THE STORY OF IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 3 April 1919, Page 9

THE STORY OF IRELAND

(By A. M. Sullivan.)

XX.— HENRY MADE A TREATY WITH THE IRISH KING—AND DID NOT KEEP IT.

'Continued .)

But neither Henry nor his Norman barons kept the treaty. Like that made with Ireland by another English king, 500 years later on, at Limerick, it was

“Broken ere the ink wherewith ’twas writ was dry.”

I am inclined to credit Henry with having at one time intended to keep it. I think there are indications that ho was in a certain sense coerced by his Norman lords into the abandonment, or at least the alteration, of bis original policy, plans, and intentions as to Ireland, which were quite too peaceful and afforded too little scope for plunder to please those, adventurers. In fact the barons revolted against the idea of not being allowed full scope for robbing the Irish ; and one of them, De Courcy, resolved to fling the King’s restrictions overboard, and set off on a conquering or freebootiug expedition on his own account ! A historian tells us that the royal commissioner Fitzadelm was quite unpopular with the colony. “His tastes were not military; he did not afford sufficient scope for spoliation; and he was openly accused of being too friendly to the Irish. De Courcy, one of his aides in the government, became so disgusted with his inactivity, that he set out, in open defiance of the viceroy’s prohibition, on an expedition to the north. Having selected a small army of 22 knights and 300 soldiers, all picked men, to accompany him, by rapid marches he arrived the fourth day at Downpatrick, the chief city of Ulidia, and the clangor of his bugles ringing through the streets at the break of day, was the first intimation which the inhabitants-received of this wholly unexpected incursion. In the alarm and confusion which ensued, the people became easy victims, and the English, after indulging their rage and rapacity, entrenched themselves in a corner of the city. Cardinal Vivian, who had come as legate from Pope Alexander the Third to the nations of Scotland and Ireland, and who had only recently arrived from the Isle of Man, happened to be then in Down, and was horrified at this act of aggression. He attempted to negotiate terms of peace, and proposed that De Courcy should withdraw his army on the condition of the Ulidians paying tribute to the English king; but any such terms being sternly rejected by De Courcy, the Cardinal encouraged and exhorted Mac Dunlevy, the King of Ulidia and Dalaraida, to defend his -territories manfully against the invaders. Coming as this advice did from the Pope’s legate, we may judge in what light the grant of Ireland to King Henry the Second was regarded by the Pope himself.”

It became clear that whatever policy or principles Henry might originally have thought of acting on in Ireland, he should abandon them and come into the scheme of the barons, which was, that he should give them free and full license for the plunder of the Irish, and they in return would extend his realm. So we find the whole aim and spirit of the royal policy forthwith altered to meet the piratical views of the barons. One of Roderick’s §ons, Murrogh, rebelled against and endeavored to depose his father (as the sons of Henry endeavored to dethrone him a few years subsequently), and Milo do Cogan, by the Lord Deputy’s orders, led a Norman force into Connaught to aid the

parricidal revolt! The Connacians, however, stood by their aged king, shrank from- the rebellious son, and under the command of Roderick in person gave battle to the Normans at the Shannon. _De Cogan and his Norman ; treaty-breakers and plunder-seekers were utterly and disastrously defeated ; and Murrogh, the unnatural son, being captured, was tried for his offence by the assembled clans, and suffered the eric decreed by law for his crime. , This was the first deliberate rent in the treaty by the English. The next was by Henry himself, who, in violation of his kingly troth, undertook to dub his son John, yet a mere child, either Lord or King of Ireland, and by those plausible deceits and diplomatic arts in which he proved himself a master, he obtained the approbation of the Pope for his proceeding. Quickly following upon these violations of the treaty of Windsor, and suddenly and completely changing the whole nature of the relations between the Irish and the Normans as previously laid down,- Henry began to grant and assign away after the most wholesale fashion, the lands of the Irish, apportioning amongst his hungry followers whole territories yet unseen by an English eye ! Naturalists tell how the paw of a tiger can touch with the softness of velvet or clutch with the force of a vice, according as the deadly fangs are sheathed or put forth. The Irish princes had been treated with the velvet smoothness ; they Were now to be torn by the lacerating fangs of that tiger grip to which they had yielded themselves up so easily.

(To bo continued.)