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approach to the town of Wexford, he was met by persons sent from Beg-Eri, to give him warning that, should he attempt to invade or molest that retreat, the heads of all the English prisoners would be cut off and sent to him. As there appeared no means, therefore, of releasing Fitz-Stephen at present, the earl and his companions abandoned their intention of proceeding to Wexford, and "with sorrow in their hearts," says the chronicler, "turned their reins towards Waterford."*

It has been already stated that Raymond le Gros, whom Strongbow had sent with a letter of submission to his royal master, returned to Ireland without any answer from the king. In the intelligence, however, brought by him, there appeared sufficient encouragement to induce the earl to despatch another envoy, and Hervey of Mount-Maurice, his own uncle, was the person selected for this mission. On the earl's arrival now at Waterford, he found this gentleman just landed from England, charged with messages and letters from persons whom he had consulted, all advising him to lose not a moment in presenting himself before the king. This advice Strongbow followed without delay, and, repairing to England, waited upon Henry, who was then at Newnham in Gloucestershire, with a large army in a state of preparation to pass over with him into Ireland. To meet the expenses of this expedition he had levied, from the landed proprietors throughout his dominions, that pecuniary composition, in lieu of personal service, called Escuage, or Scutage; and from the disbursements made for the arms, provision, and shipping of the army, as set forth in the Pipe Roll of the year 1171, still preserved, it would appear that the force raised for the expedition was much more numerous than has been represented by historians.†

Still maintaining his tone of displeasure towards Strongbow, the king refused at first to admit him into his presence; but the loyal readiness evinced by the earl to submit unconditionally to his will, soon smoothed the way to peace, and succeeded in satisfying as well the pride as the self-interest of offended majesty. Through the intervention, accordingly, of Hervey, a reconciliation was easily effected;-the terms agreed upon being, that the earl, renewing his homage and oath of feally, should surrender to the king the city of Dublin and the adjacent country, together with all the other sea-port towns and forts possessed by him in Ireland; the king, on his part, graciously consenting that all the other Irish possessions of Strongbow should remain in perpetuity to that earl and his heirs, to be held under homage and fealty to the English crown.

At the time of Henry's proclamation against Strongbow, he had also seized on the English estate of that nobleman, as forfeited to the crown by his act of disobedience.‡ The restoration of this property was one of the fruits of the reconcilement now effected; and the whole having been satisfactorily arranged, the king, attended by Strongbow, proceeded, by the Severn-side and western coast of Wales, to Pembroke, where he took up his abode for the short interval during which the ships, for the transport of his army to Ireland, were collecting in Milford Haven. Even here, however, the jealous wakefulness of Henry's fears, with regard to the danger likely to result from Strongbow's example, very strikingly manifested itself; as, during his stay at this time in Wales, he called severely to account all those barons who had suffered an expedition, forbidden by himself, to sail unopposed from their coasts; and even punished this proof of disloyalty, as he deemed it, by seizing on the castles of these lords and garrisoning them with his own troops.

A. D.

The whole armament being now in a state of readiness, the king, having previously performed his devotions in the church of St. David, embarked at Milford, attended by Strongbow, William Fitz-Aldelm, Humphry de Bohen, Hugh de Lacy, Robert 1171. Fitz-Barnard, and other lords. His entire force, which was distributed in 400 ships, consisted of 500 knights, and about 4000 men at arms; and, after a prosperous

* "Quibus auditis, non sine magna mentium amaritudine versis in dexteram loris, versus Guaterfordiam iter arripiunt."-Hibern. Expugnat. 1. 1. c. 28.

Lynch, Feudal Dignities, &c. Some of the smaller payments, as given by this writer from the Pipe Roll (17 Henry II.,) preserved in Somerset House, are not a little curious. Thus we find 26s. 2d. paid for adorning and gilding the king's swords; 12. 10s. for 1000 pounds of wax; 1188. 7d. for 569 pounds of almonds sent to the king in Ireland; 15s. 11d. for five carts, bringing the clothes of the king's household from Stafford to Chester, on their way to that country; 101. 7s. for spices and electuaries for Josephus Medicus, his majesty's doctor; 4. for one ship carrying the armour, &c. of Robert Poer; 29. Os. 2d. for wine bought at Waterford; 9s. 8d. for the carriage of the king's treasure from Oxford to Winton; 3331. 6s. 8d. to John the marshal, to carry over to the king in Ireland; and 2007. to the king's chamberlain, to bring to his majesty on returning from that country."

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Gulielm Neubrig.

Hibern. Expugnat. lib. i. cap. 29.

Applicuit in Hibernia cum 400 magnis navibus." Lord Lyttelton makes the number of ships 440; but I know not on what authority. Gervas, Diceto, and Bromton, all agree in the number I have stated.

voyage, he landed at Croch,* a place near Waterford, on St. Luke's day, the 18th of October, A. D. 1171.†

During the whole of these momentous and singular transactions, while a foreign prince was thus dealing with Ireland as with his own rightful property, and affecting to consider as rebels to himself all those minor intruders and depredators, who had but anticipated him by a few months, and on a smaller scale, in that work of usurpation he was now come by wholesale to accomplish,-during all these deliberate arrangements for the utter extinction of an ancient nation's independence, the nation itself was awaiting tamely, and with scarcely even a show of alarm or resistance, the result. As if exhausted, or rather satisfied, with the few feeble and scattered efforts already made by them, the people now heard, without even an attempt to arouse the national spirit, of the mighty preparations in progress to invade their shores, and stood unmoved as if under the influence of some baleful fascination, to allow the collar of political slavery to be slipped quietly round their necks.

One short and unsupported effort was, indeed, ventured upon by the veteran O'Ruarc, who, encouraged by the weakened state of the garrison of Dublin, in consequence of the troops drawn from thence by Strongbow on his departure, raised hastily a force in Ulster and East Connaught, and made a furious assault on the walls of the city. But, as usual, the want of patient coolness and discipline rendered even valour itself of little avail. Just as the Irish were rushing forward to the attack, Milo de Cogan sallied forth unexpectedly from the gates, and charging them, at the head of a small but gallant band, put the whole multitude, with immense slaughter, to rout. With the exception of this one headlong effort, not a single movement appears to have been hazarded against the common enemy, during the whole interval which elapsed between the departure of Strongbow from the country and his return in the train of a foreign sovereign. Nor was it that the habitual warfare of the natives was, in other respects, suspended at this crisis; for, on the contrary, there occur few periods in our history during which its annals are found more crowded with records of civil strife; and a fierce war was actually raging in the heart of Ulster‡ at the very moment when a foreign prince was about to descend upon the shores, and reduce all parties alike to one common level of subjection and vassalage.

Soon after his landing at Waterford, the king was waited upon by a deputation of those citizens of Wexford who had been concerned in the atrocious capture of Fitz-Stephen; nor could he have been presented with more genuine specimens of that worst species of Irishmen, at once cruel and servile, tyrants as well as slaves, who were destined in future to render themselves useful as tools of the English power. Making a merit in the eyes of Henry, of their flagitious conduct towards Fitz-Stephen, these citizens brought with them their captive in fetters, like a criminal, and presented him to the king, as "one who had made war without his sovereign's permission in Ireland, and had been thereby the occasion of much enmity and wrong." Though at once fathoming the mean policy of his new courtiers, Henry was resolved not to be behindhand with them in dissimulation, but, affecting sincere indignation against Fitz-Stephen, for "daring to attempt the conquest of Ireland without his leave," he ordered him to be handcuffed and chained, and committed him, as a prisoner of state, to Reginald's Tower.

The design of the king was clearly to impress on the minds of the people that he came rather to protect them from the aggressions of others than to acquire any advantage or possession for himself; and this skilful policy it was, combined with the total want of a united or national spirit among the people themselves, that rendered his progress now, as far as it extended, much more like the visit of an acknowledged sovereign to his own states and subjects than the first descent of a royal invader upon wholly

* Bromton,-"Cum magno gaudio in Hibernia applicuit, in loco qui dicitur Croch qui a Waterfordia per octo miliaria distat et ibi nocte remansit." This place is supposed to be the Crook, over against Hook Tower. See Whitelaw's Hist. of Dublin. Introduct.

† Doctor Leland has fallen, somewhat strangely, into the error of advancing the date of Henry's arrival to "the October of the year eleven hundred and seventy-two;" a mark of carelessness, unquestionably, but by no means meriting the grave severity with which Dr. O'Connor remarks upon it, as being a false step at the threshold, which inspires distrust in all that follows:-In ipso itaque limine titubantis, et in rebus præcipuis, quid in minutioribus sperandum sit accurate scriptum, quod critico acumine ad trutinam revocatum, vix divinari relinquunt."-Rer. Hib. Scrip. tom. 2. cxv. It should be recollected, also, that for the date 1172, Leland has the authority of Giraldus Cambrensis.

Rer. Hib. Script. tom. ii. cxiii. note.

Hoveden mentions, as a lucky omen, that on Henry's landing a white hare was seen to jump out of a neighbouring hedge. The animal was caught immediately, says the chronicler, and presented to the king "in signum victoriæ."

See Stanihurst (lib. iii.,) who in his usual inflated style, has made the most of this incident. The following may be taken as a specimen of the mock-heroic language which he supposes the king to address to FitzStephen:-"Quare oculorum ardore in rheum contumeliis opertum atque oppressum intuens: quis tu es, inquit, qui hujus reipub, munia sustinere audeas? Nihil præter regiam dignitatem ambitiosum tuum animum satiare poterit? Me doctore, condisces optabilius esse nobis servire, quam alienis imperare."

alien and yet unconquered shores.* After receiving the homage of the King of Desmond, who came forth voluntarily with offers of submission and tribute, Henry advanced, at the head of his army, to Lismore, and from thence, after a sojourn of about two days, proceeded to Cashel, near which, on the banks of the river Suir, he was met by Donald O'Brian, King of Thomond, who, surrendering to him his city of Limerick, became tributary and swore fealty. Having placed rulers of his own over Cork and Limerick, the king next received the submission of Donchad of Ossory, and O'Faolan of the Desies; and the example of these princes was speedily followed by all the inferior potentates of Munster, each of whom, after a most courteous reception, was dismissed to his territory laden with royal gifts.

Act

From Cashel Henry returned, through Tipperary, to Waterford, where his prisoner Fitz-Stephen being again brought before him, the sight of so brave a man in chains, after the many gallant services performed by him, touched the king's heart with compassion, and, at the intercession of some of his nobles, he readily consented to set him free. ing on the same principle, however, as in Strongbow's case, he asserted his own right to the possession of Wexford, and annexed that town and the territory belonging to it to his royal demesne in the island. It is satisfactory, too, to learn that some of those base wretches, who, having possessed themselves of Eitz-Stephen by treachery, gave him up as a tribute of servility to a new master, suffered, themselves the ignominious death they so richly deserved.

After remaining for a short time at Waterford, the king marched to Dublin, a city which from the extent of its commerce, had risen at that time, to such importance, as to have become, according to an old English chronicler, the rival of London. Here he was joyfully, we are told, received by the inhabitants; while all the neighbouring lords and chieftains hasten to proffer their allegiance; and among the rest O'Ruarc of Breffny, so long the liegeman of Roderic, now joined in the train of the English sovereign, and became his tributary and vassal. In the midst of this general defection, the monarch Roderic himself, an object, for the first time in his life, of sympathy and respect,-having collected together his provincial troops, and taken up a position on the banks of the Shannon, appeared disposed for a time to follow the example of the hardy Ultonians, and to make a last stand for the independence of the nation. This show of resistance, however, was not of long duration; as, shortly after, he consented to meet, on the borders.of his Connaught kingdoms, Hugh de Lacy and William Fitz-Aldelm,, the persons em. powered to receive his act of homage, and treat of the tribute he was to pay. These preliminary matters having been arranged, peace was. declared between the two. Sovereigns.

The festival of Christmas being now at hand, the English king, who was no less. knowingly practised in all the lesser and lighter policy of his station, than in the deeper

*It has been stated by Bromton, by the abbot of Peterborough, and by others, that all the archbishops and bishops of Ireland waited upon Henry on his arrival, and not only tendered their own obedience, but gave him letters with their seals attached ("literas," says Bromton, "cum sigillis suis in modum carte pendentibus,") confirming to him and his heirs the sovereignty over Ireland for ever. But there is not the slightest foundation for this story, of which neither Giraldus nor any of our Irish authorities say a single word. A still more glaring mistake respecting the history of this period has been fallen into by Camden, who supposes a meeting of the states of Ireland to have taken place on Henry's arrival, at which Roderic O'Connor and most of the other princes attended, and there made over to him, by charters signed and delivered, their whole power and authority; in consequence of which, as he states, Pope Adrian invested Henry with the sovereignty of that kingdom. It need hardly be added, that no such proceeding of the states occurred, and that the grant, to Henry, by the pope, of the sovereignty of Ireland, had taken place near sixteen years before.

†This brave but unprincipled chieftain. was one of the first, according to the Munster Annals, cited by Vallancey, who availed himself of the alliance of the new comers in making war against his own country. men. In the year 1170 he fought several battles against Roderic, assisted by the forces of Fitz-Stephen; in 1171, he paid homage and delivered hostages to the same prince; and, in a few months after, as we see, swore homage and allegiance to Henry II.

"Divelinum, urbem maritimam, totius Hiberniæ Metropolim, portuque celeberrimo in commerciis, et commeatibus nostrarum æmulam Lundoniarum."-Guliel. Neubrig. Rerum Angl. 1. 2. xxvi.

§ Adverting to the "vain and ridiculous parade" as he describes it, "of English writers" respecting Henry, O'Halloran says,-"We are told that his army proceeded in slow and solemn marches throughout the country, in order to strike the rude inhabitants with the splendour and magnificence of their procession; and we have been already entertained with the terror which the appearance of Fitz Stephen and his armed forces impressed on the natives, who had never beheld the like! Assertions of this kind might indeed appear plausible, had this people dwelt on the other side of the Atlantic; but, when a brave and polished people were the subjects, the futility of the assertion diverts our thoughts from cholor and contempt. The reader has been already sufficiently acquainted with the distinguished figure which the Irish nation cut in arts and arms: he has heard how remarkably attentive they were to the article of their armour; that their corslets and head-pieces were ornamented with gold; that the handles of their swords were of the same metal; and the shields of the knights and of the nobility were mostly of pure silver: he has been informed that their heavyarmed infantry were cased in armour from head to foot; and he must be convinced that the equestrian orders among the Celte of Europe originated from hence."-Book xiii. chap. 2.

Could any thing add to the feeling of melancholy and shame with which this sad period of our history is contemplated, it would be assuredly the pompous vapour thus thrown around it by such weak and vaunt. ing historians as O'Halloran.

and more important, proposed to celebrate that festive season in the metropolis of his new kingdom, with all the state which the limited resources of his present situation would permit; and, as the city afforded no building sufficiently large to contain his numerous court, a large pavilion was raised temporarily without the walls, constructed of smoothed twigs, or wattles, according to the Irish fashion;* and here the guests, both English and native, were feasted with sumptuous hospitality. The Irish princes and nobles, present on this occasion, appear to have come but as curious spectators of the feast: till, being invited by the king to join in the Christmas cheer, they took their places at the royal board, and were, it is said, struck with admiration both at "the plenty of the English table and the goodly courtesy of the attendants. "

Early in the year 1172 a synod was held, by the order of Henry, at Cashel, conA. D. cerning the acts of which there has been handed down, from historian to historian, 1172. much of ignorant, and, in some instances, wilful misrepresentation. It will be recollected that the principle object which Adrian professed to have at heart in bestowing the sovereignty of Ireland on the English monarch, was the reformation of the alleged abuses of the Church of that realm, for which he looked to the pious efforts of its new sovereign; and, the synod now held being meant as a redemption of this pledge, it is obvious that as strong a case would be made out against the Irish Church as could decently be hazarded, for the purpose both of justifying the grounds or pretext upon which the pope had acted, and enhancing the merit of his royal vicegerent in performing effectually so urgent and arduous a task. With all these pretences, however, of reforma. tion, it will be seen in the following decrees, the most important of all those passed by the synod,-how insignificant, after all, was the amount of reform which it appeared the Irish Church wanted, and to obtain which was the pretended object of Adrian's grant of Ireland to the English king.

It was decreed, "1. That all the faithful throughout Ireland should contract and observe lawful marriages, rejecting those with their relations, either by consanguinity or affinity. 2. That infants should be catechized before the doors of the Church, and baptized in the holy font in the baptismal churches. 3. That all the faithful should pay the tithe of animals, corn, and other produce to the church of which they are parishioners. 4. That all ecclesiastical lands, and property connected with them, be quite exempt from the exactions of all laymen. And especially, that neither the petty kings, nor counts, nor any powerful men in Ireland, nor their sons with their families, should exact, as was usual, victuals and hospitality, or entertainments, in the ecclesiastical districts, or presume to extort then by force; and that the detestable food or contributions which used to be required four times in the year, by the neighbouring counts, from farms belonging to the churches, should not be claimed any more.

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These, and one or two other such regulations, having no reference whatever to religious dogmas, to matters of faith, or even to points of essential discipline, comprise the whole of the wonderful reforms, for which a kingdom was not thought too costly a price; and, in speaking of which, a court-flatterer of those times says, It was worthy and just that Ireland should receive a better form of living from England, seeing that to its magnanimous king she entirely owed whatever advantages she enjoyed both as to church and state, and that the manifold abuses which had prevailed in the country, had, since his coming, fallen into disuse. "{

"Ibi fecit sibi construi palatium regium miro artificio de virgis levigatis ad modum patriæ illius-constructum, in quo ipse cum Rigibus et principibus Hiberniæ festum solemne tenuit die Natali Domini."

Hoveden.

Dubliniam terræ illius principes ad Curiam videndam accessere quam plurimi. Ubi et lautam Angli. canæ mensæ copiam venustissimum quoque verna obsequium plurimum admirantes." It is also mentioned by the chronicler that, at Henry's desire, they were induced to partake of some crane's flesh,-a food which, till then, it seems, they had always held in abhorrence.-"Carne gruina quam hactenus abhorruerant, regia voluntate passim per aulam vesci ceperunt. "-Hibern. Expug, I. i. c. 32.

1 Among these there is one regulating the testamentary disposal of property, the chief provision of which is as follows:-"That all the faithful lying in sickness do, in the presence of their confessor and neighbours, make their will with due solemnity, dividing, in case they have wives and children (their own debts and servants' wages being excepted.) all their moveable goods into three parts, and bequeathing one for the chil. dren another for the lawful wife, and a third for the funeral obsequies, "

§ Hibern. Expug. 1. i, c. 34.-The whole of this passage, which clearly, on the face of it, is nothing more than a laudatory comment annexed by Giraldus to his report of the proceedings of the synod, is strangely represented, both by Lord Lyttelton and Leland, as the language of the synod itself,-a comment of that body on their own acts, and a tribute of flattery to their royal master. This mistake, which, in two such writers, was clearly not wilful, can only be accounted for by their having relied too much upon Hookers translation, in which the passage is made to assume an appearance of the import they have given to it: and that such was the source of their mistake appears the more probable from their having also followed Hooker in a mistranslation made by him, not without design, of a passage which soon after follows. Giraldus, still speaking in his own person, remarks, that the manifold abuses which had prevailed in the church previously. to Henry's coming, had now gone into disuse-" in desuetudinem abiêre." But to say that the synod had. met but for the purpose of abolishing abuses which had already gone into disuse, would have appeared, of

As neither in the nature nor in the extent of the few abuses which the synod of Cashel professed to rectify, is there found any thing to justify this pompous vaunt, succeeding writers have endeavoured to prop the misrepresentation by invention,-alleging that the decree relative to marriage, which regarded really only the degrees of consanguinity within which it was lawful to marry (and which were extended to an unusually rigorous point in Ireland,*) was enacted in consequence of the prevalence of polygamy† among the Irish.

According to the same veracious authorities, the decree relating to baptism had for its object to put down a practice also common, as they allege, among the richer natives, of baptizing their new-born infants in milk. For neither of these often repeated assertions does there appear to have been the least foundation in truth.

In addition to the decree of this synod, above-mentioned, exempting lands and other property belonging to the Church from all impositions exacted by the laity, there was also another relieving the clergy from any share in the payment of the eric, or blood-fine, which the kindred of a layman, convicted of homicide, were compelled to pay among them to the family of the slain; and the extension of such favours and immunities to the Church, though by no means in accordance with Henry's general policy, appeared to him an expedient necessary to be adopted in Ireland, where the support of a strong party among the natives, was indispensable towards the establishment of his power; and the great influence gained by the clergy, over all ranks, rendered them the most useful and legitimate instruments he could employ. From the same motive, doubtless, the payment of tithes, which the Irish had never, during their unreformed state, observed, was now enjoined by Henry's council, with a hope that they would serve as a lasting bribe to the Church. But the people of this country were as little disposed to adopt new observances as to forget or surrender the old; and accordingly, when Cambrensis visited Ireland, several years after the date of this synod, he found marriages within the seven prohibited degrees still practised, and tithes still unpaid.

Besides this synod, which was employed almost wholly upon ecclesiastical affairs, there is stated to have been also held by Henry, a council, or parliament, at Lismore, in which "the laws of England were gratefully accepted by all present, and, under the sanction of a solemn oath, established." It is by no means improbable that, among the acts of authority exercised by him, while in Ireland, he may have, more than once, held what was called a "Guria Regis," or Council of the Realm, for the purpose of conferring with his prelates and magnates on the important matters in which he was engaged. But to apply to a council of this kind the name of " parliament," is, if not an anachronism in language, at least a use of the term calculated to mislead; as that form of legislative council to which we, at present, give the name of Parliament, did not develope itself, however long its rudiments may have been in existence, for more than a hundred years after this period.

With regard to the important act of policy which is said to have arisen out of the deliberations at Lismore, that of communicating to Ireland the laws and usages of England, a very false notion has been entertained by some writers, who, taking for granted that, under the head of "Ireland," the natives themselves must have been included, conceive the Irish to have been equally sharers in the benefit of this transaction,

course, ridiculous. In order, therefore, to accommodate the meaning of the passage to the supposition of its having formed a part of the synod's decrees, the words in desuetudinem abiére" have been rendered by Hooker, "are now abolished;" and in this mistranslation both Lord Lyttelton and Leland have, without reference to the original, followed him.

In Wilkins's Concilia, as well as in the account of the synod, by Lanigan (chap. xxix. note 12.,) the Acts of the synod and Giraldus's comment upon them are kept correctly distinct.

* While the Church, in general, did not extend the prohibition of marriage beyond the fourth degree of consanguinity, the canons of the Irish Church would not, for a long time, allow of marriage within the seventh. Thus, in the treatise de Statu Ecclesiæ, preserved by Usher, it is said, "Conjugatorum est, nullam usque in sextam, vel etiam septimam progeniem sanguine sibi conjunctam, aut illi quam habuerit aut quam habuit proximas, vel commatrem ducere uxorem."-Vet. Epist, Hibern. Sylloge. Ep. xxx.

At The chronicler Bromton even goes so far as, on the strength solely of this decree, to accuse the Irish of marrying their sisters:-" Plerique enim, illorum quot uxores volebant tot habebant; et etiam cognatas suas et germanas habere solebant uxores."

After stating that, in the whole course of his inquiries into the religious practices of the Irish, he found no instance of this sort of baptism, Dr. Lanigan adds, that "perhaps the notion of baptizing in milk was taken from the Irish having probably retained the ancient practice of giving milk to the newly baptized, which, as those ignorant calumniators did not understand the meaning of it, they changed into actual baptism in milk. "-Chap. xxix. § 4.

"Sed rex pater, antequam ab Hybernia rediret apud Lissemor Concilium congregavit, ubi leges Angliæ ab omnibus sunt gratanter receptæ, et, juratoria cautione præstita confirmatæ.-Matth. Paris.

In reference to this council, held by Henry, at Lismore, Mr. Shaw Mason mentions, as rather a curious circumstance, that "the duke of Rutland, when viceroy, called a privy council at the castle of Lismore, and issued proclamations from it. "-Parochial Survey.

The question with respect to the "Modus tenendi Parliamentum" said to have been sent into Ireland by Henry II., I shall have, at a later period, a more fit opportunity of considering.

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