Ireland under the Tudors (Vol. 1-3). Bagwell Richard

by Richard Fitz-Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Chepstow. Earl Richard, whose father had lost most of his lands, lent a favourable ear to Dermod, and undertook to bring an army to Ireland in the spring of 1169. The Irishman promised to give him his daughter Eva, his only legitimate child. According to Norman law Eva would bring the kingdom of Leinster to her husband and children. According to Celtic law the lands belonged to the tribe, and the royal dignity was elective. In this singular contract between MacMurrough and Fitz-Gilbert, we have the key to most of the problems which have made Ireland the despair of statesmen.

      Earl Richard and his friends.

Dermod, however, did not rest his hopes of success upon Earl Richard alone. He went to St. David’s, so as to be as near Ireland as possible, and made friends with the bishop, who had two brothers admirably suited for the work in hand. Nesta, the beautiful daughter of Rice ap Tudor, Prince of South Wales, is reported to have been the mistress of Henry I., and to have had two sons by him. The younger of these had also two sons, the Robert and Meiler Fitz-Henry who played a prominent part in the conquest of Ireland. Nesta afterwards married Gerald of Windsor, by whom she had three sons and one or two daughters, and from one or other of her children all the Fitzgeralds, Barrys, Carews, and Cogans are descended. After the death of Gerald, Nesta married Stephen, the castellan of Abertivy, and by him had one son, the famous Robert Fitz-Stephen. Giraldus, who must have known, twice states expressly that Fitz-Stephen had no legitimate child. The historian himself was Nesta’s grandson, through her daughter Angareta, who married William de Barry. Robert Fitz-Stephen, and his half-brother, Maurice Fitzgerald, listened readily to MacMurrough, who promised them Wexford and two cantreds of land, if they would help him conquer Leinster.32

      Fitz-Stephen and others land in Ireland, 1169.

      Robert Fitz-Stephen was a desperate man. Betrayed by his own followers, he had suffered three years’ imprisonment among the Welsh, had been released on promising to serve Rice Fitz-Griffith against Henry II., and had agreed to hold Abertivy for the Cambrian and not for the Angevin. Dermod now offered him a loophole to escape from, and he agreed to accept his offers and to invade Ireland. His half-brother, Maurice Fitzgerald, consented to accompany him. Dermod then slipped over to Ireland and sought a refuge among the clergy of Ferns, who entertained him, as the Archdeacon of St. David’s carefully notes, to the best of their small ability. It was in the winter of 1168 that MacMurrough returned to Ireland, and in May 1169 Fitz-Stephen and his brother followed with thirty knights of their own kinfolk, sixty men-at-arms, and 300 archers, picked, as Giraldus says, from among the youth of Wales. Three ships carried them all, and they landed safely in Bannow Bay, a shallow inlet which they had probably mistaken either for Waterford or Wexford. The brothers were accompanied by Hervey de Montmorency, who was sent by his nephew, Earl Richard, rather as a spy than as a soldier. On the following day Maurice de Prendergast, whose name still lives at Haverfordwest, brought ten knights and a number of archers from Milford, and landed not far from the same place. As soon as Dermod heard of the adventurers’ arrival he sent his son Donald with 500 men to welcome them, and soon followed himself. Donald, surnamed Kavanagh, from having been fostered at Kilcavan, was illegitimate; but that was a matter little considered among the old Irish, and he became the ancestor of those Kavanaghs or MacMurroughs who afterwards claimed the kingship of Leinster and even of Ireland, and who baffled Richard II. and his great army.

      They win Wexford.

      After a smart conflict Fitz-Stephen and MacMurrough mastered Wexford, which was a Danish town. The Irishman’s readiness to grant Wexford to the adventurers was very probably caused by the fact that the town had never been really in his power. Perhaps he hoped to get rid of the Normans when he had used them to subdue his enemies. It was evident that Fitz-Stephen and his company could do little more than hold Wexford. If Leinster was to be conquered it could only be by a much larger force. Nevertheless, Fitz-Stephen decided to advance into the country, and was joined by the Wexford Danes, who probably were not slow to learn that the Normans were their kinsmen. With a heterogeneous army of 3,000 men, Dermod and his allies marched towards Ossory. There was a battle in open ground with the Ossorians, and the mail-clad stranger had an easy victory. Among the slain was a personal enemy of Dermod, and we are told that that savage, ‘lifting up the dead man’s head by hair and ears, cruelly and inhumanly tore away the nostrils and lips with his teeth.’ In the meantime King Roderic had set his army in motion against the invaders, and easily penetrated to the neighbourhood of Ferns. The monastery was surrounded by woods and bogs, and Fitz-Stephen, who was an adept in Welsh warfare, taught the Leinstermen how to make it impregnable with ditches and abattis. Neither party were very anxious to fight, and Dermod made a treaty with Roderic, in which he acknowledged him as chief king, in consideration of being allowed to enjoy Leinster in peace. Giraldus says there was a secret understanding that the adventurers should be sent home as soon as they had pacified Leinster, and that no reinforcements should be brought over.

      Earl Richard hesitates. His friends take Waterford.

      Whatever understanding he might have with O’Connor, Dermod did not soon abandon the hope of more help from Wales. ‘We have,’ he wrote to Earl Richard, ‘observed the storks and swallows; the summer birds have come, and with this west wind have returned. Neither Favonius nor Eurus has brought us your much-desired and long-expected presence.’ The Earl had waited for the return of Hervey de Montmorency, and when he brought a favourable report it was still necessary to make at least some show of consulting Henry II. The King had forbidden him to go to Ireland, but he now sought an audience and begged either the restoration of his estates or leave to carve out a new one for himself. Henry gave an ambiguous answer, which the Earl chose to interpret in his own favour. In May 1170 he sent out Hervey again, accompanied by Raymond Fitzgerald, called Le Gros, a creature of Fitz-Stephen and Maurice, with twenty knights and seventy archers. Raymond landed at the south-eastern angle of the modern county of Kilkenny, just at the point where the united Nore and Barrow flow into the Suir. He intrenched himself at once, and was soon attacked by the Waterford Danes. If Giraldus is to be believed, a panic seized the assailants, of whom 500 were killed, and many taken. Among Raymond’s followers was a leper named William Ferrand, who performed prodigies of valour, ‘choosing rather to die gloriously than to endure the burden of his disease.’ A question arose as to the disposal of the prisoners. Raymond was for sparing, Hervey for slaying. ‘The opinion of the latter,’ says Giraldus, ‘prevailed; the citizens were condemned, and, their limbs having been broken, they were cast headlong into the sea.’

      Earl Richard lands, 1170.

      Earl Richard landed near Waterford on August 23, 1170. The city was taken soon afterwards, and Reginald’s tower is particularly mentioned as forming part of the defences. That tower still stands with one of Cromwell’s cannon balls sticking in the wall—a monument of three distinct invaders: the Pagan Northman, the Catholic Anglo-Norman, and the Puritan Englishman. ‘Earl Strongbow,’ say the Lough Cé annalists with pathetic brevity, ‘came into Erin to Dermod MacMurrough to avenge his expulsion by Roderic, son of Tirlogh O’Connor; and Dermod gave him his own daughter and a part of his patrimony; and Saxon foreigners have been in Erin since then.’

      The adventurers take Dublin.

      Waterford and Wexford having fallen, and his daughter Eva having been married to Earl Richard, Dermod, who now aspired to the crown of all Ireland, felt himself strong enough to attack Dublin. The Earl had brought 200 knights and 1,000 other soldiers, so that the allied force was a considerable one. MacMurrough led the army safely through the Wicklow mountains, which were the scene of more than one disaster to Elizabeth’s officers. Dermod’s auxiliaries had been trained in Wales; and probably understood mountain warfare much better than those who had served in the Netherlands, or even on the Scottish border. Lawrence O’Toole, Archbishop of Dublin, a man revered both by Danes and Irishmen, attempted to make peace between the citizens and their assailants; but Raymond and Milo de Cogan, while their elders parleyed, led a chosen band to the assault. They soon mastered the place; and Hasculph, with a number of followers and some treasure, escaped to the Orkneys, whence he went to Norway for help. Meath, which for some unexplained reason was in O’Rourke’s possession, was next invaded, and Roderic then wrote to upbraid Dermod with having broken his oath by interfering outside the bounds