CHAPTER XII
Prince John “Lackland” Created “Lord” of Ireland—Splendid Heroism of Sir Armoricus Tristram
HENRY II, whatever may have been his original intentions toward Ireland and the Irish, soon after his return to England assumed the tone of a conqueror and dictator. He forgot, or appeared to forget, the treaty he had concluded with King Roderick’s representatives at Windsor, which distinctly recognized the tributary sovereignty of the Irish monarch, and left the bulk of the Irish people under the sway of their own native laws and rulers. Now, however, he, in defiance of the commonest law of honor, proclaimed his weakest and worst son, the infamous John, “Lord” of Ireland—a title retained by the English kings down to the reign of Henry VIII, who, being a wily politician, contrived to get himself “elected” as “King of Ireland.” This title remained with the English monarchs until January 1, 1801, when the ill-starred legislative union went into effect, and George III of England became king of the so-called “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.”
Henry II died in 1189, preceding the Irish king he had so deeply wronged to the grave by about nine years. His last hours were doubly imbittered by the discovery that his youngest son, John, who was also his favorite, and in whom he had concentrated all his paternal love and confidence, was leagued with his enemies. An able, but thoroughly bad, man, Henry Plantagenet died a miserable death—his heart filled with rage against his own rebellious offspring, who, no doubt, only practiced the perfidious policy inculcated by their miserable father. The death scene occurred at Chinon, in Aquitaine, and his last words, uttered in the French tongue, and despite the vehement protests of the surrounding ecclesiastics, were, “Accursed be the day on which I was born, and accursed of God be the sons I leave after me!” His curse did not fall on sticks and stones. All of his guilty sons, except John, died violent and untimely deaths. Lackland, the exception, died of an overdose of pears and fresh cider, added to grief over the loss of his treasure, which sunk in a quicksand while he was marching with his guard along the English coast. Henry’s curse remained with the Plantagenets to the end, and most of the princes of that family met a horrible doom, from Edward II, foully murdered in Berkeley Castle, to the last male Plantagenet, of legitimate origin, the Earl of Warwick, beheaded by order of Henry VII in 1499. Strongbow, Henry’s chief tool in the acquirement of Ireland, died of a dreadful blood malady, which, the doctors said, resembled leprosy, some years before the king. He is buried in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and beside him are said to rest the relics of his only son, killed by the ferocious father’s hand, because he fled from the Irish in some border battle.
Before closing this chapter we may be allowed to remark that Richard III, when he had his nephews murdered in the Tower of London, in 1483, came legitimately by his cruel nature. John Lackland was the progenitor of all the Plantagenets who succeeded him on the English throne, and, like his direct descendant, Richard Crookback, was a usurper, because Prince Arthur, son of his elder brother, Geoffrey Plantagenet, was lineal heir to the throne. History and tradition agree in saying that John caused Prince Arthur to be murdered, and some historians say that he was the actual murderer. He was the only coward of his race, and was, also, frivolous and deliberately ill-mannered. When on a visit to Ireland, in the supposed interest of his father, he caused a revolt among the Irish chiefs who called upon him, by pulling their long beards and otherwise insulting them. Those cringing chiefs deserved the treatment they received, but John Lackland, as he was dubbed, is not, therefore, excusable for having acted toward them as a boor and a ruffian. Later on, when he became King of England, he again visited Ireland, and built many strong castles. That of Limerick, called King John’s Castle, is still almost perfectly preserved, and is a superb relic of Norman military architecture. As the Irish were not provided with armament, or appliances, for making a successful siege, the fortresses built by King John were, so far as they were concerned, virtually impregnable. Whenever the Normans were vanquished in the field, they retired to their castles, which were amply provisioned, and defied the vengeance of their foes.
In the last year of the reign of Henry II, there occurred in Ireland one of those memorable combats which deserve a lasting place in history, not so much because of any important reform or social or political blessing of any kind resulting from them, but as tending to show that warrior men, in all ages, have often been chivalrous and self-sacrificing. The Norman race—glorious as has been its record all over Europe and Palestine—never evinced greater bravery than on the Woody field of Knocktuagh (Nockthoo), “the Hill of Axes,” in Galway, A.D. 1189. Sir John De Courcy, hard pressed in Ulster by the fiercely resisting septs of the north, asked aid from his sworn friend and comrade, Sir Armoricus Tristram—ancestor of the family of St. Lawrence, Earls of Howth—then serving in Connaught. Tristram had with him, according to some accounts, thirty knights, one hundred men-at-arms, mounted, and one hundred light-armed infantry; according to other statements, he had under his command thirty cavalry and two hundred foot. This force Cathal O’Conor, afterward known as “the Red-Handed,” Prince of the royal house of Connaught—a most valiant and skilful general, who was younger brother, born out of wedlock, of King Roderick, then virtually in the retirement of the cloisters of Cong Abbey—led into an ambush, and attacked with a superior force. Sir Armoricus saw at a glance that escape was hopeless, and that only one refuge was left for him and his following—to die with honor. Some of his horsemen, tradition says, proposed to cut their way out and leave the infantry to their fate. Against this mean proposition Sir Armor’s brother and other knights vehemently protested. “We have been together in many dangers,” they said; “now let all of us fight and die together.” Sir Armor, by way of answer, alighted from his steed, drew his sword and, with it, pierced the noble charger to the heart. All the other horsemen, except two youths, who were detailed to watch the fight from a distant hill, and report the result to De Courcy in Ulster, immediately followed their glorious leader’s example. Tradition asserts that the two young men who made their escape, by order, were Sir Armoricus’s son and the squire of De Courcy, who brought the latter’s message to Tristram. Having completed the slaughter of their horses, the little band of Normans formed themselves in a phalanx, and marched boldly to attack the outnumbering Irish. The latter met the shock with their usual courage, but the enemy, clad in armor, cut their way deeply and fatally into the crowded ranks of their cloth-clad foes. The Irish poet, Arthur Gerald Geoghegan (Geh’ogan), thus graphically and truthfully describes the dreadful encounter:
“Then rose the roar of battle loud, the shout, the cheer, the cry!
The clank of ringing steel, the gasping groans of those who die;
Yet onward still the Norman band right fearless cut their way,
As move the mowers o’er the sward upon a summer’s day.
“For round them there, like shorn grass, the foe in hundreds bleed;
Yet, fast as e’er they fall, each side, do hundreds more succeed;
With naked breasts undaunted meet the spears of steel-clad men,
And sturdily, with axe and skian, repay their blows again.
“Now crushed with odds, their phalanx broke, each Norman fights alone,
And few are left throughout the field, and they are feeble grown,
But high o’er all, Sir Tristram’s voice is like a trumpet heard,
And still, where’er he strikes, the foemen sink beneath his sword.
“But once he raised his visor up—alas, it was to try
If Hamo and his boy yet tarried on the mountain nigh,
When sharp an arrow from the foe pierced right through his brain,
And sank the gallant knight a corse upon the bloody plain.
“Then failed the fight, for gathering round his lifeless body there,
The remnant of his gallant band fought fiercely in despair;
And, one by one, they wounded fell—yet with their latest breath,
Their Norman war-cry shouted bold—then sank in silent death.”
When Cathal Mor finally became King of Connaught, he caused a monastery, which he called “the Abbey of Victory,” but which has been known to the Irish of Connaught for ages as “Abbey Knockmoy,” to be erected on or near the site of the battle. Tradition, not a very reliable guide, fails to exactly define the scene of Cathal’s victory over the Normans. Knocktuagh, an inconsiderable eminence, is within a few miles of the city of Galway, whereas Knockmoy, where stands the historic abbey, is fully twelve miles east of that ancient borough, on the highroad to Athlone. Cathal of the Red Hand fought many battles and won many splendid victories, although he occasionally sustained defeats at the hands of the Normans and their traitorous native allies; his greatest victory was won over his bitter rival, albeit his nephew, Caher Carragh O’Conor, whom he encountered somewhere in the county of Galway. There was an awful slaughter on both sides, but Cathal prevailed, and, no doubt, built the abbey on the spot where Caher and his leading chieftains, Irish and Norman, fell. De Courcy was the only foreigner allied with Cathal Mor in this great battle. Abbey Knockmoy is one of the most interesting of Irish ruins, and contains friezes and frescoing most creditable to Irish art in the thirteenth century. The victory gave Cathal Mor the undisputed sway of Connaught. Adopting the policy of the invaders, for the benefit of his country, he used Norman against Norman; allied himself with Meyler FitzHenry, the last of Strongbow’s lieutenants, to punish Connaught’s inveterate foe, William de Burgo, ancestor of the Clanricardes in Limerick, and to humble the pride of the ambitious De Lacys in Leinster. In 1210, this gallant Irish monarch compelled King John of England to treat with him as an independent sovereign, and, while he lived, no Norman usurper dared to lord it over his kingdom of Connaught. Like his royal father and brother, he was a champion of the Irish Church, and was a liberal founder and endower of religious houses. Had the Connacian kings who followed been of his moral and military calibre, the Normans could never have ruled in Connaught. Nor did this great Irishman confine himself to his native kingdom alone; he also assisted the other provinces in resisting foreign encroachment. Even in his old age, when the De Lacys tried to embarrass his reign by fortifying Athleague, so as to threaten him in flank, the dauntless hero, at the head of his hereditary power, marched from his palace of Ballintober, made two crossings of the river Suck, and, by a bold manœuvre, came on the rear of the enemy, compelling them to retreat in all haste across the Shannon into Leinster. He did not fail to raze their forts at Athleague to the ground. This was the last of his countless exploits. His time was drawing nigh, and, according to the Four Masters, “signs appeared in the heavens” which foretold his death. In 1223, Cathal’s load of age and care became too heavy, and he resigned the crown of Connaught to his son, Hugh. The old king, assuming the habit of the Franciscans, retired to the Abbey of Knockmoy, and there expired, mourned by his country and respected by its enemies, A.D. 1224. Tradition still points to his tomb amid the majestic ruins of that venerable pile. His death was the signal for the rise of Norman power in Connaught, and for the final deposition by the alien De Burgos of the royal race of O’Conor.