308 



splendid promises, soon collected a band of Welsh adventurers, who, 

 with nothing to lose and much to expect, landed in Ireland in 1169. 

 This scanty group of invaders could not, however, have effected much 

 but for the divisions that then distracted the country, to adjust or op- 

 pose which, the eloquence and zeal of the celebrated Laurence O'Toole 

 were vainly directed ; the maxim of Tacitus was never more applicable, 

 "dum singuli pugnant universi vincuntur;" and the Irish having no lon- 

 ger any "cement of federal union among them, their being a prey sooner 

 or later to some neighbouring civilized nation was unavoidable."* In 

 1 170, Strongbow, the celebrated Earl of Pembroke, gave his name 

 and followers to the cause; and in 1171 the English sovereign himself, 

 hearing of the singular success of the invaders, and perhaps fearfully 

 jealous of their conquests, arrived at Waterford with 400 ships, -f- to 

 receive the homage and submission of the Irish princes. 



After a visit to the metropolis, which was intended to awe and 

 dazzle the deluded natives, and after receiving their submissions with 

 wily complacence, he bethought him of those interests of religion, which 

 formed the pretence of the Pope's alleged interference ; an interference 

 grounded on the assumption of universal temporal supremacy,:^: and 

 ostensibly granted for the extension of that supremacy ,§ with theaddir 

 tional injunction of levying Peter's pence from every house in the island. I! 



* Ogygia Vindicated, p. xxvii. 



f " CCCC magnis navibus onustis viris bellicosis et equis et armis et victu." — Hoveden. 



t " Sane Hiberniam et omnes insulas, quibus sol justitiae Christus illuxit, et quae docu- 

 menta fidei Christianae receperunt, ad jus beati Petri et sacro-sanctae Romanse ecclesise (quod 

 ttia eliamnobilitas recognoscit,) non est dubium pertinere." — Rymer's Foedera, vol. i. 



§ " Pro dilatandis ecclesiae terminis, pro vitiorum restringendo decursu, pro corrigendis 

 moribus et virtutibus inserendis, pro Christianae religionis augraento, insulam illani ingredia- 

 ris, et quae ad honorem Dei et salatem illius spectaverint, exequaris." — Id. 



II "Jure nimirum ecclesiarum illibato et integro permanente, et salvabeato Petro et sacro- 

 eanctsc Romanje ecclesix de singulii domibus annua unius denarii pensimie.'* — Id. 



L* n SI 



