318 IRELAND. 



all his neighbours, and carried off the wife of a petty prince, G'Roirk. 

 A confederacy being formed against him, under Roderic O'Connor, 

 who, it seems, was the paramount king of Ireland, he was driven 

 from his country, and took refuge in the court of Henry II, who pro- 

 mised to restore him, upon taking an oath of fidelity to the crown of 

 England, for himself and all the petty kings depending on him, who 

 were very numerous. Henry, who was then in France, recommend- 

 ed Mac Dermot's cause to the English barons, and particularly to 

 Strongbow, earl of Pembroke, Robert Fitz-Stephen, and Maurice 

 Fitzgerald. Those noblemen undertook the expedition upon much 

 the same principles as the Norman and Breton lords did the conquest 

 of England under William I ; and Strongbow was to marry Mac 

 Dermot's daughter, Eva. In 1169 the adventurers reduced the towns 

 of Wexford and Waterford ; and the next year, Strongbow arriving 

 with a strong reinforcement, his marriage was celebrated. 



The descendants of the Danes continued still possessed of Dublin, 

 which, after some ineffectual opposition, made by the king O'Connor, 

 was taken and plundered by the English soldiers : but Mac Turkil, 

 the Danish king, escaped to his shipping. Upon the death of Der- 

 mot, Henry II became jealous of earl Strongbow, seized upon his 

 estates in England and Wales, and recalled his subjects from Ireland. 

 The Irish about the same time, to the amount of 60,000, besieged 

 Dublin, under king O'Connor ; but though all Strongbow's Irish 

 friends and allies had now left him, and the city was induced to great 

 extremity, he forced the Irish to raise the siege with great loss ; and 

 going over to England, he appeased Henry, by swearing fealty to 

 him and his heirs, and resigning into his hands all the Irish cities and 

 forts he held. During Strongbow's absence, Mac Turkil returned 

 with a great fleet, and attempted to retake the city of Dublin, but was 

 killed at the siege ; and in him ended the race of the Easterling 

 princes in Ireland. 



In 1172, Henry II, attended by 400 knights, 4000 veteran soldiers, 

 and the flower of his English nobility, landed near Waterford ; and 

 not only all the petty princes of Ireland, excepting the king of Ul- 

 ster, but the great king Roderic O'Connor, submitted to Henry, who 

 pretended that O'Connor's submission included that of Ulster, and 

 that consequently he was the paramount sovereign of Ireland. Be 

 that as it will, he affected to keep a magnificent court, and held a par- 

 liament at Dublin, where he parcelled out the states of Ireland, as 

 William the Conqueror had done in England, to his English nobility. 

 He then settled a civil administration at Dublin, as nearly similar as 

 possible to that of England, to which he returned in 1173, having 

 first settled an English colony from Bristol in Dublin, with all the li- 

 berties, free customs, apd charters, which the citizens of Bristol en- 

 joyed. From that time Dublin began to flourish. Thus the conquest 

 of Ireland was effected by the English almost with as much ease as 

 that of Mexico was by the Spaniards, and for much the same reasons ; 

 the rude and unarmed state of the natives, and the differences that 

 prevailed among their princes or leaders. 



Henry gave the title of lord of Ireland to his son John, who, in 

 1185, went over in person to Ireland; but John and his giddy Nor- 

 man courtiers made a very ill use of their power, and rendered 

 themselves hateful to the Irish, who were otherwise very well dispos- 

 ed towards the English. Richard I, was too much taken up with the 

 crusades to pay any great regard to the affairs of Ireland ; but king 



