1154 not until Henry the Second ascended the throne that the project of an Irish expedition took definite shape. One of the first acts of that solitary Englishman in the long list of popes-Nicholas Breakspear or Adrian the Fourth-granted to gallant young Henry a Bull which made him master of Ireland; for popes, according to the forged donation of Constantine, owned all Christianized islands. Londonderry Teraine BELFAST ULSTER поя Lof Man/ Thirteen years passed, and then a visitor entered Henry's palace at Aquitaine, who started the sleeping scheme to life again. It was Dermot MacMorrogh, who had been driven from the throne of Leinster,* because he had carried off the beautiful Devorgilla, wife of O'Rourke, Lord of Breffny, from an island in Meath where her husband had locked her up. Dermot obtained from Henry, in return for an acknowledgment of vassalage, a letter permitting any subjects of the English realm to assist in the recovery of his kingWeighty affairs, Sligo Enniskillen CONNAUGHT Dundalk GALWAY MEATH Drogheda DUBLIN LIMERICK LEINSTER THOMOND [Nh Munster) DESMOND | Sth Munster! Wexford WATERFORD dom. perhaps the unsettled state of the Becket business, prevented Henry from seizing this favourable opportunity himself. Arrived at Bristol, then the great port for Ireland, Dermot made the tenor of the king's letter known; for a time in vain. At length a hulking weak-voiced soldier, Richard le Clare, Earl of Pembroke, surnamed "Strongbow," agreed to cross the channel *Ireland at the time of the Norman invasion consisted of five kingdoms-Lagenia or Leinster, Ulster, Connaught, Desmond or South Munster, and Thomond or North Munster. Whichever king was federal monarch of the whole island held during his time of office the central district of Meath. in the next spring, if Dermot would give him his daughter Eva in marriage, and the reversion of the Leinster crown. The Irishman gladly struck hands on the bargain. But Fitzstephen and Fitzgerald, sons of a Welsh princess, got the start of Strongbow. Bribed by the gift of Wexford, with some adjoining land, Fitzstephen followed Dermot across the sea, landing at a creek called the Bann, twelve miles south of the city which formed his pay. The men of Wexford, frightened at the shining armour of the Normans, sur- 1169 rendered in two days. Meantime Roderie O'Connor, King of Connaught and federal King of Ireland, was advancing with an army. Roderie gladly made peace, for he too felt the terrors of lance and mail. It was agreed that Dermot should have his kingdom back, and that no more Normans should be brought from England. The arrival of Fitzgerald with one hundred and forty men blew the treaty to rags, Dermot and his English lances marched on Dublin, which yielded without delay. Such was the state of things when Strongbow began to think of fulfilling his promise. Sept. As Henry's leave was necessary, or at least important, in the advanced position of the strife, Strongbow sought it in Normandy. Though the royal answer was evasive, the earl, according to the wont of feudal barons, construed it to his own liking, and went back to Wales to prepare for action. In spite of a prohibitory message from the king, he sailed from Milford Haven* in the middle of September, and landed near Waterford with two hundred knights and a thousand other troops. At Waterford he made a breach in the wall by hewing down the wooden foundations of a house that formed part of it, and he filled the streets with slaughtered heaps. The blood was scarcely washed from his hand when he was married to Eva, Dermot's daughter, who brought 1170 Milford Haven, a fine natural harbour, cuts deep into Pembrokeshire. The town of Milford stands on the northern shore, twelve miles from Pembroke, him the crown of Leinster as her dowry. Then Dublin, filled with Danes, became the centre of attack, for it had revolted from the allegiance lately sworn to Dermot. Strongbow appeared on the bank of the Liffey unexpectedly, and while the terrified Dubliners were trying to make terms, the impatient Miles de Cogan, with some kindred spirits, broke in at a weak point of the wall and inflicted on the inhabitants all that brutalized humanity could devise. About this time, an angry message from Henry, requiring all loyal men to return to England at once, on pain of banishment and the loss of their estates, reached the camp of the Norman adventurers. This gave the Irish new hope. Dublin was invested by a Norse fleet from the Isle of Man and a great confederate army under Roderic O'Connor. Thirty thousand men hemmed in the little band of soldiers who lay harnessed within the city walls under the command of Strongbow. The gallant handful, dashing out in three troops on the vast Irish lines one morning at nine o'clock, broke up the besieging camp, and swept thousands of their foes before the whirlwind of their charge. In all the struggles of this remarkable conquest, achieved as it altogether was by a few hundred lances, there was no more memorable instance of the terror which the very glitter of Norman armour struck into the half-naked Irish hordes. The Earl of Pembroke, who by Dermot's death had become Lord of Leinster, now received a sharp summons to appear before his king. He hastened to Henry, who was at Newnham in Gloucestershire, and made ample submission to him; but not until he had yielded up Waterford, Dublin, and other castles was he confirmed in his remaining conquests. Together king and earl sailed from Milford, with a force of five hundred knights and four thousand common troops, and landed near the city of Waterford. The hard work of the war was done, and * Newnham is above the Severn, twelve miles south-west of Gloucester. Oct. 18, 1171 the mere presence of so many shining coats of mail overawed the Irish people. There was no need for Henry to draw the sword. Princes came from near and far the King of Cork, the King of Limerick, the Prince of Ossory, and hosts of others--to bow humbly before his throne. Roderic's army, mustered on the great line of the Shannon, kept their loose array for a while; but his submission and promise to pay tribute melted it like snow. Keeping Christmas within a hall of wicker-work, woven at Dublin by native hands, Henry saw chiefs from every corner of the island, except unconquered Ulster, sitting at his laden board, and in their own uncouth fashion drinking goblets of red French wine, The winter which a stormy sea compelled Henry to spend in Ireland was given partly to the improvement of the Irish Church. At the Council of Cashel,* held early in 1172, Henry was acknowledged as king, and laws were 1172 passed which struck at the root of the clan-system. But when the spring winds blew, Henry appointed Hugh de Lacy, Governor of Dublin, to be justiciary of the island and Viceroy of Meath, and left Wexford with the rising sun one April morning, to plunge once more into those "fierce domestic broils" with wife and sons which laid him broken-hearted in an early grave. * Cashel, about two miles east of the Suir in Tipperary, is built on the eastern and southern slopes of a remarkable rock. CHAPTER V. A CRUSADING KING. A handsome tyrant-Unfilial-Jewish blood-Raising funds-The Third Crusade-The chained Lion-Longchamp-Prince John-French wars -The fatal knife-Robin Hood. R1 ICHARD CŒUR DE LION, third son of Henry Plantagenet, was the very model of a feudal knight, the embodiment and full-blown flower of Norman chivalry. It is true that the chief effect of his reign on the English people was to squeeze almost every coin from their coffers, and to drain the national heart of its bravest blood. But he stamped his likeness so deeply on the age, that for centuries afterwards soldiers cut after the same pattern fought on every English battle-field. Romance has flung her coloured splendours around his character. He was a great soldier, but a bad king. In the tournament, his lance flashed the brightest and smote the strongest; his harp and song rang sweetly in the hall. But English ploughmen, smiths, and weavers starved under his sceptre, working their fingers to the bone that they might furnish him with money for his French and his Eastern wars. No law of any consequence grew out of his reign of ten years. Reading his story, we find only a rebellion which broke his father's heart-a cruel massacre of unoffending Jews-an unsuccessful Crusade-a troubled regency-a romantic captivity --some petty feuds with France-and a fatal arrow-wound. The death of his elder brother Henry opened to Richard a |