16 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOE. 



very early drove the Norman masters of England to seek fresh 

 adventures, fresh conquests. Before their power in England 

 was consolidated, before they had had time to push their autho- 

 rity into the heart of Scotland, they looked greedily across 

 the water which divided their newly-gotten kingdom from the 

 kingdoms of Ireland, and they resolved to win in them a set- 

 tlement as absolute and abiding as that they had obtained 

 in England. Lust of power, of acquisition, rather than any 

 far-sighted views of statesmanship, prompted the first invaders 

 of Ireland to undertake their work, and they entered upon it 

 in a spirit wholly in accordance with the motives that actuated 

 them. 



The conquest of Ireland was on this wise : It had been 

 agreed in 1161, after many trials of strength botween the several 

 Irish princes, that Murtogh O'Lochlin, King of Ulster, should 

 be recognised as supreme in the island. He was nominally what 

 was then called a suzerain, as distinguished from a sovereign ; 

 that is to say, he was feudal lord over his brethren by their own 

 consent a " first among equals," but not absolute dominator, 

 except in his own kingdom of Ulster. The princes who con- 

 sented to this arrangement were four in number the kings of 

 Munster, Connaught, Leinster, and Meath, each of whom had 

 vassals under them more or less troublesome, who made their 

 sovereignty as permissive a dignity as the four kings made the 

 dignity of Murtogh O'Lochlin. Of course, a throne resting on 

 such explosive materials must have been but an anxious place, 

 not to say an unsafe one. The broils which had only been 

 temporarily suppressed through the effect of exhaustion in the 

 combatants, broke out again as soon as strength had been 

 renewed, and all was commotion in the kingdom of Erin. 

 Fighting for fighting's sake was sufficient inducement, when all 

 other causes failed, to make the princes take up arms ; and the 

 only wonder is how the people subsisted at all in a country 

 which was ravaged with fire and sword all over on an average 

 once a year. Domestic peace within the limits of the lesser 

 kingdoms themselves was a thing unknown ; the vassals were 

 too nearly equal for jealousy not to show itself in action ; and 

 combined, they were more than a match for their kings. This 

 was proved in the case of Murtogh O'Lochlin himself, who 

 having waged war on one of his vassals in a perfectly barbarous 

 way, having put out his eyes, and slain his most intimate friends 

 in cold blood, roused by his acts so great a resistance on the 

 part of his other subjects, that he was overthrown and killed in 

 a battle, on the issue of which he had staked his fortune. 



On his death in 1166, the nominal sovereignty of Erin passed 

 to Eoderic O'Connor, King of Connaught, a savage, whose first 

 act, on coming to his father's throne in Connaught, was to put 

 out the eyes of his two brothers, lest they should be troublesome 

 as competitors. He is also famous for having killed with his 

 own hand an enemy whom he had had loaded with chains, and 

 who was defenceless through his fetters at the time the king 

 struck him. Such a man was not likely to have a peaceable 

 time of it, and his reign proved to be such a turmoil and con- 

 fusion as to tempt the intervention of a foreign foe. 



Dermot Mac-Murchad, King of Leinster, a bloodthirsty and 

 licentious barbarian, had, during the reign of the late suzerain, 

 conducted himself so infamously as to excite universal hatred 

 and disgust against him, except on the part of the suzerains 

 who were his dear friends and intimates. He had carried on an 

 adulterous intercourse with the wife of a neighbouring and 

 friendly prince, Tiernan O'Euarc, the Lord of Breffny, in Con- 

 naught, an act which caused the direst commotion, and . was 

 the beginning of sorrows for all Ireland; for it became as 

 fruitful a source of quarrel as the abduction of Helen from 

 her husband Menelaus, and was the root of bitterness which 

 sprang up and finally choked the fair flower of Irish inde- 

 pendence. So long as O'Lochlin was on the throne this bad 

 man had a friend, and gloried in his shame shamelessly ; but 

 with Eoderic O'Connor, though he was what he was, came a 

 very different ruler. O'Connor was friendly to the lord, of 

 Breffny, and espoused his cause immediately on coming to the 

 throne. Under his auspices a rebellion was fomented in Dermot' s 

 own kingdom of Leinster. Tiernan O'Euarc took the field with 

 a large force raised in. his own dominions, and recruited by 

 numerous bands of men whom Dermot' s brutality and tyranny 

 had embittered against him. In a short time Dermot was driven 

 to his last covert, and was then obliged to fly for auccour to the 

 King of England. 



Now, at the time he did so, Henry II. was in Normandy, 

 wholly absorbed in his great struggle between Church and State, 

 represented by Thomas a Becket and himself ; and it is reason- 

 able to suppose that he did not at the moment care very much 

 for the visitor who came to him with such importunate requests 

 for help in a matter where the King of England's interests were 

 not concerned. The application of the Irish prince, however, 

 was not to be rejected summarily; the sound of it recalled to 

 the mind of the great statesman who then sat on the English 

 throne a plan he had long ago thought over, but, for want of 

 opportunity, had lain aside. Eleven years before that is to 

 say, in 1155 he had obtained from Pope Adrian IV. (the only 

 Englishman who ever sat in the chair of St. Peter) a Papal bull, 

 granting him the lordship of Ireland with full possession of the 

 country, the Pope claiming, and Henry for the nonce admitting, 

 a right in the Pope to dispose of the whole of Christendom as 

 lord paramount. At the time of the grant it had not suited 

 Henry to take the matter in hand ; he had other irons in the 

 fire, and even now it was highly inconvenient to have to stir 

 hurriedly in it. Still, a wandering Irish prince driven from his 

 home, and ready to agree to any conditions so long as he was 

 restored and his enemies were punished, was not a sight that 

 presented itself every day ; and the astute mind of Henry saw 

 at once the advisability of securing a pretext for his interference, 

 which he would do under guise of helping a neighbouring 

 potentate to his own. Once in Ireland if with a decent excuse 

 all the better his plan was never to loosen his hold on it ; to 

 make it his either by playing off one petty prince against 

 another, and making the winner recognise him for lord, or else, 

 if needs must, though he did not want the trouble, by regular 

 conquest of the island. 



Unable to quit Aquitaine, where Dermot found him, and where 

 certain disputes with the barons, together with the trouble 

 respecting Becket, detained him, Henry gave the Irish prince 

 letters recommendatory to the English nobles, and issued this 

 proclamation in his behalf : " Henry, King of England, Duke, 

 of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Earl of Anjou, to all his liege- 

 men English, Norman, Welsh, and Scotch and to all the 

 nations under his dominion, sends greeting. As soon as the 

 present letters shall come to your hands, know that Dermot, 

 Prince of Leinster, has been received into the bosom of our grace 

 and benevolence. Wherefore whosoever, within the ample extent 

 of our territories, shall be willing to lend aid towards the resto- 

 ration of this prince, as our faithful and liege subject, let such 

 person know that we do hereby grant to him, for such purpose, 

 our licence and favour." 



Armed with this proclamation, Dermot came over to England 

 and hastened to Bristol, where he expected to find those who 

 would lend a willing hand to his enterprise, thus backed by the 

 king ; but few of the English nobles had ever heard of him until 

 the present moment, and fewer still were inclined to risk any- 

 thing in a cause where the question was between barbarism on 

 both sides, and where the issue seemed to promise little profit 

 to assistants. No one who had anything to lose, or who had 

 anything better with which to occupy himself, would listen to 

 the Irish prince, who was driven, therefore, to apply to men of 

 desperate fortunes ; and such men there were then as now, and 

 as there always will be, ready for anything which holds out 

 the slightest hope of mending their broken condition. Such a 

 man was Eichard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, commonly known 

 in history as Strongbow. Dermot promised to give him his 

 daughter Eva in marriage, and to secure him the succession, 

 after himself, to the throne of Leinster, on condition of his 

 bringing over an efficient force to Ireland in the f ollowing spring. 

 Strongbow assented, and Dermot was fortunate enough to secure, 

 in anticipation of his coming, the services of Maurice Fitz-Gerald 

 and Eobert Fitz-Stephen, brothers, and adventurers by birth 

 and profession. These agreed to come over as early in the 

 spring as they could ; and Dermot having made his prepara- 

 tions, went secretly to Ireland, and remained concealed there. 



A foolish outburst of his, made before his allies could join 

 him, nearly preved to be his ruin, and brought his old enemy, 

 Tiernan O'Euarc, and Eoderic O'Connor, titular monarch of Erin, 

 down upon him. He lay at their mercy, which he experienced on 

 condition of renouncing for ever his rights in Leinster, except to 

 a small territory not more than sufficient to support the dignity 

 of a lesser baron. He accepted the condition, purposing only to 

 gain time till his English friends should be ready to join him. 



