412 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
I have given for the salvation of my soul and those of my predecessors 
and successors and the souls of my soldiers who lie there.”’ The good- 
will shown by him and his successors to Holy Cross Abbey was some- 
thing more substantial than a re-grant of these lands, for a considerable 
addition, probably the whole of the present transept and apse, was made 
by one or other of them to the buildings. Here is Hartry’s account 
of what he calls the third rebuilding and endowment of the Mo- 
nastery :— 
‘«* A certain Prince of royal descent, a son of a King of England, was 
very desirous of seeing the manner of life of the Irish. The King 
wished, too, that he should collect the Peter’s Pence paid yearly 
throughout Ireland to the Supreme Pontiff at Rome. At his depar- 
ture a ring was given him by his mother, which, if he needed her 
assistance in any way, he should send to her asa token. As he was 
passing through a wood two miles to the west of the Abbey he was 
met by one of the Clan Fogarty, and slain. One of the monks, old and 
blind, was three times bidden in a dream to go to a certain wood; there 
he should see swine turning up the earth, and close by he should find 
what would confer eternal renown on the Monastery. He paid no 
attention to the first and second visions, but after the third he rose 
early in the morning, and receiving the Abbot’s blessing, and guided 
by one of his brethren, he set out for the wood. There he found the 
swine. His companion told him that a man’s hand appeared over the 
ground, and on one of the fingers there wasa ring. The blind man 
on the instant recovered his sight. He had the body brought to the 
Monastery and decently buried. Taking ship, he crossed over to Eng- 
land, and presenting the ring to the Queen, he told her the sad news 
of her son’s death. In gratitude to him she promised to endow the 
Monastery as a memorial to her dead son. Moreover, she would crave 
from the King the Holy Cross given him by the King of France, and 
bestow it on him. The King at first refused her request, but at length 
he yielded to her urgent entreaties, and gave it to the monk. He set 
off in all haste with this treasure, took ship, and landed at Waterford, 
and made his way from thence to his Monastery. 
‘“Who will say,” he asks, ‘‘ who that King was, and who the Queen? 
I have looked through authentic records, I have inquired into the 
traditions of the place, as handed down by the monks of the Monastery 
and by the inhabitants of the village close by born and bred there, and no 
one occurs to me more likely than Henry II., King of England, and 
Queen Eleanor, his wife, who, by common consent, and from the re- 
motest times to this day, has been called ‘the Good Woman.’ She 
gave birth to six sons. Which of these our Prince was it is not for 
me to determine, nor do I find it mentioned by any author,’ He adds 
wisely to the above the saving clause: ‘‘ with all respect for the 
judgment of my betters.’’ History hardly bears out his statement in 
reference to Eleanor. The title of ‘‘the Good Woman” belongs rather 
to Matilda, the wife of Henry I., daughter of Margaret of Scotland, 
and grand-daughter of Edmund Ironsides. ‘She is distinguished,” 
