To stop the lingering course of slow decay.
Wherefore, defending our country and liberty, and acquiring for ourselves eternal renown, let us, by a resolute attack, and the extermination of our enemies, though they are but few in number, strike terror into the many, and, by their defeat, evermore deter foreign nations from such nefarious attempts.”
Henry’s astute policy disarmed, for a time, even Roderick himself. The Anglo-Norman monarch, who would have made an admirable modern politician, does not seem to have desired the absolute ruin of the Irish nation, but his greedy Norman captains were of a different mind, and when Henry, after having wined and dined the Irish princes to their hearts’ content, in Dublin and other cities, at last returned to England, in the fall of 1173, the Norman leaders showed their teeth to the Irish people, and forced most of those who had submitted into fierce revolt. As a result, the Norman forces were crushed in the field. Strongbow, himself, was shut up in Waterford, and his comrades were similarly placed in Dublin, Drogheda, and Wexford. Henry, incensed at this unlooked-for sequel to his Irish pilgrimage, sent over a commission to inquire into the facts. The result was that an Irish delegation went to London to explain, and, at Windsor, where Henry held his court, a treaty was entered into, finally, between King Roderick and himself, by which the former acknowledged Henry as “suzerain,” and Roderick was recognized as High King of Ireland, except the portions thereof held by the Normans under Henry. This was a sad ending of Roderick’s heroic beginning. As usual with English monarchs, when dealing with the Irish people, Henry, urged by his greedy dependants in Ireland, soon found means to grossly violate the Treaty of Windsor, as the compact between the representatives of Roderick and himself was called, thus vitiating it forever and absolving the Irish nation from observing any of its provisions. Another fierce rebellion followed, in which the southern and western Irish—the Anglo-Normans having now grown more numerous and powerful—were remorselessly crushed. Roderick’s rascally son, Prince Murrough O’Conor, who thought his father should be satisfied with the titular High Kingship, and that he himself should be King of Connaught, rose in revolt and attempted to seize the provincial crown. The Connacians, indignant at his baseness, stood by the old king. Murrough was defeated and received condign punishment. This bad prince must have been familiar with the unseemly course pursued by the sons of Henry II in Normandy, for he allied himself with his country’s, and his father’s, enemies, the Anglo-Normans, under the treacherous De Cogan, and this act, more even than his filial impiety, inflamed the minds of his countrymen against the unnatural miscreant. King Roderick, unhappy man, whose pride was mortally wounded, and whose paternal heart, tender and manly, was wrung with sorrow at the crime of his son and its punishment—decreed by the Clans and not by himself—disgusted, besides, with the hopeless condition of Irish affairs, made up his mind to retire from the world, its pomps and vexations. He repaired to the ancient monastery of Cong, in Galway, and there, after twelve years of pious devotion, on the 29th day of November, 1198, in the 82d year of his age, this good and noble but irresolute monarch surrendered his soul to God. He was not buried at Cong, as some annalists have asserted, but in the chancel of the Temple Mor, or Great Church, of Clonmacnois, in the present King’s County, where he was educated. Tradition has failed to preserve the location of the exact place of sepulture within the ruined shrine. And so ended the last Ard-Righ, or High King, that had swayed the sceptre of an independent Ireland.
King Henry’s claim that the Irish Church needed great reformation is disproved by the enactments of his own reign in that connection, viz.: 1. That the prohibition of marriage within the canonical degrees of consanguinity be enforced. 2. That children should be regularly catechized before the church door in each parish. 3. That children should be baptized in the public fonts of the parish churches. 4. That regular tithes should be paid to the clergy, rather than irregular donations from time to time. 5. That church lands should be exempt from the exaction of livery and other burdens. 6. That the clergy should not be liable to any share of the eric, or blood fine, levied off the kindred of a man guilty of homicide. 7. A decree regulating the making of wills.
Surely, this was small ground on which to justify the invasion of an independent country and the destruction of its liberty!
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.