\ 



17,4 



sold as slaves to nations unacquainted with God, (" genti exterae 

 ignoranti Deum.")* The horror of the transaction induced a letter of 

 excommunication from Saint Patrick against the pirate, (Epistola 

 in Coroticum,) which is still preserved. In 455, according to the 

 most credible computations, -f* Armagh was established the metropoli- 

 tical see for all Ireland. About A. D. 483,J was fought the battle of 

 Ocha, (in the present County Meath,) which led to such important 

 consequences in the succession to the sovereignty of Ireland,§ and 

 somewhat about the same period, the apostle of Ireland closed his 

 labours and his life. 



In the beginning of the sixth century, Gildas appears to have 

 come.into Ireland, to improve himself in philosophy and theology, as 

 is deducible from a passage in Caradoc of Lhancarvan.H And at 

 the close of the same century, an Irish commander called Sirigi, is 

 said to have been slain at Llan-y-Gwydhir, (Holyhead,) by Cassive- 

 launus Longimanus.** The year 576 is commemorated by Tigernach, 

 as most abundant in nuts ; as was the year 6l9 in fruit and cattle. 

 The same author, at A. D. 626, records the siege (obsessio) of Bal- 

 clutha ; and at 632, a prevalence of floods in Munster. The year 

 664 is made remarkable by an eclipse of the sun, which is so accu- 

 rately calculated in the Irish annals, that Bede is corrected by them.tt 

 Immediately after it a pestilence, to which the native accounts give 

 the name of the yellow jaundice, broke in from England, and destroy- 

 ed nearly one-third of the Irish people ; an account which Bede 



* Epist. ad Coroticum. t Lanigan's Eccl. Hist. v. 1. p. 313. 



t Lanigan, Id. vol. 1. p. 392. § Post, second section of this Period. 



II " Gildas Britonum historiographus, tunc remanens in Hibernia, Studium regens et prse- 

 dicans in civitate Ardmacha." — Cited I>anigan's Eccl. Hist. v. 1. p. 482. 

 ** Description of Wales before Dr. Powell's History of Wales, p. xv. 

 ft See O'Conor's Rer. Hib. Script, v. 1. Ep. Nunc. p. xiv. 



