1886-1887.] 497 



tenth century, for early in the next — a.d. 1015 — the church and 

 tower, presumably the woodwork only, were destroyed by fire, 

 and twice during the succeeding hundred years a similar 

 calamity overtook the port and town, the last occasion being 

 due to lightning. Next came St. Malachy, who founded a 

 monastery, in which he ended his days, a stone's throw off the 

 cathedral, and upon the site of what is now called the old gaol. 

 With him the native Irish record closes and the Anglo-Norman 

 begins; for, in 11 77, John de Courcy, with his men-at-arms 

 arrived from Dublin. By them Dun-da-Leathglas, for the last 

 time, was plundered and destroyed, but upon its ruins was 

 raised the modern town of Downpatrick ; for so the English 

 knight willed that it should henceforth be called. Three times 

 before the year was out the best and bravest of the Irish shed 

 their blood to expel the invaders, but in vain, the horses and 

 steel armour of the Norman knights and men-at-arms, and the 

 " cloth yard arrows " of their bowmen, were more than 

 a match against any odds of the half naked Irish kernes ; and 

 since that day Lecale and the Ards have remained with scarcely 

 an interruption under English rule. Of the many ecclesiastical 

 establishments which the next two centuries saw planted in the 

 rising city of Downpatrick, very few traces now remain, the 

 only one being Trinity Church, now the Cathedral, which was 

 converted into the Benedictine priory of St. Patrick, for whom 

 De Courcy had a great reverence. Saint Malachy's, which then 

 became known as the Irish monastery, was close by, on the site 

 of the old gaol ; a Franciscan friary occupied the site of the 

 present parish church, and to the north stood a convent for 

 nuns of the Cistercian order. The crutched, or cruched friars 

 had a priory dedicated to St. John, where a meeting-house now 

 stands, and a sixth priory of regular canons was founded by De 

 Courcy beside a holy well (Toberglorie), where tradition reported 

 that Saint Patrick had seen a vision of angels. In 1260, when 

 England was convulsed with civil war, another great effort was 

 made by the Northern Irish, led by Bryan O'Neill, to drive the 

 English out of Ulster. It met with no more success than the 

 former ones, for the Lord Justice, Stephen Longsword, defeated 



