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.