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.
CHAPTER XIII
Ireland Under the Earlier Edwards—The Younger Bruce Elected King by the Irish—Battle of Athenry—Death of Bruce at Faughart Hill
AFTER the death of King John, affairs in Ireland proceeded tamely enough until the repeated encroachments of the Anglo-Norman settlers and their progeny, who occupied chiefly a comparatively small district called “the Pale,” which consisted of most of the present counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath, Westmeath, Kildare, and Kilkenny, forced the native Irish to rise “in rude but fierce array” against them. The Norman family of De Lacy disputed supremacy in Leinster with the Fitzgeralds, or Geraldines, but the latter, finally, outshone their rivals both in court and camp. The De Courcys, headed by the bold and chivalrous Sir John, “of that ilk,” made some impression on the coast of Ulster. The De Burgos, ancestors of all the Irish Burkes, became powerful in Connaught, and the old Irish, headed by the O’Conors, fought against them fiercely from time to time. But the gallant, if covetous, Norman captains beheld the Irish maidens, and saw that they were fair. Love-making, despite frequent feuds, progressed between Norman lord and Celtic virgin; and not uncommonly between Irish prince and Norman lady. Many “mixed marriages” resulted, and, naturally, racial animosities became greatly softened, “for love will still be lord of all.” Very soon the warrior Normans, who acknowledged but a doubtful allegiance to the English monarch, began to assume Irish manners, wear the Irish costume, and speak in the Gaelic tongue. All this did not suit the English policy, and the Norman Irish were often described by their kindred across the sea as “Degenerate English.” It was written of the Fitzgeralds, in particular, that they had grown “more Irish than the Irish.” This alarmed England, for it began to look as if Norman and Celt in Ireland would soon make common cause against her power. But many Norman chiefs were land hungry, and many of the Irish princes were fierce and filled with a just wrath against their invaders. Gradually, therefore, the Geraldines swept all before them in Kildare and Desmond, for they were very warlike, and many native Irish joined their fortunes to theirs, because of “fosterage” and other interests. The Butlers possessed themselves of large tracts of country in the present counties of Kilkenny and Tipperary, and became Earls of Ormond; and the De Burgos, as Earls of Clanricarde, became, in great part, masters of Galway, Mayo, and other parts of the province of Connaught. Factions among the Celtic chiefs made their conquests easy. The Normans, wily as they were brave, fostered these feuds, and were particularly delighted when the formidable O’Neills and O’Donnells of Ulster wasted their strength in internecine strife. The politic foreigners occasionally allied themselves to either one of the contending septs, and generally succeeded in outwitting both contestants. Yet, as time wore on, the Norman warriors, forgetting their fathers’ speech, shouted their battle cries in the Gaelic tongue, and, except for their armor, could hardly be distinguished from the Celts.
Henry III paid but small attention to Irish affairs. He ascended the English throne a minor, and his mature years were spent mainly in repeated civil wars with his barons, who finally compelled him to extend and confirm the Magna Charta of his father. His son, Edward I, nicknamed “Long Shanks,” the ablest king of the Plantagenet race, was almost constantly occupied, during his stirring reign, in wars of conquest against Wales and Scotland, and he succeeded in annexing the first-named country to the English crown. His son and successor, Edward II, was the first English Prince of Wales. This Edward inherited the Scotch war which his father had left unfinished, after great effusion of blood. In 1314, his great English army, said to have numbered 100,000 knights, archers, and men-at-arms, was disastrously routed at Bannockburn (“Oaten-cake rivulet”), near Sterling, by King Robert Bruce, of Scotland, who had under his command not more than 30,000 men, horse and foot. This great victory did not entirely end the Anglo-Scotch wars, which were always bitter and bloody down to the close of the sixteenth century, but it preserved the independence of Scotland for nearly four hundred years. That country ceased to be a separate nation in 1707. Many Irish clans of Ulster aided Bruce at Bannockburn, and some Connaught septs, under one of the O’Conors, fought on the English side, and were nearly exterminated, which “served them right.” As the Irish princes could not settle on one of their own number for High King, they, at the suggestion of the wise and generous Donald O’Neill, King of Ulster, agreed to elect Edward Bruce, brother of the Scotch monarch, king of all Ireland. Their proffer of the Irish throne was accepted by the Bruces, and Edward was duly crowned in 1315. This provoked a destructive three years’ war. Brave King Robert came to Ireland to aid his brother, and, in the field, they swept all before them, particularly in Munster. But the Norman-Irish fought them bitterly, notably the Geraldines, the Berminghams, and De Burgos. Felim O’Conor, the young and gallant king of Connaught, was forced into a repugnant alliance with De Burgo, who was powerful in the west. His heart, however, was with the Bruce, and he soon found an opportunity to break away from his repugnant Norman ally. Summoning all his fighting force, he marched upon the fortified town of Athunree, or Athenry, “the Ford of the Kings,” in Galway, and came up with the Anglo-Norman army, arrayed outside the walls, on the morning of August 10, 1316. De Burgo and De Bermingham, two able veteran soldiers, headed the Anglo-Normans. The conflict was fierce and the slaughter appalling, particularly on the Irish side, because the heroic clansmen did not have, like their foes, the advantage of chain armor and long bow archery. Night closed upon a terrible scene. The Irish refused to fly and died in heaps around the lifeless body of their chivalric young king, who, with twenty-eight princes of his house, proudly fell on that bloody field. Most of the Irish army perished—the loss being usually estimated at 10,000 men. The Anglo-Normans also suffered severely, but their armor proved the salvation of most of them. Connaught did not recover from this great disaster for many generations. Athenry proved fatal to the cause of Bruce, although, gallantly seconded by Donald O’Neill, he fought on for two years longer, but was at last killed in battle on Faughart Hill, in Louth, A.D. 1318. With him disappeared, for that century at least, the hope of an independent Ireland.
After the battle of Athenry, the power of the De Burgo family, and of all the allies of their house, became predominant in Connaught, but all these Anglo-Norman chiefs became, also, much more Irish in manners and sympathy than they had ever been before. The desperate bravery displayed by O’Conor’s clansmen had aroused the admiration of those born warriors, and they felt that to ally themselves in marriage with so martial a race was an honor, not a degradation, such as the English sought to make it appear. Ulster maintained its independence, and so also did much of Connaught and portions of Munster and Leinster, and there were periodical raids upon the Pale and carrying off of “Saxon” flocks and herds, followed by feasts and general jubilation. The Palesmen, whenever too weak to meet the Celts in the field, would resort to their time-honored strategy of shutting themselves up in their strongholds, and making, whenever opportunity offered, fierce retaliatory raids on the Irish territory. This kind of warfare was unfortunate for Ireland, because it kept the English feeling strong in the hearts of the Palesmen, who were constantly recruited by fresh swarms of adventurers from England. Outside of the Pale, however, the Old Irish and the Normans continued to affiliate and intermarry, as we have already said. Fosterage—a peculiarly Irish custom, which meant that the children of the king, prince, or chief should be nursed by the wives of the clansmen, instead of their own mothers—grew apace, and nearly every Norman lord had his heirs suckled by the women of the Celtic race, thus creating a bond of “kinship”—if so it may be termed—in many instances stronger than even the brotherhood of blood.
Irish tradition abounds in examples of the devotion of foster-brethren to each other; and in all written history there is given but one instance of treachery in this connection, and that instance does not involve a man of Celtic, but of Latin, lineage. We refer to the betrayal of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald by Parez in the reign of Henry VIII, which will be dealt with in the proper place.