Raymond was one of the earliest and noblest ornaments, is mentioned by the chronicler as having occurred during this ceremonial. On seeing him approach at the head of so fine a troop of young men, all of their leader's own kindred, bearing the same coat of arms emblazoned on their shields, and all mounted on beautiful horses, which they coursed playfully over the field, Fitz-Aldelm said, in a low voice, to some of his attendants, "I will shortly check this pride, and disperse these shields;"* and from that hour, adds the chronicler, such was the policy pursued, not only by Fitz-Aldelm himself but by every deputy who succeeded him. Nor was it long before an opportunity for the display of this feeling was furnished by the death of Maurice Fitz-Gerald, the original stock from whence, by the three sons he left behind, have descended all the noble and illustrious families of this name in Ireland. Scarcely had the breath left his frame, when Fitz-Aldelm seized on the castle of Wicklow, which strongbow had granted to Maurice Fitz-Gerald for his services; and, by way of atonement for this injustice, gave to the three sons the small city of Ferns; where, however, from the want of strongholds, they were much exposed to the incursions of the neighbouring inhabitants. They had built, for the security of their territory, a rude fortress; but this, by order of Walter Aleman, Fitz-Aldelm's nephew, in consequence, it is said, of bribes received from the natives, was maliciously razed to the ground.

How unavailing, sometimes, were even such defences against sudden attacks, had been seen on a late occasion, when the castle of Slane, in Meath, which had been granted by De Lacy to Richard le Fleming, having been surprised by the Irish chief to whom that principality legitimately belonged, the whole garrison and inmates of the castle were put to the sword, and Le Fleming himself slain. Such alarm did this event spread throughout Meath, that the garrisons of three other castles, built by the same lord, all quitted them the following day.

The unpopularity which attended Fitz-Aldelm's administration may be sufficiently accounted for from its general character, without laying much stress on the particular charges which have been brought against it by the chroniclers; and the simple fact, that he was actuated in his government more by political than by military considerations, abundantly explains the contemptuous impatience with which he was submitted to by the colonists, who, being for the most part armed and rapacious adventurers, had hitherto prospered, and expected still farther to prosper, by the trenchant policy of the sword. Among those most impatient of such inaction was John de Courcy, a baron second in command to Fitz-Aldelin, and gifted with extraordinary prowess and daring. Having looked to Ireland as a field of spoil and adventure, De Courcy was determined not to be baulked in his anticipations: so, choosing out of the troops under his command a body of two-and-twenty knights, and about three hundred other soldiers, he proposed to lead them into the heart of Ulster,-a region unvisited yet by the English arms, and therefore opening to his fierce ambition a fresh source of aggrandizement and military fame. At the beginning of the year 1177, in defiance of a peremptory order from the deputy, De Courcy set out from Dublin with this small force, and arrived in four days, by a rapid march at Downpatrick, the metropolis of Ulidia,f or Down, and the residence of the king of that territory, Roderic Mac Dunlevy. The alarm caused by this inroad of foreigners into a country where they had hitherto been known but by rumour, and where, trusting to their distance from the seat of conflict, the inhabitants were unprepared with the means of defence, was at first so general and overwhelming, that scarce any resistance was

"Ad suos se vertens, demissa voce, superbiam hanc, inquit, in brevi comprimam et clypeos istos disper gam."-Hibern. Expugnat 1. 3. c. 15.

Ulidia or Ullah, comprised at the most the now county of Down, and some parts of Antrim.

made; and the people of the town, unapprised of the approach of an enemy till they heard, at day break, the clangour of the English bugles sounding* in their streets, became helpless victims of the rage and rapacity of the soldiery. It happened that the pope's legate, cardinal Vivian, was then at Downpatrick, having arrived there a short time before from Scotland; and, struck with horror at this unprovoked aggression, he endeavoured to mediate terms of peace between the two parties; proposing that De Courcy should withdraw his army from Ulidia, on condition of the prince of that country paying tribute to Henry.

This offer De Courcy sternly refused; and Vivian, provoked by such gross injustice, now strenuously advised the Ulidian Prince, and even besought him, as he valued his blessing, to stand up manfully in defence of his violated territories. The panic into which the natives had at first been thrown having by this time subsided, a large tumultuary force was collected, consisting of no less, it is said than ten thousand men; at the head of which the king marched to drive the enemy from his capital. De Courcy, however, advanced from the town to meet them, and a hard-fought battle ensued, in which this lord himself and some of his knights performed prodigies of valour, and which ended in the total defeat and rout of the Irish. In the course of the action, Malachy, the bishop of Down, was taken prisoner; but, through the intercession of the cardinal was again set at liberty, and restored to his see.

With the superstition common to most of the heroes of that period, De Courcy persuaded himself that he had, by this expedition fulfilled a prophecy of Mirlin, which had declared, that a white knight, sitting on a white horse, and bearing birds on his shield, would be the first that with force of arms would enter and invade Ulster. The important battle, also, which he had now gained, was the same predicted, as he fancied, in one of St. Columba's prophecies; where it was foretold, that so great would be the carnage of the Irish, that the enemy would wade up to the knees in their blood. So strongly had the predictions of this saint affected De Courcy's imagination, that he always carried about with him a book, T in the Irish language, wherein they were written, and slept with it under his pillow; regarding these prophecies as a sort of "mirror" of the wondrous achievements he was himself destined to perform. In the month of June following, De Courcy again defeated an army of the Ultonians; and among the English wounded in this second conflict, was Armoric of St. Laurence, ancestor of the barons of Howth.

While John de Courcy was thus overrunning Ulster, where his small force had extended their incursions into Dalriada and Tyrone, the legate, whose mission, notwithstanding his generous effort in favour of the Ultonians, had for its object to forward Henry's designs upon Ireland, proceeded to Dublin, and there convoked a general council of bishops and abbots; in which setting forth the right of dominion over that country conferred by the pope upon Henry, he impressed on them the necessity of paying obedience to such high authority under pain of excommunication. He also, among other regulations, promulgated at this council, gave leave to the English soldiers to provide themselves with victuals for their expeditions out of the churches, into which, as inviolable sanctuaries, they used to be removed by the natives;-merely ordering, that, for the provisions thus taken, a reasonable price should be paid to the rectors of the churches.

Soon after the dissolution of this council, we find another expedition undertaken by the English, and under circumstances peculiarly disgraceful to most of the parties concerned in it. Some bitter quarrel having for a long time existed between Roderic O'Connor and

"Adeo inexpectatus penetravit, ut cives, metu vacui, Britannicas copias in Ultoniam influere minimè somniarint, usque eò dum, in variis partibus urbis disturbatis, buccinarum clangor prima luce intonuit." Stanihurst, 1. 4.

Hibern Expugnat. 1. 2. c. 16. Gulielm. Neubrig. 1. 3., c. 9. Leland mistakenly represents Vivian as having come to Ireland in the train of Fitz- Aldelm, the new justiciary.

"Qui pugnandum pro patria esse dixit, et pugnaturis cum obsecrationibus benedixit." Gulielm. Neubrig. ut supra.

§ Adopting the improbable statement of Giraldus respecting this battle that the number of Irish engaged in it was ten thousand, while their victors, the English, were not quite four hundred, Stanihurst yet falls into the gross absurdity of praising the military valour on both sides as equal. Thus, for the mere pleasure, as it would seem, of turning a turgid sentence, he says, "Nulli parti militaris virtus deest sed victoria elargitor, Dets," &c. &c. Again, "Ultonienses, ut est hominum genus naturâ et usu valde bellicosum, nam conducti in armis ævum agunt, visis Britannis, non timide ac diffidenter, sed ordinate et audacter processum eff. ciunt."

According to Stanihurst, John de Courcy, in his anxiety to adapt these prophecies to himself, took the not unskilful mode of adapting himself to the prophecies; and, with that view, provided for his own equipment, in proceeding to Ulster, a white horse, a shield with bees on it, and all the other foretold appendages of the destined conqueror of Ulidia; so that, as Stanihurst expresses it, "he sallied forth like an actor, dressed to perform a part:"-ut in Ultoniam, tanquam personatus comodus, advolarit."

Ipse vero Joannes librum nunc propheticum Habernice scriptum tanquam operum suorum speculum præ manibus dicitur habuisse."-Girald. "Ad dormiendum proficiscens, eundem sub cubicularis lecti pulvino col. locaret."-Stanikurst.