126 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
messengers going to and fro ‘‘portantes literas domini”; the village 
packhorses bearing the bishop’s ‘‘ wine, salt, and iron’’; and then the 
lords and gentlemen with their train of attendants arriving to do 
homage, and promising ‘‘ tactis sacrosanctis Evangeliis” that they will 
surely pay in future. Everything seemed hopeful. — 
But all were strangers in a strange land; and meanwhile the 
native Irish, having no part in the new enterprise, lay hidden in the 
woods and fastnesses, waiting their opportunity, as we shall see pre- 
sently, to break forth with fire and sword, content if only they could 
destroy. 
How long the village continued to exist does not appear from the 
Roll, but it was evidently flourishing in 1364, when Bishop Swaffham 
commenced the Prpa, and entered all previous documents in it for pre- 
servation. This was 127 years from its foundation. Shortly after 
this occurred an event which must have had a disastrous effect in the 
colony. It is thus recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters at a. p. 
1382 :—‘‘ A plundering army was led by Murrogh O’Brien into Des- 
mond, and totally devastated it.” This brief entry is expanded by 
Spenser as follows:—‘‘One of the O’Briens, called Murrogh en 
Ranagh, that is, Morrice of the Ferne or wild waste places, who, 
gathering unto him all the reliques of the discontented Irish, eftsoones 
surprised the castle of Clare . . . whence shortly breaking forth like a 
sudden tempest, he overran all Mounster and Connaught, breaking 
down ail the holds and fortresses of the English, defacing and utterly 
subverting all corporate towns that were not strongly walled .... so 
that in short space of time he clean wyped out many great towns, as 
first Inchiquin, then Killaloe, Mourne, Buttevant, and many others 
whose names I cannot remember, and of some of which there is now 
no memory remaining.” ” 
Now, as Kilmaclenine is only three miles from Buttevant, it was 
evidently one of those settlements whose names he had forgotten, 
which were ‘“‘wyped out” by Murrogh and his wood-kernes. 
The destruction, however, was not final. The villagers, no doubt, 
fled at the approach of the wild invaders, and their village was reduced 
to ashes ; but when the storm passed over they seem to have returned, 
rebuilt their log huts, and attempted again to resume their industry. 
But now a more formidable danger threatened them than Murrogh’s 
wild raid, for the Anglo-Norman nobles and gentry had begun to adopt 
Irish customs, and to practise exactions of the like kind to those which 
the old chieftains had imposed, but much more severe, and this not 
only on the tenants but on the bishop himself. 
In this emergency the bishop endeavoured to protect himself and 
his property by entering into an agreement with three of the principal 
nobles in his diocese. In Cloyne, with ‘‘ Jacobus le Botiller, Comes 
Ormond,” who was joint proprietor with the bishop of the barony of 
17 Spenser, p. 24. 
